2 dozen eggs and several pounds of meat

This week I made:

• Seared Salmon with Jalapeño Ponzu, Cooking Light May 2010
• Taiwanese Sesame Cucumbers, Food & Wine Magazine November 2010
• Spicy Tomato-Poached Eggs, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2014
• Fried Chickpea & Fresh Vegetable Salad, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2014
• Beef & Broccoli Ramen, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2014
• Salted Caramel Brownies, Cooking Light September 2011
• Pan-Roasted Chicken with Cauliflower, Every Day with Rachael Ray December 2013
• Kuku Sabzi (Leek and Herb Frittata), Saveur March 2012
• Rachael's BBQ Pulled Pork Tacos, Every Day with Rachael Ray April 2014
• Sautéed Corn, Greens, Bacon, and Scallions, New York Times July 18 2012
• And a breakfast that gets its own post

We had this Asiany salmon with cucumbers and udon. Everything was pretty easy and quick. The cucumbers are pickled, but they're not called pickles so G liked it ;) The salmon came out really nice and crispy (cooked on our grill pan).

Rachael Ray had a little feature on the "new" Mediterranean diet. Not sure what's new about it-- I thought that being old and traditional was part of the point-- but okay. We made two recipes from it. 

We've made shakshuka before (this is what this is, despite Rachael Ray's name). It's hard to remember which is better. But I think I remember something being a bit off about the previous recipe, whereas this one was just fine. It has a lot of jalapeños in it, and also this gremolata made of jalapeños (with cilantro, parsley, garlic, and lemon), but since they were all seeded, it wasn't too spicy after all. Just enough to kind of make me blush. The gremolata would probably be an interesting by itself on crostini or something.

We had this chickpea salad alongside the shakshuka. It was good, although kind of just tastes as you would expect, like a Greek salad or something. The chickpeas are just canned chickpeas rolled in some spices (allspice, cardamom, cumin) and then heated briefly in a pan. We made this too thinking that either dish might be too light on its own, but actually the shakshuka was filling enough on its own and we didn't really need this :-P

 Rachael Ray always has something you can make with your kids. This was it this month. Um, it's exactly what it looks like -- Top Ramen noodles with some vegetables and steak on top. For some reason, you throw away the spice packets and make your own broth, that ends up tasting pretty much the same. What was the point? We had kind of wanted to get real ramen noodles, but were too lazy to go to the Korean store, so oh well. I haven't had Top Ramen in a long time, but this wasn't as comfort-foody as something like the-first-Top-Ramen-in-a-long-time should have been. I guess I'm not really into steak, and the bell pepper seemed out of place. I do remember my dad making ramen with broccoli in it when I was a kid, and so I've always been pretty partial to soups with broccoli. But this recipe seemed kind of stupidly complicated for what still is just instant ramen.

We also wanted to make some brownies. Here's what the picture in the magazine looked like:

And here's what my brownies looked like:

Nailed it!

Again, being impatient while making layered brownies is not a good move. The brownies were supposed to cool completely, the caramel topping was supposed to cool completely, and then the chocolate was supposed to be drizzled on. But the brownies required a lot more baking time than recommended, so my timing got off, and the topping was ready before the brownies. I kind of worried it might solidify in the pan, so I poured it over the hot brownies. It started boiling when it hit the pyrex pan! Then, the chocolate was drizzled while the caramel was still wet (apparently, it doesn't set up that fast after all), so it all just mooshed together. if you look carefully you can see weird oil spill slick looking patterns in it. Erm, oh well. It tastes pretty good anyway, but G says "not worth it." Mostly I am the one eating them each night, heated up (this makes the toppings melt into the cake part and makes it super fudgey) with some ice cream.

This roasted chicken recipe is nice. For the first time in ever, our grocery store actually stocked 3.5 lb chickens! So I was able to make this as suggested. It's very simple to make. You just brown a quartered chicken, then add some lemon, rosemary, and garlic, and roast 25 minutes. Meanwhile, you sauté/steam some cauliflower, and serve the chicken on top. It's nice and comforting. We served it along side baked potatoes from the recipe we loved before, but it didn't turn out quite the same for some reason... too much moisture from incomplete draining? Less time? Different variety? For whatever reason, the potatoes weren't quite so crunchy and nice. They were just like normal baked potatoes or something. This is a really good recipe for fall/winter.

We meant to make this Iranian frittata with some Iranian pilaf, but when it was time to start cooking, we only had like 1/2 cup of rice left :-/ So just the frittata. It had a whole dozen eggs in it along with a huge quantity of dill, parlsey, and cilantro; a grated potato; and a leek. I don't really like dill, but it's kind of cool to have a frittata with so many different flavors to it. It was pretty straightforward to make, except that I got distracted during the 16 minutes of cooking and left the kitchen, so it started smoking a lot and kind of charred on one side :( We just peeled that off, but while eating the leftovers I noticed a distinct smokey flavor. Oh well.

 These BBQ pork tacos are supposed to be served with pickled onions, pickled jalapeños, and queso fresco, but we didn't have any of that, so ... plain meat on corn tortillas it is! We should have just gotten some nice buns and had a normal pulled pork sandwich instead. I really drastically changed this recipe because we kept running out of things or having problems. Like, I thought we had lime juice and were out of lemon, so I bought lemon-- but that was the opposite. We also had run out of paprika just a bit earlier, our chiles all went bad in a really gross way (so the Chile BBQ sauce became BBQ sauce), and I didn't want to use beer. Anyway, the pork is just slow-braised in a broth with some onion, carrot and celery-- deosn't seem too TexMexy. But then it's shredded and mixed with a homemade BBQ sauce. The sauce smelled suuuuper vinegary while cooking, but ended up tasting just fine. I think I prefer Bull's Eye sauce though? Is that bad? And I was kind of just confused about why we used carrot and celery in the cooking broth. 

On the side was this quickly sautéed mix of summer vegetables. I thought we had enough meat for the day so left out the bacon, but otherwise followed it. There weren't too many spices, so it wasn't that special. Maybe that's the bacon difference!

Quick chicken, quick chili, quick St. Patty's, and supposed-to-be-quick-but-I-got-distracted mac & cheese

This week I made:
Quick Vinegar-Braised Chicken with Garlic and Celery Leaves, Food & Wine November 2010
Banana-Flax Bread, Everyday with Rachael Ray March 2014
Black Bean Soup-- Vegetarian Black Bean Chili Variation, Everyday with Rachael Ray April 2014
Soda-Bread Biscuits, Food Network
Slow-Cooker Corned Beef and Cabbage, Food Network Magazine March 2010 (as previously made)
Corned Beef Hash, Food Network Magazine March 2010 (as previously made)
Whole-Grain Pancakes, Everyday with Rachael Ray March 2014
No-Boil Mac & Cheese with Bacon, Everyday with Rachael Ray April 2014


Whaaaaat we're starting to repeat recipes! This weekend I remade the cheesy blintz hotcakes, because they were good and we had extra cottage cheese so why not, and then I also repeated the corned beef and cabbage recipe from last year's St. Patty's day. And later this week the hash! So now I can no longer claim to have repeated no recipes in over a year. I think it was true before, in that everything we made from a recipe was a new recipe. Unless G made like cornbread or something. Oh well.

This chicken dish is supposed to be like chicken cacciatore, but uses vinegar instead of wine because it is fewer calories. Huh? Weird. Anyway, although you could certainly smell the vinegar while cooking, it doesn't have too strong of a vinegar flavor. I guess it mostly burns off. It tasted like something we have made before, but I couldn't figure out what. It seemed like something with mustard in the sauce? Maybe it reminded me of this. Anyway, this was quite fast-- it's just a matter of getting a nice brown on the chicken thighs, then quickly adding garlic, then celery leaves, then broth and vinegar for a few minutes. We had extra pasta left over so I threw that in as the sauce was reducing to get it nice and tasty too. The picture in the magazine shows it looking pretty green, with lots of parsley I guess, so it seemed like it already included vegetables, but really it does not, so this needed a side. Otherwise to eat a filling amount, it was just a lot of meat! I ate a small amount, but then was hungry later.

On Sunday I cleaned out our freezer! I threw away a lot of ham from last Easter along with a few other unidentified objects. We took out a lot of old cookies and put them in the lobby for people to enjoy-- you probably only need one batch in the freezer at a time :-P We also found a bunch of frozen bananas, but G said that we should make banana bread instead of tossing them. Lo-and-behold, there was a recipe in the last issue of Rachael Ray (it was a brunch issue, so I haven't made much else from it yet).

It's secretly "healthy" with flaxseed and whole-wheat flour. G's not big on that kind of thing, and he accidentally saw the recipe and found out! We didn't plan this out well, and didn't finish the batter until midnight. Then it takes an hour to bake (when I looked at the recipe, I had previously noticed the 30 minutes quoted for 6-inch loaf pans)! We took it out and went right to sleep, leaving it out to cool. Unfortunately it was kind of dry in the morning. It's still worth eating, but G had previously said that he hates dry banana bread and would rather have undercooked-but-moist banana bread than done-but-dry. Oh well, he was the one who was in charge of testing the loaf!

 Rachael Ray's magazine always includes a pull-out booklet of like "50 burgers" or "50 cookies" etc. The format is usually a few base recipes with several variations for each, and this month's soup feature was similar. There's chicken, potato, caramelized onion, tomato, and black bean soup bases, each with five variations.
This soup really helped with the freezer cleanup! We had a container of broth with a large amount of chili powder mixed in (and some bits of steak too), sauteed poblanos, the final bit of a can of adobo sauce + chipotle peppers that I've used in a bajillion recipes, and some ground beef that all went into this soup! Since a lot of the flavor comes from things like the adobo sauce and chipotle peppers, it's a very quick chili (~20-30 min total) that still packs a lot of flavor. I used a variety of beans to make it more interesting, and I also skipped blending to speed things along and keep dirty dishes to a minimum. Plus, isn't texture good? This was a fast, filling, and yummy meal. It also has a lot of vegetables of course, so it seems well-rounded and pretty healthy (until you add that sour cream and cheese on top I guess). It was pretty spicy, so I was glad to have the dairy to temper it a bit.

We had ceramics class on St. Patrick's Day, so we had corned beef etc. the day after instead. A few friends were able to join us. This was all the same stuff as last year, except the soda bread biscuits and horseradish-sour cream sauce. G doesn't like horseradish, so when it was just the two of us it didn't seem worth making the sauce. But actually it was really good! The rest of us liked it. The biscuits I made because the food kind of cooked down and I had a moment of worry that it might not be enough food. They really just tasted like scones... other than having baking soda, I'm not sure what the difference was! It called for currants, but I used cranberries instead. It got some extra flavor because something was burnt on the bottom of the oven. This always happens-- something spills over and it's too hot to clean up. We forget about it once it's cooled. Then, the next time I bake something, I preheat the oven and when I open it up smoke billows out! So these biscuits tasted like they were smoked (because they were, I guess). If only we had been roasting some meat or something...

Thanks to the slow cooker (which was only big enough to fit the beef, turnip, carrots, and leek), the rest of the meal (cabbage, potatoes, sauce, biscuits) was able to be put together in 30 minutes. Not bad! That's the secret to a weeknight dinner party.

There was enough left over to make hash on Thursday:

Which we basically didn't eat, because we had had extensive hor d'oeuvres at an Amazon networking event (this event didn't make sense. We were invited I guess because G has a job there starting in the fall, but he doesn't know who he'll be working with or under, so we didn't actually meet anyone from there. Instead, there were just a bunch of random mostly-young professionals who weren't working at Amazon. Huh? But the food was 10/10 would eat again). We had it for breakfast the next day instead!

For dinner on Friday we made this no-boil mac & cheese. It's supposed to be "faster" because the noodles cook in the sauce, but then the sauce takes more than the boiling time to make, so... :-P It was really tasty, with leek and bacon in it. It had 1.5 cups of cheese (fontina, gouda, and cheddar), but didn't come out tasting too cheesy. Other than the top, which was a bit cohesive, the inner part was more just like pasta in some sort of white sauce. While it was baking, I got distracted by G watching gravity, so it baked for almost an hour instead of 30 minutes. Oops! Some of the pasta was hard, but I don't know if it was al dente from not being boiled or if it got rehydrated and then redehydrated from being cooked too long. I think if I made this again I would probably parboil the noodles just in case, and then make sure to take it out in time! The leeks managed to create quite a complex flavor. I could've sworn there was onion and garlic, but no... just leeks, bacon, and salt.
 
For breakfast on Saturday we wanted to make pancakes. This recipe was from the same person who made the banana bread recipe from last week, and it has flaxseed too. The picture in the magazine looks like a nice stack of typically-shaped pancakes. But ours looked like:

What happened? At first the batter was super thick, but I realized it's because at one point I was thinking of halving it (that was the point when I defrosted the buttermilk) but ended up making the full recipe of everything except the liquid. But even when I added the rest of the liquid, it was still pretty thick. It went onto the skillet in clumps, but then puffed up a lot to make these biscuit-like cakes. And then since they were so thick, they kind of singed before cooking all the way through. Pfft. We're not keeping this recipe.

Curry, Curried turkey, Pizza, and Ice Cream Delights

This week I made:
Fall Vegetable Curry, Cooking Light October 2010
Pizza
Margarita Ice-Cream Sandwiches, Cooking Light June 2011
Salted Brownie Sundae Bites, Every Day with Rachael Ray (issue unknown)
Curried Turkey Sandwiches on Naan Bread, Every Day with Rachael Ray December 2013

On Monday I made this light vegetarian dinner. It's got a lot of good vegetables-- onion, sweet potato, cauliflower and tomatoes, with chickpeas for a little protein. It's very simple too, with some of the vegetables getting briefly sautéed in curry powder before being simmered in broth. This cooked faster than the rice, even on the "fast" setting. It was pretty light though, so when I ate it for lunch the next day I got hungry mid-afternoon.
The smell of the curry powder reminded me of this bread I made when I was in Japan and taking baking classes. The dough had curry powder in it and rolled up with cheese and chopped onion (sprinkled with more curry powder, if I remember correctly), then cut up like cinnamon rolls and baked individually. It sounds like a weird combination of flavors but was really good, so I ended up making it a lot. The selection of cheeses in Japan is pretty limited, this kind being called "factory cheese." I made it a couple times back in the states, but I can't remember what I substituted for factory cheese, ha.

There was  a pizza recipe in this issue of Rachel Ray which made me think of making pizza, but G said he'd prefer to just make pizza on our own. This one had pepperoni, sausage, marinara sauce, and cheese. Pizza is pretty fast when you can buy bags of dough at the grocery store!

Wednesday was our House Cup Competition. The House Cup is a competition between the different halls in our dorm. The competition changes each month, with scavenger hunts, trivia, cooking contests, food drives, etc. This was the dessert night. I brought a few recipes to share with my neighbors, and we selected these two ice cream recipes that might be unique enough to garner up some votes.
The margarita ice-cream sandwiches are not actually alcoholic, but are lime cookies sprinkled with salt and filled with lime ice cream (actually, lime sherbet mixed with vanilla. And by lime sherbet, I mean lime frozen Greek yogurt, because apparently lime sherbet isn't really a thing). The salted brownie sundae bites are a brownie halved vertically and filled with a mix of fudge sauce and coffee ice cream. This one is also salted.
So, both of these recipes demanded like 3-8 hours of cooling, freezing, etc. I just figured that this was a bit overkill and that we could make these both in a 2-hour window. Um, yes and no. The margarita ice-cream sandwiches came out fine. I skimped on the dough cooling (3 hrs -> maybe 30 minutes) with no apparent effect. The sandwiches were not assembled and then refrozen for 4 hours-- instead, at the event we scooped ice cream onto a single cookie for each person. The cookies were great on their own, too. The ice cream unfortunately melted as the event went on, and probably could have used some more time refreezing after warming and mixing together. All in all, these were pretty normal. The brownie bites were not very successful as the recipe stands. There were a few problems-- In particular, the brownie batter totally did not fill out a 9x13 baking pan as promised. It was not thick enough to cut crosswise, so we ended up folding it over on top of itself instead. Then, the recipe calls for 30 minutes of cooling in the pan, 30 minutes of freezing after being cut, and then another 30 minutes of freezing with the ice cream. I tried to collapse this into just maybe like 10 minutes in the freezer before adding the ice cream because we were running out of time. But the brownies apparently had a lot of internal heat still, and ice cream was also pretty warm at this point (we had put it in the fridge to make it spreadable, but then it got a little too spreadable), so when I went to check on it a bit later the ice cream was all melty and pouring out and/or soaking into the brownies. Basically, the two brownie halves were directly touching and sitting in a pool of coffee cream. And then it was time to go to the event!
I cut and plated the brownies, spilling out the remainder of the ice cream. It looked really messy and awful, but I quickly renamed them "salted brownie bites drizzled in coffee ice cream" and poured the rest of the liquid ice cream on top. It looked a little funky, so I grated some chocolate on top which made it look fancy. This ended up being a pretty popular dessert too!
People seemed really excited to try our desserts, but in the end we got 4th (first loser), so we were a little disappointed. We had dared to hope!

On Thursday I made these naan sandwiches. The recipe is for 6 for some reason, and while our grocery store does carry naan, it cost $12 for 6 pieces :-P G was the one who went shopping, so I didn't realize how much it was until he came back. But we probably should've just stopped by one of the many Indian restaurants in the neighborhood for a basket of naan! Oh well. The inside of this sandwich is a patty of ground turkey mixed with mint, spinach, garlic, yogurt, and garam masala. Since the patties are thin, they cook pretty fast. It's topped with a mix of more mint, tomato, and red onions. Pretty good! G dropped half of his naan into the kitchen sink and was very distraught! So I guess it is good that we had 6 servings :)

Eggplant-Parm sandwiches, Curry, Salad, Cajun chicken, and Blintz Hotcakes

This week I made:

• Eggplant-Parm Grilled Cheese, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• Thai Pork Chops, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• Butternut Squash & Arugula Salad, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• served with steak
• Blackened Chicken with Broccoli Slaw, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• served with black beans and rice from a package that was G's favorite when we made it a few months ago, but he didn't remember it :(
• Cheese Blintz Hotcakes, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014

We got to the end of Sunday and were suddenly really hungry! I had planned to make the butternut squash salad, but we didn't want to wait for the squash to bake, so we looked for a fast recipe instead. This one sounded like it would be good, and G always likes to put his George Foreman grill to use with hot sandwiches. In this recipe, the eggplant is broiled in the oven. You cook up some garlic until golden-crispy too. But other than that, it's just cutting up some cheese, tomatoes, and basil, so it's pretty simple. 

The only annoying thing is that it calls for pressing the buttered bread into 1.5 c grated Parmigiano-Reggiano before grilling. First, that's a waste of $, since that amount is uncalled for. Second, it basically all falls off anyway. Or maybe that's because I used no-name parmesan cheese and it knew it didn't fit in?? Anyway, I guess she had to put it so that it would really be eggplant-parm, but it didn't seem to work that well. The recipe was also funny because it calls for a whole eggplant, sliced very thin. And yet each sandwich (makes 4-6) only has a single slice?? It could use some more (and we did, for leftovers).

On Monday we have ceramics, so we always need to cook a quick recipe. (And even then, we are usually late! :-/) This curry was pretty fast, starting with jarred red curry paste. The recipe called for bell peppers, but we had some sweet peas so I put that in too. I guess there's not too much to say about this, because it really depends on the red curry that you choose-- ours was a little more spicy than I would have preferred!

 On Wednesday we had a bit more time, so we made the butternut squash salad. Actually, since I used frozen butternut squash (cut pretty small, too), it didn't take as long as it called for. I left it in for a while anyway though (and forgot about it until some of the smaller pieces burnt and the rest were nice and crispy #overlyhonestmethods). Meanwhile, we made some steak. When I asked G what he wanted to eat with the salad, he chose steak and talked as if he knew exactly how to make it, but then when it came time to cook it he said he didn't want to do it because he didn't know how! We sauteed it in the cast iron skillet and then stuck the pan in the oven for a while after, since we (I?) like steak to be cooked all the way through. It was pretty good-- I sometimes don't like beef that much, but every once in a while I'm hungry or iron-deficient or something and it tastes amazing. I think there was a lot of fat. Oh, and we put a pat of butter on top when we put it in the oven too.
The salad was good too. We didn't have any dijon, so the dressing was just vinegar, brown sugar, and EVOO. It was really thick!

This blackened chicken is super fast and easy, because it's just rubbed with Cajun seasoning and pan-fried. The slaw is just a bagged slaw tossed with lemon juice and mayo. We don't really like mayo that much, so I guess we should've done something else for the side. But the chicken was good! I think this was our first time using the Cajun seasoning that came with the set of spices G has had for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I know that spices aren't supposed to be as good after a while, but they all seem pretty fragrant still!

These pancakes were so good! They're really easy, because it's just mixed in a blender, and can then be poured straight into the pan (another #overlyhonestmethod-- I made big pancakes instead of small ones because the lid of the blender fell off while I was pouring and smushed my nice small batter puddles into a big pond). It's a mix of eggs, flour, milk, sugar, baking powder, and cottage cheese. It's moist and the cottage cheese gives it a good texture. We didn't have any jams except ones so old the caps are stuck on, so we topped them with fresh mango instead. Yum! This is such a simple and great breakfast recipe-- definitely keeping :)

Month 12 day 2: a salty souffle

Finally it's time to cook again after so many days of leftovers!
Today I made:
Best-Ever Cheese Souffle, Food & Wine January 2011
served with sauteed mushrooms

Well, this is superlative something. Maybe not the best ever though. Probably "saltiest ever" cheese souffle. Cheese is salty! There's no way around it. Especially Parmigiano-Reggiano. It definely didn't need 1.25 tsp of additional salt. This souffle also suffered from me not having a souffle dish, or any dish of the right size, for that matter. It was supposed to use a 1.5 qt souffle pan. Somehow I figured the 3 qt Dutch oven would be the best bet. Unsurprisingly, it ended up being just completely flat, only about 1 inch tall. It was still airy and fluffy (with the egg whites whipped so much, it couldn't not be), but definitely not impressive in the same way it would have been if it had climbed up and spilled out of a correctly-sized dish.

(leftovers ended up being really good with the last remaining bits of salsa from last time's burritos!)

Month 12 day 1: A bunch of TexMex

Last month! This month there are 5 issues:

• Cooking Light, January/February 2010
• Cooking Light, April 2011 (this one was hidden somewhere until April was passed)
• Food & Wine, January 2011
• Every Day with Rachael Ray, January/February 2012
• Saveur, January/February 2012

Today I made a lot of things:

Chipotle Bean Burritos with Guacamole, Cooking Light January/February 2010

Three-Bean Vegetarian Chili, Cooking Light January/February 2010

Frito Pie, Saveur January/February 2012 (<-- the reviews on this one are kind of funny)

Upside-Down Fudge Almond Tart, Cooking Light January/February 2010

(burritos aren't that photographic from the outside)

First we had lunch, and one of G's friends came over to chat before he heads to NY for an internship. He's vegetarian, so I made these protein-packed burritos with a mix of black beans and kidney beans. I made the guac that goes along with them too, but we put it in with the burritos along with the chips on the side. We should make guacamole more often-- it's always so good.

Then later for dinner, we had friends over again! It was time to see G off. I made two chilis-- a vegetarian 3-bean chili and a Frito pie. G made cornbread. In this picture, the Frito pie is on the left and the bean chili is on the right. There is a ton left of each, so I'm not going to be cooking again for a while :-/ But it was good! Especially the Frito pie. The vegetarian chili was just meh, nothing too special.

For dessert I made this fudge-almond tart. It's supposed to be served upside down, but it kind of stuck to the springform pan, and so it didn't come out pretty at all. Instead of inverting onto a plate, it had to be just served right-side up, straight from the pan. But it tasted good! You can't see, but there are roasted almonds studding the bottom (supposed to be top) of the tart, and the rest is a fudgy brownie sort. There's a lot of this left over too! I will be eating well :)

Month 11 day 14: This dinner brought to you by the color yellow

Today I made:
Buttery Pigeon [yellow split] Pea Dal (Mitti Handi Dal), Food & Wine December 2010
Spiced Potatoes (Aloo Bhaji), Food & Wine December 2010
Served with Trader Joe's garlic naan and chai tea (decaf Tetley's British Blend simmered with cloves, cardamom, a cinnamon stick, and milk)

Today I made an Indian dinner. The grocery store didn't have quite exactly all the spices called for, or pigeon peas for that matter, so we had to make a few substitutions, but it ended up being pretty good. There was a lot of tumeric in everything, which is why everything is so yellow. Also a lot of cumin seeds. These are both pretty quick recipes, taking about 30 minutes of hands on time each (the peas take an additional ~30 minutes of soaking first), so that was nice. They were pretty flavorful too. I didn't have quite 2 lbs of yukon gold potatoes, so I threw in a sweet potato (a white-fleshed kind) in just for fun. It looked identical to the normal potatoes, but every once in a while you'd get a very sugary piece! Kind of fun.

Month 11 day 13: Curry breakfast and spaghetti dinner

Today I made:
Eggs Poached in Curried Tomato Sauce, Cooking Light December 2010
Spaghetti with Sunday Sauce, Food and Wine December 2010

I made this flavorful dish for brunch today. It's got garlic, ginger, jalapeño, curry powder, coconut milk, and cilantro and tastes really good. It reminded us of an Asian version of shakshuka, which I made a while back. I liked this one more, and so did G.

For dinner I made this slow-cooked meat sauce and pasta. I've heard a lot about Italian-American traditional Sunday sauces, but had never taken the time to make one before. It was different than I expected-- it's less a sauce than it is a bunch of shredded meat with a little bit of tomato puree. Not surprisingly, G really liked it, saying it reminded him of this hearty rigatoni from a couple months ago. This didn't have that much flavor, though. It was just seasoned with some rosemary and thyme. It seems overly long and time-intensive for what it is, but G liked it a lot so I guess we'll be keeping the recipe!

Month 11 day 3: Polenta and mushrooms

Today I made:
Fontal Polenta with Mushroom Sauté, Cooking Light December 2010
Braised Kale, Cooking Light December 2010

Here's a dinner that is vegetarian but it very hearty.* And fast, too! The braised kale takes the longest (30 minutes). The polenta with mushrooms is pretty fast. The mushrooms are just cooked with some herbs, and polenta is just a matter of boiling liquid (in this case, a mix of broth and milk) and stirring in the polenta and some cheese. It could be done at this point, but the recipe has you put the polenta into dishes and broil it for 5 minutes before topping with the mushrooms.
We do like polenta, and of course kale. I feel like most kale recipes are the same, or very slight variations of the same thing. I guess as long as you like it, it's ok for it to be the same? G likes kale a lot. He liked the polenta and mushrooms too. These days it's not that common for him to remark on the food (he's spoiled!) but today he said it was good.

* And high volume! The kale overflowed the Dutch oven before it cooked down, the polenta was about to the brim of the saucepan I used, and the mushrooms were definitely crowded-- Julia Child would have disapproved!

Month 10 day 4: In which I realize that "puff pastry" doesn't mean "phyllo dough" but it turns out it doesn't matter

Today I made:
Mushroom pies with pear salad, Food Network Magazine November 2009
Served with sautéed mung bean sprouts, Satomi Hara-style

These mushroom pies are each a large portobello mushroom cap filled with a copious amount of cheese and breadcrumbs, wrapped in puff pastry-- that's it. (Ok, they're supposed to have a bit of mustard too, but I left it out because G doesn't like mustard.) It's kind of a weird idea. They each have 1/2 cup shredded cheese. Doesn't that seem excessive?? But, it ends up melting down so I guess it doesn't seem like so much in the end. But these do end up being more filling than you might expect (despite the pastry just flaking away everywhere and being impossible to eat)

When I first looked over the recipe, I saw the frozen puff pastry in the ingredient list and passed over it thinking of the phyllo dough we've had leftover from a [delicious] brunch pie a while back. But tonight when I looked again, I realized you're supposed to use one sheet, which is rolled out to get to the right size... whoops. So instead, I just subbed the amount of phyllo dough by weight and cut out the approximately right sized stack of sheets. I didn't layer them with butter or anything because I didn't want to spend that much time, so I just figured it would be an experiment to see what would happen. It ended up being fine. Although the sheets weren't quite large enough to wrap all the way around and seal up, they got crispy and golden-brown as the puff pastry was meant to. I didn't think G would enjoy it, meatless as it is, but actually he really liked it. I thought it was a bit meh, because there was just too much dough. I think if I made it again I would use sliced mushrooms as many of the reviewers suggest, because large portobello caps are just so unreasonably expensive and it doesn't really matter for this dish anyway.

The salad is just a normal vinaigrette over salad with some pear slices. Straightforward, but tasty.

When I studied abroad in Japan, one of the favorite things my host mom made was sautéed bean sprouts. She thought it was funny that I liked them so much, because they were just sautéed with some black pepper and soy sauce. But it's always what I think of when I have leftover sprouts. They were a bit too salty-- I'm used to low-sodium soy sauce but we have the normal kind right now. But it was fun while I was cooking to think of my 4th grade host brother as being a high schooler now! I wonder if he has a JET teacher in his English class.

Month 9 day 16: Two strata face-off and sausages

Today I mostly made:
Pear and Gruyere Strata, Cooking Light October 2011
Sourdough Strata with Tomatoes and Greens, Food Network Magazine October 2010
Spiced Maple Sausage Patties, Food Network Magazine October 2010

There were two interesting-looking strata recipes this month, so I decided to make them both at the same time and see which was better. One's sweet and one's savory, so they're not really in the same categories, but oh well.
The sweet strata is: pear, cinnamon swirl bread, and Gruyere.
The savory strata is: roasted tomatoes and kale, sourdough, and fontina and parmesan.
Both of these, and the sausage patties that accompanied the sourdough strata recipe are assembled the night before.

I didn't want to make three recipes that each had 6+ servings, so I halved everything and we invited over a few friends. But, halving recipes always allows for some errors... I shredded the full four ounces of Gruyere and sprinkled them over the pears while thinking "wow, even though I halved this recipe this really looks closer to a cup than half a cup... they were really off." I realized my mistake right after putting the last pieces on, but decided to just leave it. I also forgot to peel the pears, and I put the full amount of sugar on the pears.

Everything looks good!

Month 9 day 9: Chana Masala with Roti and Pumpkin Hot Cocoa

Today I made:
Indian Chana Masala with Roti, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
Pumpkin Pie Cocoa, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

This was a good recipe! It seemed like something you might get at a restaurant, but it's very easy too. I made the garam masala from this recipe since it's not something we have on hand, but we do have all the components on hand. G had to hammer some cardamon seeds in a baggie though, because we didn't have ground. He did a good job though :) I used just one serrano and 1/2 of a leftover jalapeno, and that was a good amount of spice-- you could feel it, but it wasn't bad. The tomatoes we used weren't very juicy, so this ended up being much drier than what was pictured in the magazine. I think you could get away with using canned tomatoes though, and then this would qualify as a from-the-pantry recipe. I love it when I find a good recipe that can be made from the things I always have around! The curry itself is also a really fast recipe, just about 20 minutes. So serving this with store-bought frozen naan instead of making the roti would make this something you could make at any time in no time.

For dessert we made pumpkin pie hot cocoa. It's basically just hot chocolate with a bit of pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice mixed in, topped with whipped cream. Normally I think hot cocoa is too sweet, so I tend to put in less than is called for on the canister. But G said we should follow the proportions called for in the recipe: basically a 1:4 ratio of cocoa mix to milk. That was 3 cocoa packets! It was soooo sweet! The pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice was really good, but next time I will use less cocoa powder. Or just melt in chocolate and adjust the sugar myself.

Month 9 day 4: Apple quesadillas

Today I made:
Brie, Apple, and Arugula Quesadillas, Cooking Light October 2010

We love the show "Modern Family," and one of G's favorite lines is when Cam says something about PB&J sandwiches: "pear, brie, and jambon." This kind of reminded me of that, even though it's apple instead of pear and I guess arugula instead of any meat, so I wanted to try it. We needed a light meal since we planned to go to our dorm's special Indian coffee hour. As it turns out, we lost track of time as I read "Cuckoo's Calling" and G played Diablo 3 and missed it. But after two quesadillas each we were pretty full anyway.

I was kind of sure that G wouldn't really care for this actually, as he doesn't care for mustard and when we were at the store he said that he doesn't like brie much. He was a good sport and ate his, and then we made another one without the mustard for him, with mostly mozzarella. I asked if I should still put arugula, and he said yes, but when he was eating it, he admitted that he doesn't really like arugula either. So basically, he would have just preferred to eat an apple! (>_<) So, we won't be saving this recipe... but maybe you will like it, as it is quite highly reviewed on CL's website.

Month 9 day 1: Enchiladas

I'm finally starting October recipes!
This month I have 5 issues:

• Cook's Illustrated, September & October 2009
• Food Network Magazine, October 2010
• Cooking Light, October 2010
• Cooking Light, October 2011
• Every Day with Rachael Ray, October 2011

Today I made:
Black Bean and Cheese Enchiladas with Ranchero Sauce, Cooking Light October 2011
with steamed corn

These enchiladas came out of Cooking Light's (always small) "The Enlightened Cook | Everyday Vegetarian" section. They're meant to be flavorful and hearty despite having no meat. I don't think they were really that filling though... after eating 1.5 servings and a donut I am satiated but feel like I might get hungry later on. Maybe this is because the filling is just one small can of beans and a cup of cheese! If I were to make this again I would pack them more fully, maybe with corn or something inside too.

But the interesting part of this dish is the ranchero sauce. Is this ranchero sauce, even if it's not really tomato based? The dominant flavor comes from two dried chiles, which are boiled and blended along with their cooking liquid with garlic, onions, etc. It was a little soupy, but tasted deep and smokey. Unfortunately, I think the overly-wet sauce wasn't good for the corn tortillas, which basically disintegrated. When we cut into the enchiladas we were surprised that we couldn't distinguish one enchilada from the next, and on the plate it just spread out a little like a cow pie...

I thought this was good, but G said it was nothing special, especially since we were just thinking about all the good September recipes last night. I guess those will be hard to top for him :-P I think I'll keep the recipe for the sauce at least, though. I imagine it would be good on many other dishes.

Although tonight was vegetarian, the next recipes this week are heavy on the meat! Our grocery bill was a bit crazy this week, double what my family of four spent each week growing up :-P Too much meat, plus stocking up on a few things, and a few impulse buys, including some pumpkin donuts and Susan's Ice Cream Essentials after Susan herself was at the store giving out samples. You have to go with the seasons and the local flavor!

This is apparently how much it takes to fuel two graduate students for a week:

Month 8 day 21: Corn fritters and caramel-lacquered pork belly

I spent a lot of today cooking! Both of these recipes are from restaurants, so they were a little involved but very impressive.

Today I made:
Corn Fritters with Roasted Tomatoes and Lime Aioli, Cooking Light September 2010
Caramel-Lacquered Pork Belly with Quick-Pickled Honeydew, Food & Wine September 2010

Can you see the corn fritters and roasted tomatoes under all that arugula?? The picture in the magazine had just a few sprigs, but the recipe called for a half-cup each layer!
The main downside of this recipe is just that the tomatoes roast in the oven for 1.5 hours. Ours might have been in a little longer (1.5 hours is enough time to get distracted!), and in the end they tasted like sun-dried tomatoes but with some juice still. We liked the roasted tomatoes and think they added some good flavor, but I wonder if this recipe could be turned into a just-as-good quick recipe by using fresh tomatoes or cutting up some sun-dried ones for inside of the corn fritters or something like that.
The corn fritters are kind of like a pancake batter with scallions and fresh corn inside. They're quite small, but they cook quickly and are straightforward.
On top is a piece of prosciutto and a lime (and lemon in our case, since I ran out of lime juice) aioli.
I think if I were going to make (and photograph) this again, instead of making a tower, I would put a bed of arugula on the dish and then alternate the fritters and tomatoes overlapping (like a Caprese salad). It is sort of intimidating and difficult to eat something that is towering anyway!
This recipe is almost vegetarian, and I think it could easily work for breakfast, lunch, brunch, or as an appetizer.

Not too long after lunch it was already time to start on dinner, which takes 4 hours in addition to overnight curing :-P Although, it was a little faster for us because we could only buy pre-sliced pork belly instead of one two-pound slab and I didn't wait for it to cool down fully (I didn't understand the logic of this step, unless it was supposed to slow down cooking in the second roast, but given our thin slices I figured it was a lost cause anyway, so no point in waiting).

Although this recipe takes a long time, there aren't really that many steps-- they just each take a while. It's rubbed with some sugar and an excessive amount of salt, which is supposed to get washed off later but didn't! This was super fatty and super salty-- I am pretty thirsty now. But since I've been getting dizzy every time I stood up today, it's probably good to have eaten this! Raise the blood pressure up a bit.

Then the pork is roasted (braised? There's some water in the dish), and it leaked out sooo much extra liquid. I'm not sure if that was juices from the meat or fat that was getting liquified. Then it's supposed to just cool completely. Meanwhile, you heat some sugar until it caramelizes, then stop the cooking with some water and then add a bit of flavors-- fish sauce, tamarind paste, chile, and lime juice. Then the pork is added back in and roasted again until everything gets coated, concentrated, and crunchy.

During one of these long waits, the honeydew is just cut up and mixed with some flavors and "pickled" for about an hour.

This was our first use of the Dutch oven!! It did a great job. I wish I had taken a picture when it came out of the oven! It was completely covered in solidified caramel, but after heating up some water everything scrubbed off perfectly. So much nicer than our cast iron skillet :)

We liked this, but I hope in the future I can wash off more of the salt-- it definitely required a lot of white rice and honeydew to balance it out. The flavors were rich and good-- it did seem like a restaurant recipe! The honeydew scent reminded me of something I used to get at a restaurant as a kid maybe, but I think it used to be with cucumber instead of honeydew. I only used half the melon thinking that we might not like this, but it was pretty good after all.

Month 8 day 19: Not-so-cheesy-mac-n-cheese

Today I made:
Creamy, Light Macaroni and Cheese, Cooking Light September 2011
Served with red-pepper and garlic kale and some desserts from Flour Bakery

The picture is from my new iPhone! How does it look?

We made this large recipe because we were joined by the rest of our cohorts from the executive council of our dorm from 2011. One of us has since graduated and moved away, but he visits every once in a while, so it is nice to get the group back together to catch up. We all enjoy no longer having to worry about how things are going in the dorm :)

This was a "recipe makeover" by Cooking Light-- normal mac-n-cheese normally has ~900 calories (really??), but this one has 390. Because, its orange flavor comes basically entirely from butternut squash. They used fat-free milk (I used whole milk), a little bit of yogurt, and then the cheeses are Gruyere, pecorino Romano (I used mostly Romano of the non-pecorino variety, since we don't like that), and Parmigiano-Reggiano. As many of the reviewers pointed out, it's not really that cheesy of a flavor, and these are all fairly expensive cheeses (compared to cheddar) (although most of them we had in our cheese drawer already). It's fine, but I don't know if I would make it again-- I don't care about the calories in mac-n-cheese at this point of my life :-P

Month 7 day 11: Quiche and chocolate ice cream

Today I made:
Spinach, Green Onion, and Smoked Gouda Mozzarella Quiche, Cooking Light August 2010
The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World, Saveur August/September 2011

I feel like I've made quiche a lot lately.

I got home pretty late today, but I realized that this week's recipes basically all call for 3 hour - overnight marinating or brining, giving the quiche the unusual title of fastest possible meal. Note that I skipped some steps in making the quiche-- the first 1 hour in the fridge got abridged to ~20 min in the freezer while I bought more cheese (I thought I bought cheese yesterday, but I couldn't find it anywhere, and sure enough it wasn't on the receipt either. I have no idea what happened. Also, our store has only one type of smoked cheese, and I thought "smoked" was more important than "gouda." Especially since it took forever to even find the gouda). Then, the second 15 minutes in the freezer after putting the crust in the dish was basically just however long it took the oven to preheat. And I didn't cool the crust before putting in the filling. In the end it still took about 2 hours start to finish though.

The crust was unusual for a quiche... I'm used to the simple flour, butter, and ice water (keeping everything as untouched and cold as possible), but this one started with softened butter, milk, an egg yolk, and then the flour got mixed into that. No wonder it needed to cool off for an hour. The short time in the freezer wasn't a good substitute as it turns out, because when I went to roll it out it stuck awfully to the rolling pin and just cracked everywhere. I ended up just pushing it into the dish with my hands. The crust was fine, but I think it's best to just go with whatever crust is easiest, since the flavor is dominated by the filling. The filling in this was so simple, but tasted really good. Maybe from the green onions? Anyway, this was a nice quiche, and unlike last time it didn't overflow, so that was good.

This was not very dark. Or very frozen when it came out... it's pretty nontraditional, with no eggs. Instead, it has cornstarch, corn syrup, and cream cheese. Basically after making the mix last night and letting it cool all day, it seemed like I had just spent a lot of time/dirtied a lot of dishes to make a loose homemade pudding. It didn't firm up so great in the ice cream maker, and instead was like a homemade frosty. Sometimes that happens with the non-custard bases. I'll see what the texture is really like tomorrow.
For some reason the mix didn't get homogenized well. There were some different dots in it, maybe from the cornstarch and also from the chocolate. This ice cream is nowhere near as dark as pictured on the Saveur website, so I wonder if maybe it would be better with a different brand of cocoa powder or something. I thought this would be great with some orange flavoring. I'm kind of curious to try the ice cream base alone or with just a few berries or something, too, because I was curious about the cream cheese etc. but it was all masked in this.

Month 7 day 7: Chickpeas and Crostini

Today is brought to you by the letter "C":
Eggplant Crostini, Cooking Light August 2010
Cumin-Spiced Chickpeas and Carrots on Cous Cous, Cooking Light August 2011

 These crostini were *really good*. I wanted to just keep eating them. It's a recipe from a restaurant in Chicago or something like that. It's kind of similar to baba ganoush, but is easier to make because the eggplant is just (somewhat quickly) grilled instead of being charred, baked, and peeled. The only problem is that the salad doesn't want to stay on top, so it's a little messy unless your baguette slices are wide. But this is a great appetizer and could turn into a great sandwich too.

The chickpeas are fine, but they're not that special. I feel like some sort of sauteed or steamed chickpea with carrots and bell pepper shows up a lot in Cooking Light's "Enlightened Cooking" section (where the vegetarian recipes are). The lemon here is a nice touch. I probably would have enjoyed this more if I wasn't already full from eating the crostini. I will still save this recipe, because I think G will like it more than other chickpea dishes served over quinoa :-P

Month 7 day 3: Pizza fritatta

Today I made:
Pizza Fritatta, Every Day with Rachael Ray July/August 2012

Hundredth post!!!

This was an interesting meal. Basically, this is a pizza but instead of a crust it has scrambled egg. I think this is probably great for the Atkin's diet or low-carb diet. It's like, how do we make a pizza even more fattening? Let's just replace the bread with eggs, cheese, and half-and-half! Except for me, it was cream, because that's what I had. So, yeah... this is not a Cooking Light recipe for sure. :-/ Last night's dinner was also low-carb. I made up for it by eating a lot of doughnuts today though, so don't worry-- I'm getting my full daily dose of sugars. I sort of wasn't sure about making a fritatta with a dozen eggs, because I know that I will eat this whole thing over the next few days, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. But, I thought that halving the recipe might allow it to burn, since I only have one size of oven-safe skillet. So full on it was!

I think I'll save this recipe, especially for when I'm not eating it all by myself! It was very tasty. The sauce was a bit overly winey, but that was the only problem, and that's probably just because I dislike wine more than the average person and therefore instead of having an open bottle of quality wine around, I just have some crappy cooking wine. I used soppressata, which I've never used before. It wasn't spicy though, so this might not have turned out as it was meant to, so I probably should've tossed in a bit of red pepper flakes. I think it's cool that this recipe actually suggests what could be used for vegetarians to get a similar flavor. AND they suggest the Fresno pepper, so of course I support that :D


I'm glad that I decided six months ago to embark on this cooking challenge of mine. At the end of the day, even if experiments don't work or whatever, I know I'll go home and create something that (usually!) will work out. We've had such great leftovers for lunch every day! The magazine shelf is getting to the point that I need a bookend, and that's a good feeling, to use the things I have. My recipe book is getting full and running out of space for main courses. I feel like I can write some random dinner selector script and have a variety of delicious dinners to eat for the rest of my life. And I'm only about halfway through! So, there will be another 100ish dinners, brunches, or desserts to experience. Cheers to that!

Month 6 day 6: Chickpea lunch and ice cream

Today I made:
Chickpea Bajane, Cooking Light July 2010
Raspberry Buttermilk Sherbert, Food Network Magazine July/August 2010

Also pictured are samosas, which I didn't make, but my friends who joined me for lunch brought to share.

This dish is vegetarian and seems light, but it is quite filling (yet not overly filling). This chickpea dish kind of reminded me of the mint-chard one I made back in May, maybe because I swapped fennel seeds in for caraway then, and this has a lot of fennel too. But, instead of requiring a multitude of cooking techniques, this is a two-pot recipe. Once everything is chopped, it isn't a very complicated dish. This made it well-suited to a little 12:30 lunch gathering, since even though I would only get home from church ~12 pm, I had already cut everything the night before and figured 30 min would be plenty to make everything. As it turned out, I got home a little later than expected, and also things took a little longer than expected. Luckily, my friend Isaac helped cook the bajane while I wrestled with the ice cream. There were some technical difficulties.

1. The raspberries were too plentiful for my blender so the top layer didn't get mixed in easily
2. I used frozen raspberries instead of fresh (they're going to get frozen later anyway, I figured), so the liquid:solid ratio was too small to allow proper mixing 
3. Also this meant that the end consistency was really thick, so I couldn't strain out the seeds
4. I wanted to wipe out the inside of the ice cream maker quickly before pouring the mix in, but then the paper towel froze to the side of the container and was really hard to get off!
5. The amount of ice cream was exactly the upper limit of the ice cream maker, so it was a little dicey.

It all worked out, but it took a lot more hands on time than I was expecting for a recipe that is basically to blend some things together and pour it into an ice cream maker. Originally I had thought to mix this up first and put it in the ice cream machine while I cooked the bajane, but luckily I decided to start on the bajane first or else I would have never gotten to it :-P

Interestingly, it is served with cracked pepper on top. People were mixed on whether you could actually taste the pepper or if it was a good match.

Speaking of ice cream, I wanted to give a little plug for Susan's Ice Cream Essentials. Susan herself came to give out samples at our local Shaw's (why there??). I think it's only available in New England, but if you're here you should give it a try. It was tasty and she tries to make it with wholesome, natural ingredients and gluten free if you're into that kind of thing. Of course, if you have an ice cream machine, you can make whatever kind of ice cream from wholesome ingredients yourself. I don't normally eat much ice cream, but lately Hulu has been showing a ton of commercials for Skinny Cow and some other ice cream brand. Whenever I see them I'm not particularly tempted to go buy those brands, but it does make me tempted to go to the freezer and eat the ice cream that is already there. Haha. I don't think Hulu would be too pleased with that response.