Wrapping up The Best International Recipe

I'm ready to call it on The Best International Recipe and move on to something with more vegetables. Cooking from this book is like dating a really nice guy who you're just not attracted to. There's nothing to be done for it. For the most part, the recipes are fine, but they're not delicious or memorable. Without scrolling back through my posts to jog my memory, the only two standout dishes I can think of are the scones and the colcannon soup (and the spaetzle Matt made prior to the book's inclusion in the blog).

I don't know if it's because the whole concept of America's Test Kitchen is to analyze every little thing about a recipe and tweak it and tweak it until it's "perfect," but, for me--and I know that there are staunch ATK supporters out there who will disagree--this food has no soul. You can almost tell it was created in a laboratory, far removed from the personal influence and experience that gives a good book's food its unique spark. I feel like I'm missing something with the whole ATK phenomenon, because people are really adamant in their support for them. It's not them, it's me. Maybe.

Anyway, the short of it is that my shelving real estate is far too precious to be wasted on a book of "good enough" dishes. If I had all the space in the world, I'd probably keep this one and whip it out once or twice a year to try something new. Given my space limitations here, and in whatever house I have to move to every two to three years as our duty stations change, I'd rather fill my shelves with books that bring special food to my table. I'm going to toss it, right after I photocopy that spaetzle recipe.

Up next: So Easy by Ellie Krieger. I adore Ellie's previous book--The Food You Crave. Prior to this blog, I can say with full confidence that this was the one and only book that I cooked from over and over again. She makes healthy, nutritious food that actually tastes good. REALLY!

I found Ellie when my cousin had me over for dinner and cooked her mac and cheese (with butternut squash puree mixed in. It's delicious). It was so good that I went home from the meal and immediately ordered The Food You Crave. It wasn't until I received the book and saw the Food Network stamp on cover that I even knew Ellie had a show and was, I guess, a "celebrity chef." I've never seen her show, so, personally, I don't count her among the Giadas and Bobby Flays, because her personality and presentation have nothing to do with why I love her. She holds up on her own.

Easy will be a nice change of pace.

Because I'm such a fan of The Food You Crave, I pre-ordered So Easy: Luscious, Healthy Recipes for Every Meal of the Week when Amazon alerted me to its existence. I was super-excited to get the book, until I opened it. I can't put my finger on what the problem is. Even now, the recipes just didn't inspire me to cook. To date, I've cooked exactly nothing from it. Time to change that. Worst case scenario, it'll get more vegetables into me. Fingers crossed, here we go...

Oooh, Amazon just informed me that I can pre-order her newest book. Refrain, Eileen! Refrain! Break the cycle! ha!

TBIR: Greece and Turkey

The least time-consuming recipe I could find in the Greece and Turkey section was Circassian Chicken, aka Chicken in Walnut Sauce (pg 360). Like so many of these recipes, it was too fussy to justify the mediocre result.

For example, first they have you brown one side of the chicken breasts, then you flip it over, fill the pan with broth, and poach it until it's done cooking. They claim this produces "moist, well-seasoned chicken breasts," in addition to building up "flavorful brown bits" on the pan. I wound up with a poached chicken breast, just like any other chicken breast I've ever poached, and didn't have any fond build up on the pan. Not a big deal, really, but just an example of the ways that these recipes provide extra steps that aren't worth it to me.

The sauce for this is toasted walnuts, broth-soaked sandwich bread, onion, garlic, cayenne, and lots of paprika (4 teaspoons), pureed in the food processor. I ran out of regular paprika midway through, so supplemented with smoked paprika. Shred the chicken and mix it with the sauce. I threw grape tomatoes in, because, once again, there were no vegetables.

This tasted like gritty smoked paprika. Not bad, but not good. I barely ate half of what I took. Sigh.

Conclusion: Just okay. I wouldn't make it again.

TBIR: Mexico

This little Texan city of Corpus Christi, where I find myself biding Navy-mandated time for another year, has one, and only one, style of cuisine that it does right, and that's Mexican. If you want good food, don't bother with a restaurant. Instead, go to one of the hundreds of taco stands. Why am I telling you all this? Only to make clear where I'm coming from. I've grown quite fond of the cheese enchiladas at my favorite taco stand--Nano's Taco Run. They are now the gold standard by which I judge all enchiladas. They're understated and not heavily sauced (though the homemade hot sauce they give in teeny cups is smokey, complex, and amazing), allowing the corny goodness of the homemade tortillas and the actual flavor of the cheese to stand out.

I don't know why I expected the Cheese Enchiladas (pg 21) in The Best International Recipe to follow in that vein. I guess because they claim to be the best, and the best, to me, equals Nano's Taco Run. To be totally honest, these tasted almost exactly like the Lean Cuisine enchilada dinner, only lots spicier. As far as frozen dinners go, the LC enchiladas are pretty good. Would I ever call them the best enchiladas out there? Absolutely not.

"Give me a three day bellyache." Yeah, that's right. I'm quoting the musical Oklahoma. What of it?

The sauce was too spicy for me, and there's way too much of it. My biggest problem, though, is with how stale and heavy this whole thing tasted. There's a bit of fresh cilantro mixed in with the cheese, but not enough to add any fresh flavor.

 The one benefit of this recipe is that it introduced me to queso fresco, which I'd never knowingly had before. It reminds me of a tastier version of that cheese I made for the Indian dish. It would be great in a salad. Yum. I'm glad I know about it now. 

Conclusion: Just okay. I'm not impressed, but it wasn't bad. Maybe before I moved here, when I didn't know better and thought that enchiladas had to be drowned in sauce and cheese, I would have liked these more.

On a side note, inspired by Rose over at One Expat's Life, I've decided to backtrack and complete the recipes previously covered by French Fridays With Dorie before I joined up. Since the point of the group is to cook every recipe in Around My French Table, it makes sense to tick off all the boxes. It shouldn't be too bad. There are only 16 recipes that I haven't already done on my own, and a lot of them appear to be desserts, soups, and side dishes, so they shouldn't interfere too much with my regularly scheduled programming.

In that light, I made Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts (pg 18) for a treat for myself, since Matt went out with friends for a guy's night. These are spiced with sugar, cinnamon, salt, and chili powder. They're good, but they're not as good as David Lebovitz's mix, which is posted on his website here. I single-handedly ate three batches of Lebovitz's mix last winter. With Dorie's recipe, I was able to stop eating after a few nuts. On second thought, maybe I should stick to Dorie's in the future.

Conclusion: Liked it, though it's not as crave-able as Lebovitz's.

TBIR: France, plus a Dorie recipe

Due to the veg deprivation, I was drawn to the recipe for Minted Zucchini Tagliatelle with Cucumbers and Lemon (pg 124) in Around My French Table. I already planned to make this before Dorie posted on her facebook fan page that Rick Bayless (is that how you spell his name??) out in Chicago had tweeted that he made this as part of an all-Dorie meal. That's right, I'm blogging that Dorie facebooked that Rick tweeted. We live in a strange time.

You use a peeler to slice zucchini into long, fat "noodles", stopping when you hit the seeds. With thin little bits of cucumber and sweet onion, lemon zest and mint, and tossed with a lemon vinaigrette, this seemed like a healthy, refreshing side salad to complement some burgers.

Conclusion: Just okay. I like the idea of it. I think it would be lovely at a big bbq with lots of food, where you fill your plate with little bits of everything. It would work in that situation as a light palette cleanser, and a nice minty reprieve. Piled high on a plate, it was too raw zucchini-ey for me. I got bored eating that much of it. This salad would benefit from being one dish among many.

I had a hard time picking a dish from the France chapter of The Best International Recipe, because Dorie covers most of it, and I'm 95% sure her recipes have more pizzazz. No offense, TBIR. I decided to go with Pan-Seared Steak (pg 197) with Red Wine Sauce (pg 198).

The preparation of the steak (strip or rib-eye) is pretty standard. Salt, pepper, a bit of oil, and into the hot pan. I cooked them for less time than called for, and they were still more well done than I would like. I realize now, looking at the recipe again, that the steaks I bought were thinner than what's called for, so I won't lay that on the book. They were still good. The thing that we loved best about this steak was the herb butter that went on top. It had shallots, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper mixed in, and it was delicious.

Conclusion: Liked it. Strip isn't my favorite cut of meat, but it was good.

The red wine sauce was similar to things I've done in the past--cook a shallot in oil, add red wine, and stir in some butter at the end. One interesting twist was to add brown sugar and chicken stock with the wine, and then allow it to reduce. Off the heat, add some thyme.

Conclusion: Liked it. This was a very flavorful sauce, though on anything but the meat, it was a bit aggressive. I think the sugar amplified the wine, somehow. It was good on the steak, but when I mopped some up with bread, it was a bit unpleasant.

TBIR: Southeast Asia; Russia and Eastern Europe

Allow me to apologize to Southeast Asia for the disaster of a dish I prepared last night. In no way do I believe that this preparation of Ca Kho To, aka Catfish in Salty-Sweet Caramel Sauce (pg 494), represents your food as a whole, nor do I suspect it remotely represents this actual dish, as the Vietnamese would recognize it.

This seemed fairly easy to make, and included ingredients that I already had in the house (except, of course, for the catfish.) Basically, all you do is make a maple-colored caramel in a pan, then add two cups of boiling water, 1/4 cup of fish sauce, and black pepper. Add the fish, and let it simmer for 25 minutes. At the end of this time, the sauce will have "thickened to a thick, syrupy consistency." Methinks there's one extra "thick" in that sentence. Ah, well.

I had two problems with the execution of this.
1) I only used two catfish fillets. If I'd used 5 (as specified in the recipe), there's no way they would have fit in my 12 inch skillet (as specified in the recipe) without overlapping (as specified in the recipe), nor would this have been enough fluid to submerge it all. It ticks me off when the reality of the cooking doesn't match the version in the book.
2) After 25 minutes of simmering, I still had a pan of watery liquid. I removed the fish, raised the heat, and gave it ten more minutes. It still wasn't anywhere close to syrupy, but I was hungry, so served it as it was.

My mouth dried out just looking at this.

I couldn't eat this. 1/4 cup of fish sauce = SALTY. Holy mother of whatever god you pray to. I'm a big fan of fish sauce (except for the straight-out-of-the-bottle ass smell of it), but it needs to be used judiciously. Even when I scraped the sauce off, the fish itself had absorbed too much of it.

Conclusion: Hated it. I ate a peach for dinner. To be fair, Matt said it was okay and ate both of ours, but he was guzzling water for the rest of the night. He eats a lot more fast food than I do and is always adding salt to things, so we have a different threshold for how salty is too salty.

I'm afraid I'm skimping the Russia and Eastern Europe section a bit with my selection of Eggplant Caviar (pg 375). I haven't been eating nearly enough vegetables since I started cooking out of this book, so the fact that this recipe is all vegetable won me over, despite the fact that French Fridays with Dorie picked her eggplant caviar as its dish for the week after this. Oh well. It might be interesting to compare the two. Besides that, the heat index tends to be over 100 degrees these days, and I could not bear the thought of goulash or pierogies or stuffed cabbage or paprikash, tasty as they may turn out to be.

I found this eggplant caviar to be pretty bland. It doesn't even taste of eggplant. I guess 1 teaspoon of tomato paste was enough to overwhelm the dish.

Maybe my eggplant was too small, or maybe I didn't cut my onion up small enough, but the proportions of eggplant to onion seem to be way off. Also, my onion could have cooked for a few more minutes. It was too firm to just melt into the eggplant mush, if that's what it was supposed to do.

I hope Dorie's recipe is better.

Conclusion: Just okay. It's boring. I'll eat it, since I made it, but I mostly am using it as an excuse to eat pita chips.

TBIR: Spain and Portugal

I had big plans to cook paella from the Spain and Portugal section of The Best International Recipe. However, after going on a wild goose chase to find Asian sesame paste (different from tahini) to make sesame noodles from the China section, I needed a quick and easy replacement dinner. Spanish Tortilla (pg 224) was the only thing I had all the ingredients for.

As you probably know, this dish is just potatoes and onions cooked in a pan, then you add 10 scrambled eggs and stick it in the oven to cook for about ten minutes. What's Spanish for "Voila"?

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. It was good. Exactly what I expected, being a fan of tortillas as an afternoon snack when I was in Barcelona. Matt said it was good, "But tastes like breakfast." I added a little red pepper to it, because I once again realized at the last minute that I'd forgotten about vegetables. Vegetables don't seem to figure much in this book.

These recipes keep reminding me of a Tom Petty concert I went to once. It was good, but it bothered me that he sounded exactly the same live as on CD. The concert was solid and well executed, but not particularly interesting. I don't know if that's really a complaint about the book. It's certainly valuable to have recipes that give you exactly what you expect them to. It's not very exciting to cook from day after day, though.

Conclusion: Liked it.

Yesterday was a Hale and Farewell (welcome new colleagues and say goodbye to old) for one of Matt's co-workers, who is about to head out for a tour in Afghanistan. (On a side note, I love the Navy's phraseology for things. I laugh every time Matt says he has to "hit the head." We're not on a boat, dear. lol) Happy for any excuse to bake, I made Black and White Cookies (pg 192) from Ready For Dessert.

I have a huge soft spot for black and white cookies. They seem to be in every bakery in Brooklyn, but they're often dry cake and bland icing (ahem, stale). Even so, I love them. My first thought when I saw this recipe was, "What the hell does some San Franciscoan ex-pat in Paris know about New York black and white cookies??" My second thought was, "If this recipe works, I'll be the happiest girl in the world."

Well, my friends, the recipe works. Gloriously. These cookies are everything they should be, but exponentially better. I may never be able to eat a store-bought one again. The cookie is a cookie/cake hybrid, but Lebovitz's was moist and buttery. The chocolate icing was rich, but it didn't overpower the nicely balanced vanilla/lemon side. Mmmmmmmm.

My one gripe with this recipe is that, once again, even though I precisely measured out the amount of dough he advises--2 tablespoons per cookie--my yield was half of what he says it should be. That means that I only made 12 cookies. Fortunately, they were intended for a fairly small event, but if I expected to feed a larger group of people, I'd have been screwed. This is the second cookie recipe that this has happened with. Not cool, David. Not cool.

Conclusion: Love. They're even better than the original.

TBIR: Africa and the Middle East

Africa and the Middle East seems like an awfully large chunk of territory to be smashed into one chapter. I'm fairly familiar with Middle Eastern food, but if you asked me to name an African dish, I wouldn't get much farther than "tagine." Because of that, I bypassed familiar standards--hummus, kebab, couscous--in favor of Ethiopian-Style Spicy Chicken Stew. I ate Ethiopian food once when I lived in DC. I remember grabbing handfuls of heavily spiced raw meat with torn-off pieces of a wet pancake-type of bread, and I remember liking it, but I don't remember what it actually tasted like.

I've been known to bypass recipes entirely, just because the first instruction is to brown bone-in, skin-on chicken. I hate doing it. It makes a huge greasy mess, I always burn myself, and it takes forever to finish up the batches. I sucked it up and carried on, bracing myself for vicious little spits of oil. Grrr. The rest of the recipe was simple. Drain most of the chicken grease, and cook an onion in it. Once soft, add a number of spices--tomato paste, garlic, fresh ginger, chili powder, cardamom, nutmeg, and something called fenugreek, which I omitted. I couldn't find it in the store (big surprise), and it was obscenely expensive online. Add some flour to thicken up the broth, then throw in red wine, chicken broth, and water, and let it cook for an hour, with the chicken pieces. After the hour, remove the chicken and allow the liquid to cook down. In the last minute of cooking, throw some already hard-boiled eggs in, just to warm them up and cover them in sauce.

I have to admit, I had my doubts about this dish 3/4 of the way through. I tasted some on a spoon after I removed the chicken, and it was awful. It tasted like watered-down socks. I added some salt and pepper, crossed my fingers, and allowed it to reduce the remainder of the way.

This wins no points for presentation. Trust me, it tasted good, though.

I am pleased to report that once the sauce cooked away and thickened up, this was really rich and delicious! It manages to taste like a beef gravy, which I did not expect. The chicken was tender and tasty, and the texture and flavor of the eggs actually complemented the whole. I served this over brown rice, though the directions say to make a flatbread and serve it with that. I've had enough flatbread baking for a while, after that naan. My pan hasn't fully recovered yet.

Conclusion: I liked this very much. I had no idea what to expect, and was delighted with what I wound up with.

TBIR: Italy

In search of an easy dinner, I landed on Salerno-Style Spaghetti with Fried Eggs and Bread Crumbs (pg 293). This is spaghetti mixed up with parmesan cheese and oil infused with garlic and red pepper flakes. You're supposed to mix parsley in, but I forgot to buy it. Make breadcrumbs, toast them up with oil, and sprinkle them on the pasta. Top this with a fried egg.

In reading the recipe, it occurred to me that there were no vegetables. I had a brilliant scheme to cook arugula in with the garlic. I forgot about it until everything was mixed together, so then I figured I'd just fold it in and let it wilt from the heat of the pasta. I pulled out my bag of arugula from the farmer's market, and found that more than half of it was totally bug-riddled. Especially since it wouldn't be cooked, I didn't want to use it. That accounts for the few pathetic specs of green in the picture. At the last minute, I panicked at the non-vegetables, and threw some tomatoes in.

Conclusion: Just okay, though I'd only make it if I had absolutely nothing in the pantry, or if I were preparing to till a field or something. This is a heavy plate of food.

Yesterday, Matt looked at the bag of cherries in our fridge and said, "You should make that Dorie cherry thing again to use these up." I liked where his head was at, but decided to make a Cherry-Almond Cobbler (pg 99) from Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert instead. In the name of fiscal responsibility, I had to make some dessert. I had no other choice. As I stood at the sink, pitting all those damn cherries, I wished I'd gone for Dorie's clafoutis instead.

I also had a slug of heavy cream left. Whipped cream was the only responsible choice.

The topping for this cobbler was cakier than I'm used to, but I liked it better. Almond paste is mixed in with the batter. mmmmm.

Conclusion: Liked it. Almond paste apparently makes me very, very happy.

TBIR: India

One of my biggest gripes with this lousy town that the Navy sent us to is that there's very little ethnic food, and absolutely no Indian food. None. I'd have to drive three hours to San Antonio to satisfy my cravings. Because of this, I'm really interested in learning to cook my own, but also really intimidated by it. I'm not sure why it makes me so uncomfortable. Cooking is cooking. You go through the same motions to add spice, regardless of which spices you're using. I guess I'm just afraid that it won't taste right, and because the spices aren't flavors that I'm used to cooking with, I won't be able to fix it. Practice is the only solution to that particular problem, so I decided to jump in head first and cook one of my very favorite things in the world: Saag Paneer, aka Fresh Cheese with Spinach Sauce (pg 452). Actually, in the book, the Indian name for the dish is written in teeny letters beneath the English translation, but that didn't seem right to me. I also made Naan, aka Indian-Style Flatbread (pg 440). In combination, these two basic dishes took me a long time to make.

First up, the naan. I've been making bread and bagels on a weekly basis for the past few months, so the idea of kneading dough and letting it rise and all that jazz doesn't intimidate me nearly as much as it used to. I feel like I've gotten pretty good at using a recipe's description to get the right texture/look of the dough. Not this time. I suspect that the naan dough was not as it should be, but I can't really say, because the book abandoned me, in terms of what the dough should look like when it's ready. The reason I think there's a problem was that one step is to roll the dough into balls. In my experience, you need a dough with some structure to do this. This was a sticky, wet mess, impossible to roll. I added flour and made it work, but I'm not 100% sure it's right.

The instructions say to heat up a heavy pan super-hot, and then throw the flattened dough on, flipping it now and then, until the bottom is "speckled and deep golden brown in spots." Ummm. Yeah. These things burned SO fast. My pan is a mess.

This bread is in the right spirit as naan. It doesn't taste like what you get in a restaurant, though. There was something harsh about the flavor, which I think is due to the burned bits. As Matt said, "When it's cooked in a kiln, the burned bits taste good. When it's cooked in our pan, it just tastes burned." Oh well, it was a good first effort, and certainly better than the pre-made naan that we made the mistake of buying in the supermarket once. Shudder.

Conclusion: Just okay. It needs some work.

Now, on to the main event. The hardest part about the saag paneer was that you make your own cheese. WHAT??? It wasn't really that hard. I just felt very unsure of myself the whole time. All you do is boil milk and salt, then add vinegar until it curdles. Pour it into cheesecloth and let it drain in a colander for a bit. Twist the ends of the cheesecloth to release as much moisture as possible, then put the packet in between two plates and balance a dutch oven on it. Whaaaaaaaaaaat? You know how hard it is to balance a dutch oven on a rickety structure? Mine and Matt's combined skills couldn't make it work, so I ditched the oval dutch oven and used a bag of flour instead. After a half hour under pressure, it's cheese! It tasted like a solid, dry ricotta.

I have named my cheese Sebastian.

The sauce was easy to make. It's really just vegetables (onion, spinach, tomato) cooked with spices in water, then cooked down. Puree 1/3rd of the vegetable mixture with more water, add the puree back to the pan, and cook it down again. Gently fold in cubes of your homemade cheese. YUM.

If I served this with rice instead of the naan, (and if our damn AC didn't stop working mid-preparation) the whole production would have been much less stressful. Not the best Indian food I've ever had, but I'm proud of myself.

Conclusion: Liked it. It needs a bit more something, spice-wise, but I'm not sure what.

Oh, and my landlord magically wrangled an HVAC repairman to come out at 8 pm on a Sunday night. Huzzah!

Booze and Scones

I took the day off yesterday, while bracing myself for tonight's outside-my-comfort-zone Indian meal. I'll be so sad if it doesn't turn out well. Anyway, I did mix up a pitcher of Planter's Punch (pg 51) to go with the steaks Matt grilled. Does a drink count as a recipe? Sure, why not?

Snapped mere seconds before Charlie's greedy mitts reached for it. "No, dear, that's Mommy's juice."

Planter's Punch is rum with orange, pineapple, and lime juice, plus grenadine and a pinch of salt. It tastes just as you'd expect--fruity and refreshing. At the risk of sounding like a lush, I'm going to say that this recipe could use more alcohol. There is only 1 cup of rum per 4 cups of juice. If I hadn't made it, I wouldn't know there was booze in my glass. Still, it's a really nice combination of juices.

Conclusion: Liked it.

For breakfast, I made Lemon-Blueberry Scones (pg 105). I'm not much of a scone expert. I've never been to England, and hate the ones served at Starbucks, so I pretty much stay away from scones. My understanding of them was that they're dry and dense, and that in England, they aren't sweet.

These scones were delightful. They're not dry at all. They're not very sweet (just three tablespoons of sugar), and have a lovely mild lemon flavor. I may add a bit more zest next time. Blueberries, obviously, are always welcome. The crumb is soft and moist, and, considering the cup of cream that goes into the batter, they're remarkably light. The book offers an assortment of variations (Cranberry-Orange, Ginger, Cakey Scones), and I'll probably make them all at some point. There's also a separate recipe for Oatmeal Scones, and a list of variations, so I'm sure to give those a shot, as well.

Conclusion: Liked it. Tasty and easy. Works for me!

TBIR: Latin America and the Caribbean

In preparation for tropical storm Don, which is heading straight for me and will be here within the hour (ominous, no?), I shopped for recipes whose ingredients were minimal and inexpensive, in case the power goes out and I lose what's in the fridge. This led me to Venezuelan Stuffed Corn Cakes (pg 46) with Chicken and Avocado Corn Cake Filling (pg 48). I'm just going to count this as one recipe.

The idea, which I still believe is a good one, is to make a corn cake that is fried until brown, and then baked briefly (10 minutes) until they "sound hollow when tapped on the bottom." Once done, supposedly you can split them like an English muffin and stuff them with filling. This did not work out for me.

I claim full responsibility for the corn cake failure. The recipe calls for Masarepa Blanca. The book breaks down a number of corn products and defines them. Masarepa Blanca is a "pre-cooked corn flour." I could not find this in the supermarket. I expected to be able to, because I live in south Texas. There's a huge Mexican population here, so H-E-B is extraordinarily well stocked with relevant foodstuffs. I already had Maseca (masa harina) at home for making tortillas, so I decided to just use that and forge ahead with the recipe. Lesson learned.

Hockey puck, anyone?

I guess the pre-cooked nature of Masarepa Blanca is important. My corn cakes were nowhere near cooked after frying and then baking for ten minutes. Or twenty minutes. Or thirty minutes. Then I gave up and tried to serve them anyway. I "split" one, and it was still mushy in the middle. I served them anyway, but just piled the filling on top of them, as if they were pancakes. Shockingly, what bit I ate sat like a lead balloon in my belly. Yuck.

Despite my mistakes with the corn cake, I blame the book for the bland, flavorless filling. The shredded chicken and avocado is seasoned with minced cilantro, scallions, lime juice, and a scant 1/4 tsp of chili powder. Yuck. This packed no punch. Matt asked me if he was eating fish. He was not. Ugh.

Conclusion: Disliked. I respect the concept, and if I were in Venezuela, I would certainly try one. I have no interest in pursuing this recipe further.

For dessert, I made Baked Bananas (pg 56), which is served with vanilla ice cream. This couldn't be easier to make. Just sprinkle brown sugar and dots of butter on bananas, cover with foil, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another half hour.

Nasty to look at, delicious to eat.

The finished product looked vile, but tasted delicious. It's a prime example for how I try to look at food, which is to try anything and everything, regardless of how it looks or what you assume about it. I thought this would be slimy and wet. It was actually a very strange, spongey texture. In the future, I would take this out of the oven faster, because too much of the syrup in the pan burned. The drippings tasted like banana caramel--I would have liked to eat more of it.

Conclusion: Liked it very much.

TBIR: British Isles and Ireland

In flipping through The Best International Recipes, I was looking for a meal that appealed to my stuffed-up, cold-ridden self. Colcannon Soup (pg 86), with its butt-load of kale, potatoes, and leeks, sounded cozy and right. It appears that all the best international recipes begin with a base of onions cooked in bacon grease. All the ones I choose to cook do, at least. ha! I expect that will change once I wander away from chilly Northern European realms. 

I've never had Colcannon Soup, so I can't say if this is an authentic version of it. I suspect that's going to be a problem for me throughout this book. Regardless, this soup was damn good. According to the introduction, this soup is most commonly made with cabbage instead of kale, but that kale does appear in a number of versions, so they included it as a variation. I opted for the kale, because I need the leafy greens.

Behold the creamy, bacony goodness. Oh yeah, there's kale in there too.

This soup's flavor, with its base of bacon and wine and chicken stock, garlic, onions, and leeks, and topped with crumbled bacon and chives, was more complex than I assumed it would be. The heavy cream that is added at the last minute thickens the soup and makes it feel luxurious in your mouth.

Conclusion: Loved it. This would be even better if the weather were cold, but even at 95 degrees, it hit the spot. This could easily become a winter staple.

The Best International Recipe: Central Europe and Scandinavia

I'm back from New York, and ready to start working through The Best International Recipe. As I mentioned earlier, my plan is to cook a meal from each geographic chapter, and then loop back around to try out runner-up recipes.

I'm feeling ambivalent about what I cooked for dinner last night. I'm not sure if my problem with dinner was the actual taste of the food, or if external factors dampened my enthusiasm for it. A) Congestion settled in my ears and lungs, so I'm cranky and tired, B) The recipe didn't quite work flawlessly, and C) My stupid salmon had a million bones in it, which made it super annoying to eat.

The main dinner component was Cold Poached Salmon with Dill-Sour Cream Sauce (pg 127). I don't like cold fish, so I served this hot. This recipe is easy, but it didn't work out right. You're supposed to simmer a broth of water, wine, lemon, onion, carrot, thyme, garlic, and peppercorns for about a half hour, to make it flavorful. Then you add the salmon so that all the pieces are submerged. I couldn't even submerge ONE salmon fillet in this amount of liquid, and it would have been a disaster if I were attempting to cook the six fillets the recipe calls for. I don't think it's even that so much liquid evaporated. It wasn't enough to begin with. If I weren't sick, and my brain was working properly, I would have just added more water. Instead, I flipped the salmon over halfway through, then tried to do the same with Matt's piece, but by the time I was done with his, the liquid had boiled away and both pieces of fish were still raw in the middle. I put them in the oven for a few minutes, and they turned out fine, but it was still really irritating.

I wasn't so sure about the sour cream (I used yogurt) and dill sauce before I started, because I'm used to light lemon, garlic, and wine sauces on my fish. I never ate sour cream on salmon before. It actually worked together nicely. I approve. Now, if only the damn bones had been removed from the fish, I may have enjoyed eating this. GRRRR.

Conclusion: Liked it. It won't be replacing my normal salmon preparation, but it's nice for a change now and then.

As a side, I made German Potato Salad (pg 118). Hard to say what I think of this. It was delicious right after it was made, while it was hot. The bacon was crisp, the onions had caramelized in the bacon fat, and there was a balanced back-note of vinegar and mustard. I stood at the pot, eating it compulsively. I made it late in the afternoon and let it sit at room temperature until dinner, to try and save some time later. It was gross at room temperature, though Matt still loved it because it had bacon in it. In fairness, the instructions DO say to serve this warm. I barely touched what was on my plate. After two hours, the potatoes had absorbed all of the dressing. It was dry and tasted more mustardy than it did when it was fresh. Yick.

Conclusion: I'll give this a "Liked it," because it was really good right off the stove, which is when they tell you to serve it. I very much disliked this after two hours, though.

Wrap Up and Up Next: The Best International Recipe

I've spent a lovely month with Giada. Only a few recipes were exceptionally delicious, but the majority produced good, easy meals. The stand-outs were the Sweet Basil Smoothie, Pasta Ponza, and the Ricotta (/Mascarpone) and Berry Syrup. This would be a great gift for someone with a teeny kitchen and few pots and pans, because the recipes rely so heavily on the grill pan.

Giada at Home is definitely a keeper.

I told Matt to select the next book I cook from, since he's been a good sport with this whole endeavor. He picked the mammoth The Best International Recipe from the America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated people.

I'm skeered.

I have to admit, I would not have chosen to do this one yet. I haven't recovered from the horrid ATK Healthy Family Cookbook before starting another one made by the same people. Plus, it's an intimidating book. It's 562 pages long and covers the entire globe, except the US and Canada. Poor Canada. If Mexico has its own section, shouldn't Canada be in there somewhere? They must have some unique recipes up North. Oh well.

I feel a glimmer of hope in that the one and only time we cooked from this book--and by we, I mean Matt--he made a German feast of spaetzle, weiner schnitzel, and red cabbage, and it was awesome. Matt studied in Berlin for a year in college, and he said this spaetzle was the closest thing he's had to authentic spaetzle since leaving Germany. I had no idea, from eating in restaurants here, that spaetzle could have so much flavor. YUM. It's ruined restaurant-spaetzle for me forever. Hopefully the other sections live up to this promise.

Another reason that I feel uneasy about this book is that there don't seem to be many simple, whip-it-up for lunch type of recipes. Most recipes are quite involved. Apart from the scones in the British Isles section, none of it is breakfast-appropriate. This puts a whoooole lot of pressure on dinner.

Tell me to quit my whining and move on. Okay. To the task at hand...

In this book, the globe is divided into 14 chapters. My strategy will be to cook at least one recipe from each chapter, and then loop back around to runner-up recipes that caught my eye along the way.

We're flying back to NY to visit fam for a week, so there will be a brief hiatus until we return. I'll start my month with The Best International Recipes when I come back. I planned to get a head start this weekend by cooking Indian food. I went to the store and bought all the ingredients, except for garam masala. Couldn't find it anywhere. Grrrr. I'll have to look for it in Brooklyn and start when we get back.

Update: My friend just brought it to my attention that the South Pacific (ie, her homeland of New Zealand) is also not represented. I would say that English-speaking countries (Canada, NZ, Australia) didn't make the cut, except that The British Isles make up an entire chapter.  Beats me.