My blog to chronicle my escapades in my Happy Place and my journey to finding more Happy Places beyond my kitchen.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Twice-Baked Comedy
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.
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
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 “