Veg

My teething Gremlin baby turned me into a sleepless zombie for the day, so I'll try to be brief. There's no telling what sort of nonsense my brain will spit out if I give it the opportunity.

Matt went fishing today as a work outing, and all together, they fought dolphins to pull 30+ trout from the water. He cooked up some of the fish for dinner, and I fixed Vanilla Vegetable Salad (pg 114) and Boulevard Raspail Corn on the Cob (pg 336) to go with it.

The corn was good. It's your standard corn on the cob--it calls for butter and salt, which I never use on corn, and didn't this time--but the cooking method was one I'd never tried. You put the corn, in its husk, in the oven for 40 minutes. It quickly smelled like it was burning, but I checked on it, and that was just the silk that was poking from the end. This corn didn't taste different from any other corn on the cob, but it did prevent me from over-cooking it until it's soggy, which I am notorious for. I'll probably cook it this way from now on.

Conclusion: Like. Cooking it in the oven ensures it won't be waterlogged, which makes it my new go-to method. 

The salad was okay. The only salads that I ever really enjoy would more aptly be described as mountains of cheese and fruit with a little lettuce thrown in, so I'm not a fair judge. For this salad, you toss peeler-thin slices of carrot and yellow squash with a vanilla, lemon, and olive oil dressing, and serve on a bed of lettuce. Dorie says that the taste of vanilla should be "present but not very strong." That's a pretty good description of what you get. The problem with this dish is that it's hard to pair vanilla with dinner foods, so it didn't really work with my garlic fish. I can't honestly think of a full meal that this would complement, unless you use the salad as the meal and add some unseasoned chicken breast. That's not a meal I would want to eat.

Conclusion: Like, though I won't make it often.