Back to it now...

What a summer. All told, we were out of the house for several weeks traveling to Palm Springs, Mexico and Michigan and while there was plenty of cooking, there was no time to post!

Palm Springs had NO cooking, but we did find a phenomenal Jewish deli (Sherman's) that makes me wonder why we've eaten anywhere else when we go down there. The pastrami and corned beef sandwiches were a good 4 inches thick with great sauces and a refillable pickle tray. Breakfast was perfect, simple with good coffee. Plus it's VERY old-school Palm Springs with actor photos up on the walls and a flock of regulars every time we went in.

In Mexico we definitely spent a lot of time eating, although very little cooking. One evening we even had a couple of folks there cooking FOR us, rather than eating out. By far the best food came from Eva at Tacos Eva in San Pancho. Her restaurant is a vividly colored paradise with an incredible menu all made from scratch. Luckily my Spanish is mostly food words, so I could actually ask her about what she was making. I think she must be a bit magical though, as the beef in the BEST beef tacos ever was apparently just beef and salt. She also gave me the ingredients in a hot sauce that some of our party claimed to "make the colors brighter". Capsaicin high. Hilarious.

One of our party had a birthday while we were there (lucky girl!) and her husband got her a carrot cake made by Eva (lucky all of us!) This was by far the moistest, tastiest carrot cake I've ever had the pleasure of eating. Just a hint of frosting, lots of fresh carrots and it was just as good two days later as a fabulous breakfast.

At the request of several folks, I made conchas and recruited the amazing Lexi to help me. I've given up on the recipes I've found and written my own, so our house sitter had to email it to me from my scribbles here at home. Then came the adventure of tracking down all the ingredients in a town where plenty of people don't speak any English - I now know that yeast is levadura in Spanish. Lexi got the sticky, messy jobs, carrying on a family tradition of pawning the crap work off on the youngest available labor. We baked them the following morning, at a vast majority of them and then sold the rest at the local outdoor market (Conchas frescas, a cinco pesos! - Hawking them was Lexi's job again.) It was SO much fun!

We visited my family in Michigan, so there was plenty of cooking as we seem to socialize around food. I owed my dad a pecan pie for something... birthday, Christmas... I would have made him one anyway! It turned out wonderfully, even though the pie crust was a pain.

 Since my mom now has chickens too, I had to make some challah. This was one of the few things that worked without a hitch.







There was a lot of food the whole time, since all of us cook. We made one massive, joint birthday meal that took the whole day to cook - grilled chicken, bacon wrapped jalapenos, hasselback potatoes, fresh brook trout, grilled mushrooms and zucchini all followed by lemon cheesecake and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Damn good meal!

Anyway, that was my summer. Hopefully now that the temperature is dropping and the rain is setting in I'll get back to my obsessive cooking and will have more to post about!

Daring Cooks - Stacked Enchiladas

This has been a crazy month, so it was a relief to have a less time-consuming recipe for the challenge.

 First time saver - salsa verde from last year. The challenge included a recipe for this, but the tomatillos in the stores here leave a lot to be desired. It'll be another month or two before they're really in season. I stirred in some cream to balance out some of the acidity.

I DID make the tortillas, and the suggestions with the challenge made a huge difference. Reducing the amount of water and letting the masa sit for 30 minutes left me with dough that was amazingly easy to work with. It didn't stick to the press or the griddle and the tortillas puffed like pitas as they cooked. They stayed soft for much longer too.

The filling was the best part of this dish. I coated chicken thighs with chili powder and threw them and some anaheim chilis on the grill. The smell of roasting peppers is just incredible. I chopped all of that up with some onions and sweet corn, sauteed it and layered it with the sauce, tortillas and some cheese in a baking dish.

Kat had a friend over that morning to work on her car, and this was a great lunch for them and saved us all from low blood sugar crazies!

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh. 

Steak & Egg Pasta

I love cooking with leftovers. This was pesto fettucine from the night before, along with some gently heated sliced steak from another meal and a fried egg from our chickens on top. The yolk mixed wonderfully with pasta, making a lovely creamy sauce.

Hanukkah 2009

We kind of celebrated Hanukkah with some friends this year. Since none of us are actually Jewish, this mostly consisted of food (my job) and the history behind the holiday (courtesy of Nicholas.)

The main course was the chicken soup with matzo balls. Now, I don't much like soup and I was pretty skeptical about the matzo, having only ever used it as a binder. The soup was good, everyone seemed to like it (again, I'm just not a big soup person). The matzo balls were delicious though! The key, I think, was saving the chicken fat from making the broth and using that instead of shortening. A lot of the matzo ball recipes called for instant soup mix, which I thought was a bit gross, but the chicken fat worked wonderfully.

Look! Successful latkes without any serious burns, which is pretty amazing given my history with deep frying. They were absolutely worth it though as nearly anything fried is delicious.





Kat made the applesauce from apples that her parents brought us. I thought I'd want ketchup with mine (since ketchup is the condiment of the gods) but they were honestly amazingly good with the applesauce and sour cream!

Ahhh.... sufganiyot. Jelly doughnuts. I filled these with my mom's raspberry jam. These are seriously addictive!

Yeah, that's what the whole evening was like.

Thanksgiving 2009

I'm still trying to catch up on all the old photos and I've been realizing what a HUGE difference having the SLR makes. These were all taken with the old point and shoot.

Anyway.... from left to right: Kale with bacon and apple cider vinegar, cranberry sauce from scratch, stuffing (there is never enough stuffing) and pan roasted sweet potatoes. They were all tasty, but NOT the stars of the meal.

Hasselback potatoes. This maximizes the amount of crispy ends and butter soaked middle with garlic hiding everywhere. YUM.

I am quickly becoming convinced that pork products will improve just about anything - a huge change from my pork-free diet 5 years ago. Bacon, fat back, sausage, pork chops.... It sure made this one delicious turkey! Look at that skin.. Trying to prop it up with custard cups didn't work out as well as I'd hoped though. I put as much stuffing in as would fit, then mixed it with the rest once the turkey was done and popped it all back in the oven for another 20 minutes or so until it hit temp.

Daring Cooks - Brunswick Stew

This month's challenge REALLY surprised me. I mean, I like a good stew, but the ingredients list was just so... normal, especially since I decided not to try tracking down a rabbit. Besides, rabbit is not a novelty in my dining repertoire, and definitely not worth the premium they fetch here in the city.


The hardest part of this was skinning the quartered chicken, which was more time consuming than anything. Instead of the rabbit, I used pork loin. It also gave me a great excuse to use some of the broth I've been stockpiling in the freezer, much to Kat's delight.

This is pork jowl bacon. I'm now convinced that ALL stews should start with frying this stuff. It's cheap, fatty and flavorful. Now that I have my gravy separator, I defatted the stew at the end so this really just added a ton of flavor. (I LOVE my gravy separator. How did it take me this long to get such a simple tool??) Anyway... pork jowl = heaven.

After searing all the meats, deglazing the pan and then getting everything onto a simmer for a couple of hours, things really came together. The red wine vinegar and fresh lemon juice rounded everything out perfectly. We each got a few bites - this recipe makes a full pot of stew and it's all tucked away into the freezer for a gathering next week.

Killer recipe.

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

Buckwheat Pancakes

I'm smitten with buckwheat pancakes. I've only ever tried cooking whole buckwheat grains, never with much success - there are so many tastier grains out there, no reason to choke this down just to be able to say I eat buckwheat. So, I'm always a bit skeptical when there's a new round of buckwheat recipes hitting the cooking websites I watch.

THIS is why people rave about buckwheat. Skip the whole grains, go straight for the pancakes. Recipe is from here: http://awhiskandaspoon.com/2010/02/11/winter-buckwheat-pancakes/

The batter is weird. Stretchy, gluey, very dark, speckled and SO thick. As soon as the pancakes started cooking (on my new electric griddle - thanks Mama!) this great nutty aroma filled the kitchen. They cooked maybe 50% longer than a regular pancake.

These are delicious! They were fluffy, but felt substantial and they lasted so much longer than a standard pancake. I can't imagine how good they'd be if I whipped the egg whites first!