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.