It’s been a busy spring. So busy that I’ve fallen behind in my Recipe Experiments. But there’s one thing I never fall behind on:
Glee.
Yes, it’s true. I’m a Gleek. A huge one, too. But I’m not alone. There’s many of us. We are legion. We are loyal. And we love to throw Glee parties and drink mojito slushies. In fact, we had one such occasion this past Tuesday at the house of my fabulous friends, Brian and Rita. We had a potluck dinner, complete with chicken marbella (delicious), quinoa (delicious), homemade bread (delicious), a corn-feta salsa (supremely delicious), more potato and corn chips than is probably healthy, homemade wine, the mojitos (of course) and these zucchini sticks.
Chase signed up to be the taster for this particular recipe experiment and he approves. I’m in fact going to order a stamp that says “Chase Approves” and use it accordingly. Seriously. Well maybe not seriously. But maybe seriously. How much do stamps cost anyway?
This was a Parmesan zucchini recipe that I found originally on Cooking Light and then adapted a bit. It makes a good appetizer, crunchy, delicious, and in there underneath the awesomeness and the bread crumbs is a vegetable. So that counts towards your daily 5. Just FYI. And these are in fact so easy that I just prepared the parts of the recipe at home, brought it all to Brian’s and then assembled and baked them there. About 5 minutes of prep, 20 minutes of baking and that’s all there is to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Imagine a scenario, if you will, in which you need to feed a few people. Like, oh, I don’t know, 5000 people or so. On a beach. Near Bethsaida. And like, these people are really hungry, right, because it’s late and this is way back a couple thousand years before the invention of segways and nobody wants to walk back to town on an empty stomach. And it’s okay, because you’ve got the food to feed these people, you’ve got…five loaves of bread and two fish. It’s like an embarrassment of…what? You don’t think it’s enough? Dude, it’ll be totally fine, just add one more thing to this meal and the people will be sated. All you need is…
no, not love. This is a recipe post, not a Beatles soundtrack. All you need is this roasted red pepper and cannellini bean dip—and the people will rejoice. Read the rest of this entry »
I'm all thumbs today
You know what you shouldn’t do when baking something, especially for the first time? Read the line in the recipe that says to place the cookie dough on “buttered or cooking parchment- lined 12- by 15-inch baking sheets” and think, “Well, I hate to butter a pan, I’ll use baking spray instead.”
This is really dumb for two reasons. One, cooking spray ≠ butter ≠ parchment paper. Two, if there’s a half pound of butter in your cookie dough, you probably don’t need even to butter the baking sheet at all. But hey, let’s say you haven’t eaten much that day and you just have an absolutely Stupid Moment and think it’s a good idea to apply baking spray to a cookie sheet before laying your nicely molded cookies on it. Let’s say this moment continues for about 20 minutes and culminates in you scratching your head as you see that your cookies have spread out to the point that they’re practically deformed and in no way resemble the cute little round “thumbprints” you intended. Then, minutes later (how many minutes, I won’t say), the light bulb in your head suddenly goes off in an epiphany of knowledge, fireworks boom, morning dawns and the nine choirs of angels belt out in heavenly voice: why the hell did I do that? I know better. What was I thinking? Duh.
And then you make a second batch of cookies. A week later. Because you were too tired/annoyed at yourself to make another batch of them that night. Read the rest of this entry »
This post is brought to you by the letters “Y,” “U,” “M,” “M,” and “Y.” And the number 3. Let’s use those in a sentence. “This meal is 3 kinds of yummy.“ Good!
This may actually be my favorite of the experiments so far. Granted, there have only been 5–so far—but this is still one of my top ones. My fabulous cousin Carmen picked this Puerto Rican chicken and rice stew to try out; I made it as dinner for Josh and myself tonight and bundled up a bunch to take her for lunch. This dish is not only tasty, it’s informative. It’s taught me at least 3 yummy things.
1. There’s such a thing as “annatto oil,” which is made by infusing oil with achiote seeds . It’s used to flavor and color foods in South American cooking. I didn’t actually use it here. I used olive oil. But good to know it’s possible. Read the rest of this entry »
It's peanut butter chocolate time!
I don’t know what to tell you about this particular experiment except for two things:
- I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this a long time ago
- Because of this experiment, I found and bought and now have 100 reeeeeeally tiny cupcake wrappers. Like, “Honey I Shrunk the Cupcake Liners.” And, like all miniature versions of things, they are adorable.
In addition to the tiny cupcake liners, I used a few regular sized ones to make some giant peanut butter cups. It’s like a game of Big Cup, Little Cup.
I really like making my own candy. I pretend that I am Willy Wonka and my house is a factory and my dog is an Oompa Loompa. Given a little time, I may in fact convince Josh to build me a river of chocolate. I shall call it “Bob.” I always keep chocolate in the house, for snacking, for cocoa, for baking, for scrubbing my skin. In fact, I bought five pounds of chocolate chips at By the Pound this weekend and Josh said, “That’s quite a bit of chocolate,” as if my procurement was odd, unnatural or unnecessary. You can never have too much chocolate. In fact, when I die, you all might as well just slice me open; there’s a 35.8% chance I’m made of hot chocolate. Read the rest of this entry »
I bet Charlie Brown would like this
I always liked Peppermint Patty, maybe because she was a tomboy and I was a tomboy. However, I never liked peppermint patties, because they were made of mint and I did not like the “curiously strong” flavor of mint. This would later be amended to allow for the presence of mint in mojitos which is, I declare, the greatest of all mixed drinks.
I think some affinities–and aversions– for certain foods is genetic. Like cilantro. Some people love cilantro. Some people may have a gene that makes them think that cilantro tastes like soap. Apparently mint is not one of those foods, though. My parents love chocolate mints. I do not. When I was a kid, we used to go to the dime store (it had a real name, but damned if I remember what it was. I’m not sure I ever knew—we always just called it the “dime store”) or Krogers and my mom used to buy herself an occasional treat at the checkout counter and it was usually a York peppermint patty. My dad did it, too. They always offered me a bite and I always turned it down. I don’t believe that mint should go into chocolate. Mint should go into Cuban alcoholic beverages. Or toothpaste. Or you can chew fresh mint leaves like my grandmother does for a quick fresher-upper after dinner. But not into chocolate. You know what should go into chocolate? Nothing. It’s already perfect. That was a trick question. Read the rest of this entry »
so this cranberry walks into a bar...
Or alternatively titled, “Get Shortbread.”
The second recipe I decided to try for my Great Recipe Experiment was for the Joy of Baking’s cranberry shortbread bars. Carrie and Sophia both said they’d be willing to sample these for me. I actually would have made them early last week but for the life of me, I could not find a single, Godforsaken bag of cranberries anywhere. Well, not frozen anyway and certainly not fresh (ha!). And for this recipe, dried just certainly wouldn’t work. Finally I had to resort to a Whole Foods visit–and indeed, they did have a few ten ounce bags of the frozen little fall berries.
I have a particular affinity for cranberry. Not to eat, actually, and not because I’m fond of the taste (though I am, in juice, anyway) or the high level of antioxidants or the fairly ravishing color or any of those things. No, my fondness for cranberries is entirely because of my grandmother.
My grandmother is just supremely awesome in ways that I can’t even express without going into a dozen different stories will titillate and awe you. One of these days, I’ll go into more detail, perhaps when I post her recipe for cherry cordial (made with whiskey and thinned out with…more whiskey), homemade “cough syrup” (made with whiskey and…thinned out with more whiskey), and our familial favorite vanilla poundcake (oddly, lacking in whiskey). But what’s pertinent to this story is cranberries. And I like cranberries because they made my grandmother Portuguese. Read the rest of this entry »
677. Six hundred and seventy seven.
A year in the 7th century? Yes, it was. The number of a Boy Scout troop in Washington? Probably. The number of hours that equal 40,620 minutes? According to my desktop converter widget, yes. It is also the number of recipes in my Evernote recipe notebook. Or at least, it was a couple weeks ago…I’ve since added a few more. 13 more. At that rate I’m going, I’ll be at magic number 700 before you read this blog post.
That’s a lot of recipes. It doesn’t even include any of the recipes in any of the (46) cookbooks I have. And I love it because I get an unholy amount of glee from finding, collection, reading and researching recipes. However, it occurred to me that this is absolutely useless unless I actually try out some of them. Sure, I make plenty…I mean, that’s evidenced in this blog already. But I’ve barely scraped the surface of the glorious world of food stored away in my digital notebooks.
I wanted to do something about that. But knowing me and my propensity for utter laziness, I knew I’d need some pressure. So I posted on Facebook for volunteers to sign up to taste test some recipes and my friends, delightful fans of free food that they are, obliged me. Thus the Great Recipe Experiment was born. Read the rest of this entry »
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