Duck Legs and Carrots (Page 398)

RECIPE #997

• Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I was looking for something to make from the Poultry section, and as I flipped by this one I thought, "Mmmm... duck. I haven't had duck in a while!" So I decided to try it out. I started by trimming off the excess fat from the duck legs, and rendering that fat on the stove top. Then I seasoned the legs with sea salt and pepper and then browned them in the rendered fat. I then took the duck legs out of the skillet and threw in some leeks, onion, and garlic and cooked for a few minutes. Then I added carrots and cooked some more. I seasoned the veggies and spread them in the bottom of a roasting pan. I added a bouquet garni of parsley, rosemary, and bay leaf, and I also added a jalapeno. Then I put the duck legs skin-side-up on the veggies and poured enough chicken stock in to come most of the way up the duck legs, while still leaving the skin exposed. I baked the dish, uncovered, for about an hour and a half. The duck legs turned out incredibly delicious. The meat braised in the liquid, leaving it moist, and perfectly prepared. Meanwhile, since the skin was just out of the liquid, it crisped to perfection. Brilliant! That skin was so, so delicious. My one complaint about this dish is that the carrots became rather overcooked, and the flavor of rosemary in the vegetables was overpowering. So while I absolutely loved the duck legs, the veggies just didn't do it for me. It's a minor sacrifice though for what my special gentleman described as the best duck he has ever had.

This recipe isn't online.

I am headed to Germany this evening for a week of math in the Black Forest! I am going to a conference taking place at a small institute nestled into the woods. I have been there a couple times before and it is very beautiful. I am looking forward to it, other than the travel required to get there. I really don't like flying to Europe. I don't like flying in general, but in particular I don't like flying through the night. I am too nervous to sleep on planes and as I get more tired, I get more unhappy about being on an airplane. It's not fun. Typically every summer I have one mathematical European adventure, but this summer has two in store for me (both of which I am looking forward to other than the traveling!) -- so I am trying to rally for two overseas airplane trips! Luckily today I am flying with a friend, which always makes things better.

This afternoon, though, I am enjoying a restful day in Chicago before my trip. My special gentleman and I drove up yesterday morning, and yesterday afternoon I got together with my friend V to do some work. He and I had a productive afternoon and then my special gentleman and I went out to dinner with another friend, Alp. Now we are lounging around Brad and Deniz' condo after a walk along the lake. I need to finish a few things and then it is time to head to the airport. Next stop: Germany!

Garlic-and-Soy-Marinated Pork Roast with Shitake Mushroom Gravy (Page 471)

RECIPE #996

• Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A
  

This recipe came off the list generated by the random number generator. I started by marinating a pork loin roast for 8 hours in a mixture of soy sauce, sherry, brown sugar, garlic, and pepper. Then I set the pork on top of some chopped onions in a roasting pan. I put a little water over the onions and then put the roast in the oven. I roasted until the meat was 145 degrees, then I let the pork stand for 25 minutes before carving. While it was standing I cooked thinly sliced shitake mushroom caps in olive oil with salt and pepper. Then I deglazed the pan the pork had cooked in with white wine, then reduced the wine. I added chicken stock then strained the sauce. I slowly added a beurre manie (READ: flour and butter smushed together), then the mushrooms, and simmered briefly. I seasoned the sauce and served it over the pork. How was it? Well my special gentleman ate in silence for a few minutes and then said, "I think this is the best pork loin I have ever had." It was good. Quite good. The meat came out flavorful, and very juicy. It was perfectly cooked. It was the sauce that made the dish stand out though. Although the sauce was quick and simple to make, it had great depth of flavor and was extremely delicious on the pork. The flavors in the sauce complemented wonderfully the flavors in the meat from the marinade. This sauce would have been very nice on chicken too, or just sopped up with a good piece of bread. It was a delicious pork dish. My only regret is that I didn't make it on a day when we had people over for dinner to share it with!

This recipe isn't online.

Between me and my special gentleman at least one of us has moved during the summer every year for the past 12 years. In other words, we have both done a lot of moving. And now we are moving again... My lease on my current apartment ends in August, and since I am staying in Bloomington next year, I had planned to stay in my apartment. But last October (yes, ten months before my lease ends) the leasing company demanded to know if I was going to renew. I told them almost certainly I was. The only ambiguity was that I was considering applying for a job in Michigan (which I did). I figured even if I managed to get the job they would probably let me defer to finish my postdoc (which they did), but you never know for sure. So I didn't want to sign a lease until the winter, when I would know more. Note: even if I couldn't have made a decision until, say, February, that still would have been six months before my lease ended! But, no, the leasing company couldn't wait, so they leased my apartment out from underneath me. And, as I expected, I was able to defer my new job and I am staying in Bloomington next year. But now I have to move. Grrrr.... I love the apartment I live in now, so it's extra infuriating. I like my new place too, and it's very close (only a block or two away), but it's frustrating having to pack up everything and move!

My special gentleman is moving to Michigan in the fall and we have an offer out on a house, so I thought when I moved apartments we could move most of our stuff to the house in Michigan and I could just take a few things with me. But we are still waiting to see if we will get the house, which means that now everything needs to go to my new apartment. But the new apartment is much smaller (since I thought we would also have a house and hence most of the furniture would go there...). So I don't know where all of our stuff is going to go! We are currently renting two storage units -- one in Bloomington and one in East Lansing -- but thy are both full! The move isn't happening until the middle of July, but I am about to leave town for 2 weeks, so that means the time to pack is now. I was standing in the shower yesterday, dreading the moving, and I had the thought that someday soon my special gentleman and I will live together, in a house. We won't be renting any apartments or any storage units. And we won't have to move for years and years. That will be so amazing! That thought gave me some peace. The end of the moving is near!

Passover Sponge Cake with Apples (Page 711)

RECIPE #995

• Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 -- 9pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I waited until right before Passover to attempt to make this recipe, figuring then I would have the best chances of finding matzo cake meal. As it turned out, I couldn't find it even then, so I had to order it. By the time it came I was in the midst of getting ready for the wedding and I forgot to make it. It was the first thing I made when we got back from our honeymoon though. I separated 6 eggs then beat the yolks with some sugar for a long while, then added some lemon zest and lemon juice. In a different bowl I beat the whites with some salt and sugar until they formed stiff peaks. I folded matzo cake meal and potato starch into the yolks, then folded in the whites. I layered this batter in the pan with sliced apples and cinnamon sugar. Then I baked until it was cooked through. This cake was perfectly fine. It indeed had a very spongy texture: light but a little bit chewy. I liked the layers of cinnamon- doused apples and the apples were nicely cooked. My real complaint was just that it was dull. There was no punch to it, and consequently my special gentleman and I each ate a piece and then weren't too interested in eating any more. It's in the freezer now, and I am sure there will be a night a few weeks or months from now when we will dig it out and think, "Ooooo.... cake!" And we will be happy it's there.

The recipe is here.

Every semester I think, "This semester I am sure I will be traveling less than last semester!" I enjoy the traveling of course (well, not the traveling itself, but I enjoy being in other places and seeing people, giving talks, etc...), but in the last couple years it has gotten a little out of hand. In the summer, though, traveling is less stressful because I am not also teaching. Somehow when I first thought about this summer I thought my special gentleman and I would spend most of our time at home in Indiana, relaxing and getting work done. That vision, though, has changed. The summer so far has been pretty eventful. In May I only traveled two weekends, but we were getting ready for the wedding, which was a fair amount of work. And at the end of the month, of course, we had a lot of visitors! We left almost immediately after the wedding for our honeymoon, and returned home at the beginning of this week. Now, here comes the crazy part. Next Saturday I leave for a week in Germany for a conference. I fly back the following Saturday and my special gentleman and I will drive directly from the airport to my parents' place in Wisconsin. We will be there for a week, during which time my parents are throwing a small, "Yay marriage!" party for us, and we are also attending Melanie and Daniel's wedding (and many awesome pre-wedding activities!). We will drive back just in time for me to move apartments (long story -- I wish I didn't have to move!). We have three or four days at home to deal with the moving, then we are headed to Ohio to my special gentleman's parents' house. They are throwing us a reception to celebrate our marriage and then we are spending the week with them. We fly straight from Ohio to England, where my special gentleman will be working with a friend in his research area. After a week in England we are flying to Norway, where I am speaking at a conference. Then we fly home, where we will be for three days before we fly to California for a reunion with the swim crew (and to meet it's newest addition: baby Cate!). By the time we get back from that, my special gentleman is supposed to be in East Lansing. Our house still hasn't come through, and because we have been waiting for it, we haven't yet found him a place to live there. So who knows how that will go!

Basically this summer is CRAZY! Luckily it is crazy in a super fun way! All of these trips should be great, and for the vast majority of it my special gentleman and I will be together (which is a nice way to spend the summer we got married!).

I would say, "Well, things will probably calm down in the fall!" But they probably won't. I am teaching 350 students in the fall and my special gentleman and I will be living apart again. So I think it will be more than a little hectic! It is times like these that I think, "Thanks goodness we don't have kids yet!" I can't even imagine!

Coeurs a la Creme with Blackberries (Page 837)

RECIPE #994

• Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Matty, Brian, Emilee, Sam, Teri, and Terry
• Recipe Rating: B
  

My brother Spencer and his girlfriend Ellen got me coeur a la creme molds as a present this past Christmas. I was super excited, as those molds had been sitting on my Gourmet Project Wishlist for quite some time, and I just couldn't find them anywhere. You might be thinking to yourself, "What are coeur a la creme molds?" Chances are, you've never seen one. They are small ceramic molds, in the shape of a heart, with holes in the bottom. It's like someone took a ramekin, made it heart shaped, and then poked a bunch of holes in it. This item has limited utility. Many things you would make in a ramekin, even if you wanted them heart-shaped, would leak out the holes. So, the molds are very specific to this dessert, which isn't a popular one in the US, and hence I couldn't find them anywhere! Ellen found them though, and I had been waiting for a special occasion to try them out. When my parents and Emilee, Brian, and Sam were here before the wedding, I decided to give them a try and make this recipe. I started by beating together cream cheese, sour cream, powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, and lemon juice. The Book then directs you to "Force mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl." They make it sound easy but in reality this was a HUGE pain. The mixture was very, very thick, and hence it was none too happy about going through a fine sieve. The Active Time for this recipe is supposedly 15 minutes, but that step easily took 15 minutes by itself. Once that was done, I lined the molds with a single dampened layer of cheesecloth, then I put the cheese mixture into them. I put them in a shallow pan in the fridge overnight. I made the topping by mashing blackberries with sugar, then adding more whole berries, creme de cassis, and lemon juice. I let the mixture sit for 20 minutes. I unmolded the coeur a la creme onto plates and topped with the berries. This dessert was a little odd. Obviously it was delicious, but it was so, so rich. It was like biting into a heart shaped blob of cream cheese. The one thing that was remarkably nice about this dish was the texture. Apparently forcing it through a fine mesh sieve was worth it because there was an incredible lightness to the texture, that did a bit to counterbalance the richness of the ingredients. The berries were also a lovely complement to the cheese. This was the type of dessert where the first bite was amazing, but then it was so rich that after a few bites I didn't want to eat it any more.

The recipe is here.

One more post about our honeymoon trip! Throughout our honeymoon, I was on the lookout for wildlife. I really wanted to see a moose (and eventually I did see one -- unfortunately it was dead by the side of the road). Even without a live moose sighting, we did have some funny wildlife moments. When we visited Yellowstone, we happened upon a small traffic jam. This was especially odd because Yellowstone was practically empty the day we were there. So what caused this traffic jam?

Bison in the road! There were lots of bison on the hill next to the road, and then there were two bison just walking down the road, leading a line of cars. It was pretty funny. Most people stayed in their cars, but a couple people were standing in the road to get pictures. This seemed like an especially bad idea given all the warnings in the park about how many Yellowstone visitors were gored by bison last year! They look harmless enough, but apparently they aren't always too friendly.

During our 4000 miles on the road, we drove through many areas where there were road signs saying "Open Range." Indeed in many of those areas there were cattle grazing very near to the road, and occasionally they would walk across the highway. Somewhere in Utah, though, we came upon this guy, who wasn't walking in the road, he was just standing there.

We figured he would probably move out of the way eventually, but we were wrong. He just stood there and stared us down until we went around. As we drove around him, he gave us a not-so-nice look!


Besides the bison and cows we also saw many, many deer, elk, antelope, and a variety of rodents we couldn't identify. No live moose though. Maybe next trip!

Beef Tenderloin with Cornichon Tarragon Sauce (Page 416)

RECIPE #993

• Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Brian
• Dining Companions: Emilee, Sam, Matty, Teri, and Terry
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I picked this beef dish to make when Emilee, Brian, Sam, and my parents were visiting a few days before the wedding. Brian really did most of the work on this dish. I seasoned a center-cut, tied, beef tenderloin, then Brian browned it. We then put it in the oven to roast. Meanwhile, we combined shallots, white wine, and minced tarragon and simmered it until it was reduced. I then beat together butter and mustard in a mixer. Brian thinly sliced some cornichons, and we added the cornichons and some cream to the reduced shallot mixture. Then I whisked in the mustard butter and seasoned the sauce. Once the beef had cooked and rested, Brian sliced it and we topped it with the cornichon sauce. This beef certainly tasted good, but I wouldn't make this recipe again. Beef tenderloin is incredibly delicious, and browning and roasting it is a lovely way to prepare it. The sauce didn't do the meat justice though. For one thing, it was too thin. The main problem was the flavor though. The cornichons were just too overpowering. The mustard tarragon sauce would have been nice without the addition of the cornichons, but as it was it had a sour flavor to it that wasn't so nice. It was also odd having the cornichons in the very thin sauce. After saucing the meat it looked like beef with pickle slices on it -- it was not terribly appealing. The dish would have been better with a simple pan sauce.

The recipe is here.

We are back at home after a fantastic honeymoon! The last few days of our trip were awesome! On Thursday we drove from Northern Utah down to Moab, Utah. That afternoon we did a 7.5 mile hike in the Canyonlands National Park. It was AMAZING. The park was really deserted -- we didn't see another person for five miles during our hike. Lizards? Yes. People? No. One thing that was spectacular about it was the silence. Very few things can live in that type of desert environment, so it was incredibly quiet. The views really made the hike though. We stopped on several occasions to just sit and enjoy.


The hike had the most difficult rating in the hiking guide to Utah we were looking at. At the start I thought, "This isn't so hard!" But it turned out that a good chunk of the hike involved scaling up and down slippery rock. I was only scared at one point, when I was climbing up a nearly vertical face of rock and didn't have a good hold with either foot or either hand. Luckily my special gentleman was behind me and caught one of my feet! Here's a picture of me climbing down some rocks:

The other thing that made the hike tricky was that it wasn't super well marked. The trail was marked with cairns (piles of rocks) that are meant to tell you where to go. On more than one occasion we found ourselves surrounded by rock, looking for piles of rocks to tell us where to go! Eventually we found our way!

After our day of hiking in Canyonlands, we returned to Moab. The next morning we hiked at Arches National Park. We hiked the longest trail in Arches, which is about 6 miles. Here's Matt at the start of our hike:

It was pretty hot that day in the desert, and eventually I needed a little break:


After our hike at Arches we drove to Colorado where we stayed at a spa in the mountains for a couple nights. It was so great to be at a spa after two weeks on the road, doing lots of active things. The spa was incredibly gorgeous, and we relaxed! We sat in the three outdoor hot tubs. We swam in the salt water pool. We got massages. We went to an aerobics class. We sat in the steam rooms. It was great -- an absolute perfect end to our trip.

On Sunday we had a lovely lunch with our friends James and Laura in Denver, then we hit the road. We made it home last night, not too late. Now it's back to real life!

Onion and Bacon Tart (Page 71)

RECIPE #992

• Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Matty, Emilee, Brian, Sam, Terry, and Teri
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I made dinner for our pre-wedding visitors a few days before the wedding. This was one component of that meal. I started by making the dough. I proofed the yeast in water and honey. Then I added flour and salt and kneaded it in my stand mixer. I let the dough rise for 4 hours. Meanwhile I made the topping -- I cooked chopped bacon and a little water until the fat was rendered. Then I removed the bacon from the pan and used the bacon fat to grease a baking sheet. I cooked onions slowly in butter, with some caraway seeds, salt and pepper. When the dough was ready, I spread it out on the greased baking sheet, spread it with a mixture of creme fraiche, thyme, and salt, then topped it with the pieces of bacon and carmelized onions. I baked this in a hot oven, on a pizza stone which had been heating in the oven for more than an hour. This dish was not at all what I expected ("tart" is definitely the wrong word for it -- there was nothing tart-like about the dough), but it was delicious. Honestly, you can't go too wrong with dough topped with caramelized onions and bacon, and this dish was a lovely rendition of that concept. The creme fraiche mixture was just barely detectable in the end, but it added a touch of creaminess that worked well. The dough had a great texture to it -- I think cooking it on a pizza stone contributed a lot to that. And the flavors of the onions and the bacon were, of course, delicious. It wasn't the most attractive dish, but it tasted great! Everyone seemed to like this dish quite a bit.

The recipe is here.

Hello from Utah! Our honeymoon trip continues to be awesome. On Sunday we drove from Wyoming to Utah. When I was making reservations for our trip, I had thought it might be nice to rent a house for a few days in the middle -- hotels get old after a while. The house we rented looked nice online, but it is even better than we expected! It's on a tiny island in a river that runs through a canyon. The house is the only thing on the little island, so we are surrounded by a beautiful rolling river. Here is a picture of my special gentleman standing in front of the house, on the footbridge that you cross to get to the front door.


And here's a picture of my special gentleman standing in the "backyard," which is really a beach, a fire pit, and a place to play horseshoes!


The inside of the house is really nice too! Despite how nice the house is, we have still been out exploring the area. Yesterday we rented all-terrain vehicles and rode on an ATV trail through the Wasatch Mountain Range. My last experience with an ATV was more than 15 years ago, and it ended badly (I still have scars!), so I was a little nervous about this. But it was incredible! Driving the ATV was super fun and the views only got more and more amazing as we rode higher and higher. Here's a picture of us in our gear:


My special gentleman and I decided to share one ATV and take turns driving. This, I think, was a bit of a mistake, as being on the back of the ATV was much more frightening than being the driver! We only had two close calls though, and both while I was driving. I tipped the ATV twice, but managed to catch it with my foot both times before we fell off. Unfortunately, one of the times I tipped it, I was driving through a river, so I ended up very, very wet when I used my leg to catch us! My special gentleman and I laughed about the fact that I tipped it and he didn't. Either I am less cautious than him (which seems highly unlikely!), or I'm a worse driver! I think the real answer is that I drove the roughest terrain... at least that's what I'm telling myself! Here's a picture of me on the ATV:

Today I woke up tired and wanted to do something a little more relaxing. So we went out on a beautiful lake in a canyon and paddle-boated and kayaked. Basically we boated out to the middle of the lake and then took a nice nap on the boat, soaking up the sun and enjoying the amazing views. After our day on the lake, we went indoor, glow-in-the-dark miniature golfing. It was odd, but fun!

Tomorrow is our last full day in this part of Utah, then we are headed south to visit Canyonlands and Arches National Parks!

Mexican Corn Soup (Page 86)

RECIPE #991

• Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Matty, Emilee, Brian, Sam, Teri, and Terry
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

A couple days before the wedding I wanted to make a dinner from The Book for our visitors. This was the soup I made with that meal. I started by cooking garlic, onion, and jalapenos in oil, then adding cumin, coriander, salt, and pepper and cooking a few more minutes. Then I added carrots and celery, cooked them for a few minutes then added chicken stock, water, and corncobs (with the kernels removed). After cooking that for a while, I added some of the corn kernels and cooked until the kernels were tender. I removed the corncobs then pureed the soup. To get it extra smooth, I forced it through a fine mesh sieve. Meanwhile I cooked the remaining kernels in boiling water until just cooked and I roasted red peppers in the broiler. I peeled and chopped the red peppers and added them and the corn kernels to the puree. The Book suggests serving this soup at room temperature, but I found it to be very delicious served hot, so that's what I did! This soup was quite good. The texture was perfect -- it was mostly smooth, studded with perfectly cooked corn and bites of roasted red pepper. The flavor was also lovely. The essence of the corn came through beautifully while the spices and aromatics gave it a good depth of flavor. It was a lovely summer soup that everyone enjoyed!

This recipe isn't online.

Hello from Wyoming! My special gentleman and I are on our honeymoon road trip! I admit, I was mildly dreading the 23 hour drive from home to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but actually it ended up being super fun. Bits of the drive were dull but for the most part, the scenery was beautiful. The last 7 or 8 hours of driving were in the state of Wyoming, and it was gorgeous. I also learned that I am excellent at predicting the weather in Wyoming. For instance, when the picture below was taken, I predicted heavy rain, straight ahead. And I was right!

After a few days of driving, we arrived in Jackson Hole on Thursday. Yesterday we started our day with a 9 mile hike in the Tetons. It was incredibly gorgeous. Here's a picture of me, from where we started our hike:

And a picture of my special gentleman a couple hours into our hike. The one downside of hiking with a marathon runner is that he never gets tired! About three and a half hours into the hike I was getting a little bit weary, but he was still suggesting ways to extend our route. We had a great time in the Tetons!
Today we had planned to go whitewater rafting on the Snake River, but when we realized that the high temperature was going to be 45 degrees and it was going to rain all day, we reconsidered our plans! Instead we spent the day at Yellowstone, which was really spectacular. We had planned to spend only half the day there, then come back to Jackson Hole and go to the rodeo, but Yellowstone was so huge and so magnificent that we ended up spending the entire day.

Tomorrow we are leaving Jackson Hole and heading to Utah! It's sad to be leaving Wyoming so soon -- there are a bunch of things we wanted to do that we didn't get to -- but I am excited about Utah!

Chicken Soup with Almond Matzo Balls (Page 123)

RECIPE #990

• Date: Friday, May 8, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C+
  

I made this soup several weeks ago. I started by making the matzo balls. I mixed together eggs, vegetable oil, matzo meal, coarsely chopped almonds, chopped dill, cinnamon, salt, pepper, and chicken stock. I chilled the mixture for a couple hours, then formed it into little balls. I cooked the balls in simmering water, then put them in a pot of chicken broth and simmered. This soup was a disppointment. I didn't find these matzo balls to be nearly as good as typical matzo balls. The addition of almonds was ok, but it gave the matzo balls a bit of strange crunchiness that I didn't like. The seasoning was very offputting -- there was just too much cinnamon and dill. The matzo balls were also unusually heavy and dense. To top it all off, this recipe allowed for store-bought chicken broth. There are recipes in The Book which demand homemade stock, and this should certianly be one of them. So much of this soup is just plain broth that it is silly to use crappy canned broth. In summary, this recipe was not my favorite and I certainly won't make it again.

The recipe is here.

My special gentleman and I are married! Our wedding was on Saturday -- the whole weekend was just wonderful! In fact, the whole last week has been awesome! I'll write a few posts about the wedding (and soon I will have some pictures!), but everything went better even than I could have planned. The festivities started last Tuesday when my best friend Emilee, her husband Brian, and their 14-month old son Sam flew in. They stayed at our apartment with us all week, which was great fun! My parents also arrived on Tuesday. On Wednesday my mom, Emilee, and I did many wedding related errands, and Wednesday evening we all ate a big dinner together from The Book, then had some flights of scotch at a local bar. Thursday was wedding cake assembly day! (Yes, I made my own wedding cake!) I had made and frozen the cake layers in advance. On Thursday I made all the frosting, and assembled and decorated. It was awesome to have the moral support and help of my friends. A cake that big needs to have some wooden dowels and cardboard rounds inside it for structural support, and Brian helped out a ton with that. He's an experimental physicist, so he and my special gentleman worked together to make sure the cake had structural integrity. While I was whipping up batches of frosting, Brian was carefully sawing and filing wooden dowels to the exact right height. It was great fun! I ended up being super happy with both the appearance and the taste of the cake (red velvet cake with white chocolate cream cheese icing) -- I will post pictures as soon as I have some! Brian took a wonderful series of cake building pictures from the beginning of the assembly to the end of the decorating. After the wedding cake fun we finished up some more errands then went out for tasty Indian food. Friday the real festivities began! We had a "rehearsal dinner" in a beautiful outdoor area at the student union. We ate hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, baked beans, etc... it was just what I had a taste for! We had rented out a bowling alley, so after dinner we bowled, drank beer, and ate popcorn. I had an awesome time and I think everyone else had fun too!

I was up early on Saturday I was so excited! We had the wedding ceremony in our apartment, so Saturday was a busy day of setting up the chairs, decorating the apartment, doing some final cleaning, and getting ready! Luckily, I had tons of help! My mom, my aunt Julie, and my cousin Anne arranged all the flowers. Emilee, Brian, and my special gentleman helped set up all the chairs. Chris and Deniz helped with cleaning and decorating. And Vero and Philippe prepared delicious cocktails to be served before the ceremony! I wasn't too stressed out until it was time to transport the cake to the restaurant where we had our reception. It was 9 layers high and I was worried it wasn't too stable! I carried it, walking very, very slowly for the one block from my apartment to the reception site. I had a small entourage of friends around me and lots of people standing in the street starting! I was so, so happy when the cake made it in one piece! The rest of the day was filled with my hair and make-up appointment, getting dressed, etc...

The ceremony started at 5pm and it was just how I had picutred it! Emilee officiated it and she did a phenomenal job! It was so special to me to be married by my best friend, and she was just wonderful. Rachel, PJ, Juice, and Spencer did readings for us, and Matt and I exchanged vows that we wrote ourselves. Paul played the guitar beautifully as a musical interlude during the ceremony. Sam was our flower boy/ring bearer and he was incredibly cute. I was so happy that we decided to do it at home, and I couldn't have been happier with how it went. After the ceremony we headed over to the restaurant for a delicious 4 course meal and a late night of dancing and partying. The whole night was so fun!!

On Sunday morning we had brunch with the guests at the bed and breakfast where everyone was staying. We said goodbye to everyone, then went home and took a long nap! After we woke up, Em, Brian, Sam, my special gentleman (I mean, my husband!!) and I went hiking in a nearby state park. Then last night Brian made us a delicious dinner and we all went to bed early. Em, Brian, and Sam headed back to California today and tomorrow my husband and I are off for our honeymoon. This evening we are just relaxing at home, cleaning up, and being happy.

You know, everyone always says something will go wrong when you get married. But really, nothing went wrong! I guess that is one big advantage of keeping it very small and very simple!! It was exactly what we wanted! I will post pictures soon -- Brian and Chris both took pictures all weekend, and I have already seen some of them and they are amazing!

Roast Capon with Chile Cilantro Rub and Roasted Carrots (Page 399)

RECIPE #989

• Date: Friday, May 8, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

My special gentleman picked this recipe out for dinner a few weeks back. He was curious about capon (young, neutered male chicken). The idea with capon is that the hormone changes caused by neutering the bird make the meat more marbled and tender. I started this recipe by making a paste of garlic, salt, cilantro, ancho chile powder, cumin, and butter. I then worked some of this paste under the skin of the capon, and I rubbed some of it inside the cavity of the bird. I then put the capon in a roasting pan and surrounded it with carrots. I seasoned the carrots and poured some water over them. Then I roasted it all for several hours, taking it out occasionally to brush more chile butter on the bird, and later to baste with pan juices. I served the capon and carrots with red chile sauce (see post below). This dish was very tasty. The capon did indeed come out very tender, and the meat was nice and moist. The skin was amazing -- so crispy and flavorful! And the sauce went wonderfully with the meat. My special gentleman also loved the carrots. Mysteriously, I didn't like them too much. Generally I love carrots -- absolutely love them. But there was something weird about the texture of these. They were so carmelized that they became almost gummy. My special gentleman thought that was a good thing, I did not. Either way, it was a tasty dish.

Here is the recipe.

Well, the big day is almost here -- we are getting married on Saturday! Tomorrow a few wedding guests are arriving (my parents, and my best friend, her husband, and her son!), which feels like the start of the festivities. Luckily I got most of the last minute stuff done last week because I spent most of this weekend in bed! I get tonsillitis every year. For whatever reason, I am exceptionally prone to it. It doesn't seem contagious -- I have never given it to anyone else. But I haven't made it through a whole year without getting it in the last decade. Typically I get it in the fall, occasionally in the winter. This past fall and winter it never came. But then I got pneumonia, and I figured maybe that meant I was off the hook for tonsillitis this year. No such luck. I woke up on Friday in a lot of pain from an infected tonsil, and it continued to get worse throughout the day. By the afternoon I was sick and miserable. I have had bouts with tonsillitis where I then got bronchitis and ended up sick for more than a week. I absolutely did NOT want that to happen -- it would be so miserable to be sick for my wedding! So I stayed in bed as much as I possibly could from Friday to Sunday, and now I am feeling much better! In fact, I feel almost completely well! Yay! I think by tomorrow I will feel totally fine -- just in time for our first wedding guest arrivals! I am so excited!

Red Chile Sauce (Page 400)

RECIPE #988

• Date: Friday, May 8, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This sauce was a component of a capon dish, which will be my next post. To start I stemmed and seeded some dried New Mexico chiles and some dried guajillo chiles. I then toasted the chiles for a few seconds in a hot pan. Then I soaked them in boiling water. Once they were soft, I transfered the chiles, and most of the soaking liquid, to a blender. I pureed, then strained the mixture, then added back the remaining soaking liquid. I cooked onion, garlic, cumin, and oregano in vegetable oil, then added some flour, and after a couple minutes, the chile puree. I simmered it for a half hour, then added some salt, pepper, and sherry vinegar. This sauce was extremely tasty. It really highlighted the flavor of the chiles in a beautiful way. Many people think of chile peppers as just a source of heat, but this sauce beautifully illustrated how chile peppers do have a flavor independent of that heat. This sauce was not spicy at all, but still clearly had a chile taste to it. I liked it a lot. We ate it over capon, but it would maybe be even more delicious with some slow-cooked pork.

The recipe is here.

I never use to be a cry-when-I'm-happy kind of person. I've always cried when I get sufficiently upset, but happy occasions never left me teary-eyed. So I have never thought of myself as a very weepy person. I think that is changing though. I distinctly remember the first time I cried at a friend's wedding. I have no idea why I started tearing up, but as she walked down the aisle I couldn't help myself. When my best friend's baby was born last year, same thing. Definite tears. Both of those were huge occasions though, which more than merited some happy tears. But I have also been tearing up at some not-quite-as-huge occasions though. For instance, I got all teary-eyed watching the Chicago marathon. Why? No idea. I didn't even know anyone running in it. But as I watched all those runners go by, I felt a rush of pride for them, and it made me teary. The incident that has me questioning my sanity, though, is the following: last week my special gentleman and I were watching an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 from 1995 (NOT the new version of the show, but rather the good old days with Brandon, Kelly, Donna, etc...). Anyway, it was this absolutely terrible episode where Brandon and Susan were stuck in an eleveator with a pregnant lady and she (of course!) went into labor. So Brandon had to deliver the baby. And watching that made me cry! It's worrisome, no? My special gentleman looked so shocked that I was tearing up that I claimed my eyes were burning from allergies. He saw right through my excuses though. Apparently I am becoming weepy! Our wedding is next week -- hopefully I won't cry all the way through my vows!

Roasted Apple Strudels (Page 798)

RECIPE #987

• Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

My special gentleman's thirtieth birthday was a few weeks ago. At the time I failed to mention it on the blog -- the omission was not due to lack of excitement about my special gentleman or his birthday though. Rather, the opposite. I felt that my special gentleman deserved all sorts of great things for his thirtieth birthday: a big party with yummy food, a special gift, etc... and I felt like I did a really bad job of delivering those things for him. Normally I would have (at the very least) made him a really special meal. I would have invited friends over to share it with us. I would have come up with some creative and personal gift. But with our wedding just a couple weeks away, the idea of planning anything else just feels so overwhelming. I am trying hard not to feel overwhelmed by the wedding, but I am certainly at capacity for planning things. So on my special gentleman's birthday we pretty much did nothing. We went out to lunch with some friends, but in the evening we stayed home and he ate Ramen. I felt terrible about it but at the same time I felt completely unable to do any better. Maybe in a few months I'll throw him a surprise 30th birthday party. No doubt he'll be surprised ("Ummm... wasn't my birthday four months ago?!?"). The one small thing I did manage to do for him for his special day was make him a birthday cake. Ok, it wasn't a cake really. It was a strudel. I would have made him a cake, but he prefers strudel and has been asking me to make this one for years. So, I got my shit together a little bit, and at least did something for him to commemorate his special day by making this recipe.

I started by making the filling. I roasted pieces of apple with butter, sugar, cinnamon, lemon zest, and salt until very tender. Then I stirred in some golden raisins. The fun part of making strudel though, is making the dough! I stirred together some bread flour, sugar, and salt, then added melted butter, egg yolk, and water. I mixed it for 10 minutes, then let it stand for 40 minutes. Then came the best part: stretching! What makes strudel so delicious is the incredibly thin flaky layers of pastry. To get the dough that thin is a lengthy and very careful process of gently pulling on the dough with your hands to stretch it out. My special gentleman helped with this step (and it's even easier -- and more fun -- with more people).
This picture is of the dough when we were just about done stretching. You can see in the picture that the entire table is covered with dough, which is extremely thin (notice how clearly my hand shows through). That is a regular size card table, and it's completely covered by dough made from only 2 cups of flour -- so the dough is quite thin!!

After the dough was stretched we brushed it with some melted butter and sprinkled with a mixture of finely chopped walnuts, bread crumbs, sugar, and cinnamon. Then I put the filling on one end of the dough, in two separate mounds. We then, very carefully, started rolling. We rolled until we got to the other end, cut the two mounds apart to form two strudels, and placed each on a baking sheet. I brushed them with butter, sprinkled them with powdered sugar, cut steam vents in them and baked until golden.

In summary: yum! The strudels were very good. The dough was flaky and crispy, just as it should be. Sprinkling powdered sugar on top before baking gave the strudels a delicious sugary shell that was awesome. The filling also had a great flavor to it. Roasting the apples gave it more depth than a typical fruit filling. In the future I would probably omit the raisins in the filling though. They weren't bad, but they didn't seem to go that well, and I think it would have been better without. Making strudel may seem like an ordeal if you haven't made it before, but it is fun, and a really cool process! My special gentleman loved eating this and seeing how it was made, which made me very happy! At least I did something to honor him for his birthday!

This recipe isn't online.

Sicilian Pasta with Eggplant (Page 212)

RECIPE #986

• Date: Sunday, April 27, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I have been wanting to make this simple pasta dish for quite some time but have had to put it off because I couldn't find ricotta salata (Note: ricotta salata is not the same as the ricotta you can buy in tubs next to the cottage cheese at any grocery store. Ricotta salata is a hard cheese which isn't super easy to find). Finally I had surrendered and decided just to substitute feta (which was the closest thing I could think of). I hate to do substitutions in Book recipes because I feel like I am not being true to my project. So I was feeling bad about my surrender. It was one of those grocery shopping weeks where I needed lots of relatively obscure ingredients, and found myself wandering through 4 different grocery stores looking for them. Also on my list: Matzo Cake Meal. There is one place in town that claims to carry Matzo Cake Meal, but every time we go there they declare that they are out, or that the other branch of their store has it for sure (which they don't). On the last trip before I gave up on the Matzo Cake Meal and just ordered it online, while I was cursing them under my breath for telling me (again) that they would have it when (again) they didn't, I stumbled across some ricota salata in the store. Yay! And boy am I glad I did. Because that cheese was AWESOME! Seriously, it might be my new favorite cheese. It was flavorful, and salty, and delicious. And it totally made this dish. Feta would not have been the same.

So once I had my hands on the necessary cheese, here's what I did. I started by frying slices of eggplant in oil until browned. Then I seasoned them with salt and pepper. I cooked garlic in oil then added sugar and chopped, canned, tomatoes. I cooked it until thickened then seasoned with salt and pepper. Meanwhile I cooked some rigatoni. Then I mixed together the pasta with the tomato sauce, the eggplant, and grated ricotta salata. I topped it with more ricotta salata and served. This dish was really nice. I'm not a huge eggplant fan, and I mostly pushed the eggplant aside. But my special gentleman, who is eggplant-neutral, happily ate all his eggplant and my abandoned ones. The tomato sauce was simple, but tasty. It was the cheese, though, that really pulled the dish together. It gave it a punch of flavor, and a bit of richness. The more cheese I sprinkled on my serving, the more I liked it! This was a quick and easy dish (except for finding the cheese!) that I would make again for any eggplant lovers!

The recipe is here.

Grilled Pork Kebabs with Manchamantel Sauce (Page 483)

RECIPE #985

• Date: Sunday, April 26, 2009 -- 4pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: Bryan Park
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Dining Companions: A whole bunch of mathematicians
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I made these kebabs for a department picnic a few weeks ago. I started by making a marinade for the pork. I toasted then soaked some dried ancho chiles. Then I drained them and blended them with water, onion, garlic, thyme, oregano, cumin, salt, black peppercorns, olive oil, and lemon juice. I marinated chunks of pork tenderloin in this mixture for 6 hours. I threaded the pork chunks along with pineapple chunks, and red onion chunks on some skewers and cooked them on the grill. Once they were done I served them topped with the manchamantel sauce (see post below). These kebabs were pretty good. The pork was excellent -- the marinade gave it a great flavor which was beautifully complemented by the smokiness from the grill. The pineapple was also delicious, and it was well tied to the dish by the sauce (which also contained pineapple). My one complaint was the red onion. Grilled onions are extremely tasty, but in this case it didn't work so well. When the pork was perfectly cooked the onions were still pretty raw. And raw red onions are not nearly as delicious as nicely grilled red onions. Perhaps it would have helped if the onion chunks were smaller, or slightly pre-cooked before they went on the grill with the pork. As it was the dish was good, but I would have preferred it without the onions.

The recipe is here.

Today was a big day. My special gentleman and I went to the county clerk's office to get our marriage license! Now that we have it in our possesion it just needs to be signed by us and our officiant and we will be married! We'll still have to wait a couple weeks for that to happen though... Obtaining a marriage license in Indiana is apparently quite easy. You need to answer some simple questions. My favorites: "Are you currently of unsound mind, or have you ever been deemed by an official to be of unsound mind? Are you currently under the influence of any alcoholic bevarages? Are you currently under the influence of any narcotics? Are you related to one another closer than the relationship of second cousins?" After answering those questions (and other, more boring ones, e.g. "What is your mother's maiden name?") we paid our 20 bucks and that was it. Apparently there used to be some sort of physical examination that was part of this procedure in Indiana, but no longer. It was quick and easy. They handed us our forms (and, strangely, some information about STDs) and we were on our way! This is starting to feel very real! And while I admit the last couple weeks I have felt a little stressed out about various wedding details, now I am just excited! The final details I have left to take care of are fun for the most part, and I am just eager for our big day to be here!!

Manchamantel Sauce (Page 484)

RECIPE #984

• Date: Sunday, April 26, 2009 -- 4pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Dining Companions: A whole bunch of mathematicians and their families!
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

Every spring our department has a picnic where everyone brings some food and we grill, drink beer, and have fun enjoying the spring-time weather. I had planned to bring a delicious dessert to said picnic, but that was the weekend my oven broke. So instead I brought some kebabs to grill. This was the sauce for the kebabs. My special gentleman did much of the work to make this sauce. He started by toasting dried ancho chiles on the stovetop, then seeding them and soaking them in boiling water for 30 minutes. We cooked garlic and onion in oil until golden, then added sugar and cider vinegar. We then put that all in the blender, along with the drained chiles, chicken stock, water, pineapple, bananas, cinnamon, cloves, salt and pepper, blending until smooth. We then cooked the sauce in some oil, simmering for 5 minutes. This sauce was (obviously) not so photogenic, but it was tasty! It had a nice depth of flavor to it, and a lovely tanginess. It was definitely on the sweet side (with sugar, pineapple, and banana in it!) but that sweetness was a great complement to the grilled pork that we served the sauce on. It wasn't spicy at all -- it might have been nice to have a little kick. But it was still a great sauce, and I would certainly serve it again with grilled meat.

The recipe is here.

Happy belated Mother's Day! We drove to Ohio this weekend, to surprise my special gentleman's mother for Mother's Day. She was indeed surprised -- she almost fell over when she saw us! It was a nice, relaxing weekend. We ate good food, played board games, went to a concert that my special gentleman's mom was performing in, etc... We had a fun time! It was a nice end-of-the-semester mini-vacation.

I was feeling pretty relaxed until the phone rang, about 30 minutes after we arrived back home in Bloomington this afternoon. It was the place where we bought my special gentleman's suit for our wedding (which, notably, we haven't yet received because they had to order it). They were calling to tell us that they filed for bankruptcy. Awesome. After several phone calls we established that we may or may not get the suit (which we were scheduled to pick up on Wednesday). If we do get it, we may or may not get it in time for the wedding. And if we don't get it, we may or may not get our money back. Like I said, awesome. So what do we do? We don't want to buy another suit without knowing if we are going to get the one we already paid for! And my special gentleman doesn't own a suit that fits so it's not like he can just wear one he has. And the company doesn't know when they will know anything. And our wedding is less than three weeks away, which isn't much time since my special gentleman is so thin that almost any suit needs to be special ordered or at least altered. It's just a shitty situation. I spent a while on the phone with a very nice lady this afternoon, trying to get some answers, which unfortunately she didn't have. After a while, she said, "If I were you, I would institute your back-up plan." My back-up plan? Sometimes I think to develop a Plan B, but I didn't see this little snag coming. I can honestly say that I have never had the experience where a company I have paid money to has gone bankrupt before giving me what I paid for.

*sigh* Time to develop that back-up plan I guess!

Scallion, Mushroom, and Shrimp Custards (Page 77)

RECIPE #983

• Date: Saturday, April 25, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C-
  

This recipe came off the list generated by the random number generator. I started by lightly beating some eggs, then adding chicken broth, mirin, soy sauce, lemon zest, and salt. After letting it sit for a bit, I strained the mixture and added chopped raw shrimp, scallions, and mushrooms. I divided the mixture among ramekins, and covered each tightly with foil. Then I steamed them on a steamer rack until set. I don't know what went wrong here, but these custards were bad. The flavor was pretty ok -- I neither loved it nor hated it. But the texture was a disaster. I was skeptical of 3 eggs being able to properly set so much liquid. And indeed this was the problem. The custards came out very watery. They sort of separated -- with a part of each custard reasonably set, and then some liquid floating around. It was a very gross texture. The texture disaster made it hard to appreciate the flavor, which was a little bland, but otherwise unobjectionable. We ended up throwing these custards away, and needless to say it is not a recipe I would make again.

The recipe is here.

My final exams are graded, and this evening I submitted my final course grades, so my semester is over!!! I enjoyed teaching a graduate course quite a bit this semester, but I also found it slightly stressful. Up until now I have always taught undergraduate courses. Teaching undergraduates can have various frustrations associated with it (students cheating, for example). And there are certainly aspects of it that aren't enjoyable (writing and grading exams comes to mind!). But I don't find it particularly stressful. As long as I am prepared for class, the process of standing in front of the room explaining calculus is generally enjoyable, not stress inducing. And preparing calculus lectures is also not a particularly stressful task.

Teaching a graduate course was different though. I had a big sense of responsibility teaching a room full of students who love math and want to be professional mathematicians. I feel responsible for my undergraduate students too, of course, but in that case I suppose I feel more confident in my ability to do a good job. Having never taught a graduate course before, and only being a few years out of graduate school myself, the experience made me nervous. Despite the stress, it was fun. My class was very engaged, and for the most part they worked hard. Generally people did well on the final exam, which is always nice. I am looking forward to the next time I teach a gradaute course -- hopefully then I will feel more relaxed about it, and hence enjoy it more!

Grilled Shrimp Remoulade (Page 324)

RECIPE #982

• Date: Saturday, April 25, 2009 -- 1pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I bought the shrimp to make this recipe so long ago that they had some pretty nasty freezerburn when I thawed them to actually make it. Pretty gross. My special gentleman insisted that he would eat them though, freezerburn and all, so I proceeded with the recipe. I started by making the remoulade. I mixed together mustard, white wine vinegar, vegetable oil, parsley, horseradish, dill pickle, scallion greens, paprika, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Then I deveined my shrimp, leaving the shells on, and tossed them with oil, salt, and pepper. After that the shrimp were meant to be grilled, but we have no grill. The Book lists the broiler as an alternative, so that's what I did. I broiled the shrimp until they were cooked through, then I tossed them in the sauce. These shrimp were very tasty! The recipe seemed strange to me because the shrimp were tossed in the sauce with their shells still on, but the sauce did manage to penetrate into the shrimp meat. The remoulade had an excellent flavor. All the strong flavors were balanced perfectly to create something really nice. It was spicy, and vinegary, and pungent -- and delicious! My one complaint is that the shrimp were hard to eat since they were cooked in their shells and then drenched in sauce. It was messy! I would like to try this again, grilling the shrimp. I have no doubt that would also be delicious -- maybe even better.

The recipe is here.

My apologies for the ridiculously long blog silence. Partly I haven't blogged because I have been busy. I taught my last class of the semester on Friday and then went to straight to the airport to fly to Minneapolis for the weekend to speak at a conference at the University of Minnesota. But usually even when I am busy I try to make time to blog at least every couple days. Lately, though, I have been in a bit of a funk. It all started with a hair appointment last week. It was my pre-wedding hair trial (yes, such things exist). The woman who did my hair was nice and my hair looked cute after she did it, but something about the experience made me really lonely. It was the kind of appointment where it's so much better to have someone with you (to make fun of you, to give her opinion, etc...). And I have several great friends (plus my mother) who would all be perfect for the job. But everyone lives so far away! It turns out that planning a wedding is a lonely experience when all of your close friends live hundreds (or thousands!) of miles away. This is the trouble with moving around so much I guess... In any event, my special gentleman would be willing to come along on various wedding errands, but let's admit it, he's just not the right person for the job. While shopping for white shoes and a matching handbag sounds pretty fun to me with the right friend, it would likely be a not-so-fun experience with my special gentleman. He doesn't like to shop.

So I have been a lonely bride in a bad mood. But I decided today I am going to snap out of it. There's not that much left to do, and Emilee will be here three weeks from today (!) to help. So I am going to suck it up. That's the plan.

Morels in Cream on Brioche (Page 66)

RECIPE #981

• Date: Monday, April 20, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I made this recipe because I had made homemade brioche the day before and I wanted to use it for this dish! Now normally I am a stickler for getting exactly the ingredients The Book indicates. If I can't find them, I don't make the recipe. In this case, though, I cheated. And not in a subtle, it-probably-doesn't-really-matter sort of way. I cheated big time. I didn't mean to. The grocery store where I shop usually has dried morels (which The Book lists as an acceptable substitute for fresh morels in this recipe), but when I got there, no morels to be found. I had already made the brioche though, and I knew this would be much, much better with yummy homemade brioche than with store-bought brioche. So I figured I would just substitute some other mushrooms. Big mistake. That's not to say that it was bad -- it certainly wasn't. But the whole time I was eating it I was thinking, "This would be so much better with morels." Oh well. Live and learn. This recipe was pretty simple. I cooked my fake morels in butter for a while, then added some flour, then some hot cream. I simmered until the mushrooms were tender then seasoned with salt and white pepper. I served the mushroom mixture over triangles of toasted brioche. The result: yum! I mean, how can you go wrong really? Yummy brioche topped with mushrooms cooked in a whole lot of cream. It certainly wasn't going to be bad. But it is the sort of thing where the better the mushrooms are, the better the dish will be! So I should have used better mushrooms. Even with my crappy mushrooms though, it was tasty. I'll try it again someday with morels.

The recipe is here.

It's that time of year -- the semester (and the whole academic year!) is drawing to a close. This is the last week of classes and I have just two lectures left. I am definitely experiencing a tiny bit of end-of-the-semester slump. Semesters are long. By week 13 or 14 I think most people feel the need for a little break. I went to a seminar talk this afternoon and attendance was about half of what it usually is -- I think everyone is just a little burnt out! Overall though, this year has just flown by for me. September feels like a couple weeks ago, and it's crazy to think that the summer is almost here. After this last week of classes I just have to grade my students' take-home finals and then I don't have any teaching obligations again until the end of August. Last year I spent the summer in Boston, leaving Indiana just a couple days after classes ended. So although I have lived in Bloomington for a couple years now, I have never been here over the summer. I am looking forward to spending some time here in the summer months! (Of course, since I seem to already have trips planned to Wyoming/Utah/Colorado, Germany, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Norway, maybe I won't be spending much time here after all! And if the house we are trying to buy in East Lansing works out, maybe we will be spending time there to...) In any event, I will be in Bloomington for most of May -- working on my research and getting ready for the wedding. It should be a nice month!

Ginger Pound Cake (Page 704)

RECIPE #980

• Date: Sunday, April 19, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Matty, Chuck, and Paul K
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I have flipped past this recipe dozens of times and each time thought, "Nah." I had envisioned this cake as being sort of dry, flavored with that powdered ginger taste, and just not all that appealing. But the Cakes section of The Book is running low, so my choices are more limited. I am trying to finish up the section in the near future, so I decided I would finally make this cake. I first sifted together flour (which I had already sifted once), baking powder, ground ginger, salt, and mace. Then I sifted everything again (this made for a lot of sifting!). I beat together butter and orange zest, then added sugar in additions. Then I added a half dozen eggs, one at a time, then fresh ginger which I had peeled and grated. I added the flour mixture alternately with milk, in several additions. Then I spread the batter in a buttered and floured pan. I baked it for almost 2 hours. This cake was a very pleasant surprise. I had low expectations, but I will happily admit I was wrong. It was nothing like I envisioned it. For one thing, the texture was awesome! It was moist and not-too-dense. The flavor was also great. Using fresh grated ginger is atypical in baking, but it was great in this recipe. It gave the cake a lovely ginger flavor and it was perfectly balanced with the other ingredients so as not to be overpowering. The other flavor that came through quite clearly was that of butter! Mmmm... butter. The cake was definitely rich (with a pound of butter in it) but it paid off big time in the flavor. My only tiny complaint is that the cake was maybe a touch too sweet for me. I might have been happier with just a tiny bit less sugar. That said, both my special gentleman and I enjoyed this cake a lot. Easily the best ginger cake I have had.

This recipe isn't online.

Ah, wedding planning. Our wedding is less than 5 weeks away now, which means that decisions need to be made. So, I did a little burst of wedding planning late last week. Stop number one: the restaurant where we are having our reception. That could not have been a better experience. The purpose of the trip was to select wines to go with our wedding dinner. My special gentleman and I sat at the bar and tasted wine after wine after wine. Then, when we concluded we had had too much to drink to really be useful decision makers, we ordered some food. The wine was great, the food was AWESOME, and we actually made some decisions! Overall, a success.

Stop number two took us to Indianapolis. It was an exciting day: I picked up my wedding dress and my special gentleman ordered a suit. He hadn't purchased a suit in the last decade, so it was about time he got a new one! Now I have my dress in the closet and the suit is on its way, so we should be all set (ok not quite -- we don't have shoes, a shirt for under his suit, etc...). But we're making progress.

Stop number three was to meet with the catering person for our rehearsal dinner. Now, we are having a super small wedding, the ceremony for which will require no rehearsing. So it's really just a dinner, rather than a rehearsal dinner. And since we are serving a fancy five course meal at the wedding reception, I wanted something totally low key for the rehearsal. In particular, I wanted cookout food: hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers, corn on the cob, etc... So I felt totally prepared to meet with the caterer and tell her what I wanted. But then she started asking me all these questions about what color linens I wanted, what color napkins, which hors d'oeuvres, how many chairs per table, what kind of florals we are decorating with... AH! Oh my gosh. It was completely overwhelming. My mental vision of this event had been everyone sitting around, drinking beer, eating hamburgers, and then going bowling. There were no flowers in my vision. Or hors d'oeuvres. Just food off a grill, alcohol, and bowling balls. Simple, simple, simple. Depsite the pressure, I tried to remain true to my vision -- I ordered my cookout food, some white linens, a popcorn machine, and an open bar! I figure we can't go wrong with that!

Brioche Loaf (Page 611)

RECIPE #979

• Date: Sunday, April 19, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This recipe came off the list generated by the random number generator. I took the brioche dough (see post below), shaped it and put it into a buttered loaf pan. I let it rise for a couple hours, then brushed the top with a mixture of cream and egg yolk. I baked the loaf until it was golden brown. This brioche was delicious! It was rich with eggs and butter yet wonderfully light. The flavor and texture were both spot on for brioche. We ate almost half the loaf when it was fresh out of the oven. My special gentleman declared it the best brioche he has ever had. With a Start to Finish time of 21 hours the recipe looks intimidating. But the vast majority of that time is just for the dough to rise, and the actual work involved was quite minimal. Definitely a keeper of a recipe!

This recipe isn't online (although there's not much to it once you have made the dough recipe, which is online. See the post below.)

Occasionally in my kitchen there is some sort of culinary disaster. Mistakes are made. Things turn out badly. I expect this to happen once in a while. But typically disasters are spawned by intricate recipes that involve complicated steps, or lots of things happening at once. Last night was the exception. A culinary disaster definitely occurred while I was making.... frozen pizza. True confession: it's not all gourmet meals around our household. Sometimes we eat frozen pizza. Last night we were starving by the time dinner rolled around, and although I was working on some steamed shrimp custards (which turned out to be foul!) we decided we might need something to supplement the meal. So I threw a frozen pizza in the oven and went on with my shrimp custard making. When the timer went off I peered inside the oven. My pizza was not making much progress. It was pretty pasty looking for having been in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. I didn't think much of it, set the timer for another 6 minutes, and went back to work. When the timer buzzed again my pizza was still not looking too cooked. The pizza was warm, and the oven felt hot inside, but there wasn't much cooking action happening. I shrugged, set the timer for another 6 minutes and went back to work on my custards. When the timer went off again and my pizza was still pale and sad looking, I figured there was a serious problem. I don't have an oven thermometer, but I do have a new remote thermometer that we got as a wedding present (thanks Alp!). So I put that in the oven and waited. I hadn't used the thermometer yet, so I figured it was broken when it came back with a reading of 175 degrees. 175? The oven claimed to be at 400. At that point I stuck my arm all the way in the oven and started touching things to see if they were hot. After much analysis (and a few minor burns) I established that the lower heating element in our oven was broken. I don't know how that happened, but it wasn't heating at all. The top element was working, but it could only get the oven so hot (apparently, 175 degrees).

By that time my special gentleman and I were starving (heck, we were starving 45 minutes before that) and had discovered that the shrimp custards were inedibly gross. The pizza, however, was not cooked. The top heating element still worked so I had only one idea: I could broil it! And broil it I did. Within a few minutes the toppings of the pizza were burnt and smoking. The underside? Pale and soft. So I did the only thing I could. I inverted the pizza onto a baking sheet and broiled the bottom until it too was smoking. Then I attempted to reinvert the pizza so it would be right side up. Of course the toppings mostly stuck to the baking sheet, so I had to scrape them off and pile them on top of my now naked pizza. My special gentleman looked at it and said, "That has got to be the worst looking pizza I have ever seen." He's right. It wasn't cute. But you know what? It tasted fine. We ate the whole thing.

The real problem, of course, is now our oven is broken! Hopefully it doesn't take long for it to be fixed!!!

Brioche Dough (Page 612)

RECIPE #978

• Date: Sunday, April 19, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-

This recipe came off the list generated by the random number generator. The Book has the Brioche Dough as a subrecipe of the Brioche Loaf recipe (so the ingredients for the Brioche Loaf are the Brioche Dough and some egg wash). I forgot to take a picture of the dough before I baked it, so this post and the next one (about the Brioche Loaf) will have the same picture. To make this dough I started by making a starter. I proofed some yeast with sugar and milk, then stirred in some flour and let it sit for an hour. I beat some eggs in a mixer bowl, then added a mixture of hot milk, sugar and salt. In several additions I added some flour, another egg, and some butter. Then I put the dough hook in my mixer and added the starter to the mixture. I beat it with the dough hook until smooth, then added more butter and beat it some more. I let it rise for a couple hours then punched it down and put it in the refrigerator overnight. I didn't actually taste the dough when it was raw, but I will say that it made killer brioche (more on that in the next post). My one complaint about this recipe was that it wasn't quite as fun as some brioche doughs I have made. In particular, brioche dough recipes often involve some crashing (slamming of the dough against a counter). Crashing is fun (and noisy!) and I missed that in this recipe. However, it was much less messy without the crashing, and the brioche turned out great, so it was no major loss. Keep in mind if you make this that brioche dough is always very sticky -- don't be tempted to add extra flour!!

Here is the recipe.

The second half of this week has been busy, busy, busy. For one thing, my birthday was yesterday! I had a really nice day. To celebrate, my special gentleman and I went to the very small town of Story, Indiana last night. Story is an unincorporated town -- actually the whole town is now just an Inn which has been standing there since 1851. As part of the Indiana Wine Fair, the Story Inn hosted an evening of jazz, wine, and barbecue last night. It was really fun. We ate some delicious food, drank some Indiana wine, then curled up on a blanket under the stars and listened to some excellent live music. The surroundings were gorgeous -- wooded and beautiful. We were discussing on the hour or so drive to Story how before moving to Southern Indiana we had no idea how beautiful it would be! The roads to Story were very narrow and very, very windy. On the way there it was light out and quite fun for driving. On the way back it was extremely dark and a little nerve wracking! In one 5 mile stretch we encountered 3 different instances of deer standing in the road. I drove very slowly, with the windows down so we could hear the deer rustling in the bushes before they crossed onto the road. It was worth the tense driving though because it was such a great evening! Here's a birthday picture of us in Story.