Dan and Claire's Cooking Disaster Index

Cullen Skink

2012-01-22T21:18:00.000-06:00

We got the recipe at Doune Castle. I made some modifications, and it worked!

Ingredients

about 8oz mashed potatoes
1.5 leeks (you could reasonably use one), chopped
pint of 2% milk
about 1lb cod or haddock (we used cod)
salt
pepper
bay leaf
some olive oil

In a soup pot, heat olive oil. Add the leeks and cook until they're just getting tender - 8 minutes or so. Add the milk, bay leaf, and cod. Heat to boiling, then reduce to a simmer until the fish is cooked through. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, remove the fish, about half the leeks, and the bay leaf. Add the mashed potatoes and blend what remains until smooth. Flake the fish apart and re-add that and the leeks to the pot. Salt and pepper to taste (takes a LOT of salt because of the potato - don't be afraid of seasoning.)

Thoughts: This was pretty great. It's basically vichyssoise, except with cod in it. In the future, I would probably do this SLIGHTLY differently. I might cook most of the stuff in water rather than milk, because the milk tends to separate (though blending with the potato helps this). I would want chunks of potato, too. I'm not sure exactly when I would add this. Otherwise, pretty awesome. Everyone kept saying they liked it and I do not THINK they were lying to me.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Boeuf Bourguignon

2012-01-11T22:40:00.001-06:00

SACRÉ BLEU.

Ingredients

2lbs. beef shoulder, cut into 1.5" pieces
4 onions, thinly sliced into rainbows
olive oil
2tbsp flour
1c red Burgundy wine
6 carrots, cut into 1" pieces
1 clove garlic
a bouquet garni (a bunch of parsley and thyme tied together)
.5tsp thyme
3 bay leaves
black pepper
salt
chopped parsley

In a large Dutch oven, heat some oil to nearly smoking. Salt and pepper the beef. Working in batches, sear the pieces of beef until you get a nice brown caramelized sear. You want to work in batches, because if you crowd the pan, you won't be able to get the sear you need.

Anyway, remove the beef and add all the onions. Turn heat to medium-high and cook until they're translucent and wilted. Add the flour and cook another couple minutes. Add the wine and deglaze, then add the carrots, garlic, bouquet garni, thyme, and bay leaves. Add water to cover everything by a centimeter or so. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring frequently, then reduce to a low simmer for two hours, checking every 15-20 minutes to scrape up the bottom and make sure nothing is sticking. You may have to add water in the middle if it's cooking down too fast - it's a stew, after all. When it's done, adjust the salt. Serve over crushed boiled potatoes, and top with chopped parsley.

Thoughts: We actually served over some roughly smashed yukon gold potatoes with rosemary and wilted greens. This was pretty fantastic. I don't think I'd do anything differently. Oh yeah - we took the carrots out half-way through when Claire was afraid that they would get too soft. We added them back in at the end.

Claire says now that she thinks she liked the idea, but she also wants to try other recipes. WHATEVER.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Port Caviar

2012-01-11T10:49:00.000-06:00

It was a test of molecular gastronomy.
Ingredients

3/8c Port
1/8c Sugar
1tsp agar agar and sugar mixture (not sure what % agar agar)
oil

Pour some oil into a tall glass - you are looking to have about 4" of oil in the glass. Put the glass into the freezer for 30 minutes.

Now, in a saucepan, combine everything else. Bring the port to a boil, then turn off the heat and let it sit for a few minutes. Take the glass out of the freezer, and pour droplets of the port mixture into the glass. They should form little 'caviar' balls and collect at the bottom of the vessel. Pour the oil and port caviar through a little sieve, and wash off the collected caviar in cold water. Serve.

Thoughts: This isn't quite how it worked out for us. It could have to do with the unknown concentration of agar agar, but I was unable to get the port reduction to adhere properly. I dropped it into the oil - fine - and it stayed apart, but it was very messy. I was using an eye-dropper, but I still couldn't get neat spheres because of the weird texture of the sauce. Then when I rinsed off the caviar, they just all melted together into one big sticky mass. I'm not sure I'm going to try this one again.

Disaster Index: 9/10 - it doesn't get 10/10 because I was still able to melt the sauce and use it as a (way too sticky) sauce for blintzes.

Cheese Blintzes

2012-01-11T10:17:00.000-06:00

Kind of like crepes, but, you know, Lithuanian.

Ingredients

Blintz Batter

2 eggs
1c water
1/2tsp salt
1/2c flour

Filling

8oz of nonfat, small-curd, unsalted cottage cheese
2tbsp sugar (or more)
1/2tsp vanilla

This recipe is kind of ridiculous(ly easy). Basically, mix together the batter ingredients. Set aside. Mix together the filling ingredients. Set aside. In a nonstick pan (or on a griddle) on medium heat, pour out some batter. Tilt the pan around to make a blintz, um, wrapper? You probably need about 7" diameter. It DOES NOT MATTER if the edges look crazy or if it's not round. Anyway, when it's done on one side (and not until then), remove from the heat and put on a plate. Put about 2tbsp of filling in the middle of the blintz, then fold it like a burrito (i.e., fold in half toward you, then fold the sides in, then roll it up along the remaining edge). When you're done with all of them, serve (hot or cold) with jam or sour cream... or maple syrup, or whatever.

Thoughts: The filling we made had a very delicate flavor. Next time, I think we'll taste the filling a few times and try to adjust the seasoning - more salt may be indicated, and possibly more sugar. One could also add fruit to the filling - blueberries are obvious.

Disaster Index: 2/10 - the only bad part was that the filling wasn't quite perfect. Otherwise, this is a potential 1/10 recipe.

Sweet Potato Pie

2012-01-11T10:08:00.000-06:00

I guess we didn't blog this. I have this habit of keeping recipe tabs open until they get blogged, and lo and behold this has been open for more than a month. We made this to use up our farmers market sweet potatoes before we went out of town. Results were actually pretty awesome, and I don't think this is actually that bad for you?

Ingredients

2 medium sweet potatoes
1/2 stick butter
3/4c sugar
3/4c milk
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2tsp cinnamon
1/4tsp nutmeg
1/4tsp salt
1 tbsp dark rum (maybe more?)
1 tbsp flour
9" pie shell (we used store-bought pre-made. It was fine.)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook the sweet potatoes until tender. We peeled and par-boiled them, but when that failed to get them cooked all the way through, we microwaved them until they were very tender. When they are very tender, mash with the remaining ingredients (maybe want to add the sugar and milk first to cool the potatoes a bit - you don't want the eggs to cook when you add them, so make sure the potatoes are sufficiently cool before you do.)

Raise the oven temp to 400. Fill the pie shell and place on a shallow baking dish. Pop it in the oven for 40 minutes Remove and let cool before serving.

Thoughts: We made two pies, actually, because our potatoes were enormous. One of the pies we baked for 40 minutes and the other was more like 60, I think. Either way, the one we baked longer LOOKED like it was overcooked - it was much darker, and we were afraid we had ruined the texture - but it was actually much better. I guess it's very hard to overcook a sweet potato pie, and cooking the thing longer caused a lot of the sugars to caramelize, which gave it a much better flavor. The texture was better, too. So I would say 60 minutes or more may be more the way to go - just start checking on the pie after 40.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - even when we messed it up, we didn't.

Turkey Gumbo

2011-11-29T07:50:00.001-06:00

After Thanksgiving, we went to Jeff's house and had amazing leftover turkey gumbo. Pat & Eleanor had given us the turkey carcass from our own feast, so Claire and I were inspired to try it. The recipe we made was ENORMOUS but good. You will almost CERTAINLY want to alter the amount of stuff in this.

Ingredients

1/2c oil or leftover bacon grease or something similar
1/2c all purpose flour
2 large onions, chopped
2 red bell peppers, seeded, chopped
4 celery ribs, chopped
8 cloves worth of garlic
1 tsp cayenne
1/4c white vermouth
1 tbsp dried thyme
4 bay leaves
1 28-ounce cans diced tomatoes with juice
4-6ish cups turkey stock with turkey
1 package (?) andouille sausage (I think about 1 lb), cut into 1/2" slices
1 16-ounce packages sliced frozen okra
1 lb peeled (tail off) de-veined shrimp.
Salt to taste
Gumbo filé to taste

So, it's important to note before you start that we made the turkey stock as follows: chop up the turkey carcass and place in a slow-cooker. Cover with water, and leave for about 24 hours. Fish out any bones. DONE.

In a huge pot, add the grease / oil. Heat until quite hot, then add the flour. Stir around this paste, cooking over medium heat, for about 5 minutes. If you use oil, at least, it's supposed to turn reddish-brown through this process. Ours started out that color, so who knows. Anyway, add the onions, peppers, and celery. Cook until everything is quite soft - about 20 minutes. Then add the garlic and cayenne and cook another couple minutes. Then add the vermouth, thyme, and bay leaves. Turn to high heat and cook for a minute, before you add the tomato, stock, and sausage. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes, then add the okra and simmer for another 10 minutes. Finally add the shrimp and cook until just fully opaque (3-5 minutes). Salt to taste (ours needed quite a lot).

Serve.

Thoughts: Great flavor. Claire and I agree that we could have used more turkey - we could have had more, but we ate a lot of the turkey before we tried this. I think the amount of shrimp and sausage was good, though. We agree that the flavor was great.

Disaster Index: 1/10, but it made so much we'll be eating it for like 2 weeks.

Tres Leches Bread Pudding

2011-11-26T22:19:00.001-06:00

This recipe requires you to do a little math. I recommend you check out the original bread pudding recipe I posted here to get an idea of how bread pudding works. I tweaked the bake time for this. The main difference is that I replaced some milk with evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk.

Ingredients

Stale bread, torn or cut into smallish (1" or 1.5" pieces) - bagels work, too
Eggs
Sweetened Condensed Milk
Evaporated Milk
Whole Milk
Vanilla
Sugar
salt

Preheat oven to 375. Add bread into a casserole pan. Now you have to make the custard. You need the following ratios: 4oz dairy (which is 1/2c milk), 1 egg, .5tsp vanilla, 2tsp sugar. So, for example, one can of sweetened condensed milk is about 15oz. Evaporated milk comes in 5oz cans. That's 20oz total. Add another 1/2c milk, and you have 24oz., so you add 6 eggs, 4tbsp sugar, 3tsp vanilla. Add a pinch of salt, too. If this math is too hard, just do:

1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 can evaporated
1/2c milk
6 eggs
4tbsp sugar
3tsp vanilla
1/2tsp salt

Anyway, whisk those ingredients together thoroughly and pour over the bread. You want it to be pretty well soaked. Here's the secret. Let it sit for 10 minutes, then pack down the bread with a spatula or something similar. Let it go another 5 minutes or so and pack down again. You want the bread packed quite densely and quite soaked in custard.

Cover the pan in tin foil. Bake for 30 minutes, then take the foil off and bake for another 15 minutes. Make sure it's set (you want it to look slightly damp, but not "wet" - it's a custard, so it shouldn't be completely dry.) Let sit 10 minutes.

While that's baking, you can make the brandy sauce. You can kind of add your own flavors to this, too. Do what seems right. Rum might be good.

1c sugar
2/3c water
1/3c brandy
2tbsp grand marnier
vanilla bean or cinnamon stick, if you have it (or similar)

To a pan, add 1c sugar and about 2/3c water and vanilla / cinnamon (if using). Boil over medium heat until sugar is dissolved and sauce is slightly thickened, about 5 or 10 minutes? Then take it off the heat and add the brandy and grand marnier.

When the bread pudding is done sitting for 10 minutes, poke holes in it with a chopstick or fork or something. Pour the brandy sauce over the top and serve with whipped cream.

Thoughts: I think I've done something really smart here. Judging by the reaction, this was something of a hit. I only regret that when I put the bread pudding together, I didn't poke holes in the bread pudding and pour the sauce over - I more or less put it on individual servings. I think that in the future I want the brandy sauce to really soak into the dessert. Also, I had so much bread that I needed a LOT of whole milk. I used only 1 can of the sweetened condensed milk and 1 can of evaporated milk, but I could have doubled that and used less whole milk - this would have given it a stronger "tres leches" flavor. But I think we have a winner.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies

2011-11-22T14:29:00.001-06:00

When we made this, we added the sugar too early, and it took FOREVER to whip the egg whites. The instructions include the CORRECT method.

Ingredients

4 egg whites (which is a scant 1/2 cup) (Claire hates it when I call it albumin, but really it's hilarious)
1/2tsp salt
1/4tsp cream of tartar
2tsp vanilla
1c superfine sugar
12oz good chocolate chips
1/2c nuts optional (we didn't use 'em)

Preheat the oven to 200*, if you think that kind of thing is important.

In a bowl, combine the egg whites, salt, cream of tartar, and vanilla, and beat until it forms soft peaks. Then add the sugar and beat until it forms stiff peaks. Our problem was that we misinterpreted what "soft peaks" means, so we under-whipped before we added the sugar.

Anyway, roughly chop the chocolate chips (and nuts, if using), and fold those in.

Spoon the "batter" onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet (about 1 to 1.5tbsp per cookie) and bake (yes, at 200*) for about 2 hours, until "lightly golden".

Thoughts: For me, the flavor of these cookies was fantastic, and the texture was amazing. If you cook them at 300 for 25 minutes, they're supposed to be crispy and hollow, but I wanted them to be more ethereal. Though it does make one wonder - could I bake them hollow and then pipe something into them? Maybe worth investigating. I would use a bit less sugar next time - maybe as little as half a cup? Otherwise, I think this was very successful. Claire thinks they're weird. SHE'S THE WEIRD ONE.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Gelato

2011-11-22T12:03:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure, maybe we've posted other gelato recipes here before, but this one worked very well, so I'm just going to go ahead and post it.

Ingredients
3c whole milk
3/4c sugar
6 egg yolks
add-ins

Combine 1.5c milk, the sugar, and the egg yolks in a medium-sized sauce pan. Whisk together and cook over low heat until it coats the back of a metal spoon, being careful not to cook the egg. When it's done, take it off the heat and add the rest of the milk (to cool it down rapidly so it halts the cooking). Pour through a fine-mesh sieve (just to be on the safe side). Stir in any add-ins you might have. We had some chocolates that had bloomed a while back, and we chopped them up and stirred them in. You can also add citrus zest, vanilla, cinnamon, whatever. Cover and chill for at least 4 hours. Process in an ice cream machine, then freeze. Makes about a quart of ice cream.

Thoughts: Because this recipe uses whole milk instead of half-and-half or cream, it's a little more solid at freezer temperatures, meaning that you have to let it thaw a minute before you can really serve it. However this comes with the benefit that the flavors really come through. The high fat content of half-and-half or cream tends to mute the flavors you add. Whole milk doesn't have that problem. I would use this recipe again. Other thoughts: maybe in the future I would consider the use of a double-boiler to make the custard base? Just a thought.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Peanut Sauce

2011-11-10T17:00:00.001-06:00

I guess I should blog my peanut sauce recipe because it's pretty great. I've been making it forever based loosely on what I read on the internet and based on a type my mother makes. It's a lot of tasting and adjusting seasonings, though, so the amounts here aren't exact.

Ingredients

1/2c peanut butter
3tbsp soy sauce
1tbsp black vinegar
.5 to 1tsp sriracha
1tbsp brown sugar
1c water
1.5tsp ginger (minced or ground. If you use dried, go for more like .5tsp)
1tbsp minced garlic

In a small sauce pan, add the peanut butter and water and cook over medium heat. Whisk together until it forms a sauce. You may need more water - you're looking for something SLIGHTLY thin, because it will cook down. It does an interesting thing where it thickens a lot more than you think it will once the peanut butter is melted.

Once it forms a sauce of the desired consistency, add all the other ingredients, then cook until it reaches the desired thickness. Taste frequently, and adjust the vinegar, soy sauce, and brown sugar as needed. Be careful with the sriracha - it's not that it's so spicy, it's just that a little goes a long way toward overpowering the flavors of the peanut sauce.

Thoughts: We made this recently to put on broccoli, but it goes well on just about anything. Add scallions or cilantro to taste.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Poached Pears

2011-11-10T16:55:00.001-06:00

Okay, I guess I have to blog this.
Ingredients

2 firm ripe bosc pears
1/4c tawny port
3c water
1/4c sugar
1tbsp lemon juice
2-4 slices of orange
whipped cream or ice cream or something?

In a medium-sized saucepan, set the water to boil. In the mean time, peel and quarter the bosc pears, then cut out the stem & seed parts. To the water on the stove, add the port, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then add the pears. Take the rounds of orange and place on top of the pears to hold them under the poaching liquid. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until the pears are suitably tender.

Take the pears and orange out with a slotted spoon and set aside. Now bring the liquid to a boil and cook down to make a sauce. This took us another 20 minutes or so. RIGHT before it's done, it foams up because it starts to exceed the boiling point of water, I think. This is a sign that most of the water has evaporated and you have something more akin to caramel. Anyway, take it off the stove. Pour over the pears (or over individual servings). Serve with whipped cream or ice cream or whatever.

Thoughts: I would do this again exactly the same way.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Split Pea and Red Lentil Soup

2011-10-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

This one was a little odd as recipes go. We borrowed some concepts from a couple recipes. But this turned out awesome.
Ingredients

1c split peas
1c red lentils
3 slices bacon, chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
6c chicken stock
1c water
2tsp smoked spanish paprika
1 bay leaf
1.5-2tbsp tomato paste
1/3c raisins
yogurt / blue cheese (optional)

Cook the bacon in the bottom of a heavy soup pan. When it's crispy, remove the bacon and set aside to drain. Pour off the grease if there's too much and add the onions and the bay leaf. Cook until the onions are tender, about 5 minutes. Then add the split peas and lentils, chicken stock, water, and paprika. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce to simmer for 30 minutes. Around 25 minutes, check on it that it isn't sticking (it will tend to do this). When you're done, stir it really well (our stuck a little bit, but some stirring loosed the soup stuck to the bottom of the pot). Add the tomato paste and the raisins, and cook at low heat for another minute or so. Serve with crumbled bacon and yogurt / blue cheese.

Thoughts: We eyeballed the raisin amount, but I think that it could have used more raisins. Start with 1/3 cup and add more as necessary. This was an awesome recipe, if somewhat unusual. Would definitely make again.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Char Siu Bao

2011-09-30T08:07:00.001-05:00

This started as a pretty basic bao zi recipe, but we kind of went overboard with the filling.
Ingredients

Filling

2lbs pork shoulder
soy sauce
sriracha
black vinegar
ginger
garlic
brown sugar
scallions
salt and pepper to taste

Dough

1tbsp yeast
4c flour
1c water
2tbsp sugar
1tsp salt
1tsp baking powder

So for the filling, you place the pork shoulder in a crock pot. Add some of all the other ingredients except scallions and salt until it looks right. You just need something for the meat to marinate in that will give it some flavor, though most of that actually comes later. Anyway, turn the crock pot on low and cook for 10-12 hours (overnight).

When you come back to it, use a slotted spoon / tongs to fish out all the pork shoulder (it should be falling apart at this point) into a bowl. Place that bowl in the fridge. Place all the remaining liquid into another bowl (we use a pyrex liquid measuring cup, actually), and place that bowl in the fridge. When it's cooled, all the fat should congeal on the top, so you can scoop it off with a spoon (for later use?).

Put the sauce sans fat in a sauce pan and proceed to cook down, stirring occasionally, until reduced by about 50-75%. Once reduced, adjust the salt. Now pour the sauce over the pork that's in the fridge. Add chopped scallions (about 3 big ones, or to taste), and toss the filling. It could be done at this point if you want OR you can chop the filling into little centimeter chunks if you prefer. Either way is fine.

Now you make the dough. Combine all the ingredients and stir together, then turn out onto a lightly floured counter and knead for 5 minutes (or just do it all in a kitchenaid / cuisinart). Oil the dough lightly (we used sesame oil) in the bowl, cover, and let rise for 2-3 hours. When rise is complete, divide dough in half. Take each half and roll / drag it into a 14-18" log. Using a knife, divide the log into 8 pieces. flatten each piece into a 4-5" diameter circle. Put about 2tbsp of the meat filling into the dough and fold up the sides, clasping them at the top. This is important: place each bao zi on an individual square of waxed paper or parchment paper (or cabbage leaf or SOMETHING) as you finish them.

Repeat this exercise with the other half of the dough. If you have leftover filling, bonus - use it in an omelette or something. Anyway, set the bao zi to rise for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, set up your steamer, either a steamer basket or a rice cooker with steaming tray or whatever you use. We actually use both. Once risen, steam bao zi for about 15 minutes (you can go 20 and it doesn't hurt 'em, though). Enjoy!

Thoughts:

Dan: "I think we've done something really smart here."
Claire: "A+++. Would eat again."

Disaster Index: 1/10

Homemade Sauerkraut

2011-09-28T07:57:00.002-05:00

Whoo! You know you want it.

Ingredients

some green cabbage
some salt
some water
jars

There's not much to this recipe. Slice as much cabbage as will fit in your jars/containers. Into an empty jar, put in one handful of cabbage, followed by one tsp kosher salt, followed by one handful cabbage, etc. until the jar is full. Fill it with water. Make sure that the cabbage is all beneath the water's surface.
Seal jars and keep on counter (or in a cabinet, away from the light) for 1.5 weeks. Then put in the fridge. Then eat.
You can add 1tsp of caraway seeds to make "Bavarian-style" sauerkraut. We haven't tried ours yet.

Thoughts: Well, looking over the original recipe that we took this from, I noticed that we may not have followed it QUITE right. I think you're supposed to let the kraut ferment for much longer than we did (one recipe says 5-6 weeks! Not 1.5 weeks!). But our stuff is great and salty and crunchy and it goes awesome on reubens. But it might not be real sauerkraut? It might just be pickled cabbage right now. So we're going to try again and actually follow the recipe and see if it yields more proper-looking sauerkraut. Stay tuned. But this stuff is delicious on its own. I just eat it out of the jar. NOM NOM KRAUT.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Cashew Brittle

2011-09-25T21:49:00.002-05:00

We make it look easy.
Ingredients

1/2c granulated sugar
1/4c light corn syrup
1/8c water
1/8tsp salt
1/2c cashews, broken up
1/2tsp baking soda
1tbsp butter

BE SURE TO MEASURE EVERYTHING OUT AHEAD OF TIME and have it ready to go. A lot of the steps here have to be done pretty quickly - it's not a problem, but if you are busy measuring things out, you'll be too slow. Also have a pan with parchment paper waiting nearby before you start.

To a small saucepan, add the sugar, corn syrup, water, and salt. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. Once sugar is dissolved (or the mixture starts to get bubbly), add the cashews. Continue stirring until the mixture reaches 300 degrees (the hard crack stage). We used a digital thermometer - a candy thermometer is best, though.

When it reaches that hot, add the butter and baking soda (we had them both sitting in a measuring cup by the side and just dumped them in all at once) and stir vigorously until the butter is melted. Spread mixture across the parchment paper (with a spatula) as best you can. Let it cool, then break into pieces.

Thoughts: This was so easy - we were both surprised. Claire says the cashew flavor wasn't very strong, and that we should break up the cashews into smaller pieces. Maybe we can sprinkle them with salt? Claire suggests we could sprinkle the top when we spread it out. Or just add more at the beginning, I guess.

A lot of recipes say not to stir vigorously the whole way through - why didn't ours seize up?

Disaster Index: 1/10

Thousand Island Dressing

2011-09-25T13:04:00.004-05:00

Oh my God we're SO BEHIND but this recipe is easy to blog so I'm doing it. We'll get to the other stuff eventually.

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup ketchup
3 tbsp dill pickle juice (we used the brine from our home-made pickles because it's BETTER THAN STORE-BOUGHT YEAH)
1 hard-boiled, pickled egg, chopped (other recipes just call for a normal hard-boiled egg, but guess what? We had jalapeno pickled eggs in our fridge because we're awesome like that. If you don't have a pickled egg of your own, a normal one will do)
1/2 tsp white onion powder (but 1 tbsp finely grated onion would also work. We just didn't have any)
1/2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper

Mix everything together and refrigerate it. Put it on your reubens.

Thoughts: Easy and good. We might add more spices to it next time. I don't know -- like cumin? Or dried dill? Some recipes call for green olives, which would be AWESOME. We might also chop up some pickles and put them in. The texture of ours was a little thin. How do you thicken it? Hm. Maybe if we substitute chopped pickles for the pickle juice, this would solve our problem. WE'LL REPORT BACK.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Pumpkin Soup with Mole Sauce

2011-09-24T21:58:00.000-05:00

This was kind of made up, but it worked.

Ingredients

Soup

1 small pumpkin, peeled, insides scooped, chopped
1 apple, peeled and chopped
4c chicken stock
pepper
a couple of small, hot peppers, chopped

Mole Sauce

pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin
one onion, chopped
garlic
about 1tbsp dutch processed cocoa
1/4c raisins
1/4tsp cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cayenne, ancho chili powder, oregano, anise seed
2 dried chilies, seeds included
1-2 tomatoes (in our case, actually, about 3tbsp tomato paste)
1c chicken stock
salt to taste
water as necessary
Some honey (optional - I like my mole a little sweeter)
olive oil

First, scoop the seeds out of the pumpkin. Peel and chop the pumpkin. Toss with olive oil and some pepper and roast for about 30 minutes at 350, until soft.

Meanwhile, toast the pumpkin seeds in a pan with some olive oil until lightly toasted. Add onions and saute until translucent. Throw in the garlic and cook until fragrant. Put the onion, garlic, and pumpkin seeds in a blender with all the other ingredients, and blend until mostly smooth. At this point, I put the sauce on the stove and boiled for 15 minutes or so with some extra water, but I don't know if this is necessary? Anyway, press through a sieve into a bowl. Season to taste. DONE WITH MOLE.

The soup is so easy, it hardly counts as cooking. Add the pumpkin, apples, stock, and peppers to a pot. Cook until the apples are soft (about 20 minutes?) and blend (we used an immersion blender). Season to taste.

Serve soup with mole drizzled on top.

Thoughts: The soup was easy, but the mole took a while. Next time I would use almonds instead of pumpkin seeds, since I failed to hull the pumpkin seeds, I guess, and they were very tough. Anyway, the flavor combination worked, which I think we were all a little surprised about, since this was completely made up. But awesome! Claire says "interesting texture on the soup" - it's true, it was pretty thick, but velvety.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Borscht

2011-08-31T18:24:00.000-05:00

Even Claire likes it!
Ingredients

4 beets, cut to matchsticks (ish)
1 russet potato, cubed
2½c green cabbage, thinly sliced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 onion, sliced
5c beef stock
garlic
splash of red wine vinegar
about ¼c chopped fresh dill, optional

Put the onions in a stock pot with some olive oil and saute until translucent. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant. Then add the remaining vegetables. Cook, stirring frequently, for something like 5 minutes. Deglaze with the stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15-25 minutes, until veg are tender. Using an immersion blender, partly blend the soup (to taste). add the dill and splash of vinegar. Serve with optional plain yogurt or sour cream.

Thoughts: This was our first successful attempt to make borscht. It was great! Even Claire liked it, and she doesn't like beets. Future versions might include trying to get a meatier flavor from the stock. Not sure about this yet. Hm.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Ginger Beer

2011-08-31T18:15:00.000-05:00

OK, fine, I'll post something.

I made ginger beer. Ingredients include:

about 1" ginger, finely grated
juice of a lime
3oz simple syrup
6oz water
6 more oz cold water
a pinch (like 1/16tsp) yeast

In a saucepan, heat the lime juice, simple syrup, ginger, and 6oz water to boiling. Simmer for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, clean out some vessel to put the ginger beer in. I used empty soda bottles, cleaned with warm, soapy water. When the ginger mixture is done boiling, strain through a fine meshed strainer (or cheesecloth, or paper towel, or coffee filter) into another sterile container. Add the 6oz cold water, then pour into the bottle (when it's no longer hot enough to melt the plastic). Add the yeast. Screw the cap on VERY tightly and shake. Leave on the counter for about 36-48 hours, returning to shake periodically. Be careful, though, because that stuff gets carbonated. When it's carbonated enough, put it in the fridge.

Thoughts: I didn't know you can make your own ginger beer. We have to try this with other stuff, like adding spices to the boiling syrup mixture to impart other interesting flavors. I should probably get glass bottles for a more sterile/professional method of bottling, but it's expensive. The fizz that you get from this method isn't like your standard coca-cola carbonation - the bubbles are much smaller. It has a great texture and flavor.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Piadinas

2011-05-26T10:16:00.000-05:00

Inspired by a post on The Kitchn, but we made some modifications.
Ingredients

2 c flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
about 2tbsp olive oil
water until it holds together right

Mix the dry ingredients. Add oil, then add water and mix until it holds together into a dough. Don't overwork. Let it rest for about 30 minutes. Then divide into two balls and roll very thin (1/8") on a well-floured counter. Put on a hot griddle. Add fillings (I think we did ham, cheese, arugula, maybe other stuff) and serve (as a sandwich or as a wrap)

Thoughts: This was pretty easy. It wasn't anything terribly special, but this would be a pretty good way to make a sort of grilled flatbread/pizza for larger groups on short notice. I think that we could stand to add more herbs into the dough, as well. There are possibilities here.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Tapenade 2

2011-05-26T09:50:00.000-05:00

Ingredients

About 2c pitted black olives
About 2tbsp capers
About 1tsp garlic powder
about 2tsp anchovy paste
2tbsp olive oil
about 1tbsp dried basil
salt and pepper to taste

As you can tell, this is a very scientific recipe. I'm including it because it was slightly different from our previous tapenade, but just as successful. Anyway, just throw everything in a cuisinart and blend with olive oil drizzling in. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Thoughts: This was pretty great. Very successful. I don't have much to say about it.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Biscuits

2011-05-14T11:20:00.002-05:00

Ingredients
This is actually Alton Brown's grandmother's biscuit recipe.

2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp butter
1 cup buttermilk

Directions:
Preheat oven to 450.
In a large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients.
Cut the butter into the dry ingredients and then pinch with your fingers like you would with scones.
Add buttermilk and mix until just combined. Dough should be sticky.
Turn dough out onto a floured surface and fold over onto itself a few times to make sure all the flour etc. is incorporated.
Press into a 1-inch thick round.
Use a 2" biscuit cutter (we used a 2" heart-shaped cookie cutter, which worked ok) and push straight down through the dough. Do not use a glass or a jar or whatever. The cutting surface should be very thin. Otherwise you'll squish the dough, and you don't want that.
Place biscuits on a baking sheet.
Bake until biscuits are tall and light gold on the top, 15 minutes.

Thoughts: These were easy to make and pretty good. We did a half batch and cooked them for 15 minutes and it was too much -- they were dark gold and a little dry. Luckily, the cure for this is to eat them with gravy, which just makes everyone happy.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Black Bean and Espresso Chili

2011-05-14T11:00:00.004-05:00

Ingredients

olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
1 large, dried, hot pepper (we don't know what kind. It was in a bag of miscellaneous dried hot peppers)
1/8 cup instant espresso powder
1 tbsp cayenne powder
1 tbsp ancho chili powder
1/8 cup ground cumin
1/8 cup dried oregano leaves
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
1/6 cup honey
lots of garlic
1lb dried black beans
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup beef stock
1/4 lb ground beef
salt
1 tbsp cinnamon

Do a quick soak on the black beans, and then also let them sit for several hours. You'll see why.
Heat oil in large, thick-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and garlic and cook until onions are tender.
Mix in espresso powder, chili powders, cumin, and oregano. Cook 1 minute.
Add tomatoes, honey, and the dried pepper.
Bring to a simmer, and let cook for 10 minutes.
Add beans, stock, beef, and cinnamon. Bring to a boil over high heat.
Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered until the mixture thickens. Sorry, you'll have to stir constantly. Theoretically, this should take 30 minutes.
Before you eat this, you'll probably need to remove the dried pepper skins. You don't want to eat that.
Eat the rest.

Thoughts: this didn't really go well at all. The worst part was that I guess we didn't soak the black beans ahead of time enough. Like, we soaked them for 8 hours, which is the recommended time, but even after three hours of cooking the chili, they weren't soft. I'm not sure how to prevent this in the future. I guess what we recommended above (a quick soak followed by a normal soak) would be a good place to start. Also, it was just a pain in the ass to cook. If you don't stir it 24/7, it sticks to the bottom of your pan. But you can't really stir it 24/7 because the tomato sauce spits all over you. Seriously, our stove looked like a war zone. Dan thought the flavor was good, but I was just so disappointed by the texture of the beans that I don't even care. Next time, I think we'll try doing it in the slow cooker or something. AND I couldn't really taste the espresso powder, which was supposed to be the most exciting thing about this recipe. Dan says he would make it again with a slow-cooker. I would rather just find a new recipe. I don't know. It's pretty good with cornbread though.

Disaster Index: 4.5/10

Tres Leches

2011-05-06T12:31:00.003-05:00

Ingredients

1 cup flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
5 whole eggs
1 cup sugar, divided into 1/4 and 3/4 cups
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cups milk
1 can evaporated milk
1 can sweetened, condensed milk
1/4 cups heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350.
Grease a 9x13 " baking pan.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in large bowl.
Separate the eggs, and beat the yolks with 3/4 of the cup of sugar until the yolks are pale yellow.
Stir in milk and vanilla. Pour egg mixture over the flour mixture and mix to combine.
Beat egg white on high until soft peaks form. With mixer running, add the remaining 1/4 cup sugar. Whites should be stiff.
Fold egg white mixture into the batter. Be gentle.
Pour into the pan.
Bake for 35-45 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Remove from baking dish and transfer to another dish with a rim/ridge.
Combine condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream together. When the cake is cool, pierce cake with fork all over. Pour the milk mixture slowly over the cake. If you like a wetter tres leches cake, use all the milks. If you like a slightly drier one, reserve 1 cup of the milk.
Allow cake to absorb milks for 30 minutes. Eat.
You should top this with whipped cream, also.

Thoughts: Fucking amazing. That is all.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Fennel and Greens Soup

2011-04-03T17:35:00.004-05:00

Sometimes you just can't have enough soup. That time is all the time.

Ingredients

olive oil
salt and pepper
1 tbsp butter
1 fennel bulb, trimmed and chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 lb mixed leafy greens (kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, collards, whatever)
6 cups stock
oz spinach
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
garnish of dill or fennel

Heat oil and butter and add salt, fennel, onion, and pepper. Cook until the vegetables are slightly browned, 7-8 minutes. Everything should be soft.
Add leafy greens (no spinach yet) and stock to the pot and simmer, uncovered, until greens are tender, about 30 minutes. Stir in the spinach and cook until just wilted (maybe 1 minute).
Puree the soup in your blender or by using a stick blender. Return to heat and add the heavy cream and lemon juice. Heat on low until desired temperature.
Also good with Parmesan cheese.

Thoughts: Delicious, but I can't get enough vegetable soup. This is my favorite style of soup -- cook everything, blend it, return to heat and add dairy. It's a pretty simply formula, and one that yields awesome soup every time. I don't think Dan is nearly as crazy about soup as I am, so he probably wouldn't give this a 1, but it was pretty much a 1. I'll give it a 2 just to prevent arguments.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Spicy Black Bean Soup

2011-03-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

Wow.

Ingredients

.75c dry black beans
4 strips of bacon, chopped finely
1 smallish onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1 clove garlic
1tsp dried oregano
1 bay leaf
1/4tsp thyme
6c chicken stock
.25c cilantro, chopped
2 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 dried chili pepper, MOST of the seeds removed, ground in a mortar & pestle

Cover the black beans with 3 inches of cold water and let sit for about 8 hours. Drain the water and rinse the beans.

In a soup pot, place the bacon and cook until crispy. Then add the onion and pepper and the spices. Cook until the onion is translucent and add the beans, stock, and the chicken thighs. Stir well, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pot. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer for like 2 hours. After one of those hours has elapsed, remove the chicken using tongs or a slotted spoon and shred using two forks, then return them to the soup. After about 2 hours, the beans should be very tender. Add the cilantro. Serve.

Thoughts: Not only was this amazing - one of our best soups yet - it pretty much left the entire floor of our building smelling awesome. The chicken was a last minute innovation designed to use up leftovers before we left town, and shredding it seemed like a really easy way to deal with the stuff being too frozen to cut. Claire declared that all the chicken in our soups should be prepared this way in the future. Anyway, not much can be said about this soup. It was awesome. Maybe next time I'll use 2 chilies.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Mulligatawny Soup

2011-03-15T14:04:00.001-05:00

Ingredients

neutral oil
2 onions, chopped
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
5 cloves of garlic
2 1/2 tbsp garam masala
2 1/2 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp pepper
2 bay leaves
2 c red lentils
8 c chicken stock
2 c chicken, cooked (optional)
1c chopped cilantro (optional)
1 can coconut milk
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1c basmati rice, cooked

At some point while you're making the soup, you can cook the rice: wash 1c of rice, then put it in a pot with 1.25c water. Bring to a boil, then cover and set to very low heat and cook for about 8 minutes. Then turn off the heat and let it sit (covered) for another 10 minutes at least.

To make the soup, heat a little oil in a pot, then add the onions and carrots. When the onions are getting translucent, add the garlic and all the other spices (including the bay leaves) and cook for a minute. Then add the red lentils and toss to coat. Then add the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes. Take it off the heat and add the lemon juice and coconut milk, then blend until smooth (we used a stick blender). Stir in the cooked chicken and cilantro and correct seasoning (we had to add more spices and salt). To serve, put rice in a bowl and pour soup over the rice.

Thoughts: When we first made the recipe, I tasted it before we added the coconut milk and thought that the flavor was fantastic. The coconut milk really muted the spices, so we needed to add a lot more. But it was quite good. It might be nice to only PARTIALLY blend this but leave some of the lentils whole for texture. Even so, this was quite good.

Disaster Index: 1/10

King Cake II

2011-03-15T13:50:00.000-05:00

We didn't have great luck with our last king cake. This is a creative twist on the original idea, and it worked really well.

Ingredients

Dough

.75c milk
2tbsp butter
2.25tsp yeast
.25c sugar
1 egg
.75tsp salt
.25tsp nutmeg
2-3c flour

Filling

.5c brown sugar
1.5tsp cinnamon
.25c flour
.25c raisins
.25c butter, melted

In a pan, bring the milk to a boil, stirring often. Remove from heat and add the butter. In a kitchenaid (or just a big bowl, I guess) add the dry ingredients for the dough along with the egg. Start the mixer and add the milk / butter mixture. Let it knead a lot, then adjust the flour ratio so that you get a SLIGHTLY sticky dough. Form the dough into a ball and coat lightly with oil. Set it in a bowl in a warm place to rise until doubled, about 2 hours.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Get ready for this: mix the filling ingredients together. DONE.

Preheat the oven to 375. When the dough is done rising, roll it out on a well floured surface until it's about 11" x 16" (eyeball it). You want a big rectangle. Spread the filling over it evenly - I needed to use my fingers - then roll it up like you're making cinnamon rolls. Actually, if you're using an almond, this is a great time to hide it. Now place the bread on a cookie sheet (on parchment paper) and connect the ends together to make a big doughnut. Slash 1/2" cuts in the top at 1" intervals (eyeball it again). Bake for 30 minutes. Frost with butter cream frosting. Awesome.

Thoughts: This was great. The whole "cinnamon roll" aspect was awesome. The only bad thing was that it was kind of dry. I think that in the future I would use neutral oil instead of butter and not use any eggs (or just the yolk). However I would definitely make this again. The frosting really saved this from being TOO dry.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Shirred Eggs

2011-03-15T13:35:00.000-05:00

Easy and delicious.

Ingredients

Eggs
Cheese of some kind (we used Chevre)
Salt and Pepper
Milk
Bacon or other meat product, optional
Ramekins

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Put some PAM in a ramekin. Cook bacon (if you're using it) until it's crispy, then chop it up. Put some in the ramekin. Crack one egg into the ramekin. Put in more bacon. Put in another egg and any more bacon. Then add some salt and pepper and put in the oven for about 8-10 minutes, until the edges are looking cooked but the top isn't done. If you're only making one egg, this takes 5-8 minutes.

Take the egg out and add the cheese. The original recipe added about a tablespoon of milk to the top, but we didn't have great luck with this. Put the eggs back in the oven for another 8-10 minutes for two eggs or another 5-8 for one egg, until they're cooked but the yolk is still runny.

Serve with toast.

Thoughts: The original recipe has you add milk in the middle. This worked the first time, but the second time it just left us with watery eggs. It was also tricky getting the timing right so the yolks were still runny, but by the third time we made it we were getting it right. This was pretty great. I will make this regularly.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Couscous with Fennel

2011-03-15T13:28:00.000-05:00

and other vegetables?

Ingredients

1 large fennel bulb, cubed
2c chicken broth
1c water
2c couscous
2x zucchini, chopped
1c grape tomatoes, halved
1/2c raisins
carrots?

In a pan, add oil and the fennel, zucchini, and any other vegetables that you want to have in your couscous. I can't remember what we put in. Once the fennel is tender (about 8 minutes), add the broth, water, and raisins. Bring to a boil, then stir in the couscous. Remove from heat and cover for 10 minutes until the couscous has absorbed the water. Add grape tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste.

Thoughts: We first made this with just the fennel and found it lacking, so we added all the other vegetables and the raisins. I think it turned out really well, though I believe Claire wasn't as fond of it. This has less to do with the quality of the recipe and more to do with her distrust of couscous. This was incredibly easy and really good.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cream of Broccoli and Kale Soup

2011-02-02T09:29:00.000-06:00

Ingredients

2 medium bunches of broccoli, florets removed and cut into smallish pieces
2-3c Kale, roughly chopped
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
1 tsp neutral oil
salt
3 cloves garlic, chopped or minced or smashed
1tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4c dry white wine
1 bay leaf
1c chicken stock
2c vegetable stock
1/2c whole milk

Combine broccoli, kale, and onion with oil and some salt in a soup pot and saute over medium heat for about 8-10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds. Then add in the flour and toss around evenly, cooking for about a minute. Add the wine and bay leaf and cook until the wine is absorbed - about a minute - then add the stock. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove the bay leaf and blend everything together in a blender. Return to the pot and add the whole milk. Correct seasoning. Le voila.

Thoughts: Good flavor, but we agreed that we could have used the soup to be pureed a little smoother. I dunno - it was pretty standard, really. We weren't blown away by this recipe. How should we add more flavor in the future? Anyway, unobjectionable. Just nothing to write home about.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Caesar Salad Dressing

2011-01-30T12:22:00.002-06:00

Ingredients

3/4 tsp jarred garlic (or garlic paste, if you want to be fancy)
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp anchovy paste (or 6 anchovy fillets, minced finely and mashed with a fork)
2 large egg yolks
5 tbsp canola oil
5 tsp olive oil
1/2 cup parmesan

In a large bowl, combine the garlic and lemon juice and let sit for 10 minutes (this takes some of the harshness out of the garlic).
Whisk together Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, and egg yolks into the garlic/lemon mixture.
While whisking constantly, drizzle the oils in. Whisk until fully emulsified.
Add the parmesan cheese. Add pepper to taste.

Thoughts: This was awesome. I wanted to make my own because I cannot get enough of anchovies and I'm tired to going out to restaurants and ordering caesar salad and then leaving. SO. That's about it. Enjoy.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Buttercream-cheese frosting

2011-01-30T08:47:00.003-06:00

Ingredients

1/2 stick butter, softened
1/4 package of cream cheese/neufchatel, softened
1.3 cups powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp milk

In your Kitchenaid/hands, cream together the butter and cream cheese until completely combined.
Add the sugar (make sure the machine is turned off while you're adding it, and when you turn it back on, make sure it's on the lowest setting. Otherwise you will have a disaster on your hands).
Mix until combined. Add the salt, vanilla, and milk, one at a time.
If the frosting is too loose for your needs, add more sugar. You can't go wrong.

Thoughts: This is actually sort of hard to do in a Kitchenaid because the powdered sugar keeps climbing up the sides of the bowl and not incorporating into the frosting, so you have to keep scraping down the sides. But otherwise, totes awesome. I like the addition of salt, actually. Dan says he might have wanted it less sweet. If you want a frosting that's less sweet, just add less sugar and take out the milk and the stiffness should work out.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Waldorf Astoria Hundred-dollar Chocolate Cake

2011-01-30T08:41:00.002-06:00

We found this in Dan's family cookbook (it's his mother's recipe)and made it for his birthday. Totally awesome y'all.

Ingredients

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup cold water
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tsp vanilla.

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together all the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients. Make sure the cocoa chunks are mostly dissolved. We used a square Pyrex baking dish (8x8).
Bake for 45 minutes (original recipe says 35 but it took us way longer -- maybe our oven runs cold?).
Top with buttercream-cheese frosting.

Thoughts: This is super easy. It literally could not be easier. And it's really moist (maybe it's the mayonnaise?). I don't usually like chocolate cake because it gets so dry, but this one did not. On the other hand, it was sort of crumbly. But who cares?

Disaster Index: 1/10

Slow-Cooker Beef Biryani

2011-01-17T19:28:00.000-06:00

Worked pretty well, but we need to work on the timing - when do you add the cauliflower?
Ingredients

2½ lb beef chuck, cut into 1" to 1½" cubes
1 onion, finely chopped
4tbsp fennel seeds
1tsp cumin
1tsp cardamom
3tsp coriander
½tsp turmeric
2 cloves garlic
1" lobe of ginger, minced
1c yogurt
1c water
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
½c raisins (golden, preferably)
3 carrots, peeled and chopped roughly
1 head cauliflower, broken into florets
basmati rice (about 2.4c), washed

To a sauté pan, add onion, beef, fennel, cumin, cardamom, coriander, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and some oil. Cook over medium heat until the beef is browned - about 10 minutes. Add everything to a slow cooker along with the cinnamon stick, yogurt, and water. Stir well to coat, then turn on low. In one hour, add the carrots. In another two hours from the addition of the carrots, add the cauliflower. In 3-5 more hours from the addition of the cauliflower, fish everything out with a slotted spoon and toss with the raisins. Measure the amount of liquid you have left in the slow cooker. We had 3 cups. To a rice cooker, add 1 cup of rice and 2tsp salt for every 1.25c liquid. Add the liquid and cook until the rice is done. Toss with beef and vegetables. Serve.

Thoughts: The cauliflower was actually way overdone, so don't do it quite like we say above. Probably the beef should cook about 8 hours total, the carrots about 6 hours, the cauliflower about 3. Also, we should have salted the beef & vegetable mixture (maybe 1.5tsp salt) and added LESS salt to the rice (about 1tsp per cup of rice). Claire disagrees about the rice. I would have added a few more raisins, too.

Overall, I think this wasn't our best Biryani ever, but the beef was very tender, so that was good. Cooking with a slow cooker is fun, but we're still really new to it. We liked taking the drippings from the slow-cooker and doing the rice with that. I also wouldn't add the yogurt next time, probably. Claire suggests doing the yogurt but not the water.

We might toast the spices in oil first the next time, too.

This was easy, though, so we'll probably work with it a little.

Disaster Index: 3/10, but we'll try it again

Noodle Kugel

2011-01-17T08:16:00.000-06:00

I don't know when the last time I had kugel was, but it was a LONG time ago. This is a little... interesting?
Ingredients

6 eggs
1½c cottage cheese
1c sour cream
¾c sugar
2¼c whole milk
¾c raisins
6tbsp butter, melted
1tsp lemon zest
½tsp orange extract
1tsp vanilla extract
1tbsp salt
18oz egg noodles
1c coarsely crushed corn flakes
2tbsp butter, melted
2tbsp cinnamon

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, cottage cheese, sour cream, sugar, milk, raisins, butter, zest, extracts, and salt. Set a pot of water to boil, and cook the egg noodles until quite al dente - about 7 minutes. Drain the noodles thoroughly, then add them to the custard mixture. Cover and let sit for at least an hour, checking on them and stirring after about a half hour. Preheat the oven to 350. When the oven is hot, pour the mixture into a 9x13" casserole dish. In a separate bowl, combine the corn flakes, butter, and cinnamon. Sprinkle liberally over the kugel. Bake about 40 minutes. Then take it out, let cool about 5 to 10 minutes, and serve.

Thoughts: We weren't really sure what to expect. Kugel is a little unusual as dishes go, since it's like a sweet pasta casserole. We liked it, though I'm not sure we added enough salt (I think we did 1tsp instead of 1 tbsp). I'm not sure I'd make it again in this quantity. Still, this tasted quite authentic, and I went back for seconds. I call this a win.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Hong Shao Dofu

2011-01-09T07:52:00.000-06:00

I don't know - this recipe seems to be missing a lot.

Ingredients

1 pack extra firm tofu, drained (i.e. press some of the water out) and chopped.
2tbsp peanut oil
2" of ginger, sliced
10 scallions, chopped
1/4c rice wine vinegar
5tbsp soy sauce
1c mushrooms, chopped (I'm guessing here)
2c tatsoi, chopped
1tsp salt
2c water
3tbsp sugar

Heat peanut oil in a large pot and add the ginger and scallions. Stir fry for a few seconds, then add the tofu, mushrooms, and tatsoi. Stir fry for another minute, then add the rice wine. Stir fry a little longer, then add soy sauce until it's cooked down. Then add the salt and water. Bring to a boil, then until the liquid is reduced completely. It'll take about an hour, depending on the pot. Then add the sugar (or SOME sugar, anyway - maybe not 3tbsp?).

Thoughts: This was missing a lot of good flavors. The original recipe was for Hong Shao Rou (specifically, pork belly), which would have been really flavorful. So I wonder if the recipe doesn't kind of depend on there being pork belly. The tatsoi was our own addition, and I'm not sure I would recommend that, either. Mushrooms were our idea, too, but I think that probably improved the recipe. Either way, this was definitely one of our less successful dishes.

Disaster Index: 4/10

Rosh Hashana Challah

2011-01-09T07:38:00.000-06:00

We noticed we didn't have even ONE challah recipe up. If you leave out the raisins (and just braid it like normal) this is practically the same as my father's recipe for the best challah ever, I think.

Ingredients

1c warm water
2.25tsp yeast
1tsp sugar
3 egg yolks
1 egg white
3tbsp oil
1/3c honey
4 to 4.5c flour
1.5tsp salt
about 1/2c raisins, plumped in boiling water
poppy seeds

In a mixing bowl (or, in our case, in the bowl of your kitchenaid) add the water, yeast, and sugar and stir. Let that sit for 10 minutes or so to proof and make sure the yeast isn't dead. Now add the yolks, oil, honey, and salt and about 2c of flour. Using the dough hook (or your hands or whatever) mix to combine, then add flour by the half cup until the dough pulls away from the sides after kneading for a few minutes. We wound up using about 4c of flour total. You'll have to scrape the sides of the bowl down with a spatula a few times.

Now set the dough aside to rise in a warm and humid environment until doubled, about 2 hours. Make sure you give it the full rise. When it's done, either braid as usual or, for Rosh Hashana, divide the dough in half. Working with one half at a time, roll the dough out (on a well floured surface) into a long strip - about 24" long by 6-8" wide. Lay half the raisins along the middle of the strip. Working on a long side of the strip, roll the dough up into a single long snake with the raisins trapped in the middle. Pinch the ends of the dough shut and fold the long strip into a U shape, then twist the two dangling arms together. It will look kind of like a cruller, I guess? Do the same with the other piece of dough and the rest of the raisins. Now place the two twists in a pie pan. You want to arrange them like two interlocking C's - the idea is to have the bulky fold in the center and the tails twisting around in the same direction. Like a yin-yang, if that makes more sense.

Set the dough back in a humid environment to rise for another hour. Just before the hour is up, preheat the oven to 350. Mix the egg white with some water (about 1:1) and whisk together. When the hour is up and the oven preheated, brush the challah with the egg wash and sprinkle liberally with poppy seeds. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes until it's done (and sounds slightly hollow when tapped, etc).

Thoughts: the dough was very easy to work with. Despite using the kitchenaid and kneading the hell out of the dough, the gluten really relaxed. I think this may have to do with two things: 1) we mixed all the wet ingredients before adding the flour. This meant that the fat was allowed to coat the flour particles when it was mixed together, so less gluten was allowed to develop. 2) we let it rise for a full 2 hours rather than just an hour or whatever, so that probably helped. Arranging the dough was actually pretty easy. The final texture was perfectly cakey, and the flavor was fantastic. This was wildly successful.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Baked Doughnuts

2011-01-09T07:31:00.000-06:00

Cribbed from 101 Recipes Blog, but don't let that fool you. As doughnuts, these were terrible.

Ingredients

1 1/3c warm milk
2.25tsp yeast
2tbsp butter
2/3c sugar
2 eggs
4.5c flour
1tsp salt
nutmeg

In bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and yeast. Add the eggs, melted butter, and some of the milk without stirring. Begin to bring the dough together, stirring, adding more milk as needed to get a soft dough. You want it to be just a little more hydrated than you'd think - it's easier to add more flour later than to add more liquid if you didn't start with enough, in my experience. Knead the dough for 5 minutes or so.

Cover the dough and let it rise for an hour. Preheat oven to 475. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, punch down, and roll out to about 1/2" thick. With a doughnut cutter, cut out doughnuts and place them on baking sheets. Or cut out circles with a cookie cutter and punch a hole in them with your fingers. But once you're done, cover and let rise for 45 minutes to an hour.

When they're done, toss the doughnuts into the oven for 8-10 minutes. Take them out when they're a little underdone?

Thoughts: These were just like bread. There wasn't any cakeyness, and I guess that's to be expected from a recipe that is basically a bread dough. These did not make good doughnuts at all, though they made excellent bread pudding later.

Disaster Index: 5/10

Cream of Red Bell Pepper Soup

2011-01-09T07:20:00.000-06:00

Maybe we can get back into the swing of things here.

Ingredients

2.5 lbs red bell peppers
2tbsp shallot or red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1tsp dried thyme
3c chicken stock
1/2c half and half
1tsp red wine vinegar
1tsp balsamic vinegar
1/8tsp cayenne
Parmesan, salt, pepper to serve

Over a gas stove (or under a broiler), char the skin off of the red bell peppers until they're really blackened. Put them in a paper bag as you finish them and close the paper bag - let them sit in the humid environment for about 10 minutes to sweat. Then take them out and rinse them in the sink under cool water - the skin should come off pretty easily. Use a butter knife to scrape off any extra that doesn't just flake off.

In a pot, add the shallot and onion and saute in olive oil until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and thyme and sautee another 30 seconds, then add the peppers and the chicken stock. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for 20 minutes. Then blend everything together until smooth (we used an immersion blender).

Return the soup to the heat and add the half-and-half, vinegar, and cayenne. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with parmesan.

Thoughts: We didn't have the recipe for red pepper soup we ate at Sally's because we forgot it. So we did this, and it was actually pretty good. We both liked it, though there wasn't as much going on here in terms of different textures and flavors - it was a little one note. But it was a good note. I can see making this again, particularly because it's so easy.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cranberry Curd Bars with Shortbread Crust

2010-12-13T11:40:00.004-06:00

OH BOY IT'S BEEN FOREVER SINCE WE'VE DONE ANYTHING. HERE'S SOME CURD FOR YOU.

Ingredients

For the crust:

blueberry-cranberry bars

For the curd:

12 oz fresh or frozen cranberries (one standard bag)
1/2 cup water
1 cup white sugar
4 large eggs
4 egg yolks
2 tbsp lemon juice (or 2 tsp of the stuff in the little lemon-shaped squeeze bottle -- that shit's powerful)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup softened butter, cut into tablespoons

Line a glass baking pan with parchment paper. Make the shortbread crust, bake it in a 375 oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven.
In the meantime, make the curd.
Place cranberries and 1/2 cup water in a small/medium saucepan and boil for five minutes, until the cranberries lyse and get mushy. Stir occasionally.
Pour them through a fine mesh sieve and press the puree through the sieve with a spatula. This might take a while. Don't be daunted, and be sure to get all the puree you can.
Allow puree to cool. Throw away the skins. You will not need them.
To the cool-ish puree, add the sugar, eggs, yolks, salt, and lemon juice. Stir completely. You might want to use a whisk.
Make a double-boiler and whisk the curd furiously until it thickens (it'll already be pretty thick, but it needs to thicken more) and gets lighter in color. It should read 150 on your candy thermometer. 10-12 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in all the butter all at once. Because you've used a double-boiler and hence haven't scrambled the eggs, you won't need to strain the curd again.
Pour it into the shortbread crust that's waiting.
Bake at 350 for something like 15 minutes, or until the curd is mostly set but jiggles SLIGHTLY in the center.
Refrigerate before serving. Nom nom.

Thoughts: The original recipe calls for a different sort of crust -- one that has walnuts in it. Since neither Dan nor I like walnuts, we decided to use a similar (we thought) sort of crust that we've used in cobbler-type bars, etc. The flavor of the crust was really good, but I personally thought it was a little too tough -- it didn't taste at all like it does when it's beneath cranberry-blueberry bars. Maybe the curd did something to it, or we baked it for too long before putting the curd on top. Maybe reduce baking time to 20 rather than 30 minutes? But the flavor was really good. The curd was also good -- you have to be sure to keep it refrigerated, or else it will sort of melt. Not too tart, but tart enough? We would probably have used a little more lemon.

Disaster Index: 1.5/10 (Dan says 1, I say 2)

Bread Pudding

2010-11-13T14:32:00.000-06:00

I know that I had a french toast recipe, but this is slightly different.

Ingredients

Dense-ish bread, chopped into 1" cubes (ish).
Egg Mixture

1 egg
1/2c milk (I use skim)
1tbsp brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt
Vanilla extract

Cinnamon & nutmeg to taste

Preheat the oven to 300. Make as many servings of the egg mixture as you need. So if you are making one serving, it's one egg, 1/2c milk, etc. If you need two, double that. Just whisk all the ingredients together. Then add the bread to the mixture, add cinnamon & nutmeg, and toss to coat everything evenly. What you want to see is that MOST but not ALL of the egg mixture has soaked into the bread.

Pour the bread into an appropriately sized (well greased) pan - you want a depth of about 2" of bread. If you're making single servings, you can use ramekins, too. I usually add a layer of parchment paper at the bottom so that it doesn't stick. Anyway, pour everything into the cake pan / ramekins / whatever, and cover with foil. Bake at 300 for about 20-30 minutes (ramekins get 20 min, larger gets 30), then remove the foil, increase heat to 375, and go for another 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Thoughts: I've been making this for a while, but I always forget what temperatures I set the oven at and for how long, so I thought I'd write it down so I can remember. This works pretty darn well. Another thing you can do (if you're eating the bread pudding immediately) is chop bananas or some other fruit in with the bread before you cook it. I'm not 100% sure how this will impact the liquidyness of the bread pudding if you use berries, but I'd imagine it would work pretty well with bananas or apples. Not sure how well this would work with a really crusty bread like French. I'd stay away from that - you want something a little denser for this.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Caramelized Pear Cake

2010-10-12T07:34:00.000-05:00

Based on a recipe from Epicurious.

Ingredients

3 largeish bosc pears, peeled. One grated, the other two sliced thinly.
6tbsp butter
3/4 c brown sugar
1 1/3c flour
2/3 c granulated sugar
1 1/2tsp cinnamon
1tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
3 eggs
1/2c neutral oil
1tsp vanilla extract
zest of one orange

Preheat oven to 350. In an oven-safe skillet, melt the butter. When the butter is melted, take it off the heat and add the brown sugar, stirring around. Then lay the two sliced pears on the skillet in a radial pattern (or however you like).

Meanwhile, combine everything else (including the grated pear) in a separate bowl and stir to combine. It makes a fairly thick batter. Pour the batter over the pears in the skillet and throw the whole thing in the oven for 40 minutes. Take it out when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Thoughts: Fantastic. Really good. And fairly easy, although there were a lot of ingredients. I would say our one complaint was that it's got so much sugar, although I wouldn't say it's too sweet. It just makes me feel wrong for eating it. It's really good, though. I would definitely make this again exactly the same way.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Muscadine Jam

2010-10-10T21:36:00.000-05:00

Wow, we're WAY behind. We've both been so busy lately. Hopefully we'll start to catch up soon.

Ingredients

A quart of muscadine grapes
about 1-2c sugar
water

First, separate all of the grape skins from the grapes. This is actually pretty easy - put a slit down the side and pry the skin off. It comes away pretty easily. Chop all the skins and set to simmer in a small sauce pan. In another small sauce pan, start the insides of the grapes simmering. If you managed to remove all the seeds already, great, otherwise you'll have to strain them later and it's a PAIN. Anyway, simmer the insides until they're pretty completely broken down and soft, adding water as needed so they don't stick (same goes for the skins). Now remove the seeds if you haven't already and cook the skin and the insides together with the sugar for another 5 minutes, or at least until the water is mostly cooked off, then put in a food processor and blend until smooth. Put in a sterile jar and place directly into the fridge.

Thoughts: Although this grape jam was fantastic, Claire and I agree that the distinct muscadine flavor isn't quite there when you boil them for a while. That said, it's still delicious jam - very clean flavor, probably because there isn't all that HFCS and so forth. But it was a little disappointing insofar as it didn't have the muscadine flavor. Probably wouldn't make it again since it was a lot of trouble.

Disaster Index: 3/10

Double Celery Potato Soup

2010-08-30T21:05:00.000-05:00

Not for those who are allergic to celery, as this has DOUBLE celery.

Ingredients

3tbsp olive oil
about 2 entire leeks, chopped (we used the green parts of about 4 leeks)
1 large onion or 2 small, chopped
2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and chopped to rough 1" chunks
2 medium celery roots, peeled and chopped to rough 1" chunks
heaping 1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
8c chicken/vegetable stock
5 celery stalks, chopped
(optional) bacon, crisped to top (you can also cook vegetables in the bacon fat / skip the olive oil completely)
(optional) cream or whole milk - between 1/4 and 1 c, depending on how you feel (we used 1/4 whole)
black pepper

In a pot, add the leeks and onion and the oil (or bacon fat, if using). Cook until tender over medium to medium-low heat, about 10 minutes. Then add the potatoes, celery root, thyme, bay leaf, and stock. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes. Add the celery stalks and simmer for another 15 minutes. Now take the soup off the heat and, using an immersion blender (or equivalent?), blend the hell out of the soup until it's mostly smooth. Add a ton of finely ground black pepper, milk (if using). Serve and top with optional bacon, if desired.

Thoughts: The flavor of this is really INTERESTING - different from any soup I've had. In retrospect, this recipe is another variation on the traditional leek and potato soup (see Vichyssoise 2 or our ever popular Vichyssoise with Chilies), but the celery flavor is slightly sweet. It doesn't taste strongly like celery, but it has a unique... unexpected flavor. Not totally unlike pea soup. Kind of "warm" is the best way to put it. It pairs very well with pepper. I think this soup would be better had in winter. But it was a good way to use up a lot of ingredients we had... and it was an excuse to try celeriac for the first time ever.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Madeleines

2010-08-26T09:00:00.001-05:00

We more or less followed the recipe given on the 101 cookbooks blog. It took us a while to find a recipe that called for the (traditional) browned butter.
Ingredients

1.5 sticks butter
3/4c flour plus a little
4 eggs
pinch of salt
2/3c sugar
zest of one lemon
1tsp vanilla
madeleine pan

Preheat the oven to 350. In a sauce pan, melt the butter over low heat. Keep it over low heat and the butter will start to foam. The foam will subside and then you will start to get some browning of the milk solids. Take it off the heat at this point and continue stirring for a little while, then pour through a mesh strainer lined with a paper towel. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile, in a bowl, beat together the eggs and salt with an electric egg beater. Slowly add the sugar, and continue to beat until doubled or tripled in volume and the mixture is ribbony - 2 minutes or so. Now gently whisk in everything else.

Prepare the madeleine pans with PAM and a light dusting of flour (we put white flour in a mesh sieve and tapped it over the molds). Fill the molds about 3/4 full, and bake for 12-14 minutes, until the edges of the madeleines are just barely browned. Remove from the oven and turn out to cool. Dust with powdered sugar to serve.

Thoughts: Claire felt that they were a LITTLE on the dry side, though the flavor was good. She mainly questioned the texture. Maybe cook them a couple minutes less next time? I thought they were just great. Maybe I'd use orange zest instead of lemon? I'm not entirely sure. Possibly I'd consider adding a pinch of baking powder (or is that cheating?)...

Disaster Index: 1.5/10

Vichyssoise 2

2010-08-25T07:59:00.000-05:00

Easier and better than our original recipe. Thanks Julia Child.
Ingredients

6 leeks, white parts chopped and rinsed of grit, green parts discarded (or saved for something else)
5 russet potatoes, peeled and chopped (the idea is to have about 6 cups of leeks and 6 cups of potatoes)
12c chicken or vegetable stock
1-2c cream

Note: This recipe makes a LOT of soup. I made this for a group of 12 and had leftovers.

This recipe is embarrassingly easy. Throw the vegetables in a big pot with the stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for 40 to 50 minutes. Blend in batches, then stir in the cream. Chill.

Thoughts: I thought that this was really delicious - better than any vichyssoise we'd made in the past. Must be the cream. Claire really liked it, too, except that she likes it better with chili peppers in it, and she prefers it served warm. Anyway, good show.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Arugula Spinach Ravioli

2010-08-23T07:46:00.001-05:00

Probably pretty good for you.
Ingredients

Pasta Dough

2c white flour
~1-2tbsp olive oil
pinch of salt
3 eggs

Filling

~6oz arugula
10oz frozen spinach
1/2c ricotta cheese
1/2c mozzarella cheese
2tbsp butter
4 cloves garlic
lemon juice or white wine - something acidic
3/4tsp salt
3/4tsp black pepper

In a bowl, combine the dough ingredients. and stir to combine. Turn the dough out onto a well floured surface and, using a little extra flour as you go, knead out the dough until it's fully mixed and has a smooth texture - about 8 minutes. Wrap the dough in plastic and set it aside for an hour to rest.

Now start a big pot of water boiling. While that heats, (in a separate pot) combine the butter and garlic in a pot and cook until fragrant - about a minute. Add the greens (thawed completely in the microwave) and the acidic liquid (white wine / lemon juice) and cover to wilt everything down. After it's all hot, put everything in a fine mesh strainer and press out any excess liquid - there will be quite a lot. Then put the greens on a cutting board and chop finely. Mix with the rest of the filling ingredients in a big bowl.
Now, roll out the dough to an appropriate thinness. We used a pasta roller we inherited and put the past through on successively smaller gauge pasta sizes. Eventually, we put the pasta sheet on a (lightly oiled) ravioli press. We then added the filling, topped with another sheet of pasta, and pressed out the ravioli. Now, if you don't have all this fancy equipment, you can theoretically do it by hand... you can figure it out. This pasta dough is actually fairly forgiving.

Anyway, when you've pressed out the ravioli, you drop them in the boiling water (keeping the pot covered after you get them in). Cook for about 3-6 minutes, depending on the thickness of the ravioli in question. Then toss with whatever sauce you made (I made a kind of white wine / sage sauce that was OK) and serve.

Thoughts: The pasta dough we used here was nigh perfect. We've had trouble with pasta doughs being too dry in the past, or too brittle, too glutenous, etc. but this one was very malleable, incredibly stretchy, and very VERY forgiving. If I were interested in making pasta in the future, this is the recipe I would use. As far as the ravioli goes, I think it would have been better with goat cheese filling (the original recipe MAY have called for goat cheese). Next time, Claire and I have decided, we will put the filling in a food processor rather than using a cutting board (weird). And a higher cheese to other stuff ratio would also be good. Also it took us a while to get the pasta thickness right. But I'm going to go ahead and give this recipe a 1 because it was our first ever time making ravioli with this press we registered for AND it went so well once we figured out what we were doing. Very rewarding.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Gulab Jamun

2010-08-19T13:55:00.000-05:00

Ingredients

For the Syrup

6c water
3c sugar
2tbsp rosewater
1tbsp ground cardamom

For the Doughnuts

3c powdered milk
1c all-purpose flour
1.5tsp baking powder
6tbsp butter, melted
milk (any type) - just enough to make a soft dough - about 1/4c
Oil for frying

In a saucepan, add the water and sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. When it reaches a boil, turn the heat off and add the rosewater and cardamom. Set aside. Meanwhile, combine the dry ingredients for the doughnuts. Add the butter, melted, and then enough skim milk to make a thick dough that you can roll with your hands. If you add too much milk, you can always correct with a little more flour. Roll the dough into balls about 3/4" in diameter. In a saucepan, add some oil and heat to deep fry the dough. You want it hot enough that the dough takes about 30 seconds to start to get brown. If you have the oil too hot, the dough will brown (and burn) too quickly and the inside won't cook. So you kind of want to cook them more slowly. Make sure to stir them so they cook evenly. When they're done, briefly drain on paper towels, then add directly to the syrup. Let them sit in the syrup for at least 2 hours. We put our syrup in a slow-cooker set to "warm" so they stay warm until we're ready to eat them.

Thoughts: These are awesome, and the slow-cooker worked perfectly. I will say that the insides of SOME of the jamun were a little... dry? It seemed like they didn't cook very well if they were too big, and since the dough was dry, you got these little pockets of milk powder sometimes. It wasn't bad, but in the future I'd consider trying either (a) a slightly wetter dough or (b) smaller sized jamuns. This recipe is enough to feed an army (we fed about 18 people desert) so scale back as needed. On the other hand, I think they would keep well in the fridge. So. We served with rose flavored ice cream, but you could serve them plain, with whipped cream, or with many other flavors of ice cream.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Almost No-Knead Bread

2010-08-19T13:45:00.003-05:00

This is a Cook's recipe with our modifications.

Perfect bread.

Ingredients

3c unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4tsp yeast
1.5tsp salt
3/4c + 2tbsp lukewarm water
1/4c + 2tbsp dogfishhead 90 minute IPA or similar?
1tbsp white vinegar

Whisk together the dry ingredients, then add the wet. Stir together until you have a dough. Then cover it and let it sit for 10 hours. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead 10-15 times. It's a wet dough, so do the best you can. Then form it into a ball by gathering all the corners together on one side to create a smooth surface on the other side of the dough ball. Turn the dough onto the counter, pucker side down, to create a smooth dome on top, and move dough around in a circle to seal the corners together on the underside of the dough. Now move the dough to a shallow skillet lined with parchment. Let it sit another 2 hours. After 1.5 hours, put the dutch oven (covered) in the oven and preheat to 500 degrees. When the dough is done with the second rise, take the dutch oven out of the oven. Slash the bread once across the top - about 1/2" to 3/4" deep. Insert the bread and parchment into the dutch oven (using the parchment to transfer it to the dutch oven), cover, and return to the oven. Set the dutch oven to 425. After 30 minutes, remove the lid and cook for another 25 to 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and take the bread out of the dutch oven to cool.

Thoughts: This was a fantastic loaf of bread. The crust was perfect, and the crumb was about perfect as well. Really rich flavor. I might consider trying this with bread flour? Or possibly make an herbed bread with rosemary? It's a thought. The oven spring wasn't as incredible as I had thought, though maybe if I let it sit 18 hours instead of 10 we'd have more to report from that. Still. One of our best loaves so far. Side note: the crust texture suffered after a few days. It went from super crispy and chewy to just kind of limply chewy. Toasting it helped, but after about 2 days neither of us were sure we'd eat it untoasted. Not that this was a big problem, but something to consider.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Vegetable Biryani

2010-08-19T13:25:00.003-05:00

Ingredients

For the rice:

1.5 cups basmati rice
2 tbsp unsalted butter
4 tbsp golden raisins
4 tbsp chopped hazelnuts
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cardamom
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
1.75 cups + 1/8 cup water
2 tsp kosher salt

For the vegetables:

4 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
4 cloves garlic
4 tbsp chopped hazelnuts
3 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
4 tbsp fennel
1 tsp cardamom
12 oz potatoes, whatever you have, peeled and quartered
3 medium carrots, cut into 1" pieces
1.3 cups water
4 tbsp shredded coconut

Make the rice: rinse it until the water runs clear. Set aside.
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add raisins, hazelnuts, turmeric, cumin, coriander, cardamom, and cinnamon and cook, stirring, until toasted and fragrant, about 4 minutes. Add the rice and cook, stirring constantly, until toasted (another 2 minutes).
Add the water and bring everything to a boil. Set to a low low simmer. Cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Then remove from heat and let sit for 10 minutes, covered. Set aside.
For the vegetables: melt the butter in a medium, straight-sided pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes.
Add garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant. Add the raisins, hazelnuts, coriander, fennel, cumin, and cardamom and cook until everything is toasty, about 4 minutes.
Stir in the carrots and potatoes. Raise heat to high, pour in water, and cook, covered, for about 8 minutes.
Uncover and cook, stirring, until the vegetables are tender and most of the water has evaporated.
Add rice to vegetables and stir to combine. Season with salt to taste.

Thoughts: Pretty darn delicious. We made this for a dinner party of sorts, and it got good reviews. The original recipe calls for two more kinds of vegetables, cauliflower and green beans, but we didn't use those, and to tell you the truth, we didn't miss them. Next time I might add some peas in there. But the rice actually turned the yellow color it's supposed to, which is a first for us (not that we've made a whole lot of forays into the realm of Indian cuisine). We would also consider adding meat next time, maybe something like lamb or beef. Because everything is pretty much better with meat. This recipe calls for a lot of different ingredients, but the cooking aspect is actually pretty easy.

Disaster Index: 1/10 would definitely make again

Roasted Corn Guacamole

2010-08-16T08:00:00.005-05:00

Ingredients

2 cups frozen corn, defrosted, or kernels from 3 fresh ears of corn
olive oil
salt and pepper
1 tbsp finely chopped red onion
2 tbsp fresh cilantro, finely chopped
the juice and zest of 1 lime
1 jalapeno, stemmed and seeded, finely chopped
1 avocado, pitted and chopped

Preheat oven to 450. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper or tinfoil.
Spread the corn kernels in an even layer over the sheet. Drizzle olive oil over it and sprinkle with enough salt and pepper to make it tasty.
Roast for 20 minutes, until the corn turns a golden brown. You want the corn to caramelize a little. It might be a little crunchy. That's ok.
Remove corn from oven and set aside.
In a bowl, combine the roasted corn, red onion, cilantro, lime zest and juice, avocado, and jalapeno. Mash it all together. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with corn soup.

Thoughts: We probably didn't roast the corn for long enough, and it probably wasn't totally defrosted when we put it in the oven. At least, it certainly wasn't at room temperature. Next time I would make sure to cook it until it caramelizes. The flavor was pretty intense as it is, but it would have been better caramelized. This tastes a lot like Chipotle's corn salsa, actually. It's hella spicy. If you're going to serve it with the corn soup, I might recommend taking the jalapeno out of either the guacamole or the soup. You don't really need two of them. Also Dan thinks that the flavor is good, but the texture needs work.

Disaster Index: 2/3-10

Corn Soup

2010-08-16T07:50:00.004-05:00

Ingredients

3 cups frozen corn kernels, defrosted (or kernels from 5 ears of fresh corn)
olive oil
garlic
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno, stemmed and chopped
salt and pepper
1.5 cups chicken broth (or veg)
cilantro sprigs
sour cream

Put kernels in a blender. Don't blend yet. Just let them sit there.
Combine oil and garlic in a small soup pot over medium heat and let cook until fragrant. Add onion and jalapeno and cook until vegetables are soft and translucent, about 6 minutes.
Transfer the vegetables to blender and puree with corn until smooth.
Pour the corn puree back into the soup pot and place over medium heat. Add cilantro sprigs. Stir constantly for a few minutes until soup thickens. This will be tricky because this soup is so thick that when it splatters, it really splatters. Just do your best. Your stove will be a mess, but just come to peace with it.
Once soup has thickened a little, add the chicken broth. Bring to a boil, decrease heat to a simmer, and cook for 15 minutes (covered, if you value your stovetop).
Top with roasted corn guacamole and serve. Garnish with sour cream and cilantro sprigs.

Thoughts: Hella easy to make, but hella spicy. It's those really ripe jalapenos. We got a whole bag of them and we're still working on using them up. So only make this if you like really spicy things. Also, don't drink alcohol with this soup -- it will just make the spiciness even worse. There wasn't a whole lot of depth of flavor here, probably because the spice took care of that. But it's good nonetheless. A good starter recipe. We'll see what else we can add to it, I think.

Disaster Index: 2-3/10

Three Cheesecake

2010-08-06T09:39:00.005-05:00

Just as we were starting to lose faith in Martha.

Ingredients

For the crust:

cooking spray
1 & 1/3 cups crushed cinnamon graham crackers
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:

1 cup sour cream, room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
4 oz mascarpone cheese, room temp
4 oz cream cheese, room temp
2 oz soft goat cheese, room temp
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp lemon zest
1 cup heavy cream

Make the crust the way you normally would. Coat a 9" springform pan with cooking spray and line the bottom with parchment paper. Crush the graham crackers in a food processor, adding the butter slowly. Press the mixture into the bottom of the pan. Refrigerate while you make the filling.
Beat the sour cream, 1/3 cup of the sugar, the cheeses, vanilla, and lemon with an egg-beater on medium speed until very smooth, about 4 minutes. DO NOT pass through a sieve at this step. MARTHA. Add the heavy cream and the other 1/3 cup sugar and beat on medium until medium peaks form.
Spread evenly over the crust. Smooth top and freeze until firm, about 2 hours. Move to the refrigerator for about 45 minutes about serving.
Can be topped with fruit compote of your choosing.

Thoughts: Hot damn. This is the best cheesecake I have eaten. Dan agrees. The goat cheese really does good things here. The only thing I would do differently is add more butter to the crust. There wasn't nearly enough to make the crust adhere properly, so it sort of crumbled away when you cut a slice. But that's easily remediable. We would maybe double the amount of butter in the crust to 4 tbsp. It's also a little tricky to move the cake from the freezer to the fridge, and then back to the freezer. You have to remember to let it thaw a little before you eat it, otherwise it just sort of tastes like the freezer. But I don't think you can just leave it in the fridge 24/7, because it's no-bake and it might de-constitute itself or something. All in all, this is hella easy to make and hella delicious.

Disaster Index: 1/10, even with the imperfect crust

Rhode Island Johnnycakes

2010-08-06T08:04:00.004-05:00

Terrible cakes, more like. This is based off of a Martha recipe from the July issue. Something about regional specialties. And I was like "cornmeal pancakes! What could be better?" But I was wrong. I was so wrong.

Ingredients

1.5 cups cornmeal
1.25 tsp coarse salt
4 cups boiling water
1/4 cup whole milk
neutral oil, for griddle

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat. Toast the cornmeal, stirring often, until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and add salt.
Gradually add boiling water to cornmeal. When it's completely incorporated, stir in the milk. Heat griddle over medium heat and coat with a thin layer of oil. Drop batter like pancakes. Flip them when the edges look crisp and "lacy" (whatever that means). These take a little longer to cook than normal pancakes.
Serve with syrup?

Thoughts: Like I said, you'd think there would be plenty to like here. But there wasn't. There was nothing to like. It's possible that it's all about the user error, and that this is an otherwise delicious recipe. The original calls for "Johnnycake cornmeal" (as if we could just go around to our local grocer and pick that up. Please) or white cornmeal. Our "grocer," if you can call Giant a grocer, only has yellow. But my research indicates that there is no real difference between yellow and white other than the fact that yellow MIGHT be a little bit sweeter. But you'd think that would help this recipe. Toasting the cornmeal might also sound like a good idea, but really, "fragrant" means "burned smelling." Cornmeal doesn't get "fragrant." Your kitchen just starts to smell like popcorn. Maybe our pans were too thin for this endeavor. But we strained out the burned bits anyway. I'm not sure how you can avoid burning it -- it's like saying "put all this powdery stuff in your saute pan and turn it on." How do you not burn powder? Anyway.
So despite all these misadventures, we did make a batter. And Dan was like "so this is pretty much just polenta. You are making polenta pancakes." And I was like "Says YOU. These are JOHNNYCAKES. Totally different y'all." But guess what? They're not different. They tasted REALLY bland. Like, there was no flavor in here whatsoever. I tried to put a whole bunch of syrup on them, but just imagine putting syrup on polenta. Gross. It did not help in the slightest.
I'm just going to stop right here. These were a travesty. We made one batch, ate half of it (mostly because I was still in denial), then threw the rest out. We let the batter sit in the fridge for a while (again, denial), and then just threw that out too.

Disaster Index: 10/10 -- it's been a while since we've had to whip out a 10. But it had to happen.

Tapenade

2010-08-06T07:58:00.004-05:00

Based off of Alton Brown's recipe.

The wild tapenade stalks the plate of toasted French bread.

Ingredients

1/2 lb pitted olives, rinsed (we used Peruvian olives, which are a lot like kalamata olives except that they're larger, they're purple, they're softer, and the taste is slightly more mild)
2 anchovy fillets (you can rinse them if you like -- it depends on what they're being kept in)
1 clove of garlic
1/8 cup torn basil leaves
1 tsp lemon juice

Once you've done all the rinsing you would like, put everything in a food processor and process it. Eat it.

Thoughts: This stuff is awesome. It was purple, of course, instead of black or green, which was a little weird but not enough to be off-putting. The flavors were perfect. I might go through and modify ratios of things just for fun, but this is like, restaurant quality.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Palak Paneer II

2010-07-31T20:54:00.000-05:00

After last time you'd think we'd have given up.

Ingredients

14oz block of paneer
2 10oz packages chopped frozen spinach
1 large onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lobe ginger, minced
2 tomatoes, chopped
2tsp garam masala
1.5tsp cumin
2tsp coriander (we didn't actually have this)
some water (maybe next time use chicken stock)
yogurt to taste
3tbsp butter
about 1/2oz goat cheese? Though some recipes use sour cream or just cream. Something thick and dairy, though.

Reheat spinach in a microwave, then put in a blender and chop to desired consistency. Set aside.

To a saute pan, add the onion with the garlic and ginger and the butter. Cook until onions are translucent and soft. Then add the tomatoes and cook over low heat until the tomatoes are pretty completely disintegrated. Then add the spinach and the spices / salt to taste. Add water (about 1/2c?) and cook for a while - until the spinach is heated through and cooked pretty well. Add milk, yogurt, sour cream, cream, buttermilk, and/or goat cheese. We had all of these on hand, but we wound up trying milk, yogurt, buttermilk, and goat cheese before we were satisfied. I think next time just a lot of yogurt? Anyway, take it off the heat and correct seasoning to taste.

In the mean time, fry the paneer on a frying pan. It's really pretty easy - just use a non-stick griddle or griddle pan. We didn't even use oil. Aim to brown it on all sides. We turned the individual bits with chop sticks. Pretty cool. Last time it just melted. But maybe that's because the oil wasn't hot enough or something. This time, no oil = better? Anyway, add the paneer to the palak (spinach). Serve (over rice?).

Thoughts:This was actually pretty great. I was surprised. The palak took a LOT of correction to get the seasoning right, though. But it was good. I think next time I'd use more yogurt (or perhaps just heavy cream) and a little more tomato. Also, chicken stock instead of water. I've seen recipes using some tomato paste? Also, we didn't have coriander. Could have been a nice flavor. But overall, I was pleased with this. It's definitely the first time we got the general idea right. We're getting closer.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Berry Frozen Yogurt

2010-07-21T19:40:00.000-05:00

Ingredients

8oz blueberries (or something like that)
6.5oz blackberries (or something like that)
3/4c whole milk yogurt
1/4c sugar
2tbsp lemon juice
1/2tsp vanilla extract

Start by adding the berries to a pan and simmering with the lemon juice until they're really soft and cooked down. Then add the sugar and vanilla and dissolve those. Let the mixture cool in the fridge. When cool, mix with the yogurt and prepare in ice-cream maker. Transfer to another container and place in the freezer for at least 1 hour.

Thoughts: The flavor was good, but not quite as strong as we had been expecting. Possibly we should have used more berries and cooked them down longer to get a stronger berry flavor. Similarly, the yogurt had relatively low fat content compared with most ice-creams, and it freezes REALLY solid. How do you fix it? I hear alcohol is the answer: a few tbsp of liquor prevents the frozen yogurt from freezing really well. This will require some testing. Perhaps if we selected the correct liquor, it could serve to strengthen the berry flavor. Kirsch or something? I don't know yet. This is a work in progress.

Disaster Index: 4/10

Update: I unfroze it, added a little dark rum, and refroze it in the ice cream maker. Got a little bit better, though I'm now thinking something a little more fruity might have been wise. Well, next time.

Fresh Lime Custard Berry Tart

2010-07-21T19:38:00.002-05:00

This was a little complicated.

Ingredients

Crust
- 1 stick butter
- 2tbsp neutral oil
- 1.75c flour
- 0.25c sugar
- generous pinch of salt
- 1 egg yolk
- 2-3tbsp milk
Filling
- 1/3c sugar
- 2tbsp corn starch
- 1c milk
- 2tbsp butter
- zest of one lime
- juice of half a lime
- 3 egg yolks
- berries - I used about 2/3 a pint of blueberries, 6oz of blackberries, and about 8 strawberries
Glaze
- Juice of two limes
- 2tbsp jam - I used guava
- Honey to taste
- 2tsp corn starch

First the dough. Whisk together the dry ingredients. Then chop the butter up into small pieces and cut it into the flour. Next time I'm using the cuisinart like I usually do for making a pastry dough. Whatever. Then add the milk and combine, being careful not to overwork the dough or heat it too much with your hands. When it JUST sticks together (it will have the consistency of wet sand), wrap it in plastic wrap and form into a disk. Stick it in the fridge for 4 hours to chill.

When that's done, take it out and, on a well floured surface, roll it out. Fit it into a springform pan or tart pan, if you have one (I didn't). I lined my springform with a little waxed paper. Make sure the dough goes up the side a little bit. I had to actually press it into the pan with a well-floured drinking glass. It works. Anyway, put some more waxed paper or parchment paper in the middle and weight down with dry peas (classic) or the change from your change jar (my way), being careful that it doesn't actually touch the dough. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes, remove currency, and bake for another 15 minutes. This is called "blind baking". I'm just saying.

Now the filling. Set the crust aside to cool. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, sugar, lime zest, and corn starch, whisking thoroughly. In a sauce pan, bring the milk to a simmer. When it's simmering, take it off the heat and (TEMPERING FIRST), whisk into the egg/sugar mixture. Tempering means you add just a LITTLE, stir it together, add a little more, whisk thoroughly, and then add the rest. This is so it doesn't scramble the eggs.

Now return the mixture to the sauce pan and set over low heat, whisking constantly. In about a minute, the mixture will seize up (it's really sudden) probably because of the corn starch. Ok. Take it off the heat and stir a little more, then add the butter and stir until it's melted. Now pour it into the cooled crust. Dot with the berries. Actually mine had ridiculous piles of berries. Anyway, try to arrange them radially. It looks nicer. People will appreciate that.

FINALLY, the glaze. Juice those limes you used - mine were the driest limes I've ever used, so I needed two of them, but you could conceivably use one. Mix in the jam and whisk thoroughly. Then add honey until the sweetness is well balanced. Add the corn starch and whisk together, then pour it into a sauce pan and cook over low heat until it thickens. Take it off the heat and spoon it liberally over the tart. Cover the tart and fridge it until completely cooled - at least four hours, though I just made mine like two days ahead of time, so that's possibly a better option.

Thoughts: difficult to make alone. Especially in the B-more heat and humidity. I've NEVER had that much difficulty with pastry dough. It was ridiculous. I think that if I had a tart pan, that would have simplified things a LITTLE, though also the pastry dough recipe is not my usual pastry dough recipe OR method, so next time I'll try my usual and see how that works out. There were confounding factors here, is what I guess I'm saying. Berries were super cheap at Giant Foods this week, so that is the origin of that. By the time I got to the glaze, I had no sauce pans left so I actually microwaved it for 30 seconds at time (stirring in between) until it thickened. It got a little weird - corn starch does that - but it thickened well and the whole thing was pretty amazing.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Banana Lavender Spoom

2010-07-21T19:22:00.002-05:00

it is a noun.

Ingredients

2 egg whites
1/3c sugar plus a little to taste
pinch of salt
2 ripe bananas
about 1tsp lavender buds (pick them up at Penzy's)
about 1/3c water
handful of blueberries (optional)

In a saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Add about half the sugar and the lavender buds and blueberries if you're using them and cook for a few minutes. Put the whole concoction in a blender with the bananas and blend until smooth. Put in the fridge to cool. In another pot, bring water to a simmer. In a heat-proof bowl, add the egg whites, the rest of the sugar, and the salt. Over the water (as a double boiler), whisk the egg whites until the sugar has dissolved and the egg whites are hot to the touch - about 2 minutes - and then take off the heat completely and whisk until you have stiff peaks. Now take the fruit puree out of the fridge and fold the eggs and puree together. Pour the stuff into an ice-cream maker. When it's done in there, put it in the freezer for at least an hour.

Thoughts: Actually quite easy to make and harder to mess up than you'd think when you're cooking egg whites over simmering water without scrambling them. The texture was great and the flavor combination is actually really good. The one bad thing was totally my fault - I added a little too much salt. So it's a little weird tasting. But I would make this again. It's like ice cream but actually quite healthy for you. And the texture is very light and fluffy.

Disaster Index: 6 for flavor, 1 for technique.

Carrot Top Pesto

2010-07-21T19:16:00.004-05:00

It turns out these things aren't toxic!

Ingredients

1 bunch carrot tops, chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
1 tsp dried basil
1/3 cup olive oil (about; we just eye-balled it)
1 cup parsley, chopped
1/8 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded or powdered or what-have-you
garlic powder, to taste
salt and pepper, to taste (you'll need a lot of salt)
water, if you need it

Put everything except the olive oil in a food processor. Slowly add the olive oil through the hole in the top. You may not need all 1/3 cup, or you may need more. Scrape down the sides of the food processor periodically. Add seasonings to taste.

Thoughts: Easy to do. Pretty tasty -- carrot tops taste a lot like parsley, as it turns out. I kept hearing they were bitter, but they aren't really. You could also try adding some toasted walnuts to this. I bet it would be good.

Disaster Index: 2/10 pretty good

Cherry Peach Clafouti

2010-07-21T19:09:00.004-05:00

Ingredients

1.5 lbs stone fruit (in this case, about 1 lb cherries and .5lbs peaches)
3 tbsp flour
pinch of salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 cups whole milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp citronage
confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Pit all your fruit and put it in a 10-inch tart pan (with high sides, preferably).
Sift together flour, salt, and sugar. Gradually whisk in whole eggs, egg yolks, milk, vanilla, and liqueur.
Pour wet ingredients over the fruit.
Bake until puffy and brown, about 45 minutes. Let cool slightly (cake should sink), then dust with sugar. Eat.

Thoughts: Recipe was hella easy, let me tell you that. We made a few modifications. The original recipe called for 1 cup milk and 1 cup heavy cream, but we only had whole milk so we just used that. It also called for kirsch, which we didn't have, but we figured orange would complement the stone fruit just fine. We also forgot to butter the tart pan. We also had the issue where we had too much batter for our pan, which is why we recommend using one with high sides. But most importantly, this recipe was a literal disaster. LITERALLY. It was terrible. I will just say that a lot of our baking recipes that we get from Martha Stewart are not super great, which surprises me a little. The thing about this dish is that the fruit releases a whole mess of water, which in turns prevents the custard from settling completely and it just gets really runny and gross. If we were to try to make this again, I would probably cut up all the fruit, mix it with some sugar, and then let it drain for forever. I'm pissed with Martha for even making this recipe. What a mess. Dan says he'll eat it, but it's pretty much a waste of eggs, two cups of milk, and a bunch of really delicious fruit. We're going to try chilling it and then grilling individual slices to see if that makes it edible. Because it isn't really right now.

Disaster Index: 6/10 (4 for Dan, 8 for me)

Margaritas

2010-07-20T17:00:00.004-05:00

Ingredients

Makes two drinks.

3 oz tequilla
2 oz citronage/triple sec
juice of one lemon (2 tbsp)
juice of one lime (2 tbsp)
salt

Thoughts: Feel free to add other juices to this, as long as you keep the lime juice. The acidity needs to come from somewhere. We recently made grapefruit margaritas and originally left out all the lime juice, and we had to add some back in. So even grapefruits are not acid enough. Bear it in mind.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Earl Grey Ice Cream

2010-07-20T12:40:00.005-05:00

Ingredients

1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup sugar
3 bags of Earl Grey tea, cut open (or about 1 tbsp loose)

Scald the heavy cream on the stove, then add the loose tea. Turn heat to low and let tea steep for about 3 minutes. The cream should turn dark and smell pungently of Earl Grey.
Stir in all the sugar until it dissolves. This shouldn't take long.
Place in fridge for 30 minutes.
Put in the ice cream maker. Make ice cream as you normally would. Eat.

Thoughts: Delicious, though it has a weird, unidentifiable, slightly bitter aftertaste. Not enough to prevent me from eating it all the time, but it's noticeable. Dan doesn't agree that it's bitter. Well. The ice cream works really well as an addition to Earl Grey tea, BELIEVE IT OR NOT. And it doesn't dilute the flavor! Awesome. Also, homemade ice cream just has just a great, soft consistency. It doesn't develop a lot of ice crystals the way store-bought ice creams do. So that's a plus.

Disaster Index: 1.5/10

Green chili pozole

2010-07-19T09:41:00.004-05:00

This is almost too spicy?

Ingredients

2 cans hominy, rinsed and drained
1.5 lbs pork ribs
8 springs of flat-leaf parsley, tied with kitchen twine
4 garlic cloves
3/4 tsp dried oregano (preferably Mexican, says Martha, but seriously?)
.5 lbs tomatillos, husked and rinsed well (they get pretty sticky)
2 jalapeno peppers, quartered
1 cup cilantro
1/2 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped (it's going into a food processor)
2 tbsp neutral oil
salt

Place pork in large pot -- cover by 2" with water. Add parsley and garlic and bring to a boil. If any foam or fat rises to the top, skim it off with a ladle.
Reduce heat to medium low, and add oregano. Simmer, partially covered, until the meat is falling off of the bone, about 2 hours.
In the meantime, fill a small pot with water and bring it to a boil. Add your tomatillos and cook them in the boiling water for about 10 minutes, until the tomatillos are tender. Transfer them to a small bowl. Reserve some of the cooking liquid.
In a food processor or blender, add the onion, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, tomatillos, and as much reserved cooking liquid as you need to make the whole thing blend. Blend it until smooth. It should look like green chili.
Heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat. When it's hot enough to make you nervous, add the tomatillo mixture and 1/2 tsp salt, stirring constantly. It will probably spatter a little. Use a spatter shield.
Reduce heat to medium and simmer gently, stirring almost constantly (if you have pots like we do), until the mixture is thick, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
The pork might be done by now. If it is, remove it from the broth (reserve the broth) and trim any excess fat from it (we didn't have any to trim). Remove the meat from the bones (which should be pretty easy at this point). Shred meat. Remove the parsley from the broth and throw it away.
Stir tomatillo mixture into the reserved pork broth and bring to a boil. Add the shredded pork.
Reduce heat, and simmer gently until heated through. If you just took the pork from the broth, this really shouldn't take long.
Add the hominy. Simmer until heated through, about 5 minutes. Season with salt or pepper to your heart's content.
Eat.

Thoughts: This was a pretty involved recipe, actually. There must be a way to simplify it. We'll see. This was pretty good -- I was hoping it would be JUST SLIGHTLY more flavorful. I think the pork ribs we used were not super fatty, and they probably could have been. In the future I would choose a less lean cut. Although a healthier thing to do might be to cook everything in pork broth instead of water. Then you would get a more savory flavor without the extra fat. Just a lot of extra sodium. TOTALLY WORTH IT, KIDS. The hominy adds a really interesting flavor. I have never really eaten much hominy before, but I would like to be eating more of it. The heat is of a proper intensity. Dan says "delicious" about the whole affair. Good.

Disaster Index: 1.5/10

Chocolate banana icebox cake

2010-07-19T09:14:00.004-05:00

Ingredients

15 oz chocolate chips -- we did a mixture of milk and semi-sweet
5 large egg yolks
salt
3 cups heavy whipping cream
graham crackers -- just buy a box of them. We used the cinnamon ones.
4-5 ripe bananas, sliced in half widthwise, then sliced lengthwise a few times
whipped cream, for garnish

Place chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl.
Place egg yolks and pinch of salt in another heatproof bowl.
Bring the cream to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Temper the yolks, then slowly incorporate, whisking constantly. You will probably scramble the eggs a little. Don't worry about it.
Return mixture to saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon (about 8 minutes). Do not let mixture come to a boil.
Strain mixture through a fine sieve to remove the bits of egg that you scrambled.
Stir mixture into chocolate until the chocolate fully melts, incorporates, and is smooth.
Refrigerate, stirring occasionally to break up the skin, until the chocolate is thick (about 4 hours -- our fridge is much colder than normal fridges, so we did it for maybe 2. Just do it until it's pretty stiff).
Line a 5x10 loaf pan with plastic wrap. Use about twice as much as you need, since you'll be covering the top of the loaf pan with it when you're done.
Spread 1 cup chocolate evenly into bottom of loaf pan. Top with a layer of graham crackers. You may have to break some of them to fit.
Spread 1/2 cup chocolate over the crackers, and top that layer with bananas. Get as many banana slices as you can onto each layer.
Spread another 1/2 cup chocolate over bananas, and top with more graham crackers.
Repeat this step until you get toward the top. The final layer should be a layer of graham crackers. This will be the bottom crust, since you'll be inverting it to serve.
Cover the top with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
To serve, uncover and turn out onto serving platter. The crackers will have softened to cake-like consistency from the chocolate. It will be delicious.
Serve with whipped cream, if y'all want.

Thoughts: We were not at all sure that this would work out, but it totally did and it was totally awesome. The original recipe called for all milk chocolate, which didn't sit right with us (what is the point of milk chocolate anyway) so we mixed in some semi-sweet, but in the future I think we would just use 100% semi-sweet. The chocolate flavor was not as pronounced as we would have liked. We also would have added more banana. The recipe calls for 4-5 bananas, but we could only fit 3. We probably didn't space them efficiently enough. But we will next time. This was totally delicious. And hella easy. And seriously, who wants to actually bake when it's so hot out? Not us.

Disaster Index:1/10

Black Bean Soup

2010-07-19T08:52:00.003-05:00

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (or two small carrots)
4 garlic cloves (but really as much as you want)
2 tsp ground cumin
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped and divided into two equal portions
8 oz dried black beans (or 30 oz canned, undrained)
1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes (with juice)
1.5 cups chicken broth (or vegetable, I guess)
fresh cilantro, for garnish
crumbled feta, for garnish

If you're using canned beans, you can skip this first step, which is:
wash the dried beans thoroughly. Rehydrate them based on the instructions likely to be found on the package. You don't have to spend hours soaking these things. Just add the water and boil for a few minutes, then remove from heat and let them sit for an hour. That should do it. Drain when done.
Heat oil in heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrot, and garlic. Saute until vegetables begin to soften, about 6 minutes.
Mix in cumin and one pile of jalapeno (should be able 1 tsp or so).
Add beans, tomatoes (do not drain tomato juice), and chicken stock.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook until carrots are tender, about 15 minutes.
Blend about 1/2 of the soup in a blender. Or, if you want to make things a little easier, just use a stick blender through the whole soup and stop when it looks to be about the right consistency.
When desired consistency is reached, return the soup to the heat and simmer for another 15 minutes, until thickened.
Season with salt, pepper, and the rest of the jalapeno.
Garnish with cilantro and feta.

Thoughts: Pretty delicious, and pretty easy to make. Dan says the soup had good flavor, but he wouldn't use feta in the future -- we'd probably use something like queso fresco or a variation thereon. Also he thought the beans were a little toothsome, which means next time we would either use canned (we ordinarily would have, but we had these beans sitting around in our cabinet forever and I was like "good god, I will make something with these beans") or actually soak them overnight the way everyone recommends. I would also top this with some sort of sour cream too.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Grapefruit and Tangerine Ice Cream

2010-07-17T17:44:00.003-05:00

ICE CREAM MACHINE.

Ingredients

1c heavy cream
1/2c half-and-half
Juice of 3 tangerines
Zest of 1 tangerine
Zest and juice of 1/2 grapefruit
1c sugar

Prepare the ice cream maker so it's ready to go - you have to fridge ours for 15 hours. At some point during that time, juice and zest the fruits and put them in a container. Chill. When you're ready, pour the cream, half-and-half, and sugar into a bowl and whip together as best you can (I'm not sure you'll have much luck dissolving the sugar). Pour in the juice & zest and whip together a little more, then pour it into the ice cream maker. It took ours about 20 minutes to set up pretty well. We let it go for 30, then emptied it into another container and put it in the freezer to chill a little longer - 4-6 more hours.

Thoughts: Almost a little too sweet - maybe not citrus-y enough, but you have to try it once before you really get the hang of it, right? Next time I'd use maybe some lemon juice or just 100% grapefruit and about 1/2 the sugar. Otherwise, ICE CREAM. AWESOME. NEXT STOP DELICIOUSNESS.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Green Pea Soup with Tarragon

2010-07-17T11:01:00.000-05:00

This was devised as a way of salvaging another recipe we made. When we prepared this Julia Child recipe, we wound up with like 2 lbs of cooked peas left over.

Ingredients

2 pounds of leftover cooked peas (or else frozen, whatever)
1 red onion, chopped
4c vegetable broth
3tbsp dried tarragon... unless it's pretty freshly dried, in which case 2tbsp. Otherwise 3tbsp fresh.
plain nonfat yogurt for serving
1 round of ham (4oz?), cubed and fried for serving

Saute the onion in a soup pot with some olive oil until tender. Then add the broth, peas, and tarragon. Cook until the peas are done or at least warmed through - about 5-8 minutes, depending on whether they're frozen. Remove from heat and put it through a blender until smooth. Return to heat and simmer, adding a little extra broth as desired until it's the right consistency. Stir in the ham. Correct seasoning. Serve with yogurt drizzled on top.

Thoughts: We've made pea soup before in a couple of different ways, but this was actually really good. The tarragon worked really nicely, and the soup was actually thick enough. This was the first time I really felt like the ham complemented the soup, too. All in all a really good recipe. I'd make it again.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Strawberry Tarte Tatin

2010-07-16T16:55:00.001-05:00

Gotta blog a huge backlog of recipes.

Ingredients

1/2lb strawberries, stems removed, halved
2tbsp butter
1/4c sugar
1.5tbsp water
1/2tsp vanilla extract
1 sheet puff pastry
2 mini tart tins

Preheat oven to 400. In a saucepan, combine butter, sugar, water, and vanilla and cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture just starts to darken. Then take it off right away - it will keep cooking while you wait. Meanwhile, cut puff pastry to fit the tart tins and place in the tins. Layer with strawberries radially. Pour the caramel over the strawberries and puff pastry and place tarts in the oven about 25-30 minutes.

Thoughts: At least, that's how it works in theory. When we did it, the puff pastry did not puff. So we wound up taking the things out of the oven, turning them out, putting the puff pastry BACK in the oven until it cooked properly, then putting it back on top of the cooked strawberries. It was kind of a terrible mess. This is why Tarte Tatin is baked upside down, I guess. Also, the strawberries let out a lot of juice in the oven... which wasn't to their credit. I would say the flavor of the dish was fantastic. It was just a terrible mess is all. If I can think of a better way to combine similar ingredients, I'll do it.

Disaster Index: 6/10

Green Mountain Cooler

2010-07-15T18:15:00.003-05:00

Maybe we'll start a separate drink blog? Hm.

Ingredients

3 oz apple brandy
2 oz grade A maple syrup
1 oz lemon juice
peach slices

Combine everything and shake it up the way you do with any drink. Pour it out over ice cubes. Put peach slices on top. Drink it. Makes 2 drinks.

Thoughts: We originally found this in an issue of Martha, but she recommends using apple slices instead of peaches. Why? I ask you. When you can use peaches, apples are just a poor substitute. So excuse me, Martha, for disagreeing, but the peaches go perfectly with the maple syrup here. This is an awesome, delicious, drink and I highly recommend it. Dan says "awesome."

Disaster Index: 1/10

Gazpacho Andaluz

2010-07-15T13:06:00.004-05:00

Ingredients

2 thick slices of day-old bread, preferably French of some sort, crusts removed and cubed
1.5-2 lbs tomatoes (you can do all fresh or all canned -- it doesn't really matter)
2 tbsp sherry vinegar (we used red wine vinegar because that's all we had)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp ancho chili powder
sea salt
1 medium-sized cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 small red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 small green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1/2 small red onion, peeled and chopped

Put the bread in a bowl and drizzle some olive oil over it. If you're using fresh tomatoes, squeeze some tomato juice over the bread. If you're using the canned stuff, just pour some of the juice over it. Add 1 tsp of whatever vinegar you're using and set aside for 10 minutes.
Transfer the bread to a food processor and add garlic, cumin, cayenne, ancho powder, and salt. Process until smooth.
Put all the raw vegetables, the olive oil, and the salt in a large bowl. Process them (with the bread mixture) in batches until smooth.
Add any extra vinegar or water or salt to taste.
Chill for at least 3 hours before serving.

Thoughts: Sort of a complicated recipe, and that first step is just stupid. We would skip it in the future. Also it just didn't taste right. I mean, maybe I'm not the one who should be writing this post, since I don't like any type of gazpacho. Dan says "enh" about it. I don't know what makes this gazpacho "Andaluz" but so be it. It wasn't that bad, but we probably wouldn't bother to make it again. It was good as gazpacho goes, maybe, but we would try to incorporate more textural elements. Maybe we would blend the whole thing until really smooth, and then garnish with fresh tomato? I think this was a little one-note. Maybe also garnish with the cilantro oil we blogged.

Disaster Index: 5/10

Wheat Berry Salad with Tomato, Feta, Zucchini, and Olives

2010-07-14T14:00:00.008-05:00

Based on a dish we had in Italy that originally uses farro instead of wheat berries. We couldn't find farro in our local Giant. Wheat berries worked just fine.

Ingredients

kalamata olives, as many as you'd like

chopped tomatoes, as many as you'd like

1/2 cup dried wheat berries

1.75 cups water

crumbled feta cheese, as much as you'd like

salt

pepper

basil (though mint would be even better)

olive oil, to drizzle on top

grilled zucchini, if you like that sort of thing.

The trickiest part of this recipe is making the wheat berries (i.e making sure you have the ratio of berries:water correct). We tried doing it on the stove, but you know what happens when you turn your back on stovetop wheat berries? They totally burn and ruin your new cookware (we actually salvaged the pot but we did start a fire and now our apartment is filled with the lingering scent of burned wheat berries. What does this smell like? PRAY YOU NEVER FIND OUT). We also tried cooking them in our new slow-cooker, which worked much better but which left a lot of water. If you do it on the stove, you will need to stir constantly. CONSTANTLY. SERIOUSLY. I would recommend using a slow-cooker, if you have one.
Once you have your wheat berries made, refrigerate them until they're cool (several hours).
Mix in your tomatoes, zucchini, feta, olives, basil/mint, salt/pepper, and olive oil. Toss. Eat.

Thoughts: Oh my goodness this is so good. It's like, taking all of the most savory things from the Mediterranean and putting them together and then eating them. It's exactly like that. The only thing we're missing is anchovies...we'll have to experiment with this. The first time we made this (on the stove) the wheat berries were not quite soft enough, but the second time we made them (in the slow-cooker) they were perfect. Seriously, I could eat this all day and it's hella easy. It's a really nice summer dish.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Creamed Corn

2010-07-14T13:47:00.005-05:00

From Martha

Ingredients

6 ears corn
3 tbsp unsalted butter (Or however much you need. You need more? I won't judge.)
1 garlic clove
.5 -- 1 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper, to taste

Grate four ears of corn into a bowl. Carefully slice off kernels from remaining two cobs using a sharp knife and transfer them to the bowl. Scrape cobs with back of knife blade to extract liquid into the bowl. Don't just scrape the knife in one direction -- scrape it bidirectionally. Otherwise it won't really work.
Melt 1 tbsp butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and cook until fragrant (30 seconds or so). Stir in corn mixture, thyme, salt, and pepper.
Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, covered, for about 25-30 minutes or until corn is slightly toothsome. Stir often, otherwise the corn will stick to the bottom and your kitchen will start smelling like popcorn and you'll be like "oh my god, that's so weird -- my kitchen is smelling like popcorn" and then you'll realize your corn is burning. Avoid this.
Stir in remaining tablespoons of butter. Serve immediately.

Thoughts: This was sort of a pain to make. Grating the corn isn't the worst thing, but scraping all the cobs afterward was really tedious. There must be a better way, but I don't have enough time to attend to this sort of corn research. Someone get on that and let me know. But otherwise the process was easy enough. Despite this, I didn't really like this dish. The texture was all well and good, but the thyme made the whole thing taste like Thanksgiving, which was off-putting for a summer dish. Also I don't really like thyme, even for Thanksgiving. Should I have thought of that before endeavoring to make this? Possibly. I had one serving and then made Dan eat the rest. I think he liked it all right, though he would also put in less thyme in the future (ho ho ho). In the future I think I would see if Paula Deen has a recipe that involves cream or something. This one was a little lacking in the rich flavor I have come to associate with creamed corn.

Disaster Index:4/10

Waffle Cookies

2010-06-08T11:06:00.001-05:00

A SERVICEABLE RECIPE.

Ingredients

3/4 stick of butter, softened
1/8c oil
1/2c brown sugar
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
3/4c flour
1.5c rolled oats
1/2tsp baking soda
3/4tsp salt
1c dark chocolate chips
1/2tsp cinnamon

In a bowl, whip together the butter, oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Heat a waffle iron and cook big spoonfuls of the batter according to the normal waffle iron procedures.

Thoughts: this idea is almost as cool as it sounds. And it nearly works. But there need to be some modifications. For starters, I would add baking powder. The soda just creates a basic environment so you get browning, but I wanted a little lift. Second of all, I would soak the oats for at least an hour beforehand in milk. I thought the cookies turned out pretty dry, and that's a danger if you're basically creating MORE surface area. I think the oats should help retain moisture, but they need to have moisture to begin with. Flavor was good, though I had to adjust the salt up from 1/4tsp... .75tsp may be an understatement as compared with what I eventually used. Finally, I would probably use whole wheat flour, but that's just me. In general, though, the recipe needs more moisture somewhere. The trick is to sneak it in without ruining the consistency of the dough.

Disaster Index: 3/10, but I'd definitely try it again.

Pasta with Butternut Squash

2010-05-27T21:40:00.001-05:00

Few recipes that are this easy taste this good.

Ingredients

1/2lb cooked spaghetti
1lb butternut squash (a small butternut squash), peeled and cubed, (seeds removed)
1 medium yellow onions, peeled and bisected orthogonally. Or whatever.
~4oz ripe tomatoes, washed
3 stalks celery, washed
olive oil
water
salt
1.5tsp dry rubbed sage
black pepper
parmesan cheese
5 slices of bacon, cooked and chopped (or else pancetta)

Place the squash, onion, tomatoes (whole, if you please), and celery in a casserole dish. Toss with olive oil, and place in a 350-400 degree oven until the squash is just tender, about 45 minutes at 350 or 30 minutes at 400 (maybe - check with a fork). While they're going, start water boiling for the pasta. When the vegetables are done, puree them in a food processor and taste, adding salt as needed. This recipe takes a lot of salt. Add the sage and about 1/2c water and continue to puree until mostly smooth. Meanwhile, make sure that the pasta is cooking.Pour the squash sauce into a pan and add some water until it's just a little liquidy. Set to high heat and cover, letting cook for 5 minutes or so while you drain the pasta. Then take the sauce off the heat (provided it's thick enough - otherwise just uncover and cook until it's done) and pour the pasta in, tossing to coat. Grate a lot of black pepper into it and sprinkle with parmesan (maybe as much as 1/2c?) and bacon / pancetta. Serve. Thoughts: WHY have we never done this before? This will probably become a go-to recipe. It's fairly healthy (lots of vegetables, not too much fat - I used "center cut" low fat bacon) and it's really good. Disaster Index: 1/10

Pasta with Brussels Sprouts and Kale

2010-05-19T15:03:00.001-05:00

I made this recipe up.

Ingredients

1 pint of brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved. That is how I would describe the quantity. I would guess I had 20 sprouts, but it may depend on the size.
small bunch of kale - 6-8 leaves, stems removed, torn to bite-size
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion, chopped
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
2tsp brown sugar
1/2c chicken stock (or veg)
parmesan, salt and pepper to taste
1lb pasta of your choice - I used rotini.

Set some water boiling for pasta. In a pot, add the onion and sprouts, and give a generous amount of olive oil. Saute on low for 5 minutes or so, until the onions are soft, and then add the chicken stock, the garlic, and the kale and cover. Simmer on medium heat, adding extra water as necessary, until the brussels sprouts are tender. Took mine about 10 minutes. When this is complete, add the brown sugar and balsamic vinegar. I added probably 2 tbsp balsamic, but possibly as much as 4 tbsp. You have to add it, stir the veg, and taste it. When the pasta is done, spoon the pasta in with the vegetables and add the parmesan. I actually also added just a LITTLE cream cheese, though a small amount of actual cream would also be good here (neither is necessary, though). Over very low heat, stir the pasta and veg together to combine and melt the cheese somewhat in the process, then adjust the balsamic / salt to taste.

Thoughts: this was really good, even though it might sound a little strange. I think this recipe would be great with pine nuts, following in the vein of Claire's suggestion. I would definitely make this again. I don't have too much more to say about it. The brussels sprouts are just the right size for bite-sized pasta like rotini, and the balsamic and chicken stock really gives it a bright and savory flavor.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Luo Bo Gao

2010-05-16T11:16:00.000-05:00

Radish cakes!

Ingredients

1 large daikon radish
maybe 1/4c dried mushrooms
3oz ground pork
3 scallions
soy sauce, salt
rice flour

Peel and grate the daikon radish finely (it actually wouldn't grate on the "fine" side of my box grater, so I went with the normal side - this will work fine). Boil some water, and pour it over the dried mushrooms to rehydrate. with a little sesame oil or neutral oil, start the ground pork cooking in a pot. Cook until just brown. Then fish out the dried mushrooms from the water (reserving the mushroom liquid) and chop coarsely. Add to the pork along with the scallions, chopped. Cook a little longer and then transfer to another bowl.

In the bowl in which you cooked the pork, add the daikon and the reserved water from the mushrooms. If there isn't much water, you may need to add a little more (or add a little soy sauce) until the daikon is moist but not drowning in liquid. I don't really have a good rule of thumb for this - you kind of have to experiment. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add the pork / scallions / mushrooms and combine. Now add rice flour to the mixture until you get something resembling a pretty thick batter. For 1 daikon, I used about 1-2c rice flour. The first time I made this, I actually added more water so I could add more rice flour. This was a good idea - if the pieces of things in the batter are pretty big, adding quite a bit of rice flour will help your luo bo gao with internal consistency. On the other hand, too much might make for gluey radish cakes. You have to experiment, but if you can get 1.5c rice flour into your batter, I think you're in good shape.

Pour the batter into small loaf pans or basically anything you can then put in a steamer. Steam for 40 minutes, being sure to check the water level frequently and replenishing as necessary. When they're done, take them out and cool to room temperature, then chill for at least 2 hours. When you're ready to serve them, turn the "cakes" out and slice them, then fry lightly on a griddle to crisp up the outside. Serve with soy sauce.

Thoughts: The first time we did this, we got the texture more or less correct, which was pretty cool considering I didn't have rice flour (and instead just ground up rice in my coffee grinder - very tricky). But the flavor was a little bland the first time because we used fresh mushrooms. The second time, the flavor was great, but we used WAY too many dried mushrooms and the texture was way off. It's a work in progress. I think next time we'll use fewer dried mushrooms but we'll also use a little bit more rice flour.

Disaster Index: 3/10

Sopa de Ajo

2010-05-10T11:33:00.001-05:00

Garlic soup. Who knew?

Ingredients

Olive oil
1/4 lb stale bread, cut into 1/2" cubes (we used 1/2 loaf of "french bread" that really didn't have a very thick crust at all)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2tsp Spanish smoked paprika (available through Penzy's)
4-6c chicken stock (or veg)
poached eggs for each serving

In a pot, toss in the bread and drizzle with olive oil. Cook lightly until the bread is lightly brown or you think you're going to damage the pot, whichever comes first. Yeah. Then throw in the garlic, paprika, and maybe a pinch of salt. Toss that around thoroughly, then add the stock. Add enough stock that you don't just have a pile of soggy bread, but there's actually soup. I think that it depends on the density of your bread. Anyway, we used about 6c stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, poach an egg for each serving you're planning. When you're ready to serve, ladle the soup into a bowl. Dust with some additional paprika and black pepper, and top with the poached egg.

This has a great flavor. Simple recipe, but this is really delicious. The one weird thing? Texture. Possibly this is the result of our bread selection, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it makes me wonder two things: (1) are we supposed to make like a panade, or are the pieces of bread supposed to stay mostly whole? (2) are we using too much bread and too little soup? That said, I would definitely make this again. The whole thing was just fantastic. You don't even need to serve it with the egg if you don't want.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cold Avocado Corn Soup

2010-05-03T07:28:00.005-05:00

Ingredients

1 fresh or frozen ear of corn, shucked
4 cups + 2 tbsp water
1 garlic clove, smashed
1.5 tsp salt
1.25 cups chopped white onion
2 fresh chilies -- we just grabbed two chilies that looked medium hot (our grocery store doesn't label the chilies) -- I think it was one Serrano and one Jalapeno
2 ripe avocados
3 tbsp fresh (or bottled, honestly) lime juice
1/4 cup sour cream

For the cilantro oil:

1 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro (we used WAY more and this was not necessary)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt

Roast the corn over your gas stove (or use a grill, if you have one), until kernels are charred in spots, about 4-5 minutes.
Transfer corn to a cutting board, and, when cobs are cool enough, cut the kernels from them. Then cut the cobs into thirds. Don't throw them away.
Chop 1 cup of white onion.
Put the kernels, the cobs, 4 cups water, garlic, salt, and 1/4 cup of the chopped onion in a pot and boil it for about 20 minutes, or until there are 3 cups of liquid remaining. Remove from the heat. Discard the cob sections.
Chop the chiles, discarding only the stems.
In a blender, puree the corn mixture, the chopped chiles, and the rest of the onion (should be 3/4 cup).
Strain this mixture through a fine mesh sieve and into a bowl. Press on the solids to get all the moisture. Discard the solids, and return the remaining broth to the cleaned blender.
Peel and pit and avocado, and add it to the blender. Put in 2 tbsp of lime juice. Blend everything together until smooth.
Transfer soup to another bowl, cover it with plastic, and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

To prepare the cilantro oil:

Puree the cilantro, oil, and salt in the cleaned blender. You'll probably have to scrape the blender down several times. When smooth, remove mixture from blender and strain through a paper towel over a bowl for 15 minutes. Don't press on the solids this time.

To assemble the soup

Peel and pit the remaining avocado. Scoop out small sections with your melon-baller (or use a 1/2 tsp measuring spoon) and toss them with some lime juice.
Whisk the sour cream together with 2 tbsp of water until the mixture is smooth.
Season the soup and ladle it into the bowls. Put some avocado balls in each bowl, and drizzle with cilantro oil and sour cream.

Thoughts: This was pretty easy, all told. The cilantro oil didn't work out as well as we were hoping. I think we used a higher ratio of cilantro:oil than we were supposed to, so it didn't yield a whole lot of oil and the straining process left more solids than it should have. Otherwise, I think everything else was pretty awesome. This recipe says that it's supposed to yield something like six servings, but it doesn't. It yields like, maybe four. So I would go ahead and multiply everything in this recipe by 2. We went through it way too quickly. I also think that it could have used a little more flavor -- I suggest red pepper flakes, and maybe also some sort of cumin? I'm not sure what Dan thinks of this. I'll ask him later.

Disaster Index: 2.5/10

Moroccan Beef Stew

2010-04-21T09:15:00.001-05:00

From a recipe on Epicurious from Bon Apetit magazine.

2.5lbs boneless chuck roast, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 small onions
3 cloves garlic
1tbsp paprika
1tbsp garam masala
1tsp cumin
1/2tsp turmeric
1/2tsp cayenne
1c red wine
1/2c vermouth
2c beef stock (we used bouillon)
1 14.5oz can of diced tomatoes
1.5c raisins (original calls for golden, we used normal raisins)

In a pot, add some olive oil and saute the chuck roast until it's no longer pink - about 8 minutes. It's a lot of meat. I kind of felt like I was butchering a whole side of beef. Anyway, when it's done, put it in a separate bowl (aside). Then add to the pot the onions and garlic and a little more oil. Saute until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Then add all the spices and the wine + vermouth. Stir well until combined, then bring to a boil and reduce to a glaze. In the mean time, you can add the other ingredients to the bowl with the beef. When the wine is reduced to a glaze, just add the beef and all the other ingredients. Stir well and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and let it simmer until the sauce is thickened and beef tender, about an hour to 1.25 hours. Ours was reducing very quickly, so I covered it so the beef could tenderize a little longer. I think this was a wise decision.

Thoughts: We served this over rice, though the original recipe recommends serving it over couscous. It was DELICIOUS. Really amazing. It took a little extra salt at the end to make it perfect, but I would be careful to add this at the END because your stock may be saltier or less salty than ours was at the time. Also, we thought maybe another 1/2c raisins wouldn't be out of the question, though the recipe scarcely needed it. In the future, this could be a perfect recipe for a slow cooker... but we don't have such a thing right now, so. One other thing - apparently our entire floor of the building was permeated with the delicious smells of spices and so forth last night, and this morning our apartment still kind of smells really good.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Fresh Berries with Basil Creme Fraiche

2010-04-21T08:58:00.002-05:00

Or basil-infused (LIGHTLY sweetened) whipped cream.

It's pretty good, that's all. There isn't really a recipe to this. It's kind of self-describing.

Disaster Index: 1/10 on waffles or by themselves.

Olive Oil Granola

2010-04-20T13:50:00.001-05:00

Best granola recipe yet. This is super addictive. This is my own take on the olive oil granola recipe from the NY Times that's been circulating on the food blogs. I didn't have all the ingredients for that one, so I kind of improvised. I think my flavor combinations are probably better, though. YOU HEARD ME NEW YORK TIMES. Okay.

Ingredients

3c rolled oats
1c quick oats
1/4c wheat germ
1tsp salt
~1/2c packed brown sugar, plus or minus (see thoughts section)
~1/4c chocolate chips
1/2c olive oil
.75tsp cinnamon, maybe more
.5tsp cardamom
1 egg white, whipped until foamy

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Mix together all the dry ingredients until well mixed. Add the olive oil and stir around until coated, then whip the egg white and stir that in until well mixed. Spread the granola over a 9x13 pan with steep sides (like a brownie pan). I had a layer of waxed paper on the bottom of my pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 300, stir lightly, turning over the top layer, and then bake for another 25 minutes. Take the granola out of the oven and let it cool overnight. Don't touch it! This is how you get the clusters. The next morning, you can (carefully) break it apart and put it in the fridge.

Thoughts: This is REALLY good. Olive oil + chocolate = awesome. Trust me on this. But what's more, it's hard to eat more than like 1/3c at a go. For some reason this is really unusually filling. Here are some things I might do differently next time:

Salt: wheat germ is just naturally a little salty and olive oil is a little savory. This granola turned out a little on the salty side. Which was OK, but it meant I had to add a little more sugar to compensate. Next time, maybe 1/2 the added salt. Or no added salt.
Egg Whites: while I got SOME of the granola clusters I was looking for, the effect wasn't quite as pronounced as I'd have liked. In the future, I'll use more than one egg white.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Chilled Avocado Cucumber Soup

2010-04-14T06:53:00.001-05:00

I hesitate to call this "cooking".

Ingredients

1 ripe avocado
1.5 cucumbers, peeled & seeded
1c plain yogurt
2-3tbsp lemon juice
cilantro and chives - a couple tbsp each
1c chicken stock, cooled (or veg)
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded... plus some of the seeds, too.
salt and ppper

Are you ready? This is complicated. You put all of the ingredients in a blender. Follow me so far? Blend them together.

Thoughts: This has an interesting flavor of cucumber and avocado (no surprise there) and chilled it makes a great summer soup. My one complaint would be with regard to the texture, which, right out of the blender, is a little airy. I mean, it's so feathery light that it's almost not really soup at all, and I found that a little unusual, though I can see someone liking it. I think that next time I might put little julienned cucumbers or some little greens on top. Watercress would go perfectly with this soup.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Breakfast Pizza

2010-04-11T09:23:00.000-05:00

This was delicious, though there were some missteps.

Ingredients

Dough
- 2.5c flour
- 4tbsp olive oil
- 1/2tsp salt
- 1tsp sugar
- 2.25tsp yeast
Sauce
- 2.5tbsp butter
- 1.5tbsp flour
- 1c milk
- 1/2c pepper jack, grated
- ~1tsp chopped or powdered (?) rosemary
- ~1tsp basil
- pinch of salt, pepper to taste
Other Ingredients
- 1/2 red onion, sliced
- ~4-8 pieces of bacon, chopped
- arugula
- eggs

First, make the dough: mix all the ingredients together and adjust the liquid:flour ratio until you can knead it on the counter (for about 5 minutes) to get a nice, elasticky dough. Grease a bowl, and set the dough to rise in it (covered with plastic wrap) for about 30 minutes. When it's done, turn it out onto the counter again and roll out into a big square to fit on a big baking sheet. Then cover with a towel and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350. Now, we make the fillings while the dough rises. Start by making the cheese sauce. In a saucepan, melt the butter and cook until it stops foaming. Then add the flour and stir until well incorporated, then add the milk. Turn the heat up and cook it until the sauce thickens, then turn off the heat and add the cheese and herbs. You can probably add the herbs earlier, but I didn't. Anyway, stir the sauce together and set aside.

Now the other fillings. Sautee the onion and bacon together until the bacon is pretty well cooked through. That's actually about it for this step.

Pizza ASSEMBLE. Add the sauce in an even layer, then put the onion and bacon evenly around the pizza. I added some sliced tomatoes to mine. Then you bake it. We started at 350 but increased to 500. It took about 15-20 minutes for the crust to be nice and brown. In the mean time, fry an egg (over easy, if you please). Take the pizza out and sprinkle VERY liberally with arugula. Then put the egg(s) on top of each serving. Serve!

Note: we attempted to crack the egg on TOP of the pizza and hope it would cook properly in the oven. IT DID NOT. Frying an egg = same result, less variability. ALSO I made the mistake of adding arugula BEFORE baking. Claire warned me about this but I didn't believe it. That was wrong of me, and I will be the first person to admit it.

Thoughts: Really good, but hard to prepare in moderation. Delicious, though. I would do this again. It's not really pizza - it's kind of like a croque madame, but with arugula and onion. I liked it. On the other hand our actual EXECUTION left something to be desired. We messed up 1/2 the pizza with my stupid ideas and the other 1/2 looked awesome.

Disaster Index: 7/10 salvaged to like 1/10. Claire insists that her half was always 1/10. WHATEVER CLAIRE.

Sticky Lemon Rolls

2010-04-08T21:18:00.001-05:00

Like cinnamon rolls, but lemon.

Ingredients

Dough
- 2.25tsp yeast
- 3/4c warm water
- 1 stick butter, softened
- 1/4c white sugar
- 2tsp vanilla extract
- 1tsp orange extract or maybe some more lemon zest
- 4.5c white flour
- 1/2tsp salt
- 1/2tsp nutmeg
- zest of 1 lemon
- juice of 1 lemon
- 2 eggs
Filling
- 1c sugar + some
- 1/4tsp freshly-ground nutmeg
- 1/2tsp powdered ginger
- juice of 1 lemon
Frosting
- 6oz cream cheese, softened
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1c powdered sugar, more or less

Ok. Mix all the wet dough ingredients in a bowl and whisk thoroughly. Add flour, 1c at a time, until you've got about 3c added. Then add the last cup and a half and turn onto a counter and knead for 5 minutes or so. Set aside and cover to rise until doubled, one hour.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the filling ingredients. When the dough is doubled, roll it out on a floured counter top until about 18" across and 10" deep. Spread the filling over it evenly, leaving a small lip on the far end of the dough. Carefully, roll up the dough starting at the far end and rolling toward you. Take a bread knife and, using long sawing motions and minimal force, cut the log of dough into 12 pieces (try halving it twice and then cutting into thirds). Place the pieces cut side down in a greased 9x13 pan. Set aside to rise until doubled, about an hour. Preheat the oven to 350, and when the rolls are risen, bake for about 30-35 minutes.

When they're getting close to done, whip together the frosting ingredients. Take the rolls out of the oven and spread the frosting over all of the rolls. Allow to cool and serve.

Thoughts: This is a good recipe, but the filling is REALLY sweet. I'm not really sure what I would do to fix this. I mean, they're cinnamon rolls. I think if I were to do it again, the filling would have no lemon juice at all, just lemon zest (or maybe orange zest). The dough itself was very easy to work with, but I think it didn't really need the huge amount of butter - the eggs were actually probably enough for this. Otherwise, this was really pretty good, though I'm not sure if they're quite enough to convince me to make them again when I could be making normal cinnamon rolls.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Pasta al Cavolfiore

2010-04-06T21:26:00.001-05:00

This is a favorite from Claire's childhood. She felt that this was almost as good as what her father makes. This was our take on someone else's take of a Moosewood Cookbook recipe. Anyway.

Ingredients

1 cauliflower, cut into florets
olive oil
1tsp dry basil
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped or crushed (we got chopped from a jar)
1 bay leaf
red pepper flakes
optional ~3 hot italian sausages
1c cheddar plus 1c parmesan cheese
1 28oz can tomato sauce/puree
vermouth or dry cooking wine
1lb pasta (we used rotini)

If you're using them, chop the sausage and cook in a pan over medium heat until caramelized and cooked through, then set aside. In the same pot, add the cauliflower, olive oil, basil, garlic, bay leaf (or leaves), and red pepper flakes. Add some dry cooking wine and a little water and cover to cook until tender. When it's tender, add the tomato sauce. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 15 minutes (while you cook the pasta). After about 10 minutes, re-add the sausages. When it's done, drain the pasta. When the sauce is finished, take it off the heat and stir in the cheese and the pasta.

Thoughts: This is almost absurdly good. The sausage was a good addition, but unnecessary, but no, good... The cauliflower was perfectly tender. Red pepper flakes are good in just about anything, so it worked well here.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Chocolate Mousse

2010-04-06T21:14:00.003-05:00

My mother makes it better than we do. We're working on it.

Ingredients

8oz (1 and 1/3c) chocolate chips
1 stick butter
8 eggs, separated (do them one at a time and add to separate bowls)
1/4tsp cream of tartar (tartaric acid powder)
pinch of salt
vanilla extract
up to 1tbsp instant espresso

This recipe is influenced heavily by the order and timing of the things you do. In one bowl, beat together the egg yolks with the vanilla extract. In another bowl, add the cream of tartar to the egg whites, along with a pinch of salt. With a CLEAN whisk (if you're feeling really pumped) or an electric egg beater that you registered for but haven't gotten married yet so you still need to use a whisk... um... whip the egg whites into stiff peaks. Now, melt the chocolate chips with the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until JUST melted, stirring constantly, and take off the heat as soon as it's done. Add the instant espresso. Then add to the egg yolks slowly, whisking constantly. The danger is NOT that you'll cook the egg yolks - the danger is that the chocolate seizes. When whisked together, add 1/3 of the egg whites and fold together. Now add the remaining egg whites and fold everything together. Pour into a trifle pan or individual serving glasses (like you might for pots de creme?). Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 4 hours. *If the chocolate seizes, you need to break it apart. You put it in a cuisinart and blend the hell out of it until it's completely smooth. With luck, you can hide the problem pretty well.

Thoughts: This turned out GREAT for passover desert. Claire thought the texture was unusual, but she was incorrect. My feeling about it was that the flavor was fantastic, but next time I will try to get the yolks to cook a little bit more to thicken the mousse a little more so the ultimate product is a LITTLE firmer. Another possibility would be to use 1/2 the butter. Anyway, this was great. For a first time, especially, this was fantastic.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Apple Matzah Brei

2010-04-02T10:14:00.003-05:00

Recipe provided by Eleanor. Thanks!

Ingredients

2 cups farfel
1/2 cup apple juice
1 tsp neutral cooking oil
2 eggs
3 tbsp applesauce
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp sugar

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients.
Heat griddle.
Spoon ingredients onto griddle.
Eat pancakes. Honey and syrup works well, though the original recipe also recommends apple syrup, jam, or applesauce. Om nom nom.

Thoughts: This recipe really couldn't have been any easier. We were initially worried about the pancakes maintaining their structural integrity when we flipped them, because the farfel is quite coarse. But this wasn't a problem. I think the only thing we would do differently next time is combine all the ingredients and then let them soak for maybe half an hour -- this way the farfel will have time to soften a little more. The texture of these pancakes is a little chewy otherwise. We would probably also add chopped apples, since there's already apple juice in here.

Disaster Index: 2/10 -- pretty darn good

Hainanese Chicken

2010-03-16T09:18:00.000-05:00

Ingredients

2-3lb boneless skinless chicken thighs
~4 cloves of garlic
1-2 lobes of ginger, minced or grated
1 onion, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
2c rice, thoroughly washed
sesame oil, soy sauce, sriracha, black vinegar

In a pot, add the chicken, garlic, and ginger and enough water to just coat the chicken - about 5 cups for us, I think? Depends on the size pot, I guess. Bring the water to a boil, add some salt, and reduce to a simmer. Cook until the chicken is cooked through - about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on whether you started with frozen. The original recipe had you cook for 10 minutes then leave sit for 45, but we weren't too happy with the way it looked, so we just cooked it until it was done.

Remove the chicken to a cutting board and shred. Reserve the broth in a measuring cup. Add the onion to the pot with a little sesame oil and maybe some extra garlic and ginger. Cook until the onion is translucent and softened, then add the rice. Toss that around for a little bit, then add 2.5c of the broth (for us, I think this is all that was left - the closer you can come to hitting the 2.5c mark when you're done with the chicken, the better). Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer and cover, cooking for 10 minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the rice sit for an additional 10 minutes before you uncover and fluff the rice.

Serve the rice topped with the chicken. Sprinkle with scallions and a sauce made of soy sauce, black vinegar, sesame oil, and sriracha. I think we actually ran out of soy sauce so we used "tempura dipping sauce" (which contains many of the same ingredients but it's a little sweeter - it was really good). We also served this with tomato, which I think we agree was kind of unnecessary.

Thoughts: Aside from the fact that you will feel you need more vegetables while eating this, it's really fantastic. I mean, you COULD add carrot, water chestnut, bamboo shoots, or whatever you're interested in and the dish probably wouldn't suffer (I'd cook them with the rice). But it's totally unnecessary. One of the most important factors in this dish is the sauce at the end - you have to do a lot of adjusting to make it just right, but it's really good. As mentioned above, when we decided to make this, we started by boiling the chicken for 10 minutes and then letting it sit. This didn't work at all. Maybe it's because our chicken was frozen? Anyway, I'd definitely consider making this again - it was really easy and quite good. Not all that healthy, perhaps, but who really cares?

Disaster Index: 1/10

Hamentaschen (Dough)

2010-03-15T10:26:00.003-05:00

A pastry dough recipe.

Ingredients

2c flour
2 sticks butter
8oz cream cheese
3tbsp sugar
1tsp vanilla

In a cuisinart (food processor, NOT a blender), add the flour and sugar and pulse once to mix. Add the butter and cream cheese, chopped into smallish pieces, along with the vanilla, and pulse until the the dough JUST sticks together. Don't overprocess. If you don't have a cuisinart, you'll need to cut the fat into the flour, which is just really annoying, so I guess what I'm saying is: don't not have a cuisinart.

Dump the (really quite loose) dough onto a piece of cling wrap. It'll be crumbly. Lump it together in the center of the cling wrap and, well, wrap it up. Then you can kind of press the dough together, turning the package of cling wrap & dough, until it resembles a disc. Don't overdo it. Put the dough into the fridge for at least 8 hours or overnight.

When you're ready to use it, take out the dough. Roll it out thin on a WELL floured surface with a well floured rolling pin. Cut the cookies, add your filling, and bake at 350 for 15-30 minutes, until browned.

Thoughts: My mother's recipe. This pastry dough is fantastic. We actually made hamentaschen AND a little pie using this dough, and it works well for any purpose. I think the cream cheese really makes it. It's tender and flaky. Just fantastic. My mother also recommends replacing the vanilla with the zest of one lemon. This is easily the best pastry dough we've ever made.

For fillings for our hamentaschen, we strayed from tradition a lot. For the first batch, we used a few types of jam mixed with blackberries and some lemon juice and sugar. We kind of boiled them with a little water and reduced until the blackberries were really soft and the mixture was adequate for filling. I think I may have added a little corn starch to encourage it. The next batch was sliced apples with cinnamon cooked down in a little water in the same pot as the previous batch, so they turned bright red. Third batch was (frozen) peaches and blackberries with a little brown sugar and lemon juice, again cooked down until the peaches were soft. My mother uses a recipe of dates processed with frozen orange juice (which is a fairly traditional recipe), and also one with almond paste, cream cheese, almond extract, and chocolate chips. But that's for another post / another hamentashen experience.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cornmeal Waffles

2010-03-13T08:17:00.005-06:00

Ingredients

1.25 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
3 tbsp + 1 tsp granulated sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1.5 cups buttermilk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil
5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.
Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.
Add oil and butter and whisk until smooth.

Make waffles. The waffle iron will tell you what to do.

Thoughts: Awesome. The cornmeal gives a crunchy texture to the outside of the waffle, while the inside stays fluffy. What else is there to say? This waffle recipe is probably one of the best we've made. It's as good as my grandmother's recipe (see some earlier month -- I don't know, December?), but in a completely different way. The taste is totally awesome. Please make this recipe. That is all.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Fettuccine with Fava Beans and Basil

2010-03-07T20:18:00.001-06:00

Deceptively complex.

Ingredients

3c dry fava beans, soaked, or 3c fresh, shelled*
1lb fettuccine
2c basil, chopped
2 cloves garlic
salt
pepper
parmesan
juice of 1/2 a lemon

After you soak the dry beans, cook them until they're tender. We did this with the shells on. Afterward, fish out the beans and run under some cold water. Then shell them all. Ugh. Take 2/3 of the beans and pulse in a kitchenaid with 1c basil, some salt, the garlic, and enough olive oil to make it work. Don't puree the stuff, just chop until it's pretty small. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in the same water that you used to cook the fava beans. When that's done, reserve a cup of water and drain the pasta. Now you assemble. In the pot, combine the whole favas, the blended favas, and some of the pasta/fava cooking water. Add the lemon juice and parmesan and stir together. Then add the pasta and toss together.

Thoughts: VERY filling. One problem is that after we shelled and blended the beans, we discovered that they were still just too toothsome, so we had to return them to a pot and add water and cook until the favas were done. Meh. Otherwise, this is really delicious. Next time... we'll probably cook the beans for longer initially. Or maybe use fresh beans if we have them. I don't know. Quite good, though.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cornbread

2010-03-04T22:14:00.002-06:00

This is a good cornbread recipe. I tried it out on all these poets who will probably eat anything and tell me it's good because, y'know, poets. LIARS. But it was actually awesome.

Ingredients

2c corn meal
1c flour
4tsp baking powder
3/4tsp salt
6tbsp butter
1/4c sugar
2 eggs
2c milk

Mix all the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Add the butter, softened, and the eggs and milk. Whisk thoroughly. Pour into something with 64 square inches, like a 9" round cast-iron pan, or a 9" other round thing, or an 8x8 square pan. Or make a double batch and pour it into a 9x13 pan, like I did.

ANYWAY, bake it at 450 for about 30 minutes, then turn it to 350 and bake it until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean, about another 10 or 15 minutes in our oven.

Thoughts: This was really good. We were worried that the middle wasn't done because it was really soft even though a knife came out clean. Let it cool a little bit and you'll be rewarded for your patience. Awesome.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - this is really a turning point in our corn-bread career, I think.

Palak Paneer

2010-03-02T19:34:00.001-06:00

Don't try this at home.

2 10 oz package of chopped frozen spinach or 4 cups of fresh finely chopped spinach
Farmer’s cheese
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
2 teaspoon coriander powder (dhania)
1 teaspoon turmeric powder (haldi)
2-4 chili peppers, minced
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon cumin seed (jeera)
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
4 tablespoons of whole wheat flour
1.5 cup milk

Blend spinach until creamy but not pasty. Mix the whole wheat flour with the milk and set aside. Cube the farmer’s cheese and fry on medium high heat. Remove and set aside. Then add the onion, pepper, chili, cumin, ginger, coriander, turmeric, and salt. Cook until it’s pretty soft, and then add the spinach. Cook over low heat for about 10 minutes, covered. Add the milk mixture and let it cook until the consistency is right. Then take off the heat and fold in the cheese.

Thoughts: OK, so deep frying the cheese did NOT work at all. That was just the first disaster. So I threw SOME of the cheese into the oil and it promptly melted. Maybe you can't use farmer's cheese as a replacement for paneer (as one web site suggested). Next, I was looking at 3 recipes... 2 used tomatoes, 1 used red bell pepper. But I only had bell pepper, so I went for it. I think tomatoes would have been much better. From there, it worked out OK. We wound up adding a ton more seasonings because you couldn't really taste anything. I added a little bit of lemon juice, too, and I think that helped. We served it over rice. There's agreement that we can tell it's supposed to be Indian in origin, and the flavor isn't BAD, but it's not... great, either. And it's way far from the mark in terms of Palak Paneer. Well, I mean, why call it DCCDI if there aren't some D's.

Disaster Index: 5/10

Another Artisan Bread

2010-02-23T21:17:00.001-06:00

Um, interesting.

Ingredients

2c white flour
1c wheat flour
about 1/4c wheat germ
1.5tsp salt
1/4tsp yeast
1c water plus a little - maybe as much as an extra 1/4c?

Combine all the dry ingredients, then add the water and mix. I made the dough really moist, so it's not really something I could stir with my hands - I had to use a spatula. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and let sit for about 16 hours. After the time passes, pour the risen dough out onto a very well floured counter and sprinkle liberally with flour. Fold it around as best you can - I used a spatula so it wouldn't stick to my hands and so I could keep it off the counter. It was actually kind of fun. Then I put it in a bread pan and covered again with cling wrap for 2 hours to rise again. At 1.5 hours, preheat the oven to 500, then bake the bread until it sounds hollow - about 40 or 50 minutes.

Thoughts: This was easy to make, if time consuming. The loaf is a little heavy - it maybe didn't rise all that well? So that needs some work. I attribute it to not having a preheated baking dish - it needs to really be on something like a pizza stone so that it starts out hot through the whole thing. As it was, the top baked before the middle, so it didn't get all that much spring. Even so, the flavor of this loaf is really good. I would definitely make this again, but maybe the next time I'll add more flour so it's less wet (only after the 16 hour rise) and then use a pizza peel and put it on the pizza stone at 500.

Disaster Index: 1/10

EMERGENCY Chocolate Cake

2010-02-23T21:01:00.003-06:00

In WWII when some foods were rationed, people replaced eggs and butter with mayonnaise, which was readily available. When you try this recipe, you will see that they were right to do so.

Ingredients

1.5c white flour
1c sugar
1/2tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
1/2c dutch process cocoa
1/3c bittersweet chocolate chips (Ghirardelli)
1c espresso or 1c boiling water with instant coffee powder
2/3c mayonnaise (we used reduced-fat)
1 egg
capful of vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the cocoa and chocolate chips and pour in the (hot) espresso. Stir until smooth, then add the mayo, egg, and vanilla. Whisk together until smooth, then add to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Pour into a well-greased 8-9" spring-form pan. Bake for about 30 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out MOSTLY clean with just a little bit of cake sticking to it.

Thoughts: This cake was delicious. Didn't even have a hint of the mayonnaise vinegar flavor. Rather, it was an incredibly moist, incredibly rich cake. And it was really easy and had cheap ingredients. I would definitely make this again. I made it for an olympics watching party and cut out rings of paper which I put on top, then I put powdered sugar on it and removed the rings (so you can see the olympic rings on top). Unfortunately, the cake was just TOO moist, and the powdered sugar got absorbed into the cake. I know, I have way too much time on my hands.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Hoppin' John

2010-02-22T19:59:00.001-06:00

Ingredients

1c dry black-eye peas, washed
6c water
3-4 smoked ham hocks
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped
2 bay leaves
3c worth of chicken bouillon (for us, 1.5 cubes)
1 14oz can diced tomatoes (with chilies)
3-4 cloves of garlic
1c long grain white rice

In a large pot, add everything except the rice. It's a good idea to add the beans then the water before adding anything else, since sometimes the iffy black-eyed peas will float to the surface. Bring to a boil and reduce to a gentle boil / high simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, until there are about 2c of liquid left. Now mix in the rice, cover, and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes on low (leave that lid on!), then take it off the heat and leave covered for another 10 minutes. Serve.

Thoughts: I'm not sure this is authentically hoppin' john - it was kind of cobbled together from the suggestions of several people who seemed to think they knew the "right way". But this was JUST awesome. Too good, in fact. Anyway, in the future it might be good to cook the onions first with the bell peppers, but I'm not sure that it's necessary - this was really good, and had a really rich, complex flavor.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Parsnip and Carrot Soup

2010-02-21T08:41:00.002-06:00

2 tbsp unsalted butter
3 shallots, diced
1 onion, diced
3/4c vermouth
5-6 parsnips, peeled & chopped
2 carrots, peeled & chopped
5c chicken stock (or veg)
3/4tsp balsamic vinegar
3/4tsp salt
pepper
3/4c milk

Melt butter in a saucepan. Add shallots and onion and saute until soft and translucent. Add the wine and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until reduced by half - about 10 minutes. Add the parsnips, carrots, chicken stock, vinegar, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer until parsnips are tender - about 45 minutes. Remove from heat and blend until smooth. Return to the pan and add the milk.

Thoughts: The original recipe called for half-and-half instead of milk, which might have been better. As it is, though, the soup was pretty great. We found ourselves adding honey or brown sugar at the end, though, because the wine and vinegar tended to overpower the natural sweetness of the parsnips. Claire liked the soup all right even though she's not a big fan of parsnips.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Orange Cake with Blackberries

2010-02-18T08:41:00.003-06:00

Just got internet back, so we have a backlog of recipes going back to late January.

Note: This recipe doesn't make MUCH batter - about 2 servings worth. If you're making a big springform pan's worth, you'll need to multiply the recipe by about a factor of 3.

Ingredients

Cakes:
- 1/2c white flour
- 1/2tsp baking soda
- 1tsp baking powder
- 2tsp sugar
- 1/4tsp salt
- 3tbsp butter, melted & cooled
- 1tbsp milk
- 1/2tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- zest of 1 orange
- ~10 to 15 blackberries
Glaze:
- ~1tbsp honey
- juice of 1/2 an orange
- ~2tbsp water with 1/2tsp corn starch
- pinch of cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the flour, soda, and baking powder and set aside. In another (large) bowl, whip the egg with the sugar. Add the remaining wet ingredients and whisk well. Then add the dry to the wet. Take the blackberries and toss them with some spare flour. In two WELL GREASED small bundt pans, pour a little batter - just enough to coat the bottom. Add the blackberries in one layer (it doesn't take many) and then pour remaining batter to cover. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the top is just beginning to brown a little.

While that's baking, juice 1/2 the orange you zested for the cakes. In a saucepan, combine the orange juice and honey and a pinch of cinnamon. Cook until the mixture has a chance to simmer a little. If it doesn't look like enough juice, use the other 1/2 orange. Anyway, once it's cooked down a little, take it off the heat, add the corn starch and water mixture, stir, and then put it back on high heat until the glaze thickens.

When the cakes come out of the oven, let them cool for 5 minutes and then turn them out and glaze. Bonus if you dust them with powdered sugar. Serve!

Thoughts These were really good. The cake was a LITTLE dry, but you couldn't REALLY tell because of the blackberries and the glaze. I would definitely make this again. In the future I would consider using other berries. Blueberries or raspberries might be good. Claire says bake for less long in the future (we went a little longer than 12 minutes). Otherwise, perfect.

Disaster Index: 1/10