Month 9 day 20: Asian chicken and veggie lettuce cups

Today I made:
Dirty P's Garlic-Ginger Chicken Thighs, Food Network Magazine October 2010
Asian Chicken Lettuce Cups, Food Network Magazine October 2010

These were both recipes from Guy Fieri's tailgating guide. We will never host a tailgating party I'm sure, but they are good for normal dinners too. I halved the recipes for the chicken and the lettuce cups because they were meant to serve 6-8 each.

The veggie cups had a lot of chopping, and used many different kinds of vegetables, but only a very small amount of each :-P So now I need to think of some way to use the rest before they go bad! These are supposed to have some chicken inside, but since I was serving with chicken I left it out and made it vegetarian. Normally we have some dried shiitake, but we were out so I threw in some daikon radish instead. We also are out of sesame oil (>_<) so these might not have been as flavorful as they were supposed to be... but the sauce packs a punch! It is really salty and strong, I guess from the soy sauce mostly. These seemed healthy and had good crunchy texture from the wontons and lettuce, but I wish I had made more instead of halving it! We can always use extra servings vegetables in our diet (not in our fridge).

The chicken was pretty good too, and it's so fast and easy to cook boneless chicken thighs. I think we should keep both of these recipes.

That's it for October! Time is going fast. G couldn't believe that it was already time to pick our favorite recipes from the month, because it feels like we just did. I guess we didn't start October recipes until about a week in.
G's pick: the manly rigatoni! Rachael Ray sure knows her way to a man's heart.
My pick: the chimichangas. Not as crunchily delightful on the second day, but so good the first. Just watch those portion sizes!

Month 9, day 19: Kickin' Meatloafs

Today I made:
Kickin' Mini Meatloaves, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
Served with egg noodles and steamed cauliflower

G likes meatloaf so I decided to try these. The orange chunks are steamed sweet potato, which seemed like an interesting thing to put in. They're distinct, so the sweetness doesn't get dispersed into the entirety, but comes up in most bites. The strongest flavor, though, is the smoke and fire from the chipotle in adobo sauce. Why do they sell cans so large? Every recipe I've ever made uses just like one pepper and 1 Tbs sauce or something like that. I think I've bought maybe 2 cans this whole year, but I've probably cooked about 10 recipes from them (we keep the leftovers in the freezer to pinch off just a bit each time).

Other than those two ingredients it was a standard mini meatloaf recipe. G says he's not looking forward to cleaning the cupcake pan. He said it was pretty good and we should keep the recipe, but then he said he doesn't think it's the best "cupcake-sized meatloaf" recipe we've tried. I tried to explain that the recipes are not specific to the size...

Month 9: day 18: Braised chicken and kale

Today I made:
Chard Kale with Red Sauce, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
One-Pot Braised Chicken and Pear, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

Today we rented a car and drove out to Walden Pond to get our fill of crisp autumn air and fall colors. We ate ice cream twice (once in Lexington and once at Shake Shack) and shared a burger and fries at Shake Shack too (G says it's overrated and said the burger was what he would expect to get at McDonalds), so cooking tonight was more for the purpose of having leftovers to carry us through a couple of busy evenings early this week. Both recipes had some initial chopping/browning, and then just cooked for 25 minutes. Since I put the chicken in before starting the kale, it stayed in the oven a while longer than 25 and the kale was deemed finished after more like 10-15, but the chicken was juicy and good and the kale seemed as tender as kale gets, so it seemed fine.

When I opened up the Dutch oven, I was greeted by this beauty:

There's just a bit of added fat (EVOO), but after browning the chicken there was considerably more in the pot, and after braising the broth was just full of fatty gold disks of. It tasted so rich and buttery that G drank some after eating and declared that he would drink it for dessert (it was a tad sweet from the pears). This was such a straightforward dish too, because I just used thighs instead of cutting up a whole chicken (since the whole chickens at our store are ridiculously large), making this a great weeknight dish that tastes like it took much longer to make. It would be good over egg noodles or rice or something to sop up the broth. 

The vegetable side was also very soupy and needed some bread or something. It could be used as a pasta sauce and become a complete meal. G said it seemed really healthy, but he didn't realize it was cooked in bacon grease. I think he found the tomatoes a bit too overpowering. I agree that it a 14-oz can would probably have been perfect. I liked it though. I used kale instead of chard because we had a lot left over from the stratas, but I am kind of curious how it would be with the intended chard.

Month 9 day 17: Moussakasagna

Today I ate the stratas and sausage from yesterday, and made:
Sock-It-to-Me Moussaka Lasagna, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
(with Herbs de Provence from Food Network)

 We ate the pear strata and sausage first, because the other one needed a bit longer in the oven. The pear strata servings are not that large, because the bread is just not that thick and so it's not very tall. It didn't make a large impression on me because of that. The cheese didn't seem overpowering, and the pear was fine, but there just weren't that strong of flavors in this dish. I did forget to put out the maple syrup though, so maybe that would have made it better? It won 2/6 votes. The sausage was pretty good, I thought. It has lots of different spices, like sage, thyme, allspice, coriander... kind of an odd combination. I would definitely make them again.

The strata came out looking colorful and attractive, but the one picture I took of it was blurry, so this is just a picture of cold leftovers :-/ This one had a lot of volume from the kale and fluffy 1" cubes of sourdough. Despite being half-sized, it needed more than the specified amount of time to bake fully. After 45 minutes it was still pretty liquidy inside. Luckily one of the guests had eaten strata before and knew what consistency it was supposed to be. By the time we finished with our first course it was ready, and I thought it was pretty good. I don't remember too much more to say about it, but it got the other 4 votes. I would probably make this strata instead of the other one, although of course it depends on what mood you're in.

For dinner I made this weird hybrid moussaka-lasagna. It uses lavash bread instead of noodles. I'm pretty sure the intention was to use fresh lavash bread, but there wasn't any of that at the grocery store, so I just used crackers. According to wikipedia, dried lavash bread can be sprinkled with water and then used like fresh lavash bread? Anyway, it was going to be baked in the middle of sauce and cheese, so I figured whatever. I only had enough for two layers, but anyway this lasagna was too tall for our dish! As it baked it kept overflowing and smoking up the kitchen. I'm not sure why it requires a full hour to bake when all of the vegetables are pre-roasted and the meat is cooked in advance too, and everything was still hot when it went together. Oh well.

This didn't really taste like a moussaka, I guess because it has normal marinara sauce and doesn't really have anything that is distinct from a normal lasagna (unlike real moussaka, which has potatoes). So it just seemed like a lasagna that was more complicated that normal. I like the idea of putting so many different roasted vegetables in a lasagna, though. The lavash bread did become soft and noodle-like, but unfortunately it had a ton of seeds, including caraway seeds, which I don't like. Thankfully there were only a couple of bites that had that flavor.

G suggests that next time it would be better to just make a lasagna. Or a moussaka.

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!

Off day: Gingerdead cookies

Today I made:
Gingerdead cookies, Fred and Friends Blog

Last year Mom gave me one of these cookie cutters. She suggested making the gingerbread-inspired cookies from the company's accompanying blog. I'm making them for our lab's "Great Pumpkin Beer Hour" tomorrow, where people bring pumpkin-flavored beers and baked goods. I was told that as long as the baked goods contained pumpkin pie spices, they were welcome ;) These have plenty of ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, so I think they'll do the trick.

I first really tried to make cookies on my own when I was living in Japan with a microwave oven that had a convection oven setting. It was really difficult, as you might imagine, given that I could only fit like five cookies on the one tray at a time. So I always assumed that cookies were just really difficult to make, until I came back to America and had access to a(n almost) full-sized oven again. Then, I was pleasantly surprised when cookies were just fine to make.

But these cookies were challenging! Or rather, the cookie cutter was. On one side it cuts out the skull shape, and on the other side it has the design to be pushed in to the top of the cookie. My mom had warned me that it really needed a lot of flour. But really, it needed many trips back into the fridge. By the time I had cut out a sheet of cookies, they were so warm they kept sticking to the design when I tried to imprint it. And once one little piece got stuck (in the teeth), it was game over and everything stuck. Once I was done with that, of course the dough was even warmer and then refused to come up off the wax paper. There was a little bit of a range:

And Siamese twins:

The taste is a pretty standard gingerbread. I like the thicker ones better than the ones that were cut from the edge of the rolled out dough. Growing up, we always had gingerbread, not gingerbread cookies. It was cakey and sticky. But Grandma always made gingersnaps. I wonder what the difference between gingersnaps and gingerbread cookies is.

Month 9 day 15: Pumpkin stuffed shells

Today I made:
Pumpkin Patch Stuffed Shells, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

You know how women's magazines have started shortening random words? I can't really think of any examples, although I can think of a classmate who uses them often. Anyway, this one uses a new term: "Moms, youll [sic] love this meal because it has hidden health bennies." Who talks like this?? Anyway, Rachael Ray always includes one recipe that is meant to be a parent-child cooking adventure, and this is the one for the month. I guess kids are supposed to have fun stuffing the shells. I like the idea of kids starting to cook early. Actually, I learned how to make scrambled eggs very early on, and later Kraft Mac N Cheese and Top Ramen, which I made if I didn't like what everyone else was having. I also made my lunch, starting in first grade as far as I can recall. This surprises most people, but it didn't seem weird at the time. Instead, it meant that my lunch contained exactly the things that I wanted to eat-- usually half a turkey sandwich, yogurt, some crackers or carrots or something, and then a treat like gushers or fruit-by-the-foot. Anyway, I've heard of some families that bring the children in on the meal planning too-- each family member picks one dinner a week or something. It seems like a nice idea, although I'd be afraid you might end up eating corn dogs or something more than you'd like.

I thought these were pretty good, although ironically I found it distinctly un-fun to stuff like 30 shells. I'd rather just layer it in a lasagne or baked ziti way. I thought the flavors were good, although I deviated from the recipe a bit because I had extra chard to use up and I decided to halve the meat (we are eating too much meat this year!). G agrees that it was pretty good, but then said not to bother keeping the recipe. So I guess he didn't like it after all :-P Or at least not as much as yesterday's!

Month 9 day 14: Manly rigatoni

Today I made:
Fire-Roasted Tomato and Hot Sausage 'n' Beef Rigatoni, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

I got home late tonight, so I opted for one of the 30-minute Rachael Ray recipes. I think it took a bit longer, but was pretty close. This issue has a section of "guy food" that is very flavorful and hearty. No sexism intended, though-- Rachael is quoted that she doesn't run four miles a day to eat salads and pumpkin seeds!

Anyway, obviously there are faster pastas that could be made, but this was pretty good. The bell peppers are charred briefly under a broiler and then sit, covered, while other things are cooking until easy to peel. Sausage and ground beef are browned; seasoned with onion, garlic, and a FRESNO chili (holla!); and then doused in tomato paste, wine, fire-roasted diced tomatoes, and beef stock (but I just used water). The recipe says "gild the lilly with an extra drizzle of EVOO"-- I guess that's the manly touch?

Well, it turns out that Rachael does know what guys like, because G said it was delicious! I think it helped that it finished cooking just as he walked in the door. Who wouldn't love a hot meal waiting for you? It was tasty enough for seconds, but hearty enough that I regretted having a second bowl :-P I sometimes don't like roasted red peppers, but these were good-- maybe I just don't like the jarred ones. I expected this to be really spicy from the Fresno chili, but it wasn't at all... maybe it needs the seeds to be spicy. I have heard that these are spicier than some other peppers I'm more familiar with, but (despite my place of origin) have never used a Fresno chili before, so I was careful to deseed it lest it be too hot.

Month 9 day 13: Pumpkin pancakes and spiced pomegranate juice

Today I made:
Pumpkin Waffles Pancakes with Trail-Mix Topping, Food Network Magazine October 2010
Warm Spiced Pomegranate Orange Juice, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

I didn't plan to make these this morning, but today was going to be a working day for G and we had forsaken ideas of going up to the mountains because of it, so I thought we should at least have a nice brunch. We had some extra canned pumpkin, milk, and even whipping cream left over so I had everything I needed. The recipe as written is kind of complicated and long, but most of that is for roasting the pumpkin and baking a trail mix with the seeds, maple syrup, and some other nuts and dried cherries or cranberries. Instead, I just jumped in with canned pumpkin in step 6. We don't have easy access to a waffle maker, so we made pancakes instead. The batter is a little thick, so it makes silver-dollar sized ones that are pretty fat. This made it easy for them to burn before bubbles were visible (the normal way you know when to flip), so that made it a bit tricky.
Instead of roasting a variety of seeds with maple syrup, I just topped it with roasted pumpkin seeds (we always have some in the freezer), dried cranberries and cherries, and maple syrup. I felt like we probably got the main flavors this way but in a fraction of the time. G preferred not to use any of the toppings on his, as he enjoyed the pumpkin flavor on its own. In a surprise move, he even said he regretted putting on maple syrup! Normally he applies it liberally and enjoys it. He says to definitely keep this recipe. It's a good way to use up extra canned pumpkin!

We had leftover chicken and beans for dinner, but afterwards I made this spiced drink. I imagine it's like a nonalcoholic version of sangria or mulled wine, but I wouldn't really know. G says it's something like that. It's just pomegranate juice, OJ, and fresh ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice berries, cardamom, and star anise simmered together with tangerine slices added at the end. I'm a big sucker for apple cider-- it's on of my favorite things about fall/winter-- but this is alright too. I think it would be a more unique drink to serve at a cool-weather get together. Much less sweet. I tried some of the pomegranate juice by itself before adding it, and man is it bitter... which is strange, because I feel like pomegranate seeds by themselves are so good.

Looking at these two pictures together, I realize I ate a lot of dark purple and orange things today. I hope that means a lot of good antioxidants or whatnot.

Month 9 day 12: Baked chicken and beans

Today I made:
Tuscan Baked Chicken and Beans, Cooking Light October 2010
served with leftover pear and goat cheese salad

Although I just cleared out all the chicken carcasses in the freezer to make broth this past weekend, I put a new one back in the freezer tonight. This recipe starts off by deconstructing a whole chicken into its various parts. Unfortunately, all recipes call for 3.5-lb roasting chickens, but I have never seen anything less than 7 lbs at Shaw's (other than the ~1-2 lb Cornish game hens). Where can you buy a chicken that small? Anyway, I've done this a few times, so it's no big deal except that I tend to be a bit of a germaphobe when handling raw meat, and pushing and pulling on chicken joints isn't great for that :-P Our normal knife was dirty so I was using one of G's "Henckels Eversharp" knives, which cut through the joints scarily well, and cut through the skin surprisingly poorly. I guess it's similar to those tools they use to remove casts, which cut hard things but don't cut skin. Anyway, it's a bit scary to use a knife of an unfamiliar weight and grip and see how easily it cuts through joints...
This was supposed to be all cooked up in a cast iron skillet. But even before adding the overly-large chicken, the beans and vegetables alone were to the brim! So I ended up transferring everything to a large 9x13 pyrex dish before baking. It just barely fit in that even.
The chicken was pretty juicy, and G liked the beans. Although there wasn't a lot of liquid added (except from the canned tomatoes), a lot must have come from the chicken because it was like a soup at the end. G said that even if we had just made the soup he would have liked it. The recipe claimed a yield of 4 servings, but for us it is definitely at least 6, maybe just because our chicken was so large.

This is a good dish for a cool autumn evening. It's a little bit involved, with the cutting of the chicken and then cooking each item individually before putting everything back together and baking. But as the recipe points out, there's a lot of work up front and then it bakes for 40 minutes, giving you enough time to clean up and make a salad or something and relax before dinner. As such, I think it would be a good one for having company over.

Month 9 day 11: Pear and goat cheese salad

Today I made:
Mixed Lettuce, Pear, and Goat Cheese Salad with Citrus Dressing, Cooking Light October 2010

Tonight our dorm had a pizza-making competition. G planned to take part, but ended up being too busy to email our team leader with a list of ingredients, so we ended up just going at the end to see if the other people needed help. We only helped by putting a pizza in our oven. But anyway, we knew that we would be eating pizza during the judging part, so I just made a light dinner.

When G and I first started dating, pear and goat cheese salad was our "thing." For some reason quite a few restaurants we went to together had it on the menu, so we started always ordering it. We haven't had it for a while, but when I saw the recipe I wanted to make it. According to the reviews, the citrus dressing is a keeper. But I don't think I used enough, so I didn't really get a strong flavor from it. I'll have to put on more dressing tomorrow to see if it was really good. Anyway, it's easy enough, so we'll probably keep the dressing recipe as long as it's decent.

Month 9 day 10: Beans and rice and an apple cider float

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 :)

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 8: Ribollita soup and pumpkin mousse

Today I made:
Quick Ribollita, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011
Danielle's Pumpkin-Pie Parfaits, Food Network Magazine October 2010

After last week's constant meat feast, (with the six cuts of meat that we bought >_< ) we're lightening up a bit this week and doing more beans and vegetables.

Ribollita is a traditional Italian soup with cannellini beans and bread (other ingredients vary). It's tagged in the magazine as a "gut-busting soup" which G interpreted as "diet food" and I interpreted in the opposite way (the magazine means it in the "hearty" sense). In the end though, I don't think this was gut-busting in either sense of the word. It was basically just tons of vegetables and felt really healthy, and despite the bread, it wasn't overly filling either. Just satisfying. We didn't care for the texture of the bread (I guess it's like a lazy person's dumplings), so we won't do that part next time. Instead, I'd prefer to serve some cheese on toast with this. 

I normally use "better than bouillon" any time I need broth (it's very good), but last week I both used up the last bit from the jar and stuffed the third chicken skeleton in the freezer. So, today I let that simmer with some random vegetables and herbs and used that for this soup. It was tasting really subtle until I added the salt, and then it magically turned into chicken broth.  

This is a good recipe for eating lots of vegetables, something we don't do enough! If it weren't for making the broth (and thus running out of appropriate-sized pots, since the broth is basically the last thing to be added), this would have been very fast too, supposedly just 30 minutes.

In addition to the vegetables and legumes this week, we're also having a different drink/dessert each night. There were just several that looked good, so I figured why not try them all and see what's best. We kicked it off with this pumpkin mousse:

The funny thing is that in the picture next to this recipe, it shows the parfait being in a tall cup this size, so many of the reviewers complain that it's definitely not 6 servings. But oh my gawwwd is it impossible to eat more than a serving... we scaled the recipe down to make 4, and I think we just barely managed to eat 1/4th of it before being done in. It's just so sweet and rich (G says, "fit for kings"), with strong white chocolate overtones (this might be my fault-- I was using a solid piece of chocolate instead of chips, so I couldn't really measure). It has surprisingly little pumpkin in it. In rank order of ingredients, it goes 1. cream, 2. powdered sugar, 3. white chocolate and pumpkin (tie in the recipe, but like I said I think I accidentally put in more chocolate). 

I don't really like this-- I don't care for white chocolate-- but G said it seemed like something that could be served at Craigie on Main (his favorite restaurant). They would've included the bourbon, though. If I recall correctly, the last time we went to Craigie they served us popcorn ice cream. So I don't think this is quite original enough for them. G countered that they even serve burgers at Craigie, so they're not restricted to fancy foods. But then he admitted that their burgers are injected with bone marrow. So, yeah-- I don't think they would serve this! 

Month 9 day 7: Korean BBQ

Today I made:
Grilled Korean-Style Skirt Steak, Food Network Magazine
served with bacon fried rice and grilled acorn squash

I made Korean BBQ before once too (have I run through all the recipe categories now?), but I think this one was better.
The magazine version of this recipe calls for a half-pound of bacon to be added to the marinade, which are then supposed to be used for kimchi fried rice. It was taken out in the online version of the recipe, after many reviewers were confused about what to do with it, haha. I didn't follow the kimchi fried rice recipe, but I just cooked the bacon up with some grated ginger, scallions, and then pushed that to the side and scrambled an egg before adding the rice and some soy sauce. It turned out really good I thought, probably because it was all cooked in the grease from a half-pound of bacon...
The marinade is interesting, with some soda in it. Wedges of onions get to soak too, and then they're grilled first-- they taste pretty good. You're also supposed to grill some banana or Cubanelle peppers too. I thought that's what I was getting, but when I took a big bite (expecting it to be mild), I was very surprised-- we might have gotten the much spicier, but similarly colored, hungarian wax pepper. Ouch!

The flavors were very bold all around, and it was good. G thought it was pretty good too. The grilled squash was a nice, mild contrast to everything else.

Month 9 day 6: Feijoada #2

Today I made:
Brazilian Black Bean Stew, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

We made feijoada once before from a Cooking Light recipe. I was curious to try Rachael Ray's recipe, which is supposed to only take one hour, to see how it holds up to the other one, which takes 10 hours (most of that is slow cooker time). Even though I added very little salt and basically no spices, it was quite salty (bacon?) and flavorful. The recipe called for it to be served next to collard greens, boiled and then briefly heated through with garlic (and bacon grease).

This was pretty good, and it's hard to remember the other recipe. But when I look back at that post, I realize that the consistency was really different. For that, the meat was so well-cooked that it just shredded itself, making a dense stew, whereas this is more like a soup with chunks of meat in a broth. I think if you have the time, you might as well do the slow cooker version. But if not, this is a good one too. I think it does take more than an hour, though.

Month 9 day 5: Chimichangas!

Today I made:
Almost-Famous Chimichangas, Food Network Magazine October 2010

Um! These are good but so filling!

I don't think I ever had a chimichanga until Beantown Taqueria opened up near us-- everytime we go, G and I split a chimichanga and a chile relleno. This recipe was a copy/recreation of the chimichangas from a restaurant called Chi-Chi's which is apparently out of business now and took its beloved dish with it. G and I had never been there, so we have no idea how authentic this recipe is, but it is tasty.

The recipe doesn't take all that long (despite what other reviewers said, it did take me just an hour as claimed), because it starts with rotisserie chicken and canned refried beans, so there's just some aromatic vegetables that get cooked with spices before adding the chicken and sour cream and rolling up the burritos. The weird thing about this recipe is that it has cinnamon though, which (when included in a savory dish alongside cumin) made this whole thing taste Moroccan to me, and I kept expecting some cous-cous or a raisin or something :-P Cinnamon and cumin is like the lazy magazine way of turning an otherwise normal dish into an exotic African one.

Normally chimichangas are fried, but this one is baked! But before you think it might be healthier-- it gets its crisp from being brushed with butter melted into oil... so it is all but fried. It was very tasty though, and pleasantly crispy.

I was wary of the sauce, because of the time that I made posole with canned green chiles and it was inedibley spicy. Now that I read the reviews of that recipe, they all say that it wasn't spicy at all. I think there is only "canned green chiles," but maybe I somehow grabbed the wrong thing that time. Anyway, the Chi-Chi's Mexi-sauce is basically pureed canned chiles (with some spices, aromatics, and broth), so I was expecting it to be super-spicy too. But... it wasn't. So, I guess canned chiles are not so bad after all. (now that I think about it, I probably grabbed a seranno chile instead of a jalapeno for that posole-- they're all poorly marked at the store).

Anyway, this was great, and we're just sad that tomorrow it won't be crispy. And now we feel a bit ... overwhelmed. I was famished when I started cooking so I kept nibbling on the chicken, and I was basically full halfway through dinner but kept eating because it was so good :-/

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 3: Autumn chili

Today I made:
Chipotle Turkey Chili with Apples and Cheddar, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

We've been just flirting with fall weather, but in all other aspects it feels like fall has hit New England. The trees on my walk to work have changed color, squash and apples are filling the farmer's market boxes, and most everyone has taken a trip to go apple picking already. This soup is made for autumn with its apples, cider, cinnamon, and pumpkin seeds. It's a good recipe for people like me who just like to go instead of cutting and preparing everything in advance-- things are added one at a time so there's time along the way to prep things. By the end of 30 minutes (as claimed), this bowl of soup was ready. The dominant flavor was from the chipotles in adobo sauce (canned and available year-round, but used in two recipes this week-- I guess it's warming for cool weather?) There were a lot of other spices too--  full tablespoons each of coriander, cumin, and paprika as well as a big cinnamon stick-- but these didn't stick out so much. The liquid isn't added until basically the very end, which I thought was interesting, but I'm not sure if there's a particular reason why.

At the end I topped it with apple-smoked cheddar, but needed to add more! It's really good. I ate it with tortilla chips, but it would go really good with a fresh batch of cornbread too.

Month 9 day 2: Wannabe Pastitsio

Today I made:
Quick Pastitsio, Cooking Light October 2011
Served with a green salad

When I was a kid, we went every year to the Greek Food Festival. I always got pastitsio. I probably first tried it because it was the only thing without olives or lamb, or maybe because it was the thing that most closely resembled macaroni and cheese. But I really loved it and always looked forward to it every year.

I do have a recipe for it, which was submitted by someone with a Greek-sounding last name to the Fresno Bee newspaper. So it very well could be the same one that was served at the food festival. I've made it a couple times, but it isn't as good as the real thing in my hands. Anyway, I was intrigued when I saw a recipe in Cooking Light for pastitsio. And the entire thing is made in the time that it takes just to bake the recipe I previously owned. Even more intriguing, it includes cream cheese.

Yes, Cooking Light has decided that instead of going through the trouble of making a bechamel sauce, why not just melt some cream cheese in milk (with a touch of flour)? It looks the same, after all! Although many of the other ingredients are the same (pasta, ground beef, onion, garlic, tomatoes), the cream cheese really does stand out, and instead of being a layered dish it is just all mixed together and fairly runny. I guess this is like baked ziti as opposed to lasagne. G has never had pastitsio (as far as he knows), so he thought it was good. This was a decent baked pasta recipe, although I would never let a Greek person see this recipe (>_<) It's the only recipe I've seen that has basically a uniform distribution of reviews from 1 to 5 stars. G says "mm, sure" to keep the recipe because it's fast. I guess he didn't like it as much now that he is seeing the dishes piled up. There are a lot of leftovers, too.

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 25: Apple and Gruyere French Toast

Today we had a bit of a decadent autumn breakfast!
Today I made:
Ciabatta French Toast with Warm Apple Maple Syrup, Cooking Light September 2011

This French toast is topped with shallots and apples that have been simmered in a maple syrup and apple cider (although I, and at least one other reviewer of it, misread it as apple cider vinegar >_<  I think because one of our early recipes in February had apples cooked in apple cider vinegar...). I added a bit of cinnamon too.The toast is stuffed with Gruyere before getting dipped in milk, buttermilk, eggs, and nutmeg. It's supposed to be topped with pecans too, if you like them.

This was a good recipe! Even with the vinegar! Although I did wonder why the vinegar was necessary and decided that next time I would just try to use normal cider :-P At least my instincts are semi-intact. It's not too sweet-- in the magazine, it was suggested as a breakfast-for-dinner recipe, and I think the lack of added sugar (other than maple syrup) and the addition of cheese and shallots keeps it savory, even though it looks like something that would be overly saccharine. G was really impressed when he saw what I was making. It has a lot of rich flavor but only takes ~30 min. We'll definitely keep this recipe.

For dinner I just wanted to use up some things. We didn't have ingredients for any new recipes on hand, but I had a lot of halves of bell peppers after yesterday's stir fry, and for a while we've had some stuffed-pepper filling in our freezer. So that's what we did.

Tomorrow we'll be finally starting on the October recipes! Only ~1 week late :-P Many of them incorporate either apples or pumpkins in some way. Should be delicious!

September's best recipes:

G's pick: it's a tie between oven-fried chicken and spice-rubbed braised beef. Not only can he not choose between them, but he suggests that they might be some of the best from the whole year so far.

My pick: I think I liked the honey-roasted thighs and the okra I served with them too.

Month 8 day 24: Pork fajitas

Today I made:
Baja Pork Stir-Fry, Cooking Light September 2011

This dish is supposed to cook quickly because the pork is cut into 1" chunks. But they still don't cook through as fast as they are supposed to. So, the pan got some nice frond, then was deglazed, and then... reglazed :-/ The entire thick sauce evaporated and turned to some extra char. But that's just how fajitas are supposed to be, right? Somehow burnt pork and peppers tastes better. If only burnt garlic and other things were better...

Unfortunately our extra tortillas from yesterday are in the work fridge, so we ate this on pita pockets. Close enough!

I liked this recipe, but next time I will just cut pork strips instead of cubes so it will cook in time :-P

Month 8 day 23: Chicken tostadas and rice

Today I made:

Chicken Tostadas and Avocado Dressing, Cooking Light September 2011
Mexican Rice, Cooking Light September 2011

This was ok, but not great. The avocado we got, for like $2 at Shaws, was super funky and brown on the inside and seemed kind of off :( It made us not really want to have too much of the dressing. I used the roast chicken we had in the freezer from the tea smoked chicken a couple weeks back, so every once in a while you'd get a bite of Sichuan pepper or something that didn't seem to fit. The Mexican rice wasn't particularly flavorful either.

The main benefit of this recipe is that I couldn't find queso fresco, but grabbed the next closest-sounding thing-- queso blanco. When I tasted it, I realized that this is a kind of cheese we often used to get (growing up in Central California, Mexican-style cheeses are easier to find than they are over here) that I really liked but had mostly forgotten about. It's good! I'm glad to have rediscovered it.

Month 8 day 22: Tahini turkey burgers

Today I made:
Turkey Burger Pitas with Tahini Sauce, Cooking Light September 2010

Tonight was a late night in lab, so around 7:30 we ran to Chipotle for a snack to tide us over-- we shared a burrito. When I got home a couple hours later, I chose this recipe because it is the fastest of the choices (we still have the ingredients for a few more September recipes, even though it is already October... when did that happen?!). There are just a few things to cut and then the burgers get cooked a few minutes per side.
It's nothing too special-- just a parsley-and-green-onion-spiced turkey burger inside a pita with some yogurt-tahini-lemon juice-garlic sauce, but it's a good weeknight fast dinner. It's a little light though, so on a night when we hadn't already eaten it would definitely not have been enough. G says not to keep the recipe.