Not-So-Quick Bread

Never in my life have I used so many bowls and appliances just to bake a Zucchini Bread (pg 428). I totally demolished my nice clean kitchen by the time the bread went in the oven. The end result was under-spiced, even though I doubled the cinnamon and the allspice, and there is a slight aftertaste of baking powder or soda (not sure which it is--the bread includes a whopping teaspoon of each. Just to keep it in perspective, it only calls for 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of allspice).

You made me very thirsty, Bread.

I really think the "healthy" aspect of this cookbook is quite misleading. I compared this recipe to the Zucchini Bread recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, because they also provide nutritional info. The only category in which this HFC recipe shows more nutrition is that it has two extra grams of protein and one extra gram of fiber. Otherwise, this "healthy" version has 53 extra calories, 14 extra carbs, and 197 extra mg sodium. Both recipes have 6 grams of fat, but they're broken down differently. BH&G has 1 gm saturated fat and 13 mg cholesterol, and HFC has 3.5 gm saturated fat and 50 mg cholesterol. These stats include nuts in the Better Homes and Gardens recipe, and not in the HFC recipe. Granted, I haven't baked both recipes, so I can't compare their tastes, but the Healthy Family Cookbook version doesn't seem all that much healthier. It's like whole wheat flour is their only requirement for making a healthy recipe.

Conclusion: Just okay. I'd never make this again. Charlie seems to like it, though.

 For dinner, I destroyed the last two pieces of fish that were frozen from Matt's fishing adventure. Fortunately, he has plans to go fishing again on Saturday, so we'll be restocked soon. The intro to Super-Crisp Oven-Fried Fish (pg 215) says "we discovered a couple of tricks to make our oven-fried fish taste remarkably similar to the deep-fried version." What planet are these people cooking on? Saying it doesn't make it so. This fish was inedible. I literally could not swallow my first bite. Don't worry, I didn't photograph the "after." Matt tried to truck through it, but he gave up after two bites. It was crispy, but it was also flavorless, and it somehow made the fish taste and smell extremely fishy, which is not something we've experienced cooking any of the other fillets. In no universe is this recipe even remotely similar to deep-fried fish.

Never again.

I'll give you the very brief synopsis, since it's not even worth talking about. Dredge the fish in flour, then an egg, horseradish, mayo, paprika, cayenne, and black pepper mixture, then in breadcrumbs. Place on a wire rack on a baking sheet, for all-around cooking, and stick it in the oven. Remove from oven and toss directly in the trash.

Conclusion: Obviously, hated it. Disgusting.

Back in the Game

Boy-o is improving. Turns out he did not have strep, but Hand, Mouth, Foot Disease, which is a gross virus. I'll leave it at that. Since he's feeling better, I was able to steal away and cook some recipes today. One was Caramelized Onion Dip (pg 41).

The America's Test Kitchen team devised a strategy for creating creamy dips, while cutting back on the fat and calories. They say that most dips rely on sour cream and/or mayo. Their solution is to blend lowfat cottage cheese with boiling water in a food processor to smooth it out, and then add a bit of lowfat sour cream.

I was skeptical as to how this would taste, and I'm still not sold on it. I made one fatal error that very much impacted the flavor of this dish. The scallions I expected to use had gone bad in the fridge, so I omitted them altogether. It turns out that one caramelized onion is no match for 1 cup of cottage cheese and 1 cup of sour cream (I used Greek yogurt, b/c I prefer it to sour cream.) The flavor of my lovely purple carrot overwhelmed the dip. It was an exceptionally flavorful carrot, but come on. What I wouldn't give for some scallions.

How often can you say that raw carrots are the tastiest food on your plate?

My biggest problem with this dip was the texture. On my finger, it was not creamy and velvety smooth, as promised, but quite gritty. However, when actually used as a dip, the texture was less noticeable. Matt dipped one pretzel into it, and immediately returned it to the fridge.

Conclusion: Just okay. I didn't enjoy what flavor was there enough to make it again with scallions. I'd consider re-examining this in a few years, when my wee one starts demanding snack foods.

Thai Red Curry with Chicken (343) came together easily enough. Poach chicken breasts in a mixture of red curry paste (I used panang, because I have it), coconut milk, fish sauce, and brown sugar. Shred the chicken, then cook red bell pepper, onions, and snap peas in the broth. Basil and lime juice top it off.

Blah

The flavor wasn't very complex or interesting. I asked Matt how he liked it, and he said, "I love Dorie's cookbook." Me too. I'm not very present in this cookbook. I find myself either wanting to return to Dorie or daydreaming about my next book, whatever it may be.

Conclusion: Just okay. Not very good, not very bad. This dish is like purgatory.

Hubs: The Hero

Yesterday, my boy woke up with a 100.5 fever. El Doctor declares he has an ear infection, strep throat, and is teething (Still. Man, those are slow teeth.) I appear to have become a giant comfort cushion, so there has been no cooking.

Matt jumped in like a champ today by making our weekend bread and bagels, and he also made HFC's Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (pg. 381) for dinner.

It may have been a little too hot in my garage. I always let my pizza dough rise in there, but it's never done this before:

It's aliiiiiive!

This dough is awful. It's half whole wheat flour, half bread flour. The crust very much resembled drywall in color, texture, and flavor. Never again. We'll stick with Mark Bittman's recipe from How To Cook Everything instead. I don't need whole wheat so badly that I'd ruin a pizza for it.

Yuck.

 

 

Conclusion: Hated it. Absolutely hated it.

I Need to Open My Mind

I knew I'd be preparing Cola and Jam Spareribs for dinner tonight as part of French Fridays With Dorie, so I made HFC's Multigrain Pancakes With Blueberries (pg 32) for breakfast.

My pancake standards are exceptionally high. Matt makes the best pancakes ever, tweaking the recipe in How to Cook Everything. It was going to take a lot for these healthy pancakes to impress me.

The recipe sounded weird. The bulk of the flour is no-sugar-added muesli that's been buzzed for two minutes in the food processor. A bit of all purpose flour, a bit of whole wheat flour, and a bit of unprocessed muesli round it out. Because of all the grains, I expected these pancakes to be heavy and dense, but they weren't! They tasted nutty and slightly sweet (a little brown sugar in the batter), and they feel hearty and wholesome to eat. Two pancakes filled me up just enough, and they tasted so good on their own that I didn't even add syrup. WHAT??? That's never happened before. Charlie fought off my pancake-wielding hand until I actually got some in his mouth, and then his whole face lit up and he ate the entire pancake (and two eggs and four strawberries. Growth spurt??). I love watching him eat things that are so obviously good for him.

 Conclusion: Loved it. 

Pan-Roasted Broccoli (pg 127) accompanied the ribs. Again, I expected this to suck, and again, I was wrong. You brown broccoli florets in a teeny bit of oil, then add a few teaspoons of water, cover, and steam for two minutes. Off the heat, add more olive oil, lemon juice, chopped basil, salt and pepper. Sounds lame, but the singed brown bits were surprisingly tasty. Plus, this method is faster than boiling broccoli, which is my standard, so I'll probably do this often.

You are deceptively ordinary-looking, broccoli.

Conclusion: Liked it.

Molasses Spice Cookies and Skillet Tamale Pie

Gingerbread is on my short list of favorite things in the world to eat, so I decided to bake Molasses Spice Cookies (pg 437). My thought was that, even if they aren't the greatest molasses-centric cookies I've ever had, I'll probably still like them, since I'm perfectly happy eating molasses with a spoon, direct from the jar.

The size information in this recipe is wrong. The instructions say to roll 1 heaping tablespoon of dough at a time in the sugar. I rolled slightly mounded tablespoons-full. My yield was 10 cookies. I was supposed to get 18. I kept re-reading the instructions, thinking I'd confused a teaspoon with a tablespoon, but I didn't. Mine look enormous compared to the cookies pictured in the book. That's fine, but it would annoy me if I were counting calories, because my behemoths can't possibly be the same 100 calories as the dainty little cookies in their picture. 100 calories is a lot for one cookie, no?

Apart from the 1/3rd cup of whole wheat flour, I don't exactly see what the healthy elements are. And let's face it, 1/3rd cup of whole wheat flour is kind of negligible, nutritionally.

At first, I thought the sugar and fat seem to be smaller amounts than a standard cookie, until I realized that it only made ten cookies. It calls for 1/2 cup granulated, plus 3 tablespoons of brown sugar. For fat, it uses 6 tablespoons of butter and one egg yolk. Proportionally, my very unmathematical mind thinks it comes out to the same or more sugar and butter than any other cookie. This hypothesis is supported by a quick scan through my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, in which nearly every cookie recipe has significantly fewer calories than these do. Hmmm. Interesting.

Regardless of their health value, these cookies are delicious. They're crispy on the edges, chewy in the middle, are plenty spicy, and actually are a little sweeter than I personally need them to be. Next time I may not roll them in sugar at all.

Conclusion: Love them. I didn't expect to say that. ha!

Once I dropped my expectation that Skillet Tamale Pie (pg 290) should in any way resemble a tamale, dinner was actually decent. "Mild Chili With Cornbread" would be a more accurate name for this. I was a little disappointed, because I've recently become obsessed with tamales. The Navy moved us to Corpus Christi, TX, nearly a year ago. I would never choose to live here. It's close enough to Mexico that we can get some good tamales, though, and I'd really hoped that this dish would, in some way, evoke a tamale. It was not to be.

To make this, you throw chili powder, onion, red bell pepper, garlic, ground beef, black beans, and corn in an oven-safe skillet and cook them. Once they're done, you mix in some cheddar and cilantro (but I forgot to buy cilantro), then pour cornbread batter on top and bake it. Matt doused his in tabasco, but he ate it happily enough.

You can't fool me. You're not even in the tamale family.

Conclusion: I'm going to go so far as to say liked it. Shocker!

Easing In to HFC

Okay, so breakfast today was a freebie. I wasn't planning on using the Healthy Family Cookbook (hereafter referred to as HFC) to make breakfast, but figured I'd thumb through and see if I had the ingredients for anything on hand. I wound up making Classic Strawberry-Banana Smoothie (pg 38), which tastes exactly like any other strawberry banana smoothie you've ever had. I did end up adding some milk to loosen it up, because the recipe just calls for plain yogurt (I used greek, so that's probably why it was too thick), the fruit, a bit of sugar, and a pinch of salt.

I wish there was more to say about this smoothie.

Conclusion: Liked it. I mean, it is what it is. There are some other more interesting smoothie recipes in here that I'll try (Raspberry Lime Rickey, Creamsicle, etc), but I didn't have the ingredients today.

Dinner was Penne With Chicken, Asparagus, and Lemon (pg 185). This dish kept popping up in Amazon reviews, so I figured it was a good place to start. It was okay. I'm having a hard time deciding how to rate the dishes in this book. Do I rate them on a scale of how they compare to other diet food, or do I just rate them as food?? The book claims that it makes food healthy without losing anything in the process, so I'm inclined to just rate it as food. However, I expect that we're going to be seeing a lot of "Just okay"s.

Anyway, about the Penne. It was very lemony. Charlie's face squinched up when he tasted a piece of pasta. It was seasoned with fresh thyme, basil, leeks and garlic, and the sauce involved broth, white wine, flour to thicken it, lemon juice, lemon zest, and parmesan cheese. Nothing about it would ever make me say, "Hey, I'm really in the mood for that." Matt's very slow response, as he picked at it was, "It's...okaaay. I mean, it's fine. I guess. For health food."

I felt very unsatisfied after eating it and was immediately thinking about what I could have for dessert, which led me to realize that for the majority of the time that I was cooking from Around My French Table, I didn't crave dessert and didn't have it, except for the once in a while when I planned ahead of time to make something. I wonder why that is.

Blogger isn't letting me upload a picture of dinner, but I'm sure that whatever way you imagine a bowl of pasta, asparagus, and chicken to look will be pretty accurate.

I Bid Dorie Adieu, Sort of.

I've decided to cut my time with Around My French Table ten days short for a couple of reasons. One is budgetary. We're trying to cut back a bit, and whole pod spices and slabs of gruyere seem like a reasonable place to start. Another reason is that a bunch of the remaining recipes that I'm most interested in involve Fall-type seasonal produce (pumpkins, apples) or heavy beef stews. Besides that, though, I feel like I'm ready to move on. I know I love this cookbook. I've liked or loved 33 out of 47 of the recipes I've tried, which sound like pretty good stats to me. I will be cooking these recipes for the rest of my life. The purpose of this blog is to decide if the cookbooks I own are keepers or not, and this one is most definitely a keeper. I do still plan to participate in French Fridays With Dorie, so at least I know I'll have one Dorie meal a week, even as I cross my fingers and move on to...

The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook. God help me.

This book excited me when it came out. The Amazon reviews of it are phenomenal. From the way people talk, you'd think that the staff of ATK were culinary gods, churning out flawless masterpieces. I asked my brother for the book for Christmas, and spent the following afternoon reading through it on the couch. At the time, I was trying to lose my baby weight and thought it would be a good tool. I liked their claim that this is not a diet book, in the sense that it's low carb or low fat, etc, but that it makes beloved meals healthier, without compromising taste. Yeah, right.

The handful of meals that I cooked would have been totally and entirely flavorless if I hadn't quadrupled the amount of spices and improvised my own seasonings. Spices don't add calories. There is no reason that healthy food needs to taste like unseasoned ground turkey. In fairness, I was picking the lowest cal recipes I could find, which I won't be doing this time, so maybe that will make a difference. I sure hope so. I figured this was a good book to do next, because it's one that definitely has potential to be tossed.

As I change books, I've also decided to retool the amount of time I devote to each book. Two months turned out to be a strain, even with a book I enjoy. After my introductory run with Dorie, it's clear to me that one month is plenty of time to get a good handle on the value of a book, so one month it shall be from now on.

Wish me luck. I'm gonna need it.