Chicken Alambre (p19 Food & Wine January 2012)

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.