The Joy of Cooking

I have a wonderful hubby who occasionally takes over the cooking duties. The other day he made three bon appetit recipes. He made:

- Grilled Chicken with Jerk Seasoning pg 340 - very good
- Green Beans with Citrus butter sauce pb 438 - good
- Butter milk corn bread pb 372 - fair

The grilled chicken is marinated in the jerk sauce and leaves a nice hit of Jamaica without being over powering or too spicy. The green beans were very good, but I believe the oil in the dish overpowered the citrus - I could hardly taste it. Lastly, the cornbread was good, but I always like mine with honey - so it was like dessert.


Sometimes I feel like I want to get away from the whole Bon Appetit idea. Just yesterday I made a dish I love best. I boiled pasta, the enriched kind, but not whole wheat, and while I was doing that, chopped up red bell pepper and garlic. I roasted these plus red pepper flakes in olive oil and added herbed goat cheese. Last, I put in fresh basil that I had cut into chiffonade. This over the pasta with kosher salt and pepper is a thing of beauty. I love this dish - it messes up two pans, but I feel very cozy while I eat it. I'm trying Bon Appetit to learn new things, but sometimes I love the easy, old recipes too.

Pricey

I've noticed that some things are getting pricey at the grocery store. I was shopping for ingredients for three recipes and just a few things stood out. I needed brussels sprouts and the only choice were pre-washed 8oz bags for $3.99. Then I checked sun dried tomatoes which were $5.99 a jar - I decided to stick with the dried tomatoes I had at home.

Today I cooked -

- Spiced wild and brown rice pilar with butternut squash and dried cranberries pg 234 very good
- Turkey Meatload with sun-dried tomatoes pg 363 - very good
- Lemon-glazed brussels sprouts - fair

I did the brussels sprouts at lunch and it was a super easy dish. I did have to trim the ends of my pricey, pre-bagged sprouts. Which made me consider starting a compost pile. I've wanted to do it for a while, but mistakenly hoped my father would start it. Anywho, I brought a box into the kitchen to start collecting all my scraps.


Later in the day I started the rice pilaf. I started cooking items too soon and had to turn off the burner while I was prepping other ingredients. A fun ingredient that was easy to include was a cinnamon stick -which started off dry and small and ended up large and pretty. The rice looked beautiful and I thought it seemed healthy.



Lastly, I whipped together the meatloaf, using french bread to make the bread crumbs. I had to answer and make phone calls while this was happening, so I'm lucky that it was assembled correctly. Here is a thing I've noticed about ground turkey. All my recipes call for 1.5 pounds, but in the store it is sold in 1lb units or 1.25 lb units. I had to add breakfast sausage to my lasagne to ensure I had enough sauce and tonight just used less meat. What's the deal here people?

Bring on the Veggies

Recently, I've reflected that I'm not eating enough vegetables. I've been eating less, but somehow I always turn to popcorn, peanut butter sandwiches, and chips...

So I made Summer Vegetable Stir-Fry with Couscous pg 262 - very good. It is full of beautiful veggies and does not take long to make.



Tonight I made Guacamole with Lime and Roasted Chiles, pg 56 - fair. It was full of fresh ingredients, but involved too many steps - roast chilies, wait, peel, chop, chop, squeeze, process, mix, etc. I think I'll look for something that involves one bowl.

Back to Business

Things have been busy lately - but last weekend Scott and I spent at the lake and I looked through the Bon Appetit book to get inspired to start cooking again. Tonight I made -

-Spicy chicken, eggplant, and red onion quesadillas (pg 87) Very Good
-Spicy black bean salsa (pg 62) Very Good

Both recipes were easy and were excellent. The salsa I used as a side dish since it is full of corn, avocado, red bell pepper, etc. It was like a cool salad as a side.

Most of BA's southwestern recipes include many of the same ingredients -
Adobo chilies, cilantro, lime... all good, but I'm surprised most of the recipes include different prep techniques for the same ingredients.

Cooking vs. Blogging Pleasure

I love cooking and am blogging about it mostly so I can look back and remember all the different dishes that I've done and the trials and challenges learning new dishes requires. Blogging in and of itself is not the biggest pleasure.

Therefore; I've done a lot of cooking and very little blogging.

In the last few weeks I've made the following Bon Appetit recipes:
- Sausage and Cheese Strata with Sun Dried Tomatoes (pg 28), Excellent
- Smoky Shrimp, Hominy, and Tortilla Soup (pg 94), Very good
- Grilled Shrimp, Corn, and Black Bean Tostada Salad (pg148), Good
- Spring Vegetable Paella (pg 250), Excellent
- Cowboy Steaks with Tomato-Lime Salsa (pg 270), Good
- REd Chili Onion Rings (pg 270), Poor and v. messy to make
- Chicken Normande (pg 352) fair, greasy and bland
- Coconut Layer Cake (pg 537) Very Good

I feel like I've been sticking to recipes I know I will like - I've cooked lots of beef and recipes I've done before. Not many people in the family like seafood, so I don't really go there. I want to try a few more chicken recipes this week and use some veggie recipes - which was part of the reason I bought the Bon Appetit book in the first place.

Find the Beer - Use the Beer

My mother came home one day with a beer bread recipe. The only problem is that my parents currently live in a dry county. This means no alcohol of any kind - wine, beer and certainly not liquer. We even went to a restaurant and tried to order an unopened beer, but no luck.

So my poor father had to go on a 42 mile round trip to the county line to come home with a 6-pack of Shiner Bock. www.shiner.com After a wonderful chili and beer bread dinner, I searched for Bon Appetit recipes that would use up some of the beer. I came across three that sounded great together.

- Barbecued Texas Beef Brisket pg 277
- Hot and Smoky Baked Beans pg 243
- and Santa Fe Potato Salad pg 156 (no beer here, but a good side dish)

Brisket is a tough portion of beef that must be cooked for a long period of time and comes with a whole side covered in fat if you get it untrimmed. It was easy to find in this state so finally I had no problem finding all these southwestern ingredients.

I cooked the brisket for over nine hours and it came out very well. The baked beans were very good - so good in fact my mother is trading in her "superbean" recipe she has used for 36 years. The Santa Fe potato salad was also good, but was not the taste of a normal potato salad. It had no mayonaise and had olive oil and cumin - so probably healthier. The whole dinner went together well and since most could be made ahead or in the case of the meat, cut at the last minute, I think I'll use the whole meal for a party or other get together sometime.

Dinner for the Boss

My mother and I were planning a dinner for her boss and his girlfriend. She had already told him I am a wonderful cook - so the pressure was on. I thought about doing a regular menu I've made before - soup, Caesar salad, lasagna, dessert - but those were not Bon Appetit recipes.

So I perused Bon Appetit and found similar recipes that would let me knock off three more recipes. I made, with help,

- Roasted Red Pepper and Eggplant Soup (pg 103
- Caesar Salad from Barefoot Contessa
- Sausage, Cheese and Basil Lasagna pg 213
- Green Beans with Roasted Onions pg 440
- Vanilla Pudding courtesy of Martha Stewart

On the whole, dinner was very good and I made almost all the dishes ahead of time which allowed us to enjoy the dinner conversation. The soup was a bit bland one day one, but has slowly improved. I think next time I need to more carefully measure and also use less eggplant, which is basically tasteless. Also, I think it was amazing how much soup was made since the recipe claimed it only made 8 first course servings - more like 20 I think.

The only other comment I have is that finding basil in the winter is like pulling teeth. I can hardly find any, though when I did find some plants, I bought several and have been growing them in the kitchen window. I should know better, but the rest of the menu was so ideal for a cold day.

As a centerpiece for dinner, I used a bowl full of lemons. Scott thought lemon bars would be a great way to use them up, so he made Double Lemon Bars on pg 700