The Laz Gastronomique

Learning something new every day... about food!

2011-12-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I learned that, contrary to my implicit belief, hamentashen are not hanukah cookies! They are instead traditionally eaten for Purim, making it all of a sudden weird that the huge holiday cookie tray I bought at the grocery store yesterday had a whole bunch of hamentashen prominently stacked at the top.

I'm gonna make some on monday, I think. Also today I think I'm making bimbimbap. It's the week of finally getting to cook now that the semester is over and coincidentally choosing to cook dishes with names that are fun to say!

Spitesgiving: A Retrospective

2011-09-25T10:16:00.000-07:00

I've basically been too afraid of making the Spitesgiving post all month, because I didn't feel up to the challenge! I'm going to go the photo blitz route, because I think that's the only way I'll ever get over my intimidation of this Major Eating Event in order to actually make the post.

There was some total bullshit, like a selection of mixed fruits:

Note the lack of Meat or Cheese

There was supposed to be mango in that fruit salad but we wisely used the mango to make margaritas instead. Which we then wisely consumed while playing soul calibur. Ivy FTW!!!! "Exxxxtend!"

But after the momentary insanity that came from preparing such a minimally healthful dish (pineapple, at least, is like the least healthy possible fruit), we got serious and threw some korean style ribs on my ersatz grill:

I'm too scared of setting my house on fire to use my actual grill

Bobby Flay claims that this is his recipe, but even the most cursory search on the internets reveals that actually this is a traditional Korean recipe that was probably invented centuries before Bobby Flay was even a twinkle in his mother's eye. So, there's a fun fact for the Bobby Flay haters among my readership. AS and I carefully selected the actual asian sesame oil instead of the proudly labeled "ASIAN FOODS" version for the marinade, although CA reminded us that that probably means there is much more Rat, Dog, and Lead (etc) in this marinade than there would have been otherwise. These ribs really did have an amazing flavor. They were pretty easy to make, but they do have to marinate for like 3 hours so I don't know if I'll do them again prior to a future Spitesgiving. We did put away about 6lbs of ribs between the 3 of us over the course of 1.5 days.

We put away the quiche (and tequila, for that matter) much faster:

I don't really remember how the tequila got in this shot... we didn't have any of it with brunch

Ok, there are like 8 eggs in this quiche (not to mention the bacon or two cheeses), and there was only ONE PIECE LEFT after we got up from our epic 4 hours around the brunch table (not an exaggeration). I'll share with my readership a "secret" that seemed to be of interest to the spitesgiving constituents: I added about 1 cup of crumbled feta to this quiche, to make it saltier. Everyone loves a nice, salty quiche, but adding actual salt to the quiche just gives the eggs a funny texture after a certain point. Adding feta instead makes the egg mixture more creamy, and still ups the salt into instant heart attack levels. A good trick to have in the quiche making toolbox!

We selected a nice, thick, handmade wheat bread for the French Toast by committee at the Wegman's (note to self for next year, AS doesn't like raisins!)

Can you see the french toast under all the powdered sugar?

There were only like 2 pieces of french toast left after brunch too! How did we eat all that? I think the answer can be found in the photo of me laying sprawled out on the ground in between rounds of brunch (not pictured). One might believe that I could eat that much, but tiny little CA and AS had to have put away about 3x their body mass right in that one meal! Kudos!

Here's the full brunch spread.

We did actually eat all the fruit eventually. I think we ended up blending a lot of it into subsequent margaritas.

AS took this fantastic photo of pure, unadulterated BUTTER, and I think it lends a bit of authenticity to the themes of Spitesgiving that I am trying to convey.

For National Security Reasons, I'm not going to share how much butter was consumed during Spitesgiving

**New Header** Spitesgiving Dinner

CA expressed to me prior to Spitesgiving that one Theme she would like to see implemented in the menus was Blue Cheese at Every Meal (there wasn't a picture of the potted stilton from brunch). Eager to comply, I prepared these blue cheese, bacon, and scallion "puffs."

God, seriously, looking back on this now... how did we EAT all this?

I think we ate about 25 of these at dinner. In theory, these should be great, because they are bacon, blue cheese, and scallions. I think the blue cheese taste kind of got lost in them though, and I'm not sure I'd make them again. For people that like blue cheese, I don't feel that they were pungent enough, and for people that DON'T like blue cheese, they are probably too gross tasting. Maybe I could try them again with like a cheddar or something. That might be worth a shot, as they are pretty easy to make and would probably go over well at events where lots of alcohol is being consumed.

The main event was osso bucco:

Yeah, I braised the shit out of that veal

I had made this exact preparation of osso bucco before, but because of how long it took to prepare all the other dishes, it ended up braising much longer this time around. I think there was nearly universal agreement that this was right up there on the Most Tender Meat I've Ever Eaten list for all parties present.

We were fortunate to be able to sop up the osso bucco gravy with biscuits at all, but the experience went into fantasyland because we were able to do so with starfleet shaped biscuits.

Eat long, and prosper

Thanks AS for this spectacular, nerd and eating themed Spitesgiving Craft! Especially since CA and I both didn't make our crafts. Oops.

We rounded out the epic with an 8 layer celebration cake:

When there are 8 layers of cake, there are 9 layers of frosting

I had challenged myself to make double digit layers prior to the weekend, but I foolishly forgot to buy parchment paper (I KNEW we would forget something at the grocery store, even though we took an extremely efficient team approach to the shopping), so I didn't want to risk layers any thinner than this. Honestly, I'm surprised that I was able to get layers even this thin out of my pans WITHOUT the parchment paper. I give all the credit for the exceptional nature of the final product here to my stand mixer. It created a batter that was of a texture that I had never known was possible before, despite my years of consuming butter and sugar. The egg white mixture was a lacy froth, the egg yolk mixture was like spackle. It was truly amazing. Even though I keep a regularly updated list of my best cakes:

26th birthday red velvet
Chocolate Amaretto
Alton Brown's Tres Leches

This one clearly was, by miles and miles, the best baked good I've ever made (see, all credit to stand mixer). I will definitely make it again, but only when I have 3 hours (and parchment paper). I'll make it up to double digit layers someday, just see if I don't!

Beef with Broccoli

2011-08-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

I made beef with broccoli this evening, and it definitely wasn't my greatest culinary triumph (especially because I didn't have any sambal so it's not even spicy!) I didn't even take a picture of it because it was kind of sad and brown and wilted. Probably the most interesting part of the whole endeavor is that I sustained my first non-trivial oil burn by means of not paying enough attention when I dropped the beef strips into the boiling sesame oil. What surprises me the most about this oil burn is that it took me this long to get one-- I really can't remember ever raising a blister from burning myself the whole time I've been cooking. My previous worst cooking related discomfort was as banal as rubbing my eyes with jalapeno hands.

So, now I've gotten that out of the way.

osso bucco

2011-07-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, I had a major Success this weekend, by spending most of both days involved in Meat Work of some type. Meat Research to find out if I could use a veal chop instead of a veal shank in my osso bucco. Meat Comparison Shopping to find out where to get the best veal in binghamton. Then today, best of all, Meat Braising, as the osso bucco braised in my dutch oven for 3 hours.

I was having such a good time I documented the process more than usual. For example, I took a picture of the assembled ingredients:

I did it because I just liked the look of the basil plant with the bread and my cool purple flowering tree outside.

I also got a shot of the browned veal, before I set it to braise:

This one I took because I thought the veal looked amazing at this point and I was afraid I was sure to fuck it up some time in the next three hours, so I thought I had better get some evidence that it had looked good at one time. My meat comparison shopping really paid off here, because these chops were fantastic. I could tell from the minute I took them out of the brown paper that I had some nice cuts of meat on my hands. I also learned during my meat comparison shopping that Wegman's (local nice grocery store) will do special cut orders for you if you call them a mere 3 days in advance! So next time I could actually get a shank, if I so desired (although I loved the chop, so I'm not sure I would bother.)

There were some appetizers before the main event:

I believe that the highlight of the cheese plate is the habanero cheddar to the right. I think it actually has habaneros in it! Anyway, it is very hot. Not as hot as my spicy asian soups, but quite hot for a dairy product. The sausage was an impulse buy-- they were sampling it when I went shopping for the cheeses so I grabbed a stick, but I don't think I'd buy it again. The gimmick with this sausage is that it is pinot grigio cured, but I felt that the wine curing gave it a kind of weird sour chemical taste that didn't do it for me in a sausage, which in my book should be Salty, Fatty, and Hot, in that order.

I also served some dates with goat cheese, basil, and prosciutto:

I made these before (for the karafete), so I don't have too much to say about them-- I knew they were easy and end up looking and tasting good. I felt last time that they had Too Much Date (although KDF and EW politely assured me that there was Just Enough Date), so this time I cut each date in half while I was seeding it and stuffed each half separately. I think this was an improvement, and it involved essentially no extra work or alteration to the recipe, so I think I will do them again this way in the future.

The main event was the osso bucco, served with risotto milanese (a saffron risotto preparation):

Although I made risotto like every weekend last winter, there were several firsts for me with this one. I had never worked with saffron before, and I also had never made a risotto with tomato broth. I was informed by the internet, and by james beard, that when serving a risotto with osso bucco, it should be prepared ala milanese (which as far as I can tell just means a simple preparation with saffron), and using hot tomato juice instead of chicken broth to cook the rice. I think that I did NOT like the saffron, but I did like the tomato broth. Saffron is WAY TO EXPENSIVE to taste like that! I was expecting a total expensive party in my mouth but I think it basically tasted like the tomato juice had been sitting out too long and had gone bad. I don't think I'll be buying any $1 / thread saffron again in the forseeable future.

I loved the tomato juice spin though. I usually love to serve risotto with a ton of parmesan cheese, and I felt like the tomato juice both changed it up a little from the normal broth risottos I make and also went quite nicely with the parmesan. I would make it like this again-- maybe adding some hot italian sausage if I were going to do it as a Frozen Cube Lunch.

The osso bucco.... it was amazing. The meat literally did fall off the bone! It was so soft. I guess it should be, since it basted in its own juices for 3 hours on ultra low heat. I don't even know how to describe it. The fact that it was veal instead of beef gave it just a hint of pungency that set it far apart from a beef stew. I served it with some carrots, onions, and potatoes that had been soaking up the fat and gravy in the braising pan for three hours, and they were some of the best vegetables ever, probably because they were about 2/3 vegetable and 1/3 beef fat. That's the way to eat a vegetable!

I am seriously considering osso bucco for spitesgiving dinner. It is so delicious, but very easy to make and has the huge advantage of making the house smell like braising veal for hours on end. AND we could actually have 3 roasted meats this way because the veal braises on the stovetop, which would leave 2 ovens available for roasting other meats.

I'll definitely make this again, it's too easy and good not to. It's like "serve this for christmas dinner" level good. I'm just sad I only made 3 chops (for 3 people.) Although, 4 probably wouldn't have fit in my dutch oven.

Critical Success!

Fourth of July Apple Pie V

2011-07-04T16:54:00.000-07:00

Happy Apple Pie day, friends! Making an apple pie on the fourth of july is maybe my only "tradition," and I think I've made this pie more times than I've ever made any other dessert. I don't even like apple pie!

This year I forgot to adjust for the fact that I have a convection oven now. :( So the crust got a little crispy before the apples got all the way cooked through as much as I would have liked. It still got ALL eaten at the bbq I went to though. One person ate three slices, AND scraped the pie plate afterwards! Numerous testimonials were offered but I forgot them already.

On the bright side, this year I remembered to do everything I had noted to myself to do to the base pie recipe in the previous 4 years, because I actually typed up a NEW recipe! This was part of my long weekend recipe organizing bonanza. So now I shouldn't have to review several years worth of pie baking notes the next time I have to bake this pie although, if I do check back here next year, I should remember:

--YOU HAVE A CONVECTION OVEN. Lower the first baking temp to 400, and definitely don't bake for more than 30 minutes in the second stage.

--Probably I also don't want to pour quite so much caramel over the crust either. This year I finally remembered to actually double the caramel (last year I doubled the butter but not the sugar), so I think I poured too much on the top of the crust, which contributed to the over-browning. I should have poured a higher proportion of it into the apples.

Anyway, regardless of my convection oven tomfoolery, and the fact that I burned the crap out of my tongue by stupidly dunking an apple in the caramel about 2 seconds after it stopped boiling, the pie was in fact all consumed. Fifth Annual Pie Success!

bbq beans

2011-05-02T19:15:00.000-07:00

I made the bbq bean recipe from my southern living cookbook this weekend, but my camera battery was out when they finished baking and I couldn't wait for it to charge before diving in after spending 2 hours breathing in the maple bacon bbq air.

The maple bacon was really the star of that dish, even though I made it with "half bacon." The preparation was very easy, I think the "full bacon" version would be a great party dish in the future.

Quick 'n Easy Dinner

2011-04-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

I've been making myself penne rigate with fresh basil and olive tomato sauce for dinner every night for like two weeks:

The reason: it is delicious, healthful, and very easy to make. The only prep is boiling the pasta, chopping up the grape tomatoes, olives, and basil, and... that's it! It only takes about 15 minutes from start to finish. With some parmesano reggiano on there, it only comes in at about 540 calories, too! The olives are salty, the tomatoes and basil sweet, and the cheese salty and creamy. It's a good combination! It even looks good enough that I took a photo of it-- very impressive for a 15 minute meal.

Halibut and Shrimp Curry

2011-04-16T15:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while because I've been mostly making either repeats (shrimp risotto) or dishes that don't look very good (chicken chili, eggplant ziti with a slightly burnt topping.) I did make a very nice chicken lasagna a couple of weeks ago, but I was so hungry by the time that it got done baking that I just ate it, and neglected to take photos.

This week, there was a Thai halibut and shrimp curry in the buzz box on epicurious, and since I love shrimp curry and have been making a lot of fish lately, I decided to try it. The mis en place was so beautiful that I took a rare prep photo:

The colors, smells, and flavors of thai cooking are all strong and complex, and combine into the vibrant, multifaceted flavors that draw me to the cuisine. I think that the colors in this photo reflect at least a taste of that, which is why I like it. With ingredients like this, plus some very nice halibut that I got at whole foods, it would have been impossible for the assembled dish to not look quite delicious:

And it was delicious, definitely the best dish I've made this month-- the last dish I made that I enjoyed this much was that butternut risotto I made quite a while ago. Whitefish and curry is a combination that I enjoy, but have never constructed myself since I'm only just now starting to get even a little bit comfortable with fish in the kitchen (thanks, champaign-urbana). There were a couple of little nuances that I would alter if (when!) I make this again-- which I probably will because it was quick, easy, and very flavorful. First, it was not hot enough. I added about 5x as much curry as was called for, AND a tablespoon of sambal, but it wasn't enough. Next time I will try at least equal parts curry and sambal (that would be about 3x as much sambal as this time). Second, I used light coconut milk in this preparation because it has about 1/5 the calories of full strength, but I'm pretty sure the flavor suffered as a result: that rich, heavy coconut flavor that I love in thai curries was almost altogether absent. The recipe ended up making more servings than I expected, so it might have been ok to use full strength anyway.

An added bonus that always comes hand in hand with making thai curry is that now my house smells like curry, and will for probably the rest of the week. Drool!

RI_SOT_TO!

2011-02-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

After the transcendental experience of sea salt sprinkled butternut squash I experienced in my recent black bean chili, I decided to try some other dishes with butternut squash as an ingredient. Thus, butternut squash risotto:

It's official: I love all risotto, not just mushroom. This dish is AMAZING. And relatively low calorie as well. The squash is sweet, the port used in the risotto reduction is sweet, but it has sea salt and some sage to make it salty, it's so warm and soft and gooey but has a little texture from the larger cubes of squash. It is PERFECT for the cold weather. I LOVE it. The only downside to it is that it takes FOREVER to make. It took all afternoon, and the whole preparation is pretty active, since you have to stir it almost constantly and add liquid every 6 minutes or so to get that nice soft but not mushy texture out of the rice. So, I'll probably make it again, but not for awhile.

This is an example of a "comfort food" that doesn't comfort by means of adding additional layers of fat to the ass.

Festive Vegetarian Challenge!

2011-02-26T15:30:00.000-08:00

I'm getting really far behind, because there have just been too many highly edible foodstuffs parading through my apartment recently. Several of them were on display for EW and NWY's president's day weekend visit, when they brought friend and vegetarian NT over for food, sake, and kirin. It was very difficult for me to find vegetarian dishes without peppers, since my entire milieu in the kitchen is all about HOT food and MEAT. Eventually I settled on a loosely japanese theme, which started with tempura green beans:

Thanks to NT for putting the batter for these together while I was freaking out in the pre-meal end stages. They look great, and the batter was great, but for me the batter was too yeasty for the sweet green beans. I would have liked a batter that was slightly saltier and had less beer in it. This is probably party due to the fact that the recipe called for a light beer, and I had forgotten how dark kirin is. Oh well, you can't REALLY go wrong with deep fried, as long as you don't start a fire (which I didn't this time, thankfully!)

The main courses were vegetable makizushi and chinese sesame noodles:

This noodle preparation is supposedly very popular for chinese brunch (although I'm not sure I lend any credence at all to the introductory blurb in the recipe). It's mai fun with sesame oil, almond butter, honey, and rice vinegar. I thought it was going to be WAY too sweet, (especially since the recipe called for sambal, which I left out), but bizarrely the almond butter and rice vinegar combined into this unstoppable combination that became double unstoppable when the sake and dozen or so bottles of kirin had disappeared.

For makizushi, I had cucumber avocado, mango, asparagus with wasabi cream, and shiitake mushroom with scallion:

I was NOT happy with the way the sushi turned out. It turns out that sushi making (especially for beginners) is an art that requires a little bit more attention than I had available as I freaked out in the final half hour before service. They turned out so ugly! I also rolled them way too thick, just like I did in my practice. I think that the next time I do sushi I need to use a smaller grain of rice and only about half a sheet of nori per roll-- hopefully that will result in a roll that isn't a tiny speck of vegetable in a 2 in roll of rice. Regardless of my dissatisfaction though, there were ZERO LEFTOVERS from dinner (including the sushi), so I can't be too disappointed. Everyone seemed to agree that the cucumber avocado was the best-- which doesn't surprise me because that was my favorite too.

Dinner was completed with an off theme but still delicious tres leches cake:

This was easily my favorite dish of the night. By a factor of like 5 to 1. It was SO GOOD. The whipped cream topping I made FRESH in my stand mixer, and that was unbelievable by itself, but the overnight-soaked sponge cake / evaporated /condensed milk conglomeration paired with it was out of this world. God, it was so good. I got out of bed like 2 hours early the next morning just so I could eat a giant slice for breakfast. This was Alton Brown's recipe, and it is a KEEPER! I should note to myself though that I thought I had fucked it up several times, because when the cake comes out of the oven it is about 1/4 as thick as it ends up being, so I thought I hadn't beaten my eggs enough and they had collapsed. That is probably a little true, but it didn't end up really mattering after the cake soaked in sugar cream for 20 hours. UNGGGGGH Just looking at it makes me want a slice, it was really excellent. We even learned that, all this time, tres leches cake has been one of EW's favorites! Who knew something so packed with dairy could possibly meet his satisfaction! I'm glad I went off theme!

Between the zero leftover meal and the 1 slice leftover for my breakfast the next morning magic cake, I think the vegetarian challenge was a success, which is pretty surprising given how off script I had to go. I'm glad I got the chance to push my boundaries in the kitchen!

Chili Day (part N)

2011-02-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

Last night mr. monk and I only got to snuggle for about an hour before I took off for Dracula: The Ballet. I promised him that today I would give him extra snuggles! So I stayed home with him and watched many dollhouse episodes, while making a black bean and butternut squash chili:

Wow, the rare chili that actually looks as good as it tastes! Here's the lowdown on this bad boy. I used dried black beans, and I didn't have the heat up high enough while I was simmering them, so they ended up too tough even though I simmered them for about 4 hours instead of the recommended 2. However, brightside, the squash here is AMAZING! The recipe suggested I could sprinkle sea salt on here as a garnish, and man, when the sea salt hits those simmered, soft chunks of squash: FIREWORKS! Butternut squash is now official on my em effing soup radar! I already have some new and exciting butternut squash soup possibilities bookmarked for next weekend! Although, they might have to wait for 2 weeks if I am cooked out after the upcoming Festive Vegetarian Challenge.

Curry #3: Poached shrimps in tomato sauce with fried onion paste

2011-02-05T17:19:00.000-08:00

Curry #3 is Bhuna Hua Jhinga: poached shrimps in slow cooked tomato sauce with fried onion paste:

This is definitely more in the direction I am looking for in a shrimp curry. It's not vinegary (it doesn't have any vinegar), and I did double the shrimp this week after the paltry servings I ended up with last week. It came out with 5 decent sized servings, and I'm glad I doubled the shrimp (up to 2 lbs!) I feel like I overspiced it though. The fried onion paste (pyaaz kal lep) was DELICIOUS (how could it not be, I slow fried a red onion in canola oil for 35 min and then pureed it with an equal volume of water), but I can't really taste it any more in the final dish, the spices are too strong, and a little too hot for me (though not as bad as last week). I also can't taste the ginger that was part of the foundation for the sauce, which is a bummer since I love ginger. Basically I can only taste my least favorite spices in the sauce. On the bright side, unlike last week, I came out with a lot of sauce, which is what I like (even though this isn't my favorite sauce ever)-- the complex, hot, sauces are what draw me to indian food (and thai food too, for that matter)!

I would consider making this again, although I'd definitely add less cumin, coriander, and turmeric. I discovered last week that the flavors even in the chili vinegar sauce blended and softened quite a bit when I got to the leftovers-- the dish basically got better and better as the week went on. So I'm hoping that will happen again this week. At least I have enough portions for my lunch all week long!

I just wish LEM was here to share it to celebrate taking the Foreign Service Exam! ;)

Rating for Curry #3: ***

Curry #2: Garlic Coconut Shrimp

2011-01-30T17:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight's curry is garlic shrimp with coconut sauce. My cookbook informs me that its indian name is "lasoon jhinga":

Whooooooo it was spicy! I had to add some yogurt after a couple of bites because it was burning my tongue too much!

I feel like I must have messed something up, because this one is not even in the ballpark of how good curry #1 was. The sauce was painfully hot, and really vinegary (although that might have been expected because it had a vinegar base). It had about as much coconut as curry #1, but it was not nearly as creamy. It was also disappointing because it didn't make nearly as much as I had hoped-- only 3 tiny servings! It ended up being about 1.5 hours of work for a sauce that was too hot and vinegary and which I only have 2 more servings of, which sucks because usually I eat my sunday night cooking for lunch all week!

I don't think I'll make this one again. I really love shrimp curry though (it's what I always look for first at indian restaurants), so I will have to try one of the other shrimp options next. On the bright side, because it ended up yielding so little, I have about 3 cups of rice that I can make veggie fried rice with easily for dinner next week, so I guess it karmically evens out. It's also really healthy, only ~300 calories a serving (because they are so small hahah).

Rating for curry #2: ** (mostly only because I bought really nice shrimps at whole foods)

Practice Sushi

2011-01-29T17:09:00.000-08:00

I'm planning to make sushi for the upcoming festive vegetarian challenge that is going to transpire over president's day weekend, when EW is in town. I've never done it before, so I wanted to practice once to get a sense of how long it takes and whether I can pull it off properly. The result:

Finding out that I can make this, and that it is easy and pretty cheap, is a huge development in my culinary life. I made enough veggie sushi for like 4 meals all in one go! Pictured here are both the kinds I made tonight: cucumber avocado and spicy mushroom. The spicy mushroom well surpassed my expectations. I sauteed some shiitakes in hot chili oil and sambal. The result tastes alot like cooked eel, but it's just a non-fattening mushroom! I love it!

I hadn't realized until I did this how much of a contribution the nori makes to the flavor of the sushi. I had mentally always thought of it as a tasteless starch that held the rice together, but it actually has a pretty strong taste that I realize I've come to associate with better sushi.

I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with the preparation of the rice that I used here: I think it could probably use about twice as much vinegar as I used (3 tblspns for 4 cups of rice). A cursory review of the internets reveals that indeed this preparation called for much less vinegar than is typical.

I'm glad I did this practice run. I found out how long it takes (2 hours for 5 rolls), that I can do it, that I need to stuff more rice and fillings in than I initially started out doing, and make sure they are sticking out the ends or the ends will be all nori, and that the mushroom idea I envisioned does come out well.

I think the final menu for the festive vegetarian challenge is going to be:

Tempura Green Beans

Sushi (some cucumber avocado, some mushroom.)

Cold Sesame Egg Noodles

Tres Leches Cake

God, I'm so glad I learned how to make sushi!

Conference Championship Chili

2011-01-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

It is conference championship weekend in the NFL, and that means that it is unlawful to eat anything but chili. This week's version is the cook's illustrated version:

Despite reading about the rationale for why this particular version was selected by the test kitchen in the new best recipe cookbook, I was skeptical: It doesn't have ANY chilis. It is a deceptively simple recipe, but it comes together as more than the sum of its parts, and it is actually pretty hot-- from all the chili powder, I suppose. I really like it, and think I may stick with it for a while, which is saying alot given the quantity of chili recipes I have tried over the years. It needs to be seasoned with salt when served, but other than that it is nice and warm and flavorful and meaty, and was relatively easy to make!

Incidentally, pictured on top there is the whole foods "fiesta blend," which includes pepper jack, colby, and gruyere. WTF is gruyere in the "fiesta blend?" It tastes good, at least.

Gonna scarf some more chili and watch football! Go bears! Go steelers!

Boston Baked Beans

2011-01-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

I made boston baked beans as a nice alignment of the stars of my bean phase and the patriots game last weekend:

The less said about the football game the better. I got this recipe out of my new best recipe cookbook, but I think it was kind of a loser (like the patriots, unfortunately), although maybe that was my fault-- I couldn't get the kind of beans I was supposed to have and I also used all bacon instead of 1/3 bacon 2/3 salt pork. I tried white kidney beans, but they were too big and ended up dry and tasteless. I think the lack of salt pork hurt too-- I bet the beans would have been a lot richer if there had been 4 oz of salt pork in there like there was supposed to be. I won't make this again-- my search for the perfect baked bean recipe continues!

This weekend I am making the new best recipe chili. I hope it turns out better than the baked beans!

festive vegetarian no pepper challenge

2011-01-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

Just trying to get my thoughts organized for the upcoming festive vegetarian no pepper challenge. Right now I'm thinking I'm going to make:

--tempura green beans
--inari
--cucumber, avocado, and shiitake makizushi

--Tres Leches cake (I know this isn't on theme but I really want to make it)

I'll need EW and NWY to bring sake.

I feel like this menu is too light, and needs some udon or something to give it substance.

Pasta e Fagioli

2011-01-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

I have so many cooking options now, between my 660 curries and the Cook's Illustrated New Best Recipe I bought myself after christmas. I started out reading the soups section of the new best recipe, and although there IS a southeast asian soup in there, the pasta e fagioli ("pasta fazool") caught my eye. It was probably the bacon, and the beans, since I'm still in my bean phase. I noticed that pretty much all the other yuppies that shop at my whole foods are in a new year high protein low fat high fiber bean phase, so I got the last can of cannelini beans:

This soup photographs beautifully! All three of the angles I took of it were delicious looking. It also tastes pretty good. It's got some nice smokiness from the bacon, and a great tang to the broth, because of the exciting anchovy paste and parmeseano reggiano rind it includes. I was so excited about getting to use those ingredients! Mr. Monk was very excited about the tiny bite of anchovy filet he got, as well.

I scarfed my bowl down, but I don't think I'll make this again for myself as frozen food cube fodder. I was kind of hoping this soup would be hearty enough for a main course, but I don't think it really is. When I serve my frozen portions to myself subsequently, I think I'll probably cook up some more of the shells to serve it over. Having to cook again to augment the frozen food cubes negates the purpose of the frozen food cubes, so if I do make this again it will probably be as soup course in a larger meal. I paired it tonight with a little vegetable salad with balsamic, and together the two would make a great starter to a fancy italian meal, I think. Maybe I'm just extra hungry today though because I did a bike marathon this morning. Maybe it actually is hearty enough to serve as an entree course.

The new best recipe cookbook is great. In addition to the actual recipe, it has about as much text about how that particular recipe was selected (they do taste tests), and all kinds of other interesting, helpful tips and information (such as, in this case, the canned beans that scored highest in a taste test, and what shapes of pasta work best.) When I selected this recipe, I got engrossed in reading the soups chapter like a book, not just a cookbook!

holiday wines

2011-01-06T09:37:00.000-08:00

I just remembered that I wanted to write a short post reminding myself which one of the pinot noirs I tried over the break was really good and which one was just passable. The Fogdog was amazing, the 12 Clones was just passable. As usual for me, this difference pertains to the fact that the fogdog was much sweeter.

white bean, endive, and bacon soup

2011-01-02T15:26:00.000-08:00

Even though it was 60 degrees in Pittsburgh yesterday, it's hearty winter soup making season in my heart. How could it not be, the first week of the new year? I'm in a bean phase right now, so Mr. Monk and I whipped up a white bean, bacon, and endive soup as our first extravagance of 2011:

I customized this one a bit by doing half endive half fingerling potato, and I'm glad I did because those potatoes soak in that bacon fat and chicken broth in a most appealing fashion. Let me tell you: the heart of this dish is the bacon. All of the ingredients get simmered in the bacon drippings, giving the soup as a whole a nice smokey bacony flavor. I've started getting the butcher bacon at whole foods (as opposed to pre-packaged) and it makes a huge difference, it's so nice and thick and salty and fresh and somehow meatier. Mr. Monk goes CRAZY when he smells me start to work with it. I admit, I go kind of crazy when I smell it too!

I kind of wonder how this would have been with just a tiny amount (say 1 can) of diced tomatoes in there too-- I really like acid in my soups!

It's "pretty good" but probably not good enough to make again. Although, it is nice that this dish only has about 5 ingredients-- I don't have to buy thirty springs of herbs 90% of which are going to go bad before I ever use what remains of them after my soup making. Maybe I should start an herb garden.... Maybe after I move!

Year of the Stand Mixer

2010-12-31T19:35:00.000-08:00

I really do try to spend New Year's Eve doing what I want to do in the upcoming year. To roll out 2010 and ring in 2011, that means I'm watching horror movies with mr. monk and drinking pink champagne. While we watch and snuggle and sip, brownies are in the oven, fresh out of my new stand mixer:

What a beautiful sight this is! I've actually never had any workable mixing devices before (I have a hand mixer which is about one tenth as effective as just stirring with a spatula), so in addition to being a beautiful sight, that gooey chocolatey brownie batter covered beater is the first beater covered with my own brownie batter I've ever gotten to lick clean! I think this bodes well for 2011.

I'm planning tomorrow to make curry #2: probably white pumpkin and corn curry! Happy New Years, Friends! I hope you all have many beaters covered in brownie batter to lick clean in 2011!

holly jolly christmas

2010-12-29T16:18:00.000-08:00

I managed to convince my mom to let me cook in her kitchen this year, so there was ginger cake with chocolate glaze and candied ginger after christmas dinner:

My sister "helped" by stirring the glaze, djing the christmas tunes, designing a ginger decoration that would leave un-gingered portions for timid dinner guests, and offering moral support.

The glaze turned out pretty well, and I thought the candied ginger added a nice flavor and texture, but the cake itself was far too dry for me. It needed either more butter or more oil or more eggs, or all three. Maybe a little of each.

I don't think I'll make this again. Especially now that I have so many desserts to try in my Cook's Illustrated New Best Recipe cookbook that my mom got me for Christmas! Other cooking related christmas bounty: a 9 in square platinum cake pan (needed to prepare the ginger cake), an icing decorating set (pastry bags and tips), some new mixing bowls, measuring cups, and preparation bowls, a really cute vera bradley apron from my sister, a 2 quart nonstick strainer lid kitchen aid pot, and, OF COURSE, my 7 quart viking professional stand mixer (in red!) This holiday take has tremendous potential for deliciousness in the 2011!

"Holiday" Cookies

2010-12-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

The story of how these cookies came into being is complicated (although not necessarily interesting in equal proportion):

Fred Claus was on TBS when I turned my tv on this morning, and I kind of ignored it as I went through the morning chores: feeding mr. monk, making breakfast, giving mr. monk his eye medicine, doing laundry. It was still on when I took a moment out before heading to the gym to have snuggle time with mr. monk, and seeing all those elves made me want to make sugar cookies! I ignored the urge, and started to get ready to go to the gym, but when I checked my iPod I found the battery was dead, so I had to charge it for awhile before I could leave. With about 30 minutes on my hands all of a sudden, I decided to go for it and make some sugar cookie dough, and pick up some decorations on my way home from the gym.

Sooooooooo I go to Trader Joe's after the gym, and pick up some candies that look like they might be good cookie toppings: pecan praline, mini chocolate covered vanilla truffles, and discs of baking chocolate. While there, I spied some shortbread chocolate thumbprints, and decided pretty much before I even got out of the store that I would use the chocolate discs to make chocolate thumbprints.

Once home, I realized that the only cookie cutters I have are in the shape of dog-related items. E.g., bones, fire hydrants, and doghouses. Thus, the bone cookies. I think I'll just make a bunch of circles, and make some of them thumbprints, and sink the caramels and pecans into some plain circles right when they get out of the oven.

The thumbprints came out well, considering I just decided to make them on the fly, had no recipe, and had never done them before, but the chocolate was not sweet enough, and, fuck it, this sugar cookie recipe is terrible. I should have known that, because I had made it before, but I somehow forgot that it was terrible or that it was THIS one that was terrible, so I fell for it again and ended up with bitter cardboard tasting sugar cookies. So I have some bitter cardboard tasting sugar cookies with bitter chocolate on them, and some with nothing on them. YUCK. I threw out the plain ones, and am going to take the chocolate covered ones in to work tomorrow because I think that even though they taste terrible they look good enough that they will get eaten. And who knows, maybe people who like dark chocolate or something will really like them. UGGGH. What a day long time wasting complicated fuckup.

Curry #1: Ginger Coconut Curry

2010-12-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

LEM got me the "660 Curries" cookbook for Christmas! I am very excited about this gift, and am going to go through many, many curries. I thought I would orient myself by starting with a pretty "safe" curry, and work my way up from there. So I went for a chicken curry with coconut and ginger:

The Indian name for this dish is murghi ni curry, and the sauce there is made up of ginger, garlic, fresh coconut (I learned how to open a coconut! First time ever using a claw hammer in my cooking!!!), peanuts, serrano chiles, coriander, tomato, and cilantro! IT IS SO GOOD. Definitely the best Indian food I have ever made. GOOD CHOICE LAURA!!!! God, I want to eat so much more than what is in my dish! And my house smells AMAZING! It would have been really easy to make too, if I had known in advance how to open a coconut, and not had to figure it out by experimentation. The coconut makes it so creamy, but it doesn't have any cream! The sauce is delicious, and spicy from the chiles! I used skinless chicken thighs, so the chicken is super succulent. Dizzamn!

Rating for Curry #1: * * * * *

Chili Season!

2010-12-12T09:43:00.000-08:00

The first snow of the year is on the ground in PGH, which means it is chili season! I kicked it off right this year, with a chili that includes 4 lbs of pork shoulder and one pound of BACON:

This chili is about 95% pork that was fried in bacon grease. As such, I can eat about 1 tablespoon of it before the stomach clenching begins. What was I thinking! Four pounds of pork shoulder is way too much pork shoulder for one person. WAY TOO MUCH. This dish is not really a "chili," it's like really, really heavy dip that no one should eat more than 1 tablespoon of. If I was going to do it again, which I'm not, I would go down to like 1 pound of pork shoulder and put in way more veggies.

On the plus side, my house smells like bacon, and mr. monk has been FREAKING OUT about since I cracked open the package with the pork in it yesterday. I think he actually may have been able to eat more of it than me.

Recipe here, if you want to dare it.

future pies

2010-11-29T07:29:00.001-08:00

Recipe from Bakerella

Brownie Pecan Pie
———————————
SUPER-FUDGY VERSION
3/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 Tablespoon self-rising flour
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups pecans
1 package brownie mix and ingredients listed on the box
2 frozen deep dish pie shells

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Place brown sugar in a large bowl and work out lumps. Add flour and stir together until the flour disappears.
Add corn syrup and vanilla. Stir until thoroughly until combined.
Add melted butter. Fold into mixture until it disappears.
Loosely beat two eggs in a separate bowl and fold into mixture until the eggs disappear.
Stir in pecans and set aside.
Prepare brownie batter as instructed on package.
Remove two frozen pies shells from freezer and divide brownie batter evenly between the two. (Deep dish for fudgy version and regular-size for the brownie version.)
Spoon pecan pie mixture evenly between the two pie shells.
Bake fudgy deep dish version for about 40-45 minutes. Place a large sheet of foil across the top of the two pies for the last 10-15 minutes to avoid pie crust from browning too much.
Bake brownie regular pie shell version for about 35 minutes.
Remove from oven and cool.

Thanksgiving: a time for pie

2010-11-26T20:22:00.000-08:00

I am WAY too stressed to have made an entire charity grad student thanksgiving several course meal this year. I didn't want to let one of the year's premiere eating events go by unnoticed though, so I went the Pie Route. I'd been excited about making a pecan pie for thanksgiving this year since before I got stressed, so I chased that dragon, but when I found out on epicurious that you can make a double layered pie with a layer of pumpkin and a layer of pecan, and then douse that double layered pie with whiskey butter sauce, it was clear what I had to do:

You can notice that the wall of all-butter crust is approximately 2x as high as your typical pie crust, that is because of the double layered goodness. Ahhhhh it tastes like, after thanksgiving dinner, you couldn't decide whether you wanted pecan or pumpkin, so you had a slice of both, and then you kind of mushed them all together on your plate. It's got all your thanksgiving dessert flavors together, in one! As such though it was really good, it didn't really satiate my craving for a straight up sugar shock pecan pie.

As if two desserts in one weren't enough, you can also cover it in vanilla ice cream and then cover the ice cream with whiskey sauce:

The whiskey sauce here was a huge problem. WAY TOO MUCH WHISKEY. It thought it was mostly just going to be sweet, but it tasted like I poured a shot of whiskey on my pie. Maybe some people would be in to that but I wasn't (maybe partially because I was actually drinking some of the remaining whiskey at the same time I was eating the pie??)

As a pie, just for a pie's sake, and with no whiskey sauce or pecan pie expectations though, it was about perfect for Thanksgiving, because it had all the classic Thanksgiving flavors! Pie Success!!

By request, recipe here

Power of sinus and ovary

2010-11-07T16:09:00.000-08:00

Since I am both stricken with october plague and menstruating, it is obvious that the best possible food for me to eat would be both 1) spicy and 2) salty. Thus, EXTRA spicy pad thai with EXTRA fish sauce:

Usually I HATE the smell of the peanut oil fried eggs, but apparently there is a critical exception to this rule for menstruation. I seriously plucked like a whole fried egg out of the pile while I was frying the noodles. I guess it's also possible that the whole foods peanut oil is of a superior quality to what I usually would get to make this in champaign, meaning that it doesn't smell as odious when it is heated up. Probably actually I had it at a better temperature tonight too, because I was using a candy thermometer to prevent frying Disasters.

This batch turned out about perfect. I really like this recipe, and it responded well to the extra fish sauce ginger, and sambal I added tonight. God, I love pad thai! So many flavors! I would make this probably every weekend (or even every night) if it wasn't so labor intensive: it takes about 2 hours of standing over a hot wok. Very glad I came back to it tonight though!

butterscotch chip brownies

2010-10-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

I was skimming through the epicurious top ten collection looking for 10k recovery recipes and came upon a very highly reviewed brownie recipe. Then while I was in the baking aisle collecting ingredients, the imp of the perverse whispered to me to buy a bag of butterscotch chips. The result:

How did it turn out? Well, as it happens, highly rated brownie recipe + an entire additional bag of butterscotch chips (minus what I snacked on last night after my workout) = critical success!

I was warned by the epicurious reviews that this recipe would turn out too fudgy if I didn't add extra flour, so I added about an extra cup, and now I think the consistency is about what I would call perfect for a brownie. The butterscotch chips kind of take over the chocolate flavor, so I think when I do this again I'll try peanut butter chips or no chips at all.

I'm eating some hot, hot veggie stirfry as I'm writing this, and the patriots are winning. Life is good!

Minestrone Makes Mouths Happy

2010-10-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

I came upon a tasty looking minestrone recipe on epicurious, and it met my primary goal of making a hearty soup this weekend:

I ate it with a generous sprinkle of parmesan over the top. It was gooooood. It has kidney beans, hot italian sausage, whole wheat penne, carrot, onion, tomato, and tomato paste. Adding the tomato paste was my own initiative. I think this is the tomatoey beany soup I was searching for all last winter!

It doesn't stand up to the risotto I made last weekend though, that was a revelatory dish. I think I might even make it again next weekend, it was so good: I have a ton of arborio left over that's not going to eat itself!

Tomorrow I'm making butterscotch brownies for after my run.

Maple Chocolate Chip Shortbread

2010-10-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

Coming at you from bon appetit via my kitchen, is an super-fall-inspired concoction, maple chocolate chip shortbread:

It was easy to make: it only took about 15 minutes to put together. I would like to thank my springform pan for making it easy to extract, as well. It tastes about how you would expect a shortbread with chocolate chips pressed into it to taste. The only issue here is that I couldn't find maple sugar anywhere, so I went with dark brown sugar, hoping that the maple syrup brushed over the top before baking would bring the maple flavor through, but it didn't. So, unless I find a ready store of maple sugar lurking somewhere in giant eagle that I didn't check, I probably won't make this again.

mmmmmmmmmushroom risotto

2010-10-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

It is fall, and there are amazing looking mushrooms of every variety exploding out of bins in the whole foods. Also, mushroom risotto is tom brady's favorite food. And then I spied a mushroom risotto recipe that calls for a whole pound of italian sausage on epicurious:

Mushroom and italian sausage risotto is apparently up there with chili on the list of foods that taste great but look terrible in photos. I attempted to stage this photo with a little sliced tomato and basil on the top, but that just looked sad, so I tried for an angle where mostly all that is visible is the parmesano reggiano.

This is GREAT! I bet I make better mushroom risotto than giselle. :D I don't know how a dish with no cream in it can be so creamy. It has pretty much no spice in it, just a dash of oregano, although I was sooooooo tempted to toss some red pepper flakes in while I was sauteeing the mushrooms. The flavor all comes from the sausage, the mushrooms, and a reduction of 1.5 cups of red wine. I think what makes it amazing is that you cook it slow and stir it for like an hour, adding more and more chicken stock as you go, so the rice is cooked not with water, but with chicken stock, red wine, and butter. Plus then you have a pound of whole foods italian sausage in there, that never hurt.

It's been about 3 years since I made mushroom risotto, and as I was scarfing down my plate I tried to remember why, since I loved it then and loved it again tonight. I think part of it is that the last time I made it was for a disastrous patriots super bowl loss, which has negative associations for a variety of reasons. I also think I just forget how GOOD it is, especially now that I can toss it with parmeseano reggiano, which is my current Favorite Food.

Not sure what I'm going to do next weekend. All the recipes I have cut out of bon appetit right now are for desserts, but I'm still trying to cook with an eye towards limping through my long sunday runs. I still have all the ingredients for maple shortbread that I didn't make last weekend, which I'm planning to do tomorrow if I'm not too exhausted after my aforementioned long run. Shortbread and mushroom risotto after a long run will be obscenely, almost maliciously good!

Gastronomic sinus remedy

2010-10-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

I've been sick after way, way over-extending myself at my discipline's major conference in portland last week. My most prominent symptom: unrelenting sinus pressure. Fortunately, my most memorable dining experience in portland was a painfully, brutally, hot green papaya salad at a local thai restaurant near the PSU campus called baan thai, so when I was able to go to the grocery store yesterday, I stocked up on ginger, chilis, and sambal to try to make a soup that would clear my sinus the old fashioned way:

This was a relatively quick preparation: the recipe would have had it finished in about 30 min but I wanted to simmer the soup longer to let the flavors meld more. This was partly because I heated up the ingredients considerably: I did about 1/3 cup of fresh ginger instead of 2 tblspns, 2.5 tblspns of sambal instead of 2, added garlic, shallot, and an extra serrano chili (2 instead of 1). Also, I marinated the chicken in soy sauce and yet ANOTHER tblspn of sambal while the broth was simmering.

Before my experience at baan thai last week, I would have said this was hot-- as it did make my eyes water and nose run, and my mouth was still burning while I did the dishes. But that green papaya salad has made me a man when it comes to spice, and now I fear it will be hard for me to actually put enough spice in my dishes to live up to that level! Especially if I ever want anyone else to eat any of the food hahaha. I found a recipe for green papaya salad in the NYT, and I'm going to try it out... conservatively, at first.

Other notable dining from portland has to include my Five Meat dinner at Jake's Famous Crawfish, which might have been the best seafood restaurant I've ever been to: all 5 of the sea-meats I tasted were among the most flavorful I've ever had! The 5 were: snail, shrimp, crab, salmon, and rock fish. Actually, now that I think of it, TWO of those five I was having for the first time EVER-- snails and rockfish. I think I would be more likely to order rock fish again.

Also, of course, we hit voodoo donut, and got a 24 donut sampler... I personally tried cotton candy, maple, oreo, m&m's, and some others that I can't remember because of what we sampled them with: a bottle of macallan 12 year and a bottle of laphroaig 18 yr!

It felt good to eat something besides pizza tonight, and I had been craving thai soup ever since the sickness set in. Ultimate Success!

Beef Shiitake Stir Fry

2010-09-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

I was flipping through my october bon appetit w/ mr. monk when a recipe for beef shiitake stir fry caught my eye:

It includes some snow peas, hoisin, chili-garlic sauce, scallion, and ginger. I put in more chili sauce and ginger than was probably strictly necessary, so the sauce was HOT! Which is the way I like it. If I had told myself 10 years ago that in 10 years I would love to make my food as hot as I could stand it, I would not have believed it, I used to be such a spice baby! But now last night when I was eating this, I wondered, "how bland would PK find this dish? Maybe it would have a bare minimum acceptable spice."

I stir fried it in sesame oil, instead of olive oil, which is my standby, and I think this vaguely made it taste more authentically asian.

I think my cooking may start happening more frequently again now that my grant is (almost) submitted and the fall flavors are bustin' out. I've already decided I'm going to make a pecan pie for thanksgiving (my first one!) and probably some horseradish glazed short ribs. I also cut out recipes from bon appetit for mushroom risotto (tom brady's favorite food!), german chocolate brownies, maple ginger cake with salted caramel sauce, and maple & chocolate chip shortbread. But probably I won't make any of those ASAP, it might be more spice and fall vegetable centered running-recovery dishes for the near future, as I've pushed myself up to 16 mi / week and I need to eat remotely decently to sustain it and get faster (like I want, because I am embarrassingly slow now!)

On the other hand, maple and chocolate shortbread does sound pretty effing good.

I can see plans within plans

2010-08-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

Looks like just a regular, delicious, giant chocolate chip cookie, right:

WRONG! This delicious, giant chocolate chip cookie contains a secret bonus: a brownie!

That's right, I dared it, I baked a brownie inside of a cookie.

I haven't actually tried it yet, because I'm completely sick to my stomach just from the hit I took from sampling double batters. But do I really need to? It's an effing brownie baked inside a motherfuckin' cookie, people!

Gonna pair this bad boy with TNG encounter at farpoint and best of both worlds. Although, best of both worlds, of course, refers to human / borg, not cookie / brownie.

lawdy

2010-07-31T13:42:00.000-07:00

Got some salmon cakes from wf, sauteed them, tossed them in some angel hair with parmesean and tomato. Lawdy!

Brownie Cookies (Cookie Brownies)?

2010-07-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

I saw this recipe for brownie stuffed cookies on bakerella a few days ago and knew instantly that I would have to make it ASAP. I think it's going to be on Sunday (in combo with a TNG-stravaganza-thon) Posting the recipe here for easy reference:

Brownie Pillow Cookies

1 package brownie mix

1 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, plus 1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 oz. bag miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips

Make brownies according to package and let cool. Cut about ten 1 inch squares. Enjoy the remaining brownies. (I used a pan about 8 X 8)

For the chocolate chip cookie dough, beat butter with a mixer until creamy.

Add brown sugar and beat until smooth.

Add eggs, yolk and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Combine flour, baking powder, soda and salt in a medium bowl and stir together with a wire whisk.

Add flour to butter mixture and beat until combined. Stir in mini chips.

Let dough chill covered in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Use a measuring cup to scoop batter by the 1/2 cup. Since it’s chilled, you may need to pack it with a spoon. Then use the spoon to remove the dough from the cup and place it on parchment paper. Work quickly so the dough remains chilled or either prepare one cookie at a time so the rest of the dough remains cold.

After the dough is on the parchment paper, make an indention and place a 1 inch square brownie in the center. Press the brownie down gently and work the remaining dough around the brownie. You can use your hands to shape the dough into a ball.

During this step, I found it easier to use a piece of parchment paper as a work surface since the dough can get sticky and then I used another piece of parchment paper for the baking sheet. If your dough gets too soft, you can chill the rolled dough balls for a few minutes right before baking.

Prepare six cookies at a time using a large baking sheet (15 X 20) and bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. Return the remaining dough to the refrigerator until time to bake the second batch.

Cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes and then cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes about ten cookies using a little less than a 1/2 cup of dough for each cookie.

If your cookies start to get too brown before they are done baking, you can place a sheet of aluminum foil over top for the last few minutes.

Woman Vs. Food

2010-07-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's taken me this long to post about Woman Vs. Food: PGH addition. I think it is because I am intimidated. How can mere words do justice to the kind of trip where we ate two orders of french fries at a single meal? Or ate buffalo chicken wings as an appetizer to a six pound rib roast (for three people?) I think my strategy has to be to let the pictures tell the story.

When AS arrived, we drove directly from the airport to lunch, where I had a reuben and an order of onion rings. The rest of the trip was foreshadowed by the fact that we were randomly brought a whole plate of bacon that we didn't order:

For dinner that night, we went to the church of food, which is literally a restaurant in a church. We had Pittsburgh "salad," which is a sad little pile of lettuce covered with chicken fingers and french fries:

I ordered an additional portion of sweet potato fries, just to be sure. At this meal, AS made the mistake of wasting room in her stomach on the lettuce, but not all was lost because from that error she learned to not even bother with her french fries at FatHead's, the next day:

I actually managed to eat my entire hamburger, and most of my french fries. I've been daydreaming about that hamburger ever since. It had slices of cheese, bacon, sauteed mushrooms, and cheese sauce. AS's sandwich was called the "Beauty and the Beasty" and took about 10 napkins to eat half of.

After FatHead's, we went home and I started cooking dinner almost right away. About two hours later, the herb and cheese biscuits were done, and I innocently placed them out on the table and promised not to notice if the pile were to shrink:

I didn't notice, but if I had to guess, I would bet that the pile DID shrink substantially. I made 36 biscuits, and there were only 4 left after AS left the next morning. This stat is even more incredible because of how much meat we ate:

The roast was prepared pretty simply: we just rubbed it with salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic, and let it cook. It came out pretty well! I believe that both participants in the dinner claimed it was the best roast they had ever had. It was certainly beautiful to behold, and Mr. Monk didn't mind eating it one bit. I served it with fried onion straws, sour-cream parmesean mashed potatoes, and port au jus:

It was really fantastic. If there was any flaw, it was that as much sour cream and butter as I put into the mashed potatoes, I don't think I put quite enough and they ended up kind of lumpy. But that was easy to ignore swimming in jus and fried onions and meat.

I can't wait to do it again!

Sea Bass Veracruz

2010-06-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Tonight's submission was a reader suggestion from "Pervy" RJ: fish prepared in the "veracruz" style with tomato, onion, garlic, olive, and pickled jalapeno:

The source RJ pointed me to told me that this preparation is typically done with red snapper or sea bass, and lo and behold chilean sea bass was on sale at whole foods when I went in for ingredients-- serendipity!

The sauce was truly divine, it has a salty acidy tomato-ey profile that really hit me the right way. I completely fucked up the fish though, which was too bad because these were some beautiful fucking whole foods sea bass filets. I should have halfed them vertically, they were too thick to get nice and permeated by the heat. I also should have scooped the sauce all out so they would be right on the heat, and turned the heat up while I was baking them. I have pretty much no experience cooking with fish, because there was never any that was even remotely edible for sale in champaign. This sauce was so good that I might actually try this again though, doing more right by my fish. I'd probably go with red snapper if I could a second time, because sea bass is too expensive for me to buy it every time I'm going to experimentally fuck up some fish.

The smell of the sauce while it was reducing (and the fish was marinating in lime juice and salt) was amazing, it was making Mr. Monk go completely out of his mind. He didn't get any fish though, I was afraid I hadn't boned it all the way. Instead he got little chunks of tortilla soaked in the sauce. Oh man, he was smacking his lips like crazy! Good dog!

What I ate in ABQ

2010-06-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

I ate alot in ABQ. The first night I was there, I got some Pupusas at Santa's Pupuseria. It was way better than the Whole Foods pupusas, but I forgot my camera! But I promise, it was really good.

Through divine providence, it was the weekend of the ABQ annual spring food festival when I was visiting (!!!!!). My strategy was to walk around buying everything that looked good to eat, and then eat it. I started with some mini apricot white chocolate muffins:

I only bought 1 but the lady selling them was packing up for the day so she gave me a second one for free!!! Amazing! Next was a sample from one of the restaurants that was at the festival. It's a little crostada with goat cheese and a beet chip:

Right after the beet chip, I got some lamb stew from another restaurant. It was like 120 degrees outside, and it was way too fucking hot for lamb stew, so I didn't actually eat it. The next thing I DID eat was from this tent:

I want to be referred to as a "Kitchen Witch!" The kitchen witch actually had my favorite food from the festival, some mushroom pate:

Perhaps the wickedness was what particularly tickled my taste buds?? We were still really hungry after the food festival, because it had been so hot that there wasn't really too much that looked appetizing to eat, and what we did eat was all sample size. We went to the Hard Rock Casino for a while afterwards for air conditioning, penny slots, and (most importantly) free root beers on the casino floor!!!!! But there wasn't anywhere that looked too appealing for lunch in the casino, so LEM and DEW took me instead to what they assure me is an ABQ tourist standby, Frontier! I took a cool tourist photo of the sign outside the original location, near the UNM campus:

I was so starved that I obliterated my chicken nacho plate before I thought to whip out my camera, but it's carcass is impressive (pictured next to the carcass of LEM's sweet roll, which was so amazing the taste of the bite LEM let me try stayed in my mouth for like an hour afterwards):

I loved that there were raw jalapenos on the nachos!!!!

On Sunday night, we had some Real Nebraska Brats w/ red potato salad and TEQUILA, but I again was too hungry to remember to take photos. Those Brats have me dreaming of brats, and they were perfect with potato salad and tequila!

I also ate a green chili cheeseburger from Twisters on Saturday, and it was as good as I remembered it from the last visit, with it's huge bed of curly fries!!!!!

Thanks LEM and DEW for sponsoring this whirlwind spicy food face stuffing event!

Remembering.... with steak

2010-05-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

I finally felt recovered enough from cooking for my mommy when she was in PGH to try something new this weekend. Since it is American Barbecue Day, I thought I had better try something new that was also meat-based. Thus, skirt steak with chili lime sauce and shallot:

The sauce is lime juice (from an jamaican ugli lime, which are so sweet and amazing I ate like half of the lime raw), sugar, fish sauce, serrano pepper, and shallot. The pepper gives it a nice heat. The recipe called for 3 tblspns of water, presumably to soften the taste of the fish sauce, but I wasn't having any of that. Give me the fish sauce taste!!!!

I completely fucked up the steak. I couldn't find my broiler pan, so I tried broiling it on a cookie sheet. When the heat cased the cookie sheet to snap out of shape, the noise freaked me out too much to keep using the broiler, so I just baked it at 500 degrees until it was cooked through. The texture was not enjoyable. I think I might stay away from broiled meats for awhile.

I have learned:

2010-05-15T12:32:00.001-07:00

The whole foods margherita pizza is TERRIBLE, but the pepperoni one is AWESOME.

Mushroom linguine w/ hand dipped ricotta

2010-05-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

This dish was kind of a lark, not very serious at all. I had been wanting to make mushroom linguine w/ mozzarella, but when I went to wf to get the mozzarella the hand dipped ricotta just looked sooooo ggooooooood I had to try that instead:

I did the mushroom sauce with butter, garlic, onion, and some crushed red pepper. Then I tossed it in the linguine and topped it off with the ricotta. It was a nice, hearty, not too unhealthy dinner. I don't think I love it as much as my chicken sausage linguine, I wouldn't want to eat it that much. But it was fine for one weekend, and to get to try that amazing looking ricotta! It makes me really want to make a mushroom lasagna now. Next weekend?!

upcoming

2010-05-02T16:36:00.000-07:00

My mommy is coming in just over 2 weeks, and I'm starting to narrow down a menu for her visit. Here's what I'm thinking:

Herb and Cheddar Biscuits
Spinach salad w/ balsamic and strawberries
Sausage-Stuffed Pork Shoulder
Horseradish Mashed Potatoes
Apple Cobbler!

She also wants to go to a deli in squirrel hill and I'm thinking I might take her to primanti just for the pgh vibe. We shall see!

What kind of sides to people eat with their pork shoulders out there?

Soup's On! (x2)

2010-05-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

Perfectin' my chili recipe:

This week I did two giant cans of diced tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato paste, 2 giant tomatoes, and cube steak instead of hamburger. I think I finally got enough tomato in it, geez. I was forced into the cube steak because I forgot to get meat at wf, and it was the only decent soup cut available at the giant eagle. It's ok, but my chicken sausage / grass fed chuck comb is definitely better. I also forgot the garlic, probably because I was in a rush to get back to watching ALIAS with mr. monk. This week I put in FIVE chilis: 3 hot yellow and 2 jalapeno, and I didn't seed any of them, and I think I finally have the heat I want (well, maybe it could use ONE more jalapeno!)

Love the smell in the house!

Dr. Jackson, I presume?

2010-04-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Last night was a "stargate night"-- we had 3 old episodes of SG:U to watch plus there was a new episode last night with a guest appearance by michael shanks aka Dr. Daniel Jackson aka the hippie linguist who needs a haircut but still has a working knowledge of alien weaponry. I bought some Grey Goose and stuck it in the freezer in prep, and on the same trip where I bought the Grey Goose I bought some lime popsicles at whole foods. My original plan was to get drunk on frozen Grey Goose and then have a popsicle. But divine inspiration struck (partially in the form of a Canadian), and I decided to instead BLEND THE POPSICLE AND THE VODKA TOGETHER:

Testimonial from my co-conspirator: "This is amazing. You should put this on the internets." That's how good it was, good enough to GO ON THE INTERNETS. It was so coollldddd and sweeeetttttttttt and limmmmmeeeeyyyyyyy. We decided to call it the "Dr. Jackson," in honor of Michael Shanks' guest appearance. GO DRINK ONE NOW!

Here is the recipe, to help you do just that. It's really easy, so you really have no excuse:

Ingredients:
Whole Foods 365 Lime Frozen Fruit Bar
Vodka

Preparation:
Place popsicle in blender (stick removed)
Pour 1.5 shots of vodka in blender
Blend

I would probably be drinking one now myself if we hadn't consumed my entire box of popsicles in this way last night.

chicken pot pie

2010-04-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

Nom Nom Nom. I bought and consumed a frozen chicken pot pie for lunch last week, and it was so good I thought "wow, if a giant eagle frozen pot pie is this good, how good would a homemade one be?" When I found a chicken pot pie recipe with bacon in it on epicurious, my fate was sealed:

You can't really see the bacon in the filling, but it's there, precious. Urrggle Gurggle. The filling also has an entire rotisserie chicken from whole foods, some green beans, carrots, creme fraiche, and paprika (my own addition, for heat), and some onions sauteed in the bacon fat. Thus, also, bacon fat.

Here's my bad boy out of the oven, and falling apart in an appealing way in my dish, in the moments between when I shoveled it OUT of the pan and INTO my mouth:

I liked it especially the green beans, which was a surprise. They didn't get quite soft while it baked, so they gave a little texture to the gooeyness, and some surprisingly strong flavor. I didn't really love the crust I made-- I might even prefer the one that was in my frozen giant eagle pot pie! It wasn't hard / buttery / salty enough. I also don't think I used quite enough creme fraiche. And I think I didn't put enough sour cream in my ghetto-fied half half n half / half sour cream creme fraiche. I would have liked a sauce that was a tiny bit thicker, and more of it. What I DID like was the flavor given to the enterprise by the fact that not 1 drop of bacon fat was removed from the pot at any time. So the whole pie has a smoky awesome bacon flavor.

It had 4 forks on epicurious, but I think I only give it 2.5-3. I think I could probably improve it if I tried it again, but I don't think I will. The most enjoyable part of the entire prep, cooking, and eating process was tearing apart the chicken with my bare hands, which I never get tired of. However, if the prep is more enjoyable than the eating, that's a signal that I can toss the recipe. It will stock up my freezer nice for the rest of the week though!

Kara fete!

2010-04-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

KDF came to PGH for Illinois spring break, and EW followed! This was our first reunion since graduation, so I went nutbaggers on dinner! It had kind of a mediterranean theme. For instance, we started with a hummus plate with marinated olives and herbed goat cheese:

We had a regular old garlic hummus, and a HORSERADHISH hummus which was unbelievable. It's got me wanting to put horseradish in every damn thing now.

Our second appetizer was prosciutto wrapped dates, stuffed with goat cheese and basil:

I personally thought these had too much date and not enough basil or goat cheese, but my guests politely insisted the ration was acceptable. They looked beautiful though, and were easy to make.

I had intended for falafel to be the third appetizer, but it took me slightly longer to fry them than anticipated (because I insisted on keeping the oil temperature 100 degrees lower than recommended to avoid... disasters), so they ended up being the first course of the meal once we were all seated:

BCA, who was both supervising the frying and taking photos, attempted to get the temperature in this picture. It was about 225, and 350 is standard for falafel, apparently. The falafel were GOOD. I ate probably like 10 of them. It is dangerous now that I know how to make my own falafel, especially when I know I can pair it with horseradish hummus!

Because this shindig was in honor of KDF, we naturally had to have some bacon-based items. In this case, Canadian Bacon (all the way from canada!)

That yellowish stuff around the edges is cornmeal-- to keep the grease in! :D All the bacon vanished, naturally.

The main event was a simply roasted lamb:

Which actually turned out to be my least favorite dish of the night. It was TOO simple, and the lamb taste came through too strongly. While I was preparing for this meal, I thought a few times about marinating it in cumin and tomato paste or something in addition to the garlic and rosemary pictured here, and I wish I had. The only saving grace was that I served it with an olive, feta, and tomato mixture:

I actually got greek style brined feta for this, and it was amazing. I made about 3x the amount of feta mixture I was supposed to and we ate it ALLLLLLLL. It was especially good with the lemon and oregano roasted potatoes I served as an accompaniment for the lamb:

These were actually not the potato recipe that was suggested with the lamb recipe, but I'm really glad I made these instead because the lamb recipe was way too bland. These were quite good, and as dinner wound down and we were still snacking to keep our stomachs full with our scotch, everyone mostly ate the potatoes with the feta or more pita and hummus.

Dessert might have been my favorite part of the night. I made a chocolate amaretto cake with chocolate amaretto frosting and canned morello cherries from Trader Joe's:

This might now be my favorite cake I make. It's between this and the super eggy red velvet cake I made for my 26th birthday. The amaretto makes the cake so moist and flavorful. I need to have a cake bake-off against myself to figure this out once and for all (this idea met with considerable excitement from my guests.)

I neglected to do an exit poll to find out what people liked the best. For me, the falafel and the cake were the winners of the night, and the lamb was the clear loser. The lamb was actually the only dish I had leftovers from, EVERYTHING else was gone by the end of the night (including the bottle of johnny walker green and the pitcher of johnny walker red cocktails I made.)

I can't wait to do this again! Although I probably won't drink as much next time. :)

"Don't say 'beer'"

2010-03-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

Picture this, if you will. A sunny, 65 degree spring day in pittsburgh. Schenley park. A canadian. And a canadian beer:

I am told this is an ultra organic, unpastuerized, premium canadian beer. It has a very crisp taste, that at first was a little simple for me, but it grew more complex as I worked my way through a full liter of the stuff. I will probably never see it again, but if I did I would pick it right back up.

Soup's on!

2010-03-12T15:26:00.000-08:00

My "Everything I like Soup" from 2 weeks ago was good, but it could be better, and even if it couldn't, why make the same soup every week? Learning from the previous attempt, I made a few changes this week:

--I couldn't really taste the chicken sausage (at least as being distinct from the ground beef) last time, and I also was surprised, in retrospect, that I bought such lean ground beef. Also I had wanted the soup to come out as 6 servings, but it only did so with what I would consider smallish servings. So this week I went up to 2 lbs of only 85% lean (grass fed) ground beef.

--Another volume add on was 2 (6 oz) cans of tomato paste instead of 1. This should hopefully bring the tomato sweetness and flavor out a little and again, increase volume.

--More spices! Especially more crushed red pepper. Hotter and hotter little soup, ever hotter!

--Bigger Onion. I was disappointed in how little my onion yielded in the end last week.

--I did 2 jalapenos and 1 poblano pepper this week, but I fear that still isn't going to be enough. Maybe I should leave the jalapeno seeds in next time. Or switch from jalapeno to habenero. I always chicken out on the peppers and tabasco at the last minute, even though I've NEVER made a chili hot enough since my spicy asian soup kick way back when.

--Went up from 6 cloves of garlic to 8, since I liked the soup the most last week when I ate it out of the preparation bowl that had the garlic in it.

--This week Mr. Monk is NOT getting a chili powder covered bean. For reasons best left unspecified.

When I taste this this week, I need to ask myself:

Is it hot enough?
Did the extra tomato paste make it tomatoey enough, or do I need more diced tomatoes?
Should I maybe put in some brown sugar next time?
Or mess with the beer / beef stock ration?
More garlic?

I need to not be afraid of flavor!

Menu revision

2010-03-09T09:29:00.000-08:00

Hmmmm I think I need to revise the menu a little bit, since I don't want to have to fry at both the beginning and end of the meal. I'm now thinking:

Red Zingers
Hummus plate with falafel
Bacon wrapped figs with feta and or almonds
Roasted Potatoes
Same lamb dish
*DIFFERENT SECRET MYSTERY DESSERT THAT HAS LESS OF A CHANCE OF SETTING MY HOUSE ON FIRE.*

kara fete!

2010-03-08T15:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, I think it just happened, I think the menu for the kara fete all just fell together. Here's what I think we are going to have:

Red Zingers (johnny walker red, ginger ale, lemon juice, NOT the creme filled cake pastry)
Hummus plate with falafel
Roasted potatoes
Leg of lamb with feta, tomato, and olive
**SECRET MYSTERY DESSERT THAT I AM NOT GOING TO REVEAL IN ADVANCE**
w/
johnny walker green

and maybe some nice drryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy red wine. I mean drryyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Yessss, I think that is going to hit this group's palette quite well. Fortunately BA has allowed me to press him into service as fire marshall, so it's unlikely I will burn my house down frying the falafels.

Shake Week!

2010-03-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

Wow, what an amazing coincidence: CMU spring break exactly coincides with Shake Week, a milkshake celebrating week that I just made up on my drive home from coldstone:

I had to make this week up because I decided, after looking at the latest photo on thisiswhyyourefat.com that I NEEDED A MILKSHAKE RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY THIS INSTANT. I wanted to go to ben & jerry's but it was closed. Coldstone was open, and because I can never resist cake batter ice cream, I got a cake batter shake. MISTAKE! Uggh, way too sweet. Like butterscotch flavored with elemental diabetes. CHOCOLATE SHAKE, sarah! This nonsense can't be my only shake! So, shake week was invented. On my shake tasting itinerary:

~~Coldstone~~
Pittsburgh Milkshake Factory
Ben & Jerry's

Milkshakes: Fuck yeah!

Happiness in a bowl

2010-02-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

My first attempt at tossing all the soup ingredients I like together in a pot was a SUCCESS:

It is SPICY: I put in 2 jalapenos, 2 hot hungarian peppers, about a teaspoon of tabasco, and like a half a cup of paprika, crushed red pepper, and chili powder. It was so hot that when it first started simmering just the smell of all the peppers in the air made my eyes water!

There are 2 meats in here (chicken sausage and ground beef) and after simmering in the spices and tomato juice for 2 hours they are amazingly soft and flavorful. One point five pounds of meat! Maybe next time I should put in some pork sausage too and go for a THREE MEAT SOUP! Even with *only* 1.5 lbs of meat and all those beans, it is FILLING. I ate about half a cup for dinner and was FULL. I may never have to try another bean soup recipe!

The ONLY change I might make in future attempts is to use a fattier ground beef. I used ultra lean (7%) for this, and, fuck it. Give me full fat, if all the beans are going to fill me up after half a cup.

It's oddly both freeing and scary working without a recipe. Freeing because I don't have to keep checking what I need to do next every 10 seconds, scary because I have no idea if what I'm going to do is going to result in disaster.

**Scraping out the bottom of my bowl** SUCCESS!

Soup prep

2010-02-27T18:39:00.000-08:00

I'm super excited about this everything I like soup experiment! Here's the ingredients I bought at my ingredient tour of wf today:

Diced tomatoes
Tomato paste
Garbanzo beans
Black beans
Hot Italian chicken sausage
Ground beef
Beef stock
Giant yellow onion
Hot Hungarian peppers
Jalapeno peppers

I also plan on adding:

Tabasco
Crushed red pepper
Ground cumin
Cumin seed
Chili powder

It might be a disaster, and it might be awesome!

Inspiration

2010-02-22T10:23:00.000-08:00

I think next weekend I might try to make an "everything I like" soup with the information about what I like in a soup I've gleaned from all the soup making I've done. It might turn out terrible, because just because I like everything in it doesn't mean that the flavors will balance! I think I will include:

1) Hot chicken sausage
2) DICED TOMATOES
3) Garbanzo beans
4) Black beans (or maybe kidney beans)
5) Garlic
6) Onions
7) Crushed red pepper

... And some other stuff. This is exciting!

Sweet Orange Chili

2010-02-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

After 3 consecutive weeks of whole wheat fettuccine with chicken sausage and sage for dinner every night, I was ready to go back to bean soup. I did really perfect my fettuccine recipe though!

I wanted to make a bean soup that was somewhat different from my previous bean soups, so I took a vegetarian angle:

What you can't tell from this photo is that this is a very, very sweet soup. Probably sweeter than some red bean desserts I've had at asian restaurants. It's got the juice of 2 oranges, about .25 cups molasses, and about 2 tblspns sugar in it (for 4 servings.) The recipe actually didn't call for it to be so sweet (the recipe didn't call for molasses or sugar at all), but I took a taste of it while it was simmering and decided it definitely needed more sweetness. I'm really glad I made that change! The recipe also didn't call for garbanzo beans, but I'm also glad I used 2 cans black beans 1 can garbanzos instead of 3 cans black- the garbanzos improve the color and texture.

I contemplated also adding raisins, but I thought that might be psychologically weird for me while eating it if I wanted to top it with sour cream, which I did.

I'm trying to think of how this ranks with my other bean soups that I've been making. I like it, but I think it might be the worst one. I think I would rank them as:

Jalapeno broth soup with garbanzos and turkey sausage
White bean chili
This

Oh wait wait, the chicken and white bean chili I made with cream and a roasted chicken was actually the worst. So this is only 2nd to worst! I think it's because, in my heart, I prefer a really spicy, meaty chili to a sweet, beany one. I'm still glad I made this this week though, because it is hugely different from what I've been eating, even when compared with the other bean soups, so while in absolute taste it's not so great, as a bit of variety it's very welcome.'

Still haven't found that perfect white bean and tomato chili. Maybe I will attempt it again next weekend. I've also started thinking about what I'm going to make for KDF and EW when they are in town. I have 1 idea, but it is a secret. :)

CHEESE!

2010-02-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

As a reward for digging my car out of seriously like a metric fuckton of snow over the weekend, I got a trip to whole foods, where I purchased a wedge clawson huntsman.

OH. MY. GOD.

It was truly brilliant. I ate almost the entire wedge on a baguette in a continuous state of bliss. It was just perfectly salty, creamy, fragrant. So perfect. It's probably one of those things in life that is so good that I don't even want to have it again, because it might not live up to how good it was the first time. That's ok, there are alot more cheeses where that one came from at whole foods!

cogsci abstract canadian whiskey cupcakes

2010-02-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

Um, for some reason I got really stressed out about my cognitive science abstract. I submitted it yesterday though, so tonight my canadian co-author is bringing over some whiskey from his homeland and we are going to drink it, cablab style, with CUPCAKES:

This is definitely the best buttercream I've ever made. Which is surprising, since I've made this buttercream recipe before. I suppose that the previous time I made it I didn't let the butter get the right level of soft before I mixed the sugar in. Forty-five seconds in the microwave, sarah! Oh, it's so good. I only ate a tiny little taste of it, but it was perfect!

Um, did I mention that we're going to watch ST:TOS while we drink this whiskey and eat these cupcakes:

I wanted to do two standing yellow gummy bears and a dead red gummy bear for one decoration, but I eventually decided that gummy bears might taste kind of weird on these cupcakes, and that m&ms would be tastier. Plus I probably couldn't have made the starfleet emblem with gummy bears.

I kind of messed the cupcakes up (I forgot to add the oil) but the way that I screwed them up resulted in them being super gooey and a little less greasy, which is not such a bad way to screw up chocolate cupcakes, in the end.

Besides, hopefully we'll be way too drunk to notice.

Whole wheat fettuccine with chicken sausage and sage

2010-01-30T16:16:00.000-08:00

I wanted to take a break from bean soup this week but still use my power for the forces of high fiber, so I made this whole wheat fettuccine with chicken sausage, sage, and parmesean:

What I like the best about this dish is the noodles and the heat given them by the huge quantity of crushed red pepper I tossed in. The noodles essentially get fried with the sausage at the end of the preparation, and then crusted with parmesean. I did them up al dente so they didn't get all mushy. Love them! Ah, nice and hot. I used like 5x the amount of crushed red pepper called for, so worth it. Mmmmm and you can't see them but there are some crispy fried garlic chips on the top!

The recipe called for sweet sausage, so that's what I got, but given how hot I made the noodles I think if I did this again I'd get hot sausage. I can see myself making it again, it's pretty easy. Or maybe not-- it's not that remarkable and there are a million pasta dishes out there.

Next week is a cupcake weekend. I have big plans to drink canadian whiskey and watch TOS and eat cupcakes. I'm psyched because I got a huge container of sprinkles in varying shades of pink from the bakery at the market district! Expect to see cupcakes with pink sprinkles next weekend! Probably chocolate with vanilla cream frosting, because that is my favorite kind!

NFL championship weekend: two course sunday dinner!

2010-01-24T16:40:00.000-08:00

Since it was NFL championship weekend and TWO teams won conference championships, it was only fitting that I made two courses for my sunday dinner! I did some white beans with sage and chicken sausage in tomato sauce, and some garlic roasted potatoes w/ herbes de provence:

I did chicken sausage with the beans because I wanted to dish to be a little lighter, and intially I was worried that it would come out too dry without actual pork sausage, but I think the chicken sausage actually goes well. The beans kind of gravy-fy themselves cooking for like 2 hours with sage and garlic and olive oil, and they are really heavy and filling, so I think pork sausage might have been too much. This white bean dish still isn't quite what I want: I'm starting to figure out that I want one with alot more tomato and some sugar. Don't get me wrong, this one is good (and filling, god. Two spoons of the white beans pretty much filled me up), but it's still not exactly what I imagined I would be getting when I started making these tomato and white bean dishes This is like the third one in a row that, after I tasted it, I immediately thought "I should have used another can of tomatoes!"

Cannelini beans are kind of paradoxical, because they are really delicious and nice and filling and hearty and kind of buttery without being unhealty, but goddamn do they take a long time to prepare! I remembered to leave these soaking in water the night before, and I still had to cook them for like THREE HOURS before they were tender. I guess that's just how it goes with such a dense little bean! The whole time I was waiting for them to get soft I kept thinking "god, I'm too hungry, this is taking too long, never again, cannelini beans!" but then when they were done and I took I bite I was like "ok well maybe 1 more time."

The garlic potatoes were ok. The recipe I used called for unpeeled garlic, which could then be squeezed and mashed in with the finished potatoes during the actual meal. I was so full of beans by the time the potatoes were done roasting though that I didn't want to sit down and squeeze garlic and mash it in to my potatoes, so I didn't try them with the actual garlic, so they weren't nearly as garlicky as I was hoping they were going to be when I saw that the recipe called for 24 cloves of garlic. If I tried this recipe again (which I probably won't, there are too many other options), I think I would mince the garlic and glom it all over the potatoes while they roast.

Not sure what I'll be doing next weekend. I have a recipe for roast potatoes with bacon that I might try, and another recipe for lamb shank with feta that's been floating around at the top of my queue for awhile. I look forward to inspiration's strike!

White bean and turkey chili with mole

2010-01-17T16:21:00.000-08:00

It was another 2 days of football and cooking weekend! And also my second 3 day weekend in a row, wow! Today's offering is a white bean and turkey chili with mole:

This is more what I wanted when I made that chicken and white bean chili a few weeks back. I like this alot, especially because the mole gives it a bit of a different taste, but I still don't think the broth is as acidic as what I would like. I kept wanting to add lime to it. I used turkey sausage in here because it was on sale at WF, but I think this might have been better with some shredded chicken in it. So really what I want is a blend of the chicken chili and this one, where I use the broth from this but with chicken. Or maybe forget the meat and just have tomato tomato tomato, lime, and some white beans. Oh and maybe some garlic.

I think the garbanzo bean soup I made last weekend is still my favorite one from the series, because the broth from that one was just exquisite. In fact, I ate some of that tonight while this chili was still cooking, and then I only ate enough of this to know what it tastes like and socked all the rest away in my Frozen Food Cubes.

Don't know what I'm going to make next weekend. Another bean soup? I might be making cupcakes for a stargate:universe scotch tasting with cupcakes. I might also be making more bran muffins. Either the same ones I made this week if I am weak, or some crunchier, healthier ones if I am strong. Can't wait until inspiration strikes!

Bran Muffins

2010-01-17T06:20:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to eat more fiber, and so of course the first thing any whole foods shopping hippie elitist liberal cook does when she starts trying to eat more fiber is go out and find a bran muffin recipe. Mine came from epicurious, which referred to it as the "Rolls Royce of bran muffins":

I don't know about "Rolls Royce" (because I don't know if a bran muffin is a luxurious enough item to be compared to a rolls royce, no matter how good it is) but these bran muffins are amazing! They are SUPER moist, even though they have as much bran as flour in them (1 cup each.) I think that is in part because of the large quantity of butter, and then second in part because of the cup of sour cream in the batter. So in the end they don't have that much fiber in them at all but they taste good! But I guess really I was looking for a less moist muffin that maybe tastes a little less good but has more fiber. So probably if I make bran muffins again, I will make bran muffins that are a little drier and crunchier.

I tried a new technique when baking these. Instead of doing them in cups, I melted some butter and then brushed it into the muffin tin with a pastry brush. It worked really well, and now the outside of the muffin is extra moist, instead of stuck to a muffin cup. I will try to remember it for all muffin baking in the future!

Garbanzo Bean and Turkey Sausage Soup

2010-01-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

It's wildcard weekend in the NFL: two days of playoff games, two days of cooking and watching football. Wildcard weekend really is the best weekend of the year! Today's offering was a garbanzo bean and turkey sausage soup:

I garnished it with a spoonful of sour cream and some avocado slices, and I am VERY glad that I have 3 more frozen cubes of it in my freezer for this week's dinner. I was worried that it was going to be kind of boring and beany, but the 2 tblspoons of lemon juice I added at the end give the broth a bright, acidic note. I also doubled the amount of jalapeno the recipe called for, and didn't completely seed the jalapenos, so it has a nice heat to it. I think I like this better than the roasted chicken I made last night!

As additional bonuses, it's pretty easy to make and also pretty healthy: it's got lots of lean protein from the turkey sausage and fiber from the garbanzos! I'll have to remember the trick of adding lemon juice to the broth for future clear soups I make!

Time for bowl #2!

Chicken Provencale with Roasted Potatoes

2010-01-09T15:58:00.000-08:00

Once I successfully obtained a 4.5 quart Le Crueset Cast Iron / Enamel French Oven, it was inevitable that I was going to also obtain some herbes de provence and roast a chicken in it:

First words out of my mouth after taking a bite of this chicken: Oh Fuck Yeah!

After subsequent bites I wasn't quite as unanimously positive: In order to incorporate the roast potatoes into the recipe (which did not originally include roast potatoes) I changed quantities of some of the elements of the sauce on the fly. I think I may have ended up with too much lemon juice and not enough butter (gasp!) Also I used the leftover champagne from NYE instead of actual wine in the sauce, so that might have caused a problem. Also Also while I think this might have been a little better if it had roasted a little longer, I also think the chicken would have been overdone if it had roasted a little longer, so, like, catch-22. French cooking, man! I have a couple of other chicken provencale recipes I want to try in my french oven before I come back to this one. Notably, one with blanched tomatoes and ANCHOVY PASTE!!! (Next weekend!)

Smells amazing in my house, 3 more super healthy portions of this in the freezer for next week's lunch, so it's still a win! Tomorrow I continue my "restock the freezer with little old lady cubes of frozen high fiber meal" series with a turkey sausage and garbanzo bean soup. Um, have I mentioned how awesome it is to be able to go in to whole foods and, not only do they have freshly made turkey sausage, they have it in like 5 flavors? FUCK YOU, CHAMPAIGN!

2010 Eating Kickoff

2010-01-01T19:36:00.001-08:00

I started off 2010 right, with a huge big meal with wine and friends! Straight from the cover of Bon Appetit's "Best of 2009" edition, I prepared spaghetti and meatballs alla matriciana:

The fork is being held by "Meat Man" NWY, and the magazine is being held up by EW. We also had some fresh italian bread from whole foods, 2 bottles of wine, some beers, and some cannoli that EW and NWY picked up at WF on the way over, because they are awesome! Actually there was only 1 bottle of wine at the meal: the sauce called for 2 cups of wine and there was no fucking way I was going to waste the other half a bottle, so I was already 1 bottle in when EW and NWY arrived!

The white wine element of the sauce that the meatballs were in was actually a critical element. I would say what made the dish was the wine in the sauce and the heat from the crushed red pepper. The heat gave the dish a really nice comforting vibe. I expected the dish to be made by the bacon (there was bacon paste in the meatballs and bacon on the red sauce), but I could seriously hardly even tell it was there. The meatballs were nice and moist, and they smelled amazing when I was rolling them out, but I think that frozen ones could almost have been substituted-- the sauce was really that good and that important. I might have liked the meatballs better if I had cooked them longer and a little hotter, but I was already like an hour late for service when I was frying them so I pretty much took them out as soon as they were cooked through.

It was pretty fun making bacon paste. Also, note for the future: the preparation of this took about 3 hours, and I only thought it was going to take 1.5. This was the first meal I served on my new china, and I was really happy to serve it to EW and NWY (and to mr. monk, who got one piece of diced bacon and 1/8 a meatball.) We resolved to repeat this scene (if not this dish) again in March, when KDF visits PGH!

I hope you all started your 2010 off with such a sure fire, satisfying path to spherical form! And I hope that the culinary quality of the year continues along the standards I put up today!

Second Annual Gift Basket Roundup: Winners (and Losers)

2009-12-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

As I sit in the Billings Airport, having consumed all of the holiday gift baskets that I am going to consume, I am ready and pleased to announce the winners (and LOSERS!) of this year's holiday gift basket round up. The winner was a surprise entry from Mrs. E, who doesn't usually give us a gift basket (she gives us actual presents, so the gift basket when we get it is just icing on the cake). This bad boy included some amazingly sophisticated cookies-- my particular favorites were the almond candy canes and the nutmeg logs (which already had a nice, spicy, christmasey taste but then were FROSTED). What pushed her over into the winner's circle though were the meat pasties she stacked on top of the tin of cookies. She makes them with an amazing home made cream cheese dough, and they are nice and hearty and salty and good to eat at any time of the day! I can seriously eat them for any meal! I enjoyed them cold from the plastic bag in the fridge, warmed up, dipped in chili, or ketchup. Congratulations, Mrs. E!

Honorable mention goes to last year's winner, Badass uncle, who did come through with an amazing assortment of fudge, refrigerator cookies and (critically) chili, but I'm wary that if he wins every year the entire procedure of the gift basket roundup will become a formality ending with him and his stampedin' sarpy creek chili on top! And what would we do without the suspense of the gift basket roundup to sustain us over the holidays!

This year's loser, both in gift basket sending and more generally at life, is my LSD flashback uncle, who was one of the many people who had the bright idea to send pears to montana in december. LSD uncle's pears froze and then thawed by the time we got them, so they were a nice appetizing black color when we opened the box! The box also included half an ounce of gourmet mustard, and some terrifying orange cheese product and equally terrifying smoked sausage log product. Though LSD uncle was not the only person to send us (frozen) fruit, he was the only FAMILY MEMBER, and he actually sent us about half as much as the other equally deluded people who sent fruit to montana in december. LSD uncle made a much better showing last year (I still remember the all butter gallettes from THAT gift basket), so I encourage him to learn from this disappointing finish and try again next year! I know he is capable of better! Repeat after me: let's not send items that become inedible when they freeze to a place with a mean december temperature of about 8 degrees!

Until next year, I wish you all year-round multi-purpose gift baskets with no frozen black fruit in them!

Billings restaurants that aren't as good as walker's: Jake's Bar and Grille Edition

2009-12-26T19:21:00.001-08:00

There were a lot of problems with the service: we didn't get our bread for 20 minutes, I was asked specifically if i wanted anchovies on my caesar salad (and got SUPER excited because I LOVE anchovies on a caesar salad and like no where in billings does it) and then received a salad with no anchovies. My dining partner and I both ordered our steaks medium well-- mine came out medium rare and his came out well. One of the waitresses (not ours) was apparently the mother of someone I went to junior high school with 15 years ago, and came over to our table multiple times to talk to us, including showing us unsolicted family photos. And then, the piece de resistance, the worst service move in steak house history: some anorexic bus girl came out, put like a teaspoon of butter on my baked potato, and then took all the toppings away from me! I was horrified.

I overheard our waitress complaining at another table about how it had gotten so busy at 630... first of all there were several empty tables in her section, and second of all, what, they didn't think there were going to be lots of guests at 630 on saturday night the day after christmas?

Walker's has nothing to fear from this new jake's, even if its interior is very suggestive of.... the interior of walker's!

Cross-posted on yelp.

Second Annual Gift Basket Roundup: Chocolate Cake Price Check

2009-12-22T16:12:00.000-08:00

We expected my aunt's christmas cake to arrive at my dad's office on christmas eve (because she said that's where and when it was going to be delivered), but by special christmas surprise it got here today! It is six inches wide, and cost 60$! Wow, quadruple what she paid last year. Plus shipping (14.95). I do not understand why this cake cost sixty dollars. It doesn't even have a ganache frosting! It only serves 6! And (unrelated to its price point) it has already been frozen at least once because it is like 10 degrees here. Why do people mail us food?! Listen, parents' well wishers: it is cold in montana in december!

I am expecting this cake to be dry and gross, partly because I can tell from looking at the frosting that the frosting is like 100% shortening or something equally waxy and gross, and also because it was frozen for like a day.

We also got another box of frozen pears.

Holiday gift baskets are grim so far. But we still have the M family christmas tray, a banana bread from my mom's friend J (I have only met J like once but I like her because she bakes and has a tiny annoying dog), some meat pasties from my mom's friend Mrs. E., and, last year's winner, fudge and chili from my badass uncle ahead of us. Although all these gift baskets are assured, we haven't eaten from any of them yet because we are waiting for my sister who is stuck in la france. Hahah yeah I just realized that the reason the gift baskets are grim so far is that we're saving all the good ones for when my sister gets here.

Because I have been making tons of chili lately, I'm wondering if my uncle's gift basket is going to be able to win again this year, or if the meat pasties or m family cookie tray might unseat him. While my chili is probably at least as good as his (well, because I tailor it to my tastes), I think M is as better baker than me (or at least has a wider christmas cookie repetoire.) Also the cream cheese pastry that S makes for the meat pasties is pretty divine, so I think the meat pasties are still in the running. Who will take the exultant honor of gift basket supremacy this year!!!!

My mom just came over to where I am typing this and handed me some shelled pistachios. I love my mommy!

Second Annual Gift Basket Roundup: Grapefruit Mystery

2009-12-22T15:59:00.000-08:00

Hello readers! It's time for that beloved lazfood holiday tradition: the gift basket roundup. The gift basket roundup is necessitated by the trifecta of unfortunate holiday facts that 1) my mom won't let me cook anything when I'm home, 2) there are no decent restaurants for me to report on in billings (at least none that I didn't already report on, below), and 3) my dad gets about 50 gift baskets a day all december from his clients.

When I got in to the airport late last night, I mentioned that I was hungry from my trip and my mom promptly launched in to a listing of all the gift basket foods that were available for my snacking at home. First, we had a homebaked cookie tin from my dad's secretaries-- which I opened this morning, said "uggghhhhh" and closed again-- and then we had a box of apples, a box of mandarin oranges, two boxes of grapefruits, and a box of pears.

This brings me to the grapefruit mystery. Namely: why the fuck do so many of my dad's clients independently decide that it would be a good idea to send him a box of grapefruits for christmas? We reliably get 2 or 3 boxes of them every year. Does this happen to your parents? Do they get tons of boxes of grapefruit from business associates? It just seems like such a random, non-festive gift. Especially because my dad doesn't even really like grapefruit, so it's not like he often says to people on the phone "wow, I had a great grapefruit this morning, it was so good, there's nothing I like more than grapefruit!" Oh and also because they almost always freeze, because it is usually like 5 degrees in montana in december!

I told my mom I was writing a blog post about this and she said that if I got answers she wanted to hear them, so the stakes here are high! Who else's parents get grapefruits for christmas, and how many, and why??

Billings List, 2009

2009-12-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

I imagine that most people, when they go home for christmas, have a list of a few local places that they want to make sure to visit. Here's mine for Billings, MT:

MacKenzie River Pizza Company
A california kind of pizza kind of place, with your standard hand made pizza dough topped with a good range of toppings from pepperoni to thai chicken. They've also got big gigantic salads and "lodge poles," aka cheese smothered garlic breadsticks that come with ranch and marinara. My favorite pie from here is the Madison, which comes topped with red sauce, cheddar, ricotta, and bacon.
Dos Machos
Cheap, quick mexican in a place with sombreros and wooden parrots hanging all over the walls. NACHOS.
Bruno's
Gooey, cheesy Italian, with pasta and sugo both made on site. LOVE the meatball sub, the cheese lasagna, the pizza, and the meatballs. God, I love everything they make!
Walker's Grille
For a long time Walker's has been clearly the best restaurant in Billings (and therefore probably in Montana, if I had to guess), but they were slipping a little last year quality of ingredients and imagination of menu-wise. I can't wait to go back, get some tapas, and see how they're doing now!

What are your favorite hometown establishments??

White bean and chicken chili

2009-12-13T19:41:00.003-08:00

The winter chili series continued this week, with a white bean and chicken variety:

Blah, see what I mean about photographs of chili? I took about 20 pictures of it, and the one that actually probably looked the most appetizing was the one where the steam had escaped from the pot, fogged the lens of the camera, and obscured the chili from view.

Instantly as soon as I took my first bite of this I knew that I wished I could do it over with a can of tomato paste in the broth. It needs acid, bad. Even some lime juice. I think what I had in mind for this chili was that it would be pretty sweet and tomatoey, and instead it is white and pretty much tastes like tabasco. I have no idea how it got so many forks on epicurious-- those bastards are usually pretty stingy with the forks and even I would probably only give this 2. Maybe I am just cranky because I didn't realize I was going to have to soak the beans overnight and thus didn't finish until 11PM instead of 7PM when I could have actually eaten a whole meal of this instead of just a taste (which burned my mouth!)

It's really a shame that the broth turned out so bad because I discovered in my prep that I really like cannellini beans AND the rotisserie chicken I got for this from whole foods was amazing-- as was the process of ripping it to shreds. In fact, in all, probably the most enjoyable part of this entire debacle was shredding the chicken WITH MY BARE HANDS! It seriously reminds me a lot of this weird progresso diet chicken enchilada soup I have tried in the past, and that is not a compliment.

So this week's chili is full of fail, and I probably won't cook next weekend because I'm going home to MT on monday so I won't have time to eat too many leftovers. Maybe I'll just make cookies. Yeah, cookies. Then it will be time for the second annual lazfood holiday gift basket round up!

I was about to say "then when I come back I'll try this chili again with tomato paste" but I realized that was folly of the most naive sort-- there are way too many delicious chili and soup recipes out there for me to mangle this one again. And who knows what I'll be in the mood for in january!

The way it's gonna be

2009-12-12T13:03:00.001-08:00

Listen, Mr. Whole Foods Rotisserie Chicken: I need there to be 4 cups of you left tomorrow for me to shred into my chicken white bean chili, so you need to stop smelling so delicious ASAP.

Chili: The foodblogger's lament

2009-12-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

So the problem with chili, foodblog-wise, is that while its smell can make your mouth water as it simmers all afternoon, and its meat can be so tender it falls apart when you stir it with your wooden spoon, and it can taste so good your heart veritably breaks when you get too full to keep eating, it inevitably ends up looking like this:

This particular chili has 2 lbs of chuck roast and a pound of hot italian sausage, plus the usual complement of beans, veggies, and spices. Testimonial from BA: "I really want to eat some more, but I'm already full." [SL]"Well you can take some home and eat it later" "No, I'm going to eat it now."

It was a perfectly palatable preparation, but I definitely didn't like it as much as my texas style all-beef chili, obviously because that chili has bacon in place of beans and veggies. I knew even going into this chili-making session that I probably wasn't going to like the outcome as much as my all-beef variety, which I think for me (and many of my common patrons) is the Final Chili Solution. Testimonial from EW: "I think my favorite thing that you make is that chili." Despite this ambivalence, I forged ahead because I wanted to make a chili with beans that I could freeze and eat like all winter, and as good as the all-beef chili is it's really hard to down multiple portions of it. Well, hard psychologically and gastrointestinally, not hard gustatorially.

I also didn't make this chili spicy enough, in the end. My chili-testing grad student accomplices claimed that they thought it was pretty spicy, but it was no where near the "make my body sweat" level that I have become accustomed to through my eating of spicy asian soups. If I do make this again, and I might because I think it is excellent freezer stocking material, I will definitely add more tabasco, chilies, and red pepper. This time I used a pretty mild green chili (although I already used more than called for by the recipe), next time I will probably up the ante and go half green chilis and half jalapenos.

Overall status: pleased to have restocked my freezer with frozen cubes of soup (I ate all the existing ones in my desperation to not have to go to the grocery store again after thanksgiving,) and more certain than ever that all-beef chili is king.

Thanksgiving 2009: Variety

2009-11-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

I think what stands out for me the most about my Thanksgiving meal this year is the variety. Because we had only a loose "no thanksgiving foods" theme, and because we also had guests from 3 countries (US, Canada, and Cyprus), we ended up with a really broad selection of dishes. My American contributions:

The Meat Pie! It came out really beautiful this year-- at least cosmetically. I think I didn't put in quiitteeeee enough beef stock, and I also didn't stir it enough while it was roasting, so the brisket that was on the top of the pot ended up getting a little tough. But it looked goooooood. And it did taste fine-- we ate about 2/3 of it.

Second, my pumpkin cake:

This is a new photo I took after we had eaten a few pieces to show how the layering came out. So pretty! (And tasty!) I think this turned out better than the meat pie actually, and also better than the pumpkin / caramel cake I made last year. This cake might become a standby-- it's not too hard (it would be even easier if I did it as just a 2 layer cake) and doesn't require too many ingredients so its easy to shop for, it ends up looking really good, and the frosting is really amazing. I was actually even surprised at how good it was: the cake by itself is pretty dry, but when paired with the frosting it turns out awesome because the cake flavor doesn't overpower the frosting flavor and all the moistness comes from the truly ridiculous quantity of layered frosting!

From Canada (or at least from a Candian), we had a Beer Can Chicken (although everyone acknowledged that beer can chicken is really a product of the redneck minds of the american south):

I love how somehow this chicken still manages to look perky even though it's had its head cut off, been frozen, had a beer can shoved up its ass, and then been roasted for 2 hours. He just looks so happy to be so delicious! This chicken was moist moist moist! It might be my favorite roast chicken ever!!

Our Canadian counterpart also prepared a sweet potato pie:

The sweet potato pie was not originally covered with jello shots-- that was an innovation of our Greek contestant, who also prepared an awesome rice dish with squids (pictured here sharing table space with The Meat Pie:

I was kind of afraid to eat the rice because I was informed that the tentacles of the squids (my least favorite part) were ground up and part of the sauce over the rice, but I tried some anyway. It was a nice preparation, but ultimately my tentacle phobia prevented me from eating too much of it.

I ate a lot more of the second Greek contribution, spanikopita (pictured here on my plate with some chicken and meat pie):

VZ, the Greek cook, often uses pine nuts and mint with his feta-- I definitely will need to implement that flavor combination with the copious amounts of fresh feta I get at whole foods in the future.

Not pictured, we also had 3 kinds of roast squash and some tom yum gai. The meal actually started with me consuming approximately equal volumes of tom yum and red wine for about an hour. Oh man, I was feeling so good after my bottle of wine and 3 bowls of tom yum! The bottle was called "Praxis," which I want to remember because it was great. I wanted to just eat tom yum and drink merlot forever! That was a good way to start.

It was a very different kind of thanksgiving from last year. Instead of a formal, traditional meal entirely cooked by me we had a group prepared buffet style service with hardly any recognizable thanksgiving foods at all and tons of dishes I would never have thought to make for any occasion (i.e., squids). We also ate on and off continuously for about 8 hours while we did our Khan marathon. I'm really glad that it was so different because the difference prevented me from comparing it to last year-- it was just good in its own right.

I hope you all also had good thanksgivings: I challenge you to post a comment telling me about your favorite dish from your thanksgiving meal! And I can't wait to find out what I'm going to cook next year!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go heap up yet another plate of leftovers!

Thanksgiving 2009: Preview

2009-11-25T16:36:00.000-08:00

It turns out that there are going to be more guests for our no-thanksgiving-foods Khan marathon than were initially anticipated, so we decided to change venue to a place with more available seating. Thus, the actual meal is not going to be served at my apartment, which for some reason makes me feel less responsible for the event, to the degree that I've decided to break my usual embargo on blogging about dishes I've prepared for group tasting before I serve them.

Tomorrow I will prepare The Meat Pie, but tonight I went ahead and got my Four Layer Pumpkin Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Icing on. Here is a shot in which all four massive layers are visible:

Shit yeah I made all 4 of those layers of warm, spicy pumpkin cake! Here's the assembled product, complete with adorable orange peel garnish:

One of the best parts of the prep for this cake is that in order to make the sides even even with the four layers, it is necessary to cut down the round, overlapping, messy parts around the edges before frosting the sides of the cake. What this means is that there was essentially a pile of cake about the size of an extra large piece, covered with frosting, all laying on my prep plate when I got done evening out the sides. What THAT means is that I got to sample an extra large piece while it was still warm tonight, without anyone being the wiser tomorrow. Aha! And shit friends, it was tastilicious! I was far from being above scraping up the tiny ribbons of frosting left in the bowl with sections from the orange I peeled for zesting. Why was the frosting so good? Because it was made of equal parts butter, cream cheese, and powdered sugar, with a heap of orange zest! Usually I don't like cream cheese frosting, but the orange zest really makes this one a winner! That was some good frosting! And I learned from last year to cram as much of the frosting onto the cake as I possibly could, even if I had to be creative about where to stash it.

I'm considering "live-blogging" thanksgiving tomorrow. Since it's not at my house and since there are going to be a lot of guests, from what I understand we're going to do it like buffet style and everyone just eat on the couch or floor or whatever while watching KHAN, not at a formal sit down meal. So I can blog about each dish that I eat! I know already that we are going to have my Meat Pie and cake, a beer can chicken, a sweet potato pie, some seafood, and some soup! But I don't know more specifics than that, so the dishes are all going to be surprises. Sounds like a winning situation for liveblogging, to me.

I wish you all could be there with me tomorrow, stuffing your faces with cake and Meat Pie! Barring that, I wish you all significant progress towards your spherical ascendance!

Thanksgiving 2009: Preparations

2009-11-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

I realized that I haven't been posting as much about my Thanksgiving run up this year as I did last year, and there's a simple reason for that: I'm not doing nearly as elaborate a meal. Last year was such an amazing, complete experience that I almost don't even want to try to equal it, and even if I could I don't know enough people in Pittsburgh yet to eat all that food. I don't want to spend the holiday being depressed about the ways that this year doesn't measure up to last year, so this year I'm doing a potluck style meal with my labmate, his roommate, and his roommate's girlfriend, with dual themes of No Thanksgiving Foods Allowed and Wrath of Khan (we're watching the ENT eugenics arc w/ alec newman and brent spiner, TOS:Space Seed, and, of course, wrapping it up with Wrath of KHHHAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!)

For my part, I'm keeping it simple. I'm making The Meat Pie (sure to be a delicious, non thanksgiving foods success) and a 4 layer pumpkin cake with orange cream cheese frosting (new and challenging, and reminiscent of Thanksgiving, but not a food we usually eat at home nor similar to the dessert I made last year which, come on, had CARAMEL frosting a whole different ball of wax.)

I bought my non-perishables at "The Eagle" yesterday and that wasn't so bad (they were out of rosemary but Whole Foods had it today so no problem) but today I had to go to Whole Foods to get my beef brisket. I was terrified about it all weekend, and knew it was going to be as bad as I feared when I pulled up and saw the two COPS directing traffic in the parking lot (There were actually like 5 cops there but I only saw the 2 at first). Thank GOD I'm not doing a poultry or yams-- I was able to stay away from the most mobbed sections of the store. It was so scary! But I got in and out and stayed in my budget (mostly because I was too terrified of the crowd to even browse the centerpieces.) The hippies are raking it in hand over fist though, rest assured.

Oh man, I just realized that this gets to be the first meal I've served on my new china! I'm so excited!

STARGATE COOKIES LOCKED!

2009-11-21T22:06:00.000-08:00

Yeah so tonight some people came over to watch the most recent 3 episodes of SG:U with me. Two of the episodes were stupid and emotional with almost no alien technology or cgi at all, and the third episode seemed like the writers like gave up about 60 minutes in to an 80 minute episode and never resolved any of the most interesting plots that have been going on in the show to date. Fortunately, we had ice cold vodka, lots of blue moon, and STARGATE COOKIES:

These ones are little stargate style wormholes with a earth chevron in the middle. We also had a few other varieties:

The gate in various stages of operation!

I actually was pretty pissed about the way the decoration came out: the icing I used for the piping came in like an easy cheese can and it was way too hard to squeeze and also came out in way too thick of a line. I had planned to make tons of little chevron cookies like the one in the middle of the first photo, and had also planned on putting some even smaller chevrons on the gates, but the icing was too hard for me to work with. I experimented a little with drawing with the icing with a toothpick, but that didn't really work either. So my cookies that I ended up with didn't match my cookies I had in my head at all. Disappointment!

Hopefully I can do better on Thursday at my no-thanksgiving-foods-allowed wrath of khan thanksgiving dinner. I'm making The Meat Pie and also a new recipe from my bon appetit for a four layer pumpkin cake with orange cream cheese frosting.

God help me, I'm going to have to go to whole foods on the tuesday before thanksgiving to get a beef brisket. God help me.

herb and cheese oh my gods

2009-11-15T11:38:00.001-08:00

The real name of what I made today is herb and cheese biscuits, but they were too good to be called only that! Oh my gods it is!

What you've got there is a buttermilk dough with fresh herbs and cheddar kneaded lovingly into it. To my tongue, the fresh basil is what adds the strongest herb note, but there is also parsley, sage, and thyme. And after my mistake last week of bland, gooey mild cheddar, I actually did get a SHARP cheddar, which made all the difference!

These may be the most technically difficult baked good I've ever made-- right up there with my chocolate oreo layer cheesecake that took 12 hours-- but omg was it worth it. First, I had to grate frozen butter and rub it in to the dough mixture. This was labor intensive (and required me to remember to put the butter in the freezer last night) but it worked soooooo much better than dicing the butter because the huge surface area of the grated butter made it easy to blend in to the flour. I need to remember this technique in the future because it works about 100 times better than dicing the butter or cutting it in-- when I add butter to dough mixture that way I never am able to get it to actually blend.

Then 4 times I kneaded the dough out, added some of the cheese mixture, folded it over, and kneaded it again. This resulted in this amazing cheese layer cheese layer cheese consistency in the final product. I thought I was going to fail this step miserably but the consistency of the dough allowed it to happen much more easily than I anticipated. I used tons of flour and used my chef's knife to scrape the dough up each time to fold it over. That combo worked really well!

After my disastrously sticky turnovers last week, I buttered my baking sheets, topped that butter layer with parchment paper, buttered it again, and then dipped the bottom of the biscuits in flour before I sat them on the parchment paper. Some of them STILL stuck (the buttermilk dough is pretty sticky,) but most of them I was able to pull off pretty easily and the stuck ones I was able to separate with my paring knife. Also because of my disaster last week, I set my baking timer for 6 minutes (recipe called for 10) and that actually turned out to be enough. So, I lived and learned and only "had" to eat 8 or 9 slightly burnt turnovers to do it! I guess that takes some of the sting out of the disaster, if all my future baking benefits from that one sheet of burnt, sticky turnovers.

I will definitely, definitely, definitely make these again. The recipe was from my thanksgiving issue of bon appetit, and I think they would be amazing as a side at thanksgiving dinner, but probably also any other dinner or as an offering for a pot luck (if I didn't feel like making my old stand by potluck chicken pad thai hahah!)

I already know at least one thing I'm making next weekend: sugar cookies cut into rings and decorated like the stargate. Yeah. Ummm. Yeah. They're for my biweekly stargate universe marathon watching gathering with my lab mate. I'm going to serve them with sam adams black lager, which I got 24 bottles of yesterday at the beer distributor. I also got a 24 bottle blue moon winter brewmaster's sampler! Since the state of Pennsylvania makes it essentially impossible to buy beer, I thought I had better stock up! Black Lager yessssss! Maybe I'll have one right now. And watch football. And have another biscuit. Yesssssssss.

Here is another photo of the biscuits, because I couldn't decide which one to use, and so I don't have to end the post with talking about how I'm going to make stargate ring cookies. SHIT! I did it again! HAHAHA! I guess there's just no helping it.

Apple and cheddar turnovers

2009-11-08T11:51:00.001-08:00

I haven't cooked really anything since I got back from Germany, because I've been prevented from eating (or even wanting to eat) by Disease. I got my December issue of bon appetit in the mail on thursday though, and I hadn't even made ANY of the recipes I cut out of the November issue (yes, I cut recipes out of my bon appetits like a little old lady. Mr. Monk helps.) That was a situation I brought to swift rectification by making Apple and Cheddar Turnovers with Maple and Dried Cranberries:

The filling is a mixture of golden delicious apples, cheddar cheese, cranberries, walnuts, and maple syrup.

I felt really rusty in the kitchen today since I hadn't cooked in so long, and accordingly I fucked this up in a number of ways, which I will now enumerate for my future reference. First, I didn't pick a sharp enough cheddar for the filling. The recipe told me "extra sharp" but I actually got a pretty mild cheddar, which turned out to be really detrimental to the flavor of the turnovers. The cheddar is pretty flavorless, just gooey, and doesn't really add the savory note that I was hoping for when I cut this recipe out.

Next, I didn't grease or flour my baking parchment. The recipe didn't tell me I needed to, but I knew that I probably needed to anyway and didn't do it because my rustiness had me ignoring my instincts and following the recipe too closely. This same error compounded when instead of setting my baking timer for 5-10 min less than the recipe called for like I usually do-- so I can check and see whether or not whatever I'm cooking actually needs to cook for the whole time given in the recipe-- I just sat around watching football until I actually started to smell the puff pastry burning. So not only did the turnovers on the top rack get a little burnt, because I hadn't greased or floured the parchment, they stuuucccckkkkkkkkkkk. I basically had to slice a tiny slice off the entire bottom of the turnovers to get them off the parchment.

I had some leftover dough and filling after I had made as many circular cutouts as I could, so I made the leftovers into a galette:

The galette turned out much better than the turnovers precisely because I wasn't working from the recipe on it. I DID flour the bottom of it really well before putting it on the parchment, and I put it in the oven about 5 minutes after the turnovers so it didn't burn at all.

I guess that while I am being sad that I messed up my turnovers, I should be happy to know that my baking instincts are getting good enough that if I actually follow them they can lead me to improve on an already very good 4 forks rated bon appetit recipe.

I cut a few recipes out of my december bon appetit, but nothing is really jumping to mind for next weekend. There was an amazing looking recipe for spiced dough sweet rolls, but the recipe claimed it needed a stand mixer. I have an arm, so I should be able to do without a stand mixer, but the issue will need closer investigation before I buy ingredients. Stay Tuned!

An incomplete list of foods I ate in Berlin, vol 2

2009-11-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Man, what else did I eat in Berlin? How did I eat all this stuff and still lose weight? Answer: The Disease.

TAPAS
The best meal I had the entire trip was tapas at a place called Atame. EW and I had, in decreasing order of my favoritism: warm goat cheese with honey, lamb kebabs, fried potatoes with tomato sauce, BACON WRAPPED almond stuffed dates, and calamari (no tentacles.) EW even ate one of the bacon wrapped dates, in honor of KDF. I also had an amazing bloody mary (that was probably amazing because it had no alcohol in it.) Carcass of meal below:

Couscous
The most disappointing meal I probably had on the trip was moroccan food at a place called Kasbah. The restaurant was recommended by my guidebook, but it just wasn't that good. My soup and my couscous were both really bland! They brought us out a little dish of super spicy sauce, but it was too spicy for me to use effectively.

Doner (both sober and drunk)
When JG and CL went out to bring back some wodka gorbashev to the 2nd annual CABLab end of spr scotch drink, they also brought back some greasy, salty, amazing doners. Bless their hearts! Then when I woke up the next morning my room still smelled like fried lamb, so I had to have another, from the doner inn adjacent to my hotel. Cheap, greasy, spicy (and supposedly more popular in germany than in turkey).

Spaghetti Carbonara
I had to find out whether Germans make carbonara the italian way or the british way before my sister arrived, so I could report back. Answer: the british way, but with MUCH MORE BACON (at least at the place that I went.) So that was the only carbonara anyone had! I ate it in the hotel restaurant after my talk, along with the first cocktail on the menu that had gin as its first ingredient (I needed it!)

Moon Thai
I had thai food every day for the last 3 days. The first Thai I had was in savignyplatz at Moon Thai, where I got the best tom kha gai I've ever had in my life. I also had a sweet and sour duck that was not nearly as good-- the duck was sooooo fried it needed alot more sauce than it came with. The meat duck, that is. The carrot duck was not fried at all!

Thai Restaurant I don't remember the name of
The second thai I had was for lunch with EW and NWY right after NWY and my sister got in to germany. The Disease had set upon me in full by this meal, so all I managed to eat was about 2 bites of tom kha phak, which was nonetheless really good, even if it had broccoli in it.

Thai Inside
My tom kha gai at Thai Inside was not as good as the one I had at moon thai, it it was still better than any I had gotten to have in champaign in 5 years, so I guess that makes up for it! I was able to eat the entire portion even though I was still too beleaguered by The Disease to eat more than a couple of bites of my pumpkin curry. The pumpkin curry came with a carrot duck AND an ENTIRE GOURD. Very impressive presentation!

HARIBO Wall
Haribo makes my favorite gummy bear (Golden Bears hollah!) but they are never fresh in the US. Not so in the homeland! At the department store across the street from my hotel was an entire wall covered in all the varieties of haribo available for mix and match! I seriously ate like 3 lbs of gummy strawberries, peaches, coke bottles, berries, karmel puddings, and smurfs (they really had gummy smurfs, some with red hats!)

Burgers!
Because of the disease, I hardly left my hotel room for the last 2 days of the trip. For sustenance, my sister would venture out to the various american hamburger venues and obtain whoppers, big macs, etc during periods when I thought my stomach could actually contain food successfully. Hmmmmmmmm foreign whopper!

I think that is just about all the foods I ate in Germany! Thank you Disease, for preventing me from gaining any weight (in fact helping me to LOSE weight) despite this gluttony!

An incomplete list of foods I ate in Berlin!

2009-10-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Sushi
I had one sushi meal before The Disease hit me and one after. The one before was much less good (I got it in a fish market,) but I wasn't able to eat all of the one after because the orange roe was too fishy tasting for my Diseased stomach.

Giant German Pastries Covered in Various Fattening Toppings
Fattening toppings such as straight up butter, gouda cheese, and BACON. I ate bacon rolls two days in a row for breakfast. The first day it was so good I said I was going to do it every day for the rest of the trip, but by the second day either the precursors of The Disease, or slightly better judgment had set in and I couldn't keep it up. I stuck to orange juice and an apple (or a dunkin donut) for breakfast for the remainder of the trip.

Currywurst
I am such a jerk, the only place I got currywurst in berlin was in the conference center. Lame! But it was good. But probably not as good as it would have been if I had gotten it essentially anywhere else. But if I had gotten it essentially anywhere else it wouldn't have been free. Oh btw shout out here to Brain Products for sponsoring the free beer at the opening reception where I got said currywurst.

One of those 1.20 E wursts from the walking grill dudes in alexanderplatz
These dudes walk around alexanderplatz with grills strapped to their chests selling bratwurst to tourists for 1.20 E. The bratwurst is like a foot long and comes in a bun that is seriously like 2 inches long. More fun than eating it is watching all the dudes walk around eating these comically large sausages from these comically small buns.

Curry Udon, Duck Udon
For dinner after charlene and eddie had their posters, charlene, eddie, josh and I tried to go to shiro i shiro, the sushi restaurant unanimously acclaimed by every guidebook to be the best in berlin. And it was closed. Not closed like "sorry, it's 9PM, we're closed," closed like "shit, there is no floor in there anymore." We were set on having japanese food, so we went to a nearby noodle house instead. EW and I ordered a curry udon and duck udon, and split them. And I had a kirin and then a hot sake, and EW had the same hot sake and then a kirin. Symmetry! The feng shui in that noodle house must have been very good, because the meal was extremely peaceful. Or maybe that was the hot sake! I preferred the duck udon to the curry-- the broth in the duck was divine and the curry one just tasted like curry, which I like, but which was not actually divine in this preparation.

Black sesame pudding
This was my dessert at the noodle house! It was amazing. Either it had some kind of chocolate glaze on the top, or it was a MIRACLE what they had made that sesame paste taste like. This was probably my favorite sweet that I had in germany, which comes as a huge shock to me now that I realize it.

Wow, I haven't even made it to the tapas EW and I had (best meal of the trip) OR any of the tom khas I ate (including the best one I've ever had in my life), and I'm already too tired of writing and to jealous of this food as I look over my bowl of blue box to continue. I guess that means that there are going to be Incomplete List of Foods I ate in Berlin vols. 2+!

Fried Doughs I ate in New Mexico: Vol. 1 (of ???)

2009-09-28T18:48:00.000-07:00

1. Sopapillas. I think these were the most nicely prepared food that I ate the whole time I was on vacation. We got them when they were still nice and warm, and LM taught me how to fill them with honey instead of just dribbling honey all over the top where it would attach itself to my fingers and never let go.

2. Funnel Cake. I ate a funnel cake while we walked around the State Fair! Today, I am fasting.

3. Navajo Taco. Yeah, so about 2 hours after I ate the funnel cake, I ate a medium pizza sized fry bread covered in beef, cheese, tomatoes, onions, and pinto beans. Testimonial from my still fried-dough tasting mouth "My brain kind of wants a caramel apple, but my body wishes I was dead." The fair stand we got the Navajo taco included meat for FREE instead of charging extra unlike abot 49 of the other 50 Navajo taco stands around it-- knowledge of Navajo taco prices is power!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

2009-09-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

True to my plan, this week I made "something pumpkin-based." Specifically, a pumpkin cheesecake with pecan praline:

Some important facts about this cheesecake:

--The reason there is a huge slice taken out of the photo is that I had to wait for the cheesecake to cool overnight before I could top it with the praline-- and take the completed photo-- but I couldn't wait overnight to try it so I took out a big slice.

--I took the rest of it in to work, and emailed my lab mates immediately when I set it out so as to be sure they would get a piece. In the time it took for them to GET DOWN 1 FLIGHT OF STAIRS they ended up getting almost the last 2 pieces.

--A diabetic member of another lab on my floor took a piece home in a ziploc bag so he could eat it when he was able to deal with the sugar.

All this despite the fact that, to be honest, I think I fucked up the praline. It's not quite smooth enough. It tastes good, but the texture is not right. The sugar / butter mixture just never quite got thin enough when it was boiling, and consequently it kind of clumped up when I put the pecans in instead of coating them evenly. I'm really not sure what to do about that. It might be yet another consequence of the shitty, uneven warming characteristics of my shitty candy pan. I need to trot on over to williams sonoma and buy a fucking heavy bottomed copper candy pan and settle this shit once and for all.

The cheesecake itself is about perfect, I don't think I'd change anything. It tastes like pumpkin, and is rich and sweet and heavy and perfect. In general I'm not really wild about pecans as a topping, so if I made this again I'd probably do it up with a caramel sauce instead. Which I would probably burn because I / my pan always fucking burn(s) my caramel. Dude, maybe I'll just fucking melt some fucking brach's caramel squares with some vanilla in there (like I did for the BEARamel apples a couple of years ago at LEM and DEW's superbowl party) and drizzle it on there with my contraband-from-the-lab syringe and call it good. That sounds pretty awesome, actually.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

2009-09-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

I'm in a tortilla soup phase! This week I tried a variation with chicken, but still lots of veggies:

I'm not as crazy about this one as the one from last week, for some reason. It's kind of bland. I should have realized that would happen-- this recipe has about the same amount of spice as the one I made last week but makes 2x as much soup. It still has a nice fall look to it, with the corn and black beans, and it's still pretty nutritious. I doubt I'll make it again though.

It might have killed my tortilla soup phase. I think next week I might make something, anything, whose main ingredient is pumpkin. Because it is fall! Yum, fall flavors!

Veggie Tortilla Soup

2009-09-06T15:09:00.001-07:00

This week's spicy low cal dinner is Vegetarian Tortilla Soup:

Oh Man! I never really realized before how in tortilla soup the tortillas get all nice and soft and soak up all kind of flavors. I'm LOVING this. It's spicy, and really really thick-- not soupy at all. It was supposed to have like 1 tblspn of jalapeno in it, but there were some amazing locally grown pepperoncini's at giant eagle today and I put in a whole one. It's also got black beans in there, zucchinis, and tomatoes. I doubled the tomato paste too, to give the broth a little more thickness and acid. It was supposed to have cilantro but I did it with scallions instead. I might try the cilantro next time.

This was really easy to make and only leaves me with one leftover portion, plus lots of leftover nice veggies for the week. I think I would do it again! I can't really think of anything I'd do differently a second time, either-- maybe make sure I have sour cream on hand for garnish?

Restaurant review: Pangea

2009-08-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

I had a friend visiting from exeter this weekend, and I wanted to feed her up right, laz gastro style. We hit Pangea, a tapas restaurant off Shadyside's trendy walnut street. Pangea is on the basement level of a larger building, but the basement ambience really works. It's nice and dim and quiet and clean in there-- think hardwood floors and thick rugs and your waiter lighting the candle at your table when you come in.

We had 4 cocktails between us: a bloody mary, a grapefruit juice and vodka, a gin, lime juice, and cucumber number, and a strawberry puree with club soda and vodka. The bloody mary wasn't on the cocktail menu, so it was the weakest, but the other three were all great tasting and still had enough alcohol in them to get us bombed before we left. My friend was still raving about her strawberry puree drink the next day.

The tapas we ordered, listed from my most favorite to least favorite, were: Brie and mushroom tart with strawberry compote, heirloom tomato salad w/ buffalo mozzarella and balsamic vinegar, fish cake tapas flight, micro green salad, hummus tapas flight, crostini tapas flight. That list is probably actually really unfair because everything I ordered is upfront and everything my friend ordered is last, which just reflects the fact that I ordered dishes I like and she ordered dishes she likes. The hummus tapas flight had a gorgonzola and chive hummus, an artichoke and feta hummus, and a jalapeno and sweet red pepper hummus. I thought I would like the gorgonzola the best, since it combined gorgonzola and hummus, two of my favorite items in the known universe, but actually my friend and I agreed that the jalepeno was the best.

My fish cake flight had a lobster cake, a lump crab cake, and a salmon cake. The lobster cake was definitely the star-- it was bedded on pineapple and super moist. One of the crostini's in the crostini flight was actually topped with the same lobster cake, so I think they are aware of how awesome it is. The other two crostini's were a filet mignon w/ asiago cheese and a buffalo mozzarella w/ balsamic. I had one bite of the filet and it melted right down my throat. The brie and mushroom tart was really exquisite, I have to single it out. It was so good I don't think I ever want to order it there again just in case it can't live up on a second occasion.

All in all, each aspect of the meal was so note perfect-- ambience, service, alcohol, and food-- that it became more than just sitting down and eating and was instead a collective experience that brought out the laz benevolence in full force. Highly recommended, and I imagine I'll be taking future Pittsburgh guests there again.

27 Years of Eating

2009-08-27T15:06:00.001-07:00

Yes, I have been eating now for 27 years, and I have to say, I've gotten quite good at it. Just like any other skill, practice makes perfect!

To celebrate this milestone I ate some more! Starting for breakfast with a bagel with lox, avocado, and red onion, and some fruit salad:

Whole Foods lox are amazing, no surprise. Nice and firm and flavorful. Notice the floral edge of my china!

For dinner I ordered sushi from my local shadyside sushi bar. Spicy king crab roll with orange roe and 2 avocado rolls, as well as scallion pancakes:

I'd never had king crab sushi: it was AMAZING. Much better than your typical crab stick california roll filling. Especially with the orange roe! And the scallion pancakes were nice and crispy and salty. Plus my friendly neighborhood shadyside sushi bar only charges $3 / avocado roll! I am so serious!

I enjoyed a bottle of moet white star with my sushi (and before my sushi, and after my sushi and with my cake):

Yeah my cake had a lot of sugar in it. In this photo you can also see the valrhona chocolate powder I bought to make the frosting. I was kind of skeptical about the utility of using valrhona chocolate instead of, say, any old can of chocolate powder, but WOW. It made a HUGE difference. Immediately when I started to mix it in to the bowl the frosting took on a velvety texture that I've never seen before in a frosting. My frosting actually turned out kind of lumpy because I didn't mix the confectioner's sugar satisfactorily (as is usual with me, unfortunately), but it still easily made the cake because of the special cocoa.

The cake was good, but it still wasn't eggy enough for me. I've yet to find a yellowcake recipe that has any flavor to it. This one was nice and moist, but it just tastes like flour! Which is really unfortunate because of how much sugar and butter it has in it. I did learn a bunch of neat cake tricks from bakerella in prep though: I dropped the pans on the counter with the batter in them to get the air bubbles out and make the cake flatter. I wrapped the cakes in plastic wrap while they cooled to lock in moisture. And I brushed sugar syrup on the layers before I assembled the cake to increase the moisture further! So the cake was nice and perfectly flat and moist, but flavorless-- which is why it was so good that the chocolate frosting came out so nicely.

Mr. Monk didn't get to try ANY of my birthday foods except for one green grape. What a bummer!

I can't wait until it's time to celebrate 28 years of eating!

Ladies, I would not lead you wrong...

2009-08-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

...If you are menstruating and it is 104 degrees, here's what you should do, Feeding-Fen's-Family-wise:

1) Go to the movies. There you can bask in frigid air conditioning and eat from a bucket of salt for several hours. The movie theater I went to today was one of those newfangled places that sells not only popcorn, but also pretzel bites with cheese and CURLY FRIES.
2) Leave the movie theater and get hot and sweaty just in time to roll in to coldstone creamery. Personally, I would never order anything at coldstone creamery besides the birthday cake remix (because it has cake batter, brownies, AND sprinkles) but your tastes may vary. Walk the ice cream over to barnes and noble, and again enjoy frigid air conditioning, this time eating from a tub of sugar / fat. Scoffing at the Twilight display cases with twilight hats and magazines with headlines like "Robert Pattinson: DESTINED FOR FAME" is optional.
3) Come home and watch True Blood with your puppy while eating thhhiinnnnnnnnnnn slized whole foods deli cheddar and drinking mead. Loving Vampire Bill is NOT optional.

This is the Laz Gastronomique Plan for Spherical 104 Degree Menstrual Eating.

Panko breaded eggplant parmesean

2009-08-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

I conducted my panko breading exercise this evening, with tremendous success! I decided to go with the eggplant parmesean, because it seemed like the one of the options on epicurious with the most nutrition potential:

You can tell by the proportion of cheese:everything else in this photo that the nutrition value was "potential" at best. There ARE 3 eggplants and 5 lbs of tomatoes in there, I swear! Who cares though: by the time I got done layering the sauce (which I made especially for the dish), the fresh mozzarella from whole foods, and the eggplant, I had to spend all my mental energy to keep my drool from getting in the pan and thus was unable to care too much about the 1.25 cups of oil I used for frying.

Here's a side view, so you can see how nicely my panko breading technique turned out!

I was supposed to mix some parmesean cheese in with the panko before I dredged the eggplants and forgot. However, I just added the parmesean to my layering before I baked, and I think the eggplants taste great anyway. There's just something about a nice crusty, salty, warm fried eggplant baked in tomato sauce and cheese. Oh gurgle, I'm so glad I have my 7 extra portions of this frozen up to take in to work with me for effortless delicious little old lady frozen lunch!

I will definitely double triple make this again when I have time. It is pretty time consuming, between frying all the eggplants and making the tomato sauce. Maybe to shorten up the prep time I can use store bought tomato sauce instead. The sauce is good, but it's the eggplants and the mozzarella that make the dish, I think, and making the tomato sauce just adds like an hour of prep time (I actually blanched, peeled, and pureed tomatoes!)

I scarfed down my portion, so now I'm a member of the clean plate club, meaning I can look down onto the beautiful fine china my mom got me last weekend! Here's the pattern:

She'd been threatening to buy me china since last thanksgiving, when she looked at the photos of the table I set and was HORRIFIED that I served my thanksgiving guests on mismatched hula girl / corn / mollusk plates from target. I prevailed upon her to wait until AFTER my cross country move though. This pattern was my favorite one I looked at, and turned out to be like 35% off at Macy's the weekend my mom was in town. I love it! Thanks mom!!!! If any of you ever come over for Thanksgiving in future years, this is what we will be eating off of. :)

PS you're all invited for thanksgiving if you want to dodge telling your families what you do or who you have sex with over the holidays. I even have an air mattress now!

French Press!

2009-08-03T12:17:00.001-07:00

Williams Sonoma was having a sale this weekend. I bought a canvas knife bag and a French Press. This morning I had my first cup of french pressed decaf verona. Oh man, I don't think I can go back to paper filtered coffee ever. When I drink this french press coffee, I can understand why people like coffee. It's so smooth and flavorful: it doesn't have that horrible bitter burned taste that is so characteristic of your normal drip coffee offering. I put some heavy cream and cinnamon in there and it is a warm, spicy, smooth, flavor carnival! The coffee is so good prepared this way that I think I could actually do with LESS cream for essentially the first time ever.

I'm not sure I'll be sticking with verona though. I attempted to attain decaf gazebo, which is probably my all time favorite coffee, but supposedly starbucks retail stores don't sell that any more (or at least not the one I visited.) The verona smell brought back my 'Bucks days tout suite man, I tell you. I don't really have the coffee palette lingo to describe why I think I will range away from verona next, but I think I might go for sumatra or starbucks house blend next to get a brew with a little stronger bite to it. Or maybe the smell just brings back too many memories!

When I make mac 'n cheese, it is not vegetarian

2009-08-01T17:54:00.001-07:00

My mom and sister came to visit me this weekend, and I didn't want to make them anything weird or risky so I had to put my panko breading exercise off for a week (assuming I'm able to eat again by next week after stuffing my face so much while they were here!) My sister's favorite food is the blue box, so I decided to make them mac 'n cheese. I served it with fried chicken, the way god intended:

This was my first time pan frying chicken for realsies, and it was really fun! I monitored the oil temperature with my candy thermometer, to make sure I didn't have another oil fire incident. It was surprising to me the way the crust on the chicken formed. At first I thought I had screwed the coating up, because the chicken just looked plain and uncrusty, but the golden brown crust formed over the course of 20 minutes or so. The breading was a composition of my own devising, made of flour, ground mustard seed, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, and regular black pepper. I really like the way it looks here in the pan!

The macaroni and cheese recipe I made is my old stand by wisconsin style mac 'n cheese with bacon. I upped the ante to 8 strips of bacon this time around! However, despite my own advice to myself in my previous mac 'n cheese post, I think I under seasoned it. It could have used more salt! It looks pretty on the plate with my fried chicken though:

My mom and sister were very patient for me first waiting through me pan frying the chicken and then waiting for me to take photos of the first plate for my blog before they could eat!

I love a fork with mac n cheese, fried chicken, and ketchup on it! Salt, fatty, salty, sweet, cheesey, amazing!

Chocolate Chip Toffee Scones

2009-07-30T16:05:00.001-07:00

Whenever my mom comes to visit, I ask her if there's anything special she wants me to make her. Every time, she tells me she wants chocolate chip scones. This visit, I made a variation with chocolate chips AND toffee chips:

Whole foods apparently doesn't sell baking toffee, so I was forced (the horror!) to buy actual toffee and it was gooooooddddd, I definitely ate it until I got sick!

These scones are great. Nice and soft, good texture, golden brown, sugar on top. I'm not sure the toffee really adds much though: I don't think scones need to be all that sweet. I probably didn't dice the toffee up small enough either, which doesn't help-- sometimes you bite in and get a huge chunk of toffee. I'm not complaining about huge bites of toffee, no sir, but huge bites of toffee isn't quite what I'm looking for in a scone. If I make these again, I will probably omit the toffee entirely and get some lemon zest in there-- in between huge bites of toffee I thought to myself "man, these would be perfect with some lemon zest.

I hope mommy likes them!

Pork Medallions with Chili Maple Glaze

2009-07-26T16:10:00.001-07:00

This week's contribution to my gut from the epicurious low cal collection is pork medallions in a chili maple glaze:

I think I'm on to a pattern of these low cal dishes: take a lean cut of pork loin, sear it, and then pair it with a sweet or fruity sauce. Nonetheless, this one is definitely my favorite so far. I confess to adding some extra maple syrup to the brown rice I ate it with to make the brown rice tolerable. From last week, I learned that I need to cook pork loin a littttllleleeeee longer than my used to cooking diced chicken instincts would have me believe.

The scallions are really important to the flavor of this dish. They add a crunchy texture as well as some contrast to the maple sauce. The chili in the glaze makes the dish spicy in addition to maple syrup sweet, so it's flavorful without just being HOT!!!! The sweet and spicy flavor with the amazing cut of pork I got at whole foods is what makes this dish my favorite so far!

I saw panko at whole foods while I was scouring the asian cooking section for a good chili garlic sauce for my glaze, which has inspired me to make something (anything!) "panko breaded" next week. I hear that phrase on cooking shows all the time! There are a lot of promising (but NOT low cal) recipes on epicurious-- Fontina Risotto cakes with fresh chives, blue cheese crusted filet with red wine sauce, and eggplant parmesean are all particulalry promising. The eggplant parmesean is probably the healthiest, so it's in the lead!

Looking forward to eating my leftover portion of chili maple glazed pork medallions at lunch tomorrow! Then tomorrow night, I get to try my whole foods fresh pork sausage!

Kombucha

2009-07-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

I tried Kombucha essence of peach rooibos fermented tea today. I didn't like it, but at least now I know I don't like it! It's like tea beer. It has a beany taste.

Also got some wasabi peas and veggie straws. When you've got a craving for wasabi peas, pretty much nothing else can satisfy it.

AND FRESH, HOT PORK SAUSAGE YUM!

Tacos al Pastor

2009-07-19T15:29:00.001-07:00

My tour of the Epicurious low cal collection continues tonight with Tacos al Pastor:

The filling here is pork with pineapple, onion, and cilantro. The pork was prepped for 24 hours in a marinade made of pineapple, white onion, vinegar, garlic, orange juice, cumin, cayenne pepper, chili powder, and poblano pepper. It was spiiccyyyyyyyy. Probably even spicier than it was supposed to be: I did half cayenne and half chili powder instead of all chili powder. But I wasn't going to eat bland low cal dinner two sundays in a row! I was afraid it was going to be too spicy for mr. monk, but he LOVED It.

I think it's pretty good, but preparing it made a big MESS. Partly because I didn't cook the chops well enough the first time, so after I diced them and saw how pink they were on the inside I had to put them back in the pan a second time. It probably would have been really messy anyway, because I had to cube the pork chops with the marinade still on them. My fingers are kind of burning from the contact with all the chili powder.

I froze enough for 4 more tacos, and have 3 in the fridge to eat for this week's lunch. I would come back to these for future taco day, I think, if I didn't have to marinade the pork over night. I tend to prefer taco filling with tomato flavor in it, anyway.

Spicy African Soup

2009-07-13T16:46:00.001-07:00

I've decided that in order to expand my high fiber, high protein, low cal repetoire, I am going to go through some of the highly rated low cal recipes on epicurious. Up first: Spicy African Curried Coconut Soup with Chickpeas:

It's pretty bland. Especially for a SPICY AFRICAN soup. It has a jalapeno, AND I doubled the curry, and I still find it bland bland bland. Like it needs more curry, or some lime, or some fish sauce or something. Or some cinnamon. Almost anything! I'm really surprised this had 4 forks on epicurious, usually those guys are ruthless about knocking off forks for bland food.

It's always nice to try a new soup, but I don't think I'll be making this one again. Maybe I'm just spoiled on spicy soups after that pineapple vietnamese soup I made last year. At least this one is very filling and low calorie!

Peanut butter cookies

2009-07-12T17:45:00.001-07:00

Menstruatin'. Made peanut butter cookies:

'Nuff said.

Update: I've made this recipe many times, and this is definitely the best it's ever turned out, by far. I wonder why? Maybe because I finally have the sense to keep adding flour until the dough balls up? Or to chill the dough for 20 minutes before I roll it out? Anyway, I ate half the batch this morning while I was making breakfast!

4th of july eating

2009-07-04T14:26:00.001-07:00

Happy Fourth of July everyone! I wish you could all be here eating with me!

The first fourth of july food I ate was a chicken and apple sausage on a whole wheat roll with cheddar cheese and minced onion:

I actually was not such a fan of the chicken and apple sausage. It wasn't fatty enough! It was hardly greasy at all! I guess that's what I get for eating a 160 calorie sausage. And also I didn't have any ketchup so I put marinara sauce on instead, not a good idea. I was, overall, underwhelmed by my bratwurst! I wish I could have had friend-bbq'd meats instead!

Fortunately, my 3rd annual fourth of july apple pie more than made up for it. My fourth of july american flag toothpicks got lost in the move, so I had to improvise::

I think this was the best one yet! I remembered to double the caramel this year, and my pie crust making skills and knife skills have both gone way up since last year, resulting in a much softer, more caramel drenched pie crust with nice small completely saturated with caramel apple bits! I think I peeled and diced the apples in record time this year! Probably in part because I used a freshly sharpened paring knife to peel the apples, instead of an apple peeler. I don't even like apple pie, but this one was so caramely and soft and warm that I went back for seconds! I really don't think I would change anything about this apple pie. Self, when you come back to review your apple pie making notes next year, here's what you need to know:

Don't forget to double the caramel
Peel and slice the apples BEFORE you start making the caramel
Flour up both sides of your pie crust before you start to roll it out

You'll be in great shape!

Update: I've spent some time trying to think about why my pie crust is so much better this year, and I think it's largely because I cut the apples so much smaller that they didn't take as long to bake, meaning that the crust didn't have to be in the oven as long. Small apples!

Salsa #3: The salsa that was actually guacamole

2009-06-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

My third salsa was an avocado corn salsa that really was much more of a guacamole:

The reason this "salsa" turned out so guacamole-y is that I used 2 avocados instead of one, the ear of corn I bought had way less corn on it than I thought it was going to, and the recipe said the salsa should be "well seasoned" so I basted that bad boy with kosher salt and orange juice, which pretty much mush-ified the avocados. You'd think with all that salt, oj, and the extra avocados I'd be a huge fan, but I'm down on this one. I think it's my least favorite one that I've made, entirely through my own faults of adding too much salt and orange juice.

So far, the rankings go:

1) Pineapple
2) Mango
3) Corn

I don't usually do "in progress" shots on this blog, mostly because I don't want to touch my camera with my food covered hands, but this salsa looked really pretty in progress (and turned out really ugly in the end), so I broke the convention:

I think it would have ended up tasting better if I had just stirred all this stuff together and forgotten about the extra oj and salt!

I don't know where I'm going next on the salsa front. I've made it through all the avocado salsas I had in my queue on epicurious. Now all I have left in there is a tropical fruit salsa and a straight up tomato salsa. I might skip the tropical fruit salsa because my primary objective in making salsa is to end up with something I can dig in with tortilla chips, bulldozer style. The epicurious tomato salsa just doesn't look that good though. I might have to hit up allrecipes, or martha stewart, or foodnetwork or somewhere else (suggestions, readership?) to find some better candidates.