Cooking Extravaganza Menu – 1/22/11
Emily and I had one of our cooking extravaganzas last night. We call them Smitten Kitchen nights because they started out as a way for us to cook the Smitten Kitchen recipes that we’d been eyeing. But there are a lot of recipes we’ve both got bookmarked, so the Smitten Kitchen night has evolved into a general-purpose cooking extravaganza night.
Emily, smartypants that she is, suggested that we post our cooking extavaganza / Smitten Kitchen night menus in advance of publishing each of the recipes. That way you guys could see what we make together all in one place, rather than figuring it out just by noting which recipes are posted by “Emily and Amanda.”
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting these recipes for your reading and culinary pleasure. Let us know if there’s one that you just can’t live without and we can try to bump it to the top of the to-do list.
1. Restaurant-style salsa. My parents raised me right, which is to say that they raised me to say please and thank you, to study hard, and to be hard-core about my salsa. I was surprised by how much I liked this salsa recipe. It was really the perfect thing for us to snack on while we cooked, because it stayed fresh and cool and yummy even after several hours out in the open.
Obsessed with Soup (spinach, sweet potato and chickpea stew)
When I was in third grade or so, all I did was arts and crafts. Names on my assignments would be written in cursive that then looped into a picture of a butterfly or flowers. I’d order craft sets to go along with the books I read, constructing paper dolls to re-enact the scenes from the book. When walking through a park, I’d pick up untold numbers of odds and ends to use as found objects for some art project yet to be conceptualized. And the painting, oh the painting. It was unceasing.
All this is to say that when I latch onto something, I latch on good and hard. One might say I have a somewhat obsessive personality, but I like to think driven is a better term than obsessive. Let’s go with driven. It sounds less likely to end me up in years of therapy.
corn chowder with diced tomatoes and green chilies
Finals are the worst, man. I’m so exhausted and can barely see straight because I’ve been reading outlines and case summaries so long. The only thing getting me through is anticipation of this Saturday, when Em and I are going to have another cooking extravaganza, and leftovers from the corn chowder I made this weekend.
This corn chowder is filling but not too heavy, spicy but not that weird level of spicy some soups have going on. Basically, it’s the perfect soup for a wintry day. Especially if you’re a Texan living in the North who needs something warm that tastes a little bit Southwestern.
steak roquefort
On our anniversary in December, I made the beloved carnivore one of his favorite dishes of mine – or maybe it’s one of my favorites, I’m not really sure. On our second date, this is what I cooked for him. That night, I also made cauliflower au gratin – which I will introduce you to once I make it again and remember to take pictures – and a spinach, grapefuit, and avocado salad. Knowing him as well as I know him now, I find that last part hilarious. If you know this guy, you know that feeding him spinach is a stretch – avocado is yet another stretch – and grapefruit? [Insert streams of laughter here]. It’s a sign that he already liked me a good bit that he ate half of his salad that night. It’s a sign of how much I now love him that I have promised never to make him eat it again even though I think it’s delicious and would like to make it for dinner parties and such.
Sweet Palmiers & childhood memories
Well, now I’ve got one of my exams under my belt, so I can finally justify a little time spent writing up the Palmier recipe. As tricky as these palmiers might seem at first with the series of “Do this, refrigerate, do this, refrigerate, fold this way, refrigerate” instructions, I can guarantee you they’re a lot easier than figuring out whether or not the federal courts should apply Burford abstention. Maybe that’s not too comforting . . .
I made these Palmiers for my mom as one of her Christmas presents. Random, you might think, but there’s a story behind it. When my mom and I first moved to central Ohio, where we lived for about six years, we discovered this magical French-style bakery called La Chatelaine. Okay, my mom discovered it, but that’s what moms are for, right? Discovering awesome things and letting you feel like you helped. Anyway, they had and probably still have the most amazing palmiers ever. It was always a special treat to go there with my mom and get a palmier. Once, we went there or possibly to a different branch of theirs after we’d been sledding, and I swear my toes were about to freeze off. This is not a bad reflection on my mom – she bundled me up really well, but I was having so much fun sledding with my mom that I refused to pay attention to the signals my toes were sending me, namely “Ouch! Take us inside where it’s warm, you evil little girl!” We went inside and had hot chocolate, which they were also pretty exceptional at making. I remember like it was yesterday how my toes felt as they warmed up and de-numbed (or whatever). Shooting pain, people. Soothed by sips of delicious hot chocolate. That’s how good this bakery is – I remember it fondly and happily even when I’m thinking about that time that I almost froze my toes off because I refused to tell my mother I was cold.
All of which is to say that I decided to make palmiers for my mom for Christmas so that we could get all nostalgic and so that I could do something nice for her since she’s awesome and she gave me life and all that good stuff.
Hey, y’all,
We here at Emandam have something of a busy month. Em has big science presentations coming up, and I’ve got finals (yes, after winter break – my law school’s trying to make me hate January). So we’ve got a hectic schedule – particularly this week – that admits of little blog posting. But we don’t want to have total radio silence, so here are a few recipe recommendations and a preview of a recipe I’ll write up after one of my finals is done this Friday.
chicken pot pie – the easy way
My mom used to make this when we lived in Ohio and would often have my stepdad’s side of the family over to visit. I was a vegetarian and so was my aunt Amy – my aunt Amy on my stepdad’s side, that is; on my dad’s side, I have a fully omnivorous aunt Amy. My mom would make this chicken pot pie and a vegetarian version. It’s hearty enough to keep you warm during an Ohio winter, it tastes delicious, and it’s simple enough that she could make it while still keeping one eye on my little brother and sister. Since my sister had a tendency to climb on things and once (at age 2) climbed into a cabinet and tore an aluminum pie pan in half, cutting her finger so badly that she needed stitches, that kind of meal was probably no easy feat.
Now, I’m no longer a vegetarian, but I’ve blended the two recipes. My mom used to use cream of mushroom soup for the vegetarian kind, and I like it so much that way that I use it for the chicken version even though Betty Crocker tells you to use cream of chicken soup. But what does Betty know? I mean, really.
peppermint bark (or what to do with the leftover candy canes)
I love peppermint bark, but it’s ridiculously expensive to purchase. I’ve been wanting to make some all winter, but I don’t have any peppermint extract and I live in a grocery store desert – which means that those things are extra expensive at the few places where you can purchase them. So when I was visiting the beloved carnivore in DC and I went to the grocery store to pick up the fixings for dinner, I couldn’t resist buying the very affordable peppermint extract that was available there.
And thus, the peppermint bark experimentation began. I blended a couple of recipes, although almost all recipes follow the same basic format. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Now that I know, I’m going to make it a yearly tradition – and I get to keep all of the peppermint bark for myself, since the beloved carnivore does not believe that mint and chocolate should mix. He’s strictly a milk chocolate, white chocolate, and/or peanut butter with chocolate kind of a guy.
Last Minute Lunch (navy bean curry)
After months of dealing with frigid temperatures and wet weather back east, I’m back at my parent’s home in San Diego ready to soak in some…what, San Diego’s in the midst of an unprecedented 6-day deluge of rain? Why did I bother coming home then? Oh right, family. I suppose my relatives are just as worth the cross-country trek as Southern California’s typical golden rays of Christmas-y sunshine. Okay, they’re totally worth the trip – even a trip including nasty airport meals and a few hours way too close to a screaming toddler. Oh, air travel.
There are a million things I love about coming home, but I have to say a disproportionate number of them are food-related – from my favorite SoCal restaurants to Mom’s home-cooking, San Diego is my food mecca. And that’s before you even throw in Mom’s palatial and well-stocked kitchen. So, naturally, I’ve been spending my days fiddling around in her kitchen, making innumerable messes as we alternate the roles of head chef and sous chef. Mom and I have similar taste buds and temperaments when it comes to cooking, so it all generally works well. Except, I’ve noticed the lady seems obsessed with the clock. I don’t know what she’s so worried about. People will certainly wait around until 10pm for dinner, right? Wait, what do you think you’re doing with that peanut butter and jelly? Mom? Come back!
Company’s Coming Carbonara (spaghetti, fettucine, linguine, whatever)
So last night I totally ruined dinner. Ok, maybe I didn’t ruin it completely, but the fact that dinner still tasted pretty good was more of a kitchen/recipe miracle than it was an indication that I still possess any culinary skills whatsoever.
I burned the bacon, I forgot to defrost the cheese well in advance so it kind of clumped together, the bacon grease popped up right as I was about to stir the sauce and almost blinded me, and that was after the hot pasta water had spilled on my hand, giving me a mighty burn that I tried to ignore because I didn’t want to ruin dinner. But after the whole bacon grease popping up and nearly blinding me thing, I was less compelled to ignore the pain in my hand. The beloved carnivore ran (literally) to CVS to get burn ointment, which I should probably keep in the kitchen anyway, and I kept stirring and stirring the pasta till he got back, we applied the ointment to my hand, and then we ate. He served the pasta, though, because I didn’t want to add “poisoning my fiance with accidental drops of burn ointment in his pasta” to my list of accomplishments that evening.
And dinner still tasted pretty good, although not nearly as good as the other times I’ve made this recipe – but the last time I made this recipe exactly this way, I forgot to take any pictures and by the time I realized that, the beloved carnivore, his best friend, and I had already finished the pot. Which should not indicate that this recipe only serves 3 people – it generously serves 6 to 8 people, but we were hungry. And boys eat a lot, dudes. A whole, whole lot.
This really is a great pasta recipe to bring out at dinner parties – it’s got just enough pizzazz to wow even that snooty foodie that every circle of friends has, but it’s simple enough that you can be a more relaxed, welcoming host. That is, unless you’re having such an unlucky, clutzy night in the kitchen that you spend a good portion of the evening flooding your eye with cool water.
emandam 