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!

Daring Cooks - Risotto

Risotto has been on my to-make list for years, so I was really excited about this month's challenge. I've tried to make it once before, with awful results. I was making a wild mushroom risotto and somehow I ended up with a dish that looked like lumpy gray glue that, while actually still tasty, was incredibly unappealing. This one was much more successful.

Usually making stock means saving up the bones from a chicken, and I don't put in too many vegetables. This was a great excuse to go all out though, and the meat made for a great chicken salad the next day!

It's amazing... as soon as onions start to fry, everyone is amazed at how good whatever the dish is will be. I didn't take the onions out, as the recipe called for since we all love onions. The rice required more stock than I expected to get to that lovely tender stage. I'd been reducing the stock to amplify the flavor, and just barely had enough.

The shrimp in Texas were amazing... so fresh and tender. The last few stages of the risotto went quickly to keep the shrimp from overcooking. And then of course the parmesan...

Risotto. Tender, flavorful and nothing even remotely resembling glue. This may become a frequent dinner in our house!

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

Blueberry Muffins from Cooks Illustrated

These were incredibly fancy compared to my normal Betty Crocker blueberry muffins. They were delicate, and the swirl of blueberry jam really amped up the flavor. I'll try to get the recipe on here at some point!

Snowed in for Christmas - 2008

We had a HUGE snowstorm in December of '08 leaving me stranded at home for about 2 weeks, including over Christmas. Since Kat was working, I spent the day (surprise surprise) cooking.

 First off: Turkish Delight. MASSIVE FAILURE. It didn't taste bad, but it never firmed up like it should have. I was trying a recipe that only used corn starch, no gelatin and it just wasn't right. I made a pan of vanilla and a pan of citrus, both with nuts in them.

Next up, Divinity. Now, I've never made, seen or eaten Divinity. Turns out, this is NOT what it's supposed to be like at all. Mine was gooey, sticky, tasty but nearly impossible to eat. It was fun watching the chickens eat it though!

These are Yema - Filipino egg candies. They were fun to make, especially since the chickens had just started to lay and the filling was such and incredibly rich yellow. They were a bit too sweet and rich though, which seems to be the case with a lot of candies from other countries. (Hello Greece!) We ate a few, and gave the rest to the chickens. sigh.

Finally, homemade Marshmallows. These were far and away the darlings of the day. They were surprisingly easy to make and SO soft and fluffy. This is what marshmallows should be like. This recipe used a lot of egg whites, but I'd also like to try some that don't use eggs at all. That day I made regular and chocolate, and I want to try making some fruit marshmallows during the summer.

Baklava

This is my first post about Baklava, with hopefully more to follow as I work out the recipe. Baklava has been my pet work in progress for about 2 years and it's ranged from soggy to crispy, too sweet to not quite sweet enough, perfectly golden to nearly black on the bottom. However, each time it improves and the recipe is getting closer to perfected. What I've learned so far:

• Almonds aren't quite right. So far the best mix is 75% walnuts and 25% pistachios, mixed with brown sugar and cinnamon. 
• The butter needs to be clarified - this makes the phyllo MUCH crisper and golden. With the  milk solids left in, the bottom layers get soggier and the top just isn't as pretty.

• No rose water in the syrup, and I use only about half of what most recipes call for. Traditional baklava is just horrifically sweet. Syrup made with honey and water, boiled with a good half of a lemon (peel included) and a cinnamon stick. The citrus cuts the sweetness too.
• I like multiples of 3. I don't think this necessarily adds to the quality of the final product, but it makes me happier with the baklava. Bottom layer - 15 sheets of phyllo, 3 middle layers - 6 sheets each, Top layer - 15 sheets (or 18, depending on what's left.)

Fish Baked in a Salt Crust

 

This was a great experiment and I'll definitely cook fish this way again. This is for WHOLE FISH only - I used trout. The skin keeps the flesh from absorbing too much of the salt. For these 2 fish, I mixed one whole box of kosher salt with 2 egg whites (to bind the salt) and put a layer down in the bottom of the baking sheet. The fish were stuffed with herbs and lemon sliced and were laid on top and covered with the remaining salt mixture. Pack it tightly! This was a while ago... I think I then baked it all at 400F for about 30 minutes until the crust was browned:

This is the fun part: Crack it open! We used a hammer since the crust was SO hard.

The eyeballs fused to the salt crust and were yanked clean out. Gotta love dinner with a gross out factor.

Here they are, completely uncovered. The fish was incredibly moist and well seasoned. It was a bit messy to eat, but really really good. And it's worth it just to get to take a hammer to your dinner.