Monday, 2/27/17

Another recipe from Small Victories: turkey ricotta meatballs. I only made the tiniest changes: left out the fresh basil, and made my own recipe for tomato sauce, which is pretty close to the recipe in the book anyway, A couple of notes: I had to use a less popular pan for the sauce and scorched the bottom, giving everything a off taste, and the meatballs are very tender so care has to be taken lest they completely fall apart. The flavors are great, though. I think you could even mix in a little spinach? Served with some sauteed broccoli rabe. No one really likes broccoli rabe that much but I'll mix it in with tomorrow night's shakshuka.

Sunday, 2/26/17

Carter wanted pulled pork sandwiches for his lunches this week, so that necessitated cooking up a mess of pork. I used the recipe from Serious Eats again, again using the slow cooker (it took about 8 hours, which I failed to note last time). I also repeated their BBQ sauce which is very easy if you have all the ingredients on hand and better than store bought. The pork came out nice and tender; I served it with some doctored up canned black eyed peas and coleslaw (mostly for Jason's sake). And now there are plenty of leftovers for Carter.

Saturday, 2/25/16

Dinner with Jennie and David. we brought bread and a chocolate cake from Small Victories. It was a layer cake with raspberry jam filling and a simple chocolate/sour cream frosting. It tasted terrific, but I thought it was a bit dense and heavy. Maybe I overcooked the cake? Maybe that is how it is supposed to be? The only problem with using a cookbook over a website is that you don't have any feedback from others who have made the recipe.

Friday, 2/24/17

Dinner at Pita Pockets with my parents. Delicous and the owners are so nice. Jason and I had a long discussion and I think we agree that I probably couldn't make falafel that good as cheaply. But I bet he will make me try anyway...
But I agree with him that my baklava is a little tastier (albeit a different style).

Thursday, 2/23/17

Fridge overload again---leftovers.

Wednesday, 2/22/17

Dinner at my parents: we picked up food from the Ginger Garden and it was great (especially the tofu and eggplant in garlic sauce. I wish I could replicate it). I brought over some leftover caramel sauce so nothing exciting.

Tuesday, 2/21/17

Grilled teriyaki chicken tenders (a marinade from the Times that I liked but didn't love. I didn't have the pineapple juice that the recipe called for, and I omitted the cinnamon stick so it isn't really fair to judge the recipe), plus rice and simple broccoli.

Monday, 2/20/217

Pasta with a lemon cream sauce, from the NYT (although honestly this didn't need a recipe. It's just a lemon cream sauce. Also, I had intended to make my own pasta but ran out of time/motivation), plus Italian sausage with peppers and onions, and sauteed chinese broccoli (a little bland and watery. I should have splurged on the broccoli rabe). Easy, uncontroversial.

Sunday, 2/19/17

Since I didn't have to work today, I was looking forward to this involved dinner: pot stickers, cheddar-hominy fritters, and a mango salad (from here). I wouldn't call dinner a disaster, but it was not without its challenges: the pot stickers took much longer to cook than indicated, the fritters splattered like CRAZY and seemed like they weren't going to hold together, and the salad required more modification than I would have liked (no good fresh mangoes, I forgot to marinate the beets, my avocados weren't ripe, and I didn't have nearly as many almonds as I thought...). The kitchen was in shambles. Then the pot stickers were fine, Jason had the brilliant idea to cook the remainder of the fritter batter in the waffle iron, and salad was OK. The fritter recipe is from "Small Victories" and the flavors are so, so good. I am loving this book. The pot sticker recipe is from the NYT and I took some liberties: precooked the cabbage-pork filling and dded some hot chilies and sesame oil, doctored up the dipping sauce a little. Carter liked them, which was gratifying.

Saturday, 2/18/17

Dinner with Jennie and David. Jason made bread, I brought the dream bars from yesterday and another recipe from Cookie Love for nut brickle rugelach. Jeez, what a production. The cream cheese dough needed to be made in advance and chilled, there were two sub-recipes (for the brickle and caramel sauce), the rolling out and shaping stage really could have used some pictures (I opted for Smitten Kitchen's simplified method intead), and the cookies leaked all their filling and flattened like crazy. And yet....they taste terrific and everyone loved them (although David and I, who share a lot of dessert preferences, liked the other cookies more). I might make these again, using a different dough recipe. And maybe even more chilling.
So I find Cookie Love exasperating but delicious.

Friday, 2/17/17

Jason had a vision of making mini calzones with various fillings, so tonight was the night. There was the rest of the homemade ricotta, spinach, onions, peppers, salami and eggplant, in various combinations. Also little cocktail wieners that have been languishing in the freezer. Fun and tasty.
For dessert I made some cookies from a cookbook I brought home called "Cookie Love": they are called dream bars and I loved them. A sugar cookie base is covered with thin slivers of chocolate, a layer of brown sugar meringue and then baked. The cookie base is sweet and tender, and the chocolate provides a fun snap below the meringue. Definitely will make again. The book has a lot of really interesting recipes, but I find it odd that there aren't weight measurement. Especially since there are a lot of unusual ingredients, tricky techniques and sub-recipes.

Thursday, 2/16/17

I adapted a Smitten Kitchen recipe for cauliflower au gratin to include pasta, broccoli, peas and sausage, thereby making it into an entire meal (and, I suppose, a casserole). I doubled the cheese sauce and wish I had used chicken instead of sausage. I loved it, Jason liked it well enough and Carter quietly tolerated it. Jason also made us a loaf of bread to round out the meal.

Wednseday, 2/15/17

Two repeats that were an odd combination: ground pork from Cravings (no lettuce cups, just rice), plus the zucchini fritters from Small Victories. Both excellent. The sweetness from the chili sauce and hoisin in the pork melds so well with the spiciness from the sriracha. You could eat it forever.

Tuesday, 2/14/17

The thing I was looking forward to the most was this very labor intensive salad from Serious Eats. It entailed ; roasting beets, shelling pistachios, supreming citrus, making ricotta and and a vinaigrette. Sadly, the results were curiously flat. Could all be because my pistachios were unsalted, or was there just no way all that work could be worth it? Anyway, it was fine.
We also had baked panko fish sticks (from the NYT) that are crunchy and delicious and I wish I had made more and tater tots. You can't go wrong with tater tots.

Sure, it looked pretty

Monday, 2/13/17

Tofu and noodles for dinner, plus leftover cabbage. I roasted the tofu in a maple-sriracha marinade (inspired by something David made Saturday), and sauteed the noodles with ginger, garlic, scallions and soy. The leftover cabbage mixed in nicely, and tofu done that way was a nice change.

Sunday, 2/12/17

Another snow day! Indian food for dinner: chana masala and sauteed cabbage (both from Made in In India; the only change I made was adding some spinach to the chickpeas), plus naan from Hot Bread Kitchen. The naan gave me trouble in that it rose incredibly slowly. Next time I will warm the milk slightly and let the yogurt come to room temperature. Or wait til July. I rolled most of them out too thick in the mistaken belief that Carter preferred them thick and soft, but Jason experimented with rolling a couple out flatter and that seemed more successful. For dessert we made pizzelle and ate them with toasted leftover marshmallows. I am assuming all of this tasted good but I have a head cold and was so stuffed up I couldn't taste a thing, even with copious amounts of hot sauce.

Saturday, 2/11/17

Dinner with Jennie and David. I tried another cookie from Dorie's book and something called Modjeskas from Food52. The almond cookies were definitely not as pretty as their picture, but they were certainly easy (only three ingredients!) and Jason really loved them:

I realized as I was making the modjeskas that they appealed to me partly because they are really a version of See's candies Scotchmallows. I made marshmallows from a David Liebowitz recipe (they were pretty easy and mostly successful, but I was rushing them and they were still a little sticky) and a "caramel" that looked nothing like the dark glossy caramel in the recipe, and has none of the complex bitter notes of real caramel. Dipping the marshmallows in the caramel was sticky and messy and the marshmallows started to melt a bit and I kept having to put everything out on the porch to cool off and we were running late.... And then I think they are really a bit too sweet for normal people but I liked them. Not sure if I would make these again but I will probably try making my own marshmallows again just because it was fun.

Friday, 2/10/16

I was not home for dinner (library event), so Jason made a pizza and the boys ate without me.

Thursday, 2/9/17

Snow day! I was only permitted one baking project, so I made a couple of chocolate babkas (from Smitten Kitchen). A tiny bit undercooked, but still nice.
For dinner we had a ridiculous and decadent meal of all supermarket snacks: taquitos, mini eggrolls, tamales and mozzarella sticks. Sure, I could have made them all myself (actually, that would be a fun project for another snow day), but this was certainly quick and easy, if not the most healthful dinner ever.

"You can't beat a babka"

Wednesday, 2/8/17

Dinner with my parents (french onion soup---rich and delicious); I made a simple olive oil cake from "Small Victories". I would classify it as perfectly fine; moist, mildly sweet and scented with orange, but no showstopper. Bloggers are always talking about these kinds of cake: quick to put together, not overly sweet, "perfect as an afternoon treat with a cup of tea" but I don't drink tea and rarely indulge in cake as a snack. Give me a nice frosted layer cake. Yet I keep falling for the appeal of the snacking cake.

Tuesday, 2/7/17

I am feeling fairly cocky after another succesful dinner. Spaetzle (from the NYT; I was intrigued by their disc shape and thought they were pretty good but I would just use my spaetzle maker next time. I mean, if you actually own a spaetzle maker you should use it) that I made in the morning and then sauteed with leftover garlic butter, plus chicken breasts baked with maple/mustard sauce adapted from here  (I added soy and sriracha, and simmered the marinade  with a little butter to make a sauce). I also roasted some carrots with cumin seed and tossed them with lemon juice and avocado, from a recipe at SK that I just reproduced from memory. Everyone was happy and Carter even ate a couple of carrots.

Monday, 2/6/17

Burritos, mostly for Carter's sake. In fact, Jason just ate leftover monkey bread with burrito filling and toppings, and I made myself a quesadilla. Still, everyone enjoyed their own version of dinner.

Sunday, 2/5/17

It was very satisfying to cook a dinner that everyone really liked! I can't take credit for the loaf of bread from Jason, though. We also had flounder, simply broiled with some garlic butter, and quick zucchini fritters. These may have overtaken zucchini gratin as my favorite use for zucchini. As a bonus, even Carter loved them (the accompanying sour cream/garlic sauce helped). The fritters and garlic butter recipe were from a book called "Small Victories" that I had heard raves about. I am glad I finally tried a few things and I am looking forward to more.

Saturday, 2/4/17

Dinner with Jennie and David. Jason's bread was a little flat but wonderful nonetheless. I made some cookies that I saw in a local magazine, Edible Pioneer Valley: lemon-rosemary with a little glaze. I subbed in some tangerine zest and juice, and they were quite nice, The small amount of cornmeal in the dough adds a pleasant and unexpected crunch. I also wanted to make a coconut flan, and perused the web for quite a while looking at different recipes. Finally realized that I had a perfectly good flan recipe, so I used that, adding coconut milk instead of water and throwing in a shot of rum. It went over extremely well and may be my new standard.

Friday, 2/3/17

I was very intrigued by a Lucky Peach recipe for Korean Spicy Monkey bread, and I had most of the ingredients on hand, so...
This was an odd pick. You saute hamburger with ginger, garlic, scallions, soy and brown sugar (this frankly was the best part), toss it with balls of canned biscuit dough, asian pears and gochujang, top with shredded cheddar and bake. It was so lowbrow that I was sure it would be amazing but I was underwhelmed. What would be better is the beef mixture just served over toasted biscuits, I think (like a Korean biscuits and gravy which I am surprised no one has thought of).The gochujang was also overpowering.Served it with (store bought) kimchi and sauteed chard (a nice complement to the richness). Don't think I would bother with it again as written.

Thursday, 2/2/17

Bruegger's was giving away free bagels today, and so we had 9 fresh bagels kicking around that became dinner. Carter and I had ours pizza style and it was surprisingly tasty. Didn't help with the leftover situation but did make a quick and fun dinner.

Wednesday, 2/1/17

There were so many leftovers, so that is what we had for dinner. Didn't even make a dent.

Tuesday, 1/31/17

On Sunday morning I was in a cooking frenzy, making things for the whole week. Among them was a green chile and chicken pozole. The recipe is from Serious Eats and was good (I just love hominy, what can I say) but once again Carter didn't like it. When did he get so fussy?? I threw broccoli in mine for extra vegetable-ness and I also fried up some leftover corn tortillas to go along with it. Not sure if I would bother to make it again.

Monday, 1/30/17

I made what I thought was a delicious pot of chili. Carter tells me he doesn't like chili anymore, but I don't care. With it we had the rest of yesterday's loaf of bread (and I ate a couple more of the unwanted green beans).