FFwD: Corn Pancakes

In a bout of forethought, in trying to complete FFwD recipes before being separated from all-things-kitchen, I made this week's recipe, Corn Pancakes (pg 337 of Around My French Table), two weeks ago. Unfortunately, my pre-planning did not extend to writing up my post about the pancakes at that time, so the memory is pretty fuzzy as I type this now. Also, the pics were uploaded onto my desktop, which is still with my husband in Texas. I am now at my mother's in Brooklyn, so no photos for you! Don't worry--you're not missing much. Just imagine yellow pancakes.

I thought that this sounded like a delightful recipe, and figured they'd be a great way to trick my son into eating corn. Not that he's missing a world of nutrition by not eating corn, but any time that I can get him to eat anything new, it makes me happy.

For some reason, I thought that the corn would be kept whole, and dot the pancakes. That is not correct. Canned corn is pureed with the other ingredients to make batter. Hot off the griddle, they tasted fine. Nothing special, but fine. I followed the instructions to move the pancakes to a warm oven as they were made.

I finished flipping my last pancake and retrieved its mates from the oven. The texture had completely changed. I can't remember exactly what was wrong, since I stopped after two bites, but I think they'd turned gummy and dense. I gave one to Charlie and he gagged on it. For about three minutes. He's very dramatic.

He and I ate french toast for dinner. Matt insisted upon eating the pancakes--ALL the pancakes--with spinach and over easy eggs, even though he didn't like them, because he didn't want to waste them. He's mental.

I had a hard time with most of June's recipes. July looks like it's shaping up to be exponentially more delicious. Whew!

FFwD: David's Seaweed Sables

Right off the bat, David's Seaweed Sables sounded awful to me. Seaweed does not seem like the type of flavor that lends itself to a sweet/salty mashup of deliciousness. However, this recipe comes to Dorie via David Lebovitz, who I love and adore, and whose book, Ready for Dessert, is the most reliably knock-my-socks-off book I've ever cooked from, so I decided to withhold judgment until I tasted one.

Yeah. Well. Apparently I'm not sophisticated enough to hang with Dorie and David. Wish David had given her a recipe for bacon sables, as mentioned in the intro. I'd be all over those.

I'm not 100% sure that I bought the right nori. The recipe calls for toasted nori. All I found was roasted nori. Same thing? Beats me. I think it's right.

Everything came together very easily in the food processor, so the recipe has that going for it. Once blitzed, and then while baking, they smelled like the South Street Seaport, circa 1989. Not good.

Thanks for the sea salt, Pauline!

My favorite thing about this recipe was he contrast of the pretty salmon colored Alaea Sea Salt that my friend sent me from Hawaii against the light olive-toned sables. Looking at them was all they were good for. Couldn't eat them. Fishy + sweet = unpleasant. I poured a glass of wine, which did nothing to enhance the flavor of the cookie, but did help to burn the terrible aftertaste out of my mouth. I hated them. Matt took one whiff and didn't bother tasting one.

I also made last week's Lime Honey Beet Salad. Another dud. My problem was with the dressing, not the beets. It tasted like detergent to me. I threw it out. June is not being good to me, as far as these recipes go.

I'm off for NY tomorrow, and, from there, on to Naples in August. I've decided to bring Around My French Table with me in my luggage, so I'll do my best to keep up with the recipes for the next few months, until I'm reunited with all of my belongings, which I anticipate to be around October. It'll all depend on whether or not I can make the recipe without a well-stocked pantry or special equipment. Anyway, so I may go missing for a while, but I'll still be reading everyone's posts on Fridays! Wish me luck, and have a great summer!

TwD: French Strawberry Cake

I was cautiously optimistic about the French Strawberry Cake that was selected this week for Tuesdays with Dorie. I love strawberry shortcake, but I hate--HATE--wedding cake. All wedding cake. I didn't even like my own. I just ordered the one that everyone else seemed to like best. The cake part itself usually seems to be a flavorless vehicle to get toppings to your mouth, and it's usually covered in some element that makes it wet. Pudding, fruit, whatever. I don't like it, texturally. My wedding cake fears sprang to the forefront when I read through the recipe for this strawberry cake and realized that the genoise (cake) is supposed to be sliced into thirds, layered with macerated strawberries and whipped cream, then left to set in the fridge for a while. Sounds wet to me.

First problem, right out of the gate, was in slicing the cake. This was not a thick, forgiving cake to cut. It might have been an inch thick. I can't even slice a bagel evenly. I decided to halve it. The conversation with my husband went a little something like this:

Me: I'm supposed to cut this into thirds.
Matt: That?
Me: Yeah.
Matt: Never gonna happen.
Me: I think I'll halve it.
Matt: You can try, but you won't be able to do it.
Me: What are you suggesting?
Matt: Just leave it whole and pile the strawberries and cream on top of it.
Me: I'm not going to do that.
Matt: (Snort.) Good luck.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, bud. I mean, he was right--I made a huge mess of it, but still. haha. Fortunately, whipped cream masks all manner of kitchen disasters.

If anyone out there was able to slice this into thirds, I'm very impressed by you. I want you to know that.

I should be a food stylist.

I didn't really enjoy this cake. I didn't hate it, but I found myself picking the strawberries and cream off and leaving the cake behind. The cake, itself, didn't contribute anything delicious to the whole. I served it at a going-away party for two friends who are moving to Japan, and for myself (On Saturday, I'll begin my trek East, spending a month with fam in NY and DE before moving to Italy in August). A house full of people ate less than half of this cake. I've seen this group of friends clear tables of feasts, so if it was a dessert that they really loved, believe me, it would have been gone in two seconds.

I will say that I LOVED the addition of sour cream to the whipped cream. It gave it a nice tang. I'll definitely use that idea in the future.

If you want to see what this cake looks like when people actually take pretty pictures of it, check out what Sophia and Allison, our hosts for this week, did with it. The full recipe can be found on their blogs.

TwD: Oasis Naan

It doesn't take much to prompt me to cook Indian food these days, so from the moment that I read that this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe from Baking With Julia was Oasis Naan, all I could think about was a big pot of saag to go along with it. The saag was delicious (thank you Madhur Jaffrey!), but my naan was not-so-great. I haven't decided yet whether I bungled the recipe, or if the outcome was not supposed to be similar to restaurant naan, and so my expectations ruined my experience of it.

As I hand-kneaded the dough, I thought to myself that I was being too generous with the instruction to "add more flour as necessary." The dough was extremely wet and sticky, had glued itself to my lightly floured countertop, and had gloved my hands. It took a lot of flour to get it to a consistency that I could knead. It's highly probable that this is the root of my problem. My finished product was a cross between pizza dough and pita. It baked into stiff, dense breads, with none of that lovely stretchy chewiness that I associate with naan. Oh well. I hope everyone else had a better experience! Now, who's ready for some French Strawberry Cake? I am! I am!

I can't find my camera cord anywhere. I'll upload a pic later, if/when it turns up. 

You can find the full recipe on either Maggie's blog, Always Add More Butter, or Phyl's blog, Of Cabbages and King Cakes.

FFwD: Lyonnaise Garlic and Herb Cheese

It was pretty much a no-brainer that I'd love this week's French Friday's with Dorie recipe: Lyonnaise Garlic and Herb Cheese (pg 20 of Around My French Table). Mix oil, red wine vinegar, garlic and herbs into ricotta cheese. Smear on bread. Smile.

Thank goodness it was such a simple recipe, because my brain went wonky while I was shopping for the ingredients. Who knows what would have become of a recipe that involved work? I have a glitch where, 7 times out of 10, I see that a recipe calls for shallots, and think, "Oh good, I have those in the fridge." However, I don't have shallots. I have scallions. I see the word shallot, and I visualize a scallion. I read the word shallot, and I buy a scallion. I do it all the time. I did it this time. I have no explanation.

I used up all my tarragon on a chicken earlier this week, so I took Dorie's recipe as a guideline, and used the herbs I had on hand: basil, chives, thyme, and parsley. And extra garlic, because garlic makes the world better. Stinkier, but better.

This is one of those tasty, satisfying, simple ideas that make me kick myself for needing a recipe for it at all. Why haven't I been doing this my whole life? It's such a logical food combination.

Conclusion: Loved it.

FFwD: Double Chocolate Banana Tart

I stalled as long as I could before making Double Chocolate Banana Tart, not because I didn't want to eat it, but because I didn't want to make it. In my brain, a fully baked chocolate tart shell + caramelized bananas + chocolate ganache + sliced bananas + glaze = lots and lots of work. Fortunately, my brain was wrong.

The dough for the shell whirs together in no time in the food processor. Then it's pressed into the tart shell, which is waaaay easier than rolling one out and hoping it fits.

All you do to caramelize banana is to cook slices in sugar. Boom. Done.

Chocolate ganache? That's just boiling heavy cream mixed into chopped up chocolate, then stirred with butter.

Layer it, cool it in the fridge, and shortly before serving, slice some fresh banana on top and brush them with heated apricot jelly.

There may have been four layers, but this was the easiest tart I've ever thrown together. It tasted like all the best parts of a banana split.

I would make this again in a heartbeat, but only if I had company coming for dinner. It's pretty, for one, but more importantly, it's quite rich, and I don't think the top layer of bananas will last long enough for Matt and I to eat it on our own. We kept a slice each for tonight's dessert, and sent the remainder off to the USO. I may regret that decision tomorrow.

Conclusion: Loved it.

I made last week's Provencal Olive Fougasse on time, but, as is becoming my habit, I didn't blog about it. All I can say is OH MAH GOD. I'm addicted to it. One bread was the star of my favorite type of dinner--small plates of meats and cheese and veg to grab at and nibble on--and I brought the second to a friend's graduation part last Saturday, where it promptly vanished. One friend said, "I hate olives, but I LOVE this!" Dorie Greenspan: forcing people to reevaluate their tastes, one mouthful at a time. 

Conclusion: Loved it.

FFwD: Almond Flounder (ahem, Tilapia) Meuniere

Matt had to go to a conference in DC for the week, so, in the name of pantry-and-freezer-emptying, I seized the masochistic opportunity to eat a stockpile of Nutrisystem meals that have been sitting around for over a year. I look at those boxes and see dollar signs, and I just can't bring myself to throw them out. They're nasty, though. Really nasty.

I don't mean to come down too hard on Nutrisystem. For some reason--desperation? a less-refined palate?--I didn't gag on them in the past. NS served me well both times I used it, and helped me lose 20+ pounds pre-wedding, then post-baby. Also, it always slaps me in the face with how few fruits and vegetables I eat in a day, when left to my own devices. Maybe it's because I'm just eating the meals to eat them, rather than as a means to an end, but I'm having a really hard time swallowing them. They may start accidentally falling in the trash can. hehe. Anyway. What this all leads up to is that, after a few of these wretched meals, I was really, really looking forward to this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe: Almond Flounder Meuniere (pg 290 of Around My French Table.) I couldn't get my hands on flounder, so I used tilapia, for no reason other than that the cutlets were fairly flat, and I have it in my head, with no proof, that flounder is, too.

This fish couldn't be easier to prepare. Brush some egg yolk on one side of the fish, then dredge it in a mixture of ground almonds, flour, salt, pepper, and lemon zest. I had no lemons, so I took a chance and used orange zest. It was a delicious impulse. The fish is then cooked for a few minutes on each side in browned butter. YUM. I'm just sad that I haven't made this dish sooner. It's so easy and so tasty.

Conclusion: Loved it.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for a catch-up recipe that I made last week. My freezer-purge finally prompted me to cook Short Ribs in Red Wine and Port (pg 254). Months ago, I bought frozen short ribs from the grass-fed beef guy at my farmer's market. I came home, threw them in my freezer, and haven't touched them since.

Who wants a fat sandwich?

I won't get too involved with the preparation, since it's so far in the past for everyone else, but I hated the outcome. I must have skimmed six inches of grease off the surface of the broth, and there were still great globules of fat on the bones. My stomach lurched just looking at them, and then when they turned out to just taste like stew beef (my most loathed enemy), I gave up and ate a bowl of Cheerios for dinner instead. For the record, Matt liked it. I hope the memory stands by him, because he's never having it again. ha!

Conclusion: Hated it.