Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Twice-Baked Comedy

Recipe: Twice-Baked Comedy

Don't worry, you aren't reading things incorrectly. And Williams-Sonoma didn't discover a new food no one has ever heard of. For today's adventure, I was to make twice-baked potatoes. I took 4 large potatoes, scrubbed and pierced them, and let them bake for 1 hour. While they were baking, I even tried to work on my time-management by doing random chores for the first 30 minutes and then cutting the shallots, preparing the spinach leaves, and shredding my extra-sharp cheddar cheese during the final 30 minutes. I was in a good zone. Close to the end of the hour, I was even thinking "Hmm, I'm not sure I'll have much to talk about tonight". The Universe always seems to find a way to address my concerns. J

With like 1 minute left on the timer, I hear this pop in the oven. I look inside, and one of the potatoes has exploded clean out of the skin. I think I just stood there in confusion for a few seconds like, "What just happened?". This has never happened to me. I did Google exploding potatoes later and found this isn't an unheard of phenomenon. I believe that is the benefit of piercing the potato, it should keep it from exploding. I actually never thought before about why I pierced them. I just knew it was what you do. I guess now I know why. Maybe I didn't pierce this guy enough. Or seriously, maybe the Universe was really throwing me a bone for my blog. It seemed to be a "fixable" solution though. The flesh of the potato was still in one piece. And the skin was too, except for where the flesh of the potato bust out of the skin. So I'm thinking, maybe I can still save it and while it won't look pretty, it would still be edible. I had 3 other potatoes I could still use as a photo op. Yeah...not so much.

As I go to grab the flesh of the potato off the rack, it then proceeds to crumble. About 2/3 of it broke into 2 or 3 smaller pieces. The other 1/3 crumbled into very small pieces and fell to the bottom of the oven. So much for my salvaging plan. At this point, I'm thinking continuing to bake in an oven with bits of potato at the bottom is probably not a good idea. The kitchen has seen more than enough smoke in it the past few days. And since I was supposed to actually scoop the insides of all of the potatoes to make the twice-baked filling of the potato, and since 25% of my twice-baked filling was now out-of-commission, I painfully made the choice to punt on this recipe tonight. This is one of those times were you can get really annoyed at the events that transpire or you can see the pure comedy of the events. I chose the latter. So...how about we talk about twice-baked potatoes Saturday? J In the meantime, enjoy the photo of my adventures with twice-baked comedy. I threw out the bigger pieces before it dawned on me I could still take a photo. So the only thing I have to share is the bottom of the oven. But, I think it still speaks for itself.



Monday, April 19, 2010

Perfect Fried Eggs, Blueberry Pancakes, Sautéed Chicken Breasts with Whole-Grain Mustard Sauce, Asparagus Stir-Fry with Bacon and Tomatoes

Recipe: Perfect Fried Eggs, Blueberry Pancakes, Sautéed Chicken Breasts with Whole-Grain Mustard Sauce, Asparagus Stir-Fry with Bacon and Tomatoes (a Lashonda original)

It’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve blogged. It’s not been quite that long since I’ve cooked though. The weekend after my chicken pot pie, I went home to celebrate a belated Easter with my family. I wanted to keep up with my adventure so I cooked dinner for my family. I made Sautéed Chicken Breasts with Whole-Grain Mustard Sauce and (wait for it…..) Brussels Sprouts!Okay, okay. I think I have an issue, I’m addicted to them so. Actually, they were so good when I made them for Easter, I really wanted my family to experience them. And wouldn’t you know, they weren’t as tasty this time. They were still good, I ate them so they couldn’t have been bad.But the wondrousness that I experienced the first two times I made them wasn’t there. I have a theory. My sister has a gas stove. I’ve cooked very rarely on a gas stove. I think I may have made something at my sister’s one other time. I’ve heard gas stoves are wonderful and people that use them never want to cook on a non-gas stove again. But I learned a lesson, they may be wonderful to cook with, but they are definitely different. They heat faster. And there may lie my issue. Usually I bring the Brussels sprouts to a boil in the apple juice/water mixture and once it boils I let it simmer for 15 minutes. Usually it takes at least 5 minutes or so to come to a boil, so the Brussels sprouts are soaked in the apple juice for 20 min or so. At my sister’s house, they came to a boil after like 2 min. It through me off, I was busy prepping for the chicken so I didn’t know if I lost track of time or what. But after tasting them, I can tell they didn’t cook in the apple juice long enough. So lesson learned. Lower heat is definitely best with a gas stove. And as for the chicken, the reason I didn’t blog last week was I forgot my camera! And I can’t talk about my great adventures if I can’t show the final masterpiece. So I decided to remake it this weekend so I could talk about it. My mid-week adventure last week was postponed because I went to dinner with a friend. I can easily see how easy it could be for me to get sidetracked from my cooking adventure. Especially when I move to a bigger city and life gets busier and more active. And since there are 360 recipes in this cookbook, and after 6 weeks I’ve only just completed recipes 11, 12, and 13, it’s a pretty good assumption that it will take me months (if not 2 or more years) to finish at this rate. However, I don’t think I could do more than twice a week (not to mention afford it, food is expensive!). To be honest, I do worry about my ability to commit to this and see it through to the end. Commitment has often not been my strong suit. Or as my friend Kate calls it “stick-to-it-ive-ness”. As I’m going through this journey of exploration, that is one of the things about myself that I’ve really had to face. I can (at times) be flaky. I get really excited about something in the beginning, and when it’s new and fresh I’m all in. But as things get boring, or monotonous, or (sadly) too hard sometimes, I flake out or check out. I’m not beating myself up. Clearly if I couldn’t stick with anything, I wouldn’t have made it close to a stage to accept my degree. But when it isn’t something that doesn’t involve a life-changing movement, I tend to not be as committed. I’m not sure I’m looking for any answers by writing this. Maybe by putting it out there, I’ll somehow unleash my “dirty little secret” and free myself from my issues with “stick-to-it-ive-ness”. I really want to stick with this. I’ve gotten so much from this in just 6 weeks. And not just really good food to eat. J I think this has helped with my self-confidence. I really am beginning to see I can truly cook. And I’m not just a casual cook, I can take on more complicated things like Tiramisù. And my passion for cooking excites me. It’s got me thinking maybe something could grow from all of this. You never know what paths life will take you down.And more than that, this has given me something I look forward to. This experience is like my baby of sorts. So I’m hoping all of the passion I have for this keeps me going as life gets hectic.

As for what I cooked this weekend, since I didn’t cook mid-week, I wanted to make up some ground. So I went through and found a few recipes that wouldn’t be too taxing. And since it was the weekend, I thought making breakfast would be a good idea. There were only slight differences in this fried egg recipe and others I’ve used. Differences such as, after letting the eggs cook in the pan with the cover on for 3 minutes, I flipped the egg over to make it over-hard. I think in the past I just let it cook in the pan covered for 5 min or so. And I didn’t season them at all until they were done. I think I’ve seasoned them in the pan before. But I learned that salting eggs during the cooking process will mar the yolks. The blueberry pancakes weren’t too spectacularly different either. Flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar…yep all the standard things you’d expect in pancakes. Even the method for cooking was pretty standard. Although I did seem to run into an issue while cooking them. The book had me brush butter on the griddle before starting and then after each batch of pancakes finished, brush more butter on before doing the next round. For some reason, I had the darndest time with the 2nd round of pancakes.Although I didn’t turn the heat up, they cooked faster than the 1st round. And since me and my “follow the recipe to a T” self was going strictly by the time the cookbook suggested for each side, my 2nd round of pancakes got darker than I’d like. I refuse to say they were burned…but yeah, they got a little well done. The 3rd batch went the same way. And it was only after 6 “well done” pancakes that I thought maybe I shouldn’t take the recipe strictly as gospel. I rinsed the pan with cool water after round 3, and started with a clean griddle. And after that, things went better. I also started doing one pancake at a time just to be safe. And thanks to this cooking adventure, I’ve probably got breakfast at work all week! I’m still trying to balance trying to learn these new techniques with when should I punt and do my own method to get good results.I’m sure each thing Williams-Sonoma says is for a purpose and will result in some fancy dish in the end. But I think I may need several cracks at a few of these recipes before I get it down to a science.

While I cooked breakfast, I put on my inspirational music to set the mood. But when making my Sautéed Chicken Breasts with Whole-Grain Mustard Sauce, I decided to watch the Food Network while I cooked. I used to watch the Food Network all the time when I cooked, but it’s been awhile since I’ve done that. I’m glad I did though. I watched a few episodes of the ultimate cooking challenges while I cooked, and having those cooks in the background going through all kind of mini-catastrophes was a good setting for my experience. J The recipe isn’t difficult. Take 4 chicken breasts, season them with salt and pepper, and then brown the chicken in melted butter and canola oil. This did provide a new technique I’d never heard of. While browning the chicken, don’t move the chicken at all. After 2 minutes, flip the chicken and brown, without touching, for another 2-1/2 minutes. I’m not sure what the benefit of not touching the chicken is, but I will say they were extremely juicy chicken breasts once done. Now, regardless of the purpose of the “no touching” method, it is where my mini-catastrophe began. After 2-1/2 minutes on the second side, the chicken wasn’t done. And it needed to have no pink before I moved on to the next step. So I kept rotating sides at 30 second to 1 minute intervals. After 5 minutes, I still saw a little pink. And…I was starting to see black at the bottom of the pan where the butter and oil was starting to char. However, the next part of the recipe calls for you to use the chicken residue to make the sauce. So I didn’t want to cook the chicken in a new pan that wasn’t charring. This same thing actually happened at my sister’s too, it took longer than the cookbook said. But maybe this is where the “cooks hotter and more evenly” gas stove was better. At my sister’s, the chicken eventually got done and the residue in the pan wasn’t completely charred. At my house…not so much. I refuse to say the residue burned…but yeah, it got a little well done. J (Do you see a theme for the day?). Once I saw no pink, I put the chicken in the oven to keep warm. To make the sauce, I had to sauté a shallot in the “well done” residue for a minute. Then I deglazed the pan by pouring ½ cup of Chardonnay in the pan and letting it reduce down to 2 tablespoons. (Yep, that’s right…I used more alcohol). Once the wine was reduced, I stirred in salt, pepper, and heavy cream until the sauce was thick. The last step was to whisk in the whole-grain mustard. Having made this the previous week without “cooking it well done”, I could tell there was a hint of char redness to the sauce. But the mustard flavoring is so strong and distinct; it overpowered most of the charred taste. It was better when I made it for my family, but still good this time. And I have yet another Williams-Sonoma technique to master. Between the 2+ years it takes me to cook all of these recipes, and the 2+ years I’ll need to repeat each technique, I won’t need another cookbook until 2015.

Now for my last recipe, I actually made it up. Don’t get too excited, it wasn’t anything fancy. In one of my other recipes I sautéed something in the fat from a few strips of bacon. I liked that concept. I also love asparagus. Somehow I merged the concept of sautéing in bacon fat with asparagus and decided to cut up asparagus spears, sauté them in bacon fat with diced red onion, add tomato and sauté for another minute, and then sprinkle parmesean cheese and crumbled bacon on it. I call it a Lashonda original. It was really tasty. I’ll probably only use 2 slices of bacon next time though. I used 4 this time and it produced a little more bacon fat than I would've liked to use. But the flavor was really good nonetheless.

Four recipes in one day! Not sure I’ll be trying that one again soon. Or instead of blogging about my level of commitment, I’ll be blogging about being committed. J Just kidding.




Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Chicken Pot Pie

Recipe: Chicken Pot Pie

So I’ve mentioned before my struggles with sometimes finding all of the ingredients I need for my meals. I still have yet to see Thai chiles or Thai basil in the Mid-Ohio Valley. But in grocery shopping for my chicken pot pie yesterday, I seemed to hit another ingredient brick wall. I found everything I needed for my recipe except for one thing. I went to four (yes four!) different grocery stores looking for one ingredient. Geez, you’re wondering. What exotic food does a chicken pot pie need that couldn’t be found in 4 different stores, and especially the beloved Giant Eagle? Well I’ll tell ya, it threw me for a loop. The thing I couldn’t find was…corn. 3 wonderful ears of corn-on-the-cob sent me driving from Marietta to Parkersburg and then to Belpre. I know, right? Now in mentioning this at work today, my coworkers told me it’s not corn season so of course I can’t find fresh corn. Duh! But the produce guy at Giant Eagle mentioned they had corn over the weekend and had just sold out. So clearly that means it should be available somewhere else. That’s what I get for assuming. Now I could’ve just saved myself the trouble at Giant Eagle and got a bag of frozen corn. But the recipe called for fresh kernels of corn and I’m trying really hard to stay as authentic to these recipes as possible. Having to substitute for Hungarian Paprika is one thing. But surely I could do the real deal with fresh corn. So off I went to Foodland (No luck), Wal-Mart (Sorry, try again), and Kroger (You have been denied). After talking to my coworkers I was seriously contemplating not cooking my meal, I was somewhat bummed out. Again, not sure at what point I should’ve seen the clear alternative of just using frozen corn, but for some reason I was really set on using fresh. Besides, I’ve never shucked an ear of corn so I thought it would be a cool experience. After going through this scenario with my good friend Liz on IM, and finally realizing how much dilemma I really was putting into a simple solution, I decided to stop at Wal-mart on the way home and just get the bag of frozen corn. (If you think this is drama, you should see me try to pick out a t-shirt for work in the morning). J Now, I will say for the pot pie I needed to either make a crust or buy a crust. I bought a ready-made crust at Giant Eagle on the off chance I was not successful making one. But after the disappointment of Frozen Corn 2010, I was determined I’d do something cool tonight. So in place of shucking corn, I made a pie crust. But more about that later…

Pot pies are such an awesome food. They are the ultimate comfort food. I liken pot pie to a warm hug from your very best friend. It just warms you up inside. I love eating a plate of pot pie and curling up to watch a show like Grey’s Anatomy or a sappy love movie. It just makes me happy. If you can’t tell, I’ve made/eaten pot pie before. But this recipe was definitely different than I’ve done before. I steamed my carrots, peas, and corn by placing them in a sieve and lowering them into boiling water until they were crisp. I’m not really sure what this technique is called, nor why it makes a difference to do it this way. But I felt cool doing it. J Believe it or not, the recipe called for wine. Seriously, if you don’t like to drink, Williams-Sonoma cookbooks may not be for you. This is my 7th day cooking in my adventure and I’ve used alcohol in at least 3 separate adventures. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying. 43% of my adventures have required me to take a trip to the liquor store. That’s a lot of alcohol there. I’ll be afraid to drive anywhere after dinner if this keeps up. I’m really joking. The alcohol burns off while cooking, so you don’t feel the affects when you eat the food. And I’ve mentioned this before, but real wine really gives the food a quality taste. I recognized the same taste in this pot pie recipe as the last recipe that used wine, the Linguine with Lobster Sauce. Now for my crust. I’m so proud of the crust I made. It turned out pretty well for my first time making a crust. Which is surprising now that I think of it that in all my years baking, I’ve never made a crust before? For some reason I guess I’ve always chickened out on going all in and making it myself. See, my cooking adventure is causing me to start to get a little bit brave now, huh? I used the food processor to mix my flour, sugar, salt, butter, and ice water. I had to do some crafty engineering in the beginning because when I started mixing the ingredients, flour started flying out of the open spout on the food processor. Flour flew everywhere, which intrigued my dog Lady to no end. The solution was pretty simple though, I just stuffed a towel in the spout. Every once in a blue moon, the degree actually does come in handy. Who knew? Actually getting flour everywhere while mixing just turned out to be a precursor to my experience of rolling the dough. Because after I floured the counter and rolling pin about 5 or 6 times to make sure my dough didn’t stick while I rolled it out, you couldn’t tell the difference from my first mess to this one. I’m pretty sure I know why my dog continues to hover around the kitchen while I cook…because of messes like this. But low and behold, my dough was successfully rolled out and placed on the pie dish. I was also able to separate the egg yolk I used to brush the pie crust before it baked without incident, which still reminds me of one of my last adventures. Seriously, please don’t drink and cook. And now I think I’m good on not using fresh corn in my recipe. The pie crust made up for it. But next time, I’m going to get my fresh corn dang it! J



Monday, April 5, 2010

Bistro-Style Roast Chicken

Recipe: Bistro-Style Roast Chicken

She’s back!!!! I’m back to “My Happy Place” after spending 8 days in Europe, and my unofficial international “Happy Place”, London. Since I use this venue to blog about food, I’ll tell you about my trip to Europe through the eyes of my stomach. Quite honestly, I really don’t have many good things to say about the majority of the food I ate overseas. That is, until I got to London. Now, to be fair, my Paris dining experience consisted of a sandwich I got at the train station on my way back to Belgium. Yep, that’s right. I went to one of the greatest cites in the world and my dinner consisted of a really bad train station sandwich that looked like it had been sitting there all day. I’ll chalk it up to poor planning on the part of the group I was with when we mapped out our trip. In Belgium and Germany, most of my food consisted of the plant cafeteria meals. And I’ll be honest, I was somewhat afraid to eat the food. I guess I should insert my jetlag experience from my trip 2 years ago at this point. On day 3 of my trip in 2008, I got really bad jet lag. And apparently for me, a symptom of jet lag is nausea. And I chose the middle of the hotel lobby in Antwerp, Belgium to feel the effects of my jet lag. So this time, I was slightly paranoid to eat a lot for fear of getting sick in another hotel lobby. So if it didn’t look like a meal I would die without eating, I didn’t eat it. And the weird meat with even weirder sauce at the Mechlen (Belgium) plant didn’t qualify as “to die without eating” cuisine. The Uentrop (Germany) plant food was a little better in terms of the meat not looking that weird. But they also put sauce on everything. There is something about Europe food and sauce. They love sauce on everything. The second day in Uentrop, I asked the lady to not put sauce on my meat (I think it was a pork chop) and she looked at me as if I asked her to cut off her pinky and serve it to me.Apparently it is bad form to not eat the sauce. In Germany, we stayed in a hotel in Hamm and the restaurants in Hamm were actually not bad at all. The first night we went to a really nice steak restaurant. I had a medium fillet with a side of mushrooms and a baked potato. The potato had a weird ranch sour cream sauce on it that sorta ruined it for me. But the steak and mushrooms were really yummy. However, they were not yummy enough to qualify as “to die without eating” so I picked at the meal. I also think the fact that I ordered my steak medium, but at some point I think I heard it mooing at me may have contributed to the picking also. The second night in Hamm, we went to an Italian restaurant. One entertaining point, at least for me, the menu was entirely in Italian and German. Yet at least ¼ of the table was not Italian or German. It was entertaining to watch the confusion as the people who could speak German (or Italian) translating for the non-German/Italian people. It was further entertaining for me to have the OBL of my business be my interpreter. Here I am a planner having one of the top guys of my business reading me my dinner. Now that’s priceless. And the food was phenomenal. So phenomenal, I ate everything I was served. And anyone that knows me knows that’s saying something. Even when I’m on the right side of the pond, I don’t finish my entire meal most times. The starter was bruschetta, which was followed by lobster bisque. Both I think were the best I have had of either dish. And, thanks to my newfound cooking experience, I was able to distinguish a few distinct flavors. I definitely tasted fresh parsely in my lobster bisque. My meal was grilled grouper with a green cabbage which I believe to be Bok Choy. My interpreter didn’t have a good translation other than cabbage to tell me what the vegetable was. Now I’ve heard for years that London has really horrible food. But either I got really lucky when I was there, or that statement is really outdated. Because I had really good food in London. One meal in particular stands out. I was fortunate that I got to meet up with my really good friends Kate and Julius for most of my stay in London. On the last day we hung out we went to a cute little café in an artsy type neighborhood for brunch. I ordered Stuffed French Toast with ham, cheese, Dijon, and an avocado/tomato salsa. OMG. That meal may have made the top 10 list of best things I’ve ever eaten. It was so good, I took a picture (which is attached below). I also took a picture of Kate’s Flat White Latte, because the design of it looked so pretty. Unfortunately, it did not taste as good as it looked. My plan in taking the picture of the French toast is to also see if I can duplicate it. I shall make that one of my life goals. Either that or I’ll have to go back to Londonfrequently to relive that wondrous taste in my mouth over and over. Either way works for me. I also had a really good fish and chips meal, a really good gourmet burger (at least the name of the restaurant claims it was a gourmet burger), and some of the best marinated olives I’ve ever eaten in London. And I had my first taste of Sticky Toffee Pudding. Julius warned that his first time experiencing Sticky Toffee Pudding left him addicted. I wouldn’t rank my experience as addicting, but it was really good nonetheless. It seemed to be a gingerbread-like cake with a sticky icing. But the fact that Julius had an addicting experience with it, just means I must go back and try more. All in all, it was a wonderful trip to Europe, and I Seriously Heart London. I’ll definitely be going back.

Now, on to my newest adventure. I decided to tie my next cooking adventure with Easter dinner. Which means I picked a recipe instead of the usual randomness. I chose a Bistro-Style Roast Chicken. And I decided to revisit a couple of my recent adventures that I really liked. Yup, that’s right. I made more Brussels Sprouts! I really love those things. I still may rank the Brussels sprouts as my greatest cooking feat ever. You really don’t understand how much I used to hate those things. Now, I’m finding myself craving them. Who knew! I also made the Baked Mac and Cheese dish again. But since I’ve blogged about cooking both of those recipes before, I’ll only talk about the Roast Chicken now. This wasn’t a difficult recipe. In fact, this recipe took me about 20 minutes to prep (and that includes chopping fresh rosemary!). But don’t worry, the entire meal took me 3.5 hours to make. So my slowness is still in effect. The recipe really just consisted of making the coating for the chicken. I used the fresh rosemary, minced garlic, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, paprika, and salt and pepper and mixed it all with butter and coated the chicken with the mixture. After this, I just baked the chicken for about 50 minutes and that was it. Well…at least I thought that was it. The chicken looked and smelled great when I took it out of the oven. I was so proud as I took my picture. But when I went to cut, horror of all horrors, there was still pink. L So…back in the oven it went. But then I was paranoid to let it cook too long and dry out the chicken. So I only let it bake for about 10 more minutes. By the time the chicken had baked a second time, I had already finished my helping of Brussels sprouts and mac and cheese, and it was 9:30 at night. So I just decided to wait to eat the chicken the next day, and with reheating the chicken in the microwave, it would ensure the chicken was done. And admittedly, I’m typing this on the day after my cooking experience, and I can verify the microwave method worked well. And the chicken was really good. And very moist. And not pink.The butter coating gave the skin a great taste. I think I know where I went wrong also. The recipe called for a 3.5 to 4 lb chicken. But Giant Eagle only had 5.5 to 6 lb chickens. So I used a slightly bigger chicken but cooked it at the same time length. That’s my only logical explanation. And for all the food safety folks, I did use a thermometer to check the temp. And it did read 170 degrees when I took it out the first time. But somehow, maybe the entire chicken wasn't there. And the chicken wasn't grossly pink and red. I just know with chicken, any pink is not good. I’ll just have to do this one another time and work on it again. I guess they can’t all turn out perfect the first time right?? Right??

Bistro-Style Chicken

The "OMG" French Toast

The "Not so OMG" Flat White Latte