Brunch Burger

Yesterday I made:
Brunch Burgers, Every Day with Rachael Ray March 2014

Rachael Ray always has a burger of the month, but I almost never make them. This one looked complicated but decadent, so we decided to go for it. It's a pork (and supposed to be 1/2 beef too, but ours went bad) patty seasoned with fennel, garlic, onion, and sage, topped with cheese, a fried egg, and some maple-sugar bacon. All on an English muffin bun. It was so tall it was hard to eat!
The bacon was really good-- it was smothered in brown sugar and maple syrup before baking. The pork patty was fine, but nothing too special. G observed that if you just bought normal sausage patties and used the maple-flavored bacon, you could do this really easily. So easily in fact, you could do it any time. Ha! Until you ODed on cholesterol and saturated fat. Anyway, this was really good, and it was so fun to have leftovers this morning to just heat up and assemble.

Speaking of breakfast sandwiches, I think this is a really cool contraption:

Make sure to watch the video on Amazon! 

Obviously, it's one of those things you would probably just use twice and then never look at again because it was too hard to clean or whatever, but isn't it such a good idea? I love it, along with those toasters with built in skillets and coffee makers. 

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.

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 9: Eggs in clouds

Today I made:
Eggs in Clouds, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2012

These looked really good in the magazine, so I was excited to try them. I've previously made this other egg bacon cup thing, which was surprisingly easy and delicious, so I thought this might be a similar kind of hit.

Basically you separate the eggs, with all the whites in one bowl and the yolks kept individual. You whip up the whites until stiff, then add chopped bacon and chives. This is piled into a volcano shape and baked. Then, the yolks are dropped into the center and baked until set or, if you're like me, cooked through.

Rachael suggests putting the yolks into four small bowls, but the yolks come with their own handy bowls:

These were pretty good, although obviously dirties a few more dishes than the other bacon cups (which was just everything going raw, straight into a cupcake pan). But, they have a nice texture and look kind of cool, although mine ended up extra golden brown since I wanted the yolks hard. It made for a nice brunch.

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 10 day 16: Pumpkin Punch and Persimmon Muffins

 Today I made:

Bob's Mexican Pumpkin Punch, Food Network Magazine October 2010

Spiced Persimmon and Pecan Chocolate Muffins, Cooking Light November 2010

(Actually I made this yesterday, but I drank it today after letting it mull overnight)

This pumpkin punch is kind of interesting. Each of the flavors (brown sugar, cinnamon, pumpkin, limes) are distinct and strong, but they sort of come and go in turns instead of mingling together. This is actually an October recipe, and I meant to make it a long time ago with canned pumpkin left over from various recipes, but then not getting around to it and tossing the leftover, old pumpkin. So finally I ended up having to buy a can of pumpkin just for this, and limes too. Then I waited another couple weeks. So, the lime rind was probably a bit more bitter than it was supposed to be, but it tasted fine. I fourthed this recipe to just make a couple cups. I think it would be a really interesting drink to serve at a fall or winter party as a change of pace from cider. It was a bit of a pain to make, though. The pumpkin pulp is supposed to settle. It did ever so slightly, but not enough to prevent it from immediately resuspending each time I ladled some out. When it came time to strain it, it drained so, so slowly. Would it have been bad to have the pumpkin pulp in the drink? It seems like it just would've affected the texture a bit, but would have saved some hassle.

I wanted to make these muffins about a week ago, but the persimmons were completely unripe. After letting them sit out for a week, they were still pretty hard, but I decided to just give it a try anyway. I omitted the pecans, because I don't like nuts in baked goods (except hazelnuts, and maybe almonds), but instead put in some chocolate chips. I couldn't find any dried cranberries in the pantry, but I did find some dried cherries, so I used those instead. I put some pumpkin seeds on the top for some crunch and show.

These were pretty good muffins! We have been eating them for breakfast each day, and they're staying pretty nice and moist. They actually don't taste that persimmony though, which is a shame because I consider persimmons to be an expensive treat. It seems like they could've been made with pumpkin in the batter and that would have been just as moist. But, I guess it's not bad to use two persimmons to make about 20 muffins!

Month 10 day 8: Cinnabuns and turkey soup

Today I made:
Almost-Famous Cinnamon Buns, Food Network Magazine November 2009
Mexican Turkey Stew, Cooking Light November 2010

Since today was technically a holiday, we decided to go to lab a little late and have a nice breakfast. I made these cinnamon rolls the night before, so they puffed up in the fridge overnight and were pretty massive by the time they went into the oven-- there were only 6 in a 9x13 pan and they completely filled it!

 I've made cinnamon rolls once before, from my mom's recipe. She would always make it for Christmas morning breakfast, so last year I made it for our breakfast too. Those ones are not nearly as big, nor as chock-full of quite so much butter as is in these ones. But they are good! These come out very soft and delicious, but I think it's better to just eat half of one :-P

For dinner we had more turkey leftovers, in soup form.

Last night I let the turkey bones simmer for a few hours to make the broth for this soup. Since homemade broth tends to be less flavorful (or maybe just less salty?) than prefab, I used 7 cups of broth instead of half water as called for. This soup was pretty spicy! It has 3 Anaheim chiles in it, which I always think of as being pretty mild. I have a cold, so my nose was running anyway, but G's nose started running too. I think this is a pretty good soup for when you're sick! It probably has all of the benefits as chicken noodle, but it also has enough spice to clear out your sinuses. It's topped with pumpkin seeds, scallions, and cheese (supposed to be queso fresco; we used feta). It should have radishes too, but the grocery store was all out :-P

We still have ~1 gallon full of leftover turkey meat! We'll probably have to freeze it and use it later.

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 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 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 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 16: Biscuits and Gravy and Chicken Marsala

Today I made:
Whole Wheat Biscuits with Creamy Sausage Gravy, Food & Wine September 2010
Chicken and Mushrooms with Marsala Wine Sauce, Cooking Light September 2010
Served with steamed green beans and egg noodles

Brunch this morning was biscuits and gravy-- not so photogenic! :-/
I always thought that gravy was the unhealthy part of this dish, but actually it's the biscuits that have tons of buttermilk and butter. The gravy has some whole milk and meat, but is otherwise pretty unoffending. It doesn't really have sausage, just ground turkey and some spices-- I guess that once you remove sausage casing it's basically just that, though. Interestingly, it also contains chipotles in adobo, which doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the ingredients. Taste-wise it definitely sticks out too-- this was pretty spicy! I might just use one next time instead of the two it calls for. G liked the biscuits a lot. It made more than 6 biscuits, but still we had leftover gravy-- too much!

The chicken marsala was good too. It was really juicy-- especially since we used chicken thighs (and pork chops-- I'm trying to go through some of the meat in the freezer). G says, "I just like mushrooms in wine sauce!" We used dried shiitake, dried porcini, and fresh normal mushrooms. The sauce was really good, but I don't think the tomatoes fit that well. Again, I'm not really into cooked tomatoes. Next time I will probably leave them out. But yes, there probably will be a next time for this recipe :) It's not that hard or long, and it packs a lot of umami. It's depicted on a bed of mashed potatoes, and I think that would be delicious with the sauce.

Today a new Dutch oven joined the family!

 I saw an ad for $30 4-qt Dutch ovens at Christmas Tree Shops, so we had a little adventure going over there-- like many places in the Boston area, it's only a few miles away but takes about an hour on public transportation :-P It's a really weird store-- lots of cheap (and cheaply made) items, tons of holiday decorations (including, but not limited to, Christmas), and random other items. G was unhappy because it was generic and there were only two Dutch ovens left on the shelf, and they were both pretty banged up. I figured it was bound to happen eventually though and bought it, but in the next door store (TJ Maxx) we saw Lodge Dutch ovens for $40. We ended up getting it and returning the other. Actually, I'm not sure if it's 3 or 4 quarts though-- we need to measure it still. But anyway, I'm excited to try it out!!

Month 8 day 12: Arepas and Etouffee... with guest chef G!

Today I made:
Arepas with Poblanos, Bacon and Eggs, Every Day with Rachael Ray September 2011

Today *G* made:
Chicken-and-Andouille normal-sausage-from-the-freezer Etouffee, Food & Wine September 2010

For lunch I made these arepas. I was intrigued because I always see food stands at festivals in Boston (or just in touristy areas like the Commons) selling arepas, and they always look so good but I'm not usually hungry. So great if I could learn to make them! Unfortunately they didn't turn out great-- I ran out of corn meal, but didn't reduce the milk accordingly. Instead of being able to form patties I had to just pour it into the pan like pancake batter. The corn was violently sputtering everywhere and got a lot of oil spots on my shirt, and the arepas kept sticking to the pan instead of letting me turn easily. I think we would have to try it again sometime :-P The eggs were just normal eggs. The chiles were hotter than we were expecting, since we've used this kind before in many dishes (chile rellenos, for example) and not noticed their heat. We'll keep the recipe, and I'll try again sometime with the full amount of corn meal. We found out this morning that Thich Nhat Hanh was in Boston today leading a meditation! But I chose to make lunch instead of going. Where are my priorities...

Tonight G both cooked AND did the dishes! As I went to slice the second half of the onion (this being the first ingredient I started to prepare), I sliced my thumb instead. It was kind of deep (but will be fine), so we decided it was best for me to just sit down with my hand in the air. My hardest job was to decide which カピバラさん band-aid to use. I opted for this one:

And I am glad that my manicure isn't too chipped, so it can wait until the cut heals to be redone. Ceramics tomorrow might suck though :(

G comments that once everything was chopped, it was pretty fast and easy to make this dish. He was impressed by the roux, I think. We just used a random sausage from our freezer, as I am trying to clear out our overflowing meat drawer. It was not the right kind, but it was a little spicy, so I think it did fine. Haha, I just noticed-- I'm pretty sure he did not use whole wheat flour as suggested, nor did he ask me where it was. Normally he likes to follow recipes closely, but he doesn't care for whole wheat usually (at least in pasta). I guess he used his chef's discretion :) I think this was pretty tasty! We'll keep this recipe.

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 6: Muffins

I had leftover succotash today, so I just made some muffins to have for breakfasts/snacks this week

Today I made:
Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins, Cooking Light August 2010

I don't get too many chances to use this little heart cake mold, so I did some normal muffins and some hearts ♡

These muffins are good. They have lemon zest in the batter, so there is just a hint of lemon flavor that I think is a really nice touch. They also have a little more sugar than I think they should be allowed to add and still call it healthy (actually, one of the reviewers makes a big deal out of having no "white sugar." But is brown sugar really better? O_o ). I look forward to having these for breakfasts this week.

An interesting tip in this recipe is to shake the frozen blueberries with a little flour. This is supposed to prevent the batter from turning blue, and sure enough the batter stayed pretty tan. I feel like it's nbd to have blue muffins, but if you do care, there you go.

This was my first time using powdered buttermilk. Since I never use up a full quart, and I always think that I will freeze the rest but then don't get around to it, I figured it would be good to try this out. It's about $2 for 4-1 cup envelopes, so it's about the same price as liquid buttermilk. The flavor wasn't that strong in these, so I can't tell if it's a good replacement or not, but seems like a good solution for me.

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 7 day 2: Breakfast sandwich and pork

Today I made:
a Ham and Swiss Provolone Egg Sandwich, Cooking Light August 2011
Grilled Pork Chops with Swiss Chard Salad, Every Day with Rachael Ray July/August 2012

I had some extra ham, cheese, and bread left over from the Nuevo Cubano, so I decided to make this breakfast sandwich. Of course, it's provolone instead of Swiss and a loaf instead of an English muffin, but it's the same idea. I wished that instead of putting the bread with cheese on it under the broiler, I had toasted the bread by itself a bit first. Also, something I realized is that for Cooking Light recipes, you should always err on the side of using too much oil, never too little. So if it says that you should re-oil the pan in between the ham and the eggs, you really should or else your egg will stick a lot :-/

I don't normally eat a leisurely breakfast at home with tea, but it was really nice :) Maybe I should do it more often! But it did end up pushing my work time back about an hour, because while I was eating I picked up The Atlantic and started reading a bit, and once I was finished eating I was still busy reading. Oh well, I stayed late.

So it was a good thing that dinner was a fast one:

The longest part of preparing this meal was looking for hazelnuts. They used to be available in the baking section, but lately Shaw's has been revamping itself. It seems like they are expanding their organic selections but at the expense of the normal items. So you can no longer get small packets of chopped hazelnuts for baking, but you can get fairly large (1-2 cup) containers of raw hazelnuts in the "all-natural" snack section. Of course it costs much more this way and is not where you would typically look for hazelnuts, which I don't think are typically eaten as a snack food :-/
Anyway, this is just some pork rubbed with some vinaigrette, then a raw kale + chopped hazelnut salad tossed with the remaining vinaigrette. The vinaigrette flavor isn't very strong in either part, which is too bad, but this dinner was good anyway. I have been wanting to eat some pork since reading Julie Powell's (of Julie and Julia fame) second memoir, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession. The descriptions of her butcher apprenticeship are really interesting and made me want to learn a little more about the different cuts of meat, but basically she's an awful person. Her husband, who she describes as a "saint"so many times in the first book for supporting her when she's a hysterical mess in the kitchen, gets cheated on, and then even once her lover breaks it off with her, she spends the rest of the book avoiding her husband and stalking (seriously) the ex-lover, all the while refusing to hear any suggestions of going to couple's therapy or considering divorce. At the end of the book I guess they figured something out...???? in that the husband sort of embraces uncertainty??? but it seems like not an ideal scenario. I checked this book out of the library so that I would not contribute to her making money off of a story about treating her husband awfully. Anyway, it was interesting though and did make me want to eat pork, so I was glad to have this recipe in the lineup for tonight. I didn't actually use chops, because I had some cut (I don't remember what) in the freezer from a couple weeks ago when I bought two types of pork not having looked at the required amounts, only to realize that I did not need the second portion at all. It was pretty thick though, so it took a while to cook it well-done, and then was a bit chewy. I think it's probably time to invest in a good meat thermometer. I bought one once, but it's so awful that if you just hold it in your hand it displays that it's 170°F, good enough for poultry. So... no.
This recipe is from Rachael Ray's "Dinners for a Deal" section of <$3 per serving meals. I don't know how much stuff cost exactly, but I'm guessing it wasn't quite there given that the hazelnut box was $7. I guess if you prorate it you might be ok.

Month 6 day 7: Quiche and mustard gas

Today I made:
Summer Squash, Bacon, and Mozzarella Quiche, Cooking Light July 2011
Heirloom Tomato Chow-Chow, Food Network Magazine July/August 2010

I thought it would be nice to make this quiche so that I could have leftovers for breakfasts this week. I ended up de-lighting it though, using all butter for the crust (instead of butter + shortening), the bacon grease to cook the squash in (instead of EVOO), 1/2 c cream, 1/4 c buttermilk, and 1/4 c water (instead of 1 c 2% milk), and 5 eggs (instead of 3 egg whites plus 3 whole eggs). And I cut it into sixths instead of eighths.
I also deviated in that I started cooking a little late (after finding some lost keys and spending a while trying to figure out how to track down the person. In the end, I took them to the nearby gym since there was a member card on the keychain, and they were able to look the person up to contact them), so instead of cooling the dough in the fridge for an hour, I basically just rolled it out immediately and then chilled it while waiting for the oven to preheat. I feel like normally in crust there isn't a chilling step? You just use cold ingredients and ice water. In the end, the crust wasn't super great, but I don't know if that's because of my full on butter, not chilling it, using my hands instead of a food processor, OR possibly the fact that the filling was too much and overflowed, so instead of the crust being on the outside of the quiche, it was sort of buried inside. Oh well. It tasted good, although it seemed like there were some bites that were super salty and others not so much. I'm not sure if I didn't mix the salt into the eggs well enough, or if it's just that  there were certain deposits of mozzarella (which is pretty salty, right?) instead of being evenly mixed in.

I must say, I'm pretty proud of the number of dishes I've found this week to use up the fresh thyme. I think this is the third recipe this week that has called for it. In the first couple months of the blog I used to purposefully put recipes together if they called for the same perishable ingredient, but I haven't been doing that lately, so normally I just have to buy things like cilantro every week and then not use all of it :-P

So, the quiche was good. The chow-chow was not. I was not sure if it was going to be tasty, so I only made 1/4 the normal amount (and it is still definitely more than 1 serving...). I used mustard, tumeric, and then just pickling spice (instead of a combination of pickling spice, celery seeds, and mustard seeds). As it was simmering, it just started making the air awful, so bad... to the point that I had to look up mustard gas to figure out whether boiling something with mustard is what makes it (it's not, luckily). Actually, I think it was the vinegar that burned your throat. I was pretty sure that I shouldn't let it simmer for the entire 15 minutes, and even so after throwing in a test tomato for a couple minutes I realized that it was still way too strong. I poured in some water to dilute it before putting in the rest of the onion and tomato slices.
In the end, it was still quite strong. It was pretty spicy, I guess just the pickling spice I have has a good amount of pepper flakes in it. I don't know... it was an interesting flavor, and I could see why someone might choose to make and eat this, but the vinegar and the pepper were both just so strong. Interestingly, there's a different version of chow-chow with the same name (except missing the hyphen). It's by the same chef, also on FN's website... but the ratios are pretty different. Namely, there is only 2 c vinegar instead of 4 c. And instead of pickling spice, it just has the same other spices plus some cayenne directly. I wonder if this recipe would have been better.

I don't think I'll keep either recipe. The quiche was good, but I already have other quiche recipes, and it's easy to mix-and-match what goes inside. And the chow-chow I will never make again :-P But, I guess it's good to have tried it! That's what's nice about a cooking challenge-- you get to try some random things you would never have otherwise made.

July's best recipe: Probably the lemonade drumsticks