Souffléed Omelet with Herbs

Recipe: Souffléed Omelet with Herbs

Not sure how well known a fact this is about me, but I started an adventure in becoming a wine connoisseur last year. There is a wine shop in Vienna that has wine sampling every other Wednesday. When I started, I could only handle the really sweet stuff and definitely no red wine. Over the past year though, I’ve actually developed my palette to the point I enjoy slightly drier wines like Chardonnay and I have even had a few red wines in my fridge. There are 2 things I’ve learned about myself and wine though…not a good idea to drink wine on a slightly empty stomach if I need to cook later that night. And sometimes if I’m feeling down, not a good idea for me to drink wine, it tends to exacerbate my mood and make it worse. Somehow, I managed to break both rules in the same night. Let me first say that by the end of work today, I found myself feeling depressed and down. Why you ask? Beats me. My mood nowadays seems to fluctuate for something as simple as driving across the 5^th Street bridge. I’ve cried this river to most of you enough that I won’t repeat the song now. It’s enough to say I just wasn’t feeling very good about myself when I left work today. I will say, when I left work I was looking forward to cooking. Key word being was. I stopped by the wine shop to pick up my Wine Club selection, and had a drink even though I told myself it wouldn’t be a good idea. And somewhere in the midst of sipping my first and second sampling of wine, I lost my mojo for even cooking. I’m sure the wine on an empty stomach didn’t help. After I left the wine shop, I went home, curled up on the couch and kept the buzzed pity party going. But, one of the reasons I started this cooking adventure was to give me a positive outlet and something I can really connect with. I’m not fond of most things with my life right now. But as unhappy as I am with most things in my life, I do realize deep down that feeling sorry for myself will not bring me the things I most want in my life. And as great and supportive as my friends are, and as much as they have all helped me, it’s up to me to find a way to deal with and find a way to overcome the hills and valleys of my life. So, after about 10 minutes in the fetal position, I got up, put on some inspirational music, put on my pj’s and got to work in the kitchen. And there you have it, midlife crisis #82 of 2010 averted.

Now that I’ve shown how emotionally unstable I truly am, I should probably talk about my cooking adventure today. The main star of this recipe is the fresh herbs. I’ve talked about how much I love the taste of fresh herbs. It’s something I discovered in my first recipe, the Linguine with Lobster Tarragon sauce. I sincerely may never use dried herbs again. Fresh herbs just accentuate the taste of the food more than I’ve ever experienced with dried herbs. I particularly love Tarragon, to me it has a minty like taste to it. But as much as I love the taste of cooking with fresh herbs, I think I equally do not love chopping them up. Maybe it’s because I’m just a rookie at this, but it seems to take me FOR-EV-ER to snip, mince, or chop any fresh herbs I’ve used. I started cooking at 7 tonight and didn’t actually mix anything up until at least 7:45 because I was rinsing and very meticulously chopping rosemary, tarragon, parsley, and chives. I’m still not convinced I’m not the world’s slowest cook. Once I got started though, things went pretty quickly. Now here’s a math question for you: how many eggs does it take to make a 4 egg omelet? 4 eggs you say? Of course not silly. It takes 8! I believe this is where my first rule of not drinking on an empty stomach would’ve been nice to follow. J I had to separate the egg white and yolk and even though I’ve done this many, many times I seemed to not be able to do it for the life of me tonight. The first egg actually went okay. The second egg had a little of the yolk fall into my egg whites. The third egg yolk just completely fell into the egg whites and pretty much ruined the first eggs I’d done to that point. I figured it would be best to stop the bleeding and figure out how to fix my technique before I ruined an entire carton of eggs. I screwed up 1 more egg before I got it down finally. Again, I’d never messed up separating an egg before. Stupid wine. This recipe is actually a hybrid of an omelet and a soufflé. I beat the egg whites, cream of tartar, and water until there were stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, I mixed the herbs, egg yolks, parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper and folded the egg yolk mixture into the egg whites. Next I poured my mixture into a frying pan on top of the stove to cook the egg until it started to puff. This took about 5 minutes. I then placed the pan into the oven and let the omelet firm for another 7 minutes. And viola! My Souffléed Omelet was complete. It tasted really good. I do think it fell a little, as it wasn’t as puffy as the cookbook picture looks. But all the same, I still think my masterpiece is BEA-UTI-FUL! J

Pozole and Tiramisù

Recipe: Pozole and Tiramisù

My randomness has taken me international today. I made Pozole, which is a Mexican stew and Tiramisù, which is an Italian cake dessert. I imagine it’s the Universe’s way of honoring my actual international trip to Europe next week. J One of the neat things I like about this experiment is that I’m trying recipes of all styles and cuisines. I typically cooked general purpose food, nothing exotic at all. Now I’m trying food I never imagined cooking, or even heard of, and learning fun facts about the food along the way. Like Pozole (I’ll warn you, the story is slightly gross). According to historical records, Pozole was made to be consumed on special events. Pozole is a stew made with corn and a meat. Corn was a sacred plant in Mexico, which is why it was only consumed on special occasions. Apparently, in ancient times, the meat used to cook the Pozole was human. When cannibalism was banned, pork became the staple meat, as it "tasted very similar". Now, mind you I found this tidbit of information out on Wikipedia, so I guess you have to take it with a grain of salt. But it was still something neat to learn, especially since I had never heard of this dish before this week. I’m glad I didn’t google Pozole until after I made the dish though. I may have broken the rules of my project 3 weeks in and refused to make it. And no worries, I definitely used pork. I also cooked with a jalapeno pepper and an Avocado for the first time. The thing about jalapeno peppers, you should wear gloves to make sure the oil in the pepper doesn’t burn your fingers or get in your eyes if you rub them. Since I wanted to follow the recipe exactly, I did it. But the entire time I’m thinking, if I need to wear surgical gloves in order to prep the food, maybe cooking with said food isn’t such a good idea. Anything too hot to touch can’t be good for you going down, right? I will say, I ate this dish several hours ago and so far my stomach has not gotten pissed at me. And I know, millions of people eat food with jalapeno peppers everyday, and I know I’ve eaten food with them before. I’m just saying, I fundamentally needed to wear a food condom before screwing with the pepper. Somehow, that just seems wrong. Now for avocados, my entire life I’ve always thought avocados were a difficult food to deal with. There was just something intimidating about that dark vegetable/fruit with the bumpy skin. And it was confusing that some of them in the store were bright green and some were darn near black. How did you know which to pick and when they were good. So confusing. I now know that avocados are actually a really easy food to prep. You just have to slice it in half, get the pit out and cut it up however you need it in your recipe. And the skin isn’t tough at all to cut through. So now I’m thinking of all types of things I want to make with avocado. I’m definitely going to try my hand in guacamole sometime soon. The avocado went really well with this dish. I put slices of it on top of the stew, and then as you ate the stew, you just scooped pieces of the avocado up into your spoon. The creaminess of the avocado went well with the spiciness of the pepper. I’ve never been a big pork fan, it’s probably my least favorite of all the major meats, but it tasted really tender and flavorful in this dish.

I made several friends at the market while searching for ingredients for my Tiramisù. I searched Giant Eagle for 20 minutes looking for ladyfingers and mascarpone cheese. I eventually found someone to help me, it ended up being my favorite Giant Eagle meat counter lady, who is quickly becoming my favorite Giant Eagle person period. Once she found out I was making Tiramisù, she got super excited and told me how she once dropped a pan of Tiramisù on the floor and how she really had an internal battle for about 10 seconds to actually eat it off the floor. She went on about Tiramisù for the next 10 minutes that she helped me find the ladyfingers and the mascarpone cheese. Actually once we got to the cheese department, she pulled the deli woman into the conversation and they both started in on Tiramisù. J I’ve noticed that this project has really given me an outlet to bond with all types of people. I’m finding people are really interested in my project and my quest to cook all of these recipes. Sometimes they’ve made some of the recipes and can give me tips (this happened with my Linguine with Lobster Sauce adventure). And sometimes they are just interested because they love the dish I’m going to cook (like the Tiramisù). Whatever the case, my cooking thing has really given me an avenue to really connect with lots of people, which I sometimes (well actually most times) struggle to do. So yay! Another cool thing about my project. In making the Tiramisù, I found a coffee recipe that is really really good. Simmer a ½ cup of water and ½ cup of sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Pour it into 2 cups of espresso. Once the espresso is cool, pour 3 tablespoons of Rum in. I’m telling you, you’ll thank you me later. I used this concoction to dip my ladyfingers into. Once the dish was made, I had a few ladyfingers leftover that wouldn’t fit in the pan. I nibbled on a few of them before I realized I was getting somewhat buzzed. J They were sooo good though. I didn’t get to make the Tiramisù until Sunday morning, and since it needed to refrigerate for at least 6 hours, and since Terraun left at 3pm Sunday, he didn’t get any Tiramisù. But after I ate my piece, I decided I would go ahead and just eat his piece too. And then had another one for myself. It didn’t turn out quite as pretty as the picture in the cookbook, but it definitely tasted as good as the cookbook looked. I actually will take the rest of the pan to work tomorrow since it’s really not a good idea to leave me alone with the entire pan in the house. I could actually make myself sick.

Oh, update: when shopping for my recipes this weekend I did find Thai red curry paste at the Kroger in Belpre. (Thanks to several of you for the suggestion to check out their International food department). No luck on Thai chiles or Thai basil though. L Maybe this recipe will get put on hold until I’m in a larger area, which means I’m going to need to leave Parkersburg before my experiment is done. Sounds like a win-win to me. I’ll get to make my Thai soup AND I’ll be somewhere else!

Baked Macaroni & Cheese and Cajun-Spiced Catfish on Wilted Greens

Recipe: Baked Macaroni & Cheese and Cajun-Spiced Catfish on Wilted Greens

So, I had a change of plans on today’s recipe. I was going to make Thai-Style Curried Chicken Soup today. But as I thought about the soup and the ingredients I had to use, and my concern about not finding them without an extensive search, I decided to save my exploration (and potential frustration) for another day when I have time. Mid-week of a work week doesn’t seem like the time to search all over the city for Thai red curry paste. So there you go, yet another life lesson in my cooking project. If it doesn’t look like it will go well right now, just pause and give it time and try again another time. No sense in running into a brick wall when you don’t have to. I also decided to base my menu on logic, instead of randomness today. The Catfish recipe needed to use Endive, and I still had Endive left over from my Brussels sprouts meal. So instead of throwing out food, why not recycle? Actually, both recipes called for Arugula, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. And thanks to my lovely iPhone and its ability to find info on any and everything at any and all times, I googl’d substitutes for Arugula while standing in the produce department of Giant Eagle the other day, and there ya have it. Endive is a suitable substitute for Arugula. See, not only are my cooking journals entertaining…they are also educational. J You would laugh (and probably shake your head) if you saw me standing in the middle of a grocery aisle googling food when I don’t know what it is. Actually today I had to do it again. I had to make the Cajun rub for the catfish and it needed Hungarian paprika (again, who has heard of this stuff???). I couldn’t find it, but I did find out if you mix a pinch of cumin with regular Paprika, you will get an equivalent to Hungarian paprika. Since I’ve never had Hungarian paprika, I can’t confirm or deny how close my substitute was. I’ll just trust my good friends on the random Yahoo! Site I found know what they are talking about. I got a late start cooking tonight. I didn’t leave work until 5:30 and I still had to grocery shop after work. Which led to my new rule, shop for food the day before cooking during the week. Somehow, maybe that should’ve been self-explanatory.That you don’t cram too much into one setting or evening. But then again, time management never was my strong suit. I didn’t finish cooking until 10:30! Part of it was because I didn’t get home from the store until 7. But also, I’m not sure if I’m just a slow cooker or if I get lost in my own thoughts while cooking and lose track of time. Or if typically taking 3 hours to cook a meal is the signature element of a good cook. But if I ever want to be able to cook for my family one day and not have my kids up til midnight eating catfish, I probably need to find a way to speed it up.I know! I just went through Lean Training; maybe I’ll do a Value Stream Map of my cooking and see where my bottlenecks are. (Yes I made a corny work joke in my cooking blog).

There was nothing too out-of-the-ordinary about these recipes. I made my own bread crumbs to top the macaroni and cheese. I had a loaf of bread that is just about expired, so I cut off the crust and put it in the food processor. 3 slices made about ¾ cup bread crumbs, which is what I needed. I sprinkled them on top of the macaroni before I put it in the oven, and drizzled it with butter. Other than the bread crumbs, everything else was pretty basic in terms of technique and ingredients. Well excluding the Hungarian paprika, of course. I did have my first WTF episode while cooking. Now let me start by saying the recipe said to cook this particular step in a nonreactive pan. I have a book on tools and cooking techniques, so I looked up what types of pans are nonreactive. It said stainless steel pans are nonreactive. I have stainless steel, so no problem, right? Ha! So anyway, for the catfish, I had to make a dressing to pour over my endive.I needed to cook a strip of bacon, and using the bacon fat, combine olive oil, minced garlic, lemon juice, and vinegar. Well, that was the way it was supposed to happen anyway. I added the olive oil to the bacon fat with no problems. But when I added the minced garlic, some really crazy reaction happened. It was crazy, the garlic turned black immediately. Smoke started rising and the pan had this really rancid burnt smell. WTF! But I didn’t get upset. I emptied out the pan and washed it and started over. But this time I eased the garlic into the pan. This time…it didn’t react the same but I could tell the garlic was browning quicker than I think it should have. It was supposed to take about 1 minute to brown the garlic. This garlic browned in 10 seconds! I took it off the eye and added the lemon juice and things were okay. But then I added the vinegar and I don’t even know how to describe what happened. It’s like in chemistry class when you add too many of the wrong chemicals and the liquid starts smoking and gurgling and making strange noises. Mind you, none of these reactions were described in my cookbook. So either Macy’s lied to me years ago when they sold me my “stainless” steel cookware or Williams-Sonoma left out the neat chemistry experiment that occurred when making the dressing. Either way, it definitely became a hilarious WTF moment for me. I refused to go through this ordeal a third time, so I just took my chances that things tasted decent. The dressing didn’t smell burnt this time at least.And believe it or not, it actually tasted good. The entire meal was really good actually. The catfish was really tender and the flavor was excellent. I will say, tonight’s meal couldn’t top the event of converting me to a food I previously hated, but the macaroni and the catfish were both really good. And as my resident guinea pig is still in town, and I saw that he ate two helpings of catfish and 1/3 of the macaroni is now gone…I’d say it definitely gets 2 thumbs up.

Oh, and last but not least…I think I have a name for my adventure! “My Happy Place”. Cooking always makes me happy and it’s typically my place of refuge when I’m frustrated or want to relax. I usually escape to my happy place when I cook, so what better name for my journal/blog than “My Happy Place”. Maybe when I get more courage I’ll actually post these on a website somewhere. But for now, I’m content with just keeping it for just my friends and family. I’ll just wait and see where it evolves to from here….

Rice Salad with Tuna & Capers and Brussels sprouts with Walnuts

Recipe: Rice Salad with Tuna & Capers and Brussels sprouts with Walnuts

Still haven’t thought of a cool name for my project. Here soon, I think the Williams-Sonoma project is just gonna stick. I definitely think this project is what I need right now. Believe it or not, I looked forward to cooking this meal all day. Work was annoying and I’m going through another period where I’m frustrated with everything in my life. But for some reason, the thought of cooking really made me happy today. I actually missed the last 2 days I should have cooked. I should’ve cooked this past Wednesday and Saturday, but I went out to dinner for my birthday both nights. I’ve decided that I won’t sacrifice life for the sake of sticking to a schedule.I want to cook on Wednesday’s and Saturday’s, but if something comes up…I’m flexible. And there you have why I cooked on Monday. I’m sure you didn’t need a dissertation on my cooking schedule. But you know I love to ramble. J

I’m not sure if I explained how I pick my recipes. I have a random number generator app on my phone. I set the lower and upper limits for the first and last pages of the cookbook. And I just shake my phone to get the next recipe I’ll cook. J Very geeky, I know. If I get a side dish, I decided I’ll do two dishes in one night. So maybe it won’t take 3 years to finish this exercise after all. Tonight I made 2 things I’ve never thought of cooking before: rice salad (who’s ever heard of that???) and Brussels sprouts (which I’ve hated my entire life). No matter how odd the recipe, I’m going to cook it. The fact I made Brussels sprouts shows my commitment because I promise you, I got my mouth popped more than once for refusing to eat my Brussels sprouts when I was little. One time, Mommy made me sit at the table until I ate them and I sat there for hours with my cheeks stuffed with Brussels sprouts. Haha! But low and behold, I believe I have been converted after tonight. The Brussels sprouts were really good. I simmered them in 2 cups of apple juice and 1 cup water, and after they were tender I marinated them in walnut oil (again, who’s ever heard of walnut oil???) and apple cider vinegar. And to top it off, I sprinkled them with toasted walnuts. If you hate Brussels sprouts, I swear you have to try these. They are delish. Since I have my resident guinea pig in town right now (Terraun), I’m making him test all of my recipes too. And I’m proud to say, he really liked them too. And he also hates Brussels sprouts. So needless to say, the fact that I got someone to like a food they have hated all of their life was the highlight of my day. (Oh and FYI, I’m not supposed to mention Terraun liked Brussels sprouts, something about an image he needs to uphold…)

I have to admit, I wasn’t as fond of my second recipe, rice salad with tuna & capers. For one, even though I followed the recipe to a T, the rice turned out really clumpy. So somehow I missed something. According to the picture in the book, it shouldn’t be clumpy at all. Oh well, it happens.Another thing that I wasn’t crazy about, it has a really distinct tuna flavor. It wasn’t terrible tasting, just different. I did like the saltiness of the capers. And it’s definitely a healthy meal.There is a ton of protein in this dish. I was surprised, but Terraun liked this one. So I’m 2-for-2 with him tonight. I was just 1½-for-2 with myself. J

My next recipe should be an adventure: Thai-Style Curried Chicken Soup. It’ll be an adventure because at least 3 of the ingredients I’m pretty convinced I won’t be able to find in the Mid-OhioValley area (not even my beloved Giant Eagle). Thai red curry paste, Thai chiles, and Thai basil, yeah…this one will be interesting. There’s a small Asian market in Vienna. Maybe I’ll get lucky.But you’ll hear more about that adventure next time…