Food stuffs

I don't know why I decided to make pork chops. I hardly ever eat meat anymore, but I had them in the freezer and figured I ought to do something with them. I saw this marinade recipe on cooking, but I didn't write down who posted it. I'm pretty sure it was a family recipe or something.

Pork Chop Marinade

1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup cider vinegar
4 1/2 oz soy sauce
4 TB dark brown sugar
2 tsp dry mustard
1 TB oregano
1 TB thyme
2 tsp garlic

Mix it all together and let the pork marinate for around 24 hours, turning to cover it all every 2-4 hours. The recipe is for about 12 pork chops, so I ended up cutting it way down. I also didn't have any dry mustard, so I used regular mustard instead (1 tsp dry mustard = 1 TB prepared mustard, I looked it up!). I baked the pork chops in the oven, but you can cook them any way you like. The marinade was really tasty, tangy and sweet. I ended up freezing the leftovers, since I didn't want to eat meat too many days in a row. Hopefully it'll still taste good later!

Now that broccoli is an "only for special occasions" food, asparagus has become my new go-to green vegetable. I also, on a whim, bought goat cheese at the supermarket (they had free samples! Wave something in front of me and I will buy it!) and so I decided to make this Creamy Fettuccine with Asparagus recipe from my cookbook. It was pretty yummers. One thing I will say, though, is that one cup of pasta water was too much - I ended up draining it out because it was so soupy (and then of course I had to add more cheese and mustard because I'd drained most of that with the water).

Another thing I've really been wanting to try is risotto. I actually bought arborio rice a while ago, but didn't have any specific ideas to use it. On a whim (are you starting to see how I shop? lol) I'd bought some scallops and I decided they might go well together. Here's the recipe for the risotto, which was on the back of the rice container:

1 cup uncooked rice
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
salt and pepper

1. Saute onion in oil and butter for 3 minutes.
2. Add rice, stirring for about 2 minutes.
3. Stir in 1 cup of broth. Continue cooking and stirring until liquid is absorbed.
4. Gradually stir in remaining broth 1 cup at a time, cooking and stirring until liquid is absorbed before adding the next cup.

Yields approximately 3 cups cooked rice.

Since this was all rather spur of the moment, I didn't have any onion, so I just threw the rice in with the butter and oil and went from there. Also, probably the ideal would've been to use fish stock with scallops, but since I didn't have any, I used half chicken and half beef stock (apparently, now that I don't really eat beef anymore, I can make do with beef-flavored rice, lol). I sauteed the scallops like I usually do, then deglazed the pan with a splash of white wine and added both scallops and wine to the risotto when it was just about done cooking. Mmmmm yummy in my tummy. Maybe next time, if I actually plan ahead, I might do something more adventurous with the risotto.

I have been delinquent...

And now I have a lot to catch up on.

First, foodie things. Ever since I got sick, I've been eating a lot less red meat, because it does icky things to me, and you know, as much as I like chicken and fish, I can't really eat it all the time, so I've been trying some vegetables (I know!).

Anyway, every summer I crave fried eggplant. When I was a kid, my mom and I used to make it together - she'd do the slicing and battering, and I'd do the frying in a portable deep fryer out on the deck in the backyard. It's one of those things that's not really hard to make, but it makes me feel grown-up to be able to make it myself simply because I associate it with my childhood. I don't know how that works exactly, lol, but it makes sense in my head.

I don't think you really need a recipe - slice, dunk (in egg, then bread crumbs), and fry pretty much covers it. I, unfortunately, had to make do with frying them in a big pan on the stove, which I worried would be terribly messy, but it actually worked out pretty well. I love to eat 'em plain when they're hot and crispy right out of the pan, but I saved some to make eggplant parmigiana, too.

The other thing I have been super excited about is spaghetti squash. I don't know, maybe it's not a novelty to most people, but I just discovered it and thought it was the coolest thing ever. It's squash that acts like spaghetti, how awesome is that? I found a recipe for Spaghetti Squash with Ricotta, Sage, and Pine Nuts and was dying to try it. Sadly, I'd had a lot of trouble finding said squash in order to make it. My regular supermarket didn't seem to carry it, but I tried a different store one weekend and lo, there it was!

It was almost as exciting as I'd anticipated, although cleaning out the seeds reminded me why I don't usually bother carving Halloween pumpkins, lol. But there was this total "OMG awesome!" moment when I scraped it with the fork and it came out spaghetti-like. (I'm easily amused.) It's super easy to make, although I noticed the recipe doesn't say anything about draining or wringing out the squash before mixing with the cheese... there was a bit of a puddle in the bottom of the bowl with my leftovers. The other quibble I had was that the recipe was a little bland. I couldn't find fresh sage (WTF, supermarket?) and used dried instead, so that may have been a factor.

Happy anniversary to me!

Well, this is quite a landmark weekend for me. First, July 3rd was the one-year anniversary of my move to DC. Yay! Second, obviously, was the 4th of July. I celebrated by going to the pool, then heading to Becky's house for a barbecue and watching fireworks on the Mall, which was pretty awesome.

I tried a new stir fry which was simple and delicious - Honey Walnut Shrimp. I started with this recipe and made some modifications. I used 12 oz. of shrimp, 1 cup of carrots, 2 cups of sugar snap peas (I don't like zucchini), and maybe a 1/4 cup of walnuts, which made about 2 servings. I also ended up adding extra honey (maybe another tablespoon?) when it was in the pan because all I could taste was the soy sauce. I probably could've added even a little bit more, but it still tasted good as is. I served it over rice.

Also, I finished season 1 of Rome. I liked it, but I have very little to say about it. I will admit, I had a lot of trouble following it in the beginning, because I couldn't tell the characters apart. The only people I recognized were Polly Walker (from Caprica), Suzie from Torchwood (whose real name I don't remember), and Kevin McKidd (whom I completely can't buy as an ancient Roman. He's just so... Scottish). Everyone else was a jumble (too many old guys, mostly), and so I had to follow along with the Wikipedia episode summaries to know what was going on. After a while, it got easier, once they used people's names enough times to match them up with faces. (Am I the only one who thinks that the guy playing Caesar looks like Alan Rickman, lol?)

Pretty much my entire knowledge of Roman history comes second-hand from my college friends who were classics majors (um, I remember Catullus), so I don't know how historically accurate it is, but the costumes and sets sure look spectacular.

Food post

I hadn't done much cooking lately because I'd been feeling sick (on the bright side, I could do my grocery shopping for the week and spend about $10), but since I went for my treatment and then had a three-day weekend for Memorial Day, I decided to try some recipes.

On Saturday, I tried a "recipe" for Hawaiian Chicken, and I put that in quotes because it came from my mother, which means it's more like vague guidelines than an actual recipe, lol. I marinated chicken in a mixture of Lowry's Hawaiian marinade, pineapple juice, and white wine. I don't really have measurements, I just kind of poured. I used about half the bottle of marinade, a couple splashes of pineapple juice, and one splash of wine, lol. My mom browned the chicken in a pan and then simmered in the sauce, but I was lazy and decided to bake it instead and served it over rice. It was yummy and easy to make.

On Sunday, I made Asiago, Ricotta, and Spinach Rigatoni. I really need to get myself a regular food processor. Remembering the parsley sauce failure, this time I tried the immersion blender to combine the spinach and cheese, which sort of worked. I cut the recipe in half-ish, and did the bread crumb topping my way (melt butter and mix it with the bread crumbs before adding it to the dish, instead of drizzling the olive oil). It was good, but somewhat dry when reheated as leftovers.

The experiment for Monday was to duplicate a dish that I had a while ago at The Cheesecake Factory, their Roasted Pear and Blue Cheese Pizzette. I didn't bother to roast my pears, but it came out pretty similar. Here's the recipe:

pizza dough (I used Pillsbury refrigerated dough - I recommend thin crust, but any kind will do)
1 Vidalia onion, thinly sliced
pinch of dried thyme
3-4 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup beef stock
1 Bartlett pear, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped pecans
2 tbsp crumbled gorgonzola cheese
handful of arugula
salt and pepper

Follow instructions on package for pizza dough (mine had to be prebaked for 5 minutes at 400 degrees).

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add onion and thyme and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions begin to brown. Add the stock, a tablespoon at a time, until the onions are caramelized to a dark golden color.

Drizzle pizza dough with olive oil, then spread onions in an even layer. Top with pear slices, gorgonzola, and pecans. Bake as directed (mine took an additional 10 minutes at 400 degrees), adding arugula when there's about 3 minutes left.

Now I have leftover gorgonzola cheese, and also havarti cheese, which I bought by accident and don't know what to do with, so if anyone's got any recipe ideas, let me know.

Food post

This is a dinner I cooked a couple weeks ago. I've had pork chops in my freezer for a while, so I made Pork Chops with Apples and Shallots. I am not terribly happy with the broil function on my toaster oven. It seems to be rather inconsistent, and I ended up having to broil the pork chops forever in order to get them cooked through, which meant that my apples and the spinach were both done and sitting around while I had to wait for the chops. Not good. But once they were cooked, the dish was pretty good, although it could've used a bit more sauce (I think all the wine cooked away while I was waiting for the pork chops). I've added a little more wine when I heat up the leftovers, so that there's some liquid. 

Unfortunately, the Wilted Spinach with Nutmeg was a total flop. It was bland and soggy and tasted like baby food. I dumped parmesan cheese on it to make it edible (this is my solution to every cooking failure), but I ended up tossing what was left, because I had no desire to eat it again. I don't know - is it possible I cooked it too long? Can you over-wilt spinach? Mushy vegetables are, like, the worst thing ever to me. You know what I would like to try? Deep fried spinach. I've had it in a restaurant before, and it was amazing. Mmmmm, crispy spinach. Not sure if I could do it at home, though. I'm not big on deep frying. 

Food post

I tried a new recipe for Steak with Parsley Sauce from my Great Foods Fast cookbook, but I couldn't find quite the same one online. I wouldn't worry, though, because while the steak came out fine (I just browned it in a pan with olive oil), the parsley sauce was major fail. It was supposed to get pureed in a blender, but there weren't enough ingredients to cover the blades, so it never really blended. For a while, I tried scooping the mixture onto the blades and then blending, but eventually I gave up and just threw it away. It didn't taste that great anyway. Here's the recipe if you're curious:

Parsley Sauce

1 garlic clove, chopped
1 cup loosely packed fresh parsley leaves
1/4 cup olive oil
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

In a blender, puree the garlic, parsley, olive oil, and 3 tablespoons water until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Makes 1/2 cup.

I also made Roasted Asparagus with Parmesan as a side, and that came out really well. The recipe in my book didn't include the breadcrumbs, but that does sound tasty. I am kind of hit-or-miss with asparagus, but this was very good, tender and not stringy at all.

Food post!

Oi. This has been the busiest week EVER. Between trying to put together a big event for work and writing final papers for school and my friends deciding to be social this weekend, of all times, I am about ready to fall over dead.

I haven't had much time for cooking experiments, but I did try this recipe for Halibut with Mustard-Nut Crust earlier this week. It was really good. I used the key lime mustard that I bought in Key West. I emailed the recipe to my mother, and she replied back, saying, "Did you shell, skin, and toast the hazelnuts??" No, Mother, I did not. I did what any sane person would do and bought a bag of chopped hazelnuts (already shelled and skinned) and then smashed 'em up with a salt shaker.

I think I need to invest in a set of stovetop pans that can go in the oven. For this recipe, I had to start out cooking it in a pan on the stove, and then transfer the whole thing to a baking dish to put it in the oven. Which wasn't awful, but it's one more thing to clean, you know? It took quite a bit longer to cook than the recipe said - I think I baked it for about 17 minutes, because it wasn't even close to done when I checked it after 10 minutes.

Also, halibut has bones in it. Consider that lesson learned.

I used my crock pot!

This weekend, we had the inaugural outing of my brand new crock pot, and I was only slightly paranoid about leaving the house with food cooking. :)

I love clementines. Last week, I did one of those things where I bought a whole crate of them at the store, and when I got home, I looked at them and thought, "What was I thinking?" Because as much as I love them, I don't think I can eat five pounds of clementines before they go bad. So I started looking for some recipes involving clementines so I could use up some of them, and I found this slow cooker recipe for Sweet and Sour Clementine Pork Chops (third one down). It came out reasonably well, although I was expecting it to taste like Chinese sweet and sour pork and it was totally not that.

As a side dish, I made Gingered Sugar Snaps, since I thought the ginger would go well with the Asian pork chops. I didn't actually have snap peas, though, so I used snow peas. Still worked out pretty well. I'm also still using the ginger paste I bought the day of the snow storm instead of fresh ginger, and it's quite a time saver.

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.

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.

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.