Apricot Almond Cake

Well, I pretty much negated the effect of the healthy meal by making this butter-, egg-, and sugar-laden apricot almond cake. Georg was obsessed with it and said it's one of the best he's ever had. No wait, he said it's one of the best I've made, I guess that's a big difference. It was really easy to make...and I made it all in the food processor. I ground 2/3 of a cup of whole almonds (the recipe said blanched but I like to think mine looked more rustic), added two sticks of butter and 1 1/2 cups of sugar, and let the food processor run until some air had been incorporated. After that, I added 1 1/3 cups of flour and two teaspoons of baking soda and a pinch of salt, and let that incorporate in the food processor. Finally, I put the batter in a springform pan and cut up some apricots on top. After sprinkling it with sugar, I put it in the oven. I suppose it took an hour and a half on 350.

Go here to find where I got the original recipe (well, she adapted it from someone else too, but whatever), as well to peruse a really neat food blog.

Roasted Pepper Quinoa Salad with Red Curry Glazed Tofu

In my last post I expressed a desire to cook something healthier and today I fulfilled that desire. Quinoa is supposed to be one of those superfoods...I mixed it with sesame oil and green and red roasted peppers. I don't usually eat tofu, I haven't liked it in the past but I thought maybe that's because I didn't like the way it was cooked. I seared some extra firm tofu in a skillet and added some red curry sauce at the end, but the texture was still freaky. About the only thing that made it edible was the red curry sauce. I would probably eat a stick if it had curry on it.

Sweet Corn Risotto and Tilapia with Thyme Butter

I buy my fish from this fish sandwich restaurant on Lexington Road that used to be a full service fish shop. I've found that fish from supermarkets all too often has a funky taste from being old or being frozen and refrozen, and then thawed again for my consumption. The fish from the Lexington Road place is more expensive (6 or 7 dollars for one tilapia, filleted). Well, at least it seems expensive to me since I can get a whole bag of tilapia fillets at Kroger for $5. But the quality is so much better. For one thing, they don't just sell you the crappy end-cuts of the fish...you can actually see how the whole fish fit together at one point, and the tilapia's not in tiny measly pieces. Second of all, it appears to be fresh. Fish should never actually smell like fish or stink, it should smell like nothing. But I've gotten some nasty smelling stuff at supermarkets before, and cooking it does not help.

Anyway, I dusted those nice tilapia fillets with some salted and peppered flour and cooked them in a skillet. In a very unnecessary move, I drizzed some thyme and browned butter over the top of them. It was good though. I love butter.

This was also my first time making risotto! I was first instructed to saute some garlic and thyme in olive oil, and then add the arborio rice and let that toast up a bit. Afterwards, I was to deglaze the pan with some (well, two cups (!!)) of white wine. I loved the recipe I found on Food Network, it says, and I quote, "deglaze with the white wine and keep stirring, you will need to stir throughout this whole recipe." As if to say, if you have any intention at all of not stirring this like an overworked slave, you are WRONG. Haha. After the wine absorbed, I had to add four cups of liquid in three installments, letting the liquid almost fully absorb each time. The liquid was supposed to be corn stock, which was to be made by boiling two stripped-of-corn corn cobs for thirty minutes in some water (the corn was to later go into the risotto). Well, I dutifully filled a pot with water and added the naked corn cobs, and then went to go read on my bed. Some time later, I smelled something burning and realized that I had forgotten about the corn stock. Oops. I came in to find two charred corn cobs. So I had to substitute chicken stock for my liquid. I'm almost glad, though, because I was skeptical about how much flavor two old corn cobs could possibly impart to plain water. Anyway, after the third installment of liquid, I added the corn and let that cook. And after everything had absorbed the risotto was looking shiny and luxurious. Even then, the recipe instructed me to add 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese and a tablespoon or so of butter, which I did, because after all I do love butter. I need to quit after today, though, I have been veering too far toward recipes with loads of butter.

I was going to make an apricot cake today, I found the cutest little apricots at Whole Foods the other day. But the risotto was so rich I don't think we have room for it now. Maybe tomorrow.

Salmon on a Bed of Pears, Jicama, and Cucumber with Chipotle Vinaigrette & Rice Noodles Stir Fried with Sesame Oil, Sugar Snap Peas and Peanuts

Well, this meal was the one I was talking about in my last post, that I was unable to complete because I thawed the wrong meat. We had this salmon last night for dinner. It lay on a bed of julienned pears and jicama, diced cucumbers, and a chipotle chile vinaigrette.

I really liked the combination of the cucumbers, pears, and jicama. The vinaigrette upon which it lay is a different story. It was made of a chipotle chili in adobo sauce, with a tablespoon extra of adobo sauce, rice wine vinegar, and fresh cilantro. And it was just gross! The chipotle peppers were really spicy, and the vinegar...there was so much of it, it just tasted too vinegary. At times, the taste reminded me of my own vomit, which makes sense because the vinaigrette was essentially a bunch of things ground up in too much vinegar, rather than stomach acid. The combination of the sharp vinegar taste and the spicy hotness was just too much to bear, and it overtook the rest of the flavors on the plate. Sad, because the rest of the flavors were really good ones.

If I made this dish again, I'd combine the fruit and vegetable salad with something much more mild, maybe a yogurt dressing of some kind, maybe the kind you'd make for a yogurt-based waldorf salad dressing. Then, I might include a little bit of heat by spicing the salmon with a bit of cayenne pepper, but not too much. I guess I am just a wimp, but I don't like really hot food very much, and if I do have it, I want it to be isolated in a dish like buffalo chicken wings, not all over my plate infecting everything it touches like that nasty vinaigrette.

The rice noodles were good...I boiled them while a few cloves of garlic and a package of sugar snap peas were sauteeing in a mixture of sesame and vegetable oil, and when the noodles were done I transferred them into the sauteeing vegetables and seasoned them with soy sauce. At the last minute I added some chopped peanuts.

Georg and I both agreed about the vinaigrette and had fun pouring the rest of it down the sink after dinner.

Roasted Beet and Walnut Salad & Butternut Squash Gnocchi in a Sage Butter Sauce with Oregano Marinated Chicken

This meal was from two nights ago. Last night I was planning on making something totally food blog-worthy with salmon. I made this vinaigrette and salad that was supposed to go with it, with the intention of cooking the salmon quickly when Georg got home from tennis. Well, that plan went fine until I realized that I had pulled pork, not salmon, out of the freezer to thaw. I was shocked, my mind racing to find a solution. At first I dashed to the freezer, got the frozen salmon out, and put it under some cold water to quick-thaw it. But I knew there'd be no way to thaw a pound and a half of salmon in a short period of time, and it was already 8pm. So I put some plastic wrap over the vinaigrette and salad, and that will have to wait until tomorrow. Faced with having to make an impromptu meal involving pork chops, I boiled some peeled potatoes, cooked the pork chops in a pan, and sauteed some bok choy. It was OK but nothing food blog-worthy.

So I will post about my meal from two nights ago, as I started to tell you a paragraph earlier. I had a great experience last time I made homemade gnocchi, all you do is mix cooked potato with flour and maybe an egg and form it into a log, which you cut into little dough-puffs and boil. I think it's best served in some sort of herb-butter sauce--last time I used fresh thyme from my now-defunct herb garden (and when I say defunct, I mean DEAD, although I really hate to admit it to myself). This time I decided to make it with butternut squash, a recipe I saw on Food Network from Emeril Lagasse. He recommends serving it in a balsamic vinegar and sage butter sauce, but I knew from the start I'd leave the vinegar out. There is something so comforting about those soft pillows of dough browned just slightly in the butter, and I thought the edge the vinegar would provide would be unwelcome. To begin, I roasted a butternut squash cut in half in the oven. When tender I scooped the flesh into a bowl and added oregano, fresh sage, salt, pepper, olive oil, and enough flour to make it into a dough (around 3 cups). After that, I divided the dough into fourths and rolled each fourth into a long dough-log. Each log is cut into little gnocchi and then boiled.

Honestly, working with the squash as a base for the gnocchi was much more challenging than just using potato. The squash, being wetter I suppose, yielded a sticky dough that I kept having to tame with more flour. Plus I guess the starchiness from a potato makes dough stick together better. This was still a fun experiment. After I cut the squash gnocchi and boiled them to cook them, I put them in a skillet with half a stick of butter and some more fresh sage. The sage got crispy in the hot butter, as did most of the gnocchi.

We enjoyed them with some oregano and lemon marinated chicken breasts and a walnut/beet salad with poppyseed dressing, but really the gnocchi are so filling I just filled up on those and made Georg eat most of my chicken. It was a nice time to have this sort of meal; it was the night when all that thunderstorming was going on. I wasn't really in the mood to take the pictures of my food, but I did anyway, and you can tell in them my heart wasn't really in it :)

Oh, and I do want to mention that if anybody ever wants to cook something on this blog, I would be happy to supply the recipes and note which substitutions or alterations I made. I don't think anyone who reads this so far is as into cooking as I am--I imagine most people would rather look than actually try the recipe. But if I'm wrong I'd be happy to supply them.

Chocolate Cherry Cake

I made this on the fourth of July for my grandfather's birthday cake. I found the recipe for the cake on the Food Network website, but I decorated it myself. There are cherries and almond extract in the cake, so I topped the cake with chocolate ganache and mimicked these flavors on the outside. Placing all those sliced almonds on the outside was tedious, but luckily my sister helped me. Everybody really enjoyed the cake. My cousin asked me if I was a chef, haha. When it was time to sing happy birthday, we stuck sparklers in it and lit those.

Sauteed Spinach and Curried Tilapia Over Brown Rice

This meal was pretty easy to make. The spinach was sauteed until it wilted in a skillet with garlic and olive oil. At the end I added some lemon juice so it'd keep its green color. For the tilapia, I put some ginger and garlic in a pan with some olive oil and red curry powder. Once it started getting sizzly, I added the tilapia filets and let them cook a bit. After I flipped the fish, I added a can of coconut milk and let it finish cooking in the curry sauce. The brown rice is just, well, brown rice. I garnished the food with some fresh basil and a lime wedge. I am including a photo of Georg finishing this dish.

Moroccan Lamb Burgers with Lemon-Cilantro Yogurt, Cumin and Cinnamon Roasted Root Vegetables, and Lemon Spinach Couscous

This meal was really awesome. It was so pretty and tasted great. I put cumin seeds, cinnamon, and garlic into the ground lamb, and also on the vegetables (butternut squash, rutabaga, carrots, and turnips). I made a sauce for the burgers out of plain yogurt mixed with lemon juice, lemon zest, and cilantro. The couscous was out of a box, but it still looked tasty. I didn't have any because I am trying not to be a little pig. Georg's plate is the one photographed; he can afford to be a little pig, and he is. Ha!

Lemon Country Style Ribs with Blueberry Barbecue Sauce, Bacon Garlic Spaetzle, and Anise Roasted Green Beans

This meal wasn't the prettiest thing I've ever made but I felt it was interesting enough to post here. I suggested a while ago to my Mom that she try a blueberry barbecue sauce (she was already using my recipe for the lemon marinade) because I thought it would be fun and that the flavors of lemon and blueberry go together well. Well, I don't think she even considered the idea because the thought of blueberries in barbecue sauce repulsed her. I thought it sounded good because barbecue sauce from the bottle is filled with sweeteners anyway (like nasty high-fructose corn syrup--look on the back of your barbecue sauce bottle and it's probably the main ingredient). So why not use blueberries to sweeten the sauce instead? The blueberries also have a lot of natural pectin in them, which is a thickening agent. So I set out to make the blueberry barbecue sauce myself!! And it was good, well I thought. People that don't like sweet barbecue sauce in the first place won't like it, but if you do, it's really nice tasting and very pretty. And it's a whole lot more like regular barbecue sauce than you'd think.

Anyway, if you'd like to try it out, you mix a package of blueberries (around 2 cups), 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 3 tbsp. honey, 3tbsp. ketchup, a teaspoon of fresh sliced ginger, and two cloves of fresh sliced garlic. Then you boil it until all the ingredients come together (about ten minutes) and process it in a food processor after it's had time to cool off a bit.

I liked the sauce with the country style ribs--they are one of the cheapest pieces of meat ever and I felt like the sauce added a touch of class. I marinated the ribs all day in powdered lemonade, minced ginger and garlic, lemon zest, malt vinegar, and soy sauce. I dried them off and dredged them in flour, browned them, and then baked them in the oven for an hour or so. I added the barbecue sauce at the end because I wasn't sure I'd like it or not and I didn't want it to go all over the place in the oven.

Also in the oven were some green beans roasting away with some anise seeds and coarse salt sprinkled on top. If you've never tried green beans this way I'd recommend it. Anise is licorice-tasting and it's just really good with the green beans. Plus the little seeds add a lot of texture. I also like to add the seeds to biscotti.

Finally, the spaetzle. Spaetzle are German egg noodles. You can make them yourself or get them in a package at the store. They are usually boiled and then browned up in some fat. In this case, I just dumped them in the skillet that I browned the ribs in with a little extra bacon and some garlic. The little spaetzles get nice and brown.

Not a healthy meal, but a fun and exotic one.

Roasted Red Pepper and Ancho Chili Salsa Topped Ribeye Steaks with Avocado & Tomato Salad and Roasted Potatoes

The salsa for this dish was kind of interesting. I had a jar of roasted red peppers and some dried chilies laying around from other recipes I'd decided not to make and so when I saw the recipe on a website I knew I had to make it, if for no other reason than to just use up ingredients taking up valuable space in my pantry. It called for the peppers, chilies, cilantro, garlic, honey, some red wine vinegar, and pine nuts. I hate toasting nuts because I always burn them, and I burned them this time, too. Luckily I salvaged two tablespoons worth of nuts that weren't quite so burned. Avocado and tomato is a pretty classic combination so I just kind of made up the recipe for the salad in my head, adding some cilantro to mimic the flavors in the salsa. The meal turned out pretty well--but the texture of the salsa made it a little hard to eat with the steak; the strips of roasted red pepper kept falling off the pieces of meat I'd cut. Next time maybe I'd pulse it in the food processor a bit to make it more manageable, but then it wouldn't be so pretty. It might have been nice pureed with olive oil to make a dipping sauce. That's probably what I'd do if I made it again.

Whole Wheat Baguette

Georg and I both really hate what I call "sponge bread": basically, bread that has the texture of a soft sponge. Well, sponge bread is OK for a sandwich, but we don't eat many sandwiches. Georg asked me to get some bread while I was at Kroger, but since I was at the Kroghetto on 2nd St., of course, they only had sponge bread. I knew I had some whole wheat flour at home, so I bought some yeast and resorted to making some decent bread on my own. I'd made some bread in high school (it was always bad because I was never patient enough to let it rise) and I'd watched Mom and Granny make bread or yeast rolls a million times. I found a recipe on Cooks.com (not a site I regularly use, but this recipe was good) that seemed reliable--reviewers said that the recipe yielded a dough that consistently rose despite the heaviness of whole wheat flour. Thus, I mixed up some warm water and yeast with some honey and salt, let the yeast activate. Then I stirred in the flour, kneaded the dough, and set it in a window to rise. I DID add some gluten to the dough because since my KitchenAid mixer is being stored at my mother's, I didn't trust my puny arms to work the dough very well. The dough did rise nicely indeed, and I punched it down and formed it into two footlong baguettes. After the second rise, I scored the bread with a razor blade (a bit too shallowly, as you can see, but I didn't want to cut the dough fully in half) and stuck it in the oven atop a baking sheet greased and sprinkled with cornmeal. And after 20 minutes or so, I took the bread out of the oven, placed it on the heart-shaped cutting board you see here, and took this cute little picture. I was really pleased with the result: the bread had a nice crust, and the crumb was dense.

Curried Pork Chops with Brandied Peaches, Mashed Sweet Potatoes, and Garlic & Olive Oil Roasted Broccoli

One day I bought a bottle of brandy and decided to experiment with it in my cooking. This meal was the result of that. I found a recipe on the Food Network website for brandied peaches--you were to boil the peaches, skin them, dice them, cover them with brandy, and put them in a cool dark place in a jar for a month. Since I wanted gratification that was somewhat more immediate than that, I just peeled and diced the peaches and put them in a skillet with some brown sugar. When it got all bubbly and had cooked for a while, I added the brandy and stirred it around and ground in some black pepper. To make the curried pork chops, I just rubbed some curry powder into the pork chops and seared them in a skillet, then finished them off in an oven. I boiled some sliced sweet potatoes, drained them, and then left them in the hot pot over low heat for a while to dry them out (I hate mashing or pureeing anything that is too wet, what a slimy mess). I added some cream, butter, orange juice, and orange zest as I mashed.

Chocolate Pine Nut Tart

I got this recipe from TV chef Giada DeLaurentiis. I saw her make it on her show, and it looked really good. I got the recipe off the show's website--if you don't already use foodnetwork.com as a recipe finder, I recommend it, they have recipes for everything you can imagine and they're user-rated so you can look at the ratings and find out if they're any good or not. Surprisingly enough, Giada calls this Chocolate Ricotta Pie, which is absurd because obviously the most prominent feature of this confection is the pine nuts (they're on top and in the crust) and I think they deserve a mention in the recipe name. Anywhoo, the recipe was really, really easy to follow. The tart took about three hours to make in all, but it was worth it. The ingredients were really expensive, too (12 oz of pine nuts @ $3 for a 4 oz package PLUS all other ingredients). But in the end this dessert was worth the expense because it's so rich you can get 12-15 servings out of it. The crust was made with pine nuts, sugar, flour, and cornmeal, which made for a really nice taste and texture. It was blind-baked, and then filled with this chocolate custard made with chocolate, eggs, cream cheese, sugar syrup, and eggs.

Chicken Breasts with Olives and Roast Lemons over Roasted Cauliflower Puree

This is one of my absolute most favorite meals. I found the recipe for the chicken in one of those Everyday Food magazines you find in the line at the grocery, although I modified it a little to suit my tastes. The recipe instructs the cook to use green olives, while for me the tangy-ness provided by the roast lemons is sufficient and so I use more mild black olives. I also use more white wine for the pan gravy, ha! Roast lemons are ready after 45 minutes or so in the oven, and the chicken is just browned and a white wine gravy is made from its drippings. I came up with the "recipe" for the roasted cauliflower puree myself; I use quotations because the recipe's so simple it can't really be called a recipe. All the cauliflower puree recipes I usually see call for boiled and then well-drained cauliflower, but nothing dries the cauliflower out better than roasting it (a dry cauliflower makes for a better-textured puree). I roast mine with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Plus, the roasting gives it a caramelized flavor. After roasting, I put the cauliflower in a food processor with two cubes of Light Garlic and Herb Laughing Cow Cheese (a variation on the regular recipes, which usually call for cream, butter, and parmesan cheese). It comes out really well and is much healthier than using all that butter and cream. I usually eat half of it right out of the food processor before it even gets to the table.

Blueberry and Lemon Custard Tart

This is a Blueberry and Lemon Custard Tart I made on a whim one Saturday in the Spring. I remember this was the first dessert I made with the tart pan my best friend Jamie gave me for my birthday. I found the recipe in one of my favorite baking cookbooks, How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson. The tart tasted wonderfully and was and very spring-like: a dough made with chilled cream cheese, custard infused with fresh lemon zest and juice, and a beautifully shiny blueberry topping made with blueberries, sugar, and a teaspoon or so of cornstarch. I liked how through the cooking, the blueberries became shiny and juicy while maintaining their shape. This was one of my first experiences with blind-baking (baking the tart shell before filling it), and I had no pie weights. I used beans instead but forgot to use some aluminum foil or parchment as a barrier, so the beans got kind of stuck in the crust after baking. I had to pry them out before filling the tart, but it still turned out OK. No one noticed, ha.