Italian Parmesan and Egg Soup (p. 124), Buttermilk Marinade (p. 585), and Oven-Fried Chicken with Cornmeal Crust (p. 430)

I know I'm late posting this. We will get to the reasons later! And this was a really good day of cooking. And remember--I love when you guys comment :)

As previously posted, I wanted to cook a lot this weekend--plus Josh's brother was visiting and I didn't want them to eat out for every meal. Josh's brother can be picky so I wanted to stick to the kind of food that everyone likes.

But first, to get my energy up for a day of cooking, I decided to make Italian Parmesan and Egg Soup (p. 124). I'm always nervous about TJOC's "Italian" recipes. I don't know, they never seem very ethnic. But I had a bunch of chicken stock and I wanted to use it. This recipe is really easy. Pretty much, bring stock to a simmer, mix an egg, Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, parsley, and garlic, combine that with the stock, and eat. The egg mix is one of the most disgusting things that I've ever seen. At this point, I wasn't very optimistic.



It isn't really that appetizing looking -- but the soup was really tasty. True comfort food--and extremely easy. Between the egg, cheese, and breadcrumbs--it was a really filling soup. I recommend it.




One of those food items that I think everybody likes is fried chicken. The problem with making fried chicken? I really don't want to bring out my deep fryer. First off, I don't have room on the countertop for it and I don't want to through out the oil every time. Second, the deep fryer is scary. I use it once a year, to make calamari at Christmas, and this ain't Christmas.

Fortunately, TJOC has anticipated this problem (well, likely not THIS problem, but...) and has a recipe for Oven-Fried Chicken with Cornmeal Crust (p. 430). I used chicken thighs because they are a) tasty and b) cheap. Dark meat is always more flavorful than white meat--I canNOT understand why some people are so in love with chicken breasts--and they take the skins off at that!

The first part of this recipe is to prepare the Buttermilk Marinade (p. 585). This is easy--you just mix buttermilk and garlic, and then lightly season it. I can't say that it smelled that great--I'm not in love with buttermilk. Heavy cream? Yes. Buttermilk? No.

You then season it more--shallots, lemon juicy, chili powder, etc. I used dehydrated shallots because I couldn't find the fresh shallots in my refrigerator. Found them immediately afterwards--but what can you do. Dehydrated shallots and dehydrated lemon peel are two of my favorite spices from Penzey's.

The chicken goes into this mess and sits for a couple hours. The marinade was just enough for the 3.5 pounds of chicken.

Next step--mix a whole bunch of dry ingredients in a shallow pan (including bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese--apparently that was the theme of the day) and an egg/butter mix in a bowl. The chicken gets the marinade shaken off, dipped in the egg, and then dredged in the cornmeal mix (is that the correct use of the word 'dredge'?). The dry mix adhered really well to the chicken.

Yum...pieces of chicken! And drizzled with butter...

I was terrified by the end of this recipe. You bake the chicken at a high temp (425) for a long time (40 minutes). It seemed to me that it was bound to burn. And sure enough, the oven started smoking about halfway through. This freaked Josh out (he was convinced I had another TJOC related fire) but the chicken looked fine, so I turned on the oven fan and didn't worry about it.

The chicken was great! Incredibly moist and flavorful. I think the marinade really added to the juiciness. And it wasn't very difficult! I think I'm almost ready for the deep fryer!

Provencal Vegetable Soup (Soupe au Pistou) (p. 128), Mushroom Triangles (p. 88), Hearty Meat Ragu (p. 101), and Pistou (p. 569)

I know that I need to work late a lot in this coming week and I hate cooking when I get home at eleven. I wanted some food that I could just heat up. Last week, I ate frozen dinners, but they don't really hit the spot for me. So because I was so happy with the Vegetable Soup that I made about a month ago, I decided to make Provencal Vegetable Soup (Soupe au Pistou) (p. 128).

I had never used leeks before so I was a little nervous. I always get nervous when I try to prepare a new vegetable--even if it doesn't seem very difficult. I was glad to get over this fear because I really like leeks. I decided to spare you from the pictures of the leeks, onions, celery, and carrot sauteeing because that pic has been posted plenty! The recipe wants two medium ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped. I felt no need to buy fresh tomatoes. It's not tomato season, so they aren't going to taste any better than canned tomatoes and opening a can of diced tomatoes is sure a lot easier. It didn't seem to affect the recipe at all. I also used frozen green beans because that's what I happened to have. I used elbow macaroni (which always makes me feel like I'm going to do crafts), canned white beans, and no saffron--I wish I kept saffron on hand, but I don't. That will be taken care of on the next trip to Penzey's Spices!

Mmm....the soup before the beans and such were added...




The recipe requires Pistou (p. 569). TJOC says to make it without seasoning it...I figured that was the basil, garlic, and olive oil without the pepper and Parmesan. This was a problem. Basil isn't in season and the basil leaves in the store were extremely expensive so I only picked up one package. Unfortunately, this was only half of what I needed. So I searched for more basil and found that I had one of those squeeze bottles. I have no idea how to substitute the two so I just squeezed some in there--I figure that 1 cup of the squeeze bottle (which would be the whole thing) would be WAY too much because it's so compact!

This mixture pretty much looked like pesto without the pine nuts. That's what it smelled like too. Delicious. I don't have an after shot, but here's a before:



Quite a bit of soup was produced, as you can see...four storage containers and a bowl for eating!




The soup was really good and the basil was strong but not too strong. I don't think it was quite as good as the Soupe Paysanne but I will still make it again.

Mushroom Triangles (p. 88). I need to tell a little story before I can explain why I want to make these...

One of the only restaurants that I really liked in Columbia, Missouri was called the Uprise Bakery. It was delicious. And one of the tastiest items in this bakery were little mushroom turnovers. I've always wanted to know how to make these wonderful, greasy, flaky, little mushroom items. So when I saw the recipe in TJOC I was hoping that it was the same recipe or at least similar.

Frankly, I don't think they were. They weren't NEAR greasy enough, first off. And I wasn't in love with the flavor of the mushroom mixture, but I'll go into that later.

I've always been nervous about working with phyllo dough. It seems difficult and makes me nervous. There are tons of cool recipes that use it so I've been interested in it (I LOVE Baklava and the Spinach and Feta Triangles that follow the Mushroom Triangle recipe looks really good). But there are so many directions on how to work with it--anything that requires that much explanation to use makes me very nervous.


To make the triangles, first you combine shallots and garlic with butter. What a promising start! I love butter, I love shallots, and I LOVE garlic. Mmmm....garlic.....I doubled the amount of garlic, like I always do.



Next, the mushrooms. First, you have to rehydrate some mushrooms. As some of you remember, dehydrated mushrooms are the secret of Hot and Sour soup (learned earlier in this experiment). I wasn't confident about the dehydrated mushrooms in the recipe. They have a strange texture and I couldn't imagine them in the triangles. Here was my set-up--the dehydrated mushroom draining apparatus, the normal mushrooms cut-up in a bowl, and the dehydrated mushrooms, cut-up. And, of course, a Coke for energy.



This is a TON of mushrooms. I was feeling really good about the recipe at this point because, hey, I like mushrooms and they smelled really good. If you are wondering, the hydrated mushrooms were shiitakes and cremini's and the dehydrated were shiitake and a gourmet mushroom mixture.



The phyllo...how nerve racking...

You have to work with it very quickly or it dries out and you have to throw it away. I covered the pieces that weren't currently being covered with a damp paper towel, like recommended. Man, they aren't kidding. If it isn't wet enough, the phyllo dries out. If it's too wet, the phyllo sticks to it and rips. And it doesn't like being brushed with butter--that rips it too.



Another problem--the recipe says to cut it lengthwise into 8-9 strips. Are they working with a larger sheet? If I cut mine into that many strips, they would have been about a half inch tall. That doesn't seem like a very good filling to phyllo ratio. I cut mine into 3-4 strips.

If you are wondering what raw phyllo tastes like--it's floury but fairly tasty.


So you have your strip and you add some filling to the top corner.



Then you fold it over, like a flag, and just continue like that.



This was about the size I made my triangles. But it made the correct quantity, which is confusing if they are the wrong size.



Cooked, they looked delicious, but they just didn't trip my trigger. I don't know what the problem was...I think it was that strange consistency of the dehydrated mushrooms. And I never thought I'd say this--but I almost think they would have been better with just button mushrooms.




I also made the Hearty Meat Ragu (p. 101). I figured that this recipe was something that could be made moderately easily (it's made in a slow cooker). The recipe was fairly simple and straightforward--except for a couple lines. Here are two of the ingredients:
1. One 28-ounce can tomatoes, crushed, with juice
2. One 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes in puree

What's the difference? I have NO idea. So mine was made with two cans of crushed tomatoes. Was I just supposed to get a can of whole tomatoes and crush them myself? I didn't feel this was clear at all. What do you guys think?

I've got to stop taking pictures of the carrot/celery/onion/garlic mix. You've all seen in at least a dozen times by now.




My crockpot is old. It was my mom's, which is funny, because she hates crockpots. Her theory is that the pressure cooker does the same thing in a fraction of time, which is true. That being said, the crockpot isn't scary at all and the pressure cooker is extremely scary. I mean, when you want to suggest that something is intense and scary, you refer to it as a pressure cooker. Nobody says that they are afraid of getting in a slow cooker situation.

The chunks of meat in this sauce are fairly sizeable. Like a giant dork, I actually measured one of the chunks of meat to make sure that they were the correct size--and they were. It's a very red sauce.

It didn't feel very Italian. In fact, it didn't taste very Italian. But it was damn easy.



It made a LOT of sauce. These cooking frenzies are using up all of my Tupperware! I'm not going to have any left soon! I figure some can go into the freezer--it's great to be able to pull out some sauce when you are hungry.

Coq Au Vin (p. 431) and Chocolate Sauce (p. 847)

::Sigh:: Another set of blogs. Actually, the last two are pretty much on time--but this one is late! I'm sorry!

The first item I made was Coq Au Vin (p. 431). Coq Au Vin is one of those dishes that has always intimidated me--I know it's just chicken cooked with wine but its fancy name always makes it seem difficult to make. I know that the dish is supposed to be made with an old co...rooster (I would giggle too much if I used the other term) or spent hen but, as I don't keep chickens in my backyard (much to my dog's dismay), I had to settle for chicken thighs from the grocery store. I always default to chicken thighs when TJOC specifies "chicken parts" because I think they are FAR more flavorful and juicy than chicken breasts and easier to eat than legs.
Plus they are cheap. Wonderfully cheap.

You know a recipe is going to be tasty when it starts by asking for bacon. Ummm....bacon... I cut bacon using my kitchen shears because bacon can be difficult to cut with a knife. I didn't have thick-cut bacon so I estimated the ounces of my normal-cut bacon.



I can never figure out what kind of skillets or pots TJOC thinks we have. I can't fit 3.5-4.5 lbs of chicken in any of my pots or pans and it always takes several batches...



I happily started to make my onion/carrot mixture--no problem, made that a thousand times. I add all the ingredients and get ready to add the wine...



I go to add the 3 cups of dry red wine. Obviously, this is an important part of the recipe--I mean, it's in the title. Josh and I don't tend to drink at home, so when I buy wine to cook with, it sits around for a while. I made Stracotto again (it was even more delicious this time because I cooked in less) and was under the impression that I had enough wine for both dishes. As you probably have figured out from the beginning of that sentence, it was a wrong impression.

I pour the wine into a measuring cup. It's only one cup. Crap.

I look in the refrigerator--there is a bottle of red in there! I taste it--it tastes fine to me (I'm no wine expert) so I measure it. One more cup. Crap. And of course it's not the same type of wine as the first.

So I look in the cupboard. No more red wine--but I have a bunch of the little bottles of white (I prefer these for cooking). And it's a Sunday so there are no liquor sales. So I pour that in too. So now we have three different types of wine in the Coq au Vin.

It smelled delicious. I started the butter, pearl onion, mushroom mix. I used a shiitake/cremini/button mixture for the mushrooms (that's my typical mix). It's shocking I used pearl onions because I find them to be a real PITA. Even if you blanch them, which I always do, it still sucks to take the skins off. But they do taste good...

After bacon, mushrooms must be one of the tastiest ingredients in the world:



This recipe makes a spectacular amount of dirty dishes so be prepared. You have the dish that the raw chicken was on (well, I didn't because I seasoned it in the Styrofoam), the dish the bacon is on, the dish the cooked chicken was on (I had it on top of the bacon), the skillet for the butter, mushroom mixture, and the platter for the final product (platter--right. I don't own a platter).

The chicken, piled on my "platter":



I reduced the sauce quite a bit and it was DELICIOUS! The whole recipe was really tasty. The chicken was moist and the sauce was rich. The mixed wine didn't seem to matter, which made me happy. And it heated up really well, which is always important in our house.

Reducing the sauce in my cool wok-y skillet:



I was hungry for a cake and felt like making something easy. Nothing in TJOC fit that requirements (at least at first glance). I am embarrassed to say that I made a cake that seemed like a cake Sandra Lee would have made on Semi-Homemade--it was one of those souped up cake mix cakes where you mix a pudding mix and several other ingredients with a cake mix. Plus, I could use my new Bundt cake pan! The cake was easy enough to make (I found it on allrecipes.com I think) but really needed something to be added to it. It was pretty boring.

So I made Chocolate Sauce (p. 847). I didn't make the sauce in the world's tiniest food processor because the directions (pour hot cream into the running food processor) didn't seem like a very safe idea--plus I don't think that I can open my food processor with the motor running. I used vanilla rather than rum (I'm still feeling burned by the drunken icing incident, chronicled in the first few postings of TJOTJOC).



The sauce was really good, especially if you like semi-sweet chocolate (it was still a little bitter for me, I'm not a big chocolate fan). It was easy and fast--and if you bake a lot, it was totally made out of things you probably have in your cabinets and refrigerator (at least I did--I didn't have to buy anything special).




I'm going to Mexico for a week so there won't be any cooking for a while!

Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake (p. 718), Indian Ground Beef with Potatoes and Spices (p.515), Curried Chickpeas w/ Vegetables (p.257), & Beef Stew (p. 479

Since I briefly got off-track again, I posted three blogs at once. So if you are reading this one, go back and read the next two--they're new too!


I am going to be EXTREMELY busy this week so I decided to make a TON of food. That way, we can have leftovers all week with no need to cook. Other than all of the desserts we made, I also made three other dishes. And for some reason, I was on an Indian food kick

First, I made Indian Ground Beef with Potatoes and Spices (Keema Alu) (p.515). Josh and I have several sets of prep bowls. A lot of people don't use prep bowls when they cook but they really help me--especially when I have to add a bunch of ingredients in quick order. These bowls are cute little nesting zebra bowls and I used all of them while cooking today. This recipe uses a lot of spices--and I have a TON of spices so it was nice to use a bunch of them.



I used turkey. Why would someone who does beef research and comes from a pork background possibly use ground turkey in anything? It is curious, but I just happened to have some on hand for developing cooking contest recipes and it was going to go bad.

Doesn't it look tasty?!



I probably used too many potatoes...but is there any such thing? I love potatoes. I also didn't put the cilantro on the top. I like cilantro a lot but I think it can overpower a dish if you aren't careful.




Next I made Curried Chickpeas with Vegetables (p.257). I got a really cool wok/skillet for Christmas, so I was really looking forward to using it and this was the perfect recipe for it.

So I had ground cumin but no cumin seeds. I don't know if that is an important difference...I worried about this for a while and then sent Josh to the grocery store to get the cumin seeds. The first line says to cook until sizzling...which I did (I think--sizzling did occur but I didn't want the seeds to burn).



Then you add the garlic, ginger, and curry. As I always say about TJOC recipes, they are incredibly white bread, so I usually double the garlic and curry. At this point, the mixture started to smell really really good.



I like chickpeas, Josh hates them. So it was a good thing I was making more than one main dish. This recipe calls for chickpeas, sweet potatoes (I used ACTUAL sweet potatoes, which are white, rather than yams, which are orange), cauliflower, and green beans (the cauliflower and green beans were frozen because both veggies are overpriced at this time of year--I can't wait until summer!).


Then you mix in yogurt and flour plus a jalapeño.



It was DELICIOUS! I made some rice to eat with it and really wished I had some naan, but I wasn't feeling quite that motivated.

I also made Beef Stew (p. 479). I knew that I wasn't going to eat it on Sunday and the recipe says that it's even better the next day. TJOC adores browning meat. I'm not such a big fan--I think that it takes cuts of meat that are tough (the whole reason you are slow cooking them in the first place) and quick cooks them (which toughens them up). So I always barely brown the meat--which means that I don't pay any attention to TJOC's cooking times which are WAY too long. This recipe calls for you to season the meat, dredge it, and brown it. You make a mirepoix (of course). This is where I found another TJOC error. It discusses removing the meat from the pot. It never discusses putting the meat back in! So I assume you put it back in after the mirepoix but before respicing. Then you add broth, carrots, and potatoes (plus parsnips and turnips, if you wish--I didn't). OMG this was terrific! This was among the best stew I've ever had--the meat was the perfect level of tender--tender but not mushy. The fat on the meat was great, it was just delicious. It didn't give me much juice though--next time I'll use more broth.

I know this isn't a very exciting picture but I was tired of taking pictures by this point.




I have been complaining for months that I can't find a double broiler to buy. Not even a cheap one--one at all! They are available in sets but not by themselves, it seems. So the strangest thing happened when I was rearranging my cupboards...I found that I already have a double broiler! I swear I've never seen it before, and is possible that some sort of house brownie placed it there, but regardless, I have one!

Today was Josh's birthday and I wanted to make him a cake. He wanted a chocolate cake--I usually don't like chocolate so I figured I wouldn't be that into any of the cakes he was interested in. I decided on the Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake (p. 718). Personally, I think the title sounds disgusting but the intro says that it is so rich and moist that it doesn't need icing (great because I didn't want to make any). And I know some people use applesauce in cake, which seems equally strange to me...

You all know that I haven't been baking because of the elevation--it's ruined a number of cakes for me. You have to adjust a lot for recipes to work (baking soda, baking powder, liquid, flour).

The double broiler was necessary to melt the baking chocolate without ruining it.



Then you mix the mayo into the chocolate. I found that to be a strange step...



After that you mix the chocolate/mayo mix (how often do you get to use that combination!?) into a egg, sugar, vanilla mixture. Then you alternate water and dry ingredients. At this point of the recipe I was concerned--the batter looked very water-y. But I poured it into the cake pans anyway.



The cakes were BEAUTIFUL! They didn't have the dent in the middle that elevation causes, they were not overcooked, they were awesome! It made two, so I brought one to work. The cake was really good...it was light and moist but not overly sweet. If you like a really really sweet cake, this isn't the cake for you. The best part of baking this cake is that it increased my confidence in Colorado baking (and I miss baking!).



Josh also made cookies and I made cupcakes (from a box) for him to bring to work. I find it strange--they bring treats in for their OWN birthdays (like in elementary school). I also have started down the road to DELICIOUS cake mix cupcakes. Josh beats the batter by hand and for some reason it seems to make the cupcakes much more light and airy. I figure it limits the batter from being overbeaten and adds more air to the batter--that might not be the case, but it makes sense.

Mashed Potatoes with Cabbage and Scallions (p.296) and Shepherd's Pie (p. 102)

First, how do you keep all of the blogs you like to read straight? I have a ton that I like to read but I forget about them! So are there any good gadgets to keep them organized? I kinda like igoogle but if there is something better, I would like to know about.

Second, some people were telling me that the pictures on this blog weren't showing up for them--I don't know why, they always show up on my computers...is anyone else having this problem? I recognize that I'm not a wordsmith, so the pictures are important :)

Third, you don't have to have a blogger username to comment, so comment freely! I love reading them :)

I decided that Josh and I were going to have "Pub night" so, obviously, that means some sort of meat pie. I was content with cottage pie, because I don't always like ground lamb, but Josh decided he wanted to be a purist, and go for lamb--so, shepard's pie (cottage pie is the same thing but with beef--obvious, you aren't a shepard if you don't have sheep!).

Although Shepherd's Pie (p. 102) is a complicated recipe, it isn't very difficult. First, you boil and mash some potatoes. Every time I make mashed potatoes I wonder why I don't make them more often--they are so easy and I like them so much! I also couldn't find my ricer so they had to be mashed with the smasher. I bought my ricer at a antique market in FL (there are dozens of awesome kitchen gadgets at antique shops), and it's about a billion years old, but it has character and I like it. That being said, it seems to have disappeared--maybe it went to find it's old family.

Josh is always in charge of the mashing, he really takes joy in it. I think he works out some aggression that way.



The next step is to make a mirepoix. I think a mirepoix is the base of at least half of the recipes in this cookbook. The recipe does say chopped instead of diced, so this isn't an example of my terrible knife skills (well, not this particular picture).




You mix in the lamb (you can use cooked lamb but I can almost guarantee that we will never have any leftover cooked lamb), add broth, and spices. When this is done, you have the base to the recipe! Again, the recipe has a lot of steps and produces a bunch of dishes to be washed but doesn't really require much talent (my kind of recipe!).




The meat mixture is put into a casserole dish, with the mashed potatoes on top. It said to make peaks in the mashed potatoes--I have no idea how to do that, so mine were peak-less. Mmmm....and butter on the top...





Now, this recipe looks pretty before you break into it but it doesn't cut easily. Even so, it was really good.

The recipe is online.

I also decided to make Mashed Potatoes with Cabbage and Scallions (p.296), which, if fried, is known as "bubble and squeak" which is a great name! Now, I have no idea how or why you would fry this concoction, so mine neither bubbled nor squeaked. If I ever go to the UK, it's first on my list of things to try (and fish and chips...I LOVE fried fish more than I should). I've learned during this cooking experiment (cooking through TJOC) that I really like cooked cabbage, which I didn't know. And cabbage is EXTREMELY cheap, which is awesome. And everyone likes mashed potatoes! But scallions--not only do I not keep scallions on hand but there weren't any at the grocery store.

I decided to cut them out (I know they're in the title but I wasn't going to search the town for the stupid things!) so I added some garlic instead.

One of the first instructions in the recipe is to core the cabbage. How does one core cabbage? Where is the core? I opened the cabbage up, looked into it, didn't see a core, and randomly cut some parts out of the middle. It didn't seem to matter or impact the recipe at all.

So, to begin, you pretty much put some potatoes (I used Yukon Golds, of course) in a pot, add water, cut some cabbage, and layer it on top. Then you boil this for a while.


It's really hard to fit that many potatoes and cabbage pieces into a pot.



I used heavy cream instead of half-and-half or milk, plus a full stick of butter (obviously not a low fat recipe) and the recipe was a little runny. It was delicious anyway. You end up mashing the whole mixture, which is fairly easy. Apparently cabbage mashes down easier than potatoes so the whole thing is fairly easy.



It was great although it made a huge amount which we ate for about a week afterwards.

Peanut Dipping Sauce (p. 570)

When we went to the grocery store we found pork stew meat BOGO free--so we got a couple packages. I didn't know what to do with it, so I decided to cook it up and coat it in a sauce that I found in TJOC. I read through the "Savory sauces, salad dressings, marinades, and rub" chapter and was highly interested in the Peanut Dipping Sauce (p. 570). I knew that we had most of the ingredients!

I immediately ran into a problem. First off, our peanut butter was so old, I think it may have been in the cupboard when we moved in. And the recipe says to use chunky, unsweetened PB...not only was this PB creamy (I don't like chunky!), it was honey roasted (so in all actuality, it was double sweet).

It seems like a waste to buy a new piece of ginger every time I cook and throwing half of it away, so I bought a tube of ginger. I also feel no there is no point juicing limes every time, so I used canned lime juice. I wasn't confident that this was going to be the same. Here is a picture of the three offenders:




The first step of this recipe is to brown the ginger, red pepper, and garlic (I used extra) in vegetable oil. Yum! It was already looking great.





You then add the rest of the ingredients. You wait for the peanut butter to mix in. If it's four hundred years old like my PB, it takes quite a while. It was already smelling delicious though.



The peanut sauce looked just like peanut butter, but it tasted GREAT! It was sweet and spicy and had a nice kick to it (likely from the red pepper, ginger, and garlic). I didn't add any peanuts or mint to it.





The sauce was GREAT on the pork. And I half-expected the pork to be tough, since it was "stew meat" and that can mean anything--but it was tender and delicious. The sauce even kept well, which was more than I expected.

I threw out the ancient PB and bought some new stuff--it's funny because I don't like PB and Josh likes the fresh stuff from Whole Foods so we only use the jars to cook with :)