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.

Mmmmm...cherries

I have a rocky history with quinoa. When I was about 13 years old, my mom put my entire family on the Atkins Diet. As a pain-in-the-ass teenager, I refused to eat pretty much anything she presented as "Atkins friendly." Quinoa was one of those things. Nearly 20 years later, I figured it was time for me to give quinoa a second chance.

Quinoa, Fruit, and Nut Salad (pg 138) turns out to be good. A little nutty, a little crunchy. I thought the pumpkin seeds, almonds, dried cranberries, cherries, and raisins worked well with the grain, and the vinaigrette was just right as a background note.

I think I just like anything with dried fruit in it.

Conclusion: I liked it. Don't tell my mom. (In fairness, she simply boiled and served it, without any seasoning. If I were served that today, I probably still wouldn't like it.)

For dessert, I made Whole-Cherry Clafoutis (pg 452). I was alarmed when I read the instructions NOT to pit the cherries before baking them in an ambiguously puddingish/cake-ish batter. It sounded like it would be supremely annoying to have to chew around pits. Much to my surprise, it turned out not to be too great of an inconvenience, and it was a hell of a lot easier than having to pit all the cherries ahead of time. The cherries plump up as they bake and fall right off the pit in your mouth. It sort of tasted like a bread pudding with cherries in it. Yum!

I didn't expect the cherries to pop to the top like that. Neato.

Conclusion: Liked it a lot, and it was very easy to make. Score!

Chicken B'Stilla

Chicken B'Stilla (pg 222) is a lot of work, but that didn't bother me, because the instructions made it pretty clear that it would take hours. The sweet elements of this recipe intrigued me from the first time I scanned it, because I couldn't imagine how this lightly sweetened chicken would work. Usually, when chicken is sweet--bbq sauce, sweet and sour chicken, etc.--it's overwhelmingly sweet. This recipe seemed more subtle.

First, you marinate chicken thighs and onion with garlic, ginger, coriander, cinnamon, and saffron. The most time-consuming part of that was skinning the thighs. Then you just let the whole pot sit at room temp for an hour.

Add broth and boil it for an hour. No trouble there.

Once the chicken is falling off the bones, you shred it and make a sauce with the cooked-down broth by adding eggs and honey and whisking until it is thick. Mix the chicken and onions back into the sauce, and it's ready to go in the filo crust.

Ah, the filo crust. What a pain. I'm used to working with filo because I've made streudel with my mom since I was little, so I don't allow the inevitable tears and imperfection bother me. Still, I always feel like I'm holding my breath for the entire time that I'm handling the sheets. In a cake pan, you layer buttered sheets of filo to make a crust, add a layer of toasted almond, pour the chicken glop in, layer more almonds, and add a top filo crust. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Then you bake it for 40 minutes. So, even if you don't factor in the time it will take you to actually handle and prep the ingredients, this recipe takes a minimum of two hours, forty minutes.

Looking at it, you'd never guess that this took all day to make.

I enjoyed this dish. (Alleluia! There would have been a meltdown if I spent all day cooking it and it tasted like crap.) It wasn't too sweet, which was good. A heavy hand with the spices could have caused problems with this one,. The flavors were subtle, but present. Even Charlie ate some. He never eats chicken (or any meat, really). Matt shrugged and said it was just okay. I think part of the problem is that he got home from work late, so the filo was soggy instead of crispy by the time he ate it.

Conclusion: Liked it, though I'll probably never make it again, just because it's too much work not to result in mind-blowing deliciousness.

A Losing Streak

Pumpkin-Gorgonzola Flans (pg 146) sound like they'd be right in my comfort zone. Pumpkin: gooood. Gorgonzola: goooood. Toasted nuts: goooood. Honey drizzle: goooood. I've read a couple of rave reviews of this recipe on other blogs, and I fully expected to love it. I figured it was a fool-proof pick-me-up after a week's worth of mediocre recipes. Much to my surprise, these flans fell flat.

The best I can figure, gorgonzola and the local honey I used are such strong flavors that complement each other so well that the pumpkin couldn't compete. Between the cream, three whole eggs, and two egg yolks, the pumpkin itself tasted too diluted. To see if Charlie would eat any, I cooked one ramekin with just the flan, omitting the cheese, nuts, and honey. Charlie didn't eat much of it, so I tried some. The pumpkin flavor was very weak, even without the accoutrement. It all but disappeared when paired with the cheese and honey. I don't know if all those eggs and cream are necessary to achieve the proper texture (which was nice), but I think I'd like this more if the pumpkin flavor were amped up a bit.

Conclusion: I hate to say it, but Dislike. Tonight's menu is Chicken B'stilla: marinated, shredded chicken cooked in a buttery, flaky filo crust. Can't go wrong...right?

I'd Never Make It As a Rabbit

Not one part of me was interested in cooking Warm Weather Vegetable Pot-au-feau (pg 378), and I never would have made it if it wasn't this week's French Friday's With Dorie selection. I was ever-so-slightly happier once I realized that what looked like a blob of yogurt or sour cream in the picture was actually a poached egg, but even that couldn't save the fact that it's sitting on a bowl of boiled onions, leeks, carrots, potatoes, asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, and spinach.

I tried to adjust my attitude as I was cooking it. Recipes have surprised me before, so I told myself that this one might only appear to be bland. Maybe that poached egg would transform this soup, like magic.

Not so. Part of the problem was that my egg yolks came out exactly how I hate them--neither runny nor hard, but in that confused semi-state. I set the stupid timer for three minutes, according to Dorie's instructions, but it never rang, so by the time I realized that three minutes must have passed, it was too late. Not only did I cringe at each bite of partly-solid yolk, but since it wasn't runny, it did not thicken the broth as I suppose it was meant to.

The conversation between Matt and myself went a little something like this:
Me: I don't like it. There are too many vegetables in this bowl.
Matt: That's sort of what I like about it.
Me: But it's bland.
Matt: It's okay. I wouldn't necessarily want it again, but it's okay.
Me: I'm still hungry. I need fourteen more eggs.

Conclusion: Indifferent. This left me grumpy and unsatisfied. It didn't taste bad, but it didn't taste particularly good. The eggy disappointment was my own fault, so I'm not factoring that in, because that would have tipped the scale into Dislike territory.