Duck and Wild Rice Salad (Page 163)

RECIPE #1197

• Date: Thursday, August 5, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House
• Dining Companions: Matty and PJ
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

PJ came over for dinner a few weeks ago and I wanted to make something that seemed promising, so I picked this recipe. I started by making a dressing of orange zest, orange juice, olive oil, shallots, honey, salt, and pepper. Then I cooked some wild rice in onion, water, and chicken stock. When the rice had cooled a bit I tossed it with the dressing. Meanwhile, I cooked some sugar snap peas. Then I roasted some magret duck breasts. Once the duck was roasted I removed the skin, thinly sliced the skin, and put just the skin back in the oven to roast until it was crispy. I then sliced the duck and added it to rice along with the sugar snap peas, scallions, dried apricots, toasted pecans, and some salt. I scattered the crisped duck skin on top and served. This recipe was pretty good. The duck was flavorful and juicy, and I always love wild rice. The crisped duck skin (or "super bacon" as my special gentleman calls such things) really made the dish. As one would imagine it was pretty awesome -- super flavorful, super crispy... Mmmmm... super bacon. The only thing that fell a bit short in this dish was the dressing. It wasn't bad but it just didn't pop. So while any bite containing super bacon had lots of flavor, the bites without super bacon were almost a little bland. That said, the combination of textures was very interesting and everyone seemed to enjoy eating this dish quite a bit.

The recipe is here.

Although I have been in East Lansing on and off for the last six weeks or so, my job didn't officially start until yesterday. Tomorrow I have my first of several days of orientation, which are spread out across the next couple weeks. And two weeks from tomorrow, the semester starts! I am at least a little bit settled into both my offices on campus. I can (sometimes) succeed in getting to work on my bike without getting lost. I feel ready. I also feel excited. I feel as though I am standing on the horizon of a big change. This is a job that I am hoping to have for a long, long time. And now it is starting. Every time I have started at an institution in the past, either as a student or as a post-doc, there was always an end date in sight. Four years at Stanford, five at MIT, three at Indiana. There was never the idea, at any of those places, that I might be there for my entire career. That is a possibility now since this is a tenure-track job, so I feel more invested than ever. I want to do things right. I want to start off on a good foot. It's exciting, and a little stressful at the same time!

Tomorrow I have orientation events run by the university -- a morning about FERPA regulations and that sort of thing and a technology orientation in the afternoon. And I know that most people would not be looking forward to such a day, but I really am. I am ready to learn as much as I can about my job and about the university. I am excited!

New Haven-Style Clam Pizza (Page 198)

RECIPE #1196

• Date: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C+
  

I made the vast majority of the clam dishes from The Book when we were living in Berkeley this spring. This dish, however, required both clams and a pizza stone. The house we rented in Berkeley didn't come equipped with a pizza stone, so I could never make it there. I kept threatening to make it at Emilee and Brian's place in Palo Alto, with their pizza stone, but they protested so much that I never executed my threat. So, a few weeks ago when I had to go to Ann Arbor to see the doctor, I stopped by the fishmonger and picked up some clams on my way home. This dish was pretty simple, especially because my special gentleman shucked the clams for me! We started by making pizza dough. Then I shaped the dough, brushed it with a mixture of garlic and oil, arranged the clams over the oil, then sprinkled with oregano, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and some of the liquor from the clams. I used a peel to put this on the stone in the oven, and baked. I was supposed to "Bake until crust is golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes." That would have happened had I not been preparing crabs at the same time and burned myself badly when the pizza had been in the oven about 8 minutes (see post below). So my pizza, like my arm, burned. To be fair, I took the pizza out after exactly 12 minutes. Under normal circumstances I would have checked it earlier, since I know it is much better to take things out of the oven when they are done rather than to blindly rely on some time in a cookbook. But I was distracted by the burn and didn't check the pizza before the 12 minute timer went off. Whoops. In addition to being burnt, this pizza just wasn't that good. It was pretty blah. And it had clams on it. More cheese would have given it some more flavor, but the cheese plus clams was already a little weird, so perhaps more cheese would have been even weirder. Maybe it is possible to create a delicious clam pizza, but this wasn't it.

Only 97 recipes to go!

The recipe is here.

We recently made a couple changes around our house that have been huge quality of life improvements. First, we bought a king size bed. Prior to the purchase we had been sleeping for years on a full size bed. The actual mattress we were sleeping on was apparently purchased at Sam's Club about a decade ago when my special gentleman was in college. But we were used to it and it was fine. One day, though, one of us had slept poorly and commented, "Maybe we should buy a bigger bed." The thought had never really occurred to either of us before, but once the seed was planted there was no turning back. We immediately became incredibly frustrated with our old tiny bed, and wanted a big bed ASAP. Had we been less frustrated we might have purchased a queen, but as our frustration with our bed grew, we decided we needed a king! Many hours of bed and mattress shopping later, we bought one. And I have to say, it is amazing. It's SO comfortable. And we have so much space in bed. Our new bed is heavenly.

As excited as I am about the bed, I am almost as excited about our other recent acquisition. We bought a treadmill! Training for the marathon I always ran outside. And I like running outside. But despite my best intentions I can never seem to motivate to do it every day. I am much more likely to exercise if I do it first thing in the morning. But I wake up cranky and half-awake, and the idea of immediately going outside to run is too daunting. On the other hand, walking down a couple flights of stairs to the basement and getting on the treadmill is no problem. I have been on my treadmill every morning since we got it, and it is a pattern that I hope will continue for a long, long time. I run, I eat breakfast, I take a shower, and I bike to work. It's such a great way to start the day. Plus, the kittens sit on the futon and watch me on the treadmill, which is pretty cute!

I only have one more thing on my To Buy list: a grill! I may hold off for a little while on that one, but I need it to finish my project!

Soft-Shelled Crabs Meuniere (Page 337)

RECIPE #1195

• Date: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I went to Ann Arbor a few weeks ago to see my new tumor doctor. After my appointment I made a little stop at the fish market there. They had soft-shelled crabs, so I bought some and made this recipe as soon as I got home! The fishmonger was nice enough to clean the crabs for me (not such a fun job), and besides cleaning the crabs there wasn't much to this recipe. So this dish should have been a piece of cake. I started by soaking the crabs in a mixture of milk, kosher salt, and pepper. Then I dredged them in flour. I clarified some butter, then heated it in a skillet. I cooked the crabs in the clarified butter, turning once, until they were golden brown on both sides. Then I transferred the crabs to a plate. Up until that point, everything was going quite smoothly. All I had left to do was make a pan sauce from the clarified butter that the crabs had cooked in. I was a little distracted, as I was also making a pizza at the time, so I wasn't thinking clearly. The first step was to add a chunk of butter to the hot butter already in the pan. Typically when you have a pan of melted butter it isn't really that hot. If butter gets too hot it burns, so if it isn't burnt, it isn't so hot. Clarified butter, on the other hand, doesn't burn so easily because it is missing the milk solids which burn (that is the whole point of the clarifying). So, hypothetically, if you had a skillet of clarified butter which had been over high heat for 10 minutes, that butter would be really freakin' hot. And if you, hypothetically, tossed in a big chunk of cold butter nonchalantly, you might get splashed by insanely hot butter.

That's what I did, and that's what happened. In the moment when I realized I had been burned I thought, I have two choices. I could: A) Run my arm under cold water immediately to stop the burning, but in the process ruin my pan sauce because the un-clarified butter I just added would burn, or B) Finish the pan sauce and then worry about the horrible burning on my arm.

I chose B. It was a split-second decision and the rationale was something like: I can't remake this pan sauce because the flavor of it relies on the fact that the crabs were cooked in this butter. I can't cook the crabs a second time just to add flavor to a second sauce, and I don't have any more crabs. So I need to finish it. I also, at the time, didn't realize how badly I was burned. If I had been experiencing the horrible pain I experienced starting about ten minutes later, I might have chosen differently. The one upside of the situation was that the burn I got was pretty amazing. It looked just like a huge splash on my arm. I had burnt splotches from my wrist past my elbow in the beautiful pattern of a splash. It isn't nearly as spectacular now, since it has started to heal, and actually I miss it. I do not, however, miss the pain.

Anyway, so there I was, burnt and making my pan sauce. I cooked it until the butter was a golden brown then I (very carefully this time) added lemon juice and parsley. I seasoned the sauce and drizzled it over the crabs.

By the time I reached the dinner table I was hurting. I ate with my arm wrapped in cold wet washcloths. And I was irrationally angry at the crabs. Note, they gave their lives for this dish and they were dead long before I got burned. So really, I shouldn't have held it against them. But I was so riled up that I only ate a bite or two even though the crabs were delicious. Soft-shelled crab is an amazing thing. It's crazy that you can just eat the crab with the shell and all! It is usually such an ordeal to extract the meat from a crab, but with softshells you just take a fork and a knife and eat the whole thing! The simple preparation served the crab well. The pan sauce was tasty. Perhaps not worth the pain, but tasty. And it complemented the crabmeat nicely. I appreciated this dish without eating much of it, and my special gentleman happily ate two servings.

The recipe is here.

Green Goddess Dressing (Page 173)

RECIPE # 1194

• Date: Monday, August 2, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C+
  

A strange thing happened a couple weeks ago. My special gentleman and I were eating dinner and discussing how many recipes were left from various sections of The Book. I was looking at the progress bars at the bottom of the Project Index and I noted that I still had 5 recipe left in the Salads section. My special gentleman asked me what they were, and I could only name 4 off the top of my head. At this point I can easily name most of the 100 recipes I have left to make, so I was confused that I couldn't think of the fifth recipe. I pulled out The Book and flipped through the Salads section. When I finish a recipe I check it off in The Book. So I counted the recipes without check marks in the section and there were only 4. Baffled, I went through the recipes one by one and verified that the only things checked off were things I had actually made. The check marks seemed correct. Totally confused, I compared the recipes that I had blogged about to the recipes in the section and I discovered the one that was missing. I hadn't blogged about the Green Goddess Dressing. I was positive, POSITIVE that I had made it, but I couldn't remember when, where, or with whom. I flipped through some pictures on my computer until I found a green dressing. I briefly thought the mystery had been solved, until I realized that the green dressing in the picture was the Herbed Buttermilk Dressing. Slowly I became less sure that I had already made this recipe. So I decided to make it again (or, perhaps, for the first time).

To make this dressing my special gentleman and I blended together mayonnaise, anchovy fillets, scallions, parsley, chives, tarragon, tarragon vinegar, salt, and pepper. That was it! Whether or not I had made it before I was very grateful to have such an easy recipe left in my final 100. This dressing was not very tasty though. I had hoped that it would be very herbaceous, with a hint of anchovy. Instead it tasted like mayo with anchovies mixed in. Lots of anchovies. The herb flavors were lost. My special gentleman and I were both quite disappointed.

So had I made it before? Now that I have eaten it, I think maybe not. How did it get checked off in not just one, but three copies of The Book? (Yes, I have three copies of The Book.) I'm not sure. The whole experience made me glad that I have the Project Index though to keep me honest. Without it, I may have finished the project having accidentally skipped one recipe!

The recipe is here.

Only 99 recipes to go!

Rabbit with Mustard Sauce (Page 408)

RECIPE # 1193

• Date: Monday, August 2, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I can hardly believe it -- only 100 recipes left to go! This is a major milestone for me. After making 1193 recipes from The Book a mere 100 left feels like nothing. Granted the 100 I have left are some of the most complicated, with the hardest to find ingredients, and the most unappetizing-sounding end products. But never mind all that. Only 100 recipes left to go!

This recipe has been a mystery to me from the beginning. Why, I have long wondered, is this recipe in the Poultry section? Is rabbit secretly poultry? Surely, rabbit isn't included in any definition of poultry that I have ever heard... People often say that rabbit tastes like chicken, but that seems like questionable justification for throwing this in with the poultry. The mysteries only continued. Step one of this recipe was to cut my rabbit into 8 serving pieces. I have pieced many chickens in my day, and with a chicken it is easy to pick out the 8 pieces: 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, 2 wings, 2 breasts. But rabbits aren't built like chickens, and I found the 8 pieces to be non-obvious. Internet research led me to the conclusion that unlike chickens rabbits don't have a a canonical number of serving pieces, or a canonical technique for butchering them into those pieces. If you are aiming for 8 the division is what one would guess: 2 front legs, 2 hind legs, and 4 pieces from the mid-section.

Eventually I had a pile of rabbit pieces and was ready to proceed. At that point the recipe became super easy. I browned the rabbit pieces in oil, then removed them from the pan. I cooked shallots in butter then added white wine and reduced. I put the rabbit back in the skillet along with some chicken stock and simmered until the rabbit was tender. I removed the rabbit pieces and made a typical pan sauce, adding Dijon mustard, whole-grain mustard, cornstarch, butter, and parsley. I seasoned with salt and pepper and served.

This dish was pretty tasty. It had been a long time since I had eaten rabbit and I had forgotten how much I like it. Similar in taste to chicken? Sure. But more flavorful. The sauce was definitely mustard-intensive, but it suited the rabbit meat well and the combination of wine and stock gave it some depth behind the mustard. My special gentleman was a huge fan of this dish, declaring it one of his recent favorites.

The recipe in The Book is very similar to this one.

It's hard to believe I only have 100 recipes left to go. Scrolling through the Project Index I feel both nostalgic and excited about being almost done. Part of me wishes I could just bust out those last 100 recipes as quickly as possible. I feel ready to be done. But of course I will miss this project. I have been at this for almost five years now. I have been cooking my way through The Book since before I met my husband! Crazy! 1193 recipes down, 100 left to go!

Gazpacho Cordobes (Page 88)

RECIPE #1192

• Date: Monday, August 2, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I was looking for some quick recipes that are left in The Book and this one caught my eye. I started by roasting tomatoes and red bell peppers, then peeling and seeding the peppers. I stirred in some cucumber, garlic, sherry vinegar, olive oil, bread that had been soaked in water, tarragon, salt, and pepper. I refrigerated the mixture for 8 hours then pureed it in a food processor. I chilled for another couple hours, then put it through a food mill. Relative to most of the recipes I have left, this one was a piece of cake! The gazpacho was pretty tasty. To be honest, my special gentleman and I aren't particularly fans of cold soups (with the exception of sour cherry soup). So did we love this? Well, no. Do I think it was a good version of gazpacho? Yes. In fact, I think it was as good as any gazpacho I have had. I just don't particularly care for gazpacho. It had good depth of flavor -- I think roasting the tomatoes and peppers added a lot to the dish. And putting it through a food mill at the end improved the texture a lot. So if I were forced to make gazpacho again I would probably make this one.

The recipe is here.

When we moved to Michigan my special gentleman and I resolved that we would not drive everywhere. My special gentleman and I both grew up in the Midwest, and while I was excited to move back my special gentleman had a few apprehensions about it. One was that he didn't want to have a car-reliant lifestyle. So in selecting a house we picked one close enough to his office for him to walk. It's about a mile and half from the door of the house to the door of his office, which is a pleasant walk twice a day. The house is also conveniently close to a bank, hardware store, grocery store, some restaurants, a dentist, a bowling alley, etc... We can walk most places. Indeed this morning we even walked to our new veterinarian with the kitties in their carrier. For my job I have two offices though. And while one is in the same building as my special gentleman's office, and hence a nice walking distance away, the other is another mile further from home. Two and a half miles is a bit far to walk each way every day, so I have decided to become a bike commuter. I hate to bike. I haven't owned a bike since college and in college I hated to bike. So I was more than a little skeptical of this bike commuting plan, although I did come up with it. Despite my skepticism, I committed myself to it, buying myself a bike that I love. It's a cruiser -- it has only one gear and back-pedal breaks. My special gentleman installed a big basket in front for me, a little bell, and a blinking light so no one hits me at night. I ride it at a very leisurely pace. I cruise to and from work. It's awesome.

This is my first week as a bike commuter, so Sunday evening my special gentleman helped me plot my route. Those of you who know me know that I am constantly lost, and I haven't figured out how to mount my GPS machine on my bike. Sunday evening the ride with my special gentleman went smoothly, despite the fact that it was the first time I had been on a bike in years. Monday morning I headed out on my own, in the rain, confident that I could make it! Three blocks from home my chain fell off the gear -- a problem I was completely ill-equipped to deal with on my own. My special gentleman biked over, fixed my bike, and then biked with me to my office in case it happened again. The bike was fine after that and I made it home at the end of the day, by myself, without incident. This morning I headed out once again. About halfway to the office I found myself completely lost. Eventually I made it. Tomorrow I am hoping to make it to and from work without incident. Truth be told, despite the difficulties I am liking this whole bike commuting thing. I am still having trouble imagining how I am going to do this in the winter, but for now, it's not bad at all.

Fried Zucchini Blossoms (Page 43)

RECIPE #1191

• Date: Thursday, July 15, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

Zucchini blossom season arrived and I figured I would make this recipe before it passed! Despite it being the season, I had trouble finding zucchini blossoms. None of the local grocery stores had them, nor did the biggest farmer's market around. I am determined to finish this project in 2010 though, so I had to get my hands on some before the season passed! Finally I decided I would just order them. They are highly perishable, so they had to be shipped overnight. As you can imagine, they weren't the cheapest zucchini blossoms I have ever purchased. Then, just two days after making this recipe we were in Pennsylvania visiting Melanie and Daniel. Mel was giving us a tour of her garden and we looked down to see zucchini blossoms everywhere! She would have been happy to give us some for free! Oh well. This recipe was super simple. The blossoms were dipped in a batter of flour, beer, and salt and then deep-fried. I then sprinkled them with salt and served. They were tasty. My special gentleman had never eaten zucchini blossoms before and he was a little weirded out by their texture, but once he got past that he agreed that they were good. Mmmmm... deep-fried flowers!

The recipe is here.

There have been some big changes in our lives these last few days! In particular, yesterday we went out to run some afternoon errands and ended up adopting two kittens! It was really the culmination of months of discussion, but I think neither of us imagined adopting them so soon. Certainly yesterday morning I had no idea we would have two kittens by the end of the day. But they are so sweet and we are so happy to have them.

Their names are Thumbs and Feet. Thumbs is the littler of the two. He is very little -- weighing in at 1 pound 11 ounces. He was apparently rescued from a meth lab (or something like that), horribly malnourished, and has been in kitty foster care for a few months. He got his name because he is polydactyl -- he has more toes than he should. So his paws look like they have big thumbs on them. Totally adorable! He is incredibly sweet and incredibly scared of everything. He spent much of yesterday evening hiding behind the washer and dryer and meowing. He was doing much, much better today though! Here's a picture of me with Thumbs, shortly after we brought him home.

Our other new kitty, Feet (named because he LOVES to "hunt" my special gentleman's feet, and then snuggle with them), is also super affectionate. He's about three and a half months old, and definitely more adventurous than Thumbs. Thumbs wants to be friends with Feet so badly, but Feet just barely tolerates the little guy (in typical older sibling fashion). The two aren't from the same litter, or even the same foster home, so they are still adjusting to one another. Thumbs tries very hard -- waiting until Feet is asleep before snuggling up next to him. As much as Feet protests, it is evident that he secretly likes the little guy. Feet is much bolder and will often walk around the house with Thumbs in tow, showing him the ropes. Here's a picture of the two of them together, playing with some yarn.

I admit, I have been all along rather neutral on the idea of getting a cat. I was neither super-excited about it, nor opposed to the idea. My special gentleman has always wanted a cat though, so I thought we should do it. He is absolutely in heaven with our two kitties, and I already love them to pieces.

Sour Cherry Preserves (Page 921)

RECIPE #1190

• Date: Sunday, July 11, 2010 -- 3pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companions: Matty, Mel, Daniel, Rachel, Eric, Karen H, and Dave
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

The Book has quite a number of sour cherry recipes in it, and finding sour cherries has always been a problem. To this day I have never seen them in a grocery store. When I lived in Boston I couldn't find them at farmer's markets either. One summer my special gentleman and I found a farm where we could pick our own sour cherries. It was great fun, but the next year when we hoped to go back and pick more they told us it would be another two years before they had sour cherries again. I had in the back of my head that I was going to need to find sour cherries eventually in order to make this recipe. So I was delighted -- absolutely delighted -- when we stumbled upon sour cherries at our local farmer's market in Michigan. Indeed Michigan is a cherry state, and a number of vendors had sour cherries that Saturday morning. Yay!

To make these preserves I first pitted four pounds of cherries. That was neither quick nor particularly fun, and there are still places in my kitchen where you can see cherry juice stains if you look closely. I tossed the cherries with sugar and lemon juice. I had reserved some of the cherry pits and they needed to be cracked open to remove the inner white kernel. Again, not super fun. Once I had the kernels I tied them up in cheesecloth and put the bag of them into the cherry mixture. I refrigerated it overnight. I sterilized some canning jars in a boiling water canner. Then I dumped the cherry mixture into a pot and cooked it for a while. Eventually I removed the cherries themselves and cooked the liquid some more. I added pectin to the liquid. I divided the cherries and juice between the jars, then sealed them and processes them in the boiling water canner. These preserves had a very nice flavor. They were neither too sweet nor too tart. We have eaten them on pancakes and biscuits and the preserves were delightful both ways. They didn't set up as much as I would have liked, but I think this was not the fault of the recipe. The recipe called for lower-sugar pectin, which I couldn't find locally. I didn't have time to order it since I already had my cherries, so I used what I had on hand, which was a combination of regular pectin and no sugar pectin. I figured it would work out to be approximately right, but I fear that my ratio wasn't ideal. So the preserves were a little runny, but still tasty!

The recipe is here.

It's 10:45 on a Wednesday evening and I just got off the phone with our car insurance company. My special gentleman is vacuuming. Usually by this time in the evening we are relaxing -- reading, watching something on DVD, or just hanging out. These last few days, though, we have been trying to cram as much in as possible during our waking hours. Things have been a bit hectic. It seems like every email I have written lately has started, "I'm sorry to take so long to get back to you." I'm just very behind. Or at least I feel that way. In reality I think I just have a super-ambitious list of chores/work/projects I would like to get done before the semester starts, and while I check things off my list every day, I also add twice as many things each day as I checked off. But things are getting done. Now we have Michigan car insurance. And clean floors.

Yesterday I went to Ann Arbor to see my new tumor doctor. It's only about an hour from our house to Ann Arbor, and the doctors at the University of Michigan are the best in the area, so I figured it was worth it. My new doctor seems great -- maybe my favorite one yet. I went in with a long list of questions and I got them all answered. After the usual battery of blood tests and whatnot following my appointment, I met up with my special gentleman and our friend PJ for some lunch. It seems that Ann Arbor has more of a foodie culture than East Lansing, and one way in which this manifests itself is that there are more grocery shopping options there. In particular, there is a very nice fish market. I had a cooler in the car so I could take advantage of what Ann Arbor had to offer. I left with some soft-shelled crabs, littleneck clams, and an octopus! We ate the crabs and clams last night. The octopus is in the freezer for another day. It's comforting to know that there is seafood available only an hour away!

I should go to sleep, so I am ready to tackle my to-do list once again in the morning!

Walnut and Pancetta Pansoti with Asparagus in Parmesan Broth (Page 237)

RECIPE #1189

• Date: Saturday, July 10, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I chose this recipe because I wanted to finish off the Pastas, Noodles, and Dumplings section of The Book. This recipe was a pain in the butt, hence I left it for last. A very brief summary: first I made a pancetta walnut filling for the pansoti. Then I made a broth to serve them in. Then I made fresh pasta. I formed the pansoti and cooked them in boiling water. Meanwhile I cooked some asparagus, first in boiling water, then in oil. Finally I assembled all the components and served. This recipe was a lot of fuss, and the end result was not as delicious as I expected. For one thing (and this is a complaint I have had several times throughout this project) the pasta was too thin. The Book instructs you to roll the dough through the second-narrowest setting on a pasta maker. I have the Kitchen-Aid attachment pasta maker and that setting is too thin for filled pasta. My major complaint with this recipe, however, was that it was too salty. I LOVE salt, so this is a complaint that I very, very rarely make. In this case the combination of the pancetta and Parmigiano-Reggiano made the dish too salty, even for me. My special gentleman didn't like the fact that the pansoti were served in broth. He would have preferred a nice sauce rather than the thin broth, and I agreed. All that said, it still tasted good. I wouldn't make it again though -- not worth the effort.

The recipe is here.

Another section done! Whoo hoo! I love, love, love pasta, so I am sad to see this section go, but I am very happy to be making some progress, checking off the sections one by one. This section had 56 recipes in it, and now they are all done!

In no particular order, my top five favorite recipes from this section:

• Pasta Primavera -- Hands-down the best pasta primavera I have ever had. An absolutely fantastic rendition of a dish that I think is usually pretty blah when you order it at a restaurant. This is so good, in fact, that I have already made it twice!
• Chicken Tetrazzini -- Chicken, noodles, mushrooms, and cream came together in this dish to form complete fabulousness. So good! Indeed, just thinking about it is making me hungry...
• Butternut Squash, Sage, and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Hazlenut-Brown Butter Sauce -- I suppose it is no surprise that I loved this recipe given that I love every ingredient! Butternut squash, goat cheese and brown butter are some of my favorite things. I wasn't the only one drooling over this dish though. My special gentleman's brother Wes went on and on about how much he loved it. Indeed, it was praiseworthy!
• Wild Mushroom Pierogi -- I have very fond memories of this dish and this meal. I made these pierogi with Rachel in my special gentleman's old apartment in Boston. This recipe was a super-fun group project and the resulting pierogi were extremely tasty!
• Chow Fun with Chinese Barbecued Pork and Snow Peas -- These are a number of tasty Asian recipes in The Book and this was one of them. I admit, I am partial to barbecued pork, but the noodle portion of this dish was also quite tasty. Definitely a keeper.
  

With this section complete I now have 8 sections done, and 13 left to finish! I have a couple more sections with only one recipe left in them, so hopefully I will be checking off more sections very soon.

Spicy Stir-Fried Beef with Tangerine and Cinnamon (Page 442)

RECIPE #1188

• Date: Monday, July 12, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I put off making this recipe for a while because I didn't know where to find dried tangerine peel. Eventually it occurred to me to just dry my own, so that's what I did. I dried some tangerine peel for a few days, then I was ready to proceed with this recipe. I marinated some strips of beef chuck in a mixture of rice wine, ginger, and salt for 8 hours. I soaked my dried tangerine peel in water for an hour, then cut it into thin strips. (Note: very frustrating to first dry the peel and then rehydrate... seemed more than a little pointless!) I heated several cups of corn oil in a wok, then deep-fried the beef strips. I removed the oil, wiped down the wok, then added some sesame oil. I stir-fried some dried red chiles, then some Sichuan peppercorns and star anise. I added the beef, water, soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, the tangerine peel, and cinnamon stick and simmered for 40 minutes. I increased the heat and boiled until the sauce had the right consistency. I stirred in the chiles, some rice vinegar and sesame oil and served with rice. This dish was pretty good. I have eaten similar dishes several times in Chinese restaurants and this was easily as good as the comparable dishes I have had. It had a lot of depth of flavor. My one complaint was that the citrus was too strong for me. There was definitely some ambiguity in the recipe directions concerning the citrus peel. The recipe called for "2 pieces dried tangerine peel." How much that actually is obviously depends on how big the dried pieces were, which certainly isn't standard. Perhaps my pieces of peel were just too big. In any event, were I to make this again, I would cut back on the tangerine peel a bit.

This recipe isn't online.

The workshop I was organizing and attending in Chicago ended Friday and yesterday afternoon my special gentleman and I drove home to East Lansing. The workshop went pretty well. There were four of us there, gathered from our respective homes in East Lansing, Chicago, Austin, and Boston. The three of us not from Chicago stayed in a nice hotel downtown all week (we had funding for our workshop!). I reserved us a conference room for the week at the Chicago Public Library downtown, so we met there each day and worked together on various research projects. It was a productive week.

It was nice to be in Chicago but I was certainly glad to come home! We have another couple weeks in East Lansing before we have to travel again, and a long list of items we would like to get done before the semester starts! So my day today involved trips to Target, Home Depot, and the grocery store. Also a lengthy trip to the mattress store (We are buying a bigger bed -- we have been sleeping in a double bed long enough!). At one point today I was in the basement, wearing a respirator and knocking down shelves with a hammer. I felt like I was straight out of an HGTV show! But after a long day of effort we have made significant progress in the basement as well as on our bed-buying mission. (Pause here while I help my special gentleman remove demolished wood from the basement... OK, back.) I also worked on my ongoing kitchen organization project today, and I dare say that it is almost complete! Today was a nice day -- exactly what I needed after a week-long research workshop. It's 10pm now, and I have a little more kitchen prep to do for tomorrow night's dinner, them I am ready to head to bed!

Rhubarb Charlotte (Page 818)

RECIPE #1187

• Date: Friday, July 9, 2010 -- 8pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

This recipe came off the list generated by the random number generator. This recipe called for soft ladyfingers, which I had trouble finding at the three grocery stores where I get most of my ingredients. So I started this recipe by making some homemade ladyfingers (of course, Of Course, I saw ladyfingers in the grocery store two days later!). Homemade ladyfingers in hand, I proceeded with the recipe. I made the filling by cooking rhubarb with sugar and lemon juice. Then I brushed the ladyfingers with kirsch and lined a charlotte mold with them. I then beat some heavy cream with powdered sugar. I layered the rhubarb filling, the whipped cream, and the remaining ladyfingers in the mold. I put a weight on top of the mold and chilled the charlotte for 24 hours. To serve, I inverted the charlotte onto a plate. This dessert was OK. It was a big step up from the Raspberry Summer Pudding, which was in the same genre. I still wasn't terribly excited about it though. The rhubarb filling had a good flavor, but it made the ladyfingers a bit soggy/slimy. Indeed I would have much preferred to eat a nice shortcake topped with the rhubarb filling and a dollop of whipped cream. I suppose I just don't understand the appeal of the charlotte. I don't think they are that pretty, and I don't see the point of surrounding a fruit filling with soggy bread/cake. As far as charlottes go this one was inoffensive enough, but I won't be making it again.

The recipe is here.

What a long few days! On Friday my special gentleman and I drove from Middletown, Connecticut (where his conference was) to Columbus, Ohio (where his parents live). What should have been a ten and a half hour drive was actually more than fourteen hours, due to lane closures in Pennsylvania and a horrible storm in Ohio. We arrived quite late, but at least we made it there safely! The next morning we chatted for a couple hours with my in-laws then hit the road again. We drove to Bloomington, where we spent many hours cleaning my old apartment. We had moved all of our stuff out a few weeks back, but we had to return to Bloomington to pick up my special gentleman's car anyway, so we figured we would clean then. It wasn't a fun job, and it took longer than we thought it would. Eventually we finished though and spent Saturday night at Mike and Teresa's house in Bloomington. Early Sunday morning we hit the road, driving the five and a half hours up to East Lansing. Unfortunately we had two cars, since we picked up one in Bloomington, so we both had to drive. We were in East Lansing just long enough to mow the lawn, unpack the cars, and do laundry, then I repacked our suitcase and we headed to Chicago Sunday evening.

We had planned to take the Amtrak to Chicago, but our train was running more than 2 hours late (new arrival time: 1am), so we had our tickets refunded and drove instead. We were so exhausted by the time that we reached Chicago that I was delighted to crash into bed. Unfortunately, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, I couldn't sleep. I spent the night staring at the wall of our luxury hotel room. We are in Chicago because I am attending a research workshop, which started Monday morning. Needless to say, exhaustion made Monday pretty rough, but I got some sleep last night and felt better today. The workshop goes through Friday, then this weekend we will head back home. We will be at home for most of August and I am very much looking forward to that!

Tongue with Mustard Horseradish Sauce (Page 461)

RECIPE #1186

• Date: Friday, July 9, 2010 -- 8pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C+
  

This recipe came off the list generated by the random number generator. I had put off making this recipe for so long not because I had never eaten tongue, nor because I thought it would be gross. Rather, it was because I have never prepared tongue myself, and the direction: "Peel off skin and trim any fat or gristle" was freaking me out. The idea of peeling the skin off a tongue was making me feel squeamish just thinking about it. That squeamishness was a theme throughout the preparation of this recipe.

I found a 4-pound beef tongue at my local grocer (yes, 4-pounds!). I started by rinsing it then putting it in a pot with cold water, onion, garlic, bay leaf, star anise, black peppercorns, and salt. I simmered the tongue for several hours. Then I removed the tongue from the cooking liquid and it looked like this:


Ugh. It looked just like... well... a tongue. And although you can't appreciate it in this picture it had little taste bud bumps all over it. Gross. Then came the part where I peeled off the skin, and trimmed the gristle. I would rate that task pretty high on my list of Kitchen Tasks That Made Me Feel Nauseated. Luckily at that point I got to take a break from dealing with the tongue to make the sauce. The sauce was an herbed mustard and horseradish sauce, thickened with a roux. When the sauce was ready I thinly sliced the tongue, topped it with some sauce, and served.

I really don't know how to rate this one. The problem is, if I went to a restaurant and had the plate pictured on top put in front of me, I might have happily eaten it without a second thought. But given the whole experience of making the dish, by the time I had that plate in front of me the last thing I wanted to do was put that in my mouth. I ate a few bites, but that was all I could manage. My special gentleman, who was slightly more removed from the tongue-preparation process, thought the tongue itself was pretty tasty but he didn't care for the sauce at all. He pointed out, and I think he was right, that tongue is really best in a sandwich or taco. My special gentleman made some tongue and egg sandwiches the next day with the leftovers and ate them with delight. The tongue seemed to be cooked pretty well in this preparation, but were I to make it again I would forgo the sauce and instead serve the tongue in a sandwich. Truth be told though, I probably won't be making tongue again. It might be a food that I only eat out.

The recipe is here.

I have this pattern that has repeated itself through the last decade or so of my life. I will decide to get in better shape and start exercising frequently. For 3 months, or 6, or 9, I will continue in my routine, feeling good and enjoying it. Then for some reason I will stop exercising for a week or two (reasons vary) and then I will find it nearly impossible to re-enter my routine. So I will give myself a break. What was intended as maybe a 3-week break turns into a 3 month break, or 6 month, or 9 month. At some point I will realize that I am feeling shitty, physically of course but also mentally. Often I will have lost a few pounds and a lot of energy from the lack of exercise. And I will just feel more down than usual. The feeling crappy kicks me back into shape and so starts another phase of exercising.

This past fall I was training for the marathon, so I was getting more than my fair share of exercise. The marathon was in early November and in the weeks following it I felt not-at-all guilty about not working out. I let my, "I don't need to exercise, I just ran a marathon," excuse carry me all the way from November through March or so. At that point I realized I needed to get off my butt. I couldn't motivate to run but I started walking five miles a day. I have continued that for the last few months, and although I think it is valuable, it isn't the type of drenched-in-sweat exercise that I am used to. And, I have discovered, a five mile walk doesn't come with the same mental health benefits that a five mile run does. In the last few weeks I started feeling down. It's true that a few things happened that triggered my sadness, but nothing that shouldn't have been outweighed by the joys of moving into our new house, starting my new job, and living with my special gentleman! And then it occurred to me: what I really needed was some real exercise.

For the last 5 days in a row I have started the day with a run. And even though I have only been running about 4 miles a day, it has done wonders. I just feel so much better, physically and mentally, than I have been. And so, I am recommitting myself to running. I don't see another marathon in my near future, or even another half, but I do see very regular running. It just makes me feel better.

Herbed Vidalia Onion Tea Sandwiches (Page 178)

RECIPE #1185

• Date: Wednesday, July 7, 2010 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I put off making this recipe for all this time because I didn't want to serve raw onion tea sandwiches at a party, and I also didn't want to make a whole batch of tea sandwiches for just me and my special gentleman. In the end, I made the recipe for just the two of us and wished that I had made it for a party! These sandwiches were surprisingly tasty. To make them I started by stirring together mayonnaise, minced parsley, minced tarragon, lemon juice, Tabasco, salt, and pepper. Using a cookie cutter I cut out little circles from some thinly sliced white bread. I spread one side of the bread slices with the mayonnaise. Then, using the same cookie cutter I cut rounds of onion from slices of Vidalia onions. I put an onion round on half of the bread circles, then topped the rounds with another bread circle to form a sandwich. I coated the edge of each sandwich with a light layer of mayonnaise, then rolled it in parsley. That was it! I was more than a little skeptical about raw onion tea sandwiches. Typically tea party food is quite delicate and raw onions just don't scream delicate to me. I will happily admit, though, that I was wrong. The Vidalia onions were sweet enough that the raw onion slice was not biting at all. And paired with the mayonnaise and bread it was very tasty. My only complaint was that with all the parsley on the outsides of the sandwiches there was a bit too much parsley. Other than that I liked these sandwiches and I would indeed serve them with some tea.

The recipe in The Book is similar to this one.

Hello from Connecticut! My special gentleman is speaking at a conference at Wesleyan University this week, so we are out east. We drove out here from Michigan rather than flying, which actually made the logistics of the trip much easier. On Saturday we drove 8 hours from East Lansing to State College, Pennsylvania, where our friends Melanie and Daniel live. Daniel is an Assistant Professor at Penn State. He just started last fall and we hadn't had a chance to visit them yet since they moved to Pennsylvania. We had a great time hanging out with them Saturday night. Mel and I have been friends since we were 11. She is in the process of starting a green sewing business. The first product she is launching is a collection of mittens made out of old wool sweaters headed for the landfill. She shrinks the sweaters by washing them, then cuts pieces from the sweaters and mixes and matches the different sweaters to create the fabric for some awesome mittens. She will soon be selling in stores and online, but in the meantime, she gave me a pair! It was really fun to hear about her business in the early stages and see her workspace and all the work she has been doing. It was super impressive! Starting a small business sounds daunting to me but she is totally on top of it, and I can't wait for her business to officially launch so I can buy things from her!

We stayed at Mel and Daniel's place Saturday night, then Sunday we drove the remaining six and a half hours from State College to Middletown, Connecticut. I have been working from the hotel and coffee shops the last couple days while my special gentleman attends his conference. Conveniently my good friend Cornelia is in my special gentleman's field of mathematics, so tonight I had dinner with her, which was lovely. Tomorrow I will head to Boston for a couple days to visit more friends.

It has been a fun trip so far!

Brandied Sour Cherry and Pear Tartlets (Page 780)

RECIPE #1184

• Date: Thursday, July 8, 2010 -- 10pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I made this recipe to finish off the Pies, Tarts, and Pastries section of The Book. This recipe falls into a category that I like to call Delicious but Ridiculous. Instead of making one regular size pie, this recipe made 16 individual ones. This not only required special equipment, but also a lot of patience. I started by making a pretty typical pie dough and chilling it. Then I made the filling by dicing some pears and boiling them with dried sour cherries, brandy, water, sugar, and cornstarch. Then the fussiness began. The bottom and top pie crusts needed to be cut from the dough with two different sizes of cookie cutter. Then the bottoms were put into the little tart pans. I then used smaller decorative cookie cutters to cut little windows out of the top crusts. Then using some milk to help them adhere I put the cut-out decorations back on the top crusts. Then I filled the bottom crusts with filling and placed the top crusts on top, using milk and pinching to seal the edges. Then I dusted them with some sugar and baked the little pies until they were done. Reading it now, it doesn't sound too fussy. But in real life there was a lot of rerolling of dough and chilling after every step that made it seem completely ridiculous. The pies turned out pretty good though. My special gentleman loved them. I was slightly less enthusiastic (then again, I was the one who dealt with all the fussiness, so perhaps that's why). I never like pie fillings as much when they are made with dried fruit. A more flavorful, and texturally nicer, cherry filling certainly could have been made from some fresh sour cherries. And were I to make this recipe again, I would definitely make it as one or two large pies instead of 16 little ones. They were cute, but I don't think the cuteness was worth the effort!

The recipe is here.

This was the last recipe in the Pies, Tarts, and Pastries section! I am happy to be done with another section, but sad to see this one go, as I dearly, dearly love pie! When I finish a section I like to identify my top five favorite recipes from that section. Here they are, in no particular order:

• Three-Berry Pie with Vanilla Cream -- Blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries... it's hard to go wrong! The filling was just the right thickness and just the right sweetness. Absolutely delicious!
• Sweet Potato Pie with Bourbon Cream -- This pie way exceeded my expectations. The flavor from the roasted then pureed sweet potatoes was awesome and the texture of the filling was perfect. It looked like pumpkin pie, but was way better than any pumpkin pie I have ever had. Yum!
• Carmelized Upside-Down Pear Tart -- Not only was this tart fantastic but it was incredibly easy. This is a recipe that I will come back to again and again in my post-Book cooking. A huge payout for a minimal effort -- definitely a keeper!
• Baklava -- My special gentleman has this dream that when the project is over I will make fresh croissants and baklava every week. We'll see. Baklava is one of his favorites and he loved this recipe. I, too, was very impressed by it. It is one of the few recipes in The Book that I have already repeated!
• Mocha Eclairs -- What's not to love? Pastry, filled with mocha cream, then dipped in chocolate -- delicious!
  

Well, those were my favorite five. Reminiscing has made me hungry for some pastries! I am in a hotel room in small town Connecticut though and it is almost midnight, so pastries might be hard to come by. Oh well!

7 sections down, 14 left to finish!!

Roast Loin of Pork with Red Cabbage and Port Wine Sauce (Page 472)

RECIPE #1183

• Date: Monday, July 5, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

This recipe was on the list generated by the random number generator. I started by brining a pork loin roast in a mixture of water, allspice, black peppercorns, salt, sugar, thyme, cloves, and bay leaf for 2 days. Then I removed the pork from the brine and browned it. I placed the pork in a skillet on a bed of onions and roast it in the oven to 140 degrees. Then I let it rest. Meanwhile, I blanched some red cabbage, then cooked it with garlic, balsamic vinegar, and the onions that the pork roasted on top of. I added sage, capers, salt, and pepper and served the pork with the cabbage and port wine sauce (see post below). This dish was pretty good. The pork was fantastic. Brining meat is always a wonderful first step, and brining works particularly well with pork. The meat came out moist and super flavorful. The sauce that went with the pork complemented it beautifully. We were less excited, however, about the cabbage. It was fine I suppose. But it just didn't compare to the pork. It was a bit boring, and didn't seem cohesive. For instance, whole capers stirred into the cabbage after cooking it? Odd. The cabbage wasn't bad, but as vegetable accompaniments for pork go, it wasn't great either. I would certainly make this pork again and just skip the cabbage.

This recipe isn't online.

Well, we have been home in Michigan for two weeks and two days, and we are hitting the road again. We have a couple weeks of travel ahead of us. First we are driving from Michigan to Middletown, Connecticut, the home of Wesleyan University. There is a week-long conference there in my special gentleman's field and he is giving a couple talks. It's a reasonably long drive to Connecticut, but luckily we have good friends on the way. Tomorrow night we will stay with Melanie and Daniel near State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State. Sunday we will continue on to Connecticut. My special gentleman needs to be at Wesleyan all week, but since I am not a part of the conference I will drive into Boston mid-week to visit Rachel, one of my nearest and dearest, and her family. I will stay a few days with them, which I am super excited about, especially since I haven't seen Rachel's year and a half-old son in over a year. I am sure he has grown so much!

Next weekend we will leave the East Coast and drive back to Michigan, via Bloomington, where we have to return to stop to A) Clean my apartment, which we moved out of but didn't clean yet, and B) Pick up my special gentleman's car which is still in Bloomington. So next Friday night we will try to make it all the way from Connecticut to Columbus, Ohio (about 10 hours), crash for the night at my in-laws' house. Then Saturday morning we will drive to Bloomington, clean like crazy, then crash for the night at some friends' house there. Sunday morning we will drive to East Lansing, drop off both cars, maybe do laundry, etc... Then Sunday evening we will catch a train to Chicago, where I will be attending a workshop for a week. Then next Saturday we will take the train back home.

It's all fun stuff (except cleaning my old apartment) and I am looking forward to the trip. But I am also sad to go. I feel like we just got home, and indeed just tonight I finished unpacking the final box. So it is hard to pack a suitcase again and hit the road. But it will be fun! And I am only traveling for 5 days or so in August, so I can look forward to spending more time at home then!

On an unrelated note, today is my mom's birthday. Happy Birthday mom!!!

Port Wine Sauce (Page 473)

RECIPE #1182

• Date: Monday, July 5, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!!
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This recipe was a component for a pork dish which I will blog about next. My special gentleman likes to refer to himself as the saucier of our kitchen. It's true, when there is a sauce to be made he will often help with the sauce while I work on the rest of the dish. This was a quick sauce and he did most of the work. He started by cooking some chopped shallots in butter. Then we added balsamic vinegar and reduced. We then added ruby port and reduced again. Finally he added veal stock and reduced yet again, then strained the sauce and served. This sauce was very intense. The heavily reduced flavors of the balsamic, port, and veal stock each came through very clearly and pungently. The strong flavors paired extremely well with the pork, which was rather mild in flavor.

This recipe isn't online.

I wouldn't call myself a particularly messy person, but I am also not the neatest person I know. And while I am organized in terms of executing tasks, I have never had the beautifully organized closets that some of my friends do (I'm thinking of you, Deniz!). So I understand why my special gentleman has been giving me a quizzical look every time I say I am going to work some more on organizing my kitchen. It's true, my kitchens of the past have been a bit disorganized. I pretty much knew where everything was, but if a random person dug through the cupboards trying to find buckwheat flour or fine dried breadcrumbs I am sure they would have given up without success. There wasn't really a system. But now, faced with a kitchen that I own, one that I plan on cooking in for a long time, I am feeling motivated! Armed with dozens of tupperware containers and sheets of labels I have been filling, labeling, and stacking container after container of food. So if you were looking for buckwheat flour or breadcrumbs, or one of 5 different kinds of rice, you could easily find them in my cupboards! And I am not done yet!

I am feeling a lot of pride of ownership in our home, and in these early weeks that is manifesting itself in my desire to get everything cleaned up and organized. So the settling in has been a little slower than when I employ my usual moving strategy of just putting stuff wherever it will fit. But I think the house is really shaping up! And soon my kitchen will be just as I want it!! I can't wait.

Plum Tart (Page 783)

RECIPE #1181

• Date: Sunday, July 4, 2010 -- 8pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I am trying to finish off the Pies, Tarts, and Pastries section of The Book (although I will be sad to see it go!) and this was one of the last couple recipes in that section. I started by making the crust. I combined flour, butter, sugar, salt, lemon zest, and egg yolks in a food processor, then pressed the mixture into a tart pan. Then I pitted and halved some plums and tossed them with sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice. I let the plums macerate for a bit, then arranged them on top of the crust. I then baked the tart. Note: it took much longer than indicated in The Book for the juices to start bubbling. This tart was pretty good. The crust was more cookie-like than crust-like, which I enjoyed. The fruit was cooked just the right amount and the juices thickened nicely to give the filling some body. My only complaint was that it was very tart. I'm sure the tartness depended heavily on the plums I used. I used ripe plums though and it still turned out too tart for me. With sweeter plums it could have been excellent!

The recipe is here.

With around a hundred recipes left to go in this project, I am getting to the point where I have in my head a list of ingredients I still need to find, and recipes that I have left to make. I would venture that, if pressed, I could name off the top of my head at least 80 of the 112 recipes that remain. I have flipped through those remaining recipes many, many times! I used to go to the grocery store with specific recipes in mind, looking for specific ingredients. While I still do that, I have taken the attitude that if I see ingredients I know I am going to need eventually, I buy them. If they are perishable, I make the dish that day or the next. If they aren't, I throw them in the pantry. Sour cherries at the farmer's market on Saturday morning meant Sour Cherry Preserves on Sunday morning. Green tomatoes at the grocery store meant a batch of Green Tomato Pickles was in the works a few days later. I have photocopies of the remaining recipes in my purse at all times so when I stumble across a hard-to-find ingredient I can look up the recipe and buy the rest of the ingredients to go with it. My special gentleman just laughs at me. Yesterday evening we went to the grocery store on what was supposed to be a quick stop just to pick up some beef I needed for dinner tonight. Soon I was throwing all sorts of things into the cart: canning salt, pickling spices, white balsamic, etc... My special gentleman kept asking, "What is that for?" I would answer, "I'm not exactly sure, but I know I need it." When we got home I threw them in the pantry for the day I decide to make the Tricolor Pickled Peppers or Bread-and-Butter Pickles (turns out, that's what they were for).

I am starting to have real confidence that I WILL finish this project, and it WILL be in the year 2010!!

Seafood Cannelloni (Page 229)

RECIPE #1180

• Date: Sunday, July 4, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C
  

I picked this recipe because I was trying to finish off the Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings section of The Book, which only had two recipes left. This recipe was a huge pain. There were so many steps that I don't even want to write them all out. So I will summarize. First I made a stock out of shrimp shells and some vegetables. Then I pureed the stock (shells and all!) and strained it. I made a sauce from the stock and some heavy cream. I then made a seafood mousse, which involved pureeing some shrimp and scallops with Cognac, some of the sauce I had just made, and heavy cream. Once the mousse was nice and smooth I stirred in chunks of shrimp and scallop. I then boiled lasagna noodles until they were partly cooked. I formed the cannelloni by spreading seafood mousse on each noodle and rolling the noodles up. I fit them into a dish with the sauce. I then baked the dish until it was done. I admit, I was supposed to broil it for 3 minutes after it was baked, and I had done so many steps at that point that I completely forgot. Whoops!

This dish was not so good. On the upside, the sauce was tasty. It had a pretty intense seafood flavor from the shrimp shells and a wonderful texture. The seafood filling, on the other hand, was not so tasty. I am never really a fan of seafood mousse, and this was no exception. Even my special gentleman was put off by the chunks of shellfish that were mixed in with the pureed shellfish. It didn't work well. We both felt that without the chunks in the filling the dish would have been much more appetizing from a textural perspective. From a flavor perspective it was just intensely flavored like shellfish. For me, it was too much. I can imagine someone else who might enjoy it though. Unfortunately that person was neither me nor my special gentleman, so after all that effort most of this dish ended up in the trash.

The recipe is here.

I didn't particularly enjoy making this dish and I certainly didn't enjoy eating it. But one positive thing did come out of the experience: a very funny interaction with my special gentleman which we are still laughing about. I made this on a Sunday and early in the day my special gentleman asked me,
"What are we having for dinner tonight?"
I replied, "Seafood Cannelloni."
(pause)
"Oh. OK."
[Several hours pass.]
"So we're having Seafood Cannelloni tonight?"
"Yup."
He said, "I don't usually like cannelloni."
"Well, this recipe is quite different from a typical cannelloni recipe. For instance, there's no cheese."
"Huh. So it's just a flaky pastry with seafood inside?"
(pause)
"Matt, we are having seafood cannelloni, not seafood cannoli!"

Apparently all day he had been trying to picture the Sicilian dessert cannoli, except filled with seafood. He doesn't particularly like cannoli (crazy, I know!), and was having trouble getting excited about a seafood-filled version. When I explained to him that cannelloni were different -- indeed we would be having a stuffed pasta dish for dinner, not a seafood and pastry dessert, he was much happier!

Raspberry Summer Pudding (Page 829)

RECIPE #1179

• Date: Sunday, July 4, 2010 -- 1pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C+
  

This one was on the list generated by the random number generator. I had put off making this dessert for years because while I love pretty much everything called "pudding" in America, English puddings just aren't my thing. I no longer have the option of being so picky though, so I finally bit the bullet and made this recipe. I lined a charlotte mold (a gift from Vero and Philippe -- thank you!) with plastic wrap. Then I lined the bottom and sides of the mold with white bread, overlapping slightly. I cooked some raspberries, strawberries and sugar with some raspberry liqueur then used a sieve to separate the solids and the syrup. I layered the fruit solids and white bread in the mold, poured some of the syrup over the top layer of fruit solids, and topped with bread to cover. I then weighted the pudding down with 2 pounds of canned goods and refrigerated it for 12 hours. To serve I unwrapped and inverted it, then spooned the reserved syrup over it and garnished with fresh fruit.

This dish was, well, exactly what I expected. The fruit had a good flavor but it was surrounded by soggy white bread. Ick. And actually the texture of the fruit was a little gross too. It was cooked to a mush, which generally wouldn't bother me, but paired with the soggy bread it just didn't work for me. All that said, if you don't have an aversion to soggy bread like I do, you might well like this dish. My special gentleman wasn't crazy about it, but he did eat the entire thing over the span of a couple days.

The recipe in The Book is almost the same as this one, except that the one in The Book calls for strawberries and raspberries rather than just raspberries.

Well, a week and a half after we arrived I am still not feeling so settled in Michigan. It seems that my special gentleman and I have both been very busy over the last ten days, yet there is still so much to do. Indeed, at this point it feels a little insurmountable. We both have tons of work to do (as usual), and are trying to balance that with our efforts to get the house organized and get settled into it. My office at the university was being vacated and cleaned this week, so I was working from home. I enjoy working from home, but my home office is a disaster at the moment, and cleaning it up would require buying some filing cabinets at the very least. Which I haven't had time to do... So I sit at my desk, surrounded by huge stacks of paper and boxes and wonder when I will get to the item on the To Do list that says: Clean Office.

Indeed, I am in that phase where my To Do list gets longer instead of shorter every day. *sigh* Today I tried to learn about yard care. Luckily, our friends who were staying in our house while we were in California did an awesome job of taking care of our yard. So it was looking pretty good when we got back. But today we headed out there to do some lawn care ourselves: we needed to reseed some bare patches, prune the hedges, pull weeds, trim back the overgrown plants, etc... Before we could start we made a fun trip to Home Depot where a nice man kindly advised us on all sorts of things. I think he realized we were clueless/new homeowners when it came to his attention that we didn't even own a hose. And we were clueless. We have a lot of plants and some areas around the house are very densely occupied by plant life. Picking out which were weeds wasn't easy. Luckily we live in a neighborhood where a lot of neighbors stop by to chat whenever you are outside. I solicited a lot of advice throughout the afternoon and gained a little yard care confidence!

One thing I can say about home ownership: I am learning a lot!

Jellied Cranberry Sauce (Page 903)

RECIPE #1178

• Date: Sunday, July 4, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I picked this recipe because the Relishes, Chutneys, Pickles, and Preserves section of The Book is one of the sections on which I am making slow progress. My special gentleman claimed adamantly that he had never eaten, or even seen, cranberry sauce before (a claim which I find nearly impossible to believe, especially because my aunt serves the kind in a can every year on Christmas Eve, and my special gentleman is there). But he stood by his claim and throughout the four days or so that this was in the fridge he kept asking, "Sauce for what?" He was unsatisfied with my answer that it could be eaten as a side dish on its own and instead ate it as a "sauce" on pork, Kraft mac and cheese, and even on pie (yes, plum pie topped with cranberry jello).

To make this sauce I combined cranberries, sugar, and water in a saucepan and cooked it. Then I strained out the solids, mixed some gelatin into the liquid and poured it into a mold. The recipe said to let it set for 2 hours in the fridge but in reality it took much longer. I then inverted it onto a plate and served. The resulting cranberry sauce was OK. It had a nice cranberry flavor but it was very gelatinous. The texture reminded me of the Jello Jigglers my mom used to make for me when I was a kid. I love jello, so that was fine with me, but it definitely wasn't a typical cranberry sauce texture. My other complaint about this recipe was that it was a little dull. If you are going to go through the work of making your own cranberry sauce it seems like it should be interesting in some way. Perhaps a kick of citrus or booze would have made this dish more interesting. All that said, over the course of a few days we finished off the whole dish, and I grew quite fond of my serving of cranberry jello with every meal.

The recipe is here.

I enjoy teaching and I try to do a good job. When teaching graduate courses, or upper level undergraduates, the students tend to be pretty focused. They are interested in learning the material or they wouldn't be there. With lower level undergraduate courses, however, that isn't always the case. For instance, the business calculus course that I have taught many times in the last few years was a requirement for many students. I would guess that at least 80 percent of my students wouldn't have taken the course if they hadn't been forced to. In that situation I try to bring even more enthusiasm to my teaching. I try to motivate everything thoroughly, and communicate my passion for math. I do what I can, and then I just hope that by the end of the semester they have developed an appreciation for the course and walked away with some mathematical foundations.

I think, though, that sometimes there are students who miss the point. An illustration: I recently got my teaching evaluations back from the fall semester, when I had over 300 business calculus students. Overall the evaluations were positive with some constructive comments -- I was happy with them. But in the mix was also probably the most ridiculous student response I have ever gotten.

Question: What did you like most about the course and/or the instructor?

Student response: I thought she was pretty cute with a nice little figure.

In fact, the student wrote six or seven sentences, mostly in that vein, including charmers like, "Last week she wore her hair down and was looking right."

Somehow I think that student missed the point of the question (and possibly the course)!

Baked Eggs with Cream, Parmesan, and White Truffle (Page 634)

RECIPE #1177

• Date: Saturday, July 3, 2010 -- 11am
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our New House!!!
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I hadn't made this recipe yet because I couldn't find white truffle paste. Finally I just special-ordered some. This recipe was quick and easy, which was exactly what I was looking for last weekend, as the kitchen was still half full of boxes needing to be unpacked! To prepare this dish I stirred together some creme fraiche, grated Parmesan, white truffle paste, salt, and pepper. I divided the mixture between buttered ramekins. I broke an egg into each ramekin and set them in a baking dish. I filled the dish with boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins, then I baked the dish until the egg whites were just set. I served the baked eggs with toast. This dish was tasty, but incredibly intense. The richness of eggs + creme fraiche + cheese was a little overwhelming. I was certainly glad the toast was there to cut the richness a bit. The recipe called for 1-2 teaspoons white truffle paste, or to taste. I put in 2 teaspoons, since my special gentleman loves truffles (plus since the truffle paste was hard to find, and expensive, I figured I would get my use out of it!). In retrospect, I wish I had used less. It had a great flavor, of course, but the mushroom flavor was so intense in the dish that it drowned out the cheese and overpowered even the egg. Half as much truffle paste might have been perfect. All that said, this dish tasted pretty good. One further warning: the dish was texturally a little weird: the creme fraiche melted and was quite runny, while the egg had firmed up nicely. But the egg white and the creme fraiche mixture were essentially the same color, so the different textures were a little off-putting.

This recipe isn't online.

When my special gentleman and I were house-hunting I would walk in the front door of each house and head straight for the kitchen. I was open-minded about many aspects of our house search, but the kitchen wasn't one of them. I was partial towards kitchens that wouldn't have to be gutted and remodeled, but I would have done that if we had absolutely loved a house where it was necessary. The real problem was the houses where there just wasn't enough kitchen space, and no way to expand. There was one house we liked quite a lot along the way that was great except for a super-tiny kitchen. The kitchen was beautiful: granite counters, top of the line appliances -- it was very nice, but very small. I think we went through that house three times, trying to decide if there was a way to push out a wall to make the kitchen bigger. But the way the house was laid out nothing could be done short of moving the kitchen entirely, which I didn't feel up for. At the time I wondered if I was being too picky, if it was unreasonable to reject a house based solely on the kitchen.

Now, less than a week into living (and cooking!) in our new house I am so glad that we waited for the right kitchen (err, I mean house) to come along. My special gentleman had a lot of things he wanted in our house (walkable to work, an older home, hardwood floors...). My top priority was an open, airy kitchen with plenty of room for cooking with friends and storage for loads of kitchen equipment. In the end we managed to accommodate all of our priorities! I am totally loving my new kitchen -- it is a delight to cook in. I dare say, it may well be my favorite of all the kitchens I have ever cooked in (except, of course, the culinary school kitchens, which were pretty much awesome).

I'm so happy to be home!

Green Chile Cheesecake with Papaya Salsa (Page 68)

RECIPE #1176

• Date: Wednesday, June 9, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: Westerville, OH
• Kitchen: Karen and Dave's House
• Dining Companions: Matty, Brad, Deniz, Karen H, Dave, Phil H, Kayla, Wes, and Jinx
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

I made this dish as an appetizer for a dinner with my special gentleman's family last month. The concept of this dish was a little unusual. It was a savory cheesecake on a blue corn chip crumb crust, studded with chopped roasted poblano chiles. Slices of the cheesecake were served with a papaya salsa. I first made the crust, in the usual fashion that you would make a graham cracker crumb crust, but using blue corn chips rather than graham crackers. I baked the crust for 10 minutes. I then roasted some poblano chiles in the broiler, then peeled, seeded, and chopped them. I made the filling for the cheesecake by blending together sour cream, eggs, cream cheese, and softened butter then stirring in the poblano chiles, grated Monterey Jack, grated sharp Chedder, minced fresh dill, chopped cilantro, and salt. I poured the filling over the crust and baked until the center was set. Then I let it cool for several hours. Meanwhile, I made the papaya salsa. I combined chopped papaya, minced garlic, finely chopped red onion, finely chopped red bell pepper, cilantro, rice vinegar, salt, and pepper. I served the cheesecake with the salsa.

On the upside, the papaya salsa was excellent. It was well-balanced and flavorful with nice textural contrast. It would have been tasty not only on this cheesecake but also with chips or in a taco. The cheesecake, however, left something to be desired. I had two major complaints. One, the filling was very bland. With so much cheese and so many roasted poblanos I expected the filling to be flavorful and spicy. Unfortunately this was not the case. I think it just desperately needed more salt to bring out the flavors. As it was it tasted quite dull. My other complaint was that the crust had a bad texture. The idea of a blue corn chip crust really appealed to me, but in practice the crust came out kind of chewy and stale tasting (although the chips had been neither stale nor chewy before they went into the crust). So although the salsa was very tasty the cheesecake was disappointing and the whole dish together was only OK.

The recipe in The Book is similar to this one, but the one online has a cornmeal crust rather than a corn chip crust.

Well, we are finally home in East Lansing! We arrived on Wednesday evening after a fairly smooth day of moving. The last few days have been a blur of unpacking, organizing, and administrative things for my new job. The weather has been incredibly perfect and it is wonderful to have windows open throughout the house as we unpack. We have been eating every meal out on our screened in porch. I had hoped/suspected that summer in Michigan would be lovely and I wasn't wrong!

There are still boxes to be unpacked, but they are no longer stacked high along the walls. And after much effort, I think I have gotten my kitchen supplies mostly organized. Luckily we have a fairly large kitchen, with a pantry. And my special gentleman made me a second pantry in the basement. He took the job very seriously. We have a little room at the bottom of the basement stairs which I suppose is meant to be for storage. It was dusty and a little gross in there, but he spent hours cleaning it out. He then declared that we should repaint it. So we did! We gave the walls and the floor in there a fresh new coat of paint. He then set up rows of shelving and a freezer. And so it came to be: kitchen pantry number 2! Between the many cupboards in the kitchen itself and the two pantries, I think everything has a home. There is still more organization to be done (at moment the cookware and dinnerware is mostly organized but the food is a mess!), but I am confident that I will feel very at home in my new kitchen. To celebrate, today I even did some cooking amidst the unpacking. I made three recipes from The Book!

Tomorrow I am hoping to finish off the unpacking, make a couple more recipes, and take care of some yard work! Sounds like a great way to spend a summer Sunday!