Asian Lettuce Wraps

This dish - whatever recipe you use - is too satisfying and too easy to not be in your repertoire.

I used an online adaption of PF Chang's formula. It was very good, but I'll probably try a different recipe next time. Ketchup in the sauce, really?

This is great for summer, and you certainly don't need the wok.

Angel Food Cake

Ah, this most finicky of cakes. My first attempt tasted fine but was, texture-wise, a disaster. So I grabbed a friend, who had made them before with her mother, and we tried again.

Success! Not 100%, but pretty close. My big mistakes the first time around were in not understanding how delicately the batter must be handled.

1) I hadn't whipped the egg whites long enough. Alton's recipe says "medium peaks" - what you really want are stiff peaks. AKA as much air as you can get in the egg whites without breaking them.

2) The flour MUST be sifted first, and the additions of the flour mixture to the whipped egg whites must also be sifted in. Old 50s cookbooks talked about sifting all the time - a step that is largely absent from modern baking instructions. You can't skip it here, though. [Full disclosure: I don't have a sifter, so I used a tea ball. I bet a fine-mesh strainer would also work.]

3) When sifting the flour mixture into the egg white mixture, don't add too much at a time, and fold it in *gently*.

4) Bake the cake until the top is REALLY golden brown. On attempt #2, we took it out just a little too soon, and lost about an inch of volume due to some collapsing. Another 5 minutes in the oven halted any further collapse, but we did lose some fluffiness with that mistake. Be careful checking doneness with a wooden skewer, as apparently even this step can lead to losing volume.

5) Cool the cake - for an hour minimum - upside-down. The first time around, I just flipped the cake pan upside down on a cooking rack - that only worked because the cake had about half the desired volume. The second time, we balanced the cake upside down with the central piece on a can, although apparently you can also put the upside down cake on a full wine bottle to hold it while it cools.

So, after driving yourself nuts with the paranoia - you are done! Enjoy with fresh fruit! I think the next attempt will be even better, as I have a much better idea now of what to do.

Chairman Mao's Red-Braised Pork

This recipe was the favorite dish of Mao Zedong - a fact which will no doubt prompt everyone who reads this to run out and buy pork belly immediately. Fuchsia Dunlop, while in Hunan province to research her cookbook on the region's cuisine, was told frequently of the dish's benefits:

"In keeping with traditional Chinese gastronomy, which seeks to make a medical virtue out of every dietary predilection, the people in Mao's home village, Shaoshan, recommend red-braised pork as a health food: 'Men eat it to build their brains,' Chairman Mao's nephew Mao Anping assured me when I met him there a few years ago, 'and ladies to make themselves more beautiful.' His friend and neighbor, the Shaoshan communist party secretary, told me he ate two bowlfuls a day to keep his intellect in shape."

[Excerpt from Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook - Recipes from Hunan Province]

I can't speak to the brain building or beautification properties, but this is a very tasty dish requiring relatively few ingredients.

Your first task is to track down pork belly. A surprisingly difficult thing to do in most standard grocery stores. The local Giant, for example, was quite obviously a no-go. The guy behind the meat counter at Harris Teeter didn't even know what pork belly was (it's the cut from which bacon is usually made, before the curing and slicing) and had to get the butcher - who then told me they didn't stock it. The local international market, though? Score! They had packages and packages of the stuff.


After pork belly, you need a some wonderfully aromatic spices: cinnamon stick and star anise, along with sliced ginger and a few dried red chilis. The bottle with the red label is Shaoxing wine - a standard pantry item if you're doing Chinese cooking, and carried by every Asian market.





First, the pork belly is plunged into boiling water for a few minutes until partially cooked. It looks SO appetizing afterwards. Not.






Out comes the wok. Some sugar and oil go in for a few minutes, until the sugar has melted and caramelized, then all the other ingredients are added - the pork belly, the wine and the aromatics. The whole thing is barely covered with water and the heat is turned down. Set your timer and walk away for 45-50 minutes. Except you can't, because this smells AMAZING. Reminiscent of pho broth, which has pork bones and broth in it, and I suspect some similar spices.



Towards the end of the cooking, turn up the heat to reduce the sauce. The sauce does not get very thick, even after reducing.

I think I reduced the sauce a little too far, just because there wasn't enough of it. The flavor of this dish is wonderful, with the spices and chilis (there is some slight heat), but as most of the flavor is in the sauce and not in the meat itself, you are constantly dunking the pork into the sauce. This is quite fine, we just didn't have enough to dunk in. Next time I think I won't reduce quite as long.

Plain rice is the preferred accompaniment. Fried rice wouldn't really work, I think. Especially since I usually tank up on garlic when I make fried rice, and there is no garlic in this dish. It wouldn't fit the flavor profile, which has a somewhat delicate quality with the star anise and cinnamon.

The pieces of cooked pork belly are delicious - some of the fat you want to eat, and other parts you pick around.

I would definitely make this again.

Emeril's Cajun Jambalaya

I've used Zatarain's mixes in the past to make jambalaya - I'm not usually a boxed dinner person they're great to put tasty food on the table really fast. When I wanted to try to make jambalaya from scratch for the first time, where else to look but Emeril?

I used all three proteins as his recipe requires - shrimp, chicken and andouille. I haven't cooked with shrimp hardly at all at home - this might have been my first time, now that I think about it - and I accidentally purchased shell-on shrimp that also needed de-veining. Not a huge deal, but a smelly job and one I'll probably side-step next time by buying shrimp with these things already done.

The single biggest problem I had with the recipe was the amount of time it said it would take for 3/4 cup of rice to absorb 3 cups of chicken stock. The recipe says this step will take 15 minutes. Anyone who has ever made risotto knows how unrealistic this is. It took closer to 45 minutes. Not a huge deal, but we were really hungry after waiting the extra half hour.

The recipe has a good back heat that you notice on the first bite but which builds up in your mouth after several bites. We love spicy food, so this wasn't a problem for us, but it might be for the spicy-sensitive. I might add a little more of the Creole seasoning next time, but otherwise there was a good depth of flavor from all the different seasoning ingredients.

The star, perhaps not surprisingly, was the andouille. We were all picking the sausage slices out of our bowls. Overall a very good recipe, that might approach "wow" status with a little more tinkering.

Herbal Marinade for Steak

This marinade came from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home and is very different from the marinades I usually break out for beef. There's no acid - no citrus, no vinegar.

It's a great change-it-up treatment for steaks. The marinade smells amazing when you prepare it, with all the garlic and fresh herbs, and the meat takes on a wonderfully herby flavor.

I'm thinking this might be good on chicken as well, although I haven't tried it.

Bacon-Stuffed Waffles

This is a fun variation on basic waffles if you like the combination of sweet and salty/savory, and it works particularly well with my favorite waffle recipe - one from the New Basics cookbook that includes some whole wheat flour and cinnamon.

Pour about half of the amount of batter you usually use on the heated grates, and lay a couple strips of already cooked bacon across them. (Don't use raw bacon, as the waffles won't be in the iron long enough to thoroughly cook it.) I need to cut my bacon slices in half so they fit.







Then pour more batter on top of the bacon, before closing the iron and waiting a few minutes for the waffles to cook.








The waffle batter cooks up and around the bacon, so it's only visible from the ends.

Good maple syrup is a must!

Thai Chicken Tacos

I've come out of my cooking dormancy in a big way. I'll have made more than four new things this week alone! However, of all of them, this recipe clearly took first prize. It came from Better Home and Garden, June 2011.

The recipe said to marinate the chicken for only an hour, but as anybody who knows anything about marinating knows, that is not long enough. I put it in the marinade for about six hours.

For the slaw, I managed to get to Publix just as they were clearing out the wilted produce, so I went with a pre-chopped slaw mix for the lettuce and carrots and then picked up the green onions, cilantro and radishes separately. I left out the peanuts.

This dish was incredible! Richard says it is his new favorite. The flavor of the chicken completely awed me. I have never done any cooking with sriracha or fish sauce before now, but they definitely won a spot on the staple list. The slaw played very nicely with the chicken. The one minor thing I might consider changing is the tortilla. The corn flavor was almost too much. I might like to see how flour tortillas work.

My biggest dilemma was what to serve on the side. I don't know how one would classify this dish...Thai-Mex? Cali-Thai? Not sure. I ended up breading and frying some zucchini-very tasty.

Butternut Squash Gnocchi

I've been making ricotta gnocchi for several months now with great success, but I had not been brave enough to try my hand at potato gnocchi since Em's and my utter failure at it circa June 2009.

However, a friend had given me a butternut squash and although I love my curried butternut squash soup, I wanted to try something new with this delicious gourd. Enter butternut squash gnocchi.

To begin with I did not want to buy a ricer for the potatoes and presuming that people made potato gnocchi before Williams Sonoma existed, I decided to try it with my 100-year-old, French rotary grater. The results were great! As you can tell, I was very proud of this.

The squash roasted in well under an hour, after which it was pureed and reduced. I then gently mixed, kneaded, rolled and cut the squash-potato dough.

I refrigerated it for a couple hours and then made my big mistake. :( I usually read recipe reviews religiously, but for some reason skipped them for this one. The recipe said to cook the gnocchi for 15-17 minutes, which I thought seemed excessive. It was excessive. They came out well over-done. The sage and brown butter sauce might have been good if the canvass had been better. I served it with sauteed baby eggplant.

This was, however, not a total failure. I learned a lot. First of all, in my ricing reading, I noticed many people recommend ricing potatoes for mashed potatoes. After seeing the light and fluffy results of ricing, I definitely will try this next time I make mashed potatoes. Secondly, I reinforced my emphasis on reading reviews. All the reviews said 15 minutes was too long. Lastly, I could see myself trying potato gnocchi again but probably not this variety. I couldn't really taste the squash at all

Fruit Leather

Matt is a huge fan of fruit leather, so I was pretty excited when I found a recipe for making it at home. This is a great use for fruit you can get in bulk - I used apples here. Spending money on berries, kiwi, etc. so that you can intentionally dry out all that great juice doesn't seem cost effective.





The formula is very easy. Peel/core/chop your fruit of choice, and add it to a large pan with half a cup of water for every 4 cups of fruit.





Simmer the fruit and water, covered, for about 15 minutes, or until it's cooked and softened. Mash the fruit up a bit, and taste it. I added just a little bit of sugar (the apples were pretty sweet on their own), a couple shakes of good cinnamon and little bit of lemon juice to make the flavors pop. I did another 15 minutes of cooking as well, just because I'd chopped the fruit unevenly and wanted to make sure it was cooked through.





When you're happy with the seasoning, toss the mush in the blender. Or the food processor. Or a food mill. You basically want to puree the heck out of it, until it's very, very smooth.








Spread some microwave-safe plastic wrap (the more sturdy variety) on a baking sheet, and spread the fruit puree over it evenly.







The directions say 140 degrees for 8-12 hours. The lowest my oven would go is 170, so we set the timer for 9 hours and went to bed.









This is what we found in the morning. The puree had shrunk a little with the drying, and was smooth on top.










After just a couple minutes of cooling, it peeled easily from the plastic wrap.









Matt's first comment was "Did you try this? This is awesome!"

I don't get the whole fruit leather thing, but I don't need to. :)

Chicken Pot Pie

Despite Florida's reputation for heat, our winters here in North Florida fluctuate wildly, and we have some genuinely cold days. Pot pie is perfect for those days, but I've out-grown frozen pot pies. Em recommended this recipe, and since she generally has good taste, I tried it out.

I used a rotisserie chicken to save myself some trouble, and I also used the crust recipe that the blog link has listed. I did boil the carrots and potatoes in the same pot. Other than that I followed the recipe.

To me, the most important thing about a pot pie is the crust. No argument. This crust was fabulous and I loved that I got to use my food processor for it.

Em had told me how much she enjoyed the bechamel, although it took more time to make. I cannot claim to be such a big fan of this bechamel. I found it too thick and I didn't feel that the extra time added anything to the flavor. It also seemed to be too little quantity for the pie, and most of it absorbed during baking. Next time I plan to use my stand-by bechamel recipe instead.

The one thing that I really didn't like in this recipe was the potatoes. When reading the recipe, I realized I'd never had a pot pie with potatoes in it. There's a first time for everything, but I will not use them next time. I think they may have been the bechamel-absorbing culprits.

As far as first pot pies go, this was a good start.

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." :)