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.)

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.