There’s a running joke that I’ve wanted to make falafel waffle only because it rhymes with itself and is fun to say. Well, this month, the joke comes to life. I finally learned how to make falafel, and then I made it into a waffle.
Ingredient Challenge Dinner Party!
Saturday, February 27, 2016 – So when I first started doing ingredient challenges, the rule was that the people who issued the challenges had to eat whatever I cooked for them. (This was to prevent people from choosing the most ridiculous ingredients and make sure they picked things that people would actually eat.) That and, whatever I came up with, I wanted to share with my friends. So naturally, it’s dinner party time!
Today’s menu was
- bacon cheddar garlic mashed potatoes (by request)
- roasted butternut squash and green beans wrapped in chard
- sausage wrapped in bacon wrapped in steak
- chocolate nut rosewater honey cinnamon pastries
Jan/Feb 2016: Multitasking Practice
So as we all know, I make good-looking food, but I’m slow in the kitchen. One of my issues is I tend to serialize everything (laymen’s terms: I do everything one at a time). If I really want to work on my kitchen speed, I need to get comfortable multitasking things. And the biggest opportunity for improvement is to have more than 1 thing going on the stove at the same time.
About Introverts
(Disclaimer: This isn’t based on any medical diagnosis of introversion (if such a thing exists). Rather, this is based on a self-labeled introvert and his observations of other self-labeled introverts.)
A lot has been written about introverts. Most of it is wrong. Well-meaning, but wrong. Some of it is over-simplification. Some of it is missing a lot of important nuances. A lot of it is just wrong.
So I decided to write my own blog post about introverts, based on observations of myself and of other introverts.
Ingredient Challenge #5, Take Two: Rose Water Croissants
Saturday, January 9, 2016 – So if you’ve been following along at home, you’ll remember I was really unhappy with the previous version of this challenge. Long story short, the 3-layer parfait got all mushy and turned into a 1-layer soggy parfait. Not good.
And I said I still wouldn’t be making baklava, but rather rolling stuff up into puff pastry and calling it a croissant variant. And that’s exactly what I did. The challenge was chocolate, nuts, rose water, honey, and cinnamon. The chocolate and nuts is rolled up in the puff pastry. The pastry is baked and soaked in rose water, glazed with honey, and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.
And it was good.
December 2015: Cooking In California
It might be more accurate to call this Cooking For California, since the story starts in Seattle, as I try out a few new recipes and practice a few old ones.
Specifically, one of my friends specifically requested deep-fried stuffed jalapeno for our traditional New Years Eve party. (Which she calls “jalapeno poppers”, and I lovingly misinterpreted as “jalapeno popplers“.
Not only that, but it’s tradition for my to cook dinner for my family every time I visit, a tradition that was broken once only because… well, you know… And between my Chef Watson stuff and my Ingredient Challenges, I had a lot of new material I wanted to try on real people. (I ended up going with some Chef Watson winners for my family dinner.)
New Years Retrospective and Resolutions 2016
Are you surprised? I do these every year. The short version is, I like to promise myself to do interesting things (or necessary things), and asking myself every year “what do I want to accomplish this year” is pretty much New Years Resolutions. Nothing lame like “I want to gain/lose weight”, but real stuff like “take cooking classes” or “write a book”.
And I like to talk about it because, let’s be honest, I’m a writer (blogger?) at heart, and I like drawing attention to myself.
Cookie Crust Pumpkin Pie 2: The Pumpkining
Hey humans! So you know how last year, I made a pumpkin pie with a no-bake filling in a cookie crust? Well, I tweaked the recipe a bit, added more sugar (because it wasn’t sweet enough), reduced the cloves (because it was too clove-y), and overall tweaked the recipes. And I also discovered that they do sell butter-flavored shortening in tub form, although you might have to check larger safeways, possibly maybe even Whole Foods. And butter-flavored shortening prolly made a big difference this time.
And I like what I got (and so did my Thanksgiving cohorts), so I figured I’d share the recipe with you this time.
Ingredient Challenge #6: Salmon with Kimchi Slaw
Sunday, November 29, 2015 – And now for our last ingredient challenge of the season. My coworker Eric S picked salmon (good protein base), orange juice (I can make a citrus glaze for the salmon), cantaloupe (I guess I could infuse it into the orange juice), artichoke hearts (I can work with that), and… kimchi. Okay, we’ll see what I can do.
Lucky for me, I decided to try mixing the kimchi with the roasted artichoke hearts and mayo and call it a Kimchi and Artichoke Slaw. And you know what, it kinda worked.
Ingredient Challenge #5: 3-Layer Parfait
Monday, November 16, 2015 – Something a little different this time. My friend Spiro picked rose water, honey, nuts, cinnamon, and chocolate. Now, the rose water, honey, and nuts immediately screams baklava. Which was too obvious, so I didn’t want to do that. In fact, I figured I’d avoid the whole pastry thing altogether. So my next thought was pudding.
The next problem, of course, is that rose water, cinnamon, and chocolate don’t really blend as flavors. So instead of making one pudding, I’d make three. And I’d layer the honey and nuts in between them. And call it a parfait.