Marinated Bocconcini

On Saturday I went to my friend Shelly's bridal shower and brought a plate of hors d'oeuvres , marinated bocconcini. I got the recipe from Martha, http://www.marthastewart.com/332743/marinated-bocconcini, and I almost followed the recipe exactly. I mixed fresh cut rosemary, olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt, and mini mozzarella balls (I left out the lemon zest because I didn't have any and didn't feel like going and getting it). I let them sit in the fridge for two days and then the day of the party I put them on skewers with a basil leaf and a cherry tomato.

They were very impressive looking, but incredibly easy to make. I'm glad they were a big hit, but I almost felt guilty because I'm not the one that was impressive, it was the recipe. That's actually the key to most things I make, if I have a good recipe to go off of, even if I change it, it'll be great. I never make anything that doesn't look or sound great and unless something goes wrong it turns out that way.

Peanut Butter Pie

Tonight Brandon and I are going over to his parent's house for dinner to celebrate his sister coming home from college. I asked what I could bring, and as usual it was my favorite part of the meal - dessert. I was running around doing stuff all day so I needed something quick and easy and decided to make something I've always wanted to make but never have: peanut butter pie. I used a base recipe from http://www.marthastewart.com/258413/chocolate-peanut-butter-pie. I had all the ingredients, but not in the quantities that the recipe called for. I needed six ounces of cream cheese and I only had two ounces left over from another recipe I made, so I added some sour cream to make up for it. A very similar ingredient that I've used as a substitute before. Then I just measured out about a cup of peanut butter and beat those together until they got fluffy. I added 1/4 cup brown sugar, which is what another recipe for a peanut butter tart called for and it sounded good. Then I added a little salt and vanilla, just eyeballing everything. The key part of this pie is the whipped cream. A hint I heard of a long time ago from Rachel Ray, and that I've been doing ever since, is that you chill the bowl and the beaters along with the cream to make it hold better. So I whipped one cup of whipping cream and 1/4 cup of powdered sugar, also to help it hold its shape. Then I folded the the whipped cream into the peanut butter mixture and poured it into the pie shell.

Because I was short on time I was going to buy chocolate cookie crumbs and make a crust from that, but the grocery store I went to (Safeway) only had the pre-made Oreo crust so that's what I got. I hated the fact that I had to because of time, who knows what artificial ingredients and preservatives are in there. In the past when I had time I've even made my own chocolate cookies to crumble and make a crust from that. But this pie should still be good and satisfying, and it only took 10 minutes to put together. I hope everyone likes it!

Dark Chocolate Cake with Dark Chocolate Frosting

Today at work we celebrated one of the supervisors 40th birthday. The other supervisors were going to buy a cake but I convinced them to let me make it, so they gave me the money they were going to spend on an order. This is the first time I've been paid for what I was making, a very exciting time. I used a recipe I've used before that I knew was great, dark chocolate cake from http://www.marthastewart.com/333219/dark-chocolate-cake-with-ganache-frostin?backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/chocolate-cake-recipes. I like it because the recipe calls for melted chocolate chips. A lot of chocolate cakes turn out dry and somehow tasteless, but this one is perfectly moist and chocolatey. The first time I made it is the picture below. I had just watched It's Complicated and how she had the exact life I wanted (except for being divorced) and the one night she made chocolate cake just because, I wanted to do that too. 

I think when it comes to cakes like this the frosting is more important than the cake. I used my new favorite frosting recipe. I think I've only made it about four times but it is AMAZING. Again, you melt chocolate chips, but you also mix in cocoa powder with boiling water, butter, and just a little bit of powdered sugar.It's extremely soft, silky, and chocolatey. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart's cupcake cookbook. It never fails.

Today was a good day; everyone loved the cake, I got several people asking if I was a baker. The answer would be yes, I would do this for a living if I could. Someone even told me I had missed my calling, that was almost depressing. I'm only 24, I still have a lot of time to figure out what I want to do with my life. But something in the baking/food world would be incredible.

Homemade Tortillas

I have always wanted to make my own tortillas, and tonight I finally tried. I would say that if I had a tortilla press these probably would have turned out, but tonight they didn't. I used a recipe on MarthaStewart.com (http://www.marthastewart.com/343224/corn-tortillas). The dough was fine, but trying to get it into a thin circle was virtually impossible. I tried patting it in my hands, I tried patting it out on my silpat. I tried rolling it with a rolling pin, nothing worked without tearing it. So I got it was nice looking as I could and put it on the griddle. It should have gotten a lot more well done, but Brandon was hungry and impatient so as soon as it was looking like you could make a taco with it he pulled it off. They tasted fine, like regular corn tortilla without much other flavor. But the recipe just called for water and masa harina. I would make them again, if I had a tortilla press and perhaps a iron cast skillet and not just the pancake kind.

Belated Mother's Day Dinner

Since Brandon was out of town for a baseball tournament on Mother's Day we had his parents over for dinner this Sunday to celebrate. We decided on a very spring menu. The main course was spice rubbed grilled salmon (http://www.marthastewart.com/312489/spice-rubbed-grilled-salmon-with-spicy-c) with spicy cucumber salsa (http://www.marthastewart.com/262044/spicy-cucumber-salsa). The side dishes were spicy roasted broccoli and Mediterranean pasta salad. It was delicious and everything turned out great.

For the salmon it was just a spice rub with sugar, salt, pepper, dill, coriander, mustard powder, and cumin. Let it sit at room temperature for 45 minutes before putting it under the broiler until medium rare (again, since we don't have a barbeque set up). The cucumber salsa was jalapeno, cucumber, shallots, white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. It was very refreshing, spicy, but a little too much onion for me. I don't like raw onions anyways, but everyone else liked it.

The side dishes were super easy also. I bought a bag of chopped broccoli and poured it on a jelly roll pan with oil, salt, pepper, and red chile flakes. Mix it up and roast until it gets just a little blackened. The pasta salad was from a recipe from a stand at Pike's Place Market that sells their own pasta. The pasta flavor was Italian pesto blend, but I only had half a pound and the recipe called for a full pound to feed that many people, so I added half a pound of farfalle. While the pasta is cooking I sauteed onions, garlic, asparagus, and red bell pepper. Then I added balsamic vinegar and let it reduce. The recipe called for sun dried tomatoes but I had fresh grape tomatoes and used those. Then I added some feta. The recipe called for kalamata olives but Brandon doesn't like olives so he made me omit them. It was good without them, but it would have been great with them.

The dinner was a great success, everything turned out the way it was supposed to and everyone loved it. It feels good when things happen the way they should.

Homemade Curry

On Thursday for dinner I made one of me and Brandon's favorites, chicken curry. I had clipped a recipe out of the Oregonian years ago for chiang mai curry noodles and I keep making it, with slight adjustments every time. The recipe doesn't call for any vegetables, and I think every dinner needs to have them, so I usually add a red bell pepper to make it red curry, but I had already used the red bell pepper I had in our previous dinner, so I used the green one in this. I also thought I had added onions in the past, but when I was eating it that part seemed different too.

The recipe calls for you to saute garlic in oil and then add the curry paste until it's fragrant, then add the chicken until it starts to cook through. This is where I added the vegetables, a chopped jalapeno, then coconut milk, chicken broth, tumeric, curry powder, and soy sauce. Let that simmer for a while until things are cooked. The recipe calls for rice noodles, but I think that it's too soupy and hard to eat that way so we always have it with rice. Jasmine rice tastes the best with it, but we had white rice so that's what I used and it works just fine.

Now to the flavor; this time I thought it was more bland than before. I used two cans of coconut milk when last time I only used one and decided that definitely wasn't enough. But I guess using one low fat and one regular isn't good enough either. Coconut milk is only going to taste good if it's real coconut milk. Also, I tried just sprinkling in the spices and I was supposed to have a teaspoon each of tumeric and curry powder, and maybe I didn't get as much as I needed. The recipe called for 1 3/4 cups chicken broth and I just poured some in that I estimated to be about a cup. Maybe next time I should omit it all together so that we get the strong flavors we want instead of watering it down. It was still good, spicy enough and hot enough temperature wise to keep me content. But it wasn't the kind of curry I've had before that you don't want to stop eating because it's so good. So a recipe I've made half a dozen times I still am trying to get it to be great.

Beef Skewers

It's been a while since I've written and we've had a few dinners in the meantime. On Tuesday Brandon was flipping through my Food Everyday 2 cookbook by Martha Stewart and wanted me to make the recipe for beef skewers with horseradish dipping sauce. Neither Brandon nor I really like horseradish, so Brandon asked me to make tzatziki (although he doesn't know the know what it's called, I've just made it before and he liked it). Brandon pretty much picked out the whole dinner. He also wanted rice, he always likes plain rice. And he specifically asked for one of his favorite salads: tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, and balsamic vinaigrette. Super easy and super delicious. I wanted to add some vegetables to the main course, so I cut up a bell pepper and half an onion. I sliced one piece of steak and marinated it in lots of garlic, salt, pepper, oregano, and olive oil with the pepper and onion for about 45 minutes and then put them on skewers.

It would have been really good on a barbeque, but we don't have room for one at our apartment so I did the next best thing- I broiled it.  It's like a barbeque in the way you put the food close to the heat source, and if you had a gas oven it would be exactly like a gas barbeque. I didn't cook it very long, because we were hungry and didn't want to wait, so the meat was cooked medium rare and the vegetables were still a bit crisp. But it tasted good, especially with the tzatziki that someone from work made. It was delicious. In all of this I never even glanced at the recipe Brandon had wanted me to make, we changed the style of what it was going to be with just the sauce, and I made up the rest from there with things I had eaten or seen before. And it turned out good.

A Completely Made Up Dinner

It's not very often that I don't even use a base recipe to make something. Tonight was the first night in weeks that Brandon (my husband) was home for dinner because he's a baseball coach and has had practice and games every afternoon and night. I had some asparagus and mushrooms I was saving for the rare occasion because I know how much he likes them. I had remembered seeing a recipe of asparagus and mushrooms in some kind of wine sauce, and I thought it was in Martha Stewart's Everyday Food that I get, but I couldn't find it. So I went to www.MarthaStewart.com and still couldn't find it so I decided to make it up.

First I sauteed two chicken breasts in oil and butter (oil so it didn't burn and butter because it tastes good) for a few minutes on each side until it started getting browned. Then I put them in a baking dish in the oven to sit at 350 degrees until done. In the mean time I sliced the 3/4 pint button mushrooms and the bunch of asparagus I had and put them in the pan the chicken had sauteed in with the oil and butter. After letting them cook a few minutes I added salt, pepper, dried French thyme, and Marsala wine. I was going to let it reduce but I wanted it to be saucy so I was going to reduce the heat and just keep it warm until I realized I wanted the chicken to be saucy too. So I poured the vegetables over the chicken and baked them until Brandon got home. As a side dish I warmed some rolls and made mashed potatoes out of a packet.

Now you have to realize I don't usually make anything out of a box or packet. I actually despise it. There's usually things in there that you don't know about and many things you don't need, like preservatives, salt, sugar, and fat just to name a few. But all I had was one potato and I had gotten the packet a while ago in case of emergencies. So I chopped up the potato and boiled it until practically falling apart. Then I mashed it in the water and added the packet of potatoes, stirred, and viola! Half real, half fake, still good, and Brandon never knew I had changed anything.

Overall the dinner was good. Not great, not impressive, but it was a good sit down dinner that we haven't had in a long time. This is probably something I would make again, most likely a little different but I'm not sure how at the moment. I'll just have to see what I feel like and what I have available at the time.

Mother's Day Brunch

Today for Mother's Day I made brunch for my family. The main course was leek and sorrel quiche. To compliment it I made dandelion salad with lemon vinaigrette. Then as a side dish I made root vegetable hash. As another side dish I made brown sugar glazed bacon.

The main dish was kind of a combination of different recipes I had read on MarthaStewart.com. I went looking for recipes Friday night so I knew what to get at the farmer's market on Saturday. It really just comes down to the fact that you can put pretty much anything in a quiche, you just have to keep the quantities correct so it'll bake well. I found sorrel, which I had heard of before but never seen, and leeks, which I thought would be a nice additive. I used farm eggs my mom had, and some old gruyere cheese, which can make practially anything taste good.

For the crust I used a recipe for pate brisee, I got it from my Baking Handbook by Martha Stewart, but it's a pretty common, basic pie dough recipe you can find a lot of places. And I think this is the best pie crust I've made in a long time. I have been trying to do it in a food processor, as Martha says is so easy, but the water doesn't mix into it well at all. I've gone back to cutting my butter in with a pastry blender, then I mix it with just my fingertips to make sure the butter is well incorperated and the dough is starting to stick together. Then I add cold water, usually more than the recipe calls for, and just make sure it's well distributed. Pat it out and let it sit in the fridge until you use it. People think making their own pie crust is hard and takes a lot of time, but it's only about ten minutes until it's ready to go. It really should sit for a while so the flour molecules can soak up the fat and water.

Dandelion salad I've heard of, but I've never seen them for sale anywhere. They were more bitter than I thought they'd be. I didn't tell my family what it was until they ate it, they have a tendency to not want to eat things that sound abnormal. But I was surprised when I told my mom and she supported me that it was actually something people eat. She claims she had it at a very fancy restaurant once. The dressing was good, a few tablespoons of lemon juice, a few dashes of white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and probably about a third cup olive oil. It was exactly what the salad needed.

The hash was much more basic than my mom thought it was. Potatoes, onions, and carrots thrown into a pot with oil and sauteed until they started getting soft. Then salt, pepper, and paprika was stirred in and I added the leftover ham scraps from Easter. It was delicious. I should make different kinds of hashes more often.

I think my family's favorite part of the meal was the brown sugar glazed bacon. They went on and on about it but it was the easiest part of the whole meal. I laid bacon on a baking sheet and sprinkled some brown sugar on it then baked it until it started to get crispy. That's it. No turning or anything and it was perfectly cooked.

After lunch my grandma came over for afternoon tea, which I also made from scratch, and again it was much easier than anyone thought it could be. I bought a mint plant at the farmers market yesterday and this morning I picked a few stems of it, put it in my french press, and added boiling water. Let it steep for 5-10 minutes and drink. It was delicious, fresh and refreshing without caffine or sugar. To go with it, and since it wasn't really the kind of tea my grandma's used to, I made earl grey tea cookies. They were like shortbread but softer because I used powdered sugar. And you just mix a couple bags of tea into the flour before adding it to everything else. They were delicate, not overpowering, and everyone liked them a lot more than they thought they would.

Overall it was a big morning of making things, all from scratch, as many local and fresh ingredients as I could get my hands on, and I tried several new foods today. Happy Mother's Day.

Andouille Jambalaya

My first post is coming from the inspiration of my friend Hillary. She came over to make dinner with me and experienced what I experience almost every day. I have ingredients and want to make something, but don't have a recipe that fits what I have. So I take a base recipe and make it my own. Tonight's base recipe was chicken and wild rice soup from the FOOD everyday II cookbook by Martha Stewart. But really all I did was follow the method while using different ingredients.

First, we sauteed the sausage, took it out and sauteed chopped onions and garlic until softened and translucent. Then we added white rice, a chipotle chile in adobo sauce, then chopped celery, frozen corn, canned black beans, canned diced tomatoes, and chicken stock. We cut up the sausage and added it back in and let it simmer until the rice was cooked. When it was done we chopped an avocado and put it on each serving, along with some shredded cheese, sour cream, and cilantro. It turned out to be quite a display, and just as delicious. As we dug into our bowls this was the point that Hillary thought I should share my concotions with others for them to try. We even thought of a rating system. As far as taco soup type dinners go, this was one of the best I've had. I'll rate it an 8, because I know there's always room for improvement.

The point of this blog isn't just for me to talk about what I make, but to inspire others to be creative in how they make food. Nothing is too difficult. I will try anything once. I love trying new things and experiementing. I almost never make the same thing twice, I want to see what else is out there. I also almost never follow a recipe exactly. I use what I have and I make adjustments either to my taste or what I think will turn out better. Anyone can make great food, you just have to try.