Baked Beans (p. 255) and Chicken Curry (p. 434)

I have been super busy lately so I decided to make some good food for the future days. What would freeze well?

I decided to make Baked Beans (p. 255). I like baked beans and all the previous homemade beans I've eaten I've thought were damn good. So why not make my own? I forgot to put the white beans soaking the night before, so I used TJOC's quick soak method. It totally worked, and it is quicker than overnight, but it isn't what I would call "quick". It still takes well over an hour.

I used salt pork for the top, which was tasty. I think I might be the only person who buys salt pork at our grocery store, because it was clearanced this week. I put curry in it, because curry makes everything better (and it was an optional ingredient). I cooked them for the full 4.5 hours. What were they like? I think they were bland. I won't be making this recipe again! Even so, I ate them for three meals...






For dinner Monday night I made Chicken Curry (p. 434). This may be the most challenging thing I've made from TJOC. First, the spices and onions look about burned by the time that you put yogurt in.





As it thickened it looked really tasty. And it smelled great! I used a jalapeno in it and it didn't make the curry too hot. I also diced the onion instead of slicing it, mostly because I didn't read through the recipe before starting.


The sauce pre-chicken:


The chicken, finished, without sauce:



With sauce--YUM!

Pineapple Upside Down Cake (p. 691) and Cornbread Tamale Pie (p. 102)

Now this is how I'm a tricky minx...I forgot to post this blog when I cooked the food, so it's getting posted now, even though it is going to be hidden behind other posts...


This was a bizarre mix of recipes. First, you have the Cornbread Tamale Pie (p. 102). Absolutely bizarre. To make this, you brown some meat. Then you add beans, corn, tomato sauce, broth, some spices. After that, you mix some cornmeal and other stuff together and put it on top of the meat mix.


Heating the meat and veggie mixture...



This was made more exciting by the fact that I opened the cabinet to get some spices out, had condiments kamikaze me which tipped over the cornmeal mix, spewing cornmeal all over the kitchen. I took some mediation-type deep breaths and started over. Josh hurried over--I think he was afraid that I was going to explode--and cleaned the mess up. Fortunately it was all dry ingredients so it wasn't that bad.

The evil cornmeal, pre-explosion:




The cornbread mix (2.0) layered (messily) over the meat mixture:




The casserole was very very strange. Fairly good, even though I put about twice the spices in it, although it really could have used more cornmeal on the top. Now I've made a couple TJOC casseroles and I think that TJOC is a little too bland. I really recommend that you "spice them up". It won't hurt you to double everything.

I will admit that the cornmeal did settle into a top layer, like it was supposed to:




I LOVE LOVE LOVE pineapple upside down cake. So I thought that Pineapple Upside Down Cake (p. 691) would be a cakewalk (HA! I'm so funny!). My mom makes a great PUDC, her secret is that she replaces all the liquid in her recipe (well, not oil, but water type liquids) with pineapple juice.

This recipe was really good. All of you know that I have this overwhelming fear of baking. I consider myself an excellent baker but the altitude really screws me up. So I've been using the rule of thumb of decreasing the baking powder or baking soda a little. And it seems to be working! Even so, I don't enjoy baking as much here as I do in the midwest. It's hard to work so hard knowing that half of everything I make doesn't seem to turn out...

This recipe has a HUGE amount of butter in it which makes me happy! And I placed all the pineapple in the pan and the maraschino cherries...ate the rest of them...and continued on in the recipe.

The cake was BEAUTIFUL and tasty! I didn't make it in cast iron, because I'm scared of cast iron, but a cake pan worked fine. You HAVE to use a lot of butter or the cake will stick and it won't be beautiful. The buttermilk was good but I think next time I'll try mom's method--half buttermilk, half pineapple juice.

Cool PUDC fact--the cake was originally developed to popularize canned pineapple. So the recipe isn't very old--although it is delicious. And you can make a lot of different UDC's--different combos of fruit and spices are awesome. Peaches are especially tasty.


The first step is to place the pineapple slices down on a ton of butter, and then place the cherries (or pecans, if you prefer) and sprinkle the whole thing with brown sugar.





The cake batter is poured on top of the art that you just created:




How pretty! I think PUDC makes everyone feel like a 1950's housewife--in the best way :)

Lasagne (p. 340), Tomato Sauce with Meatballs (p. 564), Tomato Sauce (p. 562), Italian Meatballs (p. 513)

Today was a huge moment in my journey through TJOC. Cooking something that I was pretty damn sure my family had much better recipes for. Today I cooked Lasagna (p. 340). Now, my family has a pretty damn awesome lasagna recipe. The filling is the same as in my beloved Noni's ravioli and is a meat, spinach, ricotta mixture with a few special ingredients. TJOC's recipe? Sauce, cheese, ricotta. That doesn't sound that tempting. Where is the meat? Where is the spinach? To make up for that, I decided to make Tomato Sauce with Meatballs (p. 564), probably my favorite recipe in TJOC so far--it's only four lines long and refers entirely to two other recipes--Tomato Sauce (p. 562) and Italian Meatballs (p. 513).

The sauce recipe was simple enough, although why TJOC wants me to make all sauces in a skillet is beyond me. I didn't send it through a food mill because I kind of like it lumpy.




I then made the meatballs. It's kind of fun to play with raw meat and, again, these were fairly easy. That being said, I think they were heavy on onions and the recipe from Cook's Illustrated is a lot more tasty. Plus, real Italian meatballs aren't all ground beef. I didn't want to waste veal on this recipe--plus it wasn't called for. Even so, they looked extremely tasty!





How could the altitude (my mortal enemy) affect the lasagna? Hmm...water boiling at a lower temp...that couldn't possibly affect...NOODLES! My noodles took FOREVER to cook and were more chewy than my liking. Even so, I wasn't really willing to start over.

One of the many things I don't like about this recipe is the extremely low amount of ricotta cheese. Now, at least it doesn't ask for cottage cheese (disgusting!) but 15 oz is not near enough. I smeared that on the first level! Josh had to go for a second, larger container to finish the meal off.

So, TJOC's lasagna recipe says that it takes 5 cups of the tomato sauce from 562. That lead me to believe that the tomato sauce recipe made 5 cups, so I didn't worry about it. This was incorrect. The tomato sauce recipe makes about two and a half cups--uh oh. I didn't have enough tomatoes to make a second recipe....so I improvised. I had a Tupperware of sauce from last month in the freezer. I dumped that into the other sauce, and away I went! But even that wasn't enough sauce! I had to get a container of the sauce my mother made me when she was here this summer. How much sauce does this take???





Assembling the lasagna was fairly easy. The whole thing weighed about forty thousand pounds. It said I was supposed to have three layers of filling but that was NOT going to happen...mine only had two layers.





The lasagna pre-cook and post-cook:






So how did it taste? Frankly, I think it was too heavy and sweet with not enough spinach or meat. Just not my taste in lasagna. And way too much of it for two people! So some of it might end up in the trash can...


In other news, some might see this as a shot glass but it may be one of my favorite things in the kitchen--so easy to measure liquid!!

Thanksgiving!!! Candied sweet potatoes (p. 302), Bread and mushroom stuffing (p. 533), Mashed potatoes (p.295), etc

Thanksgiving!! Hooray! A holiday where the main focus is where it should be--on food!!

My mom, who usually does the cooking, is experiencing neuropathy with her chemo, which makes her really sensitive to hot and especially cold. Even though we have a little thanksgiving each year (this year it was me, my mom, Josh, and his brother), it still requires a lot of cooking. So I decided to do what I could to help (and knock out some Joy recipes along the way).

First things first. What oven-cooked item could I make early so it wouldn't crowd the turkey? Candied sweet potatoes (p. 302) seemed like a good choice--and a serving size of 4! Perfect. We wouldn't have ten years worth of leftovers (and I only had 5 sweet potatoes--exactly what the recipe calls for). These were good. Not overly sweet and without marshmallows, two things I like in sweet potatoes. They also heated up really well. They were only made with four potatoes though--the last one had some gross black thing in the middle--it had to be culled from the herd. I made the recipe without lemon zest because I DESPISE zesting--well, at least until I get a microplane...

So why is there only one picture of this? And it's AFTER cooking? I forgot! No good reason--well, and the camera wasn't charged. But they do look tasty.




The only other thing I needed the oven for was toasting the breadcrumbs for the stuffing. My mother was absolutely horrified that I didn't need her to buy me ready made breadcrumbs. TJOC is big on toasting your own breadcrumbs, so I just needed her to buy white bread. That sounds easy--but getting you 100% Italian mother to buy pre-sliced white sandwich bread is not a simple task. She eventually did it, but not without a lot of complaints.


I decided to make Basic bread stuffing (p. 532), modified to Bread and mushroom stuffing (p. 533). Toasting the breadcrumbs wasn't difficult at all and they were beautiful and golden brown...

The bread pre-toast:




The bread post-toast--look how pretty it is!:




Mom was convinced this recipe was going to amount to--how did she so eloquently put it??--oh yes, stuffing a loaf of white bread up the turkey's ass. (As you can see, she's a back-seat cooker). She didn't need to worry--the stuffing was heavily spiced. I would never have thought to put nutmeg or cloves in there--although they were really good. You could definitely taste both flavors, but they were good. I mixed cremini and button mushrooms for the mushroom mix--I would have mixed more but Iowa has a pretty sad mushroom selection. I baked the stuffing in a casserole dish rather than inside the bird, so I added more broth so it wouldn't dry out. I also added two eggs which made a more firm stuffing.

Mixing the breadcrumbs and spices:



Pre-cooking--with tasty bits of butter on the top:





The tasty stuffing, after being shoveled onto everyone's plate:


I LOVE Yukon Gold potatoes. They are soooo good. So obviously, Mashed potatoes (p.295) were among the first things on my list of items to make. I was suspicious that TJOC wouldn't be able to live up to the wonderful Cook's Illustrated recipe that I made last year. And they weren't. The potatoes were good, but not great. Josh always enjoys the mashing process, I think it allows him to get out his frustrations in a healthy way. These cooked WAY faster than I expected, so they were done too early, which made me angry.


They tasted better than they looked:



At this point I was done with everything I had planned on making. But there were a lot of button mushrooms left over. So I decided, on a whim, to make Broiled stuffed mushroom caps (p. 284) stuffed with Basic flavored butter (p. 558) flavored to Garlic butter (p. 559). Oh were these great!! They were the hit of the holiday and gone in about thirty seconds. I can't recommend these enough--they were really easy and good. And the garlic butter was easy to make once I decided to mince the garlic in the world's smallest food processor. They would have been great on toast--sort of like snail-free escargot.


The butter--it makes quite a bit, I recommend having more than one use for it or halving the recipe--





The mushrooms pre- and post- broil. Thy tumbled all around! But were still nice and buttery:










So why didn't I make the cranberries? I said on the last blog I was going to...well, I specifically told my mother not to mince them and she did anyway. Unfortunately, that knocked my recipe out. And what about the pie? I'm not sure why that one didn't happen--I'm guessing lack of time.



Two more quick pictures--the turkey, although I only washed it, deserves it's day in the sun. It was very pretty. And Josh tried his hand at the electric slicer :)








www.Kiva.org is a really cool "charity". It isn't really a charity--it's a micro-lender, so you make little loans (right now you can only donate $25 to each one) to needy people and they pay you back. Most of the lenders have a 0% default rate, so you will get your money back, but your helping someone who needs it. I just made four loans--all to people trying to get started in agriculture, three to pig farmers (I have a soft spot for pigs!). It's a good deed, especially around the holidays. And you're helping people get on their feet so they won't need charity any more--how great is that? If you decide to do it, use me (email me for my username!) as a referral--I don't get anything but I would like to know if I influence anyone to make a loan :) As fellow food-lovers, I implore you to get involved :)

Chicken Cacciatore (p.433) and Becker Chicken Soup (p. 134)

So Josh and I bought a package of chicken thighs at the grocery store. I love chicken thighs--they have a taste (unlike the breast, most of the time) and they are INCREDIBLY cheap. This being said, I was under the impression that I was going to feel like cooking a lot more the week I bought them and they had been "aging" (hmm...chicken doesn't tenderize through aging...) in my refrigerator. I didn't want to end up throwing them out--what a waste! But we already had some in the world's smallest freezer and didn't have room for more. So I decided to use them all (novel, I know! ).


I made chicken cacciatore (p.433). Now, my family has a chicken cacciatore recipe and it is NOTHING like this one, so I didn't know what to expect. Our recipe doesn't have olives and has a hellava lot more tomatoes, so I didn't know what to expect.

The first strange part of this recipe? The fact that they seem to think I can fit 3.5-4.5 lbs of chicken thighs into a skillet. What skillet could fit that many thighs? Certainly not one I own! So I used six, which is what my skillet fit, and I think it was the perfect ratio of chicken:sauce.

This recipe is really good. I used oil cured olives, like it asked for, and they were awesome. I would recommend using even more than the recipe calls for, if you like olives. The mushrooms were also good. The chicken was tender, although the skin got kind of gross, so I would recommend skinning the chicken before using it. And the final test? It heated up great! In our house, this is a big deal :)

The onions and spices...watch them, they desperately want to burn!

Adding the chicken and tomatoes--it isn't very tomato-y, I'm warning you!

The finished product. Doesn't the sauce look tasty! Man, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it....

So I still had about four chicken thighs left over. What to do with them...first I thought to make chicken tortilla soup, but I didn't have any avocados on hand and didn't want to go to the store. So I decided to make Becker Chicken Soup (p. 134) with the thighs. I even got to use the chicken stock I made previously! It wasn't enough but it gave the soup a great chickeny taste. Four thighs was definitely enough chicken, even if you like a lot of meat in your soup.

I also used more curry than it called for--and it was delicious! Josh happily ate this for days. I think it would be better if you added either noodles or rice though...

Just as the soup starts to simmer...my bouquet garni is not in a cheesecloth, but it's easy enough to remove anyway.

The (tasty) final product:

Black Bean Soup (p. 133) and Tomato Meat Sauce (p. 563)

So...hmm...well...I've been a terrible blogger! You've placed your faith in me and I haven't been blogging. Do I have any excuses? Of course--but they aren't good enough (I've been sick, in Mexico, and worried that my boyfriend's cancer that was previously in remission might be back). What's worse? That I have several recipes that I cooked, took pictures of, and didn't blog about!!



So I'm going to double blog today. But what do you have to look forward to? THANKSGIVING! The holiday that is ALL about EATING! My mom is in charge of the turkey, gravy, and pumpkin pie, but she's undergoing chemo for colorectal cancer and can't finish the meal. So I'm making mashed potatoes, candies sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, a vanilla cream meringue, and the stuffing. How exciting is that!!



So, you know, I had the beans that had been soaking, to be made into Black Bean Soup (p. 133). As a holder of a meat science degree, I couldn't make my soup vegetarian, although it easily could be. I used salt-pork, which is like a chunk of bacon. I also put ham into the soup, which made it more hardy. With some cheese on the top and some Ritz crackers--it makes one hellava meal! But be forewarned--it makes a TON of soup. Be ready to eat it with a lot of people or you will have a bunch left over. Since I'm the only person in the house who likes beans, I ate this for days, but it was really good.



One big warning. When you drain the beans, you're supposed to reserve the juices. Well...whoops! Still worked though! I added a little of my homemade chicken stock to flesh the flavor out a little.



The celery, onion, carrots, spices browning nicely:















Hmm...it doesn't LOOK like black bean soup yet...although the black pork is a little creepy looking...








What a difference 3 hours makes! It really helps if you have a normal sized food processor too...

In real life, it looks much less like mud :)











Since I was in a cooking mood, I also made Tomato Meat Sauce (p. 563). Of course, I knew from the start that white-bread TJOC probably isn't the end all of Italian cooking. That being said, this sauce was pretty good. I used salt-pork for it, instead of bacon or pancetta, because I had it left over from the black bean soup. It was very tasty--like cracklings in your sauce! The sauce is very tomato-y because of the whole tomatoes. I recommend it--I think it will freeze well. Of course, that would be a lot more helpful if we weren't cursed with the world's smallest freezer...





My one problem with that the recipe required 1 T of tomato paste...what the heck am I supposed to do with the rest of the can???





Browning the beef and salt-pork in olive oil...YUM!













Mmmm...smells great! And super easy...

















The finished product--ready to go in the freezer (the picture looks like you are going to dive right in!):

Household Poultry Stock (p. 118), Bouquet Garni (p. 960), Baked Polenta (p. 349), Curry Mayonnaise (p. 580)

First of all, I have decided to abstain from cooking Mexican food this week :) I'm nervous about my research and don't really want to think about the trip!

Second, I'm pretty sure people are reading this blog who I don't know in real life--that is super exciting! Also, if you decide to make any of these recipes, go back and comment on how yours turned out. If you want to take a picture of yours and email it to me, I'll post it on the blog!


Yesterday I got highly motivated to cook. First item I wanted to make? Black bean soup. So I got out my black beans, started reading the recipe....uh oh...beans need to soak overnight! So I guess that will have to be made Monday!

So what else to make...

I had the leftover carcass from a rotisserie chicken that we bought at King Soopers. I had no idea what to do with it but it still had some meat on the bone and it seems wasteful to throw it away. So I decided to make Household Poultry Stock (p. 118). Super easy! Throw the chicken carcass and some water in a pot, boil it, throw some vegetables and Bouquet Garni (p. 960) into the pot, boil some more. Strain it and VOILA! Chicken stock. And it makes your house smell great--like chicken soup. Actually, the stuff I strained out of the stock looked pretty damn good too--it would probably be good if you wanted to eat it.

So am I still going to buy chicken stock at CostCo? Yes, because we use a TON of it. But I will make all of our chicken carcasses into stock too...


All of the ingredients boiling away:



The strained stock--look how tasty!



What to make next? We got a nice big hunk of salmon at Costco and Josh was highly motivated to grill it so I didn't need to help with the main course. But what could I make as a side dish? Baked Polenta (p. 349) was something I had all the ingredients for...

Now, I don't know how many of my readers are of Italian heritage. I am and my mom and noni made polenta for me all the time. We would have it with sauce on it and the next day, we would slice it, fry it, and eat it with maple syrup. This recipe is not like my families polenta.

TJOC has 4 polenta recipes, but this one is strange.

Reasons why this recipe is strange:
1. It has swiss cheese in it. Any cheese is strange in polenta, except maybe Parmesan. But swiss? How Italian is that? Very odd.

2. It tells you to slice three kinds of cheese (well, slice swiss and mozzarella, measure out some Parmesan). Then it tells you to put half in the middle and half on top. Half of what? Half of all the cheeses? Or half of the cheese in general? I put the swiss in the middle and the mozz and parm on the top...

I hate vague instructions!

So how did it taste? Pretty good. Odd, but good. I think it would be better with some sauce on it.

Browning the onions in olive oil...


The constructed polenta pre-oven




Nicely browned and tasty-looking!





So what else could I make? It seemed like a good idea to put some sort of sauce on the salmon. I decided to make Curry Mayonnaise (p. 580). OMG! This was delicious. TJOC recommends using it in chicken salad...I'm totally going to next time I make it. If you like curry you have GOT to make this! My favorite way to eat it is to mix the leftover salmon in the curry mayo the next day and eat it on Ritz crackers (I'm obviously a gourmand!).





Until next time!