52 Recipes in 52 Weeks

Sunday Night Dinners (#s 7 & 8)

2011-04-22T00:35:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my pattern of delayed postings, a couple of past Sunday night dinners from Gourmet Today: More than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen.

#7 was Braised Short Ribs with Dijon Mustard. Perfect for a Sunday night, brown the short ribs and let them braise in the pot while you drink cocktails or, in my case, do all the laundry you put off doing all weekend. If you're Hercules, you monitor the braising process very carefully:

The only reason he was not monitoring from his usual position beneath the stove was that I was not in the kitchen during said braising. The recipe was definitely hassle free and you can even make a large part of it ahead of time, so if you are an obsessive entertainer there is plenty of time to take care of all the final dinner details. A couple photos:

Before (in process):

... and after (Fun fact: I hate cooked tomatoes unless they are made into pasta sauce)

My only gripe about this recipe was the operator error - I know braising means "cook forever in liquid," yet I still seemed to gloss over exactly how long it would take and ended up eating at 10 pm. If I had gotten my act together and started the process earlier, I would have been much happier.

#8 was South Indian Shrimp Curry. Easy, quick, and good for a weeknight meal. I think peeling the ginger was the step that took the longest, which wasn't so bad. The downside: My house smelled like curry for 2 days. The upside: Yummy leftovers! I didn't get pictures of this one, but I think we've all seen curry by this point and the end result wasn't exactly food porn.

Based upon these two recipes, I'm making the determination that this cookbook is a keeper. There were several others that I wanted to try, but I just didn't have the extra time that week. It is a full service cookbook (as are the other Gourmet cookbooks I have) with everything from drinks to desserts, and lots of good tips throughout. As a unabashed food porn addict, I will admit that the cookbook is no substitute for the lovely photos that used to grace Gourmet magazine (and which are included in my OCD recipe file). iPhone photos are no comparison, but they will have to do here!

Best Intentions, Gone Wrong! (#s 4-6)

2011-04-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

I've got some catching up to do here - an update on some recipes from a couple of weeks ago. The theme of this post is "things I intended to make for others." All recipes came from The Essential New York Times Cookbook, which showed up on my porch the week before - as if to mock my lack of progress.

First up, the Roasted Potato Salad which I intended to bring to wine... err... book club - the evening's theme being comfort food and all. The recipe proudly declares 1989 as the year of the Potato Renaissance. Although potatoes are one component of my Food Trinity (the others being bacon and cheese), I seem to remember 1989 for other reasons (Tianamen Square, a trip to Japan, the Loma Prieta earthquake during the World Series). I'll agree to disagree with the NYT writers on this one. I stayed up really late one night making this for the following evening and appreciated its simple preparation: roasted potatoes (duh!), red wine vinegar, whole grain mustard, garlic, chives, rosemary. It looked and smelled fantastic before I added the chives and I was tempted to skip them because it was midnight and I didn't feel like chopping a batch of m&*%$f&^% chives, but I was glad they did. They gave the dish a good flavor and also made it pop visually. The red wine vinegar gave it a nice flavor.

Sadly, this dish is incongruent with the war on carbs. Since I couldn't make it to book club, a large portion of it sat in my refrigerator, mocking me, for several days.

Next, Broiled Halibut with Miso Glaze and Edamame with Nori Salt. You won't see photos of either because they were incredibly visually unappealing. I had planned to make it for a friend but got stuck at work and had to cancel. Since fish doesn't exactly keep in the fridge, this turned into another late night cooking session for one. One of the lessons I will learn these days is to read the whole recipe ahead of time - I read the recipe for the main dish, but not for the edamame (which was a recommended side). As a result, there I was at 10 pm passing nori (quickly!) over the gas burner on my stove and hunting through the kitchen cabinets for my long-dormant coffee grinder to grind toasted nori into powder. Strike 1. Strike 2 was the recipe's admonition that you may need to mix more nori than you think you need to with the salt. The end result was edamame that was covered with what looked like soot. It was tasty, but the marginal utility of spending the time toasting and grinding the nori was nil compared to just sprinkling the edamame with sea salt. I might revisit this if I could find premade nori powder.

The halibut recipe was my original pick - well, actually, I was debating between this and another fish dish, but the hot guy I asked said this sounded better than the other. Preparation was easy enough, but it didn't look particularly exciting when I popped it out of the oven. It tasted fine, but I have made halibut in other configurations that I liked much better. I probably wouldn't bother making it again. And clearly the usefulness of hot guys is negative when it comes to recipe choices (Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain excluded).

So, NYT, I'm iffy on your cookbook. I will have to try some more recipes to see if it's worth keeping, but for the time being I am moving on.

#3 - I'm seriously lagging

2011-02-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

So somehow, I thought this was recipe #4, but when I went back to the blog I have only posted 2 new recipes so far. *Sigh* Only 2 months in to the new year and I am lagging, but that's why this is 52 recipes in 52 weeks and not a new recipe every new week.

Larry has been all over me for the last couple of weeks for my neglect in posting this, so hopefully this will make him happy. In my defense, I got really sick and then had to travel for a couple of weeks, so this one slipped through the window. Anyway, Larry brought one of his many friends named Michael for dinner a few weeks ago. I made Ina Garten's Baked Shrimp Scampi for dinner from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients. Michael brought a bottle of bubbly which distracted me from taking a picture of the finished product, so you'll have to make do with a picture of the cover of the cookbook.

We had a lovely evening toasting life, love, and our independence. The herbs and lemon came from my garden, giving it a little local Long Beach flair. The recipe is a great one for entertaining because you can make most of it ahead and pop it into the oven while you are enjoying cocktails & hors d'oeuvres. If you're a garlic lover, extra garlic is key -- I put in a couple of extra cloves, but could have done with a couple more.

If you're really a garlic lover, carb lover, or both, you should by all means make some garlic bread to go along -- although this would also go well with a linguine tossed in olive oil & garlic. My tried and true garlic bread method is to use the brown & serve rolls, cut in half. Mince a couple of heads of garlic, melt some butter (unsalted preferred) in a small skillet, and then toss the garlic in for 30 seconds to a minute until it softens up. Dip the halved rolls in the butter & garlic mixture and put them butter & garlic side up on a cookie sheet and bake according to instructions. If you want a little cheese on top, by all means add some asiago or parmesan. Your call. And use fresh garlic, the minced stuff in a jar doesn't do it justice.

Share your recipes/ideas!

2011-01-18T18:56:00.000-08:00

Last night, my friend Steph posted a recipe on my Facebook wall. It looks amazing and I really want to try it. And Joan had the excellent idea that we should exchange some cookbooks and try different recipes.

Do you have a favorite recipe to share with me? Cookbooks you love and that I should put on my wish list for that future date when I will have run through my stash?

Share them in the comments section on this thread!

#2 - Shroom OD

2011-01-17T22:34:00.000-08:00

So Sunday night Joan and I had a Golden Globes viewing party. We started with some bubbly and baked brie with fig & ginger jam. Normally this is where I would take a photo of the glorious brie wheel and tag my cousin Becky, but there were no survivors (and I forgot to do it ahead of time).

I made Jacques' Savory Stuffed Roast Chicken from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. Not a new recipe, but this has been my tried and true favorite way to roast a chicken for a few years now. Stuffing the shallot and herb mixture under the skin makes the chicken so incredibly tasty! Since I discovered that recipe, I've not been able to resist stuffing something under the skin of the chicken whenever I roast one.

This meal would not count without a new recipe, so to accompany the chicken I made Asparagus with Morels from Barbara Kafka's Vegetable Love. It sounded amazing, but truth be told the morels were overpowering and I felt like I had way more liquid than I needed. I would definitely try this again, but would probably cut the morels in half, and maybe the liquid too. The morels should probably be smaller too, as the texture just didn't jive well with the asparagus. I really wanted to love this recipe because I love her soup cookbook, love asparagus & mushrooms, but it just didn't translate well for me.

Something else that evidently didn't translate well - Ricky Gervais' hosting job on the GGs. Heard a lot of criticism today, but he did a great job of sticking it to the celebrities who are used to having their egos stroked. On a day like today, when we should be remembering the legacy of Dr. King, the criticism seems overblown. Yes, some of his jokes crossed the line, but we still have much larger battles to fight than the hurt feelings of a few celebrities. So many injustices left to correct here in America and throughout the world, and in the words of Dr. King:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

#1 - And so it begins...

2011-01-15T19:33:00.000-08:00

The idea for this blog came out of a jumble of things... a significant life change, a love of cooking, an overabundance of cookbooks and random recipes, and of course Julie and Julia.

I recently transitioned from cooking for two to cooking for one, and as a result I've found myself eating some really dull stuff because it's easy to prepare (or pick up). Turkey burgers, grilled chicken breasts, take-out, blah. Over the years, I also have accumulated -- in technical terms -- a crapload of cookbooks and recipes.

Today I relentlessly pruned my cookbook stash and made a deal with myself that for each cookbook retained, I would need to commit to cooking at least one recipe this year or it would wind up in the Goodwill pile next year. I also have a bajillion recipes cut out of various food magazines, and many of them have yet to be tried. I don't have the intestinal fortitude to commit myself to one cookbook for an entire year a la Julie, and my crazy collection of cookbooks have many, many recipes that I'm really not up for attempting. I've also seen a few blog posts about committing to reading 52 books in 52 weeks, but frankly, that seems like too much commitment for this point in my life.

First, I decided I would keep a list of the recipes I tried on the fridge... then contemplated putting the list on Facebook so that I could share with others... then decided, "What the f***, I might as well try blogging about them!" If I don't submit myself to public shaming/ridicule, I'll inevitably slack off. The only rule is that it can't be a recipe I've tried before. It can be a dish I've made previously, but in order to count towards 52 it needs to be a recipe from a cookbook or magazine that I haven't tried yet.

So here goes, #1 for 2011 is Steak au Poivre from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. I was really in the mood for a steak and Bittman's cookbook has become my go-to first stop any time I'm looking for a jumping off point. I can't resist the urge to meddle, so I added mushrooms, some Penzey's Shallot Pepper that my friend Joan gave me, and a dash of Tuscan Herb olive oil that was a Christmas gift from Nana. It was delicious. I would love to make it again, but given my imperative it might be a while before I can get back to this one.