Chicken Enchiladas (p. 104), Vegetable Soup (Soupe Paysanne) (p. 128), and MY TRIP TO JAPAN!

First off, I'm pumped! I seem to have readers--and some of them aren't family members! Hooray! And I was mentioned on Jennifer's awesome knitting blog, www.pieknits.com , which is one of my favorite blogs (even though I'm far, far too uncoordinated to knit). I'm not going to mention that she is one of my extremely good friends, who I've known since 2nd grade...so she kinda has to read the blog...but she doesn't have to mention it to others!


I had a rotisserie chicken that we bought from CostCo, so we had a lot of extra cooked chicken. I decided to make Chicken Enchiladas (p. 104). This is a relatively time consuming process. You make the enchilada sauce (which you don't have to do--you can buy it--but I wanted to be authentic), make the meat mixture, heat up the shells, dish out the meat, roll them up, cover in sauce, and bake. Not difficult, but time consuming.

Sauce, pre-puree:







Sauce, post-puree. Remember, I have the smallest food processor in the world, so this took about five batches:





And I thought they were bland...but maybe I'm just not an enchilada fan. Are chicken enchiladas typically bland?


Corn tortillas are amazing. I had some in the refrigerator that were so old, I swear they came with the fridge. But they still tasted good and rolled fine. Any cracking was due more to my lack of ability than to the tortillas.

Tortillas. pre-roll and post-roll:







The finished product (cheddar on top):






I made Vegetable Soup (Soupe Paysanne) (p. 128) while I was making the enchiladas. It was a simple recipe, make a mirepoix, add stock (I used store bought vegetable stock), tomatoes (I used canned--it isn't like "fresh" tomatoes are that fresh this time of year), potatoes (no turnips, I'm not a big fan), and spices. Later I added some cabbage and pepper.

This was a delicious soup that heated up extremely well. The cabbage was a really good addition--it's cheap, has a lot of flavor, and is filling. The soup is tomato-y, but not overwhelming, and has a great pepper bite. I have been thinking about this soup for the last few days so it is going to be re-made--but I think some peas or corn added would be even better.

Josh was disappointed by the lack of meat but I like my vegetable soup vegetarian.


Only one picture of the soup--there wasn't much to photograph.






So, I'm sorry I was out of commission for a few weeks--I WAS IN JAPAN LAST WEEK! How cool is that? So, some food related photos from the trip (not all of them, don't want to bore you!).

1. Although Japan has a lot of their own foods, they have interesting versions of brands that are common here. I had a delicious green tea doughnut from Starbucks (I know, I know, but it was next to the Hotel Okura, where we were staying), for example. And there are green tea versions of almost everything, such as Green Tea Kit-Kats:





2. Shabu-shabu! Delicious. So is tonkatsu (which I don't have a picture of) which is essentially fried pork that you dip in sauce. But shabu-shabu...you take raw pieces of highly marbled beef, swish them around in a pot of broth (apparently the sound is supposed to sound like shabu-shabu), dip it in sauce, and eat it. Yum! My father brought a whole set home from Japan, so I had eaten it before, but it was amazing to eat in Japan.

Raw beef, sliced thin, and the sauces, seseme based and soy-sauce based:




Getting dipped:




3. The Tokyo fish market, which is getting torn down soon (or so I hear). Well worth the trip if you're in Tokyo, even though you have to get there really early (like 4 am). They auction off tuna, both fresh and frozen, the size of which is AMAZING! HUGE fish...and then you can walk through the market and see an incredible assortment of fish.


Tuna ready for auction:




Giant clams (mussels? What's the difference?):



Octopi--Yum--We eat these every Christmas!:






4. I thought that it was just a stereotype that Hello Kitty is popular in Japan. Apparently not, because I saw her EVERYWHERE. Including (during a trade show) in a bento box display, made out of both rice AND meat, with little sausages that are imprinted with Hello Kitty on the side. I adored it...Hello Kitty rocks!







5. I ate the most expensive meal I've ever seen. A former grad student's father treated us to a meal, six courses, and the main was Kobe beef, with black truffles, drizzled in truffle sauce. It was delicious and I was excited to try both Kobe beef and black truffles! They lived up to my expectations BUT I still think that American Corn-fed Prime beef is every bit as good.

Italian Pot Roast (Stracotto) (p. 477)

This is not a roast. It is in a pot, but it is not roasted, it's braised. So I actually find the name fairly annoying.


I also want to introduce my beautiful Cuisinart Stock Pot/Dutch Oven that my godmother, Judy, bought me. It is an awesome piece of equipment and this was it's virgin use! I'm kind of turning away from teflon and nonstick coatings. I hate the constant worry about scratching them and I want the ability to stick them in the dishwasher if I want to. I got mostly kitchen equipment for Christmas, as I hoped for--thank you Mom, Dad and Vickie, Judy, and Charlotte!!!

My beautiful new pot...notice my cute blue salt pig behind it...





This recipe pretty much boils down to this--prepare the meat, make a mirepoix, mix wine and tomato paste, reduce, mix wine and beef broth, reduce, and then mix wine, broth, and tomatoes. Cook it forever. This recipe honestly took me 4 hours. It was a strange choice on a Monday night.


First, you make a herb mixture. I doubled the garlic. Half of this gets stuffed into the meat:




Stuff it into the meat (in this case, a blade roast):




Brown the meat. This was a challenge. The meat did NOT want to cooperate and it kept collapsing and splashing me with boiling oil. It was not pleasant. I thought that browning it for twenty minutes was a really bad idea. I've always heard that the idea that browning meat keeps the juices in was an urban legend--plus this is getting braised--there would be no way for it to be dry. So if it's just for aesthetic value, I don't want to brown it too much. Even with this concern, I think the pan was too hot and that I browned it to much.

I'm sure you are pondering our ugly plates at this point in the blog. I really need to buy a plate to photograph on. The clear plates were Josh's...I'm not sure why ANYONE would want to see their lap while they were eating but maybe that's just me.





So then you take the meat out of the pot, add the mirepoix, mushrooms, a bay leaf, the rest of the herb mixture, and eventually some wine and tomato paste. It's then cooked down until almost dry. This takes forever. Each reduction step is time consuming. I'm beginning to think this is a weekend roast I'm working on.




After a bunch of reductions, the browned meat is added and cooked for about 2.5 hours. And it smells wonderful. So you will start to get starving hungry with no food in sight.




The finished meat product, sliced. Admire the tasty pockets of herb mixture:



Finished product with sauce. I reduced the sauce (without the meat) at a boil for about fifteen minutes.





This is one of those recipes that has a lot of leftovers. So far, Josh ate it for about four more meals and said it was great for every one of them.

TJOC said that the sauce can be used on pasta, so I tried it. Wow....it was really good. Tomato-y, beefy, wine-y...really good. And it makes A LOT of extra sauce, so you have to use it for something. I mix a little minced garlic in with it, but it's really good. The sauce has (so far) yielded two additional meals, and will probably yield two more.

So, all in all, this recipe has served us 8 meals (2 orginal meals, 4 leftover meals for Josh, 2 pasta meals for me) and probably has around 3 more meals to go. That is a lot of value out of an $8 piece of meat.

Josh declared this his favorite recipe that TJOC has produced thus far. Better than crepes, better than curry mayo, better than all of things that we make often...I can't recommend this recipe enough. I'm SURE that we will make it again.


In other cooking news, when I was in Des Moines, I stopped at Penzey's (http://www.penzeys.com/), which is a spice store. I LOVE this store. It's a dangerous place for me to enter because I drop a ton of cash every time I go there. I got in an very interesting discussion with the manager about ricers (I think I sold him on one! I should get a kickback!). I lusted after high end curry and bought about fifteen spices, along with their DELICIOUS minced garlic that Josh and I use in large quantities, and three differant types of salt. I also bought juniper berries. I have no idea what to do with these. When Josh asked what they are used for, I told him gin production. Since he knows full well I'm not going to make gin, he asked what else they were used for. I told him they are common in Albanian cuisine (I seem to remember that from the placard in front of the spice). He was also aware that I don't even know what Albanian cuisine consists of. So do you know what to use them for?

Split Pea Soup (p. 134) and Ham Salad (p. 164)

I really like most of the recipes in Joy (of course) but some of the foods are foods that I really don't like. This is a problem. The whole point of this project is to make ALL of the recipes and I don't want to start down the slope of not making recipes for any reason. On the bright side, some of the stuff that disgusts both Josh and I the most are dishes that my mother really likes. So I've decided to make some of the foods that I do not want to eat every time I visit her. This has the additional positive of giving my mom food to eat when I'm gone--she's still tired from chemo and is usually unmotivated to cook, even though she is getting way too thin.

The first recipe I made her was Split Pea Soup (p. 134). Did you know there were two types of split peas (yellow and green)? There is just something about pea soup that turns my stomach. Maybe it's The Exorcist. Maybe it's the hidious color. But I can never motivate myself to eat it, much less make it. Even so, it's a hot, filling soup. Perfect for mom!

The ham hocks called for in the recipe were not easy to find in the white-bread mega-grocery I went to. I knew that I wanted them, though, because ham (like bacon) is one of the signs that a higher power exists and loves us.

A ham hock, water, and peas:


The recipe was easy but WAY too thick. It was more of a porridge than a soup. I recommend using more water or broth or something...I ate a bowl and it was extremely filling. It would be good with a good crusty bread.


Why would anyone eat something that looks like this?? And sadly, I think that's how it's supposed to look!





I also made Ham Salad (p. 164). I HATE ham salad. There is just something gross about the pink sludge. Yuck. But for some godforsaken reason, my mom loves it. She buys it at the grocery store disturbingly often. And, of course, there is a recipe for it in TJOC.

So I bought a slice of ham and made ham salad. I almost forgot to include the mayo which would have made for a real strange, dry salad. It's really pretty easy to make--other than the ham, she had everything in the refrigerator. This itself was bizarre, considering that my mom idolizes Old Mother Hubburd and likes her cabinets bare. The ham salad looked as good as was possible but was too chunky for mom, so we pushed it through a food processor at the end...just like the grocery store. Yuck!

Pre-food processor. Hard boiled eggs, ham, pickles, mayo, spices:





I stand by it...why would anyone eat these items???

Waffles (p. 646) and Raspberry

So the relatives wanted waffles. Never mind that we are low (or empty) on milk, eggs, and butter, three of the main ingredients of waffles.

There are JUST enough eggs, slightly under a stick of butter (but I can't use it all because I need some for the top of the waffles) and no milk. The relatives want me to use creamer in the waffles. I don't know about you guys, but that seems like something that you would do if you were in wartime, and seems gross. So I looked in the back of the book and figured out how to use evaporated milk. I don't like evaporated milk. I think it tastes tinny and metallic. But my mom and aunt like it more than real milk. They were convinced it was a 1:1 substitution. That doesn't make any sense. The evaporated has to mean SOMETHING. You don't have to look very far--even wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporated_milk -- to know that you have to mix it with an equal amount of water to use it in place of milk.

The waffle mix--in a bowl that is probably twice as old as I am:




So we get out the waffle iron. It's filthy dirty. Whoever used it last didn't clean it. It doesn't take an aerospace engineer to know that you should clean kitchen equipment before putting it away, but apparently that's beyond my grandmother's caretaker's abilities. So we cleaned it (well) and sprayed it with plenty of oil. The waffles worked, but I think they tasted way too much like evaporated milk...


This is my first time making waffles. I don't even like waffles. Why would you bother with a specialty iron when you can just make waffle's more delicious cousin, the pancake? And I have a moratorium on equipment in my house that is only for one purpose. We have a few pieces that have snuck through the cracks--an ice cream maker, namely, but our kitchen isn't big enough for pieces that one do one job. We need multitaskers. I'm sure I'll inherit the pizzelle maker eventually.

The waffles being cooked:



The finished product. I think waffles pretty much require someone to be in the kitchen, making them, while everyone else eats. And I'm not into that.



My g'mother's caretaker had organic maple syrup for the waffles. I have two main problems with this. First, isn't all plain maple syrup organic? I mean, really, I doubt they spray the maple trees. So you are paying a premium for nothing. I understand if you don't want the syrup with all the preservatives and such, but I'm guessing all plain maple syrup is the same. Second, the syrup was Grade B. Josh assures me that the highest grade of maple syrup is AA (apparently his parent's collected sap one year), so this super expensive syrup is third-tier. And people pay a premium for it! Amazing.


This blog is dedicated to our dear Rottweiler, Raspberry. Raspberry lived a hard life. She was used as breeding stock (which was no surprise--she was a gorgeous dog) until she could no longer whelp, and then was set "free". When the shelter found her, they found a microchip, but when they called the owners, they were told that she was no longer wanted.

Her teeth were broken and worn from chewing on her cage. Her nose had a scar across it from pushing it through the bars. She didn't walk upright for the first year Josh had her. But she was a loving dog (almost TOO loving at times--she was definitely needy). When she moved to Colorado and adopted Duchess, she blossomed.

She was a great dog. She and Duchess were my constant cooking companions, always looking for food I may have dropped (accidentally or on purpose).

Josh noticed that she didn't look so good on 12/30. By 1/2 she had to be put to sleep. She had gotten a clot in her stomach, which punctured it and rotted her stomach away. She lost twenty pounds in three days.

May she rest in peace and get all the attention that she deserves until we meet her at the Rainbow Bridge.




The rainbow bridge poem (collected from www.rainbowbridge.com)
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Author unknown...

Leftover Potato Cakes (p. 301)

So it's the day after Christmas and we have a bunch of leftovers. I made the mashed potatoes for Christmas dinner and they were delicious--but there are some left over, of course. I spot the recipe for Leftover Potato Cakes (p.301). I giggle about the name for a while. It sounds like the potato cakes are leftover, not that leftover potatoes are made into cakes. I'm such a dork.


For this recipe, you pretty much take mashed potatoes, mix in some of whatever you want, fashion them into cakes, dip them into flour, and panfry them. I mixed together some garlic and a few eggs, which when mixed into the potatoes was gross and mucous-y. Even when dipped into flour they were sticky.

This picture shows the garlic egg mixture in the upper left hand corner, plain mashed potatoes on the left, and the mucous-y mixture on the left. TJOC is visible in the far left of the picture. Isn't the marble counter nice? I really should have made candy while I was there and utilized the table...



The little cakes frying. Flour did not stick to them as well as you would have expected...although they did fry up an attractive golden color:



They were fairly pretty when cooked but fairly bland. I smeared butter onto them and they were still on the bland side. I think that maple syrup or something would be better on them...

Even so, they were really easy. And the recipe has a LOT of room for interpretation so you could really get creative. It's nice to use leftovers in a new way...

They apparently didn't excite me enough to make me take a picture of the finished product!

Viennese Crescents (p. 773), Roll Cookies (p. 772), Sugar Drop Cookies (p. 766), Pecan or Angel Slices (p. 764), Filled Cookies III (p. 777), etc

I'm in Florida for the holidays. I decided that I could certainly do most of the dessert cooking, and I brought my camera, but of course, I forgot to load the camera's installation disk on my laptop, so I had to wait until I get home for the pictures...

First off, it was extremely exciting to not worry about modifying recipes or cooking times because I'm at sea level...that is wonderful! I am literally right next to a major water body (the Halifax River)--in fact, I can see it from the chair I'm sitting in.

I felt right at home because I still had a dog that was begging for food--my g'mother's beagle, Casey. I agree with my aunt, Bandit would have been a cuter and more appropriate name. She's a strange dog, however--she begs and begs but doesn't ACTUALLY want anything. If you drop food on the floor, she won't eat it.



The first cookies I made were Pecan or Angel Slices (p. 764). I chose to make them out of nuts, not angels--I suppose you'd have to get those in a specialty store :)


This required me to toast coconut (p. 972) and toast walnuts (p. 1001). That was fairly easy, although toasting the coconut was stressful...it always seemed a quarter step from burning. At least it changes in taste. I hate when I do these extra steps and they don't seem to actually accomplish anything. Toasting the nuts was easy enough, although I don't think I toasted them enough.

Coconut pre- and post- toasting:







The toasted walnuts:





The slices were strange. It seems that you make the crust (extremely gooey and REALLY hard to work with, even after some refrigeration), pat it down on foil (never did figure out why I needed foil--I recommend not using it), bake that, make the nut mixture, and put that on top.

The crust has to be baked first:


The whole concoction:




Very tasty! But very strange. And almost impossible to get out of the pan. The "bars" were tiny and bite size, because they were that hard to get out of the pan. It was for the best, however, because they were SOOOO rich that one whole bar would have thrown the eater into automatic diabetic shock.




Viennese Crescents (p. 773). My aunt Charlotte is a big fan of those butter cookies with the ground nuts that everybody seems to have at Christmas. I think the actual cookies she likes are called "Mexican wedding cookies" or something like that. I figured these were fairly close. Well, they are. They are rich and nutty. But I made them way to big. Why is it that cookie recipes always say you can make 48 cookies but I always seem to only be able to make about 20? That's really annoying. Do they make doll-sized cookies? Because I'm not typically making GIANT cookies...


These were slightly less than attractive. I didn't notice that I wasn't photographing them but this is the only picture I have...at least they TASTED good...





Sugar Drop Cookies (p. 766). These were pretty good and allowed my mother to use the sprinkles that she desperately wanted to use (they are quite pretty!). I made the cookies, found out that I had 20 cookies and the recipes says that I will have 60...so I broke them up further.

Hmm...these cookies must be WAY too big. But they don't look THAT big...this cookie sheet isn't very large:




So I break them up and get twelve instead of eight:



I still didn't have 60! Apparently, they needed to be TINY! These were good--but dry. Kind of boring actually. And I don't really like cookies that don't use butter or shortening...only vegetable oil...and I think that is kind of gross...So again, the dough was REALLY sticky, even after I put it in the refrigerator. And my g'mother doesn't have one of those awesome cookie ballers that I love so much (thank you Rachel!).





I called mom over and let her decorate. Apparently, she wanted to live out all her six-year old fantasies... But I must admit that they are attractive and festive:




So I had a bunch of toasted coconut left over. I hate extra stuff like that--you put in a baggie, put it away, it rots, and eventually, you throw it out. What's the point? So I found a recipe that would use the rest of it. Filled Cookies III (p. 777) using Roll Cookies (p. 772) and the third option, the coconut filling. This is the worst, most obnoxious recipe in TJOC I've came across so far. I made little turnovers. The problem with this is that the recipe has no instructions for cooking. In the little review of filled cookies, it says "since there is so much variety in the shaping, handling, and baking of filled cookings, not many general rules apply." So, apparently, that means that they don't give you any direction. I cooked them at 375 degrees for ten minutes and it totally worked.

You make the filling first. There is a lot of room for creativity in this recipe:




The roll cookie part needs to sit in the refridgerator for a while. So don't plan on making these cookies if you don't think you'll be interested in finishing them a few hours later:




You make them like ravioli:




A closeup:





Some of the turnovers were beautiful...and others, well, the others have great personalities.



The whole plate of cookies were pretty. Of course, while I was getting my camera to take this picture, my g'mother snagged TWO cookies. I knew this because I had counted them before leaving. My g'mother is on a strict diet. Six cookies after dinner do not fit in it. So I had to hide the rest of the cookies...