Sour cream dip (p. 72) and Roasted red pepper soup (p. 132)

I decided to whip out an easy recipe and the perfect choice was Sour Cream Dip (p. 72). The recipe is spectacularly easy. Mix sour cream, mayonnaise, chives, onion, dill, salt, and pepper, and there you go! Finished.



So how was it? Extremely tasty--if you like dill (which I do). Much better than store-bought dip and a great use of sour cream (which we never completely use before it goes bad). The one problem--watch out, before you know it, you've eaten all the dip and an entire bag of chips.

I have surgery on the 23rd (relatively minor, don't worry!) and my mom was coming out to help me while I recovered. Because she was being so helpful, I made a recipe that I knew she would really like--Roasted red pepper soup (p. 132).

As you can imagine, the first step of the recipe is to roast six red peppers. I explained roasting in a previous blog entry and I did it the exact same way--easy!




The red peppers were then peeled, seeded, and cut into strips. This produced a LOT of roasted pepper!



Next step--saute onions, carrots, and celery in some olive oil. Then add the red pepper, along with poultry stock, basil, rosemary, fennel seeds, and red peppers flakes, as well as 3 tablespoons of white rice. Does that seem like a strange amount of rice to anyone else? And look at all that fennel!



The soup was cooked for a while (quite a while) and pureed (using the wonderful immersion blender). Pretty!




The last step was too stir in some heavy cream, a few drops of balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper.




So what was the point of the rice? To thicken the soup? And the vinegar really rounded the flavor out.

Much like the Cream of spinach soup I made earlier in January the red pepper soup was beautiful. I think these colorful soups would be amazing in a dinner party. Mom loved the soup and said it was great both hot and cold. It had a STRONG pepper flavor, so if you love peppers (like mom) you will love the soup, but if you hate peppers (like me) it might not be a huge hit. Am I the only person who despises peppers?

Cheese quiche (p. 109) and Pat-in-the pan butter dough (p. 666)

Regular readers will remember that I decided to randomly generate a list of TJOC pages so that I could force myself to make recipes that I may be avoiding. I made the first dishes off of the list! I decided to start with a Cheese quiche (p. 109).

The recipe requires a half-recipe of Pat-in-the pan butter dough (p. 666), which was also on the randomly generated list. The first part of the recipe is to process flour and salt in the food processor, which I attempted. For some mysterious reason, the tiny food processor wouldn't work! I really hope it's not broken because I don't want to buy a new food processor at this point (I hope to get one for a wedding present). I poured the flour/salt back OUT of the food processor and into a bowl (what a pain, I hate making extra dishes).

Next step--mashing butter in with a fork until it resembles "course crumbs". What exactly is a "course crumb"?



A little (or quite a bit--this step took a lot more cream than the recipe called for) heavy cream is added and the dough is stirred until the crumbs look "damp". Nice and vague.



I patted the dough into the quiche pan and quickly ran into a problem.



See the problem?

There wasn't near enough dough. Rereading the recipe, I noticed that I was supposed to be making the crust in a 9-inch quiche, tart, or pie pan. My quiche pan? 11.5 inches. Uh oh...

So back to the drawing board. I decided just to make another half-recipe of the crust and see if that was enough.



Yep! Terrific. So the moral of the story--check the size of your pan before you start making a quiche.

The crust was then baked until "golden brown".



Unfortunately, although it was a beautiful color (the picture makes it look darker than it was), it started to tear apart. I figured it didn't really matter since it was going to be filled.

Egg yolk was smeared (yes, smeared) on the crust. It started cooking immediately after hitting the hot crust--it was actually a little gross.



The cheese was sprinkled on. I figured that making 1.5x the recipe would fix the problem of the pan being too large. It was a LOT of cheese.



The rest of the quiche was easy. I mixed heavy cream, eggs, a little grated onion (and grating onions is horrible, my eyes were streaming tears), nutmeg, and salt and pepper. That mixture is then poured over the cheese.



The finished product:



How was it? Tasty! The crust was the perfect thickness (and flaky), the quiche was flavorful and good both hot and cold. It heated up well. All that being said, I think it would have been helped by some meat, either ham or bacon. I don't think I would make this EXACT recipe again without doctoring it up a little. It was enough of a hit that Josh immediately packed some up for lunch.

Blueberry muffins (p. 635) and Cinnamon sugar (p. 1019)

Muffins! Sometimes, I'm just in the mood for muffins. I'll admit that I tend to use mixes (they sure are cheap) when I make muffins but I decided to try TJOC's recipe.

A component of this recipe is Cinnamon sugar (p. 1019). Cinnamon sugar is one of those recipes that you read and think "Really? Does anyone REALLY need a recipe for this??" You combine sugar and cinnamon and that's it. The entire recipe.

I think I'm the only person in American that doesn't particularly like cinnamon. I never liked that cinnamon/sugar toast that everyone goes so crazy for. I only made a half-recipe of this and still have a big pile of it in a plastic bag, left-over. Any ideas for what to do with it?



On to the muffins--Blueberry muffins (p. 635).

The first step is to mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Easy enough start!




Then mix the wet ingredients. TJOC recommends that the muffins are made with the full amount of butter and milk if you aren't going to eat them all in one sitting (I sure hoped they were going to last more than one meal). Apparently the extra fat helps keep them from staling.





Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix--but not too much. Apparently, overmixing can run muffins and make them tough.




I thought the batter (could this even be called batter?) looked very dry and strange but what do I know? I ladled it out into the muffin pans. At this point I looked around the kitchen...

And saw a cup of milk sitting on the counter. I totally forgot the milk. No wonder the batter looked so bizarre.

At this point I had no idea what to do. Are they ruined? Should I throw them out? I didn't have any more blueberries or milk (I had used half milk and half cream--so I guess I used half and half!) so I couldn't start over. I figured that it would be interesting to see if they still turned out, so I dumped all of the muffins out of their liners back into the bowl and added the milk. I figured that the overmixing/toughness problem is due to gluten formation because of th milk and flour, so without the milk, it shouldn't have been a problem (that may or may not be accurate but that was my thought process).

It seemed to mix all right.





I ladled the batter into the muffin liners (for the second time). The batter seemed much more like I expect it to look.



The cinnamon sugar was sprinkled on the top.



(I know there is nothing attractive about my pre-cooked muffins--I will never have a gorgeous Flikr stream that some bloggers seem to have)

They only took about 17 minutes to cook and they were beautiful! They were big and puffy and looked like bakery muffins!





I was so happy with the muffins! They are sweet but not too sweet (and I made them with all white sugar rather than brown) and the blueberry' were juicy and tasty. They even heated up well (and stayed moist!). I loved them. These are definitely going to be made again. I can't recommend them enough and my mistake didn't matter! I don't think they were much harder than the mix so maybe I'll make them from scratch for now on....

Beef Enchiladas (p. 104)

This is one of those double posts so make sure you read the blog behind this one--they are both new!

I had the leftover pot roast from the night before so I looked through TJOC for leftover beef recipes. I decided on Beef Enchiladas (p. 104), which are pretty much chicken enchiladas, with leftover beef.

TJOC says to shred the beef but I decided to slice it (against the grain) because it didn't want to shred.



The corn tortillas were put into the oven to heat up. TJOC says to put a layer of foil on the baking sheet, brush the tortillas (on both sides) with vegetable oil, and layer them on the sheet. Then cover the whole thing with more foil.



As you can see here, I didn't read the part about foil on the bottom until after they were already layered, but it didn't seem to matter (that is my refrain lately!).


Some of you may remember from the chicken enchilada post that I wasn't impressed with the enchilada sauce at all. The recipe says that you can use store-bought sauce, so that's what I did. When I tasted the sauce it was a little strange-tasting, so I doctored it up. I added Spicy V8 (my favorite secret ingredient), garlic powder, a little sage, and some cumin and the sauce was delicious! If anyone else doctors the sauce (Rachel, I KNOW you do) I would love to know what you add.

Part of the sauce is smeared on the bottom of the pan (yes, smeared is the technical term).




Half the sauce is added to the meat.




The meat was put in the middle of the tortillas and they were rolled up and placed on the sheet, seam-side down. The rest of the sauce was poured on top.




Cheese is then added to the top and it was baked for ten minutes.





Easy! I think the whole recipe took about 20 minutes. This is one of my new go-to recipes for quick dinners. In fact, I talked to my mom about this recipe and she made pork enchiladas the next day--just as fast. They heated up extremely well and gave me three meals! The beef was nice and tender too--in fact, I think it was more tender than when I ate the pot roast originally (I think it's because I cut it thin and against the grain).

Beef pot roast (p. 477), Cream of cauliflower (p. 144), and Cream of spinach soup (p. 145)

I'm not sure why I went on a cooking spree but I knew that I had a bunch of doctor's appointments this week and knew that I probably wouldn't want to do much cooking. Plus, it's much more convenient to get the kitchen extremely messy once instead of every night.

The first recipe I decided to make was Beef pot roast (p. 477). I had really good luck when I made Stracotto (Italian pot roast) so I was optimistic. I don't tend to love pot roast. I don't hate it but it's certainly not one of my favorite "big chuck o' meat" recipes. That being said, I think it's a great use of tougher cuts of beef that are usually cheap. I even got my chuck roast on sale (which is why I decided to make pot roast).


The first step was to brown the meat in a little vegetable oil. TJOC recommends browning for twenty minutes--I think that is WAY too long. I browned the meat for about 5 minutes. The meat is removed from the pot, celery, onions, and carrots are added in and cooked for a while, and then the meat is returned to the pot.

Looking at my pictures and re-reading the recipe, it seems like I may have messed it up. Apparently, I was supposed to add a cup of chicken stock to the vegetables, bring it to a boil, and then add a bay leaf and thyme, before adding the roast back to the pot.





This picture sure doesn't look like the broth was added...so I'm thinking I added the meat and then the broth. I don't think it made any difference.




The roast was cooked for hours and then the meat was removed from the pot. The sauce was strained and the gravy is returned to the pot.



A mixture of flour and butter is then added to the gravy to thicken it. I didn't know this method of thickening but it really worked! '



In fact, it might have worked too well, my gravy was pretty thick. Attractive though and there were no lumps at all.






For some reason, I have no after picture of the final product! It was good but still a little tough. The gravy was really good. The best part was that Josh and I managed to eat a full meal, Josh brought another serving for lunch the next day, and I had enough left over for another meal. I don't think the pot roast cost me more than $8 for all of those meals--really cost effective. I will probably make some version of this in the future.

Is this similar to other people's pot roast recipes? Mom's always had potatoes, carrots, and celery in it--this one had no vegetables (they were all diced up and then I threw them out).



I love soup! So because I had such great luck with the cream of broccoli and asparagus soups I decided to move on to the Cream of cauliflower (p. 144) recipe. This recipe was really easy. I didn't take a picture of the sauteeing celery and onions in butter because it's pretty much the first step for almost every recipe in TJOC. The cauliflower is then added to the pot and it's cooked. I wasn't sure if I cut the cauliflower small enough but I figured it didn't really matter.




Flour is sprinkled on the top.




I don't think I've shown a picture of this yet but I never bother to skim my chicken stock as it's cooking. I just wait for it to make a solid layer and I pop that out before using the stock--it works really well and it's easy (exactly what I like).




The chicken stock is then added and the soup is simmered for quite a while.




When the cauliflower is tender it's time to blend! And heavy cream is stirred in...




Absolutely delicious! This vat of soup was eaten in less than 24 hours and it was the first soup I've made that Josh took for lunch. It was INCREDIBLE. Almost so good that I want to make it again this weekend (but I won't because I have 7 more TJOC cream soups to make).


I have no idea why I decided to make two different types of cream soups but I'm guessing it's because I love cream soups and have had fairly good luck with them. I moved on to Cream of spinach soup (p. 145).

I often think that COS soup is a beautiful soup but sometimes can be a little much (and I LIKE spinach).

The first step was a common one--sautee onion in butter. You aren't supposed to brown them--uh oh. I couldn't find my camera's battery charger so I was running all over the house while starting this recipe and it may have gotten a bit overbrowned. How I can possibly lose both chargers (which are interchangeable since I have two matching cameras--long story) is beyond me.



A little flour is then added and that is cooked for a while.

And into the butter/onion mix a couple cups of both milk and chicken stock are slowly added.



TJOC says that after 10 minutes this mixture is supposed to be thickening. I don't know how it is for those of you who live at normal altitudes but it took the mixture WAY longer to thicken than 10 minutes. I would say at least 25 minutes--but I had it at too low a temperature for at least part of that.

While the cream mixture was cooking, I started with the spinach. There was a sad lack of decent looking fresh spinach at the grocery store so I used the frozen spinach in my freezer (which took FOREVER to defrost--even placing the boxes in a water bath-- and drain).



The spinach was then cooked, covered, with no oil, for about 15 minutes (TJOC says 5 but the spinach wasn't even thinking about being cooking at that point), rinsed with cold water, and pressed to remove that water. This is a step that I would undoubtedly cut in the future because I don't believe it would matter very much if the spinach continued to cook a bit.

The spinach was then dumped in the milk mixture...




The whole concoction was immersion blended (I LOVE my immersion blender) and a cup of heavy cream was added.




So how was it? Like all TJOC cream soups it really, really, really needs a lot of salt. And like all spinach soups, I thought it was a bit much. That was before I spiked it with feta cheese--which made it absolutely delicious! If you make this soup, I really recommend sprinkling in a little (or an enormous amount) of feta. And it was a really beautiful soup--such a pretty green!

Randomly Generated List #1

As I mentioned before, I'm stealing an idea from Teena of the Gourmet Project. She uses a random number generator to generate page numbers and she has to cook something off of them every so often. It's a good way to make sure that you aren't avoiding recipes--otherwise I could end up with a year of really nasty-looking foods that I didn't want to make.

I'm going to post my list (that way I can't cheat!). I plan on making at least one recipe every two weeks. I can make any recipe off of the page but the recipe has to start on the page in question. I have to make them all before I can move on to the next set (we will see how that works!).

I had Josh pick 12 numbers and the random number generator pick 12 numbers. Several of the pages picked didn't have recipes on them so I threw them out and generated more numbers.

Here is the list (page number, abbreviated chapter title, (eventually) what I made and the date):
ETA: I decided to list all the possiblilities per page so I could easily refer to this page. When I make something, it will be linked and the discarded choices will be deleted :)

77, Appetizers: Marinated mozzarella, 2/1/09
109, Brunch, Cheese quiche, 1/19/09
127, Soups: Jellied soup, jellied tomato soup, jellied beet soup
196, Eggs: Poached eggs, 3/26/09
225, Fruits: Kumquat compote, 3/15/09
333, Pasta: Japanese noodles in broth, 3/26/09
356, Grains: Jamaican rice and peas, 9/27/09
444, Poultry: Turkey in red mole, 5/25/09
500, Meat: Pulled pork, 3/27/09
513, Meat: Macleid's rockcastle chili, 4/9/09
520, Meat (variety meats...joy of joys...): Sauteed kidneys with mustard, boiled fresh, smoked, or pickled beef tongue, baked stuffed heart
552, Sauces: White wine sauce for fish, 5/25/09
555, Sauces: Hunter's sauce (sauce chasseur), 10/3/09
641, Breads: Garlic bread or toasted buttered bread loaf, 2/8/09
666, Pies, Pat-in-the-pan butter dough, 1/19/09
667, Pies: Pat-in-the-pan shortbread dough, 1/30/09
729, Cakes: Individual molten chocolate cakes, 10/4/09
777, Cookies: Molasses crisps cockaigne, 7/5/09
791, Icings: Fluffy nut or coconut icing, luscious orange icing, chocolate fudge frosting
816, Desserts: Chocolate mousse, chocolate mousse with gelatin, white chocolate mousse with toasted almonds