I had the eggs, I had the Tamworth bacon, so when I saw this on page to on what to make for the super bowl, it all came together.  They ended up being pretty good, though I don't think they rendered off enough pork fat to add the bacony flavor to the yolk mixture.  They went over pretty well and I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Bacon Deviled Eggs (Blue Gate Farm Eggs and La Quercia Tamworth Country Cured Bacon)

Flat Omelet with Scallions and Pickles

I planed on making these Friday, but I didn't actually get home until a bit after 8:PM.  So it was a bit silly to make Shannon wait for me to get done with work, so I let her work, and by the time I got home, I was so hungry that I didn't want to wait to make this, so I just made my self a regular old sandwich.

Prosciutto, Apple, and Brie Monte Cristos (p11 Fine Cooking February / March 2012)

Stopped by The Cheese Shop of Des Moines on my way home one day, and with their fine recommendations came home with some thicker sliced (just slightly) La Quercia Tamworth Prosciutto and some Brie Belletoile 70%.  Both were very good and the creaminess of the Brie makes it a very good candidate to buy again for any number of reasons.  I also picked up half a loaf of La Mie ciabatta (the guy in front of me at the Cheese shop ordered a half to take home, so I got the other half).  So all combined together it made for quite the delicious sandwich, though I didn't actually follow the egg part of the recipe, since again, I was home late and didn't want to take the time.  Good combination of flavors none the less, maybe I'll make this again sometime.

Prosciutto, Apple and Brie Monte Cristos

Teriyaki Chicken with Starfruit (p18 Fine Cooking February / March 2012)

So my goal for the week was to use items on the stove top, but clearly I didn't read this recipe closely, cause it required the oven, lucky for me, Metro Appliance had come to replace the igniter in my oven.  The repairman (who, while he looked young, but clearly knew what he was doing) and I had a discussion on how it works and remains safe.  So basically the element heats up to a certain temperature, and once it gets to that temperate the gas gets released, and starts.  Seems like a fairly effective, yet cheap, safety method.  Anyways, I don't think I reduce the sauce enough, even with that it still turned out pretty well.  This was Shannon's first experience with starfruit.  I myself, haven't had it in a while.

Teriyaki Chicken with Starfruit

Thai-style Pineapple Fried Rice with Cashews (p52 Fine Cooking February / March 2012) Pineapple, Papaya, Starfruit and Blood Orange Salad (depending on availability, halved) (p53 Fine Cooking February / March 2012) Spicy Mexican Hot Chocolate (p82 Fine Cooking February / March 2012)

There was quite a bit of prep work involved in getting this meal ready to go and quite a bit of stuff left after the prep.  So the salad come together well and tasted good, though the leftover life wasn't long, as I think the mint started to turn pretty quick.  I was able, after prepping everything, of cooking it all at about the same time (rice done the night before, salad done before cooking, hot chocolate done after).  Because of the timing I had everything ready to go, and waited for Chris and Holly (and soon to be here baby) to actually show up, before I started cooking.  It was a special night and I didn't want to mess up (I have in times in the past), so I made sure everything was ready, before I went through.

So I cooked the fried rice and pork at the same time in separate pans on the stove.  It kept me pretty busy for the next 10 minutes or so, but it all worked out well.  And everyone seemed pleased.  The pork was based on the Shanghai dish from last week. and again turned out pretty well.  I was pretty happy with all the components.

After dinner I started to whip together the hot chocolate, and after skimming the recipe, I saw "bring to a boil" and I verbally stated, the hell I am.  I don't think chocolate ever wants to be that warm.  Anyways, using more gentle heat levels, all the parts got done and Shannon helped by making the whipped cream.

We watched the movie, we had a good meal, and made offers to help out where we could.  It was kind of crazy that we started doing this ~7 years ago.  Before dinners, before coupledom, before marriage, and now before baby.  Crazy...it doesn't seem that long.  We know we are going to take a hiatus while Chris and Holly make their final preparations to have their baby, and at least the first while after their baby boy arrives.

Thai-Style Pineapple Fried Rice with CashewsPineapple, Papaya, Starfruit and Blood Orange SaladSoy Sauce and Sherry Pork TenderloinSpicy Mexican Hot Chocolate

Yeasty Waffles

After getting out of the West Side Story at the Civic Center, we discussed what we wanted to do, and decided that we'd go to Zombie Burger instead.  Shockingly, at ~5:PM (still) there was a wait of an hour, so we got the quick service and headed home instead.  I was able to finally get the walking ched.  Good stuffs (though probably not good for you).  Waffles...they are moved to the next week.

There's just something about the magic that comes out of chorizo.  That red spicy juices just spreads over everything else making for a wonderful meal.  That is what happened here.  The Mexican style chorizo I used (tried a new one) just had flavor that permeated everything else.  Heating it all up, making it all taste good.  The chicken thighs clearly cut some of the fat out of it, which is perfectly fine.  Served with some simple additions and it made for great meals (even breakfast).

Keema Beef Curry (p44 Food & Wine January 2012)

So generally when I think of curry, I don't often think of beef.  Even though it's not the most accurate thing to associate curry with India, but I don't think it is uncommon to do so.  and because of that you end up with beef being a kind of forbidden item.  So when I thought about this, that is kind of what went through my mind.  First, I was having trouble finding Madras Curry Powder and I found some that sand that it would work in Madras Curry.  I found some paste first, but that's not what the recipe asked for.  The way that I read it, it should have a little heat to it (it didn't have much).  But with all that trouble, it ended up coming together pretty well, though as it seems always with curry, the house had that lingering smell afterwards.  Still a good recipe.

Keema Beef Curry

Chicken and Cheese Arepas (p41 Food & Wine January 2012)

So this ended up being fairly frustrating.  First frustration:  I ran out of plastic wrap.  I don't generally use a lot of plastic wrap, but this recipe wanted to use it to help form the arepas around the filling.  Being that the dough was...well kind of a pain with to work with, I made the call and thought that I could bake it.  After struggling to get it off of the cutting board it was finally on the baking sheet (on parchment paper), I figured it would be about the best I can do so I check the oven heat.  Second frustration:  The oven was still sitting at 100°, which is the minimum displayed temperature of my oven.  While I smelled no gas (which was good), I put my hand in the oven and felt no heat.  So I went down to get the fireplace matches (long sticked) and tried to see if I could light it (like maybe a pilot light went out? does my oven even have a pilot light?).  But apparently there is a gas shutoff somewhere as well, because there's nothing going on in there.  So no extra fire luck.  I tried to open the oven bottom and, though I admit I didn't try that hard, I failed to open it.  So I'm left with non-cooked dough, filled with cooked and edible ingredients.  So I check the broiler.  The broiler worked great.  So I move the shelves a bit away from the broiler and start to broil this thing that was meant to be fried.

It turned out ok.  The cooking was a bit uneven (some parts a bit over done, some a bit right), but considering at this point, I'm just totally guessing, not a bad job.

Shanghai Stir-Fried Pork with Cabbage (p69 Food & Wine January 2012)

So after Thursday's frustration, I get down to do a little stir fry.  I have everything prepped, I'm ready to go, because it's cook time is all high and I start to heat up the oil and I see a little fleck of something in the pan, so I want to get it out of the pan.  Thinking I don't want to eat that (whatever it is).  I have a damp paper towel in my hand and I go to just kind of wipe it off.  So first we get a little bit of splatter in from the water, so I backed up and let the pan tilt down a bit (I did get a spatter of hot oil next to my eye), and then...

Foom!

Oil's gone from the pan (luckily it wasn't much) and there was a small pillar of flame shoots up.

Flame burst over, I realized I had stepped back further and had stepped on Gracie's food bowl (and spilled a bit).  I turned the flame off, set the pan down, and cleaned up the kitchen.  I then heated up new oil (no flecks in the pan this time) and proceeded to make the dish.  I have to say the pork turned out very well.  A simple combination added so much more to the pork.  When we finished this off, I realized that we had quite a bit of cabbage this week (with no complaints). I was pretty happy over all with how this came out, even if I had a semi-rookie mistake.

Shanghai Stir-Fried Pork with Cabbage

Buttermilk Pancakes

Used the last of the buttermilk and made these very fluffy pancakes that had whipped egg whites combined in (to help with the rise), they were pretty good.

Home Fries (p13 Cook's Illustrated January & February 2012) (recipe halved) and Scrambled Eggs

I guess I had never really known what these were called.  I had always called them hash browns, knowing that they were not the shredded potato, but the cubed potatoes.  And these were very good.  Though a few of them ended up getting over cooked (my own fault), it is clearly something I'll make again, cause even though it was quite a bit of work, I love these things.

For example, I cook, I don't like printing (ink jet printing it to expensive, and my laser printer's cartridge is almost dead and is an $80 replacement and it's not great for the environment) so I often use my iPhone (previously iPod touch) to see the recipe, so it is sitting up in a special place on the fridge.  The problem is, that there is not a lot of space, so it's hard to see ingredients verses instructions.  The iPad, allows for a much larger display, thus making it easier to see and scroll through.  So it makes it much easier to reference while cooking and moving forward and back to make sure you are not missing something.

It makes it easy to have that extra part when watching TV (IMDB, finding that reference, song, etc).  And it's not that you couldn't do these on an often cheaper laptop, but it's that it fits in well in that user space.

I think the most telling about this that first weekend it was home, Shannon used it more then I did (she's using it right now).

Shannon and I often do play games (Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne) as well, which is quite fun (even though she's been beating me more often then not)

So lets get to the magazine.  So first off, I'd like to say that Bon Appétit, Fine Cooking, Cook's Illustrated (Country, Entertaining, etc) should take note (not that any of them actually read my stuff on a regular basis).  This is clearly a value add and I'm not going to comment on the price split and business practices of the magazines vs. Apple (cause that is not my business).  So the easy way to do this would be to just take a print sample of your magazine, put it as a PDF or other ePublishing format and then just put it up there.  Now this would clearly be easy to do, and would work for the most part, but it is clearly not taking advantage of the platform.  Since I already have a paper subscription to Food & Wine, I was able to enter a simple code and gain the magazines that were available to me.

After a downloading of a few issues, I skimmed through the one that I had just finished (January, cooking the issue this week).  The organization made sense.  The added multimedia experience was an actual add to experience, and not just a waste of time.  And frankly, even the ads were better (not that America's Test Kitchen will care).  I liked that I could see the page views and sort of skim through the magazine (like I was looking for the page).  I think the best thing was the way the actual recipe were organized.  With the ingredients to the left, and the instructions in the middle and a little moveable marker to tell you "I'm right here" in the recipe.  I didn't need directions or anything and it just worked.  So to American Express Publishing iOS development team, you have my kudos (and maybe you should update your resumes and hit up the other magazines / publishing houses).

With the second time around I guess I should admit that I halved the amount of chicken, but kept the same amount of the breadcrumb mixture.  So you end up with a much thicker coating of the breadcrumbs.  Second time around it was again, very good.

Chicken with a mustard-fennel crust

Cannellini Bean and Radicchio Salad with Tuna

This was pretty simple to put together and Loki got his first taste of tuna (he was pretty happy).  I didn't combine the greens with the beans and heat them up, but this ended up being pretty simple, and ok to eat.  A decent veggie option.

Pizza (spice Testing) (Lamb Sausage)

Yay!  I think I'm done here.  Sauce recipie coming shortly  Maybe one more test, to make sure that it works.

Grass Fed Beef burgers (the last in the freezer from Coyote Run Farms)

I admit...I got excessive.  Before the cost of the meat (bought at winter market) and cheese (left behind by Eric at game night), so just taking the cost of the bacon, lardo, and challah, we're talking $7 in (retail) food cost per burger.  So for the challah, I took the time to toast it in the oven, and while doing so, melted some of the Iberico de Bellota Lardo into the bread and then the cheeses one the bread.  So by layer, challah, Iberico de Bellota Lardo, we have some Clothbound Truckle from Milton Creamery, grass fed beef, Tamworth country cured bacon, not pictured: mixed baby greens and spicy mustard, a blue cheese which is small dairy produced but I am forgetting the name of, a bit more Iberico de Bellota Lardo, and challah.  Clearly not a healthy choice, but it was so, so good.  I think I felt my cholesterol drug just throw up it's hands and give up...

Perhaps a bit excessive burger

Spicy Meatballs with Fragrant Tomato Sauce

Sometimes you read a recipe and you wonder how, by combining one cup of bread crumbs (even compressed) and a pound of ground beef will make 30 inch to inch and a half meat balls.  I admit that most of mine were around the inch and a half mark but even so, there were no where near 30 meatballs.  Even so, served over rice, it made for a nice dinner for Shannon, Joseph and I.

Spicy Meatballs with Fragrant Tomato Sauce

Rigatoni with Spicy Tomato-Vodka Sauce

Quick, good, and a good weeknight meal (and it gave me an excuse to buy a bottle of vodka, which I had run out of).

This was...well...lazy.  As a recipe it didn't take the time to develop the flavors at all.  I saw simple modifications that could be done to, develop the chicken better, and to generally have better flavor over all.  To me it really sounds like someone put this together who doesn't actually like chili.  Anyways, it ended up being ok, but I have a feeling that it could have been a lot better (though if you add cheese and sour cream to most things, you'll end up liking it).

White Chili

Pasta Puttanesca

Nice, simple, made me realize how old the olives in my fridge were (they got tossed, luckily I bought another jar).  Being that it used olives and capers (both pretty salty) I imagine that this was something I should, in theory, avoid, but once in a while is ok, I would hope.  I reduced the capers to 1 teaspoon from 2 tablespoons, because I know that Shannon is not a fan (from my previous experience, it can be a background flavor, but if it gets to up front, it's not ok).  Olives have that same sort of thing, but really it was part of the dish, so you can't really remove one of the main focuses of the dish without leaning towards calling it something else.  I liked it, a little salty and olive flavors up front.  It made for a good, relatively quick dinner (though pitting the olives was kind of a pain).

Pasta Puttanesca

Cornmeal Blueberry Pancakes with Spiced Maple Butter

So I had originally planned to make these on Wednesday but delayed it till Thursday for the reason that I needed to use the food processor to make pizza dough.  So putting this together was pretty easy, as always, I ended up making eight inch (ish) pancakes in my 8" pans.  For them, I made some with blueberries and some without.  It came together very nicely.  Some extra flavor from the cornmeal, I liked the cinnamon and chili powder (I used cayenne pepper, since I'm not a huge fan of the chili powder I have (any chili powder that contains salt, gets a thumbs down from me)) added to the butter, that added some nice spice to the pancakes.  Good and quick.  You can make the butter, fridge it (no need to wrap unless you are worried about presentation of your butter (I just put mine in a bowl) and then while it solidifies back up, make the pancakes.

The one issue I made here is that I forget to check to see if I already had cornmeal in my cupboard...so now I have extra cornmeal.

Breakfast Burrito

I vaguely followed this recipe (mostly for the beans) and put together a meal in a pretty short amount of time.  It was ok.  I ended up eating the rest of the beans buy themselves as either snacks or breakfast.

Chicken with Mustard-Fennel Crust

This was probably the winner for the week.  The combination of a good crust, chicken thighs, fennel and Dijon mustard?  We both enjoyed this very much.  So much so, I'm going to make this again (to use the other 4 chicken thighs).  Again, very good.

Chicken with Mustard-Fennel Crust

Pizza (spice testing)

So I forgot to buy the peeled whole tomatoes, we went out, got some and came back.  Then I looked at my stash of tomato paste, and didn't have enough and wasn't going to take a second trip to get it either, I did play with the spice levels a bit, but don't consider it a valid test since it wasn't the tomatoes I've been using, nor enough tomato paste.  That being said...I guess this'll go again next week.

Whoopie Pies with Mint Filling and Chocolate Ganache

So for game night I made these (Ok I made the cookies, and Ganache and Joseph made and piped the mint filling), they were pretty good:

Whoopie Pies with mint filling and Chocolate Ganache

So I didn't add the suggested green food coloring (why would you add food coloring when it doesn't have a purpose?).  I do love the smell that the peppermint extract had when Joseph added it (from AllSpice).

Had Joseph start this off, as I ran off to the grocery store and then finished it over time.  This was more of a clean out the fridge type of dish.  A little of this, a little of that.  As I remember it has:  Carrots, celery, leeks, onions, garlic, a red pepper, chicken and the butter and flour to make dumplings.  I turned out pretty well and I was able to check off the chicken and dumpling soup that Shannon wants.  Another great use of an older hen.

Chicken Soup with Dumplings

Pepperoni Pizza (playing with spice levels)

GAH!  I am tempted to try another thing of oregano, cause this is frustrating.  I'll try again this week.

Turkish Carrots and Lentils and Herbs

Shannon wasn't the biggest fan.  I thought it was kinda of bright.  I may have added a bit to much lemon juice.  We both agreed that it'd be better with chicken in it (though that would defeat the purpose of having a vegetarian dish).  I also love dill, which is the  top of it.

Turkish Carrots and Lentils and Herbs

Chicken Tinga Tacos (p158 Food & Wine December 2011)

The first comment I have to make is that the Cotija is a surprisingly salty.  Which added quite a bit saltiness to it.  However, this still tasted pretty good.  I changed the recipe because I thought it was a bit silly to use a non-stick pan, when you are going to sort of deglaze the pan later.  I added another chipotle pepper and it had a nice mild bite, but wasn't overwhelming.  Good meal, though perhaps a bit to time consuming for a weeknight meal.

Chicken Tinga Tacos

Moravian Chicken Pie (p21 Cook's Country December 2011 / January 2012)

This was dreadfully time consuming.  I started around 3:30 PM and we didn't eat until much later.  Though a good chunk of  of that is wait time (bake high temp, bake lower temp, then cooling).  Even with that, it was a very simple recipe, with very simple and straight forward flavors.  Joseph also helped a bit on this one.  While I was making gravy / sauce for the chicken he deboned it.  Was it worth the time?  I'm still debating that, but as a pie with actual crust, my lack of trying that my come to  an end.

Moravian Chicken Pie

For a small bonus this week I went all out and stopped by 2 stores to make some burger deliciousness.  Yom combine some good bread, some corse ground beef (George's Grind), Prairie Breeze cheese and added on top some heaven on a plate La Quercia Tamworth Country Cured Bacon.  *drool*

George's Grind burgers, Prairie Breeze Cheese and La Quercia Tamworth Country Cured Bacon

Moved to next week, forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer in time.

Norwegian Meatballs (p32 Food and Wine December 2011) 

There is something a bit unbalanced about this.  Savory?  Sure. Good?  kinda.  but it was missing something.  Being, by far and away, the most expensive dinner of the week, it should've been better.  Now to think about it, if you are thinking of what would be available in the winter and would they have some fruit?  Not really.  But there was something acidic that was missing from this.  On the leftovers, I added a bit of Frank's Red Hot and it brightened it up quite a bit.  Now clearly that's not Nordic in the slightest, but I'm sure there is something more northern European that can be done.  I also should've stuck with CJ at The Cheese Shop's advice and used the cheese I bought there instead of the gjetost.  Oh well.

Norwegian Meatballs

Chicken Burgers with Red Cabbage Slaw

This was a pretty nice combination of flavors.  Spiced nice, and a good balance.  It was not to bad to put together.  And the next night, when I headed off to caucus and Shannon stayed home, and I was able to cook it up for her a second time on Tuesday in the tiny amount of time that I had between leaving late from work and when I was supposed to be at the caucus.  It was a good night at the caucus.  I am going to get a bit more involved this time around.

Chicken Burgers with Red Cabbage Slaw

Sausage Pizza (hopefully final test of sauce)

So, clearly not the final test.  Either I added to much oregano or to little red pepper flakes.  I think it was a bit of the former.  So I adjusted down the red pepper flakes because it was a bit too spicy.  I want it to have a bit of a bite, but not so much that it becomes the only thing you can taste.  I think because of the oregano that I added, it left it with that taste.  On the bright side, the sauce thickness is what I want.  So now I am just bickering over spice levels, which is certainly part of the final stages.  So the issue here is that it was an overwhelmingly oregano taste.  We'll see how it goes.

Sausage Pizza

A combination of meat, peppers, guacamole, a bit of cheese and chips.  This wasn't exactly a healthy meal, but it was pretty good and certainly quick after a late shopping trip.

Sloppy Sammys

Quick, random and delicious.

Chicken Salad melts (I have to work this night)

So I picked up a rotisserie chicken and then make a salad, because I had gotten home from work later then I expected, and had to go back to work not to much later, so they just turned into chicken salad sandwiches.

Meat Loaf

So this was a combination of a pound of beef, 3/4th a pound of Graziano Sausage, and half a pound of ground turkey.  Along with some bread, milk, celery, and green peppers.  I did forget to add an egg or two to help with the binding, but it still turned out pretty well.  I was thinking about added a hot pepper of some kind and some shitake mushrooms, but after I had all the veggies in there, it started to look like there was a bit to much and it'd make the loaf too crumbly.

Bacon Covered Meat Loaf

Meat Loaf Pizza (why not?)

You already have a nice flavor built up and you put slices of that on a pizza, it seems like it works.  I think it would've been better if I made the loaf a bit firmer I could've sliced up cleaner pieces to put on.  It's a nice concept though.  Perhaps to make a mustard sauce to go over it, as well.  I did add some spicy brown mustard to a couple of my pieces and it turned out pretty well.  So the pizza sauce I think I finally have it, and I'm going to try it one more time to make sure that it works out a second time.  I got to thinking, and part of the reason why could be the tomatoes that I'm using (switching from Muir Glen to local store brand (cost over taste)) and the amount of liquid in the whole tomatoes compared to the Muir Glen...so perhaps this recipe would only qualify for a certain type of tomatoes, based on the liquid content.  Kind of makes me want to be able to test that (get all sciencey up in here) but I'm pretty sure I don't have the tools and don't really want to buy them either.

Meat Loaf Pizza

New Years

So for New Year's we spent it over at Holly's sister's.  I had my first, and probably last, paraffin hand wax treatment.  It was interesting.  My big hairy hands, couldn't get all covered and when I peeled the wax off, it took some of my hair with it, not a ton, but certainly enough to make it less then desirable.  I brought over a loaf of chocolate short bread/cake and a few cheeses (Fromager D'Affinos (a new delicious treat), Mt Tam (one of my favorites), Prarie Breeze (Iowa made cheddar style deliciousness)) from The Cheese Shop of Des Moines and a bit of Cabecero Lomo Iberico De Bellota (which was crazy delicious).  I drank from a bottle of Cedar Ridge Iowa Bourbon Whiskey, and share a bit with Chris and another guest.  Later in the night Steph (one of the hosts) made me the best white Russian I've ever had.

New years day, Shannon and I took my bother Joseph to lunch at Tartine and to see a movie.  After he went home, I proceeded to make a very expensive sandwiches (smoked turkey, arugula and a mixture of the Mt Tam and Fromager D'Affinos on a La Mie ciabatta).