Pheatured Photo
Jeremy and I had many-many adventures this weekend, and for the first time in separate states! Obviously I’ll have to go to work soon, so we’ll write with more details later, but we went for hikes and motorcycle rides, catered a baby shower, attended an Iron Sharpens Iron seminar, and had sushi for the first time. It was a good weekend, although a little rushed for both of us.
It is very, very good to be home.
Written by Angela at 6:39 am - Filed under Our Little World, Friends and Family, In the Kitchen - No Comments
Two nights ago I tried my recipe for fruit salsa with cinnamon chips. It turned out quite nicely; both Jeremy and Elizabeth really enjoyed it. Between the three of us we ate about 2/3 of the chips and 1/3 of the salsa - and there was a lot of both! Everything worked quite well right out of the gate, so it was not as much of a learning experience as the eggs chevre, which was quite all right with me.
My plating was also just right on the first try, but unfortunately I did not take a picture. I figure I should be able to get plenty of pictures before the guests start noshing anyway, so no huge loss.
If Jeremy’s parents come down this weekend, I’ll make some more homemade chocolate ice cream so that I can determine if my serving idea is going to fly (and thus if I should bother bringing the ice cream equipment with me, or leave it home in its nest.)
Written by Angela at 6:09 pm - Filed under In the Kitchen - 1 Comment
Tonight was the trial for Eggs Chevre en masse. I learned quite a bit.
Timing:
Volume:
Technique:
Presentation:
On the schedule for tomorrow: cinnamon chips with fruit salsa. Stay tuned!
Written by Angela at 7:05 pm - Filed under Friends and Family, In the Kitchen - No Comments
I spent some time tonight experimenting with Prosciutto-wrapped melon for my sister’s baby shower. The instructions online tell you to wrap a piece of Prosciutto di Parma around a chunk of melon and “secure with a toothpick.” I don’t like to “secure with a toothpick,” because the plain ones are so blah and the frilled ones are so… mmm… not my taste. Here’s what Jeremy and I came up with (using ham, can’t get the good Prosciutto around here):
So much better than a toothpick! I much prefer my food to be completely edible. Point of interest - the melon totally drowns out the chive, but if the combination is too weird for you, you can eat the Prosciutto and melon off the chives just like a toothpick.
Written by Angela at 7:57 pm - Filed under Friends and Family, In the Kitchen - No Comments
I’m testing recipes for my sister’s baby shower brunch, and one of the dishes is Eggs Chevre (ingredient combo and egg-knowledge courtesy of Dan Rosenbach, Red Cottage Restaurant, South Dennis, MA - sorry, no website). The thing is, I’m testing Eggs Chevre “for a crowd”, and I’ll be cooking two dozen eggs at once. We are not going to eat two dozen eggs in one night, eggs really aren’t any good reheated, and I don’t want to throw away most of the pan.
So, do any of you in the area want to stop by? The dish consists of scrambled eggs baked in a large pan in the oven and mixed with Chevre cheese and chives. I will be testing cooking time as well as proportions of add-ins. If you like eggs and don’t mind being a guinea-pig, please leave a comment or give us a call and let me know you’re interested. I’m planning on doing this next week (4/13-4/19), probably on a weeknight. It will be informal, paper plates etc so don’t worry about spending all evening here, you can in-and-out it.
Written by Angela at 3:04 pm - Filed under Our Little World, Friends and Family, In the Kitchen - No Comments
I’m in charge of food for my sister Heather’s baby shower, and my tentative menu includes recipes that I’ve had for a long time but have never actually made, so for the next few weeks I will be running trials.
Jeremy gets nervous when I do stuff like this, because it almost always means buying new kitchen equipment. But can I just say? Since he got me my beautiful KitchenAid two years ago, I’ve had nothing major to buy. She’s beautiful, she sits out on the counter where I can admire her all the time, and she enables me to make so many recipes that would simply be impossible otherwise. Just yesterday I made a perfect batch of meringues in about ten prep-minutes. I had made something that used four egg yolks earlier in the week, so I saved the whites, tossed them in the KitchenAid, added some sugar and chocolate, and just let it go.
Today is a particularly mad-scientist trial day. I’m working on Parmesan crisps. Recipes for this are rather vague, so I’m trying to gauge the exact shade of brown needed to get them crisp. So far I’ve been working with tablespoon-sized mounds of a good-quality cheese. My first efforts were too light and ended up completely bendable. At this stage of cooking, they also turned out quite strong-tasting. The last one I made was crisp around the edges, with a much more mellow flavor there - so I think I’m going to continue in this direction. If it turns out to be a dead end, I’ll try making larger, lighter-colored cheese laces and shaping them around the bottom of a glass. Then we can put some light salad ingredients in the lacey cups - maybe half a cherry tomato, a smidge of lettuce, an olive… colorful things, but I haven’t really thought it out yet. If I do go in that direction, I’m sure my brother Josh (who very kindly agreed to be co-chef) can help me come up with something.
Here’s to playing with your food!
Written by Angela at 8:55 am - Filed under Our Little World, Friends and Family, In the Kitchen - 1 Comment
I actually got the turkey I was looking for!! This year, Cook’s Illustrated recommended Rabashkin Aaron’s kosher turkeys for the best flavor and texture. I knew I would never get one in time if I tried to mail-order it, which is what I usually have to do in order to get my hands on a CI recommended product - plus, can you even imagine the shipping? - so I went to the grocery store this morning with my fingers crossed and the second-place turkey name just in case. At first I thought I was out of luck, because Rabashkin Aaron didn’t appear on any of the price tags on the freezer. But I started moving turkeys around like a mad woman, and after looking very, very carefully I found the right ones! I had to look VERY carefully - Hannaford placed the weight/price stickers smack dab over the turkey names. Brilliant, guys.
The only (minor) problem is that the Aaron’s turkey’s only came in 15-pound weights and up. I’m feeding four people with a turkey built for twenty. That’s okay because I want lots and lots of leftovers. I’d like to experiment beyond my usual turkey pot pie and turkey soup. On the other hand, it’s going to take a long, long time to cook. And defrost. And break down to fit in my “stockpot” (in quotes because it’s really just a random big pot).
Speaking of leftovers, I’ve developed a very fast and easy two-pronged approach to taking care of most of them right after dinner:
Since you’ll already have everything you need on hand, this takes about ten minutes right after dinner. Plus your fridge won’t be jam-packed with leftovers for a week! And while you’re doing this, the men can be washing the dishes - complete leftover control plus cleanup in twenty-five minutes or less.
And now I am FINALLY feeling inspired to plan my Thanksgiving meal. Thank goodness. I was starting to get nervous.
Written by Angela at 11:22 am - Filed under Our Little World, In the Kitchen - 1 Comment
Jeremy and I listened to NPR on the way home from our haircuts yesterday, and heard a segment about making fresh, small-batch butter. It sounded gosh-darn easy, so I filed it away in my head as a fun project for future reference.
Today at the grocery store I ran across some fresh cream from McNamara Dairy, the dairy about twenty minutes from our house. Jeremy loves their chocolate milk, so I thought their cream must be pretty good too - I picked up a pint. When I got home, I poured the cream into my beautiful KitchenAid, set it on speed 4, and went downstairs to watch some TV. When I came back up twenty minutes later, I had fresh butter!
I poured the butter and buttermilk into a colander and tried separating the remaining buttermilk from the butter by pressing it through the colander. That didn’t really work - I ended up with spaghetti strands of butter sticking out the bottom of the colander. I tried pressing it with my hands, which worked pretty well, but I was worried that the warmth from my hands would quickly melt the butter. So we went to the store and got some cheesecloth, but when I wrapped the butter in the cloth and pressed, the same thing happened as with the colander.
By this point, the butter seemed pretty clean anyway, so I let it go and just mixed in some coarsely ground sea salt to finish up. I think next time I’m going to buy a sieve, line it with cheesecloth, wrap the butter in the cloth, put a plate on top, and weight it with a gallon-bottle of water or something of that sort. That would actually make it even more convenient to make - it would become a couple of short steps with lots of free time in between.
Anyway, this butter tastes incredibly fresh. I want to say it has a grassy flavor… but you might think that’s a bad thing. Put it this way: it tastes as fresh as a newly mowed lawn smells after a rain-shower. However, it is not an economical way to get your butter. A pint of cream that cost $2.99 gave me about 6 ounces of butter. That adds up to about eight dollars a pound. Definitely a special-occasion treat!
I’m considering giving this stuff away for Christmas. Mix in some extras like chives or honey and lemon zest, roll the butter into logs, maybe coat it in some parsley or walnuts or something like that. I know I’d like to get that gift!
Written by Angela at 2:47 pm - Filed under In the Kitchen - No Comments
Jeremy and I went to Concord to get haircuts yesterday. We do the 2.3 hour roundtrip once every five weeks, which might sound crazy for a haircut, but it is so worth it. The salon establishments in our neck of the woods don’t understand the concept of customer service yet, and as one of my coworkers put it, “I just know that as soon as I walk out the door they’re going to rip me apart with their gossip.” (That particular coworker trims her own hair at home.) Plus, the stylists are rude and nasty to your face. And they don’t ask you what you’re looking for before they start doing their thing. So that’s why I don’t get my hair done around here. Jeremy had someone in town he liked, but getting his hair cut was always an ordeal for him because he couldn’t trust her. He’d come home with a different “cut” every time, and end up even-ing his sideburns in front of the bathroom mirror. The last time I caught him doing this and said, “Honey, didn’t you just pay for that? Are you sure you don’t want me to make you an appointment with Shea next time I’m there?”, Jeremy answered, “Yes, yes please do.”
Shea is awesome. He works at Posh on School Street, in case you’re in need of a stylist. We go there every five weeks because Jeremy’s hair is picky about the length it likes to be, Shea makes us pretty, and then we head out for some fun in civilization. This time we went to the outlet mall in Tilton to get some fall clothes. Jeremy got a few things he needed, but I don’t have such great luck there. The Eddie Bauer outlet is always out of my size, and the two or three times we’ve gone I’ve ended up in tears. We live so far from actual stores that I very, very rarely get the chance to purchase quality basic clothing (like long pants for winter, maybe?) and an unsuccessful trip means that I’ll be cold for five weeks until I get the chance again. We’re going to have to go to Kohl’s tomorrow night and get something to hold me over - not a great compromise, because the last time I bought pants there I had to repair the hems after three weeks, but it will have to do.
Anyway, I did have some unexpected luck at Harry & David in the outlet mall. I finally found Mr. Right. I’ve been looking for him for seven years. Arms not too long and at a good angle, perfectly proportioned for three buttons, and just the right size for a cookie. He cost me $6, which is pretty steep for a cookie cutter, but it was worth it to me, after my seven-year search for a gingerbread man.
I also found a “lace” cake stand (on sale plus clearance plus 25% off lowest price) for only nine dollars. Although I don’t usually purchase something like that unless I already know exactly what I’ll use it for, research on cake stands for Christina’s wedding cake last June really opened my eyes - and nine dollars was much too good to pass up! It’s not sturdy enough for a full-blown wedding cake, but would be perfect for a birthday or anniversary cake, and since the points and cutouts make the stand resemble a snowflake, I already have visions of star-cookie Christmas trees and gingerbread houses dancing in my head.
Written by Angela at 8:30 am - Filed under Our Little World, In the Kitchen - No Comments
I spend about an hour every week designing a meal plan for upcoming dinners and compiling a shopping list. That might seem like a long time, but planning a week’s worth of meals is actually pretty complicated. Thursdays have to be quick-quick, because I have a commitment at 6 PM. Leftovers have to be used in a second life before they go bad, but can’t be reused the next day because then you’d be eating the same thing two days in a row. That gets even more complicated when you’re using leftovers from two or more nights to create a second-life dish. (For example, the leftover plum glazed pork loin from Sunday and thyme-mustard vinaigrette from Saturday meet and meld in a mixed green salad with warm pork, plums, and thyme-mustard vinaigrette on Wednesday.) We’re actually having that salad on Monday this week though, because we have some leftover salad greens from Friday as well. If we suck it up and have pork twice in a row, I won’t have to buy more greens.
I have every intention of creating a rotating stack of the perfectly constructed weekly menus. Someday. When I feel like I already have enough recipes to last me for a while.
Fat chance!
Anyway, I was sitting at my desk working on the meals this morning, and wondering how much time it would have taken if I had to actually flip through cookbooks, guessing at the potential outcomes of the recipes. Because, of course, I hardly use cookbooks at all. I rely on the good folks at America’s Test Kitchen most of the time, because their recipes always, always come out exactly the way they are described. I have a couple other cooking magazines that I use for quick-and-easy meals on a night when ease must take precedence over flavor (although occasionally we hit a jackpot, like with the Cumin-Lime Chicken with Salsa from Cooking Pleasures magazine). And when I hit a snag in my weekly planning, I go to All-Recipes.com (which has tons of reviews for most of their recipes) or to an alter-ego of America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated.com, and find a new recipe.
The challenge this week, the one that had me marveling over the resources I have available to me, was, “Shoot, I’ve already done chicken and pork, I want to leave out the beef this week - I need a turkey recipe.” Oh, and there was another challenge - I wanted a light, cooling, easy cucumber salad recipe to pair with Wednesday’s Sesame Chicken Fingers with Spicy Peanut Sauce. Both problems happened to be solved at All-Recipes.com today, first with a recipe for Goat Cheese and Spinach Turkey Burgers (Friday), and then by browsing cucumber salad recipes to figure out a basic throw-together dressing of plain yogurt, salt, pepper, and dill. And I already know from Cook’s Illustrated that I need to salt and press those cucumbers so that they release their water before I mix them with the dressing.
Fun fun fun! Oh I love this stuff!
Written by Angela at 10:09 am - Filed under In the Kitchen - 2 Comments
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