Sunday, 10/30/16

Dinner with my folks, plus Thor, Sarena, and Kevin. My mom made a lovely Thanksgiving day trial meal, with roasted chicken instead of turkey. Plus ample mashed potatoes and gravy. We brought an apple cake with brown sugar icing (from the King Arthur flour website). I thought the cake was a little too crumbly, and that the frosting was the best part. I wonder why some cakes are so soft like that? Was it the apples? It wasn't dry, at least. I bet that frosting would be good on any number of cakes, although it is really more of a glaze.
What we didn't bring were pralines, which were a failure. I tried a Paula Deen recipe (since her corn fritters worked so well), and it may have been me not cooking the syrup quite long enough, but they never firmed up. They are now destined to be an ice cream topping. Oh well.

Saturday, 10/29/16

Dinner with Jennie and David: bread from Jason, another sprinkle cake from me. This time I made a cooked flour vanilla frosting instead of chocolate. I preferred it, Jason didn't. I think Jennie and David liked it, though. I also made some feta boureks that were quickly assembled using store bought puff pastry and quite nice. The recipe is from the book "Zahav", and I can't wait to try some more things from there.

Festive!

Friday, 10/28/16

The day got away with us, with shopping and whatnot. We made ricotta ravioli, with a lemon-y cream sauce and a regular tomato sauce. However, that is all we had for dinner. Oh well, tomatoes are a vegetable.

Thursday, 10/27/16

Since Jason was off giving an exam, Carter and I just had leftovers, I think. Whatever it was, I can barely remember so it was unmemorable. I did microwave a sweet potato, to no good effect.

Wednesday, 10/26/16

Dinner with my parents: really good beef barley soup, plus some vegetables that I just can't remember? We brought a lemon drizzle cake, from the NYT. Easy enough, since it is a sheet cake. I maybe overcooked it a tiny bit,  as it was nearly too dry. The crackly glaze is my favorite part. I had a dream (literally) of making this cherry instead of lemon someday.

Tuesday, 10/25/16

I had planned to make chicken soup: bought a rotisserie chicken, made a nice rich stock...but instead I improvised sort of noodle bowls. It was just Carter and me, so I customized them: noodles, ginger, jalapeno, spinach, mushrooms, chicken and scallions for me, no mushrooms or jalapenos for Carter. Put is all into enormous bowls and poured boiling stock over them. More novel than soup---closer to ramen. I added a bit too much soy sauce but it was still good and fun to eat.

Monday, 10/24/16

Pot roast done in the slow cooker and mashed potatoes was supposed to be a quick meal, but it somehow took a while. Even the stupid steamed broccoli took longer than I thought. The pot roast was just my own version (carrots, onions, garlic, red wine, tomato paste and beef stock) and it was fine but not awesome. Carter said my mashed potatoes were good (but then went on to say that almost all mashed potatoes are good enough for him) but that my gravy was not as good as grandma's. Sad, but he is right.
I am getting the feeling that we don't actually like slow cooked beef and I should stick to pork.

Sunday, 10/23/16

Can you believe that after all that entertaining this weekend, my mom had us over for dinner? And that all I brought was a crappy jar of (sub-par) caramel sauce? And it wasn't even homemade? Anyway, pulled pork and fancy tuna salad (I mean, really fancy: you start with fresh tuna, you make your own aioli...it was amazing and I feel sad that I sullied it by putting it on potato chips but I would do it all over again), salad...I really owe that mom of mine.
Also, my brother was there. Yay Thor!

Saturday, 10/22/16

Dinner with the peeps again, at the Blue Heron. A real treat for me, less so for Carter. He didn't approve of the housemade catsup (and really, why bother), and his gnocchi was too sweet. Too bad, since my seared tuna and mezze platter were excellent. Jason even admitted that his calamari was the best that he'd had! Or was that the scotch talking? As I could have predicted, my chocolate pot de creme was fine but no match for homemade. A super fun evening! It was sad to say goodbye to everyone.

Carter enjoying a post Blue Heron hot dog.

Friday, 10/21/16

Dinner in Whately with parents and aunts and uncles! So nice to see everyone and my mom made roast pork, green beans and mashed potatoes. Once again she proved just who is the gravy boss. We brought a couple of loaves of bread, SK cheese straws (made into cracker shapes), and two pies: pecan and pumpkin. I am so happy with those recipes that I see no need to look further, but I had crust troubles. One crust shrunk so much I had to start over! I will go back to my regular method, even if is is a little less flaky.

Thursday, 10/20/16

Chicken korma again, at Carter's request, plus some cauliflower with curry butter (NYT) and store bought naan. The chicken was as good as ever, if a bit undersalted. The cauliflower recipe has potential, but I was in a hurry and it was only fine. It needed a little more of everything. Also, it was boiled and I would roast it instead. Next time, since we have cauliflower apparently all the time.

Time did not improve the Bad Cake.

Wednesday, 10/19/16

We met my parents at Frontier for pizza (always my favorite). I had made a prune cake from PW. I have made this before with great success, but both times that I have made it for my parents, it has been awful. This time it looked TERRIBLE. I was hoping it tasted better, but no. Heavy, dense and the icing was lumpy. Disappointing AND mortifying. I will need to step up my dessert baking this weekend if I ever hope to convince people that I can bake...

Tuesday, 10/18/16

Slightly less complicated dinner of meatballs, salad, and egg noodles. I adapted the meatball stroganoff recipe from the NYT with ingredients on hand and my own preference: vermouth for sherry, and added beef stock to the sauce. I was able to do a lot ahead (and baked the meatballs instead of frying), so this came together pretty quickly. Too many mushrooms for Carter, but I would certainly make it again.
Since I can't seem to get a good food photograph, here is our lovely autumn instead:

Monday, 10/17/16

What a complicated dinner! I made japchae (saved in NYT) and kimchi pancakes (from Maanchi cookbook). The pancakes were fairly simple: just mix kimchi, flour, some of the brine and salt and fry. Serve with a quick vinegar dipping sauce. But the japchae required many, many steps and lots of chopping and lots of frying. It is essentially a beef and vegetable stir-fry with sweet potato starch noodles, but the recipe has you prepare almost every ingredient separately. Still, it was very good! Next time I will add a spicy element, maybe. Carter especially liked the chewy, spring noodles. But save it for a weekend night.

Sunday, 10/16/16

Chili, salad, fritos. Honestly, I think I just made the chili as an excuse to eat fritos. I even made some of them into frito-nachos for an extra treat.

Saturday, 10/15/16

Dinner with Jennie and David. Bread, some of the caponata, and a pumpkin pie (from David Liebowitz). The pie crust was great if shrink-y (I used a recipe from Serious Eats and think my ingredients weren't cold enough. The advice to use a glass pie plate was good, though). The pie was devoured so I will take that as a sign of success. I'll try the crust again next weekend.

Friday, 10/14/16

I was planning to make eggplant parm, but a look at my eggplants revealed that I had let them languish too long in the fridge. So, a big batch of caponata instead (from David Liebowitz). We had that with a loaf of Jason's bread, some fancy cheese (manchego and delice de bourgogne, from Big Y, which has recently stepped up their cheese game), apples and for dessert, a giant cake. The Funfetti cake recipe is from Food52, and it is not bad. I didn't want to make the American buttercream that the recipe called for, since it looked too sweet and used too much butter (even by my standards), so I made a milk chocolate frosting recipe from Cook's Illustrated instead. It is a nice, silky and easy frosting, but I thought the chocolate was too overpowering. Next time I will make a cooked flour frosting.

Another bad photo. Maybe red plates aren't my best option

Thursday, 10/13/16

Pizza by Jason: onion-pesto, pepperoni-mushroom. Delicious.

Wednesday, 10/12/16

Dinner with my parents; tortellini with chicken and mushrooms. Why do I always forget about tortellini? It's so good! Also, salad and rolls. We brought Moravian Spice cookies which are like very, very thin ginger snaps. They were a pain to roll out and not spicy enough, in my opinion. Made good ice rream sandwiches, though.

Tuesday, 10/11/16

Less ambitious, more popular: beef burritos and sauteed zucchini. A real crowd pleaser.

Monday, 10/10/16

After a delicious brunch at my Mom's (I made deviled eggs and apple muffins. The muffins were the first decent baked good I have made recently and I saved the recipe to the NYT. The only change would be to bump up the spices), nobody was very hungry. But that did not stop me from making chicken with cilantro chutney and roasted cauliflower (both from my new Indian cookbook), plus potatoes from my recipe file. I think Carter was underwhelmed (he would have preferred chicken korma again), but I liked it!
 I made a lot of spicy things this weekend: the cilantro chutney, the crazy-hot habanero jam, kimchi and salsa verde (which is actually pretty mild). Cool weather + long weekend = lots of cooking. I am starting to contemplate making croissants again...

Sunday, 10/9/16

Korean dinner, while Carter was off with his cousins. I made kimchi (hard to tell yet how it will turn out; it is from the same source as the chicken buldak: Maangchi's blog)), a punishingly spicy scotch bonnet jam (from a book called K Food) sticky rice and bulgogi beef. I had forgotten that I had made bulgogi before, and I think I used the same recipe (from the Times). I used flank steak, but the long marinade made it very, very tender. Served with some raw garlic and forgot to buy lettuce. Oh well. It was still good and Jason raved about it. The chile jam was sweet and spicy and best used judiciously. It also smelled up the whole house while cooking.

Saturday, 10/8/16

We had an enormous lunch at Bombay Royale, so dinner was just snacks.

Friday, 10/7/16

Dinner with Jen and John. I made a lentil soup from the NYT that I apparently made before. Terrific and easy both times. I also made Almost Flourless Chocolate Cake (from my recipe file) that would have been good had I not overbaked it. Dammit! I feel like I have been baking cursed lately.

Thursday, 10/6/16

Carter and I had dinner at Bertucci's. It was pretty good, but we both sort of regretted not getting Chinese instead. Next time.

Wednesday, 10/5/16

A quick but satisfying dinner of spaghetti with meat sauce and some roasted delicata squash. Not much to say about it, other that we ate everything up.

Tuesday, 10/4/16

A reprise of spicy chicken buldak, but I substituted roasted tofu for the chicken. I even bought some Korean red pepper (last time I just used crushed red pepper). Jason and Carter say they prefer the tofu version; I am not so sure. I felt the whole thing needed more spice and a bit more salt. I threw in some steamed broccoli, which I thought was a nice addition.

Monday, 10/3/16

On Saturday while I was baking sub-par dessert and crackers, I was also making a chicken and sausage gumbo, which we had tonight. I am happy to report that is delicious; Carter praised it highly even though I was worried that it was a bit spicy. No real recipe, just lots of peppers, onions, celery and a nice dark roux.

Sunday, 10/2/16

One of those recipe videos on FB caught my eye, prompting me to make something that I would never have otherwise tried:  cauliflower crust mini pizzas. I am virulently anti-paleo, so I don't know why this looked so good, but...
First off, it is more what I would call pizza flavored. The crust is nothing like dough, of course. That being said, these were tasty! Carter liked them even after hearing that they were made of cauliflower. I topped them with sauce, cheese and pepperoni, and that is what mainly came through. I would make these again; they are fairly simple and you feel quite virtuous about eating vegetables.

Saturday, 10/1/16

Dinner with Jennie and david. Two new recipes, two disappointments. A citrus-almond cake (NYT) that I found bitter, insufficiently sweet and overdone, even though I pulled it 10 minutes early. Also made some cheese crackers (SE) that I thought lacked flavor. Also, first I underbaked them, then I overbaked them, so that was my fault. They aren't bad, but I would add more salt, a sharper cheese, and maybe a bit of hot sauce or cayenne. Overall, a lot of work for only a slim return.

Friday, 9/30/16

Part of dinner was a concession to Carter and Jason: kielbasa and french fries. The rest of dinner was for my own enjoyment: a zucchini gratin (adapted from the Barefoot Contessa: I shredded the zucchini instead of slicing it and just eyeballed the flour and butter), that was crunchy and delicious. I thought there was too much panko topping, but it was not a problem. I also made a banoffee pie from a recipe by April Bloomfield. This turned out to be a bit of a production, as I had to make my own dulce de leche first (luckily, David Liebowitz has a very good and fairly easy recipe that worked perfectly), and I probably didn't chill the pie crust long enough as I was pressed for time. Next time I will use my regular pie crust as I thought this was too hard and cookie-like, and I will use more bananas, but otherwise this was a decadent and sweet mess. It would be good to make for a crowd, as it doesn't hold up too long.

Thursday, 9/29/16

It was the Middle School Open House, so we sort of cobbled together dinner in a hurry: some ravioli, meatballs from the freezer, and Jason finished the bread.