A New Experiment

Dear Friends,

For all of you that have followed my cooking chronicles for the last four years: I appreciate your perseverance and devotion. Unfortunately, I have decided that maintaining two blogs is unfair to all of you since it means that I don't post often on either. So, I have decided to attempt to remedy this situation by merging them. As of today, you can find all the posts from this blog on my other blog. And all my future adventures in cooking will be found there as well. I'd encourage you to hop on over and then you can read not only about my adventures in cooking but also about my adventures in grad school, my adventures on the east coast, and anything else I can think of (and find the energy to write about). I hope you enjoy this new experiment in my attempt to be a blogger.

Love always,

Me

Brussel Sprouts with Roasted Grapes

So a while back I saw this recipe on Two Kitchen Promenade that looked pretty interesting. Brussel sprouts are one of those foods that have a reputation for being pretty awful. In fact, until I made this recipe I had never ever had a brussel sprout before. I think the only reason I was brave enough to try them was because I have known 3 or 4 people in the recent past who think brussel sprouts are pretty amazing.

Unfortunately for me green grapes were what was on sale so my dish didn't have the same color appeal that this one had, but c'est la vie. I will say that brussel sprouts are pretty delicious. I'm not sure how they ended up with such a terrible reputation, but I'm glad that they are coming back in style. One thing I will say though, is that they are much better fresh; they don't reheat well at all--actually, it's mostly the grapes that don't reheat well. Next time grapes (and brussel sprouts) go on sale I will definitely be making this one again.

Hot Cross Buns

So back in 2010 I posted about Hot Cross Buns and you probably thought it was a one-time occurance. Well, I've made them again (though I don't think I made them any times between then and now). And today I want to tell you a little more about their history. These buns are a traditional Good Friday food, and so naturally that's when I made them. It seems that the cross represents the crucifixion but Wikipedia (aren't my sources great? and I call myself a librarian) doesn't seem to say anything about how it came to be a tradition, so I guess we will just have to remain unenlightened for a while longer (maybe next year when I make them I'll be inclined to doing more proper research).

When I went to make these this time I looked for the recipe I used ages ago, but I really have no idea where it came from and the one I ended up using was significantly easier, though I didn't actually love it. (I also have no recollection to what my last attempt tasted like for a comparison.) I think that next time I'll try another recipe yet again because these ones were kind of dry and I didn't love that. One thing I did like though was that I used cherry juice-infused craisins instead of raisins and that was pretty tasty. Though I was just reading about a variation that uses chocolate chips instead and that would probably be even better. I was prompted to try these fancy craisins to see how the might work to solve the great tea-ring debate. I have another package of craisins and I want to try them in the tea-ring in concert with a recipe for glace cherries I found to see if that will solve the issue--I'm not sure that it will really be an adequate substitute.

Potato Pizza

This seems like forever ago that I was on my pizza kick, but for a while I'm pretty sure I made pizza (usually with zuccini and squash on it) at least once a week and maybe more like twice. I'm not sure what happened. I guess I got busy (which I definitely did, if I look at my life in January and my life now they are completely different). But back when I ate pizza all the time I saw this recipe for potato pizza and thought it sounded pretty tasty. Though when I made it I admit that I made some changes because I had neither shallots nor gruyere (though if I did that would've been pretty fantastic). Sadly, it's a little hard to remember, but I'm pretty sure I used cheddar cheese. And I also learned that you definitely need to make sure the potatoes are cooked all the way through before you put them on the crust because they won't finish cooking in the oven. But other than that, the pizza turned out pretty fantastically. Writing this makes me want to make pizza again soon, maybe I'll get ingredients for one next time I do a shop.

Spinach

So for no apparent reason I was under the impression most of my life that cooked spinach wasn't very good. I don't know where I got that impression because I definitely also knew that eating spinach makes you strong enough to punch the living daylights out Bluto--Popeye's nemesis. But so a couple of weeks ago I had a whole bunch of spinach that was starting to wilt, and so it wasn't ideal for a salad, but I still needed to eat it so I looked up a recipe for cooked spinach. It is surprisingly tasty. And since spinach cooks down so much I feel uber healthy eating half a bag of spinach in about 4 spoonfuls.

Spinach with Sesame and Garlic

Cherry Tea Ring

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the cherry tea ring that my mom makes for breakfast on Christmas morning. She always makes it the night before and then it rises in the fridge overnight (in theory it least). By now you're probably wondering tea ring? What's that? Does it really have tea in it? To which I answer no. It has no tea in it (think coffee cake). But a tea ring is similar to cinnamon rolls only a different shape. Basically you make cinnamon rolls but instead of slicing them completely apart you only cut them partway and it makes this lovely ring. And we put chopped up candied cherry pieces inside and on top.

Before I cooked it.

The candied cherries always cause a bit of consternation in our household. If you have ever gone on the hunt for candied fruit in this country you know the trouble it is to find it. Granted at Christmas time it is a little bit easier, but it's still hard to find small packages of just cherries. Mixed fruit is much easier. And no matter what you find they're incredibly expensive. So a couple summers ago when I was in England I stumbled upon small pots of just candied cherries for 79p. You can't beat that price. Even if the exchange rate is 2:1 $1.60 is about a third of what you'd pay for candied cherries in the States. So I quickly snapped up two packages. I still had one left at Christmas this year but completely forgot to take them home and so I decided that it was time for me to use them up. Mine didn't rise as well as I'd like, but I blame that on my poorly heated house. But it tasted fantastic.

Check out that gooey deliciousness.

Black bean and sweet potato tacos

It is amazing to me just how versatile the sweet potato is. I would never have pegged it for being a good taco-filling, or even for going well with black beans. But it is, and it does. Once again I will beg your forgiveness for the lack of a photo. While my taco turned out very deliciously, it wasn't really attractive enough for my to take a picture. (I used too big of a tortilla, and put in too much filling and ate it like a burrito, except with the filling falling out all over the place). Instead, I will have to refer you to this blog instead, and to her picture, because hers is excellent.

Zucchini Pizza

Normally I'm a pepperoni pizza person. Just plain old pepperoni (or occasionally Hawaiian), but this zucchini pizza is fantastic! One of my old roommates used to make it occasionally and it made the apartment smell so good. So today I tried it. And I tried a new crust recipe, which at least so far has passed muster. Admittedly, I didn't use goat's cheese, but that was more because it was too expensive to actually buy. But next time, I think I'll spend the extra money.

Gingerbread houses

Ok, so I didn't really make a gingerbread house today, or even last week. But I did "make" some when I was home over Christmas, and now I'm posting about it.

My mom thought it would be a fun thing for my youngest brother and I do, to build this gingerbread village kit that she got somewhere. It was fun, but also incredibly difficult. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard, I mean it shouldn't be any hard than building with graham crackers, which we've all done before, but it was incredibly difficult. And so by the time we'd gotten them built we'd lost a lot of energy for decorating them. In fact, I bet you can't even tell which ones I decorated and which ones my nine year-old brother decorated.

 I'll give you a hint, I did the ones with white frosting.

So after we had decorated these, my brother came home from school, a couple days later, with a much cooler gingerbread house. (And it was a lot tastier too.)

Brigadeiros

I mentioned in my last post that I was preparing for a new adventure while using up all my food. I guess I'll tell you a little about my new adventure before I talk about how I finished up my canned goods. I am once again packing up all my junk (which never fails to amaze me at how much of it there is) and moving. (no surprise there, huh?--when am I not about to move?) And since moving within the same city or the same state gets boring after a while (though I'm not actually bored of Maryland, I love it here) I've opted for a new state. Massachusetts here I come!

Now, on to canned goods. So what are Brigadeiros you ask? They are a phenomenally delicious Brazilian treat that I learned to make while living in England two summers ago.  Basically they are sweetened condensed milk and chocolate powder. You boil them together until it's thick enough to more or less hold its shape and then you make little balls. (I let it cool enough so it didn't burn my hands and that helped it to thicken even more.) You can roll the balls in something if you like, but you don't have to. I rolled some in cocoa powder and some in plain sugar just because I could. Or if you feel like rolling things into balls is too much work you don't have to cook the milk as long and it makes a pretty awesome sauce on things like ice cream (which is how I had it the first time). 

Potato Pot Pie

We're all agreed that chicken pot pie is pretty delicious, right?  I mean, flaky crust, chicken, peas and carrots, what's not to like? I'd have to say the thing I don't like about chicken pot pie is the purchasing of the chicken. Why does meat have to be so expensive anyways?

In preparation for a new adventure (more on that later), I've been trying to use up all my food. Always a challenge. So I found myself with a whole bag of peas, and a couple carrots, but no chicken. However, I did have a potato.  (I discovered a while back that potato does make a tolerable chicken-substitute in Indian food, which is how I came to the following conclusion.) Potato pot pie anyone?

I had decided that I wanted to make this pot pie before I went home to visit my family for Christmas, and since I knew my potato would suffer during my two-week absence I decided I'd be all prepared and chop it and the carrots up before I left and freeze them. You can buy frozen vegetables so I assumed this would work. I came home and pulled my frozen veggies out of the freezer to find that my potatoes had turned black. Thinking about it, I know that potatoes turn brown after you cut them much like apples do, so I figured there was nothing wrong with blackened potatoes. So I still used them. (but I also got another fresh potato and used that too.)

What I've since learned is that potatoes don't freeze. When they thawed they were kind of mushy, which was weird, and when they were cooked in the pie they didn't taste like potatoes. Basically, they didn't look like potatoes and didn't taste like potatoes, so what I really ended up with was a pea-pot pie. (I also used far too many peas to be proportionate--why not use the whole bag up at once?) The fresh potatoes did taste like potatoes and were really quite delicious. So I do think that potatoes can work in pot pies. Just not frozen ones. And really, after you pick out the blackened bits the whole pie still turned out ok--though I still wish I didn't have to eat it all week.