Last one for a while, I promise

I don't know if any of you watch the Olympics. I generally don't, although I did go through a phase in college where my roommates and I were obsessed with curling. Mainly, I am just cranky that all of my shows are either pre-empted by the Olympics, or in reruns because they think no one wants to watch anything else. When stuff comes back on, hopefully I'll talk about it. In the meantime, I talk about food.

I loooove French onion soup, so I was really excited to make this French Onion Tart. It came out pretty decent, but definitely needs a few warnings. First, the "crust" on the puff pastry is completely unnecessary, especially if you're planning to cut it up and serve it as an hors d'oeuvre. You end up with some pieces that are all crust and no topping. Just leave off the extra strips and spread the onions almost to the edges. Also, I added some grated gruyere cheese on top of the onions before I put it back in the oven, since that is an essential element to the soup. 

I ended up with a few strips of leftover puff pastry, so rather than let them go to waste, I baked them and made some dessert. It was kind of a cross between a cannoli and a profiterole, which is a French pastry sort of like a cream puff, but with an ice cream filling. I had leftover ricotta, so I used the cannoli filling (recipe here) instead of ice cream, topped with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. It was yummy.

I also had a chocolate chip cookie craving over the weekend, which resulted in what I am calling "multi-chip" cookies. I used the good old Tollhouse cookie recipe, but I didn't have enough chocolate chips, so I just used whatever I had leftover from other recipes. I ended up with chocolate, white chocolate, and butterscotch chips all mixed in. The combination of the white chocolate and the butterscotch makes them very sweet, but you can't go wrong with the Tollhouse recipe. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but when I was a kid, my mother - who is an excellent cook in all other ways - would totally fail at making chocolate chip cookies. They always came out hard and flat as a pancake. But these were nice and fluffy and soft on the inside.

More food

I am almost caught up with chronicling my cooking, so I'll stop spamming you with food posts for a while. But first, I have to tell you about these amazing Butter-Pecan Sweet Potatoes. OMG so much yum! This is definitely up there in the top three of things I've made so far.

Modifications: I cut down the recipe like woah, since I am not eight people; I used dark brown instead of light brown sugar (is there really much of a difference?); and I used a red-and-black pepper blend instead of cayenne, which I didn't have. Still tasted like awesomesauce.

I also made this casserole dish, to use up the half a package of frozen spinach I had left over. Its official title is Spinach and Hot Ham Fake-Baked Pasta with a Crispy Top. Seriously? Only Rachael Ray could come up with a title like that. I didn't have any ham, hot or otherwise, so I just left it out. Also, FYI, she claims the recipe makes about four servings "among big eaters like me and my family." I don't know if her family has a lot of extraordinarily large people in it, or maybe a hollow leg runs in the family, but I cut the recipe in HALF and still got four decent-sized servings out of it.

I added some extra milk, though, since the mixture seemed rather dry with only 3/4 cup. Also, I've made bread crumb toppings before, so I know how they're supposed to look, and you need way more than 2 TB of olive oil for that amount of bread crumbs. Personally, I prefer to use butter instead of olive oil, but I followed the recipe this time, and the bread crumb/cheese mixture was basically dry. Didn't taste like I'd added anything at all, and sprinkling dry bread crumbs over a casserole isn't very appealing to me (it also makes a big damn mess when you try to serve it - the bread crumbs go everywhere).

Waste not, want not

The theme for this post would seem to be "use up the leftovers!"

I made Broiled Apricot and Cheese Toast for breakfast, which I stumbled upon while searching for things to do with apricot jam. As you'll recall, I bought the jam for the Pecan-Apricot Chicken, and then used it again for the Butter and Jam Thumbprint cookies, but I still have about half a jar left. Ordinarily, I am not one to open a container of ricotta just to have something to put on my toast, but I knew I'd be using it for dinner, and wouldn't need all of it, so I guess you could call that "pre-leftovers." Anyway, I really liked the flavor combination, but the broiling did not go as well as I'd hoped. The edges of the bread got crispy, but the parts that were covered with the jam and cheese did not, so it was kind of just hot bread rather than toast. This is the first time I've tried the broiler setting on my toaster oven, so maybe it's just not that great. I'd probably toast the bread partway first, then put the topping on and broil for a couple minutes to get the cheese hot.

Dinner was Florentine Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken, which used the leftover prosciutto from the Fettuccine with Prosciutto and Peas, as well as the pine nuts I bought for the Chicken Rigatoni with Pesto Cream Sauce. I cut the recipe by half, since that was all the chicken I had. The chicken was again the thin cutlets rather than whole breasts, so instead of stuffing them, I just put the spinach and ricotta stuffing on top, and then laid a slice of prosciutto on top of that. I'd be suspicious of that 18-20 min baking time, though - my chicken was cooked in 20 min, but I would imagine full-sized stuffed breasts would be much thicker and would take at least double that. Anyway, the chicken came out moist, the prosciutto was nice and crispy, but overall it could've used a little more flavor. Maybe I'd try chopping up some fresh basil with the spinach.

As a side dish, I made Sauteed Peas and Red Onion, because I also had leftover peas, and... okay, here's the thing. On one of my recent supermarket trips, I bought this enormous red onion, and I have no idea why. I'm sure I meant to use it in some recipe or other, but I can't for the life of me remember which one. And I don't like raw red onion (I think it has an overpowering taste), so it's not like I can use it up in salads or anything. So I've been trying to find ways to use up this friggin' mutant onion (seriously, it's bigger than a softball). I used some of it in my Quick Crab Stew, but that only called for "one small onion," which was less than half of this sucker. Anyway, this seemed like a good, simple solution, although I cut the recipe waaay down, since I only had 6 oz of peas, not 30, so I still have a lot of onion left. I also added a teaspoonful of minced garlic, because that's just how I roll.

Sometimes, my experiments fail

For dinner the Friday night of the blizzard, I tried Fettuccine with Prosciutto and Peas. Interestingly, the recipe online calls for 2/3 cup of heavy cream - the recipe in my cookbook only called for 1/4 cup, which was seriously not enough. They keep referring to the "sauce" throughout this recipe, and I'm thinking, "What sauce? This isn't even enough liquid to keep the pasta from sticking together!" So perhaps if you use the larger amount, it will come out better than mine did. Of course, if you read the comments, apparently people had some trouble with the cream curdling when the lemon juice was added. I obviously didn't have this problem, since there was barely any cream in there, but it might be worth it to add the cream at the end like the commenters recommend.

One other quibble I had with this recipe - the pasta shape was inappropriate for the ingredients. Twirling fettuccine around a fork meant the peas kept falling off the fork, and it was virtually impossible to get a bite with all three components of the dish. I ended up alternating between a forkful of pasta and a spoonful of prosciutto and peas. Maybe it would have worked better if there was actually some sauce, but I'd recommend using a shorter shape of pasta with some texture to it, so it clings to the peas more.

Saturday, I made Coconut Shrimp Soup, which also didn't go very well, but that wasn't the recipe's fault. See, I went food shopping on Friday. Day of the blizzard, weekend of the Super Bowl? Yeah, the grocery store was practically out of food, so I ended up having to make some substitutions. They were out of fresh ginger - you wouldn't expect a snowstorm to cause a run on ginger, but there you have it - so I bought this ginger spice blend that was kind of a paste. That worked out fine. But I also couldn't find any coconut milk, and therein lies my downfall. I called my mother in the supermarket and asked if cream of coconut was the same as coconut milk. My mother: "Sure, I guess so." Well, it's not. Cream of coconut is way sweeter, and while that's awesome in a pina colada, it made my soup sickeningly sweet. Fortunately, I had the foresight not to put in all the shrimp - since seafood doesn't usually reheat well, I figured I'd just throw in one serving of shrimp tonight, and then I could add more each time I reheated it. So I didn't waste 1 1/2 lbs of shrimp, thank goodness. And my mother has accepted responsibility for this culinary failure, and has promised to google before advising me in the future.

Food for thought

I stumbled across this transcript of a keynote speech by Hart Hanson (aka the creator of Bones), and I thought he had some very interesting things to say. Some of them I agree with, some of them I don't (namely this: "My entire audience wants them [Booth and Bones] to get together." Um, not all of us, punk. Personally, I think you're killing the show by forcing UST where there isn't any).

One potentially controversial statement: "...without exception I’ve never seen anything on TV that rivaled a good novel." Which, on the one hand, is probably true, given that novels and TV are two very different types of storytelling (finite vs. infinite, standalone vs. episodic). But it also sounds very much like that "TV isn't art/literature because it's pop culture and pop culture gets no respect" mentality that really bothers me. As BtVS fans, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that there are TV shows out there with just as much depth and quality storytelling as a good novel.

He seems to suggest that writing for TV means writing for an audience, whereas writing a novel means writing for yourself. Which is all well and good, as long as you don't ever plan to sell your novel and make money from it. If you want to do that, well, you're probably going to have to take the audience into consideration. I think - again - he simply denigrates TV when he should be looking at both TV and novels as falling into two categories: those designed for mass market (pulp novels, TV shows like Bones, CSI, or American Idol) and those intended to be art (literary novels, TV shows like Mad Men). Every professional writer wants to attract an audience, no matter what type of writing they do.

Anyway, a lot of it is talking about how to be successful writing for a mass audience, and the answer seems to be, "Write about things that appeal to a large number of people, but don't pander," which is probably much easier said than done. This quote in particular stood out to me: "But if you cleave to, if you support – as an entertainer – the basic values of your culture and society, you have a much better chance of reaching a mass audience than if you challenge the mores and morals of a society." And I couldn't help but immediately think of Dollhouse. But you know what, Hart? For all the problems (and they were legion) that Dollhouse had, I'd still rather have that on my television than Bones, ten times over. Guess TV aimed at a mass audience just doesn't appeal to me.

I have to admit, I was pretty confused about the whole "redemption of Sweets" section. Did I miss the part where Sweets needed to be redeemed? 'Cause I kind of loved him from the beginning.

Oh, but then there's this: "And America is anti-intellectual, in a way. I find… it’s very anti-intellectual. They tend to… if I hear one more person say, “He’s a president you can have a beer with!” Jesus Christ! I don’t want him to have a beer; I want him to make me feel stupid." WORD.

More cookery

Happy Valentine's Day. I am celebrating by watching Veronica Mars. (She's a marshmallow.)

Anyway, more food stuff. I made Sauteed Chicken in Mustard-Cream Sauce, since I still had leftover heavy cream (seriously, one pint of that stuff lasted for, like, five recipes). I totally recommend this one. I wasn't too enthusiastic about it, since I've been making chicken with honey mustard salad dressing for years, and it's really good, and I figured why go to the trouble of making your own sauce when you can just use the stuff in the bottle? Oh, man. This sauce is amazing. It's tangy and light, and it tasted delicious on the chicken. I even added it to my woeful Orzo and Snap Pea Salad, and it was a definite improvement. I didn't make four servings of chicken like the recipe says, so I had some leftover sauce that I put on, like, everything until I'd used it all up. :)

Remember the snowpocalypse that started a little over a week ago? Nothing better than a hot bowl of soup on a snowy day, so I made Quick Crab Stew for lunch that Friday. It's kind of a cheaty recipe, since it uses cans of condensed soup, but I had a lot of recipes picked for this weekend and wanted something quick and easy. (I do have a real crab soup recipe, also from Paula Deen, which I will probably try eventually.) It came out a lot like New England clam chowder in color, consistency, and taste, but I'll take crab over clams any day, so it's worth it to whip this up rather than just opening a can of clam chowder. I gotta say, though, if you're gonna make it, make sure you use the right crab meat - if you get the "special" grade that's shreds or flakes of crab, it'll disappear into the soup. You definitely want the nice lumps of meat in there, plus the claw meat has a stronger flavor than the white meat.

Cookies!

A couple weeks ago, I had a dinner to go to, and wanted to bring something other than a bottle of wine, so I tried two new cookie recipes. I got an email from my dinner hosts saying that they couldn't stop eating my cookies, so I guess that's a good review, lol. :)

I started out making Butter and Jam Thumbprints, using the leftover apricot jam from my chicken recipe a few weeks ago. Following the tips from the commenters on the website, I refrigerated the dough for about 15-20 minutes before adding the jam and baking. (It's best to scoop the dough onto the baking sheet and shape it first, before refrigerating, otherwise the dough will be too hard to work with.) They came out looking very nice, and they taste yummy. I decided not to bother rolling them in sugar, as the recipe suggests, which was fine, but I don't think it would hurt if they were a bit sweeter. I just didn't have the time, since I was also making...

Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Glaze. These suckers came out huge - they really spread out in the oven, so I'd advise making your scoops much smaller than the recipe tells you to. Also, I didn't have enough lemon glaze for all the cookies, but maybe I was spreading it on too thick. The cookies themselves are a little bland when eaten plain; the glaze really gives them the lemony flavor.

I did some more baking today, and I have what I am calling "multi-chip" cookies (chocolate, white chocolate, and butterscotch chips) cooling as we speak. If they're any good, I'll let you know.

Melt, snow, melt!

I am finally (finally!) back at work after a full week of being snowed in. I was starting to think I wouldn't see the inside of my office again until spring. And weirdly, I am happy to be here. Not that I mind having days off, mind you, but if I'm gonna have free time, I'd much rather be able to go out and DO things. Books, TV, and the internet can only keep me occupied for so long before I go stir-crazy.

Anyway, recipe for today: Chicken Fettuccine Rigatoni with Pesto Cream Sauce. I'm Italian, which means I currently have five different types of pasta in my kitchen, but none of them is fettuccine, so I just used whatever I had. It's all the same stuff, really, just in different shapes. I did not make my own pesto (what do I look like, Martha Stewart?), but my supermarket has freshly made pesto in their fresh foods section, and it worked just fine (and tasted good, too). I also added some toasted pine nuts to the dish - just spread the pine nuts out on a baking sheet and pop them in a 350-degree oven until they turn golden brown. Incidentally, my cookbook said to toast them for 6-8 minutes, so I set the timer and let them go - and they were completely burned in about 5 minutes. Maybe it's because I was using a toaster oven instead of the full oven? I don't know, but the second batch I watched more carefully and took them out when they were the right color, which was maybe 3 minutes or so. Anyway, the pesto cream sauce was delish, and it doesn't use a lot of cream, so it wasn't terribly rich or heavy.

I heated up the leftover pasta the next night, but instead of the usual garlic bread, I made some Pesto-Mozzarella Crostini to go with it. (I was inspired by the crostini on the episode of "Worst Cooks in America" that I'd watched the night before.) I sliced up a French baguette and, since I don't have a grill pan, toasted it about halfway in the toaster oven. Then I spread the leftover pesto on the toast and topped with a slice of fresh mozzarella cheese, and put it back in the toaster oven until the cheese was melted.

Recipe for today

On one of my adventures in the kitchen, I made Pan-Seared Scallops topped with the Scallion Beurre Blanc sauce from this recipe (maybe next time I'll actually try it with the chicken, but I wanted to do something different since a lot of my recipes include chicken). The scallops were sort of a challenge to myself - I love seafood, but I very rarely make it at home, and when I do, it's usually just cooked frozen shrimp or canned crab meat. Scallops can seem intimidating, because there's a very fine line between undercooked and overcooked, but mine came out really well. I also got to try out the fresh seafood shop down the street. Anyway, I seasoned the scallops with just salt and pepper, and then dredged them in flour. The trick to a good pan sear is to make sure the oil is really hot, and once you put the scallops in, don't move them around. Just let them sit and get that nice golden-brown crust. They only need 1-2 minutes on each side, and will continue to cook once you take them out of the pan, so you want to cook them to just almost done, but not quite.

The beurre blanc sauce was delicious, of course (it's basically butter, how could it not be delicious?), but a little thin - which I notice was a complaint from some of the commenters on the website. It was just fine for the scallops, but it definitely didn't look like Rachael Ray's picture there. I really liked the flavor the scallions added - I've become something of a scallion fan, I think. (I even added them to my eggs the next morning!) The recipe made way more sauce than I needed, so I had it over pasta with shrimp later in the week, which was also rather tasty.

Yep, you guessed it...

Another snow day. Got an email from GW, and they have adopted the term "snowpocalypse," so you know it must be serious. Meanwhile, a flock of crows have taken shelter in the tree outside my window, and it is driving Chelsea craaaaa-zeeeee. She is hopping from window to window, meowing furiously (although sometimes it sounds more like a pathetic "Mommy, do something!" whine), while the birds blissfully ignore her.

Speaking of crazy, guess what Chuck shippers are up to. If you're just joining us, the latest development in the Chuck/Sarah forbidden love tale has both of them being paired up with other people (oh the horrors). Chuck's hooking up with fellow Nerd Herder Hannah, while Sarah's showing some attraction to fellow spy Shaw. (Weirdly, both love interests are played by Superman alums - Kristin Kreuk from Smallville and Brandon Routh from Superman Returns.)

I personally am not terribly invested in Chuck/Sarah. Yes, they're obviously meant for each other, but I'm in no hurry to get there. On the occasions when I wish they would just get together already, it's usually because they're pushing the "we can't be together" angst over the top (as they did in the first few eps of the season), and not out of any particular desire to see them consummate their love. I don't have any problems with this newest obstacle - I actually like Hannah, which is a little bit of a shock, given that I generally avoid anything (or anyone) Smallville-related like the plague. It seems a little weird to me that Sarah and Shaw would want a relationship, given that they both have a "spies don't fall in love" rule. Granted, Sarah's spent the entire run of the show breaking that rule with Chuck, but specifically because of that, I'd expect her to tread more cautiously here.

Still, I'm willing to sit back and see where the show takes this. Crazy-cakes shippers, on the other hand, seem to think this has absolutely ruined the show for good, and one "fan" even suggested a boycott so that low ratings force the writers to get Chuck and Sarah together. Alan Sepinwall explains why this is completely idiotic. He also talks to the show creators about the controversy, which only seems to emphasize how much the fans are overreacting. I swear to God, if my shiny show gets canceled because whiny Charah fans executed a completely useless boycott, HEADS WILL ROLL.

Snowed In: Day 5

Guys, I have not been to work since Thursday. We're supposed to get another 6-12" tonight. I don't think I'm going to drive my car again until spring.

Anyway, two more recipes from my experimentation:

I decided to take my brand-new immersion blender out for a spin and made Potato-Leek Soup. (The immersion blender is a godsend for pureed soups - all that pureeing in batches in the regular blender is a pain, plus the immersion blender - my parents call it a "boat motor" - is much easier to clean.) I'd never eaten leeks before, and given the ratio of leeks to potatoes, I was a little worried whether I'd like it, but it came out very tasty indeed. Even though there's only one potato in there, it definitely tastes potatoey. The recipe recommends the soup be served chilled, but it tastes just as good hot.

I also tried Orzo and Snap Pea Salad, which was my first... well, I wouldn't say failure, but it sure wasn't a success. I still have leftovers sitting in my fridge, almost a month later, because I don't want to eat them. I didn't have orzos, so I used the slightly smaller risos (pasta the size of grains of rice) instead. I also halved the amount of vegetables, which seemed to be plenty. Not sure if that's because of the smaller pasta.

I wasn't sure whether this should be served hot or cold, but it seemed to taste best hot, right off the stove. The salad came out bland (I even added extra Parmesan cheese and some garlic), but the snap peas and squash still had a nice crunch. Unfortunately, they got soggy in the refrigerator, so the leftovers weren't nearly as good - and this recipe made a lot (about 12 cups), so I had a good bit left over. I felt bad throwing it out, so I tried to come up with a sauce to mix in to make it less bland - first this lemon dill yogurt sauce, which was painfully gross, then a lemon vinaigrette, which wasn't bad, but I think it suffered from using concentrated lemon juice instead of the fresh stuff. I wouldn't make this dish again.

Snowpocalypse Part Deux

I mentioned in my previous post that I've spent the snowstorm cooking - now that I'm feeling better and can eat food, I decided it was time I learned how to cook. I've actually been doing a lot of it in the last few weeks, but so as not to overwhelm you with recipes, I'll post maybe one or two a day.

Since I was just talking about it with Kelly, here's my Pecan-Apricot Chicken, the first thing I made, while my parents were visiting, post-hospital. It was sort of an amalgamation of two different recipes. It turned out really well, and my parents seemed to like it (or at least they pretended to). I'd definitely make it again, and my mom, who is notorious in our family for her endless supply of chicken recipes, said she'd be adding it to her repertoire. I kind of didn't measure anything, since I was mostly just winging it once I got passed the concept stage, but here's what I did, if you want to try it at home:

I used thin chicken cutlets, but you could use whole boneless, skinless chicken breasts if you wanted. Place them in a baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Spoon apricot preserves on top of each piece. Make the pecan topping by smashing up the pecans (I used the "put them in a plastic bag and pound them with something heavy" technique) and then mixing them with bread crumbs. Add just enough melted butter to moisten the mixture so that it sticks together. Spoon on top of the preserves, and then sprinkle with parsley. Bake at 375 degrees; cooking time depends on the thickness of the chicken. My chicken was very thin, so it only took half an hour. I served the chicken with roasted potatoes and a tossed salad.

Snowpocalypse

So, if you don't live in the DC area, we got about 2 feet of snow this weekend. I had off Friday - my boss (a bit prematurely, as it turned out) decided on Thursday night that we wouldn't open the office on Friday, since they were predicting snow to start around 10 am. Which it did, but it didn't start to accumulate for another six hours, so... oops? But I got a day off, so I'm not complaining. And I'm off again today, because there's no above ground Metro service, which means I can't get into the city.

I've spent much of my time cooking (I'm getting pretty good!), reading for class, and catching up on TV from last week. Here's a few thoughts:

24: I don't actually try to make sense of the plots anymore; I just turn my brain off and watch Jack be awesome. This season is pretty rockin' with the new cast members - pleeeeeeease let Katee Sackhoff and Callum Keith Rennie have a scene together at some point. Not just for the BSG reunion, but also to save Starbuck from her idiotic subplot. (Cougar came early this season, apparently. It's only episode six.) Also? David Anders! Love him. I stopped watching Heroes because they killed him off (and also because the show spiraled into nonsensical drivel). I love him most when he's suited up and being menacing, so it works out well that he's one of the bad guys.

Bones: Holy product placement, Batman. Are they perhaps trying to highlight the voice-activated GPS in Brennan's car? You know, I'm not opposed to product placement - in fact, I am all for Subway sponsorship of Chuck if it'll keep the show on the air - as long as they don't smack you in the face with it. If it's distractingly out of place, it pulls you out of the story. Also, they don't actually call mental institutions "sanitariums" anymore, do they? Seriously? And continuing the familiar guest stars theme, in this ep we have Joshua Malina, alumnus of everything Aaron Sorkin's ever done.

One final observation - is it just me, or do they repeat the same B-plot every time the Muslim intern is on? It seems like every time that guy shows up, the case has something to do with religion, he makes some comment about it, which Cam or someone else misinterprets, only to realize later that they've horribly stereotyped him. If they don't have anything to do with him except say "hey, he's Muslim, but he doesn't hate Americans," then can we please move on to other, more interesting interns, like Wendell or the British trivia-spouting guy?

Question

I've been getting a lot of anonymous spam comments on my journal lately, and it's getting annoying to have to keep deleting them. I'm thinking of switching the comment settings to registered users only, but I don't want to inconvenience anyone. If you don't have a Blogger account, you can always log in using OpenID. Would that be a problem for any of you guys?

Life Unexpected

Hi, guys. Still doing okay - taking lots of meds, but eating normal food and actually gaining weight (but hopefully not too much...).

I started watching a new show this week - Life Unexpected on the CW. (I know! I haven't watched the CW since Veronica Mars was canceled.) It's been billed as the next Gilmore Girls, probably because it features a quirky, intelligent teenage girl and her very young, got-pregnant-in-high-school parents. The difference is that in this case the young mom, Cate, didn't keep the baby, and so Lux (the daughter) ended up in the foster care system, and has only just found her birth parents in an attempt to get emancipated at age 16. Anyway, the third episode aired last night, and so far I like it. It reminds me of the old school WB shows I used to like.

Except you know what kind of disturbs me? When Gilmore Girls was on, I was Rory's age. She was the character I identified with (although I sometimes wished my mom was as young and hip as Lorelai). But with Life Unexpected, I find that I'm actually closer in age to the parents. Eeek! Granted, it's biologically impossible for me to have a 16-year-old daughter, but still... it kind of makes me feel old.