Month 12 day 8: Another day, another white bean soup

Today I made:
Chicken and White Bean Soup, Cooking Light April 2011

When I asked G what he thought we should make this weekend, he chose this white bean soup, unsurprisingly. He loooves soup with white beans! This soup has chunks of chicken thigh meat, orzo, bacon, and then the typical onion, tomato, and herbs. We ate this with salad and some bread dipped in olive oil and vinegar, but between the beans and the orzo it was a pretty filling soup anyway.

Month 12 day 7: Tourtiere

Today I made:
Tourtiere, Cooking Light January/February 2010

Today I made this dish, which is essentially a chicken-pot-pie but pork instead, and with cinnamon and cloves. It's supposedly a dish that dates back to the Middle Ages.
I learned my lesson before and made sure to make my own crust instead of using store-bought dough like I did with the sausage turnovers last week. It was a really good dish! I was really happy with it. G came home to visit this weekend, so I was happy to have a dish that I was pretty sure he would enjoy in the oven waiting for him. It's got all the things you love about chicken-pot-pie (toasty crust, tender potatoes and vegetables, oozy gravy), but the cinnamon and cloves elevate it to something that seems fancy and special.

Month 12 day 6: "Healthy" cookies

Today I made:
Chocolate-Cherry Heart Smart Cookies, Cooking Light January/February 2010

((Didn't take a photo, but they look like normal chocolate chip oatmeal cookies))

Tonight was the inaugural meeting of a book club to discuss "The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women." We're going to discuss its 12 chapters over 4 meetings. In addition to some carrots and fruit and other things, I made these cookies to serve. They are described in the magazine as not being bad for you. I guess, sure there is a bit of whole-wheat flour and oats, but I think it's funny that sometimes it seems like people use brown sugar instead of white or something and then it's healthy. Or bittersweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate. Just because there are dried cherries and oatmeal doesn't make something healthy... it is still a cookie :-P But given that it is described as "healthy" I decided that it means I can eat leftovers for breakfast. It's basically like eating oatmeal, amirite??

These are pretty good, although I am not really into dried cherries. The dried cherries cost like $8, too. They're just too .... sour? sweet? not sure. They're just too much something, and they don't taste like normal cherries, which are some of the best things ever. I will keep this recipe as a base, but I don't think I'll put in dried cherries next time.

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 12 day 4: Chicken and Bell peppers

Today I made:
Roast Chicken with Balsamic Bell Peppers, Cooking Light January/February 2010
with non-marscapone mashed potatoes

Once when G and I first started getting involved in our dorm's house government, we had a long night of interviews for the various officer positions we'd be managing all year long. We had just about 30 minutes and were lamenting that there was no time for dinner, but I sent G off to his first interview and got to work in the kitchen (I didn't need to be there until the second interview). Following one of the Cooking Light's quick recipes, I whipped up a pork tenderloin with balsamic bell peppers served on pasta alongside a salad. G was floored, and he couldn't believe I made it so fast. We've made it since then, and I've never found it to be quite as good as in my memory, but it's still something G loves. It was our first time cooking with pork tenderloin and we've been set on that cut ever since. I think we'll always remember that meal.

Anyway, so this recipe sparked my memory, and I wanted to try it out. It's fairly similar, with rosemary, garlic, balsamic vinegar, and red and yellow bell peppers. I used chicken tenderloin, actually, although I didn't realize the coincidence until just now :) But this chicken is rubbed with fennel seeds before getting baked, which adds quite a different note. It's pretty good. The recipe was paired with one for marscapone mashed potatoes, but I forgot to pick up marscapone so just made normal noes. Pretty good! But, I don't know if G would let me make this-- I think he'd just want the pork :)

Month 12 day 3: Savory Sausage Turnovers, or why you should always make your own pie crust

Today I made:
Savory Sausage Turnovers, Cooking Light April 2011

These looked really good, with yummy ingredients in the filling like bell pepper, sausage, basil, spinach, and potato. And, it was a quick recipe-- my cutoff for "quick" tagged recipes is 40 minutes, and this promised to take 39. This is made possible by using refrigerated pie dough-- the filling is quickly sautéed, and the other half of the time is hands-off baking time.
I'd never bought pie dough before, except maybe the kind that comes already in the pie pan. So I wasn't really sure what kind to buy, and I just grabbed one. Since it was straight from the fridge, it cracked all over when I tried to form it. I ended up not being able to roll it out well, so I just used a lot of it, still thick. Still, I was excited to see these come out of the oven all crumbly and toasty brown.
But as it turns out, pre-made pie crust doesn't always taste so great. In fact, this was just straight up awful! I ended up just cutting it open and eating out the filling from the inside, trying to remove as many crumbs from it as possible :-/
Definitely these are worth making again, as the filling is quite good! It would be good in other things too, like maybe an omelet or as a calzone filling. Or just with homemade pie crust :)

I froze the rest of these to take down to G in NY when I visited him. He said he liked them and didn't mention the crust. Too polite?

Month 12 day 2: a salty souffle

Finally it's time to cook again after so many days of leftovers!
Today I made:
Best-Ever Cheese Souffle, Food & Wine January 2011
served with sauteed mushrooms

Well, this is superlative something. Maybe not the best ever though. Probably "saltiest ever" cheese souffle. Cheese is salty! There's no way around it. Especially Parmigiano-Reggiano. It definely didn't need 1.25 tsp of additional salt. This souffle also suffered from me not having a souffle dish, or any dish of the right size, for that matter. It was supposed to use a 1.5 qt souffle pan. Somehow I figured the 3 qt Dutch oven would be the best bet. Unsurprisingly, it ended up being just completely flat, only about 1 inch tall. It was still airy and fluffy (with the egg whites whipped so much, it couldn't not be), but definitely not impressive in the same way it would have been if it had climbed up and spilled out of a correctly-sized dish.

(leftovers ended up being really good with the last remaining bits of salsa from last time's burritos!)