Going Out With a Bang...

...and not the good kind. More like the gruesome, I just got someone's brains in my mouth kind. Okay, that may be a bit extreme. The meal I made for dinner tonight was bad. Really bad.

Once again, my kitchen has exploded. This time, the results were not worth it. Definitely. Not. Worth. It. Oh, Ellie, no one is going to believe me that there are good recipes in your book. This one was especially foul, despite it's delicious title: Beef Tenderloin with Rosemary and Chocolate (pg 180). I used eye round instead of tenderloin, because tenderloin was too expensive, post-Santa. I'm glad I swapped meats, because I would have been furious if I had a tenderloin and cooked it to 140, which was her recommendation for medium-rare. I removed this at 115, and it was medium. For a roast beef, I can accept that. For a tenderloin, I would have flipped out.

I didn't defile the meat with sauce. You'll have to use your imagination.

I'm straying from the point. The meat is only seasoned with salt and pepper, so the interest of this dish is in the sauce. The horrible, horrible sauce. Standard broth vegetables are cooked for a few minutes, then wine, beef broth, and tomato paste are added. It boils for 40 minutes, then is strained, at which point you stir in rosemary and cocoa powder. It tasted like dirt. Literally.

Conclusion: Hated it, obviously. 

To accompany this travesty, I made something I'd had my eye on that I didn't get around to from Perfect Vegetables: Sauteed Tender Greens with Caramelized Onions and Dried Apricots (pg 141). I picked up irresistably beautiful swiss chard at the farmer's market today, and instantly thought of this dish. I also picked up these radishes at the market, because my sense of humor is that of a 12 year old boy, and I could not stop laughing when I saw this...

In case you can't read the sticker, it says "Red Rocket Radishes." Hee. Heehee.

 Anyone know what to do with radishes? Ellie has a few salads with them, which I probably would never try if not for this impulse purchase. I don't even like radishes. What was I thinking? HA!

As far as the swiss chard goes, all I'm going to say is that dried apricots, garlic onion, and anchovy paste are not flavors that mesh. Hated it.

Fortunately, we ended the night with my not-quite-on-Christmas-Plum-Pudding. This was not all that different from my Mom's fruit cake, which is not a complaint. I love my Mom's fruit cake. Fruit cake gets a bad rap. If it's made with real dried fruit, as opposed to that citron crap, and it's brandy-soaked and moist, it's awesome. I like that the pudding is served warm, with boozy hard sauce melting all over it, but otherwise, I'm not sure it's worth the difference in effort between baking a fruit cake vs. steaming a plum pudding for four hours, and then steaming it again for 1.5 hours before serving.

I may not make this again, but I'm glad I made it once, especially because I had no clue what a plum pudding really was until now. The problem now is that there is SO much left.

A little of this stuff goes a long way. If anyone wants to hop a flight to Corpus Christi to try some, I can guarantee you it'll still be here when you arrive.

The other night, with Dorie's cauliflower, I made Ellie's Roasted Pork Loin (pg 198 of The Food You Crave). Full confession: I've made this recipe many, many times before. Make paste out of garlic and salt, then mix in olive oil, sage, rosemary, thyme, and pepper, then rub into the meat and cook. Easy and delicious. 

Conclusion: Love it, time and again.

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years, and that your 2012 is full of adventurous cooking and satisfying eating.

FFwD: Cauliflower-Bacon Gratin

I wanted to make Dorie's Cauliflower-Bacon Gratin (pg 362) over the holidays, but Matt asked for her potato gratin instead, even if it meant making both. That sounded ludicrous to me, so I spread them out.

This was a pretty simple recipe, but my kitchen looked like it had exploded by the end of it.

Bacon, gruyere, and cream. Really, there's not a lot to say besides yuuuuuuuuu-uuuuuuum. I like Dorie's suggestion to throw broccoli in there, too. I'll try that next time.

It tastes better than it looks.

Charlie squeezed his mouth and eyes shut every time I tried to get him to eat some. I explained to him that it tasted like bacon. He still wasn't interested. Weirdo.

Conclusion: Loved it. Too rich to eat regularly, but it's so good for a once-in-a-while treat.

Pears, Pears Everywhere

I've baked two lovely treats from Dorie Greenspan's Baking to use up a bunch of fat, juicy pears that my bro-in-law sent us. I've done pretty well--I only have five left. Woot!

First up, Brown Sugar Bundt Cake (pg 179). I'm glad I looked pears up in the index, because they're buried in the ingredient list, so I wouldn't have noticed them otherwise. This is a moist, tender cake. It's lightly sweet, and the pears retain their flavor. My only complaint is the prunes. I like prunes, but they were aggressive here, because all the other flavors are subtle. Next time, I'll use apricots or dates instead of prunes. 

Conclusion: Liked it, and it's Charlie-Approved. I popped it in the freezer, and am happy that it's there.

As a safeguard against my potentially dreadful goose pie (which actually turned out to be pretty good. Huzzah!!), and because I had pie crust in the freezer, I made Fold-Over Pear Torte (pg 348). A pie crust is pressed into a spring form pan. The edges are supposed to be higher than I managed to get them. Woops. Diced pears, diced dried apricots, walnuts, and lemon zest/juice are mixed together, then piled in the crust. A very wet batter (custard??) is poured in, then the sides of the crust are crimped over.

All our rum was gone (egg nog), so I couldn't include it. It would have been a nice addition to the vanilla and almond extract in the batter.

I asked Matt why he was making weird faces. He said he was trying to decide if he liked it. He landed on yes, and had a second slice.

Conclusion: Liked it. I suspect it was supposed to bake a little longer. It was very wet. Or maybe that's just the nature of pears. Not sure.

Bits and Pieces

Last week, before Christmas madness hit, Mom's Turkey Meatloaf (pg 216 of The Food You Crave) called to me as a potential way to get Charlie to eat meat. You know, same old story I always have. This loaf uses ground turkey, and the meat is flavored with bell pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup. Much to my surprise, this loaf didn't dry out. Giada de Laurentiis has a turkey meatloaf that I love, but she adds a whole butt-load of olive oil to prevent it from drying. I thought the oil was essential, but I guess it's not. I'm guessing that the first step of Ellie's recipe, where oats are soaked in milk, holds the key to the moisture retention. I may try Giada's recipe with this trick and see how it comes out.

The meatloaf was decent, but Giada's tastes better. Matt kept saying it could use feta and sundried tomatoes, which are the awesomest bits of Giada's recipe.

Conclusion: This was okay, and Charlie ate a decent portion. It was a little bland, but that could be why Charlie liked it.

We have loads of leftovers in the house, so it'll be a few days before I cook an Ellie dinner. I'm going to attempt to turn the goose remains into something like a shepherd's pie tomorrow. It's the best we can think of to do with it. Wish me luck.

I also have a million pears in the house. My brother-in-law very kindly sent us two cases of pears from Harry and David for Christmas. They're delicious and juicy, and all 14 are ripe at the same time. We finished one box, and I'm scouring my books for ways to bake and then freeze pear desserts, because I'd hate to waste any of them.

Spiced Red Wine-Poached Pears (pg 293) was an obvious choice for dessert tonight. I don't know how pears are normally poached, but it seems it would be a lot easier to dump enough wine in the pot to submerge the pears, instead of attempting to turn them every five minutes. Pears--especially cooked pears--are fragile little buggers. Mine looked pretty jacked up by the end of it. My biggest problem was that I over-reduced the wine sauce. It just about turned into jelly. It seemed okay when I took it off the heat, but by the time I gave Charlie his bottle and put him to bed, it had turned solid. It's a shame, because the sauce was necessary. Without it, the pears didn't seem to have a whole lot of flavor.

Conclusion: Liked it. The flavor of the sauce was good, and the pears poached to a perfect consistency, I just bungled the execution. I'd make it again.

I love me a toasted nut, and Spiced Mixed Nuts (pg 61) are no exception. The spices in question here are curry powder, cayenne, rosemary, and salt, with a bit of maple syrup to bind it all together.

Conclusion: Liked it. Still love Lebovitz's mix best of all, but this gets props for using less butter and sugar.

My Holiday in Food

Something went wrong with nearly everything we cooked over the holidays, to the point that I started to laugh, and then decided not to make the apple pie I'd been planning to bring to some friends in Austin, because surely, it would only end up being a waste of ingredients.

It was just us for Christmas Eve and Christmas, so as a way to make dinner special, I had the adorable idea that we (aka Matt) should cook a goose, and I'd make a plum pudding, and we'd be all English Christmasey. Matt remembers the Christmas goose that his close German friends made once as being one of the best meals of his life. He got their recipe. I don't know what went wrong. Maybe German geese are different than what we have here? The meat was dry and tough, and the skin never crisped up. Matt couldn't decide if he overcooked it or didn't cook it enough, like maybe he was supposed to cook it so long it fell off the bone. I have no clue. All I know was it was gross, and I was very grateful that we also had potato gratin.

The moment before our goosey dreams were smashed.

 As for the plum pudding, I knew it was supposed to sit in the fridge for a few weeks after it was steamed, but I didn't get around to it until mid-December. We decided to give it an extra week, and eat it for New Years, instead. I'll let you know how that goes.

My chocolate chip cookies flattened out. Anyone know why that would happen? Does the type of baking sheet make a difference? Temp of ingredients? These were Toll House, and they've never done this for my Mom. I notice this with a lot of my cookies lately. I suspect the baking sheets.

 I made bagels for breakfast. I think I've finally tweaked the recipe so that they would have come out perfectly, if Matt had set the timer like I asked him to. They were still edible, but were VERY dark. Still, I'm happy that I think I've finally merged several recipes together to form a bagel that I'm happy with.

Growing up, my Dad always made lasagne for Christmas. We call it his "Never again, Margaret" lasagne, because that's what he'd call out to the house, in general, and my mother, in particular, as he tired of dealing with sauce all day. He threw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and I try my best to duplicate his "recipe" every year by scrolling back through 25 years of memories.

I can tell you, though, that THIS never happened when he made the sauce...

 Even on the lowest possible setting on this stupid electric stove, the bottom burned, and I scraped it up into the sauce before I realized what was happening. I spent the rest of the day spooning black bits out. Never again.

 Okay, that was a lie. I'm sure I'll do it again next year. The sauce was good, despite the charred bits. I retrieved all of them of any size.

Then the aluminum foil ripped the cheese off of the top layer of lasagne. I forgot to stick toothpicks in to keep it raised. Woops. This is the point where I started to laugh, and gave up on any thought of baking a pie.

Food imperfections aside, we had a wonderful Christmas, and hope you did too! All I can say is, I'm glad we didn't have any company. It wouldn't have seemed so funny, then. I learned an important lesson for next year, in that I should pick simpler food that can be prepped in advance of Christmas (lasagne is good for that--I just didn't get around to doing it ahead of time this year). Who wants to spend the day in the kitchen? Not I. Good to know for next year.

FFwD: Creme Brulee (Yeah, baby).

I was certain that this would be a tale of woe. All manner of things went awry in the preparation of Creme Brulee (pg 422 of Around My French Table).

I thought I'd timed this perfectly. The custard is supposed to bake at low temp for an hour. Charlie and I had to leave for a doctor's appointment at 12:30. I put the custard in the oven at 11, figuring it should be out by 12. Foolproof.

Except that it wasn't foolproof. I'm an overzealous ramekin filler, and so only made four brulees instead of six. I'm an idiot, and didn't consider how drastically this would impact the way the custard cooked. At 12, it was still liquid. Uh oh. I didn't have enough time to let it sit and do its thing for as long as it needed. My bright solution? Raise the temp to 300.

When I checked it 15 minutes later, the custard was boiling, the jelly Dorie says to smear in the bottom of the ramekin rose up around the edges, and great bubbles had formed on top. Double woops.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuudge.

I pulled them out, muttered a series of curses, and headed out to our doctor's appointment.

Somehow, these turned out great. It's a Christmas miracle!! Using the broiler to melt the sugar didn't work so well. Some bits were crunchy, but not nearly enough. Still tasted good, though. Twist my arm, I think I need to give these another spin.

Charlie inhaled his little bowl-full like a ravenous beast. So this is the way to fatten him up: feed him custard. I should have tried this months ago.

Conclusion: Loved it.

Norman, Hellooooo

That's a reference to City Slickers, if you didn't get it. City Slickers is one of the finest movies of the past thirty years. I'm not embarrassed to admit that Matt and I have been known to watch it, bedecked in our cowboy hats. Okay, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that. Fortunately, Matt never reads this blog, so he won't know I told you. HA!  I made this reference because, unless I'm misunderstanding the role recipe titles have on reality, I'm pretty sure that the dinner I made qualifies me as a cowgirl.

Cowboy Steak with Coffee and Ancho Rub (pg 183) was fine, though surprisingly bland. With chili powder, ground espresso, brown sugar, dry mustard, coriander, salt and pepper rubbed into top sirloin (not a delicious cut of meat), I expected more flavor. I should have used better judgment and let the steaks sit with the rub for a few hours, even though the instructions don't indicate to wait. That may have helped matters. Oh well.

Conclusion: Just okay. Not bad, but unmemorable.

However, Matt and I both loaded up on Ranch Beans (pg 246). No two ways about it. These beans were mighty tasty. Sautee onion and green pepper until soft, add chili powder, pinto beans, a bit of broth, and cilantro, and cook until warmed through. Then you mash it all up a bit.

As he ate thirds, Matt correctly stated that they would be amazing in a breakfast taco (one of the few culinary masterpieces of Corpus Christi). I haven't stopped thinking about homemade breakfast tacos since eating these beans.

Conclusion: LOVED it.