Today I made:
New Orleans Red Beans and Rice, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
Apple Cider Floats, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
We got a new utensil carousel! I saw something like it on Groupon that didn't have the holder, so I went to Amazon and found this one. The utensils are designed in such a way that the head doesn't touch the counter when you lay it down, so you don't need a spoon rest and don't make a mess. We have tongs of this design. This one is a no-brand version, and so actually the ladle does touch the countertop :-P But, I look forward to this festive display and clearing out a little space in the drawer, which is always overly full and sometimes hard to shut.
A few of the recipes I've made recently (this, last week's feijoada, and yesterday's curry) are from a feature in Rachael Ray's magazine about traditional day-of-the-week meals. Sunday is an English roast and Yorkshire Pudding. Monday is this dish and Tuesday is the dish we made yesterday (whoops, we messed up the days). There apparently are no traditional foods on Wednesdays. Thursday is gnocchi, Friday is a Caribbean fish fry, and Saturday is feijoada. Apparently Monday is traditionally laundry day, and people would simmer these beans all day as they washed. This is a much simpler version, without ham hocks (although we have one of those in the freezer, so I would've liked to use it...). And actually, I forgot to add the cayenne, so it wasn't spicy at all. Also I used the leftover chorizo from the feijoada instead of using andouille sausage, which is probably what the recipe was relying on for a lot of the flavor. But anyway, even though the flavors weren't very complex, this was still a good dish, and it was very easy and pretty quick too. I got to use our Dutch oven, so I was happy :) It's a bit on the small side, so not all recipes work with it, so I'm happy when I still can use it without it overflowing.
For dessert we made these apple cider floats. It's just cider heated with a cinnamon stick, with a scoop of vanilla in it. I made the caramel sauce from 1:1:1 sugar : water : cream. The sugar is boiled in the water until it has largely evaporated away and starts to get foamy and brown. This transition is really fast, after a long, boring simmering stage, so I think it would be easy to miss. Once it's caramelized for a bit, pour in the cream and stir to mix it in. When I poured the cream in, it basically froze the caramel it touched first into a big hard clump stuck on my spoon! But it eventually evened out nicely. This was really sweet, mostly because the cider itself is very sweet... there was just a hint of caramel in each sip, and it did taste like a caramel apple! We didn't put in as much ice cream as the recipe called for because it was too solid to scoop easily. By the time I finished drinking, it had completely melted, and then seemed to have curdled a bit :-/ It might be better to use more ice cream so there is some left to eat at the end! I had a second scoop later with some of the extra caramel sauce :)
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