Published by mel on November 12, 2008 in entree, recipe and sides & bites.
Some people are born to bake. They know how to follow instructions, can measure quantities with surprising accuracy and are patient enough to do things like let dough rise or bring ingredients to room temperature. Others are a bit more implusive, too impatient to wait for their ingredients (but I want cookies now!), too rebellious to follow a recipe’s instructions, tweaking and changing things as they see fit. These people may turn out some good cookies and cakes, but they’ll never be bakers at heart.
I think I fall into the latter category, and so my attempts and cookies and muffins are never as successful as attempts at soups, mains and sides. Whenever I’m baking, I feel like I’m throwing everything into a bowl and crossing my fingers. I can’t taste and adjust, add a little more of some ingredient, try different accompaniments. I’m coming to terms with it. I’ll never be a baker at heart.
Tangent over, now back to regularly scheduled programming…Thanksgiving. I mentioned on Monday that I’m using this week to test out some new Thanksgiving recipes. The first was a rousing, raging success: Carrot Pumpkin Soup with crushed hazelnuts. (Thanks again to Oh! Nuts for those hazelnuts! They’re so very delicious!)
I had some ground rules for this soup recipe. Since it’s just me and my mom cooking for a large crowd, it had to be somewhat simple. No simmering for hours, straining, simmering or making a roux. There will be enough of that with all of the other Thanksgiving dishes. This soup is super simple — a quick saute of shallots, carrots and garlic, then add some canned (or pureed) pumpkin and stock and simmer for awhile. Run it through with an immersion blender, then stir in some cream, smoked paprika and sherry vinegar. Top it all off with a good drizzle of olive oil and some crushed hazelnut and you’ve got a bright orange, smoky sweet soup that’s perfect for a Thanksgiving first course.
Continue reading ‘Thanksgiving Test Recipe: Carrot Pumpkin Soup’
Published by mel on May 14, 2008 in entree, recipe and sides & bites.
I love summer rolls for a number of reasons.
1. They’re pretty
2. They’re hand-held
3. You can dip them in sauce
4. They’re healthy
5. They are super tasty
I don’t like summer rolls for a few reasons.
1. They’re a pain to wrap
2. The rice paper is delicate as all hell and a pain to wrap
3. Man, are they ever a pain to wrap
I’ve always loved summer rolls. I just never got why they were so expensive. Five or Six dollars for some vegetables wrapped in rice paper? Why? I finally found some rice paper wraps at Whole Foods and thought I’d give them a go. How hard could they be?
Turns out, they’re not so easy. The five or six bucks is for labor, not ingredients. You have to dip the rice paper in warm water to soften it up. You can’t do more than one at a time or they’ll stick together (at least in my experience). And you have to be careful wrapping the little suckers or they’ll break and you’ll have to start all over again.
But they are tasty. Very tasty. Like a hand-held salad you dip in dressing. Maybe I just have to get the hang of it. Maybe, like dumplings, they just take practice. I’m sure I will try and try again until I get them right (I still have like 50 rice paper wraps in the pantry). Next time, I’ll also throw some shrimp in there. I think they need it. Everything is better with shrimp.
Continue reading ’summer rolls w/ spicy peanut & sesame basil dipping sauces’
Published by mel on February 7, 2008 in entree and recipe.
Last weekend I did something I’ve never done before. Something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile, but have been too intimidated to take on. I roasted a chicken. A whole chicken. And guess what? It was really easy! It took me about 10 minutes to prepare it and toss it in a pan with potatoes, yellow carrots and garlic cloves. Then it was into the oven for a while and out came a whole dinner. All I had to do was wait around, peek inside the oven from time to time, and then dig in.
I’ve had many a roasted chicken from take-out places, the grocery store and Whole Foods, but I’d never tasted one with such juicy meat and crispy skin. Obviously, I’d never had such a fresh-from-the-oven treat. It’s true that it wasn’t quite as tasty the next day when the meat had dried up and the skin had turned into the unappetizingly brown soggyness you get at the store (the kind you should definitely peel off and throw away). The roasted vegetables were also pretty delicious. The potatoes were browned and toasted and the carrots had caramelized nicely in the bottom of the pan.
A roast chicken definitely should be eaten moments after it’s taken out of the oven, but the leftover meat is good for tacos, chicken salad, soups, etc. I don’t recommend eating the leftover skin.
Continue reading ‘Roast Chicken w/fingerlings & carrots’
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