Christmas Tins 2010

The first Christmas after we were married, I determined to make Christmas baskets full of goodies every year.  Is it really a loser thing to admit that I look forward to this every year?  Well, I do.

I have made mostly the same things each Christmas, but I wanted to try some new things this year.  In the past I made chocolate raspberry fudge (which I still plan to make), popcorn balls, macaroons, and chocolate Oreo cookie bark.  

I always bought baskets for them up until last year.  I couldn't find any baskets I liked at a decent price so I got goodie boxes instead.  This year, I found some tins.  

Unfortunately, the tins didn't hold as much as I thought they would, so I was relegated to only two items per tin.  (Wow, will I ever get to the food part of this post?)

I made Holiday Biscotti and Chocolate-Dipped Marshmallows topped with Peppermint.

I'm not sure why, but I've always been intimidated by biscotti.  I'd never looked at a recipe for it, but I was convinced it must be difficult.  It isn't at all difficult.

The recipe is extremely straightforward.  I did think it needed more pistachios and cranberries.  I also was a bit shocked by the absence of anise, and to be quite honest it needed anise.  Biscotti is not biscotti without anise.  I followed the recipe this time, but next time it's getting anise.  

It does make a beautiful presentation though with the green pistachios and the red cranberries offset by the white chocolate.  Very impressive.

The chocolate-dipped marshmallows were inspired by something similar I saw at Fresh Market.  Very straightforward idea.  Heat chocolate, dip marshmallows in chocolate, sprinkle with crushed peppermint candy and let cool.  Also a very nice presentation, and very tasty.

I don't have any photos yet of the tins or their contents, but I have one left to do and will take and post pictures.

Christmas Party Fare

Every year, I try to put on a Christmas party--not so much for other people as for myself.  I'm only half-kidding about that.  While I most certainly do enjoy having friends over for the holidays, I really do love putting out a table full of delicious eats.

Because I cannot boast a formal dining room, I decided long ago that rather than having only two or three people over at a time for a dinner I would invite more people for drinks and hors d'oeuvres.

The menu this year was as follows:
Heavyset Cheeseball
Cocktail Shrimp
Olives
Sausage Balls (see my earlier post)
Spinach and Goat Cheese Tartlets
Bruschetta (my own make-shift recipe)
Christmas Stollen (purchased)
and a bowlful of Hershey's Kisses

I also served red wine (Espiritu de Chile 2006 Carmenere), and a Chardonnay (2006 Meridian), and the usual array of soft drinks.

I typically try to do this sort of menu with a mixture of homemade and purchased items to make things a little easier on myself.  This was especially necessary this year since I decided to give my Christmas tins as party favors this year. (See next post).

The heavyset cheeseball proved a crowd favorite.  Everyone was initially awed by the presentation, and then loved the flavor.  The recipe seemed a little light on flavor so I added a good bit more dill and a smidgeon of garlic powder.  It was just right.  For the green garnish, I simply used the extra dill.

I've posted before on the sausage balls, and they were yet again a big hit.

My personal favorite was the tartlets.  In this, I may be biased by my steadfast opinion that there is nothing that cannot be improved by goat cheese.  I also made these for a party earlier this year.  They really are incredibly easy to make.  I do recommend using the pre-made phyllo cups.  They are a huge time-saver.  I also use only one teaspoon of lemon zest instead of two.  The first time I made these, I followed the recipe and they were too lemony.

For the bruschetta, I forgot the basil.  In my defense, I had been running around like a mad woman getting ingredients and doing Christmas shopping.  I realized as I began chopping the tomatoes that I had forgotten the basil, and made a decision to go without it.  I did tomatoes, shallots and garlic with salt and pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Turned out great.  I do highly recommend getting the bakery to slice a baguette for the bruschetta.  I've noticed many places selling pre-made and packaged bruschetta chips/slices, but nothing beats freshly toasted bread.

Everyone gets bombarded with sweets this time of year, so I chose to keep the dessert simple.  Christmas stollen and Hershey's Kisses fit the bill and looked great on the table.

Now to the more artsy side of my Christmas party.  I couldn't find votive holders I liked at a price I could swallow, so I improvised.  I have a collection of ribbon remnants from previous Christmases, so I had an epiphany.  I bought two plain votive holders at $1 each, wrapped a piece of holly and ivy ribbon around them and voila!  Festive candles!

Originally, I had planned to use paper plates and cups for the party, but I decided against it.  I get to drag out my Noritake so rarely, and this would be so few dishes that I had to go for it.  I'm happy I did.  It really added to the ambience.  I also decided against plastic cups.  I did have to buy some goblets but I got them for practically nothing at Ross and I can always use them.  I also bought a pair of foil red serving plates to add a little extra color to the table.

Overall, it was a very nice evening.  Great company and great food.

My First Turkey

This year I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey.  As any woman knows, this is a rite of passage.  This turkey is unforgettable regardless of how it tastes.  Fortunately, my turkey turned out beautifully, and I won't have to recount any horror stories during future holidays.

Brining has always attracted me.  I chose Emeril's Brined, Herb-Roasted Turkey recipe.

For the turkey itself, I chose a Publix brand, fresh (never frozen), 13-pound turkey.  A huge benefit of a fresh turkey, other than taste, is there is no panic about defrosting the bird.

I purchased a five-gallon bucket from Lowe's for the brining.  I did have to take out my fruit and veggie drawers, but it fit perfectly after that.

The brining process really couldn't have been simpler.  Throw everything in the bucket, cover and let sit for up to 24 hours.  My turkey brined for approximately 14 hours.

I got up early Thanksgiving morning to stuff the turkey and put it in the oven.  I had always been told that a good roasting pan made all the difference.  After conducting some research, I learned the best pan is a Calphalon.  The downside to this pan is that it is over $100.  So I looked for a pan that most closely resembled the Calphalon's v-shaped rack and non-stick pan.  TJ Maxx had a Barenthal for $30.  

To monitor the temperature, I used a leave-in, probe thermometer with a digital reader which stays outside the oven.  (I'm sure there is a more succinct way of describing that.)  It worked extraordinarily well.

The turkey cooked for about four hours, and tasted amazing.  Incredibly moist with great flavor.  I'm not a dark meat person, but even the dark meat was delicious, not greasy or grissly.

There is really only one thing I would do differently next time.  I should have put some of the herbs and seasoning under the skin instead of just inside the cavity.  The breast meat could have used more flavor.

As an additional note, the gravy is great.  I did not chop up the gizzards or neck and add it to the gravy.  I wanted it to be smooth.

Vegan Before Dinnertime: Day 10

My fresh fruit and vegetable intake has skyrocketed. I'm not sure I've ever eaten this much produce in such a short amount of time. And I'm really digging it. Reasons:

1) It's been a whole new experience, walking into a grocery store and restricting myself to the produce section. There's a lot - a LOT - I have habitually overlooked. I have, for example, rediscovered kiwis. I also hope I am slowly learning how to pick out the best and freshest fruit and vegetables. I hadn't realized how much my knowledge in this area was lacking until I took home what turned out to be a very sub-par honeydew melon. Need to read up on how to pick those.

2) As a follow-up to #1, I think spending a lot more time with fresh produce is helping me as a cook. I find myself thinking of ways to use, say, carrots - when I definitely was not doing that before! Either as the main focus of the meal or as a side - I am giving produce much more attention in meal planning than I was before.

3) I suspect my stomach is shrinking a little, which means it's now taking less to make me feel full. I've been slowly moving away, anyway, from 2 or 3 large meals to smaller meals and more snacking, but trying this vegan thing is accelerating that process. I hadn't really realized the extent to which this was happening until Matt and I had dinner at Chipotle over the weekend. My standard Chipotle order is three crispy tacos, and I had usually felt just full enough after all three. This last time, though, I was starting to feel full after the second one, and I had been really hungry when we walked in!

4) It's great not having that post-lunch lag! No more feeling sluggish or comatose in the afternoon after a big lunch. I'm not really eating "lunch" at work - just snacking all day - but nothing I'm eating is heavy and I feel like I gained a chunk of the day back.

5) I enjoy dinner more now - and actively look forward to it - since I know it's my treat. And I don't feel guilty about whatever I'm eating for dinner, even if it's takeout Chinese food or a fried fish and chips basket. Related side benefit - I find myself wanting to cook full dinners a little more often since scrounging in the fridge isn't very satisfying when it's your one "anything goes" meal of the day. So Matt is loving this, since it means he has to scrounge less. :P

6) I don't beat myself up on the days where I don't stick entirely to vegan food before dinner. Last week, for example, I had the rare opportunity to go to lunch with my dad, so I took it. I didn't restrict myself to the salads on the menu, but at the same time the heavier dishes - pastas, etc. - just didn't appeal. I ended up selecting something light but not vegan (fish tacos, if you're curious). So I don't adhere to the vegan dictum perfectly every day - the code is more a set of guidelines than actual rules. But what I want to eat even when I'm not adhering has changed.

7) All this fresh fruit and veggies are giving my intestinal system a good scrubbing. Enough said.

8) I feel better overall. Not in any particularly definable way, but just *better*.

I think I need to do this a while longer before I see any benefits in terms of weight loss. Although I also need to fit exercise into the day more consistently than I do.

Chili

Chili is great and can only be made better by beer, right?  Yes.  

I have never found a good standby chili recipe, but then I haven't looked very hard since Richard doesn't care for chili.  This recipe was Richard pre-approved because it forced me to buy stout.  

This proved a good basic recipe but I did alter it a little.

First of all, the recipe as written is enormous.  Five pounds of beef?  I definitely don't need that much.  So, the first thing I did was to cut the recipe in half.  Even then, however, the proportion of beef to beans/chili seemed off.  So this is what I did.  I replaced ground chuck-which of course cooks down substantially-with leaner ground round.  I also used only one pound of ground round, which was just the right amount.  An added benefit of the leaner meat is that you don't have to drain it.  

From the perspective of the vegetables, I thought the recipe would have been better served written in cups rather than pounds.  I used about 3/4 of a large white onion, and a whole medium red and a medium yellow bell pepper.  

We bought a four-pack of the Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, so I used probably less than 1/4 of the bottle, which I thought was just right.  

Seasoning-wise, I added some salt and a little more cumin.  I also added just the slightest touch of cinnamon, which I think helps warm up the flavor a bit.

Delicious result.  

Vegan Before Dinnertime: Day 2

I got the idea for trying this from Mark Bittman. The idea is simple - go vegan during the day, no meats, dairy or otherwise uber-processed foods - and eat pretty much what you want for dinner.

Meg and I are trying this for two weeks, starting yesterday.

Since I work full time and don't get to cook dinner every night of the week, cooking separate vegan dishes for work lunches isn't really feasible for me. So I'm doing more or less the "raw vegan" thing until dinner, and snacking pretty exclusively on fresh fruits and veggies at the office.

As of day 2, I've already eaten more fresh produce than I'd eat in an average month. I'm being honest here - I'm not a big fruit or veggie person. But I've done 3 apples, 2 bananas and a 1 lb. bag of baby carrots. Compared to my standard diet, this is significant.

What I am most curious about is how I feel after a few weeks of this - if I have more energy, for example, or think more clearly. We'll see.

Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake

I have never been a fan of pumpkin pie, much less pecan pie-which I find revolting.  So at Thanksgiving I'm just screwed.  I will eat pumpkin pie to be polite, but I really don't care for it.  I will under no circumstances eat pecan pie, since I think it would be most impolite to gag.  Solution: Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake.  That's right.  Liquor and pumpkin together at last.

I searched for several recipes for this cheesecake, and I have to admit that the decorative properties of this one made the decision for me.

I didn't notice until too late, i.e. after I'd already purchased an 8" springform pan, that she uses a regular cake pan.  Oh well.  I don't think it would make that much difference.

I made the unfortunate error of assembling this cake on a time crunch, so I didn't get to follow the recipe exactly.  Instead of putting the cake in a tented water bath, I put a pan of water in the oven with the cake.  The cake came out plenty moist, but I think the tent would have prevented some of the cracking.  Although the cracking could have been more a result of the cooling "process" I used.  I put it straight in the fridge instead of cooling to room temp in the water bath.

I also did not use the sour cream topping for two reasons: 1) I didn't think I wanted that much extra sugar and calories on something already so sweet, and 2) more importantly, I did not have time.  I didn't miss the sour cream in the finished product, but if I were going to do the decorations (which I intend to do) I would use the sour cream topping just for aesthetic purposes.

So, how did it taste?  Very good.  It is definitely a superior pumpkin dessert.  However, I do think it needed more bourbon.  One tablespoon did seem too little to me, but I wanted to follow the recipe the first time. Or I could try putting some bourbon in the sour cream topping.  We'll see.

She does recommend making your own graham crackers, but come on...Who's going to do that?  I'm sure it does taste better.  I was not wild about my graham cracker crust.  I think next time I'll make the crust with ginger snaps, to add a little more depth to the finished product.

Overall, it was good, but could be better.  I like my cheesecake a little more on the tart side, so I might replace some of the cream cheese with sour cream.

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

I had never been a fan of squash soup until I tried a curried version at a local tea room.  It was so good and it changed my whole perspective.  As much as I wanted to try to make it, I thought Richard would never go for something so...chicky?  However, we were in the store together last week looking for soup and he saw the V8 squash soup in a box.  He wanted to try it and I said no.  I'd tried that and found it inedible, but I promised to try to make homemade butternut squash soup some time.

Well, squash is in season, and today was the day.

I used Emeril's recipe: Curried Squash Soup.

It called for summer squash but I used butternut, because it has better flavor and color.  I didn't put as much chicken stock in mine as it called for, which turned out to be a good decision.  I didn't notice until midway through the recipe that this soup is supposed to be served cold.  Refrigerating this would make it thicker, but I wanted a hot soup.  So, I mixed a little corn starch into the cream before adding it in, which thickened the soup nicely.

Some reviewers found the soup too spicy, but I'm usually quite sensitive to that and I did not reach the same conclusion.  This may have been because I used butternut squash.   I thought the seasoning was perfect.  It smelled divine while it simmered.  Very, very close to the tea room recipe I was trying to replicate.

Chicken Enchiladas

I would like to take a minute to talk about Meghan's enchilada recipe.

It's really, really good.

I doubled the recipe but only ended up with about 10 enchiladas - so I suppose I'm filling each one more than I need to? Minor thing, though, since they taste fantastic. I had marinated the chicken overnight first in my favorite chicken fajita marinade and then cooked them simply on the stove. Once shredded, I mixed the chicken with pepper-jack and sour cream per the instructions. I used scallions in place of regular onion since that's what I had in the fridge, and also threw in a few spoonfuls of green chilis and another few of chopped jalapenos. And a healthy pinch of salt. I used a medium green enchilada sauce, and only poured about half of the can over the enchiladas instead of the full can, since that seemed like a lot. On top, after the enchilada sauce and sprinkling of more pepper-jack, I scattered more chopped scallions. (Why not?)

The men devoured them and added salsa/more jalepenos/tobasco as they wanted. This recipe is absolutely going into the standard rotation. Thanks, Meghan!

Chicken Creole

I was really inspired by a visit to New Orleans a few years back and finally got around to making one of the classic regional dishes: Chicken Creole. Well, it's really "Fill-in-the-Blank Creole" - I used a recipe written for shrimp creole, but used chicken instead of shrimp and chicken stock instead of shrimp stock. You could also have Crawfish Creole, Turkey Creole, etc. etc....substituting the proteins however you want.

The recipe called for the chicken to be "seasoned and browned," so I made up a batch of the Creole seasoning blend from the same recipe site, rubbed the mixture into both sides of four chicken breasts, and then cooked the chicken on the stove in 50/50 olive oil & clarified butter. (I had the clarified butter in the fridge, so why not use it? I love that stuff.)

Meanwhile, a TON of veggies needed chopping. I blame all the Chinese food I've been making - I got into a zen kind of rhythm with chopping onion after pepper after onion after pepper - and was kicking myself afterward for not remembering that I have a food processor that would have made that process much easier. The precision of the cuts isn't nearly as important in an application like this one, where things are sweating and simmering. Alas - next time.

The recipe is pretty simple. The chopped veggies sauté gently for a while, and then all the other

ingredients except the chicken are added and the pot is set to simmer. I didn't have the two Louisiana regional hot sauces the recipe lists as optional, and I forgot to roast garlic so I didn't

use that either. I used slightly less than the called

-for six cups of crushed tomatoes - the big cans of crushed came in 4 cup increments, and I had no idea what I'd do with half a leftover can of crushed tomatoes in the fridge. So I stuck with one can - 4 cups. Excepting these items, I did everything else as written. The chicken is added closer to the end of the simmering process, and when done, the creole is served over rice. Use bowls - this is soupy!

I have two and a half complaints with the recipe. One is that 2-3 pounds of chicken breasts is nowhere near enough for the amount of Creole this recipe makes. Considering my pot was full to

within an inch or so of the top, and you serve a ladle or two at a time over rice, it goes a looooong way. And the four chicken breasts in all that sauce meant you got a bite of chicken rarely. I seasoned and browned another eight chicken breasts a few days later and added that, and the ratio of chicken to everything else became a bit more satisfactory.

The other thing I didn't care for was the overall sweetness of the flavor. The creole sauce has a nice depth of flavors - with all the different spices and seasonings that went in - but the predominant flavor was sweet, most likely from all that ketchup and tomato paste. It was a good thing I'd seasoned the chicken and didn't just cook it plain - the spice coating on the chicken pieces helped cut the sweetness a bit. The roasted garlic, if I had remembered to add it, would probably also have helped - although I doubt a few cloves of garlic could offset an entire container of ketchup. It was still good - and we enjoyed the many bowls of this we've had - but I'd prefer a more savory, more spicy creole.

The "more spicy" part is my half-complaint. I'd like a little more heat in this dish, although that's a minor thing that can be easily remedied with another poblano pepper and a few more shakes of

hot sauce. As written, there is hardly any heat - you occasionally get a tiny bit if there's a piece of chopped poblano in your spoonful, but otherwise, it's not spicy.

So overall verdict: good for a crowd, if you use about 3 or 4 times more chicken than is called for and season the heck out of said chicken before cooking and chopping it and throwing it in the pot. I can see what this dish will be great for once perfected - it's fantastic cold-weather food - a great and hardy variation on soups and stews. I will, however, try a different recipe next time - this recipe is not "the one." :)

Italian Cream Cake

This is hands-down one of my favorite cakes in the world.  It is so old-fashioned.  Unless you're making this for a crowd, halving this recipe might not be a terrible idea.  Otherwise, you'll be eating it for a long time.  It takes only a small slice to fill up even the heartiest of cake-eaters.  Very straightforward recipe.

I usually do two 10-inch pans instead of three 9-inch pans.

My Enchiladas

Ok, so I think I can call this recipe my own, since it so little resembles the original recipe I learned years and years ago.

First, let's get one thing straight: My enchiladas are not authentic Mexican cuisine.  They fall squarely in the Tex Mex category.

Because I've made these so often, I no longer measure anything.  That will make writing the recipe a little difficult, but here goes.

1 1/2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (cooked and shredded)
small, fajita-size flour tortillas
1 can hot enchilada sauce
3 tbsp. chopped onion of choice (I use Spanish onions)
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup + 1/2 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
salt to taste


Preheat oven to 375.   Combine cooked chicken, onion, sour cream and cheese.  Add salt to taste.  Lightly brush one side of tortillas with enchilada sauce.  On sauced side, spoon on desired amount of filling.  Roll up and place in lightly greased baking dish.  After all have been assembled pour remaining sauce over enchiladas.  Top with remaining 1/2 cup pepper jack.  Bake uncovered for approximately 25 minutes.  Yields about 10 enchiladas.

Now, this is the version which I make to make the two of us happy.  I can't handle a lot of heat, so this is pretty tame.  Richard adds a little hot sauce and some jalapenos to his.  I used to put jalapenos in the recipe (I think the original called for green chiles), but it was too spicy for me.  It's a pretty good base recipe that can easily be adjusted to taste.  When I have the time, I let the chicken marinate for an hour in some oil, salt and a little fresh lime juice if I have it.

One of Richard's all-time favorite dishes.

The Unfortunately Named Sausage Balls

Most recipes for sausage balls are virtually identical, but I've been using Paula Dean's recipe lately.  Nothing special about the recipe, but the proportions are correct.

I use mild sausage and then add hot sauce to taste.  I prefer this to just buying "hot" sausage.  As with most recipes, I prefer to use an aged sharp cheddar like Cabot.   It holds its flavor much better than the alternatives.

These are very, very simple and quick to make.  If you're wanting to make them ahead of time, they do pretty well in the reheating process.  However, I would recommend that if you bake them and then refrigerate/freeze them, you leave them slightly undercooked.  This keeps it from getting too tough during reheating.  Pre-baking them seems a little unnecessary though.  They bake up in 10-15 minutes flat.

They aren't the most appetizing-looking things, but they are always a huge hit.  People love them.

Salmon En Papillote

I've been wanting to try this technique for some time, and then one night this week the stars aligned and everything worked out for me to do it.  Salmon was on sale and I had plenty of parchment paper, vermouth and vegetables on hand.

Originally, I was going to use this recipe from Alton Brown, but I couldn't find leeks (strange).  So, not knowing how much that would throw off the flavor palette I decided to go rogue.  I used zucchini, lemons, salt, pepper, a little garlic, shallots and vermouth with the salmon.  From start to finish the whole process took about fifteen minutes.  I stacked the zucchini on the bottom, then the shallots and garlic, followed by the salmon (seasoned with s&p) and finally the lemons and vermouth.   Wrapped it all up in the heart-shaped parchment paper and popped it in the nuker for four minutes.

For so little effort and time, the result was stupendous.  The zucchini was actually my favorite part.  Sitting on the bottom made it absorb all the flavors.  Good beyond words.

The fact that the zucchini absorbed so much flavor, made me reconsider my stacking technique for next time.  I placed the salmon skin-side down on the veggies.  Next time, I will probably do skin side up, so the fish can get more flavor.  The salmon had a great deal of the lemon flavor but much of the vermouth/shallots/garlic flavors sank to the bottom away from the fillet.

One other thing I love about this technique is that it makes clean-up so easy.  Just toss the parchment paper when done eating.  No pots. No pans. No fish stuck to a pan.  And the plates just needed a minimal quick scrub to get the juices off.

Sweet & Sour Pork with Fried Rice

Matt's enthusiasm for my continuing attempts at cooking Chinese food knows no bounds. He went grocery shopping yesterday - without me asking - and picked out flank steak and pork loin since he knew I needed those specific cuts of meat for Dunlop recipes I want to try. Then, in consultation with me via AIM (I was still at work), he found my recipe book and went through it looking for recipes that could be made without a trip to the Asian market - I am, sadly, still lacking some basic Asian pantry items like chili bean paste. And so the decision to make Sweet & Sour Pork for dinner was made before I had even left the office.

A note on the recipe linked in the post title - that's the best I could find online, although it is somewhat confusing since the ingredient list can't decide if it's in English measurements or metric.

Anyway, the recipe. The trimmed-of-fat pork pieces sit in a simple marinade of rice wine and salt for half an hour, before being mixed with a batter consisting only of eggs and cornstarch. This batter is fairly close to tempura - has a certain fluffiness when it hits the oil. Anyway, I got even smarter this time with the frying and used a small pot instead of my stock pot to fry in. My stock pot has a good 9-10 inch diameter, while this little guy is only 6-7 inches across. That translates to being able to fry successfully (i.e. have enough depth of oil) without going through an entire container of the stuff. I am kicking myself for not thinking of this earlier. I'm not spending the big bucks to get peanut oil, which is a joy to fry in but costs over twice as much as canola. However, whatever oil you use, you only get one use out of it before you chuck it (unless you're frying similar items a few nights in a row - in which case it's fine to strain and reuse). SO....long story short, my oil goes farther if I use a smaller pot.

A unique feature of this recipe is that it calls for the pork pieces to be fried twice: once at a lower temperature (about 300 degrees) then again at a higher temp (about 375). I was astonished at how the second frying made the difference in texture. Before and after pictures also tell the story: the one above is after the first frying, the one below is after the second.

While frying and double-frying the pork in one pot, I had fried rice going in the wok. I've been making a lot of plain white rice to accompany this or that Chinese dish, and there is always some left over. Day-old rice is no fun to eat, but it is ideal for fried rice - and in fact, day-old rice is the secret to fried rice. Perfect! My first attempt at fried rice, months ago, was so-so, so I went online and loosely followed the technique outlined on this helpful website. This time, I was making a very simple fried rice - with just garlic, scallions, and egg - so I skipped all the instructions for cooking and adding meat, etc.

First, I heated a few tablespoons of canola oil and about a tablespoon of sesame oil in the wok over medium-high heat. When hot, in went about 4 cloves worth of minced garlic. A few minutes of sauteing, then in went some finely chopped scallions. When those were just cooked, I added all of my leftover rice, stirred briefly, and poured some light soy around the edges of the wok. Some sea salt and pepper also were added. When the rice was thoroughly mixed and looking a little on the dry side, I pushed the rice to the sides of the wok, turned the heat way down, added a tiny bit more oil to the now-clear center of the wok and added a couple eggs - not beaten - but just barely stirred, enough to break the yolks. As instructed, I waited until the broken yolks were starting to set before mixing the whole thing together, rice and egg. This technique gave me the perfect bits of egg throughout that I was looking for, but had miserably failed at when I first tried fried rice without directions. Amazing how a little technique goes a long way! Anyway, more stirring - some tasting - a little more soy - and voila. This was way too easy. It could easily be done in a regular saute pan, too - just remove the rice to a different bowl when you first add the egg, and then add it back in when the egg starts to set.

Once the fried rice was removed to a serving bowl, and the pork pieces done with their second trip into the hot oil (hooray for multitasking, as I was doing this all at once), it was time to assemble the sauce in the wok. I even had some homemade chicken stock in the fridge to use. 5 minutes, max, and the sauce was thick and lustrous.

What a meal. The sweet-sour pork was, just like the Gong Bao, heads and tails above take-out Chinese. I don't know where that saccharin-sweet, candy-red sauce that usually accompanies sweet-sour in take-out orders comes from, but it sure isn't authentic. I wasn't sure if I was more proud of the pork or the fried rice, which was delicious in its simplicity and which I now see I can vary to infinity depending on what's in the fridge. The fried rice could easily be a meal on its own with a little protein added. The sweet-sour recipe would work just as well on chicken. Overall, a smashing success.

And my man was happy.

Note: I have included the "Super Easy Recipes" tag on this post because the fried rice is super easy. The sweet-sour pork is, of course, more intensive.

Take 2: Cinnamon Buns

Meghan already tried this recipe - so it was my turn. (Note about picture: yes, I put a bun in a ziploc and took it to work. It doesn't look the prettiest after the trip in a bag, but who cares? No, I don't feel guilty about subjecting my coworkers to the aromas of a freshly-microwaved homemade cinnamon bun.)

I tried my best to mess up the recipe - I really did. First I realized, after mixing, kneading, and oiling the ball of dough, that I'd forgotten to add the salt. Rats. Out comes the dough, and another 2 minutes of kneading to try to mix in the salt. Then the dough didn't rise in the first two hours. I used the right kind of yeast, but had forgotten to check the expiration date. (Cue groan from bakers in the audience.) I needed to leave the house, so I left the bowl with the dough on the counter with a towel over it. Returning at 2am, I saw that the dough - after 12 hours - had finally risen! Yay! Only by 2am I really was not interested in making filling and rolling out dough and constructing buns. Not to mention that, with sitting out all day, the sides of the ball of dough were dry and kind of crusty - which I'd never seen happen and didn't feel like dealing with at that moment. So straight into the fridge it went.

The next morning, I put bacon in the oven and set about assembling the buns. Thus I remembered too late about the "put buns in cold oven with a pan of boiling water and let rise" part - the oven was very hot with cooking bacon by this point. So I put the pan with the constructed buns on the stove, hoping some of the residual oven heat would rise them. It kind of did - kind of. Bacon out of oven, buns in. Buns out, icing on. Man oh man are these good, in spite of all of my multiple clueless and careless blunders. The cream cheese base in the icing is outstanding. Matt's comment: "This is how cinnamon buns are supposed to taste."

Step aside, Cinnabon! This recipe is foolproof.

Pseudo Tzatziki

So one evening I had planned to make meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner but after a weekend of heavy eating decided I needed something lighter.  Hence the great tzatziki experiment.

Many of the recipes I found called quite appropriately for Greek yogurt.  Unfortunately all those recipes required overnight straining of the yogurt and I just didn't have time.  Ina Garten came to the rescue once again with her modified tzatziki recipe.

I strained the plain yogurt for about two and half hours and had no idea that that much fluid was in yogurt.  I did not drain the cucumbers nor shred them because I like a chunkier tzatziki especially since I was eating it on pita and not meat.

It really was great.  Some commenters on the recipe said it wasn't authentic enough because it had sour cream in it.  However, I thought it tasted just as good as the tzatziki I've had in restaurants.  The sour cream is basically to enrich the otherwise rather bland plain yogurt and make it more like Greek yogurt.

General Tso's Chicken

General Tso's Chicken is one of the most beloved dishes in Chinese-American cuisine. Known as a Hunanese dish, its actual roots to Hunan province are pretty tenuous. Fuchsia Dunlop has a fascinating write-up on the history of the dish in her Hunan cookbook, and excerpts of the story were printed in the New York Times.

Chef Peng - a Hunan-born chef who invented the dish while cooking for the exiled Nationalist party in Taiwan (read the NYT excerpt) - altered his creation for the very different taste buds he encountered when he moved to America. The Taiwanese version of the dish does not have any sugar; the adapted version for Americans does - not much, just a few teaspoons, but that's enough to give the sauce the characteristic sweetness for which it is so famous. Fuchsia has a recipe for each version in her cookbook and this week I tried both on back to back evenings. (Note: the recipe linked in the post title is for the Taiwanese version, not the Americanized version.)

The first step, obviously, is deep frying. I didn't think this out very well on the first night and did the frying in the wok. Which works in theory, only the wide opening and low sides meant splatters went everywhere - I have a splatter guard but it doesn't fit over all of the wok. On the second night, I wised up and did the frying portion in a different pot with high sides, and then did the sauce and final mixing in the wok.

General note about frying - if you do this with any kind of regularity, do yourself a favor and buy two things from your local cooking supply store. One is an oil thermometer. This is a different device from a probe thermometer (also useful, but for different applications) and it removes all guesswork about oil temperature. In frying the chicken pieces, I could watch the oil temperature fluctuate with each new addition of room-temp chicken to the hot oil, and could allow the oil to get back to the right range before adding the next batch, etc. No wonder my first attempts at frying were such a disaster - oil temperature is key. The other insanely useful device is the thing I'm holding chicken pieces with in this picture. Williams Sonoma calls theirs a "spider skimmer" and it's essentially a wire basket on the end of a stick. It is the best tool for scooping things out of hot oil. The thin wire lets most of the oil escape, so you don't end up with little pools hiding in your ladle that then drip all over the paper towels you laid out to keep your freshly fried food crisp. With these two tools, any pot with high sides and a splatter guard, I've been able to fry with confidence. Well, more confidence than I initially had, anyway.

The technique for both recipes is pretty much identical. The only differences are minor ones, in the ingredients lists. One has sugar, one doesn't - one has twice as much potato flour as the other - small variances like that. The sauce ingredients are slightly different - the Americanized version calls for Chinkiang (black) vinegar, the Taiwanese for clear rice vinegar.

At the end of the day, we liked the Americanized version better, hands down. The Taiwanese version was good - it had a heat and slight sourness that was delicious, but "General Tso's", to us as Americans, means a sweet-hot sauce. That's just what we're used to and what we associate with this dish. I should point out though - whereas the General Tso's you get from takeout restaurants here in the US has a syrupy-sweet sauce, this is definitely not that. This is not syrupy.

When I made another of Fuchsia's recipes - for Gong Bao Chicken - I realized through trial and error that increasing the sauce in proportion to the other ingreidents threw off the whole balance of flavors. General Tso's, though, is much less of a balancing act, flavor-wise. Sichuan cuisine is all about seasoning complexity, whereas Hunanese flavors are much more straightforward. So I might try doing more of the sauce in future, and see how that goes. There wasn't enough to moisten the rice, and we really liked that sweet-spicy sauce!

Additional side perk of home wok experimentation: any night I don't know what to do for dinner, Matt now suggests trying a new Chinese dish.

Chicken Piccata

Chicken Piccata is one of Matt's favorite dishes, so I've played with various recipes for it a great deal looking for "the one." Ina Garten's was the 3rd or 4th I tried, and it was the closest to what I was looking for. However, I use her recipe more as a set of guidelines and do not follow it line by line.

For one thing, her recipe does not call for capers (?!) so the first thing I did was add those to the sauce. After trying various amounts, I settled on 1/4 - 1/3 teaspoon of capers (without any of the brine in the jar) per recipe. It doesn't seem like much, but the capers have a powerful flavor and using much more than that gave us more of a caper-y sauce than we wanted - we were after a balance between the capers and lemon juice.

Her step of putting the squeezed lemon halves in the pan with the sauce while it is reducing is cute, but threw the balance the other way, toward being too lemon-y. So I skip that. Also, it goes without saying that squeezing fresh lemon juice is the way to go here. I have yet to find a recipe that does not benefit from squeezing fresh. It's easy, takes just a few minutes and the result is always far superior.

I've tried many variations on the chicken breading, most notably using panko when I made this last night. I'm kind of torn on panko. The breading is thicker, yes, and crispier, but the panko itself doesn't have the best flavor. That's kind of a problem since whatever breading I use tends to come off the chicken in sheets when soaked with sauce for serving - which isn't a problem - but you sometimes end up eating a bit of breading by itself and in a direct comparison between panko and standard Progresso Italian, Progresso Italian wins in flavor. I've also noticed, when using panko, that I get a better breading if I double the steps - i.e. flour, egg, panko, egg, panko. Hitting the egg and panko a second time gives you a much thicker breading. If only the panko itself actually had a good flavor. I've tried three brands - Progresso, whatever brand comes in the big container from Costco (can't remember what it's called) and some obscure Asian brand that I got at the Asian market. I had the same problem with all three. Progresso was, if I recall correctly, the best, but it was also much more expensive. So overall, I'm not completely sold on panko. Matt prefers Progresso Italian anyway, so I'll probably stick with that going forward.

For the chicken, split chicken breasts cook more evenly. In an attempt to give the chicken itself more flavor, I brined the four chicken breasts overnight in a mixture of 1/4 cup kosher salt to 4 cups water. (I also threw in a couple bay leaves because, well, why not?) The chicken sat in the saltwater for a good 24 hours before I set out to make dinner, and it did make a difference. The chicken did not taste salty, but just had more depth of flavor. I will continue to do this step in future. The times listed on Ina's recipe for cooking are way off from what I end up doing - I find the chicken usually needs 4-5 minutes per side, and not 2, in order to brown nicely. I've also noticed that the chicken needs longer than 10 minutes in the oven to be cooked thoroughly. As far as what kind of fat to saute in, her recipe calls for olive oil, but I have also successfully used olive oil/butter, butter alone, clarified butter, and bacon fat. The latter two are my favorites.

Given the prevalence of butter in the sauce, I noticed a BIG difference the one time I made this using fresh butter from the local Amish market. It was much, much richer and creamier than using Land'o'Lakes, which is what I usually have around. If I have the good stuff in the house, I use it, but don't sweat it if I don't.

Finally, I've found that the kind of white wine used in the sauce does make a difference. My personal preference for a cooking white wine (for any savory application, not just this recipe) is Sauvignon Blanc. It's not overly sweet, and has a nice tanginess that I find very pleasing. Last night the only white I had in the house was a Pinot Grigio, and I didn't like the sweetness of that grape with the capers and lemon.

Picky about sauce ingredients or no, I usually make just a little extra of it. For example, I usually double the recipe for the chicken and then do three or four recipes of the sauce, depending on what I'm serving the chicken with and whether any of the sides would want some sauce (like pasta).

However I vary it - this is still one of Matt's favorites.

Plum Torte

I first had plum torte in a German restaurant in Norfolk, Virginia, about a two years ago.  I couldn't believe how delicious it was and I set out on a quest to find a recipe for it.  My quest had lapsed after I made it from a recipe last summer and didn't care for it.    The crust was made from a kneaded wheat dough which became very tough during baking.  Not sure if the wheat dough is more traditional or not, but I like this new recipe a thousand times better.

Unlike many of the recipes I've been using lately, this one came from a physical cookbook, The New Elegant but Easy Cookbook. However, I did find a link to it online, Original Plum Torte.  It really may be one of the easiest desserts I've ever made.  Literally, the most difficult part is slicing the plums--that's how easy it is.  The recipe recommends simply halving the plums, but I think it looks prettier when they are sliced and arranged.  I used both purple and red plums to give it some depth.  The 10-inch spring form pan I used made it a little thinner than I would have preferred; I'll use a smaller pan next time.

This would be a great dessert for any time of year and any time something needs to be made quickly.  I like it cold, but it would be very nice warm too.  Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

First, let me say that this is not haute cuisine, not at all gourmet fare. This is jock food for watching sports games and drinking beer. And it's not exactly healthy for you. But for the rare occasion when you have a bunch of people watching the Super Bowl, the World Series or doing a live fantasy football draft (**raises hand**) this is perfect.

To cook the chicken, I cut four thawed chicken breasts roughly into strips and boiled them in plain chicken broth for an hour to an hour and a half or so, until they were cooked through and shredded easily with a couple forks. Crock pot cooking the chicken apparently also works, as does using a rotisserie chicken.

There are several varieties of Frank's Red Hot Sauce - I used the simple Original sauce. I also used about a cup more of shredded cheddar than is called for. For dipping, either a sturdy chip or sticks of celery work well. The entire bottle of Frank's Red Hot is offset by the Ranch and cream cheese, and while the end product is definitely spicy, it is not nearly as spicy as I was expecting.

I got the recipe from the Chowhound cooking boards, and the thread with this recipe also contains many ideas for possible variations.

Simple Joys of Cinnamon Buns

I've come to a very important conclusion: There is nothing quite like waking up to a cake stand full of homemade cinnamon buns.  Sure, Pillsbury would look much the same, but the care and love put into making these delicious artery-clogging buns from scratch multiplies the joy exponentially.  I admit I thoroughly enjoy the sensation of my kitchen looking like a professional bakery.  It gives me a great sense of accomplishment and fulfillment to know that I made the effort and now they are there for me or Richard to enjoy at leisure.  

I hope someone knows what I mean by all this blabbering.

Going into this project, I did wonder if the extra effort would yield a result sufficiently superior to Pillsbury's exploding cylinder of dough to make it worth the effort.  It proved unquestionably superior.

The recipe was straightforward.  I did run into a bit of hitch with the yeast.  Somehow I got it into my head that it called for active dry yeast when it in fact called for instant dry.  Now of course, yeast will work as yeast no matter what, one must simply prepare it differently.  Unfortunately, there isn't much liquid in this recipe to reduce proportionate to the amount of liquid used to proof the yeast, so I resorted to using more flour, which certainly had a mild impact on flavor.

Other than that slight and completely self-inflicted problem, I had no difficulty with the recipe.  I did all the kneading by hand since I don't own a swoopty-doo stand mixer, but I like kneading dough so it didn't bother me.

The only thing I might do differently next time is invest in a quality cinnamon.  I have my handy dandy McCormick shaker, but a greater depth of cinnamon flavor would have been nice.

Richard genuinely enjoyed them.  I even got the coveted "I'm-not-really-a-big-fan-of-cinnamon-buns-but-these-are-delicious" comment.

Spicy Cucumber Salad - Fuchsia Dunlop

This recipe comes from Fuchsia's Sichuan cookbook, and is both absurdly simple and utterly delicious.

First, peel a few cucumbers and then cut them into quarters lengthwise, and remove the seeds and pulp. Then cut the pieces into batons - pieces that are roughly 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch by 2-3 inches long. Sprinkle the pieces with salt and set aside for at least an hour to draw out as much of the water as possible. Then squeeze the pieces in a few paper towels to again draw out as much water as possible.

Heat the wok! Add a few tablespoons of peanut oil, and just a little bit of Sichuan peppercorns, and 4-5 dried red chilis, snipped in half with seeds removed. When the oil is fragrant with the spices (20-30 seconds - stir and watch so the spices don't burn), add the cucumber and stir until coated with the hot oil, just about 10-15 seconds. Remove from the heat. Add about a tablespoon of sesame oil, and stir thoroughly before transferring to a serving platter. Dish gets better as it sits and cools off, and can be made entirely in advance and served cold.

This is fantastic, so easy and it disappeared quickly!

Gong Bao Chicken with Peanuts - Fuchsia Dunlop

I discovered Fuchsia Dunlop through her utterly fascinating memoir, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, and was inspired by her to try cooking Chinese food at home. She has published two cookbooks, one on Sichuan cookery and one on Hunan, and both are widely considered to be among the best (if not the best) Chinese cookbooks written in English.

As the bulk of her memoir focuses on her time in Sichuan, that collection of recipes is the one I started with (although my library fortunately has both!).

Her recipe for Gong Bao Chicken (often called Kung Pao here in the states) is listed on her website as well as in her memoir, and is the first Chinese food recipe I attempted to make at home. I took a copy of the recipe to my local Asian market, and after a good 15 minutes in the vinegar and wine aisle, was able to locate most of the tricky ingredients. For example, there are a couple varieties of rice wine. Sweet rice wine, also called mirin, is a staple in Japanese cooking and is quite distinct from dry rice wine, which is what this recipe required. (Incidentally, I have both dry rice wine and mirin in my pantry! Mirin is essential for udon soup and tempura dipping sauces, which I'll write up the next time I make those.) The ingredients list calls for Shaoxing wine, but not being able to decipher all the Chinese characters on items at the Asian market, I found something that said, in English, "dry rice wine" and felt that would work (and it has).

Chinkiang vinegar was easy to locate. Sesame oil I can find at my standard grocery store, and it was simple to pick out light and dark soy. My local grocery doesn't carry dried red chilies, but they were no problem at the Asian market. The trickiest ingredient to find was the Sichuan peppercorns, which are not actually a peppercorn as we understand them but are actually the small dried budding fruit of a particular bush. While this spice was not available at either my local grocery or at the Asian market, I found it at Penzeys, a spice specialty store. (I didn't have the peppercorns the first couple of times I made this dish, and it came out fine, although lacking that distinctive flavor.)

Also - the recipe calls for groundnut oil for the wok. All this means is peanut oil, called "groundnut oil" in the UK, which is where Dunlop is from.

Part of the magic of this dish lies in the combination of garlic, ginger, and scallions. All of those must be fresh. Also - make sure you use roasted peanuts. I accidentally got raw peanuts from the Asian market once - yuck!

I've made this recipe 5 or 6 (or 7?) times now, and have learned a lot about wok cooking during that time. The prevalence of wok cooking in China was driven by the relative shortage of cooking fuel, and you can both cook food very quickly and conserve precious fuel if you cut it into small pieces and then cook it over a very high flame. The shape of the wok, with its sloped sides, contributes to the even distribution of that precious heat. Combined with the fact that chopsticks are used for pretty much everything, most authentic Chinese dishes are in bite-sized pieces when brought to the table. No knives, here!

Additionally, since wok cooking is all about exposing your ingredients to high flame and cooking them very quickly, how you cut your ingredients is essential. The food processor can't be used here, as it is imperative that your ingredients be in cubes or slices (or whatever) as the recipe indicates. The shape of the cut food determines how it reacts to the fast heat in the wok, so this step can't be glossed over. (Dunlop spends a whole chapter in her memoir on the importance of cutting - just the cutting! - in Chinese cuisine.) The enormous upside, besides the rather zen exercise of careful slicing that I must admit I quite enjoy, is that the recipe can be almost entirely prepped in advance, and then everything pulled out of the fridge and thrown into the hot wok right before mealtime.

With this particular recipe, I have tried several things. I made it in one batch, double batches, triple batches, with extra sauce, without the Sichuan peppercorns, and with a reduced number of red chilis.

The sauce of this dish is fantastic, but increasing that part in ratio by even a little bit throws off the delicate balance of flavors, and the end result is way too sweet. I was astonished at how much I liked the sauce when there was just a little of it, but could hardly stand the sweetness when there was more. The Sichuan peppercorns add a distinctive kind of spice that is completely irreplaceable. The red chilis, when used in the amount listed in the ingredients list, bring too much heat for our house to enjoy. I tone down the chilis from 10 to 7 and find that suits our taste buds (although we love spicy food, so it might be worth it to tone down more if you aren't into lots of heat). The primary purpose of both the peppercorns and the chilis is not to be eaten themselves, but to flavor the hot oil which then permeates all of the ingredients. The flavor of both is carried to everything, but you don't actually eat the peppercorns and chilis (unless you want to, of course! Although those chilis - eat at your own risk!).

However, the biggest lesson I learned with this recipe was about the size of cooking portions. The first time I made the dish, Matt and I were struck at how light and fresh the taste was - so far and above take-out Chinese food that it'd be hard to go back. I lost that freshness and lightness on subsequent batches, and only last night figured out why. The first time I tried the recipe, I made a single batch since I was unsure how it would turn out. After the roaring success of that first time, I doubled and tripled the recipe the next few times. However, increasing the amount of food in the wok completely changed how the food reacted to the heat. Some water comes out of the ingredients when you cook them, and when you have a single recipe in the wok, that little bit of liquid evaporates quickly. With two or three times the ingredients in there, the greater amount of liquid doesn't evaporate, and you get almost a boiled effect instead of the hot quick saute you're after. The effect is completely different! Last night I made a double batch of the recipe but cooked one batch at a time in the wok. It was the best version of this dish I've made yet.

Poblano Corn Pudding-Guy Fieri

I've always been a big fan of corn pudding done well and adding some extra flavors to it was intriguing.

The recipe was very simple.  Since I don't have a gas stove, I roasted the peppers beneath the broiler which works beautifully.  I used the Cabot seriously sharp white cheddar, which I like because it holds its flavor better than other cheddars.  I also used more cheddar than the recipe recommended.

My biggest beef with this-and it isn't that big-is that I think the milk-egg ratio is slightly off.  While the pudding was consistent, it was not quite as cohesive as I prefer.  This might also be helped by adding a little of the panko to the mixture, since the panko topping gave it a lot more unity.

One last thing... I'm not able to handle very spicy foods but I could see someone wanting this to be hotter.

Overall, a good recipe that I might use again.  It would be a really nice dish for the winter with some fresh bread or biscuits.  The general idea could also be transferred into some sort of corn chowder which would be lovely.

Ina Garten's Portobello Mushroom Lasagna

I adore this recipe.  It has definitely become a staple in my house.

There's nothing tricky about it; it really is as straightforward as it looks.

I use the baby bella mushrooms, just because they are easier to find and a little more economical.  I also use salted butter in the bechamel.  The main flavors in this dish are the mushrooms and the parmesan so the extra bit of salt in the butter helps bring that out.  (Be sparing with the nutmeg or you'll taste that above all else.)  Other than that the only change I made to add a small clove of garlic while the mushrooms are sauteing.

Portion-wise, I halve the recipe which feeds two and leaves leftovers.  It keeps extremely well in the refrigerator.

It's also one of those recipes that will "wow" guests without causing you to pull your hair out.

Chicken Fajita Marinade

My favorite marinade for chicken fajitas is super simple:

For 3-4 chicken breasts:

• juice of 4 limes (fresh-squeezed, of course!)
  
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano (I put this through my mortar and pestle to try to release the oils as much as possible before adding it)
  
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper

I usually throw the thawed chicken and marinade in a big ziploc, which seems to guarantee that the chicken and the goodness are right up next to each other much better than if it was all in a bowl. I got the formula from this gem of a cookbook, and it always goes fast. An overnight sit in the marinade is, in my opinion, essential. But then, I haven't run across a marinade that achieves peak flavor in just a few hours.

Cuban Pork Chops with Mojo-Guy Fieri

This was my weekend new recipe.

Having never tried a mojo sauce before, I can't attest to how it compares with other mojo variations.  However, the sauce combined with the salt/oregano/garlic/onion/pepper rub was fantastic.

I will definitely use the sauce/rub combo again, but I did not like it on the pork chops.  The flavor was great but the chops were not very tender.  It's possible that I got inferior chops.  In general, however, I prefer pork loin when eating pork.  That's what I'm going to use next time. (9:05pm--The husband insists that I give him credit for the pork loin idea.)

As a side note, I didn't see much point to the recommended garnish.  Maybe the watercress, but to me the tomato and avocado would have been odd with the flavor combo and the texture difference would have been weird.

Cheater Pots de Creme

I got this recipe from Pioneer Woman - that Oklahoma ranch wife who has managed to captivate the internets. Her shtick can get kind of old and her recipes are, as she says, a reflection of what she's cooking and not exactly gourmet. That said, however, this recipe is fantastic.

Real pots de creme is usually some kind of cooked custard. This is not that. You throw a few ingredients into your blender, let it go for a few minutes, pour into pretty glasses, chill. It's insanely easy. And way too delicious considering it takes next to no effort to prepare.

The end result is creamy and rich, but without the hassle of cooking custard. The most important thing is having the ingredients at the right temperature. Letting the eggs sit on the counter for a few minutes to get the chill off and having the coffee as hot as possible (I usually throw it in a small skillet so it's boiling when I add it to the blender) makes sure you don't have flecks of solid chocolate in your finished product, but just a smooth delicious solid pudding.

I've already made this four or five times. I tried substituting white chocolate chips one time but those didn't set. Not sure why.

Gazpacho

I heard on a Chowhound thread about a Cook's Illustrated recipe for gazpacho being great, so I tried it over the weekend at the same time I did this pulled pork.

I had never made gazpacho before this and had it in restaurants only rarely, if at all. But cold soups are the perfect "something different" for all this heat.

The process is slightly more laborious than simply chopping veggies and throwing them in the blender. The Cook's Illustrated recipe has some explaining of the technique here - not having made gazpacho before, I don't have first-hand experience with the problems they describe, but generally trust them where the science of cooking is concerned and have had more success than not with their recipes.

The slice of bread in the soup does give it wonderful body that it wouldn't have had otherwise. The finished soup contained both pureed and chopped veggies - some chopped veggies added after it's made, and others as a garnish right before serving.

Honestly, the chunky veggies in the soup didn't do much for me. The smooth puree was delicious - especially when pieces of good bread were dipped in it - and I think would have stood better on its own. Next time I make this, I'm going to try it without the chunky veggies.

My Berry Soup Experiment

Emily gave me this great recipe for mixed berry soup a few weeks ago.  She had made it for a birthday party and raved about it, and I just had to try it.  

I used the Talenti Tahitian Vanilla Bean gelato, which I got from Publix.  It was on the pricey side, but this was a special treat I thought deserved a couple extra dollars.  It didn't disappoint.  Fabulous gelato.

For the wine in the berry soup I used an unimpressive bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I had in my fridge.  For my part, I thought the wine was a little overpowering in the finished product.  Next time I will probably back off a bit from the wine and focus more on the fruit.

One problem I had with the recipe was the way Giada measured the berries.  In the ingredients list, she listed the quantities by weight, but in the instructions by volume.  I found that a bit difficult to measure especially since her weights were different than mine.

My own addition to the recipe was some homemade shortbread.  This idea literally struck me about thirty minutes before I was going to assemble the dessert.  I used this recipe from AllRecipes, and was very pleased.  It added a nice substance and saltiness to the dessert.  

I liked serving it in the large martini glass.  It's such a pretty dessert.

Tyler Florence's Pulled Pork

I tried this recipe over the weekend.

It was outstanding. I used a 7 pound pork shoulder (bone-in). I decided to try the recipe too last minute to give the shoulder an overnight sit in the spice rub, so it got about 4 hours in the fridge and then I threw it in the slow cooker on low overnight instead of oven roasting as the recipe calls for. I'll try the oven sometime to see if it makes a difference but the slow cooker worked just fine.

The sauce is a vinegar/mustard type barbecue sauce, which was very unusual. Very tangy, tiny hint of kick, utterly delicious. While vinegar-based sauces on pulled pork are the norm for the Carolinas - ketchup-vinegar sauces in western NC and no ketchup in eastern NC, I think I've heard that mustard-vinegar sauces are more of a South Carolina thing. Not 100% positive on this though. The recipe says you can use yellow or spicy brown mustard - I definitely used spicy brown - just got a cheap brand.

The coleslaw was pretty easy in the food processor, albeit a bit messy when putting the cabbage though. I don't think I had the right kind of chili pepper - Wegman's didn't have the kind the recipe calls for, shockingly. The coleslaw didn't suffer for it though. The coleslaw sauce separated out from the veggies when left to sit, as it's a bit on the thin side, but could be stirred back in with no problem.

Everything served with plain pre-made hamburger buns. The pork, mustard-vinegar sauce and coleslaw together in a sandwich was utterly fantastic! Everyone absolutely loved it - tons of compliments and the food went fast. :)

In future, I'd give the pork shoulder an overnight sit in the fridge with the spice rub instead of just 4 hours, to see what that does. I'll also try oven roasting at some point. But either way, this recipe is absolutely a keeper.

Side note - I've given pulled pork it's own label because I have a thing with trying different pulled pork recipes, and think it'd make sense for those to be grouped together.