Every time I visit California, I cook for my family, and I bring something to the holiday potluck that invariably happens. This year was no different.
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
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.)
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.
July 2015: Chef Watson Month
For those of you who don’t remember, Watson is the AI who beat Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings in a game of Jeopardy.
Well, Watson is a chef now (among other things). So I decided to work on a few recipes from his book.
Pi Day 2015
(Photo courtesy of Joy)
For those of you who don’t know about Pi Day, March 14 can be written as 3.14, which is pi. Therefore, March 14 is Pi Day. Also, pi sounds like pie, so we celebrate Pi Day by eating pie. But wait, there’s more. This year, Pi Day falls on a Saturday. So I figured, all the stars are aligned, and this year, I’m going to bake a pie and have a pie eating party at my place. Fruit pie or savory pie? Why not both? It’ll be a Double Pie Pi Day, a Pi Day Pie-thon, if you will.
For the apple pie, I started with the crust and filling recipe from Sizzleworks, and eventually, I made enough tweaks to the apple pie filling that I’m willing to call it my own. The chicken pot pie recipe, though, I was inspired by an Emeril recipe from a long time ago, but I re-wrote the recipe from first principles and my own preferences. The only thing it has in common with Emeril’s recipe is they both have shiitake mushrooms.
In the traditional manner, I’ll show you the recipe(s) first, after the cut, then jump into the write-up.
No-Bake Pumpkin Pie with a Cookie Crust
(Photo courtesy of Joy.)
Thursday, November 27, 2014 – It’s Thanksgiving. My friends know I bake epic-level desserts. They also know I have a knack for cookies. So of course, I revive the cookie crust pie. Except instead of a chocolate filling, I go for a pumpkin pie filling.
(Side note: cookie crusts were relatively obscure when I started making them in 2012. Now they’re pretty common. It kinda annoys me. I guess I’m a food hipster.)
Peanut Butter Cookies
Monday, October 13, 2014 – I’ve made a lot of chocolate chip cookies in my lifetime. (Well, mostly in the last 6 years.) But I’ve never made peanut butter cookies before. But then my friend [redacted] asked me to bake peanut butter cookies for her birthday. So I thought, what the heck, why not?
Adventures With Browned Butter
Sunday, September 14, 2014 – When I first started learning how to bake, I learned that you should never melt the butter, that if you’re using butter, the creaming method is king.
Since then, a few of my coworkers and a few of my friends have mentioned melting the butter. One of my friends even mentioned browned butter. (Nope, it’s just brown sugar.) Serious Eats famous cookie article (the one that I’ve been linked to by 4 different people) swears by browned butter. So I decided to finally give it a try.