International Potluck

Last night, my ward (church group) had a International Potluck dinner for FHE (Family Home Evening--a Monday night tradition we use to strengthen our families). I was impressed with the variety of foods that we had. If you think about it, gathering a bunch of single twenty-somethings together and telling them to make/bring an "international" dish for a potluck dinner sounds like a recipe for 17 different kinds of salsa and maybe some fancy casserole. This was not the case. We managed to represent all 7 continents (ice water is from Antarctica right??) and there was so much variety that I couldn't even try it all. Needless to say, I ate way too much.

I made Yorkshire pudding for my food. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to take a picture of it, so instead I'm going to make you really hungry, and maybe even drool a little, and post this picture I found online.

When it occurred to me to make Yorkshire pudding for this potluck late on Sunday afternoon I was surprised by this simple solution to the problem I'd been wrestling with for a couple weeks. I wanted to make an easy and delicious English food that was savoury. I'm sure many of you are thinking that my problem was with the "easy and delicious" part, but really my problem was that I couldn't think of anything savoury that I could easily (and cheaply) make. So when I attended a similar potluck last Saturday (strange to have to International potlucks in less than 72 hours, I know--I didn't plan them...) I ended up making Portuguese Custard Tarts because they are simple and delicious, although not savoury. (and once again, enjoy a photo I found online. I'm just not very good at this whole remembering to take pictures of my food business.)

Zupfa

I has been months since I have posted anything, and it has been a while since I have cooked anything particularly exciting too, but I have cooked a few good things in the last while. Last year sometime I made a Lemon Posset, I think I posted about it. This time I used cream that had been frozen and then thawed. That doesn't work. It changes consistency and just doesn't set up in custards. So the lemon posset never really set and it had a weird consistency. So I now know that cream doesn't freeze. But at the same time I made Scottish Shortbread cookies. Those did turn out pretty well. They didn't taste exactly like Walkers, but pretty close.

I also made Zupfa, which is a sort of Swiss bread. It is delicious. I have a friend who has a good recipe and I used hers and it was delicious. I've decided that it is much cheaper to make your own bread than to buy it at the store and so that is what I've been doing. I made this recipe for between $5 and 6 dollars. And it made approximately 9 loaves. So it was 60 or 70 cents a loaf. So much cheaper than store bought bread, and it has no preservatives! The recipe was huge--I think the hardest part was finding a bowl bigg enough to mix it in, and then enough pans to bake it in. I had regular loaves, and more french bread shaped loaves, and round loaves, the works. I also tried to make cinnamon rolls out of some of it, but that didn't work too well. It's definitely not good for sweet breads.

Sometime after my Zupfa adventure I tried my hand at a chocolate rice pudding. I had all sorts of leftover rice one and I thought that that would be a good way to use it up. Yeah, no. I've never really had good rice pudding, but this definitely wasn't it. It tasted a lot like warm, mushy, cocoa krispies. Definitely not exciting. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Maybe other kinds of rice pudding are good, but this one wasn't.

Let's see, after my not so delicious rice pudding I made a dessert that I was a little more comfortable with. I needed a pie for something so I whipped up a cherry pie using cherries I bottled myself last summer. It turned out pretty well. I'm always glad when my pies turn out.

And the last dessert that I've made was a mango shortbread bar. It was pretty good. It had a shortbread base, and then mango slices on top of that and then more shortbread crumbled on top. it was a bit like a cobbler. Everyone seemed to like it well.

Souffles and Custards

I would be remiss if I didn't update soon. It appears that it has been quite a while since I have written.

Some number of weeks ago I tried my hand at a Chocolate-Banana Fool. The OED explains a fool as "A dish composed of fruit stewed, crushed, and mixed with milk, cream, or custard." The word was first used in this sense in the late 1500s and was spelled with an e (foole). So essentially, a chocolate-banana fool is a sort of chocolate-banana custard. It was quite delicious, though the I think that next time I'll use a little less chocolate because it didn't mix into my custard as smoothly as I would have liked and so was a little grainy. but the semi-sweet chocolate definitely was a good sweetness.

After the fool, I tried a Cheese Souffle. Now, I have always heard the souffles are quite difficult to make, and that anything much of a loud sound will make them fall. I don't know about the loud noise (though I suspect that's merely and old wives' tale) but I do know that souffles aren't really that hard to make. You mix the ingredients, whip the egg whites, fold them together, and bake. They are delicious. I've tried to describe what exactly a souffle is to a number of people, and I have yet to come up with a very good explanation. It's sort of like a cake, only spongy-er, and a cheese souffle is kind of like cheesy scrambled eggs, but not. They are extremely light, and moist, and delish.

The week after I made this cheese souffle, I decided that one good souffle deserved another so I made "Hot Berry Souffles with a Mixed-berry Coulis," you know I like coulis. Instead of making these souffles in a big souffle dish like the cheese souffle, these I made in individual ramekins, so they were delightfully easy and individually portioned. The berry souffles were a nice light shade of purple, and were light, and fruity, and a great dessert. The best desserts are the ones where you can eat just a little and feel satisifed, and this was just that way. The coulis on top looked nice, and gave the souffle just the right sauce to eat it with. I included a picture of them right after they came out of the oven. They are amazingly tall, and fell quickly. but they were good--if I'm allowed to say that.

Earlier this week, I had the responsibility of providing treats for our weekly staff meeting, and so I made a Lemon Cream Tart. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, so I have nothing to show for my work. Tarts are surprisingly easy to make, and quite tasty. The dough for the crust reminded me of the smell of cookie dough, (though the dough didn't taste like it. In fact it wasn't yummy at all). The lemon cream part was reminiscent of the filling that lemon meringue pies. I'll have to make it again sometime so that there can be a picture.

Catching Up

Well, it has been a very long time since I have posted, so I will try to get myself caught up on all the cooking adventures that I have had in the last 3 months or so. First off, in October I tried my hand at making fortune cookies. They are surprisingly easy, and quite tasty. When I read the recipe it seemed weird that you can only cook 2 cookies at a time, but when I tried it myself, it is indeed a true statement. If you cook anymore than that there is no way that you'll get the cookies folded before they harden. It is so cool, when you first take the cookies out of the oven, they are soft and quite malleable, but they start to harden almost instantly; nevertheless, it is quite possible to fold them to actually look like fortune cookies.

Then, a little late in the month, I tried my hand at Portuguese Custard Tarts. They utilize two of my favorite ingredients: custard and puff pastry. And they cook in a muffin pan, so they are perfectly bite-sized. Finding the custard to fill the tarts with took a little doing, but eventually Macey's pulled through and helped me out. The tarts turned out so well, that I've made them once since my original attempt and took them to a party, where everyone loved them.

Then November came, This month I tried my hand at my first mousse, a White Chocolate Strawberry Mousse. It turned out quite nice. This time, I decided that instead of putting my dessert in the same old boring ramekins, that I would try putting it in a champagne flute so that you could get the nice effect of eating the mousse out of a nice dessert glass. Really, I suppose that I was envious of the pretty picture in the cookbook.

Finally, after thanksgiving, I decided to try my hand at cooking a pot roast. As you can probably tell, I mostly cook desserts, but man must not live by dessert alone, so I made my first pot roast. All my life my mother has made roasts sometimes for Sunday dinner, but she has always prepared hers in the crockpot while we were at church. I decided that I wanted to cook it in the oven, in preparation for a school project I was preparing for. The recipe that I was following didn't have much instruction regarding seasonings, so I just sort of made it up as I went. But if I do say so it turned out quite tasty. I also made some roasted potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding. My Yorkshire pudding even came out of the pan perfectly--nearly unheard of! My mother always served the juice that was left after the roast cooked as that--juice. But I decided that I would try and make a more proper gravy out of it, and it was to die for, I am so glad that I did. The gravy really made the roast, and with it poured over the potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, it was absolutely delightful! It is always fun to find out that you can cook regular food too, and not just desserts.

Flummery and Buttercookies

Flummery is a sort of 17th century soft pudding. Typically it's made with oatmeal and stewed until it reaches a nice gelatinous consistency. My flummery turned out very much not like that. Based on what I knew about flummery I figured that it would have some sort of pudding-like consistency. Mine was more like a melted smoothie, but that's ok. I was pretty nervous about this dessert since I'd never had it or even heard of it, but I was pleasantly surprised. It tasted delicious. It was a nice strawberry flavoured flummery and it was so light, and yet rich enough that you didn't need to eat tons.

Since I figured that the flummery wouldn't be terribly filling I also made buttercookies. I was a little nervous about them, they were very crumbly when I made them but they turned out quite well, though they took forever to brown. They tasted very much like Royal Dansk buttercookies. Next time I'll have to figure out how to make them in more shapes than just squares or circles.

Panna Cotta

Well, these aren't exactly the long awaited pictures of my Panna Cotta, but they are pictures from when I made it about a week ago. I went up to my grandmother's house last weekend and together we made this delightfully creamy and light, yet rich dessert. Panna Cotta is an italian dessert, much like France's Creme Brulee, or Spain's Flan, though it contains no eggs. I think that custards are one of the finest desserts. Panna Cotta is rich enough that a little will suffice and so a nice ramekin size is perfect. This Panna Cotta we served with a warm strawberry coulis, though it is also quite nice with fresh peaches and blueberries. I think that by far this dessert has been my favourite one I've made this summer. It is always just so cool and creamy.

Custard Based Desserts are the Best

It seems that I can't manage to update my blog as often as I actually cook things. And in all reality I don't really cook that often. First off. I made flan. I found a recipe that looked pretty good and I am pleased to say that it turned out well. Next time I need to cook the sugar a little longer. It didn't turn quite the color flan caramel normally is. It was definitely a little anemic looking. But the custard tasted good. It had a nice eggy hint, but it wasn't nearly as overpowering as the creme brulee was. I've decided that heavy whipping cream is about my favourite ingredient to cook with.

On sunday I decided that I wanted breadsticks with my dinner. And I rediscovered a recipe that I had found, that looked really good, and decided that the "soft garlic breadsticks" would be my next adventure. They were a lot softer and more delicious than the last breadstick recipe that I made. I think one thing that made these ones so much better was that they had fresh grated parmesan cheese in them. They weren't stringy or anything but the cheese added a nice flavour and helped them to stay moist. The breadsticks were quite delicious, though I did manage to burn one batch of them.

My last adventure in cooking this week, was also a bread. Focaccia bread. Pretty much my favourite kind of bread. The recipe that I found didn't have any seasonings in it so I took the liberty of adding some (among other seasonings). I've decided that most things are better with a little minced garlic in it, and next time I think I'll even grate in some cheese. The bread was a little crispy on the bottom. I think though that it had a little more to do with the cookie sheet that I used as opposed to something that I did. I'll have to do some research and find out what sorts of pans other people use to make their Focaccia. I also think that next time I'll use a bit more olive oil. I was rather liberal with the olive oil and didn't follow the recipe but I think that a little more would be even better, and definitely more seasonings. The seasonings were good but not quite piquant enough for me. Overall though it turned out fairly well. I'm glad that all these yeast breads are working out. I remember a time when I would have shuddered and fled at the thought of cooking with yeast.

Croque-Monsieur and Lemon Posset

It has been quite a while since last I wrote. Never fear, I have been cooking even in my long absence. My first new adventure was to make Croque-Monsieur. Essentially it is a hot, ham and cheese sandwich, though since it utilizes Gruyere cheese it tastes immeasurably better. This recipe uses the broiler part of your oven, to toast the bread. I found though that if I left the sandwich under the broiler only long enough to toast the bread then the sandwich wasn't warm and melty. So after initially toasting the bread I turned off the broiler and just let the sandwich sit in the oven to warm, before toasting the last slice. This made the sandwich nice and warm. Which is the way that all hot, ham and cheese sandwiches should be.

The next thing I experimented with was a Japanese recipe--chicken teriyaki. The sugar mixed with the soy sauce made for a delicious glaze on chicken, and served over Jasmine rice it was quite delicious. This recipe has you simply marinate your whole chicken in the teriyaki sauce, and I think that next time I will go ahead and cut my chicken up into smaller pieces before marinating so that I get more surface area, and also so that it doesn't take as long to cook.

I completed off my day with a new dessert recipe. Lemon Posset. A posset is a 16th and 17th century drink. A sort of drink that consists mainly of curdled milk and ale. Fortunately my posset really had neither, and due to the wonderful invention of the refrigerator my posset also had a consistency more like a custard than like a drink. This lemon posset is more than merely a pudding, it has a bit of grated lemon rind in it and so that makes it have a sort of satisfying crunch. The posset definitely fulfills the requirements of being cool and creamy, but it is also quite rich so you can't have more than a few spoonfuls at a time. Which I suppose isn't really a problem.

A few days after I made all of these wonderful dishes I made pretzels for one of my meetings at work. Pretzels are both surprisingly easy to make and extremely time consuming. I most certainly under estimated the time that I would need to prepare them, but they really were quite delicious, and use just regular ingredients that I had around. The pretzels went stale surprisingly fast but I suppose that if I had eaten them faster that wouldn't have been such a problem.

It has been a busy couple of weeks cooking-wise, but I am excited that all the things I made turned out so well, hopefully the luck will hold.

Egg Yolks and Egg Whites

This weekend was another exciting one. Once again I made three different dishes. The first dessert that I made was Crème brûlée. It turned out surprisingly well. On first taste I'm not sure that I liked it as much as I liked the Panna Cotta of a few weeks ago, but that may have had something to do with the size. I think next time I'll make my brûlée smaller. It is quite a delicious rich dessert. I found the recipe on Allrecipes.com and followed the suggestions that the people made at the bottom, it turned out delicious.

The second dish that I made was semi related. I made Meringues. I did this because the Crème brûlée took half a dozen egg yolks, which leaves a lot of egg whites left. meringues on the other hand take a lot of egg whites. So, you see, this way I could use whole eggs. The meringues didn't turn out as well as I would have liked but with some chocolate pudding they are quite delectable, much like eating air.

The third dish that I made wasn't a dessert at all, but was my dinner. I made Broccoli and Chile Spaghetti; only, I used a red bell pepper instead of a red chile. Surprisingly fresh red chiles are nearly impossible to find, and so i figured that a red bell pepper was the next best thing. Certainly they aren't the same at all, but they do have one thing in common-their color. The broccoli and red bell pepper spaghetti turned out quite well, especially with a little salt and pepper. Overall I think that it was a fairly sucessful weekend. Hopefully this next week will prove as exciting.