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!