Crispy Sweetbreads with Parsnip Potato Puree, Braised Endives, and Port Sauce (Page 462)

RECIPE #1260

• Date: Saturday, February 19, 2011 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Fellow Chef: Mike
• Dining Companions: Matty, Charles, Helen, Clara, Tim, and Mark
• Recipe Rating: C
  

I remember one particular occasion as a kid when I was out for a fancy dinner with my parents. There was a whole menu full of words I didn't know and foods that didn't sound tasty to my young palate. One thing, however, did catch my eye: sweetbreads! I like breads. I like sweets. It sounded perfect! Luckily before I had a chance to order the sweetbreads my parents cautioned me against it. "It's not actually bread," they warned me. Indeed it is not. In the years immediately following that incident I remembered that sweetbreads were some sort of organ meat, but I didn't remember entirely accurately what they were. So for quite a while when I was a kid I thought sweetbreads were monkey brains. I was close... sort of. Sweetbreads are the thymus gland of calves. I still refer to them occasionally as brains. In fact I did so all throughout this dinner, mostly because it drove Mike crazy! He corrected me several times.

I put off making this dish for a long time because it sounded pretty disgusting. Mike requested a dinner with several disgusting dishes when he visited, though, so I figured it was time for the sweetbreads! This dish was labor-intensive. I soaked the sweetbreads in ice water for 8 hours. I then poached them very briefly. After they had been poached I cut away the membrane and connective tissue. This was not a glamorous job, or one that I would care to repeat. The sweetbreads would later look relatively appetizing, but they certainly did not at that stage. It's a shame I didn't take a picture. I weighted the sweetbreads and refrigerated them for another few hours. I then sliced the sweetbreads. While all that was going on, I made a puree of parsnips and potato using a potato ricer. I cooked endives in butter. When all the veggies were ready, I seasoned the sweetbreads and dredged them in flour. Mike and I fried them in clarified butter until they were golden. Mike then made a pan sauce with shallots, veal demi-glace, tawny port, and butter.

So how were the fried brains... err... thymus gland? Truth be told, in this three component dish, the sweetbreads were definitely the best part. They had a very mild flavor. If you take anything without an offensive flavor, bread it, and fry it in butter, it will taste pretty good. This was no exception. It was hard for me to shake the image of how gross the sweetbreads had looked earlier in their preparation, but the diners who had missed that stage found them to be not gross at all. The vegetables in this dish, however, were pretty disgusting. The Book said that the endives could be cooked up to a day ahead and reheated. I cooked mine just a bit ahead, but it was a bad idea. They took on a disturbing gray color, and were very wilty. Mike said they looked like something his cat threw up and it was hard to disagree with that. We all agreed that the dish would have been better without the endives at all. The parsnip puree was just OK. It tasted decent but the texture left something to be desired. I would have rather eaten my sweetbreads on a bed of tasty mashed potatoes. I certainly won't be making this dish again. That said, the preparation of the sweetbreads themselves was perfectly fine. It was the accompaniments that made this dish unappealing.

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This past Sunday was my 31st birthday. It was also Easter. And on Saturday night I was baptized at the Easter Vigil. To say that the weekend was memorable would be an enormous understatement. Emilee, Brian, and Sam flew all the way from California to be here for the festivities. Indeed, Em and Brian were my baptism sponsors. Poor Emilee flew in on a red eye, landing around 5am Saturday morning. She flew out on Sunday evening, just over 36 hours after arriving. I was honored that she made the trip despite her insane work schedule as a medical resident. I thought that Em, Brian, and Sam were going to be our only out-of-town visitors for the weekend, but my parents surprised me by flying in as well!

On Saturday we enjoyed a nice spring Michigan day. We took Sam to the children's garden and butterfly house on campus, and had some ice cream at the Dairy Store. Emilee and Brian had never been to Michigan before and I was so happy to have them here. We grilled brats on Saturday evening and made a big batch of mashed potatoes. It was perfect. The baptism was Saturday night. The Easter Vigil service was beautiful. Most of the service is in the dark, with everyone holding candles. In the Episcopal church there are four services a year when baptisms are done. Several people advised me that the Easter Vigil is the most magical, and I am indeed glad I waited for Easter to be baptized. It was very special.

On Sunday we celebrated Easter and my birthday by throwing a party! We had a brunch with 20 people at our house. It was fun, and festive, and a little bit chaotic. I loved it! We had two Easter egg hunts: one for the kids, and one for the adults. Here's a cute picture of Sam in our backyard, not seeing the two Easter eggs right behind him in the bush!

We had a ton of food, including a few new things from The Book (a foie gras terrine, blinis with three kinds of caviar, and a garlic rosemary jam). Most of the food was not from new recipes in The Book though: braised lamb shanks, cornmeal waffles, warm lentil salad, fruit salad, green salad, parmesan walnut salad in endive leaves, grilled asparagus, spicy potatoes and cauliflower (made by Helen!), baked leeks with cheese (also made by Helen!) and some gorgeous baguettes made by Bob. There may have been more... I can't remember! It was a big spread. We managed to set up a long table seating 20 in our living room (Well, 19 really. We didn't give baby Olly her own seat!). It was crowded in exactly the way I like. For dessert we had birthday cake (my favorite: red velvet with white chocolate cream cheese buttercream). When I was a kid every Easter I would make a cake in the shape of a bunny rabbit. I decided to make my childhood bunny cake this year for my birthday! I made the cake and Emilee gave the bunny a face using jelly beans and licorice rope. Isn't it cute?


Here I am with my special gentleman, Emilee, and Sam, right before I blew out my candles:


And a few moments later:


I had such a fun time celebrating both Easter and my birthday. It was really special having Em and Brian there, and my parents, and new friends I have made since we moved to East Lansing. I think it was my best birthday ever! Plus, as a birthday present to me my special gentleman did all the cleaning after the party. There were a considerable number of dishes generated by cooking and serving a big meal to 20 people, and he did them all! Late in the evening, after all our guests had left, my special gentleman and I ate some party leftovers and went for a nice walk on a beautiful spring day. It was a perfect birthday!

Beef Tenderloin with Bordelaise Sauce (Page 417)

RECIPE #1259

• Date: Saturday, February 19, 2011 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Fellow Chefs: Matty and Charles
  
• Dining Companions: Mike, Tim, Mark, Helen, and Clara
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

Beef tenderloin is the hunk of meat that filet mignon steaks are cut from. Basically, it is delicious. So I have been saving this recipe for a special occasion that merits extra deliciousness. Mike and Tim came to visit a couple months ago and that was just the occasion I needed. To make this I started by preparing the beef marrow bones. I soaked them in warm water for 10 minutes, them my special gentleman helped me push the marrow out of the bones. I cut the marrow into rounds, covered it with cold water, and refrigerated it for a day, changing the water several times. To make the sauce I boiled red wine with shallots, mushrooms, carrot, thyme, bay leaf, and black peppercorns. I added veal stock and boiled some more. I strained the sauce, then returned it to a boil and added arrowroot and Madeira. I seasoned it with salt and pepper. I browned the meat then roasted it to 120 degrees (letting it rest to 130). While the meat rested I poached the marrow in stock, water, and salt. Then I transferred the marrow to the sauce. Charles sliced the meat, and poured some sauce over it. We served it with more sauce on the side.

As expected, this dish was very tasty. Indeed as we went around the room and graded the recipes after dinner, everyone gave this dish an A or A-. Mike joked that I would ignore them all and give it a lower grade, and I suppose I did. Don't get me wrong, it was good. The beef was nicely cooked, and it was a beautiful cut of meat. The sauce had a lovely flavor to it too. What really made this a B+ recipe rather than an A- recipe for me though was the consistency of the sauce. It was just too thin. I reduced it as instructed, and actually I even reduced longer because I was worried about the consistency. But still, the sauce was too thin. Almost anything you do with a beef tenderloin is going to taste delicious. Would I eat this dish again? Definitely. I would be happy to. Was it the best beef tenderloin recipe out there? No. With a better bordelaise this could have been fantastic though!

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Throughout the last year or so, people have been asking me what I am going to do once this project is over. For a while, whenever someone would ask me that, the first thing I would think was, "Celebrate!" As I was getting down to fewer and fewer recipes last year, keeping up my usual pace was exhausting. The recipes towards the end have been more time consuming with many hard-to-find ingredients and I began to feel like my life was dominated by the project. Plus, when we first moved here we didn't have anyone to share the project fun with. Not being able to eat big project dinners with friends took some of the joy out of it for me. Basically I felt ready to be done.

At some point in the fall I decided to relax my pace, and not attempt to finish the project in 2010. It was a fantastic decision, as it has let me enjoy making the dishes again. In the meantime we have made friends here in East Lansing who enjoy eating the crazy project food. (Well, I suppose I am not sure they always enjoy it, but they keep coming over!) The project has become fun again. And suddenly it makes me really sad to think about it being over. Although this post claims I have 34 recipes left, that number is really more like 27 (I am behind in my blogging!) and I am making another 2-3 this weekend so soon I will have fewer than 25 to go. It's hard for me to even believe that I started this thing with 1293 recipes to make, and now I am only 25 from the end.

So what will I do next? I don't know. A while back the publishers of The Book asked me if I would be interested in blogging about the second book they published: Gourmet Today. At the time, I thought, "No way!" The idea of taking on another long project seemed insane. They sent me a couple signed copies of the new book though. I flip through them often and think how fantastic it would be to be at the beginning of such a project again -- to have so many choices, to be able to construct entire meals, to not be done with the desserts... I still don't think I will do it, but it does sound appealing.

Slowing down the pace lately has been a nice transition to post-project life. I have been cooking my way through The Book for a long time now! I started this project before I even met my husband! I think it will be very weird for me when the project is done, and it becomes a thing-I-once-did rather than a thing-I-am-doing. So truth be told, I am dragging my heels a little bit. Could I cook faster than I have been these past few months? Sure. But I made a decision to savor these last few recipes -- to eat them with friends whenever possible and to celebrate the food and these last few months of the project. Plus, I no longer feel ready to be done.

This weekend I am making the Foie Gras Terrine, which is a recipe that I thought I might save for the very end. It is definitely a special occasion recipe. This weekend is going to be very special though: my baptism, Easter, and my birthday are all happening, and Emilee, Brian, and Sam are coming from California to be here. We are having a big Easter/birthday lunch at our house with braised lamb, and cornmeal waffles, and birthday cake in the shape of a bunny rabbit (and lots of other things...). So I am making the foie gras. Also the blini with three kinds of caviar.

Yes, the end of the project is near. And I am more than a little sad about that.

Escargots a la Bourguignonne (Page 75)

RECIPE #1258

• Date: Saturday, February 19, 2011 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Fellow Chef: Helen
• Dining Companions: Charles, Clara, Matty, Mike, Tim, and Mark
  
• Recipe Rating: B
  

When Mike and Tim came to visit a couple months ago I put together a special menu for them. These snails were part of it. I started by making a compound butter with shallots, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, and white wine. Helen sterilized the snail shells, then stuffed some of the butter mixture in each one. She put a snail in each shell, then topped them with the remaining butter. She stabilized the shells on a baking sheet by nestling them in kosher salt. Then we baked the snails until the butter sizzled, about 3 minutes. These snails were perfectly fine. The butter mixture was buttery, as it should have been. It had a nice garlic-shallot flavor to it, and the white wine was a good addition. No one had anything terribly negative to say about this dish, but no one was really raving about it either. Mark commented that he prefers his escargots piping hot, which these were not. That was mostly my fault -- the timing of the meal was a bit off so these sat for a couple minutes before we ate them. But even when they were straight out of the oven -- after only 3 minutes in the oven (as The Book indicates) -- they weren't terribly hot all the way through. They could have cooked longer. Mike complained a lot about how the snails came in a can, which I agree was a little creepy. But that's what the recipe called for! Other than that everyone seemed relatively neutral on this dish. Wasn't great. Wasn't terrible. I probably won't make it again.

The recipe is here.

Only 35 recipes left!

One of my students started crying today. This happens more often than you might think. Math is hard, and many students feel very frustrated by it. This particular student is in my 300-level math course. It's not an easy course. She already failed it once with a different instructor, and is concerned (with good reason) that she might fail it again this semester.

I have been teaching for a number of years now, so I am accustomed to teary-eyed students in my office. It is pretty rare that students start all out crying, and only once have I had a student start sobbing. (That was a unique situation. The student had cheated on a quiz and was so remorseful that she couldn't stop sobbing through the entire meeting. She was crying so hard she was gasping to catch her breath. It was a difficult meeting for the both of us.) I am no longer surprised by the teary eyes. This afternoon, though, my student started to cry in a more serious way. After class we were standing outside the building where the class is held. It was a beautiful afternoon. What started as a discussion about what she needed to do to pass the course devolved into her crying out of frustration and anger. We stood on the steps for 25 minutes: her crying, me trying to be sympathetic, constructive, and motivational all at the same time. The reality is, there are less than two and a half weeks left in the semester, and much of her grade has already been determined. She should have done many things differently from the start. Can she still pass? Definitely. Will it require some hard work? Yes. I tried to pass along what wisdom I could.

As I stood there, I thought back on my own life as a student. To my recollection, I cried in front of my professors twice: once in college, once in graduate school. They were very different situations than the one today. I certainly never cried about a grade. In college I cried out of frustration at the feeling that I was doing a bad job at something that mattered to me. In retrospect I wish I could take back that whole conversation. I shouldn't have cried, and to this day I feel embarrassed when I think about the possibility of running into that professor. In graduate school I cried, also out of frustration, about the stress of the job application process. It wasn't my thesis advisor that I cried in front of, but rather another professor who I was close to. I don't feel bad about it actually. Applying for jobs is incredibly stressful. If I had to do it again now I am sure I would cry again. The professor took it in stride, and it didn't affect our relationship at all. I got the feeling that I was not the first person to cry in his office from job application stress. He told me horror stories about his own experiences on the job market, and it was tremendously reassuring.

This afternoon, standing in the sunshine with my crying student, I understood how she felt. I never failed a class, but I could relate to her frustration. And I wanted to help her. The problem is, there aren't always easy solutions. Her situation is difficult in a lot of ways. I do hope she passes. And from her tears I could tell, she genuinely hopes for that too.

Rumaki (Page 53)

RECIPE #1257

• Date: Saturday, February 19, 2011 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Dining Companions: Matty, Mike, Tim, Helen, Charles, Clara, and Mark
• Recipe Rating: C+
  

Mike and Tim came to Michigan back in February for a visit, and Mike requested a dinner from The Book full of dishes likely to be gross. This one seemed sure to be foul so I added it to the menu. I started by cutting some chicken livers into pieces. I added the liver pieces and some halved water chestnuts to a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar, and curry powder. I marinated the livers for an hour. I removed the water chestnuts and liver pieces from the marinade, and wrapped them together in small pieces of bacon. I used toothpicks which had been soaked in water to secure the little bacon wrapped packages. I broiled the rumaki until the bacon was crisp and the livers were cooked but still slightly pink. I thought this dish left a lot to be desired. I am not a huge liver fan, so that was part of my objection to the dish. But even setting that bias aside as best I could, I found this dish to be odd -- and not in a good way. It had both flavor and textural issues. The water chestnuts seemed out of place, and most of us agreed that the dish would have been better without them. The marinade left the liver and water chestnuts with a canned curry powder taste that I didn't appreciate. And when the liver was cooked properly, the bacon wasn't yet cooked as much as I would have wanted. I didn't care for this dish at all. However, several of my dining companions defended the dish. No one was willing to say it was fantastic, but several people found it enjoyable enough. The one thing we did agree on though was that in the wrap-something-tasty-in-bacon genre of food, this is not the best recipe out there.

The recipe is here.

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Almost four years ago I was talking to a friend and he was asking me about my job. At the time I was a post-doc. One of the first things he asked was, "So, is it a five-days-a-week kind of job?" I was surprised by the question, so much so that I remember it still. I answered honestly, "Well, no."

It is very rare that I only work on five days of the week. During a semester when I am teaching, it never happens. That said, on the weekends I do try to take it easy. My usual policy is that on Saturdays I only do work that I want to do. If a particular task sounds unappealing (grading comes to mind) I don't force myself to do it on Saturday. Indeed I often take most of the day off to do something fun, and squeeze in a few hours of enjoyable work when I feel like it. On Sundays after church I try to get ready for the week ahead, which often involves lecture writing, grading, etc... in addition to research-related work. Sundays don't have the same leisurely feel as Saturdays, but I still work from home and enjoy the company of my special gentleman and my kitties. So while my weekends aren't exactly work-free, they are still relaxing and rejuvenating.

When I don't have them, I miss them. Weekend conferences are a common thing in math, and the last few weeks, said conferences have robbed me of my precious weekends. This past weekend, our university was hosting a graduate student conference in my field. Two hundred graduate students from around the world descended on East Lansing for a two-day extravaganza. The conference was organized by graduate students, for graduate students, so I had no organizing responsibilities. I did however have a speaking responsibility. The conference mostly consisted of talks by graduate students, but they also had three senior faculty speakers and four junior faculty speakers from around the country. My special gentleman and I were both asked to give young faculty talks, not about our own research results, but rather about open problems in our respective fields. The point was to be inspirational! So on Saturday afternoon, when normally I would be sipping hot cocoa on the couch, I was attempting to inspire a big room full of graduate students. My special gentleman and I also did some entertaining of people in town for the event so it was a busy weekend.

The weekend before that, my special gentleman was speaking at a conference somewhere in Illinois. He had been in Canada for another conference, and flew straight from one conference to the next. I drove down to Illinois to pick him up, and went to the conference with him. The conference wasn't in my field so I did get some work done while I was there, but it wasn't a relaxing weekend at home.

The weekend before that I co-organized a special session of a conference in Iowa City. It was really fun! One benefit of organizing is that you get to pick the speakers -- so not only were the talks super-interesting to me, but I enjoy all the people who were there! The conference went smoothly, but I arrived home late that Sunday night, exhausted.

The weekend before that my special gentleman and I were driving back from our Spring Break "vacation" to the East Coast, where we both spoke at MIT and he also spoke at Princeton. The weekend before that we were headed to MIT for our talks.

It feels like a long time since I have had a real weekend. I really enjoy conferences, and I have heard some great talks and seen a lot of good friends over the last few weeks. But I am tired. Luckily, I will be home for the next FOUR weekends! I don't have to give any weekend talks. I am not going anywhere. It will be awesome! Five weekends from now I have to give another Saturday talk, and for the following five weekends after that I will be traveling. But right now I am not thinking about any of that. I am only thinking about my upcoming weekends at home and how lovely it will be! Maybe I will even have some time to do some cooking...

Mortadella and Truffle-Stuffed Pork Loin with Rosemary Roast Potatoes (Page 470)

RECIPE #1256

• Date: Wednesday, February 2, 2011 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Fellow Chef: Matty
  
• Dining Companions: Helen, Charles, and Clara
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I had my eye on this recipe for quite a while. When a blizzard hit East Lansing last month, it seemed like the perfect time to make it. I managed to go to the grocery store on a Tuesday evening before the snow started. The university canceled classes that Wednesday, so it was the perfect day to stay home and stuff a pork loin! Our friends Helen and Charles live only a short walk away from us, so they braved the snow to join us for dinner. To prepare this pork I started by making a mixture of crushed black peppercorns, salt, garlic, and butter. I butterflied the pork loin, then my special gentleman helped me pound it to an even thickness. I spread some black truffle butter evenly over the pork, then topped the butter with thinly sliced mortadella. I repeated with another layer of truffle butter, a layer of mortadella, and a final layer of truffle butter. Then I carefully rolled up the loin, tied it, and rubbed it with the peppercorn butter mixture. I roasted the pork for a while, and simultaneously parboiled some peeled yellow potatoes. I tossed the potatoes with olive oil, rosemary, salt, and pepper, then added them to the roasting pan with the pork. I roasted it all until the pork reached 150 degrees. I made a pan sauce by deglazing with chicken stock, then adding cornstarch and truffle butter. I served the pork with the potatoes and sauce. This dish was pretty good. The potatoes had a lovely pork and rosemary flavor to them and the meat was nicely cooked. My only complaint was that the dish didn't have enough flavor. The truffle flavor was present in the pork, but not bold enough. And the mortadella didn't contribute much in terms of flavor. I think I would have liked the dish better had the pork been stuffed with something more strongly flavored, like prosciutto, rather than the mortadella. With prosciutto and more truffle butter, this dish could have been crazy delicious. As it was, it was just tasty. I liked it, but I doubt I will make it again. There are much better pork loin preparations out there.

The recipe is here.

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For the last three weeks or so I have given up eating anything between meals. This is the season of Lent, and I am choosing to fast for Lent by eating a small breakfast and lunch each day, a normal size dinner, and nothing between meals. The first couple weeks of Lent were a little rough. I think many people probably eat this way normally, but it is just not the way I eat. I am a grazer. I eat when I am hungry. I don't eat when I am not hungry. I don't like the feeling of being overfull, so I never eat so much at a meal that I won't be hungry before the next one. Consequently, I always carry food with me. At the first sign of hunger, I have a snack. It is rare that any 2 hour waking period goes by during which I don't eat. I eat so frequently that I rarely experience the feeling of being very hungry. All of this has changed.

The first few days of Lent I was astonished by how hungry I could feel. I got used to the hunger quite quickly though. Once I learned to expect the hunger, I grew much less frustrated by it. This morning I had a piece of toast for breakfast. By 11am or so I was hungry again, but luckily I was distracted by a half dozen students in my office hours. I had some yogurt with granola for lunch at noon. After I taught both my classes and ran around for a while trying to get things done, I got really hungry again around 3:30pm. Dinner time finally rolled around at 6:30pm. I had a bowl of chili, a salad, and some french fries. The food tasted incredibly good, probably in no small part because by then I was extremely hungry! Now it is almost 10pm and I am hungry again. But I'll go to bed soon, and actually wake up feeling less hungry in the morning.

I never diet, mostly because I feel fine about the way that I eat, but also because I just don't think I would have the willpower to do it. I would get hungry, and I am sure that I would rationalize having something to eat. This is very different. I don't consider it an option to cheat on my Lenten fast. I use the hunger as a reminder that this is a period of reflection and prayer. In past years I have given up various things for Lent: meat, candy, etc... This is definitely the most challenging Lenten fast I have done. It has also been the most rewarding. This is a special Lent season for me, as I am being baptized this year at the Easter Vigil. I have thought about baptism for many years. This year it finally feels like the right time. Easter is just over three weeks away and I am very excited!

Green Apple Sorbet (Page 860)

RECIPE #1255

• Date: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 -- 5pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Dining Companion: Matty, Helen, and Charles
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

This was the LAST DESSERT I had left in The Book. That's right. There are NO MORE DESSERTS! It is a moment both for celebration and mourning. I am delighted to have made them all, but I am sad to see them go. I would have made this recipe much sooner, as I love sorbet and it only had a 15 minute active time. But the recipe requires a juicer strong enough to juice an apple and I don't have one. Luckily, it recently came to my attention that my friend Helen does have such a juicer and she was willing to lend it to me! This recipe was super simple. I boiled sugar and water to form a syrup. Then I crushed a vitamin C tablet into powder. I juiced the apples (skins, seeds, and all!) and added both the vitamin C powder and the sugar syrup to the juice. I chilled the juice until it was very cold, then froze it in an ice cream maker. That was it! This sorbet was OK. It definitely had a strong green apple flavor, but it had a bit of a weird flavor too. I couldn't tell if it came from the vitamin C tablet, or if it was from the skins of the apples. I'm not sure. But there was an off flavor that I couldn't get past. Unfortunately, omitting the vitamin C isn't really an option, as it is there to preserve the color of the sorbet. I enjoyed trying this sorbet, but ultimately it sat in our freezer for a while and then got thrown away. Definitely not a recipe I would make again.

The recipe is here.

Only 38 recipes left!

This was the last recipe in the Frozen Desserts and Sweet Sauces section of The Book that I had left to make. So, it is time to reminisce about some of the delicious recipes in that section! In no particular order, my top five recipes from Frozen Desserts and Sweet Sauces:

1. Cream Cheese Ice Cream -- I was suprised by how much I liked this cream cheese flavored ice cream. It was tangy and rich, and the texture was perfect. I made this for a bunch of friends in Boston not long after I started this project. Good times!
2. Kir Royale Sorbet -- Raspberry sorbet with champagne and creme de cassis! How can you go wrong? As it turns out, you can't. This sorbet was awesome. We brought this to Paul and Beth's house, and I was a little worried that we were getting underage Lauren drunk on boozy sorbet. She had a few servings! It was irresistably good.
3. Dark Chocolate-Caramel Ice Cream Sandwiches -- Emilee bought me animal shaped ice cream sandwich molds for my birthday one year, and this was the first recipe I made with them! Chris and I brought these very cute pig and cow shaped ice cream sandwiches to a Halloween dinner at Mike and Teresa's house. Both the chocolate cookies and the caramel ice cream were delicious on their own. They were even better together. Yum!
4. Raspberry Sauce -- This very simple sauce had a fantastic raspberry flavor. I made it back in the days when I cooked for the Talbot math conference every year. We ate it with molten chocolate cake, but it would be delicious on ice cream, or with a variety of other desserts.
   
5. Vanilla Creme Anglaise -- Creme Anglaise is always delicious and this was no exception. It had a great vanilla flavor. I made this one for the Talbot conference too, and it was enjoyed by all!

I can't believe I am not only done with this section, but also with all of the other dessert sections in The Book. Crazy!! The end of the project is in sight!

Now I have 12 sections completed and 9 sections left to finish. I am almost there!!

Roasted Squab (Page 406)

RECIPE #1254

• Date: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C
  

A while back I ordered all the squab I need for the rest of this project and they have been sitting in my basement freezer. I decided it was about time to pull some out and make another squab recipe. I prepared a mixture of butter, shallots, thyme, lemon zest, salt, and pepper, and worked it between the skin and the flesh of the squabs. I seasoned the birds, then browned them in butter. I roasted the squabs in a hot oven. As it turns out, I just don't like squab. This is the second squab recipe I have made from The Book and the second squab recipe from The Book that I have not liked. Fortunately there is only one more squab recipe left, and my plan is to put that one off for a while. It's odd because in general I very much enjoy eating poultry. But pigeon just isn't my thing. It is incredibly different in color, flavor, and texture than other poultry. The dark, livery meat doesn't appeal to me. My special gentleman is a bit more neutral about squab than I am, but even he couldn't get on board with this recipe. There was no sauce or other components to this dish, so it was the meat that was meant to shine. Unfortunately instead of shining it just tasted kind of bad. I certainly won't make this dish again.

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I ate dinner tonight at an establishment claiming to be the World's Largest Truckstop. I couldn't possibly verify the accuracy of their claim, but I will say that it was one of the largest truckstops I have been to. This particular stop was out of desperation -- about 6 hours into the 7 hour drive from East Lansing to Iowa City, I became extremely hungry. The World's Largest Truck Stop was the best option available.

I am in Iowa City now. This week was a whirlwind. We got home from our East Coast trip on Saturday night. Sunday I went to church and then spent the rest of the day desperately trying to prepare for the week ahead of me (grading, writing lectures, writing exams, working on my annual review documentation, etc...). I never did end up feeling prepared for the week. Indeed, I would say that this week kicked my butt. Being home for four days between trips is a little rough. It's long enough that you try to settle back into a routine. But it's not long enough that you can really buy groceries and unpack your suitcase. The contents of my suitcase were dumped in the washing machine, then folded and put right back into the suitcase. I am giving exams in both my classes tomorrow since I won't be there to teach. So this week included a lot of exam writing and meeting with students who were worried about said exams. That, on top of the usual stuff, plus some fun stuff (e.g. a Sarah McLachlan concert), and getting ready for another trip, made for a busy week. But I think that everything that needed to be done got done. I finished writing the second exam at about 1:30am last night. This morning I edited it, photocopied it, and handed it off to the friend who is administering it tomorrow. Then I did several related rates problems with a student before running home to get the house ready for the pet-sitter will be living there this weekend with our kitties. My special gentleman and I hit the road in the early afternoon. I dropped him off in Chicago, where he is staying overnight before catching a flight to Canada tomorrow. I continued on to Iowa City.

Now I am sitting in my hotel room, a little bit exhausted, but looking forward to what should be a fun weekend. There is a meeting of the American Mathematical Society happening here this weekend, and I am co-organizing a special session in the meeting. Some good friends of mine will be here, and we have a great line-up of speakers. It should be fun! And for the moment I am trying not to think about the fact that when I arrive home Sunday night I will have two sets of exams waiting to be graded, and a couple lectures to prepare for Monday! I have a feeling there might be another busy week ahead of me...

Tarragon Lobster Salad (Page 157)

RECIPE #1253

• Date: Sunday, January 9, 2011 -- 2pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I put off making the lobster recipes in The Book because I wasn't too excited about the boiling of live lobsters. Now that I have done it a few times though it has become old hat and I am making rapid progress through the lobster dishes. For this dish I boiled some live lobsters then removed the meat and cut it into pieces. I stirred together chopped shallots, lemon juice, and salt and let the mixture sit for a bit. Then I whisked in mayonnaise, tarragon, and pepper. I added the lobster meat and tossed. I served the salad on toasted hot dog buns. It was as easy as that! My reaction to this dish wasn't terribly negative but my special gentleman had some pretty nasty things to say about it. He exclaimed more than once: "Why would you ever do this to a beautiful lobster?" He isn't a huge mayonnaise fan and the idea of adding mayo to lobster really bothered him. Apparently he had never experienced a lobster roll before and the existence of the dish made him very angry. In the end he scooped his salad off the bun, put the salad in a sieve and rinsed it under running water until all he had left was the lobster meat. Then he ate the lobster dipped in melted butter. No, I am not kidding. I, on the other hand, have eaten lobster rolls before, and do not find them to be particularly offensive. This, I thought, was a perfectly reasonable lobster roll recipe. The balance of ingredients was fine. The salad wasn't drowned in too much mayonnaise and the tarragon gave it flavor without being overpowering. Are there better ways to eat lobster? Yeah, sure. But if you are craving a lobster roll, this version is not bad at all.

The recipe is here.

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Our Spring Break adventures took us back to Boston this year (amongst other places) as my special gentleman and I were both invited to give talks at MIT. I lived in the Boston area for five years when I was doing my PhD. I have many fond memories of my years living in Boston, and also some not-so-fond memories. On the fond memories side, my special gentleman and I met in Boston. I was in my last year of graduate school at MIT and he was in his first year of a post-doc there. We have a lot of Boston memories so it was nice to make this trip back there together.

We arrived in Boston on Sunday. Our whole vacation was full of meals with friends, which was fantastic, but on Sunday night we took the opportunity to have a special dinner, just the two of us, at a restaurant we went to very frequently during the first year of our relationship. It was special being back there. After dinner we walked by his old apartment, and the apartment I lived in when we met. It was a very nostalgic and sweet evening.

On Monday my special gentleman and I both gave talks at MIT. I go back to Boston pretty frequently -- indeed I was there this summer -- but it had been a while since I had been back at MIT while school was in session. My good friend Mike was also back in town. He and I went to graduate school together and to say that we spent a lot of time together would be an enormous understatement. Mike was very much a part of my MIT experience. On Monday he and I met for lunch, at one of the places we frequented as students. Eating burritos together and walking the halls with him felt just like old times, but so many things had changed. It was tremendously unsettling. It was weird to be there but not be a member of the department any more. It was strange to speak in front of a seminar that I attended every week for many years. It was bizarre to be standing at the chalkboard, looking out at the audience and thinking about all the times I sat in those same seats, and listened to someone give a talk on those same sliding boards. It was in that room that I once fainted during seminar, at a time when I was having some medical problems. It was in that room that Mike dropped his notes for his talk behind the sliding boards and couldn't reach to get them because his pants were baggy enough that they would have fallen off. It was in that room that a particularly famous speaker threw a piece of chalk at a very famous faculty member's head. It was in that room that I taught linear algebra recitations. It was in that room that a screeching squirrel slid down the window pane, having been forced out the window of the room above it. I also have dozens of mathematical memories of that room: things I learned there, pictures people drew on the board, concepts that I understood for the first time while sitting in the audience in that room... All of those thoughts went through my head as I was giving my talk. I have been in that room so many times, but this time it was incredibly different. So many of the people I associate with my years at MIT have since moved on: Mike, V, Chris, Lars, Vero, Andre, Tyler, Ricky, John, Matt, Michael, Angelica, Jenny, Nora, Peter, Francesca, etc... And new people have moved in. And while a few audience members were the same: Mark, Jacob, Big Mike, etc... mostly it was different. Of course our field is small so the new faces weren't unfamiliar. I knew almost everyone in the audience. But Kyle or David or Clark or Kirsten, they weren't part of my MIT experience and it was just weird to see them there. The whole thing was very unsettling.

My talk went perfectly fine, but right afterward, and still now, I had a terrible feeling about it. I can't explain why. It just felt so weird.

Even now, a few days removed from the experience of being back there, I am having a hard time sorting out how I felt about the trip. Did it make me miss MIT and the community of topologists there, or did it make me glad to have moved on to somewhere else? I am genuinely not sure. Maybe the real answer is, both. The visit reminded me of all the fantastic things about being at MIT and also all of the not-so-fantastic things about it. It was a weird and emotional few days in Boston. I am glad to be back home now.

More on the rest of our trip another time...

Hunan-Style Tea-Smoked Chicken (Page 355)

RECIPE #1252

• Date: Wednesday, January 5, 2011 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

I put off making this recipe because I had heard from a couple other people that it resulted in a house full of smoke and a not-very-tasty chicken. The warnings about the smoke discouraged me from making this during the many years that I was living in an apartment. Now that we own a house, and excessive smoke and a sounding smoke alarm are inconveniences only for us and not for other people living in the same building, I decided to make this dish. I marinated the chicken in a mixture of rice wine, salt, Sichuan peppercorns, scallions, and ginger. Then I put the chicken on a steamer rack in a wok and steamed it over boiling water until it was cooked through. I dried out the wok and lined it with foil. I put black tea leaves and dark brown sugar at the bottom of the wok and set the chicken on a rack above the mixture. I covered the wok and heated it over high heat until smoke started to pour out. I continued to smoke the chicken for 6 minutes, flipped it, then smoked it for 6 minutes more. I took the wok off the heat and let the chicken stand, covered, for a bit longer. I had never smoked poultry before and it was pretty amazing. Yes, the kitchen filled with smoke. Yes, our eyes burned and it smelled for days. But the smoking process was amazingly effective. Perhaps a little too effective. The chicken was incredibly smoky. It was one of those dishes where the first bite was fantastic. The second bite was a little overpowering. By the third bite it was barely edible. It was just too much smoke. It's a shame because the meat was beautifully cooked. It came out moist and tender. Although it was hard to eat, I am glad I made the dish -- it was a fascinating experience. I never would have guessed that I had the equipment at home to infuse that much smoky flavor into anything. There was a lot of chicken leftover, since we could really only eat a few bites. The next day I mixed the meat with lots of rice and some soy sauce, which diluted and balanced out the intense smokiness a bit. It still wasn't a mildly flavored meal, but it was pretty tasty that way, and in the end we ate it all.

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I made the mistake of looking at my calendar today. As I flipped through the weeks I got more and more scared. I thought the last few months had been busy, but by the looks of it, it is only going to get worse! From now to the middle of June, between me and my special gentleman we are traveling to Boston, Princeton, Iowa, Banff, small-town Illinois, Las Vegas, Chicago, Switzerland, Germany, Switzerland (again), France, Italy, and California. Of those destinations, I myself am only going to 10 of them, but it still feels like a lot! Add to that 8+ more house guests spread out across the between-trips periods that we are home, and I think it is going to be hectic! That said, I am looking forward to seeing our visitors and I think all of the trips will be fun. In addition to containing work (in the form of giving talks, working with collaborators, and attending conferences) we will also see lots of good friends and visit some nice places during our travels.

First up: Boston. Today was the last day of classes before Spring Break and tomorrow morning we are hitting the road. My special gentleman and I are both giving talks at MIT on Monday, so we are headed first to Boston. We decided to drive and stop at Niagara Falls on the way, to make it feel a little more like a vacation. Later in the week we are headed down to Princeton where my special gentleman will give another talk. It won't be the warm weather Spring Break on the beach that I have always dreamed of, but it is sure to be fun! We have lots of great friends on the East Coast and I am excited to see some of them! We are leaving the cats at home, under the careful watch of some friends of ours. After the rat poison incident, I am a little nervous about leaving them. But they are in good hands!

I suppose it is about time for me to start packing for our trip!

Lobster Bisque (Page 103)

RECIPE #1251

• Date: Saturday, November 6, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Fellow Chef: Matty
  
• Dining Companions: Brad and Deniz
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

This recipe is slightly out of order. I made this dish months ago, when Brad and Deniz came to visit us in Michigan. At the time I was really sick from my new medication, and when it came time for dinner I was so ill I barely ate. Indeed, I was so ill that I forgot to even take pictures of the food! Immediately after dinner we froze the leftovers of this dish, to be enjoyed later. But it was a while before my special gentleman stumbled across the leftovers in the freezer one evening and decided to have lobster bisque for dinner. When he did, I took a picture. So now I am able to blog about this dish!

I began by boiling two live lobsters in a mixture of water, white wine, tarragon, bay leaf, and salt. When the lobsters were cool my special gentleman removed all the meat from the claws, joints, and tails, reserving the shells but discarding the bodies. I cut the meat into pieces. We pounded the reserved shells with a mallet to break them up. I finely chopped carrots, celery, onions, and garlic, then cooked the vegetables in butter. I added the lobster shells then Cognac, tomato paste, cayenne, the lobster cooking liquid, and reserved lobster juices and tomalley. I simmered it all for an hour and a half, then discarded the bay leaf. I transferred the solids to a food processor and pureed them as much as possible, then forced them through a fine mesh sieve. I returned the pureed solids to the cooking liquid and brought it to a boil. I thickened with cornstarch, then added cream, lemon juice, the lobster meat, and salt and just heated it through.

This bisque was pretty good. As I said, I was pretty ill that day, so I didn't eat much. But the general reaction around the table was positive. It had a lovely lobster flavor, and the chunks of lobster meat were well-received. There were two complaints that kept this out of the A- category. One, it was a little bit thin for a bisque. The other complaint came from my special gentleman was just said that it, "wasn't amazing." His standards for lobster bisque are high, and this didn't quite meet them.

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My apologies for the long blog silence. We have had a lot of visitors lately so I have been trying to spend my free time being a decent hostess rather than writing in my blog. Last Thursday our friend Chuck drove up from Bloomington. He stayed with us for a couple nights and gave a seminar in the math department on Friday. It was really fun to hang out with him! He left Saturday morning and on Saturday evening Mike and Tim arrived from Virginia. They stayed with us for two nights and we jammed in lots of fun things during their weekend visit! On Saturday night Helen, Charles, Clara, and Mark joined us for a dinner from The Book. The eight of us ate veal sweetbreads (i.e. the thymus gland of baby cows) with parsnip and potato puree, snails, chicken livers wrapped in bacon, beef with marrow, mushroom risotto, beets, salad, and a white chocolate and grapefruit cake that Helen made... It was quite a meal! It was really two meals in one. Mike always enjoys eating nasty things from The Book, so I was aiming to have a full meal of dishes that would likely be gross (i.e. the veal thymus, snails, and chicken livers), but then also a meal of dishes that would be good so we would have something enjoyable to eat (i.e. everything else on the menu). As it turned out, nothing was as gross as expected so there was a ton of food!

The next day we walked around Lansing for a while, visited the fish ladder, and strolled along the river trail. In the afternoon we went to the rodeo! It seems that I work at a university which holds an annual rodeo on campus. Crazy! Mike was as enthusiastic about going to the rodeo as I was, so on Sunday afternoon we braved a blizzard to see some professional cowboys in action. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome. I hadn't been to a rodeo in years. As I remembered it was a little bit terrifying, and super fun. Mike and Tim left Monday morning, and on Monday evening another house guest arrived. This guest, Adam, is a mathematician in my special gentleman's field. He is giving several lectures in the math department and working with my special gentleman during his visit. He is staying with us for almost two weeks!

So, it has been a hectic time with people coming and going. All the chaos has left me way behind on my blogging, so one of my many goals for the upcoming week is to make a little progress on my backlog!

Bouillabaisse (Page 346)

RECIPE #1250

• Date: Friday, December 31, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: Westerville, OH
• Kitchen: Karen and Dave's House
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Dining Companions: Dave, Karen H, Brad, and Deniz
• Recipe Rating: B
  

My special gentleman's family likes seafood more than most people in my life, so I made this fish stew as part of New Year's Eve dinner at their house. I started by making some croutons by slicing a baguette, brushing the slices with oil, and toasting them in the oven. Once they were toasted I rubbed them with garlic cloves and set them aside. I then cooked a live lobster by plunging it into boiling water. My special gentleman cracked the boiled lobster into pieces. I cooked tomatoes, onion, and garlic in oil, then added peeled, cubed potatoes, fennel fronds, bay leaf, saffron, sea salt, and pepper. I added fish stock and brought it all to a boil. I reduced the heat and simmered until the potatoes were almost cooked, then added 2-inch pieces of halibut and cod. I stirred in the lobster and cooked the stew for a few minutes. I stirred some of the broth into the rouille (see post below). I then put croutons in each bowl and ladled some soup on top. I served the soup with the rouille on the side. I was a pretty indifferent about this soup. It did have halibut in it. I love halibut. There aren't too many types of seafood that I get seriously excited about, but halibut is one of them. We served halibut as one of the entree choices at our wedding. That's how much I love it. So the halibut was delicious. The rest of it? Eh. I could take it or leave it. I hate, hate, hate putting toasted bread on the bottom of a soup bowl and pouring soup on top of it. The bread instantly becomes soggy, and hence disgusting. The Book is very big on the soggy-bread-in-the-soup method and I just don't get it. Plus, this soup was already served with soggy bread sauce (aka rouille), so why did we need more soggy bread? We really didn't. The flavor of the soup was fishy (as one would expect). The fish flavor from the fish stock drowned out some of the other things I was hoping to taste, like the fennel. But it wasn't bad. Nobody had anything terrible to say about this dish, nor any particularly high praise for it. It was a decent fish soup, which I am unlikely to make again.

The recipe in The Book is similar to this one, but the one in The Book doesn't call for clams or mussels.

Only 43 recipes left to go!

Nothing makes you realize how much you work like having someone visit that you want to spend time with. My mom was here this week, and at the end of every day I thought, "I wish I had had more time to spend with my mom." That's not to say that we didn't do anything fun -- we did. We watched the Super Bowl, we had some of my friends over one night, we went to the MSU/Penn State basketball game, we went out to eat a couple times, we did some shopping, we watched a movie... But most days I left for work before my mom woke up and there were several nights when I was still working (although at least from home) at midnight. And I did a lot of multi-tasking -- when I was "watching" the Super Bowl, I was simultaneously writing midterm exams. It was a busy week. On top of the usual stuff, I was giving exams in both my classes. Between writing the exams, grading the exams, and helping nervous students prepare for the exams, it adds up. With just one class (or several sections of the same course) it is pretty manageable, but this term I am teaching two classes that are very different from one another so it was a significant amount of work. I also had research-related deadlines/meetings/goals for the week that contributed to the busyness.

This coming week, I think, is going to be significantly less busy. Looking at my calendar, it seems like it will be a piece of cake! I am hoping to have a productive week and not put off a long list of tasks for the weekend (like I usually do!) because Mike and Tim are coming to visit. They will be here next weekend and I am already scheming about what kind of crazy Book dinner we will make... Sweetbreads are definitely on the menu, and I have been thinking about making some snails too (plus some beef, so that we have something to eat if everything else is too unappetizing!). Fun! Speaking of Mike, it's his birthday today. Happy Birthday to Mike, who is always willing to cook and eat crazy shit from The Book with me! That's a sign of a good friend!

Rouille (Page 347)

RECIPE #1249

• Date: Friday, December 31, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: Westerville, OH
• Kitchen: Karen and Dave's House
• Dining Companions: Matty, Karen H, Dave, Brad, and Deniz
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

This recipe was a component of a fish stew I made for New Year's Eve at my special gentleman's parents' house. I am not a huge fan of soggy bread, so rouille is never my favorite. This soggy bread and garlic based sauce was simple to make. I poured water over some fresh bread crumbs that I made from a baguette. Then I mashed together garlic, sea salt, and cayenne. I mashed the wet bread crumbs into the garlic mixture, then added olive oil. That was it. The result was exactly how it sounds: soggy bread with garlic, cayenne, salt, and oil. To be fair, while it certainly wasn't something I would be interested in eating by the spoonful, it did add flavor to the stew that it was served with. In the past I have made rouille in the food processor and the texture came out better. My mashing by hand didn't incorporate the bread crumbs well enough to make this really feel like a sauce.

The recipe is here.

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My special gentleman is traveling a lot this semester. He has been away since Friday, and is arriving home late tonight (or very early tomorrow morning, depending on how you look at it). He will teach his class tomorrow afternoon, then fly out again tomorrow evening for another trip, which will last almost a week. I have to admit it, I don't like it when he is away. We basically have the same job, and I also travel a lot, so of course I understand why it is necessary and I never try to stop him from traveling. But that doesn't mean I enjoy it when he travels. You would think that after years of living in different states I would be accustomed to being apart. These short trips are nothing compared to the amount of time we spent apart when he lived in Boston and I lived in Indiana, for instance. But I think those years apart made me more sensitive to distance rather than less. When he calls me at night from some faraway state or country, I can't help but think of the hundreds of times we had similar good-night phone calls when we lived apart. At least for that second I feel as though we are living apart again, and it is a terrible feeling. Plus, for reasons I can't explain, I am less productive when he is away. I am less focused, less motivated... So when he is traveling I count down the days. And I look forward to the summer, when we can travel together rather than separately.

Luckily, this week my mom is visiting, so my attitude about my special gentleman being away isn't nearly as bad as it otherwise would be. We have been having a really fun time!

Crown Roast of Lamb (Page 499)

RECIPE #1248

• Date: Friday, December 31, 2010 -- 7pm
• Location: Westerville, OH
• Kitchen: Karen and Dave's House
• Dining Companions: Matty, Dave, Karen H, Brad, and Deniz
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

My parents and my special gentleman's parents both do not like lamb. My special gentleman and I have long been puzzled by this fact, as lamb is delicious. It's true that lamb prepared badly can be really bad, much more so than with beef, for instance. But lamb prepared nicely is absolutely divine. This was the last lamb recipe I had left to make for my project, and I would have made it long ago, but crown roast of lamb isn't so easy to find. When I saw it at the Whole Foods near my in-laws' house, I was desperate to buy it. But first, we had to talk them into letting us make lamb for dinner! Luckily, they are very open-minded about trying things, and were willing to consider the possibility that the lamb they had in the past just hadn't been cooked well. Plus, we promised to make another dish to go with this one that they were certain to like: Bouillabaisse! So, a New Year's Eve feast was born. We had crown roast of lamb. We had fish stew with lobster in it. We had porcini risotto, and a big salad. We had a caramelized pear tart. It was a feast fit for New Year's Eve!

This recipe was super-simple to make. I rubbed the crown roast with a mixture of garlic, thyme, rosemary, salt, and pepper. I put a ball of foil in the center to help it hold its shape. I also covered the bone ends with foil. I roasted it in the oven until it reached an internal temperature of 135 degrees. While it rested I deglazed the pan with beef stock. I added thyme, rosemary, arrowroot, cream, and port, and boiled until it was thick. I seasoned with salt and pepper. I served the crown roast with the pan sauce. That was it! This lamb was tasty. It was cooked nicely and the herb rub contributed a good flavor to the meat. The pan sauce was delicious. I gave this one a B+ rather than an A- only because there are much better lamb recipes out there. In particular there are more than a few lamb recipes in The Book which are more interesting and delicious than this dish. I liked this dish a lot, but it wasn't spectacular, and I doubt I will make it again. That said, it did convince my in-laws that not all lamb is bad! They seemed to like it a lot actually. That's an outcome of the meal that I can feel good about: convincing a couple people that lamb can be tasty!

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I grew up in Wisconsin, and we occasionally had snow days when I was a kid (or sometimes, cold days). I definitely remember being excited when school would get canceled for snow. But I certainly don't remember ever being as excited as I was this evening when I found out that classes at MSU are canceled tomorrow! I did a dance. I sang a song about it. More than once. My special gentleman thought it was so funny that periodically throughout the evening he asked, "Hey, did you hear tomorrow is a snow day?" just so that he could see my song and dance again. Don't get me wrong, I love my job. But I have been very busy lately. And while I planned to take some time to relax this weekend, I ended up working a lot. Plus, Wednesdays are long days for me. I have two and half hours of office hours in the morning, which are usually quite populated with students as both my classes have homework assignments due Wednesday afternoons. I have 15-20 minutes scheduled to eat lunch between my office hours and when I teach, but often that amounts to eating granola at my desk while helping someone finish their assignment. Then I lecture an hour of calculus and an hour of "Foundations of Higher Mathematics," which is an introduction to proofs class, mostly populated by future elementary school teachers who are majoring in math. My two hours of lecture are followed almost immediately by two hours of seminars (first the algebra seminar, then the topology seminar), and often we go out to dinner with the speaker after the latter seminar. By the time I get home I am tired, and I haven't yet had any time in the day to work on my own research. So, if there is one day of the week when a snow day really helps me out, it's Wednesday. Tomorrow I am going to stay in my pajamas all day. I am going to drink hot chocolate while working in front of the fire. Thursday I don't have to teach and I don't have any appointments, so if it's still snowing I will stay home then too. That gives me two days to do some intensive work, without any distractions. Just thinking about it makes me want to do my snow day dance again! Supposedly they haven't called off classes at MSU because of snow in more than 20 years. But I am pretty delighted that they did now!

Oysters Rockefeller (Page 52)

RECIPE #1247

• Date: Tuesday, December 28, 2010 -- 6pm
• Location: Westerville, OH
  
• Kitchen: Karen and Dave's House
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Dining Companions: Karen H, Dave, Wes, Brad, and Deniz
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I hadn't made this recipe yet, as oysters aren't so easy to come by in Lansing. There is a huge Whole Foods near my in-laws' house in Ohio though, so when we were visiting them over the holidays I seized the opportunity to make this hors d'oeuvre. My special gentleman graciously agreed to shuck the oysters for me (not my favorite job!). He also cleaned the shells once the oysters had been shucked. Meanwhile, I stirred together finely chopped Boston lettuce, spinach, scallions, dried bread crumbs, parsley, celery, and garlic. I cooked the mixture in butter, then added some Pernod, anchovy paste, cayenne, salt, and pepper. While the mixture cooled I cooked some bacon, then crumbled it. I stabilized the bottom halves of the oyster shells on a baking sheet using kosher salt. I placed an oyster in each shell and moistened them with some of the oyster liquor. I put some of the vegetable mixture on top of each oyster, then piled on some crumbled bacon and more dried bread crumbs. I baked them until the edges of the oysters curled, then we served them. These oysters were pretty good. The flavor of the vegetable mixture was nice and the bacon was, of course, a delicious addition. I didn't care so much for the extra bread crumbs on top. I can imagine bread crumbs that would have achieved a delicious crunchy texture. But the recipe called for fine dried bread crumbs which instead of giving the oysters a nice crunch, gave them a doughiness that I didn't like. The ratio of topping to oyster also seemed a bit high. So while they were tasty, they weren't amazing, and I probably won't make them again.

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

Only 46 recipes left to go!

I did laundry today. As I was putting the second load into the washing machine, I realized that I hadn't done laundry in over a month. Yet somehow my underwear drawer was never empty and there were always clean pants in my closet. I haven't been to the grocery store in three weeks, yet there is food in the fridge. And while I have only loaded the dishwasher once or twice this month, all the dishes are clean. Basically my special gentleman is amazing. This month was tremendously hectic, and in the little free time that I had, I opted to get some sleep rather than help around the house. Not once this month did my special gentleman complain. Now, the tables are turning. The big things that were making this month crazy for me are now all off my plate, and my responsibilities are back to just the usual ones. My special gentleman, on the other hand, is entering a month full of travel, visitors, and extra time-consuming responsibilities. He is working even harder than usual. So today I did the laundry and made dinner. Tomorrow I will go to the grocery store. I will likely be doing most of the dishes this month. There is a rhythm to our marriage that I appreciate more and more with each passing month. When one of us is exceptionally busy the other person always manages to pick up the slack, without discussion. When we are both extremely busy, we work together to get the things done that absolutely need to be done. What I appreciate about it the most is that it's easy. I always imagined marriage as a partnership that would be empowering. And indeed it is. As a month of craziness comes to a close I am especially thankful for my special gentleman, and hopeful that as his crazy month begins I can be as supportive to him as he was to me these past four weeks.

Minced Squab and Pork with Rice Stick Noodles (Page 408)

RECIPE #1246

• Date: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 -- 7pm
  
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C+
  

There are three squab recipes in The Book, which I hadn't made because it turns out squab isn't so easy to fine. I finally got my hands on some though, so my special gentleman and I made this recipe. We started by soaking dried shitakes in water, then mincing them. I also minced some squab and pork tenderloin, then marinated the meat in a mixture of soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil. While that was marinating, we deep-fried rice stick noodles. I made a sauce of water, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, salt, and cornstarch. Then I heated some peanut oil in a wok and stir-fried the squab mixture with the mushrooms, scallions, ginger, water chestnuts, and the sauce. We served the meat on the rice noodles, with Boston lettuce leaves for wrapping. My special gentleman and I both had similar reactions to this dish. It looked and smelled like something we would really want to eat. But it didn't taste that way. Both components of this dish were disappointing. The deep-fried rice noodles were cool in a way. I had never fried rice noodles before and the way they puffed up was really interesting. But they were terribly bland, and as soon as the meat mixture sat of them for a few seconds they were soggy and gross. Ick. As for the minced pork and squab mixture, it just didn't taste very good. Squab has a distinct flavor which didn't go well with the Asian flavors in the dish. I would have liked the dish better with just pork. The pigeon definitely didn't help it. My special gentleman and I wanted to like this dish, but just didn't particularly.

This recipe isn't online.

Only 47 recipes left to go!

I haven't blogged in ages. I have been swamped this month. I had a bunch of work that needed to get done before the semester started, so I was working very long days during the first week of the new year. The second week of January was the first week of classes, which is always a bit of a mad house. And this past week, I was traveling for work from Sunday to Saturday. Missing the second week of classes was obviously not ideal, and it took some real work to get ready to go away. But some kind souls covered my classes for me, my trip went well, and now I am home. Being home again means catching up on all the things I got behind on while I was away. That includes not just work, but also things like running, cooking, and blogging! Also, relaxing. My flight got in yesterday afternoon, and I will admit that I spent the rest of the day napping, eating, and just hanging out with my special gentleman. It was delightful. Today, confronted with all the work I could have started catching up on yesterday, I regretted it a bit. But I needed a day off. It is looking like this is going to be another very busy week, but I am hoping things will settle down pretty soon. I knew that the month of January would be rough, but I am not traveling at all in February, so likely things we feel a little less hectic then!

Chocolate Prune Pave with Armagnac Creme Anglaise and Candied Orange Zest (Page 820)

RECIPE #1245

• Date: Saturday, November 20, 2010 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Dining Companions: Matty, Helen, Charles, Clara, Corbett, Mary, Allison, Ben S., Marcie, Kendra, Jubin, Watson, Linda, and Bob K.
• Recipe Rating: B
  

When we hosted our pre-Thanksgiving dinner in November, I only had two desserts left to make for my project. I chose this one to serve with dinner. I had put this off for a long time because chocolate and prunes just didn't sound that good together to me. But the time had come to finally make this dish! I started by pureeing prunes with Armagnac in a food processor. I then forced the puree through a medium-mesh sieve. When I first read this recipe I noticed it had an Active Time of one and a half hours. But reading the recipe it just didn't seem like it could possibly take that long. In fact, that steps all sounded very quick, and they weren't very many of them. Well, I quickly solved the mystery of the hour and a half. The step that took forever: forcing that puree through a sieve. Prune puree is very, very thick and gloppy. It did NOT want to go through a sieve. That step took a nice long while. Once that was done I melted some chocolate with cream then added it to the prune mixture and blended it all in the food processor. I poured it into a loaf pan that was oiled and lined with plastic wrap. I chilled it overnight, then inverted it out of the pan, topped it with Candied Orange Zest, and served it with Armagnac Creme Anglaise.

This dessert was much tastier than I expected it to be. I was worried about the prunes, but they were very subtle. Knowing they were there, it was easy to detect their flavor, but if I hadn't known I probably wouldn't have guessed. They actually contributed a fantastic sweetness and fruitiness to the dish. The predominant flavor, though, was that of the chocolate. The texture was very smooth. The dessert was quite rich -- in fact it was so rich and chocolatey that I found it hard to eat more than a few bites. Eating a slice of this was like eating a giant prune and Armagnac flavored truffle. I would have preferred a chocolate cake to this pave, but it certainly exceeded expectations!

This recipe isn't online.

Only 48 recipes left to go!

This was the last recipe I had left to make in the Fruit Desserts section of The Book! This section had some odd things in it (the Broiled Grapes in Mascarpone come to mind), but overall I enjoyed making these fruit recipes. In no particular order, my top 5 recipes from this section:

• Fruit Crumble -- I have to include this one because this has become my go-to peach crumble. I have made this at least 10 times since first making it in 2006. It is super-fast, super-tasty, and easy to make for a huge crowd. If you need to throw together dessert for 50 people in a flash, this is the recipe for you!
  
• Strawberry Shortcake -- My special gentleman still talks about this recipe, which we made back in 2006, shortly after he and I met. It was indeed memorable!
• Baked Apples -- I made this one at the very beginning of my project, before I even started taking pictures of the dishes! These are the best baked apples I have ever had, and the recipe is so, so simple. The baked apples are filled with creme fraiche at the end and the result is superb!
• Chilled Sour Cherry Soup -- Soup cherry soup is one of my special gentleman's all-time favorite foods and I still remember the shocked look he gave me when he realized that we could make it ourselves! This is a good version of the dish, and we make it often in our household.
  
• Blackberry Cobbler -- Nothing says summer like a good fruit cobbler, and this one was indeed good! The biscuit topping was delicious and moist and the berry mixture was not too sweet. A winner!

Another section complete! Yay! I have so far completed 11 sections of The Book with only 10 sections left to finish. More than half the sections are complete -- I can hardly believe it! Plus, three of the sections I have left only have one recipe remaining, so hopefully I will finish them off soon!

Candied Orange Zest (Page 820)

RECIPE #1244

• Date: Saturday, November 20, 2010 -- 6pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Dining Companions: Matty, Helen, Charles, Clara, Corbett, Mary, Allison, Ben S., Marcie, Kendra, Jubin, Watson, Linda, and Bob K.
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

This recipe was a component of a dessert I made for our pre-Thanksgiving dinner a while back. This was super simple to make. I peeled some navel oranges and cut the zest into thin strips. Then I combined the zest with Cointreau and simmered until the liquid had evaporated and the zest was translucent. I spread the zest out on waxed paper to dry. That was it! This sort of thing is difficult to grade. Candied orange peel basically tastes like candied orange peel. There isn't a huge amount of variance. This peel was less sweet and more boozy than some though, which was an interesting change. It was pretty, and worked nicely as a garnish for the dessert that it was served with (which I will blog about next).

Only 49 recipes left to go!

I have been thinking the last few days about what my resolutions for the new year should be. Here are some that I have come up with:

• Run every day that I am not traveling -- Over the last few years I have learned something about myself. If I resolve to run three days a week, I won't run at all. If I resolve to run every day, I will do it. Apparently, having the option of not doing it some days leads to me not doing it every day. The one exception I am giving myself: when I am traveling. Often when I travel I have little control over my schedule, and trying to fit in a run becomes very stressful.
• Finish the Gourmet Project! -- Yes, I said that last year, and didn't quite make it, but this year I am going to do it! I have less than 50 recipes left, which is very manageable. I will finish in 2011!!
• Eat some fruit every day -- Every year I say I am going to eat more fruits and vegetables. The reality is, I already eat a lot of vegetables, but I am just not a huge fruit person. It's not that I don't like it, but I never crave it, and hence don't eat it as much as I should.
  
• Get eight hours of sleep every night -- I know, that sounds totally ridiculous. Who actually gets eight hours of sleep every night? Certainly not me. But I realized recently that when I do sleep a full eight hours I feel happier, more motivated, and I can think more clearly and hence get more work done. My special gentleman and I don't have kids so we still have the luxury of setting our own sleep schedule, and in 2011 I am going to take advantage of that. I am aiming for eight hours a night!
• Bike to work every day -- I did a good job of this in the fall semester, but I would like to be sure to continue biking in 2011!
• Stick to my work schedule -- I am more productive if my schedule has some structure to it, so I have a system that I use to self-impose some structure. In the fall, though, with the craziness of starting my new job, I got off schedule early in the term and never completely got back on it. In 2011 I am going to try to stick to my schedule a little better! I have LOTS of other work resolutions, but I won't list them all here.
  
• Answer emails more quickly -- This one is in the front of my mind, as I have many, many emails awaiting response in my Inbox.
  
• Explore the Lansing area and the rest of Michigan -- The fall was so busy that I didn't have time to do much exploration of the area we now live in. In fact, I haven't even gone hiking once since I moved here! In 2011 I would like to see more of Michigan: the sand dunes, the upper peninsula, etc... I want to go to a Lansing Lugnuts game, visit the zoo, canoe on the river... I have a long list!
• Continue to build relationships in the math department, in the residential college, at church, in our neighborhood, etc...
  
• Be a good wife, family member, and friend.

That's plenty to start off the year with! Looking at the list it seems to me that everything is very achievable (well, maybe with the exception of sleeping eight hours a night!). Hopefully a year from now I will be reflecting back on the success I had with my resolutions!

Grilled Turkey with Cranberry Gravy (Page 381)

RECIPE #1243

• Date: Saturday, November 20, 2010 -- 5pm
• Location: East Lansing, MI
• Kitchen: Our House
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Dining Companions: Helen, Charles, Clara, Corbett, Mary, Allison, Ben S., Kendra, Jubin, Watson, Linda, and Bob K.
• Recipe Rating: A
  

Part of the reason we threw our pre-Thanksgiving dinner party last month was because I still have several turkey recipes left to make from The Book. We selected this one for our party. I started by prepping the turkey. I stuffed the cavities with some lemon halves and herb sprigs. Then I seasoned the bird with salt and pepper and rubbed it with butter. I put it on a rack in a roasting pan and put some water in the pan. My special gentleman was in charge of grilling the bird. He turned off the middle burner on our gas grill and balanced two disposable loaf pans on the burner tents of the middle burner, under the grill rack. One loaf pan had water in it. We punched holes in the bottom of the other loaf pan and filled it with some apple wood chips which had been soaked in water. My special gentleman put the rack back on the grill and put the roasting pan with the turkey over the turned-off burner. He grilled the turkey over indirect heat for about three and a half hours. Meanwhile, I cooked some cranberries and sugar in a saucepan, then pureed them in the blender. When the turkey was done we took it off the grill and let it rest while we made the gravy. We reserved some turkey fat and discarded the rest of the fat off the pan juices. Then we deglazed the roasting pan. We made a roux from the reserved turkey fat and some flour, then added the pan juices, some chicken stock, and the pureed cranberries. We cooked the gravy until it had reduced appropriately, then we strained it and served it with the turkey.

In a word: Yum! It was easily the best turkey I have ever eaten. The flavor from the grill was amazing, and the meat came out fantastically moist and delicious. On top of that, the cranberry gravy was incredible. I will be making cranberry gravy for years to come. It was so, so good. Everyone raved about this turkey. In fact my special gentleman raved about it so much to his parents on the phone after our party that they requested that we make it again for them -- which we did this week! It turned out great again! We did learn one thing from the repeat preparation though. The Book says to keep the grill between 350 and 375. At home we couldn't get it up to 375 with one burner off, so we cooked it right around 350. Here at Dave and Karen's their grill easily got up to 375, so we cooked it at that temperature. Both turkeys had the same great flavor, but the one at our house was moister, so I would aim for 350 degrees in the future. I don't know how well this method would work for a huge turkey, but if you are looking to cook a 12-14 pound bird I highly recommend this recipe. Yum!!!!

The recipe is here, although the recipe online only gives instructions for a charcoal grill, whereas the one in The Book gives instructions for a gas grill too.

Only 50 recipes left to go!

Well it is that time of year again -- time to reflect on the resolutions I made for 2010 and see how I did:

• Be a good homeowner and neighbor -- This one has gone pretty well. The house hasn't fallen down and to our knowledge we haven't pissed off any neighbors. So I will call this one a success.
  
• Eat more fruits and vegetables -- I did pretty well with this one too. I have been stocking the fridge with fresh produce and we have definitely been consuming more fruits and vegetables than in the past!
  
• Eat less processed food -- I would call this one a definite success. I stopped buying ramen, boxed mac and cheese, microwave popcorn, crackers, cookies, cereal, etc... more than six months ago now, and it has been great! We never ate a ton of processed food, but now we eat even less and I feel good about it. We make all our own bread, cereal, etc... and it has been great!
  
• Finish the Gourmet Project! -- Well, clearly that didn't happen. But I have only got 50 recipes left to go (actually less as I am a little behind in my blogging), and I definitely WILL finish in 2011.
  
• Run five 8-minute miles -- Ugh, this also didn't happen. I have no excuse.
  
• Do 20 consecutive real push-ups -- Again, didn't happen. I've got no excuse other than laziness.
  
• Get a lot of research done in my semester of not teaching -- I feel like I used my time pretty well last spring. I didn't accomplish as much as I would have hoped, but I never do.
  
• Bring a lot of energy to my new job in the fall -- I think I did pretty well at this one. I am more or less happy with how my first semester went.
  
• Be a good wife and friend -- I hope I did well at this!
  
• Put effort into meeting people and making friends in East Lansing -- This went better than expected. I definitely put in a lot of effort trying to meet people, throw dinner parties, etc... and it paid off in a big way. Six months ago I barely knew anyone in East Lansing and now I feel like I have some friends there!
  

Overall, I feel pretty good about the last year. Certainly I didn't achieve my fitness goals, and that is something I would like to improve upon in 2011. But overall, I accomplished many of the things that I wanted to in 2010. Today I need to do a little reflection and think about what my resolutions should be for 2011!

Happy New Year's Eve!!