It went pretty well out of The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition. Simple, clear, and concise directions that make the whole thing pretty easy to do..
Curried Egg Salad (p 122)
This was really good, simple and easy to make, we had them on the South Union ciabatta buns for quite a bit of combined flavors. I bought a new curry powder, that is quite fragrant and spicier then the curry powder/paste that I made last week.
Quick Turkey Burgers (p 381)
These didn't turn out as well as I thought it would. The problem was that It wanted me to use 1.25 pounds of ground turkey, and I didn't reduce the rest of the recipe to match the only a pound of ground turkey that I used...so it was fairly crumbly. The taste was good though.
Creamy Sweet Pea Soup (p 47)
This was very simple and bright in flavors and a very bright green in color. It really accentuated the peas with slight back flavor of cream.
Orecchiette with Broccoli, Sausage and Roasted Peppers (p 266)
I used less broccoli and more sausage and cheese then this asked for. I liked it. The one thing about it, that I had never really seen before, since I really hadn't paid much attention to the cooking of broccoli before is how it magically changes color. I watched it, through the lid, steam. And it just hit this magically point where it went from the dull green color to this magical bright color...that signifies it's done. It was interesting to watch.
Broiled Chicken Thighs with Spicy Jamaican Jerk Dipping Sauce (p 327)
This was good, and simple. cover pan, put chicken thighs on pan, cook, turn over, cook more, move up closer to the broiler, get a nice crust on the skin side (left it a bit to long, some got a bit of a char). Done! I did modify the sauce and added tomato paste and pureed it as well. It came out as a sort of spicy ketchup.
Hummus (p 13) (For game night)
Again...going to the point that this is easy as hell to make. Rinse, rinse, add, add, processor to a creamy goodness. Spice it up...taste...spice it up...taste. The thing I learned here is that with the cayenne pepper...and probably the other spices, when it sits together it kind of grows in spice. So instead of the forward taste of chickpeas, followed by the bright taste of the lemon juice and then a bit of a kick with the cayenne pepper, it was more of a smack in the face with the cayenne pepper and the more that you ate, the more the cayenne pepper took over and just dominated the whole flavor profile.
So...less cayenne pepper.
Pâté de Campagne (Country Pâté)
I'm running a bit behind in my magazines (Just started with February issues), so I read this article about pâté and the description buy the author, Molly Wizenberg, in the January issue of Bon Appetit, made me really want to try it. The way that she described is kind of like the way that I heard wine described. Once you find one that you like, you can expand your tastes from there. Getting over that sort of wtf is this, to the holy bajesus this was good. I was worried though. It's not something I've ever made, it seems extra snooty, a the thought of it was just kind of wierd. But the list of ingredients, pork, bacon, ham, how could it be bad? So I put out feelers to see if people would at least try it....Proctor sounded very enthusiastic others said they would try it...so I moved forward.
I understand that this is the country version, so it's not like smooth paste type of pâté that I had read about in the December issue of Bon Appetit, but this was really good.
When I got home from work on Friday I made the hummus, and started on the pâté. I sealed it up, put away, quickly made dinner and came back to it later. And because I did this I messed a few things up...so I had it all layered and packed together in the loaf pan and thought, "Crap...I forgot the eggs" So I unpacked everything, added the eggs to the meat and then repacked and layered everything.
It cooked a long time (2.25 hours) and I pulled it out of the oven around midnight, and put it in the fridge....A bit before the party started, I took it out...warmed it up a bit in hot water, and then got it out of the pan. It came out with this load of congealed combined pork and bacon fat. Which I proceeded to wipe off and I ended up with this beautiful loaf lined with bacon. Presentation alone it was very appealing.. With the bacon alternated colors...just a thing to behold.
I cut off a few slices and stuck them with my other GF stash for Courtney and tried a slice for myself. It was quite good, no weird odd flavors, just a wonderful combination...and on bread with the Dijon mustard...freaking fantastic.
It went over really well at game night too...I was very happy.