Month 1 day 8: Basil Chicken Meatballs with Ponzu Sauce

Today we made:
Basil Chicken Meatballs with Ponzu Sauce, Cooking Light January/February 2011

Remembering last Thursday, when I had to eat very quickly so I wouldn't be late to tutoring, I decided to give myself a full hour to cook and eat tonight. This was supposed to take just 19 minutes according to the recipe, so I would have a leisurely 20 minutes to eat and a 20 minute buffer just in case.

It didn't quite work out that way though. 19 minutes includes 13 minutes of cooking time, so you only have 6 minutes to actually put things together? But our chicken was in the freezer and took a while to defrost in the microwave. And you actually have to cut things, because no one budgets time to cook starting the timer once they have already mise en placed everything. We couldn't buy ground chicken in non-integer weights, so we scaled up the recipe, and by the end we were making forming many more little meatballs than we were supposed to. So that's why today's blog is in the first-person plural, because G was interrupted from reading his paperwork for his summer internship and forced to come saute a batch of meatballs while I formed the other ones. Also problematic: the bag of dried coconut from Shaws had a hole in it! Gross! But there was no time to buy more so I just had to use it from the other end! Hopefully we don't die.

Other than that though, it was pretty easy, and it is still quick, but probably closer to 30-40 minutes than 20. So I still had to eat really quickly :( G liked them-- there were many different flavors, but they didn't overwhelm each other. They were just a bit spicy, but then there was a bit of sweet coconut. The serving size says 2 meatballs, but I think we ate 6 servings between the two of us... which was probaby a full pound of ground chicken :-P I thought it would've been cool, with more foresight while grocery shopping, to serve this on rice noodles, so it would be the total Asian version of spaghetti and meatballs. 

Month 1 day 7: Ground Turkey Laap

Today I made:
Ground Turkey Laap, Food and Wine February 2011

This is the first time cooking from Food and Wine magazine. To be honest, I don't know how I ever became subscribed to FW. I must have gotten a free subscription somehow, because one day my mom emailed and said that they kept getting my magazines and maybe I should change my shipping address. I don't drink wine, although I do like food, but I never really looked at any of the issues I got until now. It seems a little more upscale than Cooking Light and Rachael Ray, but definitely a tier below Saveur. This means that there are travel-eating articles, but their recipes are dumbed down to require only a few ingredients that you might not otherwise have (unlike Saveur, which puts in the recipes unadulterated  and has an index listing websites where you can order all of the things you can't pronounce).

This recipe was pretty quick and easy, other than the first step, which was to toast and then grind uncooked rice. I wasn't sure how I was going to do this without a spice grinder, but then I realized we had a pepper grinder. Since pouring the pepper out and back in, the floor is covered in little pepper balls  waiting underfoot to make you slip! Anyway, that worked pretty well, but was an insane wrist workout, even though it was just 1 Tbs rice. 

Otherwise it was very quick. There were so many herbs! I ate it on lettuce leaves, but it was juicy and just dripped all down my wrists.

Month 1 day 6: Pork Tenderloin with Eggplant Relish

Today I made:

• Pork Tenderloin with Eggplant Relish, Food Network Magazine January/February 2010

As you can see, it's not that much food. In fact, the recipe in the magazine has a huge star that says "Only 297 Calories!"I don't know why that's meant to be a positive thing for your dinner, which should satisfy at least a third of your daily caloric needs. Anyway, normally you would serve this with some sides-- maybe some crusty bread? But as it was, I started cooking this about 45 minutes before I had to leave to lead an exam review, so this was all we had. Peppers, garlic, and eggplant are charred under the broiler and then chopped up. The tenderloin is quickly seasoned and then pan cooked. So this wasn't a very complicated meal, and was pretty fast. I only had five minutes to eat it, so I don't really remember how it tasted. I think it tasted good.

G and I are big tenderloin fans, but we already have a go-to recipe, and G likes that one more. I think he fell in love with it one day when we were in a rush to go to some meetings, but I stayed behind a few minutes to finish cooking. In about 20 minutes total, I cooked pasta topped with tenderloin and sauteed bell peppers in a balsamic sauce, nestled next to some salad. G was surprised to see this array of tasty foods that was whipped together so fast, and everyone else in his meeting was jealous. So I think that's why he has good associations with that particular recipe.

This was the second day in a row cooking with the broiler. It does speed things up a lot! It's like the oven's response to the pressure cooker. I think I'll use it more often in the future.

Month 1 day 5: Tandoori-Spiced Chicken and Chickpea and Cauliflower Curry

Today had some excitement-- when we woke up there were emails in our inboxes about a gunman sighted on campus! We were supposed to shelter in place. I wasn't planning on going to work today anyway, so it was all the encouragement I needed to stay at home in PJs. Anyway, I had a term paper to write for my education class. It turned out to be kind of just a rant the lack of clear goals and learning objectives in Intro Bio and what a lame class it is.

We had a couple no-cooking days since the last post. On Thursday G attended our dorm's hot-pot night while I attended a panel discussion and dinner about careers in education for graduate women. It was actually a great panel-- the ladies spoke candidly about realizing that they weren't meant for academia (mostly in the infamous 4th year of their PhD programs...) and how they bumbled along and randomly wound up working in other sorts of education/outreach jobs that turned out to be their dream jobs even though they never would've thought of it. Friday was another event at our dorm, Open Doors Night. On this biannual event, residents can volunteer to host a party in their room. The dorm pays for the food and non-alcoholic drinks, and residents can just go from party to party. We decided to go with a selection of cheeses and chocolate. We have so much leftover cheese now, we will be eating this for breakfast for a while:

With all the preparations (and me losing, but luckily recovering, my wallet) we didn't have time to cook beforehand, and mostly filled up on cheese and baguette ourselves, but afterwards we did end up getting hungry so we fried up some Italian sausage with bell peppers and onions. We cooked it for long enough that the onions were caramelized and the peppers were nice and soft too. Yum.

Anyway, today I got the chance to cook again. We meant to make this earlier, but had forgotten to soak the chickpeas. So it was delayed until today:

• Tandoori-Spiced Chicken, Cooking Light January/February 2011
• Chickpea and Cauliflower Curry, Food Network Magazine January/February 2010

These were both dishes that took a long time, although not so much hands-on time. The tandoori chicken was supposed to marinate for two hours. I don't know how long we actually let it go... probably somewhere between one to two. Is it accurate to call it tandoori chicken? It's not cooked in a special oven, it's not pink, and it doesn't seem to have much overlap with what are typical spices at least according to wikipedia. The only similarity is that the marinade has yogurt in it. I don't know if it's because of the yogurt or not, but it was really juicy! That was nice. It wasn't super flavorful, and the flavor didn't penetrate, but the outer layer at least was good. I could see setting up the marinade in the morning and letting it sit all day, and then it would be a quick meal because it actually only broiled for 15 minutes.

The curry (can we call it a curry if it doesn't actually have any curry powder?) was kind of interesting to make. For Open Doors Night, I had just bought these empty tea bags that you can use with your own loose leaf teas, so I used one of those to put all the spices in. It smelled like we were making chai! The curry took a while, but didn't require much supervision, so this is a fine recipe for lazy weekend days. It wasn't spicy at all. I may have used the wrong type of pepper. Our grocery store has a chart of different chiles and their spiciness levels, but the pictures don't particularly look like what is in the baskets down below. It's always a gamble.

We happened to have some leftover rice from Indian takeout in the freezer, and G got some naan at the grocery store. He made some mango lassi too! It was really frothy and good.

Month 1 day 4: Herb-Crusted Chicken and Parsley Orzo

I had planned to make tandoori-spiced chicken today, but as I perused the recipe over breakfast I realized that I was supposed to soak some chickpeas for the side overnight, and also have set some chicken in marinade. Whoops... I suppose I should read the recipes the night before instead of the morning of.

So instead, I made:
Herb-Crusted Chicken and Parsley Orzo, Cooking Light January/February 2011

We're not saving this recipe because it's not really anything out of the ordinary-- it's just chicken with some dried herbs rubbed in and then cooked. The orzo is just orzo with some parsley and butter mixed in. But, it did taste good.

Despite the simplicity of the recipe procedurally, we took pause because it calls for "fines herbes." When I first read it, I kind of just blew it off like yeah, that's probably just fine herbs, whatever you want. But then the "s" of "fines" and "e" of "herbes" started bugging me, so I looked up what it really is. It's really a specific mix of tarragon, chervil, chives, and parsley (and sometimes marjoram and a few spices I don't own).

When G moved into my apartment, he brought with him a spice rack that he had acquired in college... five years ago. We replaced a lot of the spices, but the bottles are convenient so we still use it. We threw out a lot of the spices that aren't commonly used (including many that had never been opened) and relabeled the bottles for things we do use a lot, like thyme (how was that not already a part of the set?). 

Anyway, we do own tarragon and parsley, but we repurposed the chives bottle and I have never tasted chervil. So I just used a mix of tarragon, parsley, marjoram, and added some savory for good measure, because with a name like that how can you go wrong?

It's good to remember that even if you can't cook or don't have time to do anything beyond pan-frying some chicken, adding a mix of spices is easy and adds flavor without extra calories, fat, or other negatives.

Month 1 day 3: Fettuccine with Mushrooms and Hazelnuts and Molten Chocolate Cakes

Today I made:

Fettuccine with Mushrooms and Hazelnuts, Cooking Light January/February 2011

served with lightly steamed green beans.

This was easy and quick to put together; boiling water for fettuccine took the most time. Hazelnuts are toasted briefly in butter then set to the side, and then mushrooms and garlic are sauteed up. Sage and copious amounts of parmesan are added at the end. The hazelnuts made it taste special, since they're not an everyday ingredient. Our only complaint was that the ratio of pasta to toppings was off, but then we realized that it called for a 9-ounce package instead of the 1-lb box we used in entirety. So there you go. Lightly steamed green beans (I keep wanting to type "green beens" or "grean beans") are an under-appreciated side-- they're great on their own and it's hard not to snack on them! They would be even better with some lemon zest and butter. The key is not to overcook them.

We're keeping this recipe too.

Edit:
And then I made molten cakes from an old recipe from ABC cooking studio in Japan. Yum!

First I made the ganache center and froze it while I made the batter. The batter also started with a ganache base, which was folded into a merengue. Just a bit of flour and cocoa were added at the end. I got to use a new silicon cake mold from Target which worked quite well and didn't stick at all! If you'd like me to translate the recipe, please comment.

Edit #2: The recipe (makes six cupcake-sized cakes)
First make the ganache: Mix 60 g milk chocolate (I used chocolate chips), 30 g cream, and 12 g unsalted butter in the top of a double boiler or a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir until melted and remove from heat. Add in 1.5 tsp grand marnier and cool by placing the bowl in ice water (I didn't do this part). Separate into 6 equal-sized balls/plops and tie up individually in Saran wrap. Place in the freezer for 20-30 minutes.
Next make the batter: Mix 90 g milk chocolate, 90 g cream, and 30 g unsalted butter in the top of the double boiler and stir until melted. Remove from heat and add in 3 egg yolks (keep the whites aside). Add 1.5 tsp grand marnier and stir. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat the 3 egg whites with a handmixer until fairly foamy (sorry I don't know how to translate this description) and add 11 g sugar. Keep beating until soft peaks form that bow when you pull up the mixer and add another 11 g sugar. Keep beating until stiff peaks form. At that point, beat one more minute on low. Pour about 1/3 of the merengue into the chocolate mixture and mix with a spatula. Then, pour the chocolate mixture into the bowl with the rest of the merengue and stir gently just about 5-6 times, taking care not to pop all of the air bubbles in the merengue. Sift in 15 g each of cake flour and cocoa powder. Stir gently 7-8 times. Then sift in another 15 g each of cake flour and cocoa powder and stir gently until you can no longer see powder.
Fill cupcake liners about halfway full with batter. Remove the ganache from the plastic wrap and put in the center. Cover the top with the rest of the batter.
Bake at 170 C for 13-15 minutes in a gas oven or 180 C (~350F) for 15-18 minutes in an electric oven. Top with powdered sugar once cooled (if you can wait that long before eating it! ;) )

Month 1, day 2: Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes and Gingered Pears and Parsnips

Today I made:
Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes, Cooking Light January/February 2011
Gingered Pears and Parsnips, Food Network Magazine January/February 2010

These two recipes overlapped well together. The pears and parsnips are quick to prep, and then they basically just do their own thing and simmer in a wine, broth and lemon juice mix while you are preparing the shrimp dish. The shrimp dish is pretty quick to throw together too-- toast some breadcrumbs, garlic, and parsley on the stove, then layer shrimp, crumbs, tomatoes, crumbs. I used pre-cooked frozen shrimp, so it really just had to heat up anyway. By the time that was in the oven, it was time to start stirring the pears every so often, and most of the dishes were cleaned up by the time dinner was ready.

These recipes were both written into the recipe book but with some reservations. G doesn't like parsnips, but he liked the pears. What could be substituted for the parsnips? We'll have to try again and see how carrots, potatoes, turnip, or daikon do in its place. G liked the shrimp dish better, but there was way too much of the breadcrumb mix for me. The picture published next to this recipe couldn't possibly have been made from the same recipe! I would've liked a little more liquid in the mix (maybe winter tomatoes were to blame), and even crispier bread crumbs on top.

Month 1, day 1: Cous-cous stuffed chicken

This month I have 3 issues:

• Food Network Magazine January/February 2010
• Cooking Light January/February 2011
• Food & Wine February 2011

Since February is already half over, I tried to select just a handful of recipes, but it was hard! So, I already think I will be pardoning some overlooked recipes each month instead of mercilessly throwing them all away at the end of each month.

Anyway, today I decided to make couscous-stuffed chicken to greet G when he came back from a day of snowboarding with friends. I timed it just right to account for his travel time. But then dinner was done and he wasn't here. And he wasn't responding to texts either. I decided to eat and keep his in the oven. He came back quite a bit later, and had already stopped to eat on the way home. Whoops, oh well. It was delicious though, so his loss!

Couscous-Stuffed Chicken, Cooking Light January/February 2011 (click for recipe)

Stuffed chicken is kind of a pain, but this might have been worth it. It's stuffed with a mix of couscous, tomatoes, feta, parsley, and lemon zest (I left out olives because they are disgusting!).  The rolls were bulging and dumping their contents everywhere while I tried to brown them in our cast-iron skillet. The skillet and I don't get along well. It's unseasoned and sticks to everything. But it's the only thing I have that can go from stove to oven. Before roasting, I tossed in the rest of the couscous mix that didn't fit in the rolls, and it was good-- it could have used more. While it was roasting (for just a while-- this is a quick meal once the chicken is assembled) I sauteed some kale for the side.

The lemon zest was clutch-- it made everything taste so fresh. The chicken was moist and everything was good. But in the end each roll was pretty small. I think 2 rolls would be a more reasonable serving size. As it was, there was enough for lunch leftovers, but if G had eaten dinner tonight, we probably would've finished it off. This recipe is a keeper.

The Why

I enjoy cooking. But perhaps even more, I enjoy buying cookbooks and subscribing to cooking magazines and pouring through the recipes and pictures and imagining what I will cook. But then I don't. The end result is that I've accumulated more than a shelf-full of magazines full of recipes that have never been tried, so I can't get rid of the magazines, but they just sit there and make me feel guilty. It's pretty rare for me to flip through one for what to cook that night, and even when I do the season's usually off or it's just full of Halloween cupcake decorating ideas or something.

Last weekend, I purged my room of other magazines, going through the dog-eared pages and jotting notes of books to check out or websites to visit. Energized, I wanted to do something about the cooking magazines too.

I laid them all out by month. For some reason, I don't have full sets of each, but there's about 3-5x coverage. That wouldn't be so great for a genome sequence, but for cooking magazines that is more than enough. I decided that for the next year, I will take the 4 or so issues that correspond to that month and attempt to cook all the best-looking recipes. Whatever recipes I didn't get to are --let's face it-- probably never going to happen and can be discarded sans guilt. Whatever gets cooked will be tasted, and those that pass muster will find a permanent home in the hall of fame AKA my recipe book.

That's the plan, anyway! So at the beginning of each month, I will decide on some recipes and put together weekly shopping lists/meal plans. And throughout the rest of the month, I'll be blazing (hopefully not literally) my way through.