I realized I haven’t food-blogged in nearly a year. So let’s take a quick whirlwind tour at the things I’ve made this year.
Our story starts with a series of Good Eats recipes. This is because during the first part of the year, I decided I would randomly pick a few episodes from one of the early seasons and cook everything the episode presented.
Mushroom-Stuffed Mushrooms – The outer mushrooms are the biggest mushrooms you can find. (In my case, big criminis.) The filling is half crimini mushrooms, half shiitake mushrooms, chopped and sauteed with cream, butter, garlic, shallots, and breadcrumbs.
If I were to do it over again, I’d find some larger mushrooms to stuff. Also, roast them longer to make them nice and soft.
Rice Pilaf – This is rice, cooked with onions, garlic, butter, saffron, and I don’t remember what that orange stuff is. Bell peppers I think. (It’s not listed in my notes, and I don’t have the book on hand at the moment.)
I distinctly recall (and my notes corroborate) that the rice was unevenly cooked. Next time, I’ll just use a rice cooker. Much easier that way. (Although I’ll need to figure out how to flavor it with onions and garlic and saffron.
Speaking of saffron…
Bonus: Bottle of saffron. It’s the only spice that I leave in the cupboard instead of on a fridge magnet spice jar.
“Shred Head, Butter, and Bread” – There were several recipes from the Good Eats cabbage episode. (“My cabbages!”) This one involves shredding a head of lettuce and topping it with a dressing made from melted butter and crushed croutons. While it wasn’t bad, I ended up not serving it to my dinner party guests. (More on that later.)
Braised Red Cabbage – Cabbage braised in apple juice with chopped granny smith apples and a little bit of lemon juice. When the flavors are balanced right, the cabbage becomes tender and flavorful and a little bit tart. Would definitely serve to anyone and everyone.
Also, apparently caraway seeds are important when cooking cabbage in liquid. I’m not a food scientist. I’ll cede to someone who is.
Stuffed Cabbages – This one isn’t from Good Eats, but I decided to throw a dinner party with “Cabbage Feast” as a theme. Also, the feast needed to have some protein. So I got a recipe for stuffed cabbages, courtesy of Jack. Cooked cabbages wrapped around a filling of ground beef, onions, and other aromatics, topped with a seasoned tomato sauce, and braised for a few hours until tender and cooked.
For those of you who are curious, the Cabbage Feast menu was cole slaw (from a different Good Eats episode not covered this year), braised red cabbages, and these stuffed cabbages.
Macarons – We’ve long finished our Good Eats recipes and come to something new. I spent most of this year learning how to make macarons. I made many batches, but for whatever reason, this is one of the few photos I took. (It’s also a pretty good photo, so there’s that.)
As it turns out, macarons aren’t as hard to make as people say. They’re harder than cookies, but easier than croissants. If you know how to whip and fold egg whites, you basically know how to make macarons.
Egg Salad with Dill and Salmon Roe – The next several recipes are from Bon Appetit magazine. I think I mentioned before, I got Bon Appetit for 4 years for something like $30, and I figured I should actually, you know, use the magazines.
This recipe was described as “deviled eggs”, but it’s really just egg salad served on a biscuit topped with some salmon roe. The original recipe said to bake the biscuits, but the biscuits were nothing special. Might as well serve them or crostinis, or even just store-bought Ritz crackers. The salmon roe was excessive. The egg salad was good though. Flavored with dill and pickle relish.
Turnip and Kale Gratin – I don’t know what the difference is between a gratin and a casserole. It’s probably a squares and rectangles thing. (Also, according to teh intarwebs, gratin is pronounced “GRAT-tin”, but au gratin is pronounced “oh gra-TAWN”.) Languages are weird, man.
In any case, the core of this casserole is (as its name suggests) turnip and kale. Topped with chopped up bread and cooked with cream, cheese, and an egg, so it almost had a bread-pudding like texture. In fact, I’m craving it right now…
Cauliflower Steaks – Dressed with olive oil, oregano, and lemon zest, and grilled in a cast iron pan. Served over a cauliflower and tahini puree. Topped with a salsa made walnuts, toasted capers, chilis, currants, and a few other ingredients.
A fresh squeeze of lemon juice really makes the flavors pop, and adding a few more extra capers really adds a little I don’t know what.
Fettucine with Chicken, Fennel, and Peas – And topped with those nice big parmesan shavings. The interesting thing about this recipe is that calls for braising the chicken in water. The texture came out amazing, but the flavor was lacking. Next time, I should probably simmer it in some chicken stock instead.
The sauce could also stand the be thicker. More cream. A recipe I would revisit, but needs a lot of tweaking.
Green Beans with Soy, Sesame, and Honey – My notes say this is the best green bean preparation ever, but a big part of that might be the salt from the soy sauce. The flavors need a little more balance. A tad less soy sauce, and a tad more cumin and honey.
I would later learn a miso green bean recipe from Sizzleworks. Clearly I need to make both and have a side-by-side taste comparison test.
Collard Green Gratin – Another gratin. This one was topped with toasted breadcrumbs (way too many breadcrumbs, in my opinion). A little bit of prosciutto for protein. But the most interesting part was that the recipe had me make a bechamel sauce from a roux (flour cooked in melted butter, then add cream, then melt in some parmesan). This really elevated the creaminess of the dish. Also, a dash of nutmeg in the bechamel.
This would inspire me to make my own potatoes au gratin recipe. (More on this later.)
Pumpkin Pie Panna Cotta – This is not a Bon Appetit recipe. This was a homebrew inspired by a recipe I whipped up from first principles fused with something I learned at Sizzleworks.
The hardest challenge to making pumpkin pie is making it set up firm. I can get it thick, and it’ll almost hold on its own, but it still has the consistency of pudding. (And not the Asian kind, but the western kind.)
So after learning a pumpkin panna cotta recipe at Sizzleworks, I decided to make pumpkin panna cotta in a pie crust and call it pumpkin pie. (And I tweaked the sugar and spice and everything nice in attempts to match the flavors I had before.) Oh, and the crust is a solid cookie, because that’s just the way I roll.
Of course, the panna cotta recipe I used is half cream and half buttermilk, and the end product was too tangy. Maybe I should tweak the ratio to use less buttermilk. Or no buttermilk.
Potato, Ham, Spinach, and Cream Casserole – Or is it a gratin?
Anyways, as I was saying earlier, the two casseroles/gratins from Bon Appetit inspired me to make my own. A previous cooking adventure made me want to do a potatoes au gratin, so thin potato slices as my base. I chose ham as my protein (don’t have to worry about cooking it), spinach as my veggie, and the bechamel sauce from the collard green gratin as my filler.
I originally tried topping it with breadcrumbs, but I found breadcrumbs to be unnecessary, I also found that potato casseroles need to cook for a long time, and that the top layer generally doesn’t cook at all. So no top layer, and a longer cooking time.
And now I’m craving that turnip and kale casserole from Bon Appetit. But maybe kale is too fancy. Hmm… it seems like I still have work to do.