2 dozen eggs and several pounds of meat

This week I made:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here's what my brownies looked like:

Nailed it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was enough left over to make hash on Thursday:

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

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

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

Curry, Curried turkey, Pizza, and Ice Cream Delights

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

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

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

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

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

Pasta, Orange buns, and Stoup

This week I made:

Chicken Ragu with Fennel, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014

Sweet Orange Buns, Saveur January/February 2012

Sausage, Zucchini & Potato Stoup, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014

Thursday I made this pasta with ground turkey, fennel, and half-and-half. It was ok, but nothing too special. Unfortunately I didn't give the flat fettuccini enough of a stir after first putting it in the pot, so some of the noodles clumped together, becoming super thick masses that were quite al dente, in a bad way :-(

But while that was being eaten, these babies were in the oven:

I made the dough, filling, and rolled these out the night before, and they sat in the fridge until tonight. I baked them for the final meeting of book club. They were pretty ridiculously sweet and buttery, definitely needing some straight tea to mellow it out. The filling is two sticks of butter plus 3 cups of powdered sugar along with some zest, extracts, and more sugar (brown this time). It's about a centimeter tall once it all gets smeared on top of the dough! Of course, during baking that basically all just melts, such that you end up with these rolls sitting in a bath of melted sugar-butter about halfway up the sides. They have you use a bit more of the filling mixed with a bit of orange juice to drizzle, but it just seemed so excessive and not even different (how does adding 1 Tbs juice to 1/4 cup frosting even make it more like icing? Seems like icing needs less liquid, not more, or else it just melted in instantly).

We enjoyed the leftovers for breakfasts and such :)

On Friday we warmed up after a cold day with this stoup:

I thought I had a lot of extra Italian sausage in the freezer, but didn't. Instead of just skimping, I used up some other sausage that was in our freezer-- a fully-cooked chicken sausage with apple and sweet maple syrup. Um, this did not fit in well. The rest was hearty and savory, but then you'd have these cloying bites of this sausage with a weird texture to boot. It would have been better without it, and on my second bowl I started fishing it out. The rest of it was great and used up the rest of the fennel from the earlier pasta. As a kid, we used to eat a similar soup basically every week as per my sister's demands. I named it "rainbow soup" because it had so many colorful ingredients, but I think I was the only one who called it that. I guess the only similarities are ground meat (but sausage instead of ground beef), potatoes, onion, garlic, and tomatoes. I'm not sure what makes this a "stoup"-- it's pretty much the definition of a soup.

Month 12 day 5: Pork and Bell peppers

Today I made:
Post-Roasted Pork with Sweet Peppers, Every Day with Rachael Ray

This recipe is for a pork loin that's browned, then added to a kind of a soup of onion and bell pepper and tomato to be cooked through. Since I was just making it for me, instead of using a large pork loin I just used a couple boneless pork chops. So this probably really altered the texture and whatnot.

This didn't have a whole lot of flavor to it, although the sauteed-then-boiled bell peppers were very good. As I've said before, we already have a pork and bell pepper recipe we love, so I am not keeping this recipe. When I searched for this recipe on Rachael Ray's website, I found several other better looking pork and bell pepper recipes too :-P

Month 11 day 9: Chicken, chard, and pumpkin

Today I made:

Chicken Baked on a Bed of Bread and Swiss Chard, Food & Wine December 2010
Ginger-Roasted Winter Squash, Food & Wine December 2010

I'm at home, where I have access to my parents' California backyard garden, teeming with all kinds of greens-- lettuces, komatsuna, mizuna, chard, kale, broccoli, and also rhubarb, beets, and eggplants (with snow peas on the way). I picked this recipe to make to spotlight their chard, along with Dad's freshly baked bread (and chicken from the freezer, meaning that we had everything on hand for this recipe!). (We had to buy a pumpkin for the side, though.)

The chicken was a hands-off one-pot meal. The chard and bread get tossed and seasoned (we left out capers and used black raisins, not golden, and onions, not shallots), and then the chicken just gets set on top and put in the oven. But after the recommended roasting time, the chicken was still quite red, so I think maybe it hadn't been entirely defrosted. We had to let it go an additional 20 minutes or so maybe, but by then the skin was crispy and the bread had soaked up the delicious chicken juices. It seemed like a nice Thanksgivingy dish that could be done for a small crowd.

The winter squash is supposed to bake for a really long time, but I just cut a pumpkin in half, deseeded it, and steamed it in the microwave until soft before slicing it and roasting as directed. I used dried cranberries instead of currants, and people liked that. The vinegar flavor seemed weird with sugarpie pumpkin, and the ginger flavor didn't come through too well (maybe we didn't quite use a full 1-inch piece, or maybe the microwave treatment didn't let it do its thing).

Month 11 day 1: Squash, Soup, Pork, and Biscuits

Month 11!
I have six issues:

• Food Network Magazine, December 2009
• Food & Wine, December 2010
• Cooking Light, December 2010
• Cooking Light, December 2011
• Every Day with Rachael Ray, December 2011
• Saveur, December 2011

Since I'll be going home for a bit, I doubt I'll be able to make a dent in these recipes, especially since there are just sooo many cookie (and other baking) recipes. But maybe I will just have to clip some recipes to bring home with me to make there!

Today I made:
Sweet & Savory Spaghetti Squash, Every Day with Rachael Ray November 2011
Apple-Cheddar-Squash Soup, Food Network Magazine December 2009
Pork Tenderloin with Herbed Biscuits, Cooking Light December 2011

For lunch I made the squash that I forgot to make yesterday. It's a spaghetti squash cut in half, and then one is filled with savory spices and the other is filled with sweet spices. Both contain liberal amounts of butter, which melts and looks like this:

 It's a bath of butter.

But once it gets stirred into the rest of the squash it evens out and takes on the characteristic "spaghetti" look:

 I thought this was fun to have two different flavors in one. They're both very simple to put together, it's just that it takes a long time to bake. I'm sure this could be done in the microwave, though, to make this a faster side dish. Anyway though, it takes about 5 minutes of hands-on time and then goes in the oven for 55 minutes while you could be making the rest of the dinner. As I predicted, G liked the sweet one the best. I think I liked the savory one the best. It's good to have both!

For dinner I made this soup with pork tenderloin and biscuits. The pork and biscuits recipe is designed to be a main course for a casual (or more formal-- you choose) dinner party. The tenderloin is just browned and then roasted (whole) for about 20 minutes before being sliced. It doesn't have any seasoning besides salt and pepper, and the sauce is just a 4:1 mix of Dijon : maple syrup. (I wondered which would win-- G hates mustard but loves maple syrup. The mustard won out, probably because it's the more obvious ingredient visually. And tastewise too, I guess.) The biscuits have more flavor, with fresh sage and thyme and buttermilk. I was using powdered buttermilk, so I put in a half packet (halving the recipe), but then for some reason filled the measuring cup with 1-5/8 cup water instead of just 5/8 cup. I poured in most, (cleverly thinking, a little too late, that I should add it gradually in case it didn't need it all) and it was way too soupy. I considered adding more flour, but thought that might make them too dense unless I also supplemented the baking powder and soda, so ended up just deciding to see what happens. What happens is that the biscuits flow into each other a bit before the oven heat seals the edges, and then they don't rise basically at all. But they are surprisingly fluffy despite this, and taste great. It's too bad that they got messed up, because I was really looking forward to seeing how the texture was since I bought myself a pastry cutter finally on Black Friday. Well, next time! The biscuits are supposed to be cut in half to make a sandwich, but we couldn't do that.

The soup was pretty straightforward but flavorful, with tart apple and sweet butternut squash. It's topped with cooked prosciutto, which is quite salty. I wondered why not bacon, if you're going to cook it anyway, and it seems that many other reviewers just went for bacon instead. G liked it, but didn't like cleaning up the blender afterwards, since it had melted cheese that stuck everywhere! We need an immersion blender! Other than the blending step, this soup is pretty hands-off and is a great taste for fall.

Month 10 day 17: Fast chipotle chicken soup

Today I made:
Chipotle Chicken Stoup, Every Day with Rachael Ray, November 2011
Super-concentrated cider syrup

Rachael Ray likes to use the term "stoup" to refer to a soup that is especially thick and hearty like a stew. But I don't think it really applies here at all. This recipe claims to serve four, but it was really just three bowls full-- one for me and two for G. This is to be expected, since it's basically like a 5-ingredient recipe-- chicken; hominy; broth; lettuce, cilantro, and radishes; and flavorings. I added in some extra green onions and a little cheese on mine, but really this was pretty light. If you just put the 1/4 lb chicken, 4 oz hominy, and lettuce and radishes on a plate, it would look very meager and sad. It's like something your people would eat in Oregon Trail.

Anyway, this was fine given that there were two of us, but there were no leftovers, and if we really had been trying to serve a family of four, this would have been a problem :-P The chipotle chiles in adobo sauce gave the broth quite the spicy kick! So it ended up tasting good anyway.

After dinner I wanted to make some mulled cider from the ~1.5 cups of cider we had in our fridge. I put in a bag of mulling spices and set it on the stove.

A while later I remembered this, and I also realized that instead of setting it on low, it was at a rapid boil, and had been for maybe ten minutes or so. There wasn't much left:

And what was left was quite thick! It had reduced down to a very thick syrup. Funny how things never reduce when I want them to, only when I forget about them. We tried sips, and it was sooo tart. G said it tasted like candy. We ended up adding some soda water to make a mulled-cider Italian soda. It foamed up a ton and ended up being pretty good! With the addition of the water, it was basically back to its normal concentration, and just tasted like mulled sparkling cider. G joked that we might buy another liter to do this on purpose! But I do prefer normal hot mulled cider.

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 10 day 7: Turkey arepas and cauliflower

Today I made:
Turkey Arepas, Cooking Light November 2010
Cauliflower filet, Food & Wine November 2010

This arepas recipe specifically says not to use masa harnia or cornmeal for the arepa flour, but we couldn't find either of those. We made arepas once before with just normal corn meal, so we figured it might be ok. But when I mixed the specified amount of water with the specified amount of flour, it was totally soupy. I ended up adding extra corn meal until it was finally a texture that could ever hope to be shaped into a ball. But then, they're supposed to puff up and get a pocket in the middle, but these were pretty solid, so maybe this wasn't the correct thing to do. Instead of making sandwiches, we just piled the turkey-onion-pepper-cheese mix on top. They were pretty good!

The side recipe is an unusual way of eating cauliflower-- instead of florets, you cut it through the center to make "steaks" which are browned and then baked along with a zesty mix of red chile, corn, scallions, and capers. I'm not sure if the intact fillet shape added anything, but this was certainly a more interesting side than some plain steamed cauliflower.

Month 10 day 6: Turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce

Today I made:
Roasted Turkey with Rosemary-Garlic Butter Rub and Pan Gravy, Cooking Light November 2011
Fennel, Sausage, and Caramelized Apple Stuffing, Cooking Light November 2011
Old-Fashioned Cranberry Sauce, Cooking Light November 2011

We expected that today, finally, the turkey would be defrosted. Unfortunately we didn't get home until ~7, so the turkey didn't go into the oven until ~8. And, it wasn't completely defrosted, despite being in the fridge for a week! But, I guess it's not too surprising since our fridge tends to freeze things, so of course it would stop things from unfreezing. I figured that once I bathed it in hot water and it relaxed from its tight, balled-up shape it wouldn't be that bad-- it was mostly defrosted after all.

I rubbed it underneath the skin with herbed/spiced butter and then it went in at 425 for 30 minutes, cooling down to 325 for the rest of the time. After about 2 hours or so the popup timer was up and our meat thermometer agreed that the leg and the breast were done. We cut off some leg to snack on, cut off the breasts to eat, and made the gravy and put the stuffing in the oven while the turkey relaxed and adjusted its juices (is this really a thing, or is it a wive's tale?)

After we ate though, we realized that the other parts of the turkey were most certainly not cooked through. The back, for example, was still squishy-soft. Other parts were a cooked texture, but were pretty pink. Back in the oven it went for another couple of hours until just before we went to sleep! The next day when I was picking off the meat for leftovers, some parts seemed pink still, although now that I take a second glance I think that turkey is just pinkish. Nevertheless, we decided to panfry the leftovers a bit or use them in things like soups just to make sure :-P

The gravy was tasty, and particularly important given that our turkey ended up baking for probably longer than intended when all was said and done, and some parts were quite dry by the end. It never got too thick, though-- I guess the ratios might be off because the recipe doesn't specify a total volume for drippings + broth, just the amount of broth to use. Anyway, it was thin in viscosity but not flavor.

The stuffing... I'll just go ahead and say that I grew up on boxed stuffing and I stand by it! Despite the time and effort, it tasted no better than boxed stuffing, and in my opinion was worse. Normally I'm a big believer in as-much-from-scratch-as-possible, but Stovetop stuffing is just my favorite, especially when you add in some sausage, apple, celery, etc. So we will not keep the stuffing recipe. Good to know though! The first time I ever tried to make stuffing was when I lived in Japan, before I had the internet at my apartment, so I just tried to derive it from first principles. I knew there were some spices, some stale bread, and some broth... but I really didn't know how much broth to add or anything. It turned out a mushy disaster! This was better (especially as leftovers when we let it bake a while longer)

I did get converted to home-made cranberry sauce though. It is so fast to make-- just about 10-15 minutes, and tastes so good. This recipe had orange zest in it. When I was a kid I could just eat cranberry sauce straight from the can I loved it so much! I could imagine just eating this too, or using it like jam or anything.

We made a ton of food, so we'll be needing to use turkey in the next few days' worth of recipes!

Month 10 day 3: Pork and roasted vegetables

Today I made:
Crispy Pork Medallions, Cooking Light November 2011
Roasted Root Vegetables, Cooking Light November 2011

This was a straightforward meal, and quicker than you might think given the roasted vegetables. You just cut them up while the oven preheats and toss with some oil and garlic. Then while they are roasting you cut the pork tenderloin and coat in panko, thyme, and parsley, brown in a cast-iron skillet, and pop that in the oven too. Everything finishes around the same time (if you are like me and want your meat definitely well done).

We had some extra veggies left over from the Asian lettuce cups last week, so I went ahead and used them too in the roasted veggies. I also put in a sweet potato in place of one of the parsnips since G doesn't like them (but he didn't end up eating this, for dinner or lunch leftovers :-P). So I got all the colors! Red pepper, orange sweet potato, yellow parsnips, green daikon (It was the stem end of an aokubi daikon), purple onions, and white/red potatoes. It seems like roasting is such a good way to prepare vegetables! So easy and delicious.

The pork was good too, but not particularly crispy. The bottom layer of breading was pretty soggy from contact with the pan.

Month 10 day 1: Pepita-crusted pork and squash puree

Month 10! We're almost out of magazines!
This month I have five issues:

• Food Network Magazine, November 2009
• Food & Wine, November 2010
• Cooking Light, November 2010
• Cooking Light, November 2011
• Every Day with Rachael Ray, November 2011

In general, I thought I was getting better at picking out just the perfect amount of recipes that were actually realistic to make in a month, but this month was difficult! Some of these are "double issues" and they're all FULL of turkey, stuffing, green bean, and pie recipes. It was a little tricky to find recipes to make that weren't all just turkey (which I could eat for a whole month, but I don't know if G could).

Today I made:
Pepita-Crusted Pork, Every Day with Rachael Ray, November 2011
Kabocha Acorn Squash Puree, Cooking Light November 2011

G made a squash heart!

We hadn't yet gone grocery shopping, but we wanted to get started on dinner. I looked through the freezer and the pantry and realized that we had an extra squash and some pork in the freezer, so I made these two dishes. They're both simple-- the pork is just dredged in flour, then egg, then chopped [roasted, hulled] pumpkin seeds before being browned in a skillet and then baked. The squash is supposed to be baked for like an hour, but I sped it up by cutting it in half with some water in a pyrex pan and microwaving it for 10 minutes. After getting steamed in this way, you blend it with some brown sugar, butter, and salt and pepper. I was pretty sure G would like this, and he did. It's like candy! He didn't seem to care too much for the pork, though. We like tenderloin, but this was just a normal pork chop or something, so it came out a little tough. The pumpkin seeds don't really have that special of a flavor either. We won't keep that recipe, but I will keep the squash one.

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.

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 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.