Polentina with Bananas and Maple Syrup and Black Bean Sausage Chili

Recipe: Polentina with Bananas and Maple Syrup and Black Bean Sausage Chili

So I cheated a little this weekend. How did I cheat? Well, I'll get to that in a second. My cheating all resulted from a major case of the blah's. What are the blah's? Well to me, they are when you just feel off your normal game or not your normal self. And I'm not sure why, but I had the blah's all weekend. And with the blah's came very little motivation to do anything. I was supposed to cook Polentina, Rosemary Spoon Bread, and Tortilla soup. I went grocery shopping on Saturday, got everything I needed and came home with the intention to cook, looked at the large pile of dishes in the sink from the Tuna/HV adventure on Wednesday, gave a big sigh and retreated to the couch to watch my DVD's of The Wire, season 4. Cooking makes me very happy. Cleaning up my cooking messes does not. And seeing the 3 day old pile of dishes particularly depressed me Saturday for some reason. I sometimes get overwhelmed at the thought of something and mentally check out. Sometimes it's not even a major event that overwhelms me. I mean they were just dishes, for pete's sake. But I just didn't feel like dealing with anything on Saturday. After a few hours of trying to motivate myself, I said screw it and decided to cook on Sunday. On Sunday morning, I got up, cleaned up the kitchen and felt like I had my mojo back. After cleaning the kitchen, I moved on to making my Polentina. Polentina is a breakfast dish made with corn meal. Polenta is a boiled form of corn meal, and Polentina refers to a more liquid or creamier form of polenta. It's a very comforting food, and it's very easy to make. It's also a very filling meal, similar to the way oatmeal is filling. If you don't like oatmeal, or want a change, I would definitely try this. To make it, boil milk, water, sugar, and salt and whisk the corn meal into the boiling liquid. Then for the next 15 minutes, let the mixture simmer while stirring it every couple of minutes. Top the bowl of Polentina with sliced bananas, warm maple syrup and melted butter. It is so very good. I sat down with my comforting bowl of Polentina, a cup of Mint Green Tea, and watched "The Other Boleyn Girl" all before noon. I was so proud of myself for getting back on track. And then....well let's just say the comforting bowl of Polentina was a little too comforting. So comforting in fact, I ended up falling asleep until 4 in the afternoon. :)

All of this leads me back to my cheating. I woke up from my nap, and realized the motivation I had took a nap with me. But unlike me, my motivation did not wake back up. At that point, I realized this just isn't my weekend for being productive and I said "Yeah, I'm not cooking spoon bread or tortilla soup tonight". And then I decided to cheat. I pulled out one of my old standby Taste of Home recipes, Black Bean Sausage Chili. It's quick and easy to make. Oh, and most importantly, it's freaking delicious. And since I did cook something, it made me feel less like a slacker. To make it, cook Italian sausage with a few cloves of garlic. Then mix in chopped green pepper and onions and cook for a few more minutes. Next pour chili powder, diced tomatoes, black beans, corn, tomato paste and sauce and a handful of dried herbs (no dicing fresh herbs for me tonight!) and let it all simmer for 30 minutes. Before serving the chili, top it with shredded cheddar cheese. If you ever need a meal and are short on time or motivation to cook, this is the recipe for you. So there you have it. I guess since I did make something from my Williams-Sonoma cookbook, it's not truly cheating. I just didn't accomplish all I wanted to accomplish. But I will say, the Black Bean Sausage Chili isn't too bad of a back-up plan. Quite honestly, cheating has never tasted (or looked) so good before. ;)

Polentina with Bananas and Maple Syrup

Black Bean Sausage Chili

Seared Tuna with Italian Herb Sauce and Haricots Verts with Shallot & Lemon

Recipe: Seared Tuna with Italian Herb Sauce and Haricots Verts with Shallot & Lemon

I didn't just cook for 1 tonight! Yay! My friend Sarah is in town for work and is staying with me. So I got to have another guinea pig for my experiment. And Sarah is engaged to Terraun, my other resident guinea pig. So now, being my guinea pig is a family affair. And since I was sharing my adventure, I invited my friend Henry over also. I love cooking for other people, especially when they like the results. Cooking for yourself is lonely sometimes. And after 4 days of Chicken Pot Pie, no matter how good it is...it gets a little monotonous. So I was very excited to be able to share my adventure with my friends. This was another very fancy, stylistic meal. And another one to add to my dinner party portfolio. This one actually looks fancier than the pork chops and twice-baked potatoes meal. It wasn't quite as simple as that meal, but by no means was it stressful to prepare. Now, have you wondered what Haricots Verts are yet? When it popped up randomly, and I saw what the recipe was, I was thinking, "What the heck is this? What odd vegetable has Williams-Sonoma come up with now?". Being the inquisitive person that I am, and being very afraid I wouldn't find these Haricots Verts anywhere in the Mid-Ohio Valley area, I googl'd them. And yeah...they're green beans. :) So apparently the French term for green beans is Haricots Verts. Ha! That sounds so much more fancy than green beans. So from this moment on, I shall call green beans Haricots Verts. Or HV's, which is what Sarah and I ended up calling them by the end of the night. Verts is also an acceptable term.

So for these two recipes to have come up randomly, they complemented each other very well. I started by making the Italian Herb Sauce because it needed to sit for an hour so the flavors could meld. And man did it have a lot of flavors in it to meld. I put an anchovy fillet, a minced garlic clove, Italian parsley leaves, fresh mint leaves, capers, dijon mustard, and red wine vinegar into a food processor and pureed it all until it was smooth. I was somewhat nervous with the anchovy at first. Although I've never had anchovies, it just seems they aren't a very well liked food. While I was shopping for food today, I told Sarah I would be home after I found my anchovies, and she also took pause for a second. I think when people hear the word anchovy, they immediately get grossed out. It's like one of the red-headed stepchildren of the food family. But in the essence of my adventure, I shall try all foods, the loved and unloved alike. And Sarah was happy to commit as well. Turns out, we had nothing to worry about. All of the flavors were pureed together so well there's no chance we would've tasted the anchovy anyway. So while the sauce was in the fridge melding, I started working on the HV's. I boiled the HV's for about 6 minutes, and then put them in ice to stop the cooking so they stayed crisp. I sauteed shallots for a couple of minutes and then added the HV's and continued sautéing them. Then at the end I added lemon zest and sauteed for 30 more seconds. I added chopped parsley, salt, and pepper to season. And this dish was complete. I knew it was good well before the meal was ready to serve because Henry kept sneaking over and stealing pieces of HV's. In fact, I almost had to ban him from the kitchen. I'd never think to put lemon zest on HV's, but it gives it a really fresh taste. Hmm, I wonder what other vegetables would also benefit from lemon zest? Brussels Sprouts, perhaps??? :) To sear the tuna, I just cooked the steaks on high heat for 90 seconds on each side. Then, after asking my guests if they wanted rare, medium rare, or medium tuna steaks, I cooked each side for 60 seconds longer for medium. Actually, I think they were more medium-well, but they were still really good. In fact, this was an awesome meal. It was fancy and healthy and easy to make. And Sarah and Henry both loved it. Yay! In fact, in addition to my usual picture to show how the meal turned out, I have the "5 minutes after the meal was served" pictures of Sarah and Henry's plates. Needless to say, they devoured this meal. A definite sign of a successful experiment. :) So while I didn't have much left over from this meal, seeing my friends enjoy it was a much more fulfilling reward than eating HV's for the next 3 days.

The final masterpiece

Sarah's plate before it was devoured

Henry's plate, 5 minutes later....

Sarah's plate, 5 minutes later...

Pork Chops with Apple & Onion and Twice-Baked Potatoes

Recipe: Pork Chops with Apple & Onion and Twice-Baked Potatoes

Finally! After exploding potatoes, a badly managed weekend, and being incapacitated by a bad toothache last Wednesday, I finally made my twice-baked potatoes! Fourth times the charm, eh? I have to say, the recipe was worth the wait. Both of them were. When one day I am living in a new area and have all kinds of wonderful dinner parties for my friends, this meal will definitely be on the menu. And it only took me 2 hours to cook both dishes. Since the potatoes had to bake for one hour, I'd say I didn't do too bad at all with time management this time. Sometimes when I cook, I like to listen to Inspirational music, especially Hillsong, to get me in the mood. But not this time. I went all the way random on the music playlist. I had everything from Kanye West to AC/DC to Stevie Wonder to Santana to 2Pac bumping Saturday night. Music is my other "Happy Place". I love to escape into the beats of a track or find something I can connect to in the lyrics of a song. As strange as it sounds, I think music was my first best friend. As a kid, when I really couldn't verbalize what I was thinking or feeling, music did it for me. And for some reason, with the combination of my fully random music library going and finally being able to cook a meal I've been attempting to make for 2 weeks, I was in a zone.

While my potatoes were baking, I snipped the stems off my spinach leaves, minced my shallots, and shredded my cheese for the potatoes. Then since I still had time, and I was on my time management game, I sliced the yellow onion and the green apple for my pork chops. I even had time to make the rub for the pork chops. Now, I've always known that sage is the magic seasoning for turkey because it brings out a good flavor in the turkey. But I never knew it was the same for pork also. For my rub, I took sage, salt, and pepper and rubbed them over my 4 pork chops. I had to let them stand at room temperature in the rub, so I let the pork chops do that while I worked with the twice-baked potatoes. Actually, by the time I finished fixing the rub, my potatoes were done baking so I went right from prepping the pork chops to working on my potatoes. I'm telling you, I was time management queen. And yes, I actually pulled 4 whole, intact potatoes from the oven. Of course, if you could have seen the way I pierced those poor potatoes before I put them in. :) Let's just say, it's a good thing there's no such thing as protective services for vegetables. I think I would've been taken in for domestic abuse by way of stabbing. To make my filling, I sautéed the shallots in butter and garlic and then added the spinach. I was skeptical when adding the spinach at first. I used two bunches of spinach leaves, which is a lot of green leaves. At first I was somewhat concerned I had misinterpreted what 2 bunches really meant. But the leaves wilted to about 1/4 its original volume by the time it was all said and done, so I felt much better. Next, I scooped out the potato flesh from the shells, mashed more butter, sour cream and salt and pepper in, and mixed the mashed potatoes with the spinach mix. This entire mixture was loaded back into the empty shells, and back into the oven the potatoes went for 20 minutes. A very tasty and fancy dish, that is a piece of cake to make. Of course, that is if you can make sure your potatoes don't explode in the beginning. :) Now, while my potatoes were baking a second time, I switched back to my pork chops. The technique for this dish was also pretty simple. I just seared the pork chops on both sides until they were brown and not pink on the inside. Then I took the chops out of the pan, and added the onions and apples to the pan and sautéed them in the pan drippings. After about 5 minutes, I deglazed the pan with Chardonnay, and viola! The pork chops were complete. And I have to say, apples and pork chops together is definitely a keeper on the list of things I'll be eating again and again. They were sooooo good.

Sometimes things seem much more complicated than the really are. If I were to look at the picture of my dish, I would think it took a lot of effort to cook this meal. But this meal offers style, without the stress. And that gets a two thumbs up from me. Of course, when I serve it to my dinner guests, they don't have to know it's a no-stress dish. They can all think I worked for hours to prepare a stylistic and tasty dish for them all. Of course, that means I'll have to invite people that don't read my blog. But that's just a minor detail...

Chocolate Chip & Pecan Cookies

Recipe: Chocolate Chip & Pecan Cookies

I had this great menu planned out to cook this weekend. I was going to remake (or make for the first time) my Twice-Baked Potatoes, Pork Chops, and for dessert Chocolate Chip & Pecan cookies. But once again, my Time Management curse strikes again! Somehow with not much to do all weekend, my entire weekend flew by and I'm not sure how. And I only completed 33% of what I wanted to accomplish. Dang life and how quickly things go by. :) No complaints, I did good stuff this weekend. I actually de-cluttered my house and unpacked from my recent trip out of town (which is why I didn't cook last weekend). I went to the beauty salon (always a good thing). I did an impromptu bowling outing with some of my work friends. And I had an awesome workout with my trainer. Earlier this month, I started working out with a trainer. And I have to say, I'm liking the results. I could say, I'm liking the way my arms and legs are starting to tone up, or how I'm seeing my waistline slimming down. But seriously, my favorite result so far has been...my bowling score. Bowling for me usually results in a lot of gutter balls until I drink about 2 or 3 beers. Then I can at least hit 6 of the 10 pins. But typically, I don't often break 75 points in a game. But wouldn't you know, I broke 100 twice last night. Yay! I think the muscle I'm building helped me throw a more controlled ball. Now, none of this has to do with cooking, but it does make me happy. And since the blog is not just about my cooking in my happy place, but my journey to finding more happy places, there ya go. My journey is going to find me one buff, tough cooking machine before it's all said and done.

But back to my cooking adventure. After I worked out on Sunday, I went to the store to get groceries. By the time I got home, it was 3:30. I'm thinking, not so bad. I should be able to do 3 recipes in 5ish hours. What was I thinking??? I thought I'd do the cookies first so I could bake them and get them out the way. Then I'd have the oven free for the baked potatoes and I could prep the rest of the meals while the potatoes were baking (and hopefully not exploding). But my first mishap was when I realized I didn't have Vanilla Extract. I always check before I go to the store, and I swore I had Extract. So...back to the store I went, which lost me 30 more minutes. I finally got in a groove though. But the groove was a slow moving one, as usual. One of the things I liked about this cookie recipe, was that I ground the pecans in with my flour, baking soda, and salt. I also put bigger pieces of chopped pecans in with the cookie dough at the end, but grounding them into the flour mixture was a new one. I'm happy with the way my cookies turned out. And they looked just like the cookbook! Usually the picture in the book tends to vary some from my final production. But my cookies looked exactly like the cookbook. I had enough of the cookie dough before they finished cooking to know they were good. Eating cookie dough is my favorite part of baking cookies. I wish I could just make cookies to just eat the dough. But I don't know how healthy that would be. Between all of the cookie dough and the cookies I ate, I think I undid every second of my workout today. But man were they good. Oh and what did the rest of my cooking adventure in for the night was when I got on the phone with my friend Terraun. I actually got on the phone while making my cookies, but while I waited for them to bake we kept talking and reviewing the most recent events of Pop Culture. And a 20 minute conversation turned into 90 minutes. And next thing you know...it was 7:00. And I decided to punt on the potatoes and the pork chops. At least I got my cookies done. :) And they are really good. Maybe I should be nice and take some to work tomorrow. Or maybe, I'll savor them all for myself. Then again, I've already undone one day of working out. Not sure I really want to undo the last month. But then again....

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.

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 2^nd round of pancakes.Although I didn’t turn the heat up, they cooked faster than the 1^st 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 2^nd 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 3^rd 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.

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 7^th 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