Classic Brioches (Page 612)

RECIPE #1047

• Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 -- 10pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Matty, Deniz, Brad, Dave, and Karen H
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I hadn't made these brioches yet because I didn't have the proper molds. We got them as a wedding present though (thanks Grant and Anna!), so I was finally equipped for this recipe. I made these brioches last week and froze them so we could have them with breakfast this weekend when my in-laws visited. The majority of the time that went into this recipe went into making the dough, which was a separate recipe that I had already made once before and blogged about here. Once the dough was ready I brushed the molds with melted butter. Then I kneaded the dough for a minute, then cut it into ten pieces. From each piece I tore off one-quarter of the dough and made it into a small ball. I formed the other three-quarters of each piece into a bigger ball. Then I put the bigger ball into a mold, used my finger to make an indentation, and put the smaller ball on top. I repeated with the remaining nine molds, then covered the molds with plastic wrap and let the brioches rise for an hour and a half. I brushed them with a mixture of egg yolk and heavy cream and baked them until golden brown. My brioches weren't the cutest -- several of my top knots were more than a little lopsided! But they were tasty! They had all the buttery flavor you would expect from brioches, and they were beautifully crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I froze them the night I baked them, and when I wanted to reheat them I put them in the oven directly from the freezer. They were just as good reheated that way, and everyone enjoyed them spread with jam as part of a breakfast spread.

This recipe isn't online.

What a fun weekend! My husband's parents, brother Brad, and sister-in-law Deniz came to visit us in Michigan this weekend. They hadn't seen our new house yet, so it was especially exciting to have them visit. Their visit was made even more exciting by the fact that Brad and Deniz just got puppies! Their miniature dachshund puppies Hanby and Wellington are about two months old and SUPER cute. They are incredibly small, and extremely energetic. They provided a lot of entertainment! When we weren't occupied by staring at the puppies we also spent some time walking around campus, eating big meals, and exploring downtown Lansing. It was a lovely weekend. When we were picking a house one of our priorities was to find a house that would be good for having company stay with us. We love it when our family and friends come visit us, so that was a big priority. I think we succeeded on that count -- everyone who has stayed with us so far has seemed comfortable with the accommodations!

Tomorrow morning my special gentleman and I are headed back to Indiana so I can teach on Tuesday. Then on Tuesday night we will drive to his parents house in Ohio for Thanksgiving weekend. I love this time of year -- full of holidays and family (and good food of course!)!

Pasta Dough (Page 209)

RECIPE #1046

• Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty, Karen H, Dave, Brad, and Deniz
  
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

There are two different fresh pasta doughs in The Book, and although I had made the other one, somehow I hadn't made this one yet. I figured it was about time to fix that! I made some ravioli from The Book and this recipe was a component of that dish. The Book gives two options in this recipe. One option is to mix and knead the dough by hand. The other is to use a food processor for the mixing and kneading. Typically I make my pasta by hand, so I figured I would give the food processor route a try. I combined flour, eggs, water, and salt in a food processor. I pulsed until the dough came together, then I processed it for 15 seconds more to knead it. Then I turned the dough out onto a floured surface and let it rest for an hour. That was it! Of course, the time consuming part of making homemade pasta is rolling out the dough, which was a part of the ravioli recipe, not this one. But this was indeed a super-quick way to throw together a pasta dough. I used this dough to make ravioli and they came out very nicely. This dough was not as easy to work with as my usual pasta dough recipe (which I got in culinary school). But after a few passes through the pasta machine, it was more workable. This recipe didn't have any olive oil in it. Olive oil is often (but not always) found in pasta dough. I like the effect that a little olive oil has on the flavor and texture of fresh pasta, so I missed that here. This dough held up well for making ravioli though and it cooked up nicely. I'll probably stick to my usual pasta dough recipe, but this is certainly a solid recipe.

The recipe is here.

I opened the freezer a few minutes ago and food fell out on me. This is a good thing. I have been cooking like a crazy woman the last 5 days or so, and for the first time in a long time I have a backlog of recipes to blog about, and the freezer is bursting with food!

This semester has been crazy busy. Even in busier times though, I have found the motivation to cook. This semester was different. I don't know if I was exhausted from marathon training, or from teaching 330 students, but I just couldn't motivate to cook. Actually, I couldn't motivate to go to the grocery store so that I could cook. But now we are entering into the holiday season, which means visitors, and parties, and all sorts of fun occasions that call for food. This season of celebration has given me a second wind! It has also given me people to cook for! Since I moved to my new apartment in Bloomington I haven't been able to have anyone over for dinner. There's not really anywhere for guests to eat. In particular, I moved my dining table to the house in Michigan. I would feel a little bad having guests eat on the floor, so I haven't been throwing any dinner parties. And our house in Michigan is perfectly suited for dinner guests, but until recently I hadn't been set up to do any serious cooking there. This weekend, though, I am headed to Michigan and my husband's parents, brother, and sister-in-law are coming to visit! So I am going to cook a big meal one night (which I have already started -- hence the overflowing freezer)!

It's nice to be cooking frequently again. I am remembering how much I love creating new things, and checking them off in The Book. I may finish this project in a timely manner after all! Less than 250 recipes to go!

Tiny Choux Puffs (Page 91)

RECIPE #1045

• Date: Monday, November 16, 2009 -- 8pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty, Brad, Deniz, Karen H, and Dave
  
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This is a component recipe for a soup that I am making. To make these tiny choux puffs I started by boiling water, butter, and salt. Then I dumped in some flour and beat it vigorously on the stove for a couple minutes. I let it cool briefly, then added some eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. This was a very typical pate a choux recipe -- the dough that one makes cream puffs from, and profiteroles, and all sorts of other yummy things. I put the dough into a pastry bag and piped very tiny little mounds on some greased baking sheets. I baked these until they were puffed and golden. Yum! These are meant to be floating in beef consomme, and I haven't tried that particular application for them yet. But as an after dinner snack they were awesome! They were everything that a choux puff should be: light, delicate, crispy on the outside and airy on the inside. This recipe made way more than the 90 it claimed to make. But that's ok with me -- it made me feel fine about eating a dozen of them this evening! I look forward to seeing how these work with the soup, but they are delicious just as they are.

The recipe is here.

My husband and I have spent most of the last two and a half years living apart. There was a stretch of several months when we both lived in Indiana, but before that we commuted Indiana to Boston and now we commute Indiana to Michigan. For the most part I am used to it, and try to stay positive. I feel very lucky that the end is in sight -- starting in June we will both be living together in Michigan!

When my husband lived in Boston, we often went two and a half weeks or so without seeing one another. But then we lived together in Indiana for a while after that, and since he moved to Michigan we have been spending 4 nights together and 3 nights apart every week. That is very manageable, especially since we are both so busy that those 3 nights apart fly by. We are entering a period though where we we frequently be spending 10 (or more...) days apart at a time. And I just feel sad about it. I haven't seen him in more than a week now, and it's the first time we have spent that long apart since we got married in May.

I have been feeling down about this the last couple days, and now I am trying to have an attitude adjustment about the whole thing. It's obviously a good sign that I feel so uplifted by my marriage that I miss him very deeply if I don't see him every few days. And we are incredibly lucky to have secured tenure-track jobs at the same university, allowing us to live together permanently very soon. So for now I just need to suck it up!

Braided Challah (Page 610)

RECIPE #1044

• Date: Saturday, November 14, 2009 -- 1pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

I was in the mood to do some baking this weekend, so I made this challah yesterday. I first made a starter by mixing water, sugar, flour, and yeast in a warm jar. I let it sit until the mixture was very bubbly. Then I combined peanut oil, sugar, salt, honey, eggs, egg yolks, warm water, the starter, and some bread flour in my stand mixer. I beat it for 5 minutes then put the dough hook in and more flour and kneaded it for 10 minutes. At that point my dough was very, very soft. I put it in a bowl and let it rise for a couple hours, then I punched it down and let it rise some more. I then kneaded in more flour, then let the dough sit before shaping it. To shape I divided the dough in half, then each half into thirds. I made each piece into a long rope, and braided them into two loaves. I brushed the loaves with egg wash and let them rise again. Then I then baked them on greased baking sheets that were dusted with cornmeal. I covered the loaves with foil halfway through the baking so they didn't get too brown.

I love homemade bread, and I love challah, so I had high hopes for this recipe. Sadly, though, I was very disappointed. The texture of the bread was nice enough, and it did have the eggy flavor you would expect from challah. But the peanut oil was so trememndously overpowering that it ruined the bread for me. When I read the recipe and saw that it called for more than a half a cup of peanut oil, I was surprised. Peanut is a rather strongly flavored oil, and a half a cup is a lot! Indeed, the loaves came out smelling and tasting predominantly of peanut oil. It's not a bad flavor per se, it was just too much. I left my apartment shortly after baking this and when I returned to the building, I was shocked by how strong the peanut oil scent was from the front door. Indeed even a set of stairs and a long hallway away from my apartment, the unmistakable smell of peanut oil was in the air. This challah might have been tasty with the peanut oil replaced by a milder oil, but as written I certainly wouldn't make this recipe again.

This recipe isn't online.

What a day.

I went into the office this morning to finish writing the third exam for my business calculus class. Obviously delusional, I brought food for a very light lunch, but no dinner. I thought I would be done by 4pm or so, but this was not the case. Exam writing is difficult, and especially so in this course. For one thing, because of the rampant cheating I have to write four versions of the exam so that students don't have the same version as the people sitting near them. Further, half the questions on the exams in this class are multiple choice, which are easy to grade but hard to write. This exam in particular also included a lot of figures, which adds to the time it takes. Four o'clock came and went and I was still working on it. By six-thirty or so I was done. And starving. I had only eaten an energy bar and a bowl of cereal (my light lunch) all day and it wasn't enough. I just needed to run to the bathroom quickly and then I was ready to head home.

As soon as I shut the door to my office, en route to the bathroom, I realized that I had locked my keys inside. People say that when you spend enough time with someone you pick up pieces of their personality. My husband is awesome and I would be happy to pick up almost any aspect of his personality. I was hoping, however, not to pick up his tendency to lock himself out. I have never locked myself out of my office. But tonight, I did. Not only did I lock my keys inside (including, of course, the key to my apartment), but also my wallet. So there I was, starving and penniless. I called the university janitorial staff, and they could let me in, but not for 4 more hours. I don't mind chilling in the department for a few hours, but the idea of not eating until 10:30pm was not sitting well with me. I wandered the building floor by floor looking for help. Finally I found the one other faculty member in the office at dinner time on a Sunday. He couldn't help me with a key, but he did lend me money to eat!

Dinner helped, and now I am feeling much more balanced, although still locked out. Luckily we have Sunday night movies in our department, so after I ate I went to the movie. Then a colleague let me into his office to wait. So now I am at least fed and comfortable while I wait for the janitors. Ugh. Not smart. Not smart at all...

Beef and Veal Loaf (Page 449)

RECIPE #1043

• Date: Saturday, November 14, 2009 -- 1pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I am attempting to make some progress on the meatier sections of The Book, so I made this loaf of meat for lunch today. I started by soaking some cubes of bread in milk. Then I combined ground beef, ground veal, eggs, finely chopped pancetta, grated Parmesan, chopped parsley, grated lemon zest, salt, and pepper in a bowl. I squeezed the milk out of the bread, finely chopped it, and threw that in there too. Then I mixed it all up with my hands. I formed the meat into a big cylinder. The instructions then said to carefully transfer the cylinder to a skillet and brown it on all sides in oil, turning the meat cylinder with two spatulas. Yeah right! I can imagine a spatula size that would make that suggestion reasonable -- but it would be huge! Having no such spatula, I attempted to do this with two regular size spatulas and it was a disaster. Every time I turned it in the pan it lost more and more of its structural integrity, until eventually it just fell apart into 4 big chunks of meat. I then had to remove the detroyed cylinder from the skillet (which destroyed it even more!) and deglaze the pan with white wine. Then I had to put the cylinder back into the skillet (again, more destruction). At that point I tried to reform a loaf, but as you can imagine it wasn't so easy because the meat was hot, it was in a hot skillet, and sitting in hot pan juices. Plus, since the outside was browned, it was less willing to stick to itself. I did my best, then put it in the oven, basting occasionally with the pan juices. I cooked the loaf until it reached an internal temp of 150, took it out and covered it with foil to rest for 10 minutes. I sliced it and served it with the pan juices. My beef and veal loaf had been so frustrating to deal with that I was having angry thoughts by the time I was done making it. All that changed when I took a bite. Oh my gosh: Yum!! I would never have thought to put lemon zest into meatloaf, and even as I say it now, it sounds bad. But it was SO delicious. The lemon zest and white wine were amazing together and went beautifully with the meat, particularly with the pancetta. And although the browning was a huge pain in my a--, that exterior crust was incredibly tasty. Further, this meat loaf was deliciously moist. The texture was just perfect. I love a good American meat loaf, but this Italian version was awesome! If you don't have a couple huge spatulas it is probably going to fall apart and be unattractive (see photo above) but it will still taste great!

This recipe isn't online.

On Thursdays my office hours start at 1pm. My class ends at 12:30pm, so in theory I have 30 minutes to eat lunch before students arrive in my office. In practice I usually have half a dozen things I need to do in those 30 minutes, so more often than not I eat while helping my students. This past Thursday one of my students arrived in my office right at 1pm, as I was just about to start eating my lunch. We had the following conversation:

Student (looking at my lunch): "You always have ramen for lunch."
Me: "Yeah. I suppose that says something about my life as of late."
Student: "It's ok, I don't really know how to cook either."

I thought about defending myself, explaining that I really do know how to cook. But she was right -- this semester I have eaten ramen for lunch more days than not. Things have been busy and somewhere along the way I lost the time to cook, and the will to pack myself a halfway reasonable lunch. Ramen is even easier than peanut butter and jelly, and it costs 17 cents. But it's a sad thing to eat ramen every day, and I am going to starting trying a little harder.

Between now and the end of the calendar year I am going to attempt to blog at least 5 times per week -- which means I will have to cook at least 5 things per week! I started getting back into the swing of cooking by knocking off three and a half recipes this morning. I need to gain a little momentum for my project again!

Black Forest Cake (Page 746)

RECIPE #1042

• Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 -- 10pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Teri and Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

My mom was in town this past week, and since she is a fan of all things dessert, I figured it was as good a time as any to make the Black Forest Cake in The Book. I started by melting chocolate with butter and water in a double boiler. I let it cool, then stirred in vanilla extract. I then ground almonds with sugar in the food processor. I added the almond mixture to egg yolks and beat it with a stand mixture until doubled in volume. I then beat in the chocolate mixture. In a separate bowl, I beat egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks formed, then I folded the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. I then folded in flour, crumbs from zwieback toasts, cocoa powder, and salt. I poured the batter into a springform pan, lined with parchment and buttered on the bottom. I baked it until a toothpick came out clean. Meanwhile I made a syrup by heating water and sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolved. Then I added kirsch. Before assembling the cake I beat together heavy cream and sugar to form stiff peaks. To assemble, I sliced the cake horizontally into three layers. Then I put the bottom layer on a serving dish, brushed it with a third of the kirsch syrup, then spread it with a layer of sour cherry preserves, then a layer of whipped cream. I repeated this with the next layer. Finally, I put on the top layer, brushed it with the kirsch syrup, then spread the whole outside of the cake with whipped cream.

For some reason I didn't have high expectations for this cake. I am happy to say that I was wrong -- it was extremely tasty! The cake layers themselves were dry, but they absorbed the kirsch syrup beautifully, making the assembled cake lovely and moist. The almonds and zweiback crumbs gave the cake layers just a touch of texture without making them crunchy. It was really the flavors that made this cake though. The chocolate, cherry, and whipped cream flavors were perfect together. The cake was sweet without being cloying. The sour cherry preserves were delicious with the whipped cream. The whole thing just came together beautifully. Black Forest has never been one of my favorite types of cake, but this recipe changed my mind about it. Yum! My special gentleman even declared it one of his favorite cakes that I have made.

This recipe isn't online.

People always seem surprised to hear how much I travel for my job. Indeed, research mathematicians travel a lot! The funny thing about math travel though, is that although some of the locations seem exotic, you often end up returning to the same places over and over again. It has to do both with where there are math institutes, and where there are people in your field. For instance, in my field of study there are a lot of Scandinavians and Germans. So although I have been to Denmark, Norway (twice!), and Germany (many times), I have never been to Spain, or Italy, for instance. There just aren't as many people in my field in those countries. A frequent destination for mathematicians in all fields is a math institute in Germany, in the Black Forest. Although it has been explained to me on several occasions, I am still not completely clear on how a math research institute ended up in a tiny little town in the Black Forest, but it did, and there are many conferences hosted there. I have been there three times now, and it is a rather idyllic place. Conferences there share the property that they are held from Sunday to Saturday and on Wednesday the conference goes on an excursion. This excursion involves hiking in the Black Forest for 4, or 5, or 6 hours (depending on who is leading and whether that person gets lost!). The goal is to stumble upon another small town in the Black Forest, where everyone on the hike crowds into a restaurant and eats Black Forest Cake. This past summer I was on such a hike at such a conference, and indeed we ended up stopping for cake. I was sitting at a table full of German speakers, and they were have a boisterous conversation that I could understand none of. So I sat there peacefully eating my cake, savoring each bite. I remember it fondly.

When I ate this Black Forest cake last week, it brought back memories.

Roast Pork with Sweet-and-Sour Chile Cilantro Sauce (Page 468)

RECIPE #1041

• Date: Sunday, October 25, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I am trying to make progress on some of the meatier sections in The Book so I chose this pork dish for dinner a couple weeks ago. I started by butterflying a pork loin, then spreading it with a mixture of crushed coriander seeds, bread crumbs, oil, salt, and pepper. I rolled and tied the pork loin, then coated it with the remaining bread crumb mixture. I then roasted it, first at 400 degrees, then at 325, for a total of about an hour and a half. Meanwhile, my special gentleman prepared the sauce. He combined chopped red bell pepper, crushed dried New Mexico chiles, honey, lime juice, and salt and simmered it for about 30 minutes. Just before serving he stirred in some chopped cilantro. This dish was quite good. The pork was perfectly cooked and had a nice flavor to it. The coriander bread crumbs made a flavorful stuffing. They were a bit disappointing as an exterior coating on the pork though as they didn't get as crispy as I had hoped that they would. My special gentleman was very proud of the sauce he made. It was indeed tasty -- both sweet and sour, with some kick to it. In fact there was a little too much kick -- we didn't have quite enough dried New Mexico chiles around the house, so we threw in some other chiles from the cupboard. Apparently they were spicy ones, because the sauce came out quite hot! It still had a great flavor to it though, and my special gentleman loved it. Overall this was a solid pork dish.

The recipe is here.

Yesterday was marathon day, and I did it! I ran my first marathon! A weekend summary:

The race was Saturday morning, so we headed up to Indianapolis on Friday night. My special gentleman and I carbo-loaded with a HUGE pasta dinner on Friday night. We went to bed early for a 6:30am wake-up on Saturday morning.

I was super excited on race day. Standing at the Start line, with more than 5000 other people (marathoners and half-marathoners together), I was dancing along to the blaring music. The weather seemed ideal (more on that later) -- cool, but not cold, sunny once the sun came up. When I crossed the Start line I was definitely raring to go!

The first half of the race felt great. My parents (who came for the marathon) were cheering us along at mile 3, and I was happy to have their encouragment. The first 13 miles or so I was going faster than my goal pace, and feeling strong. Around mile 13 my parents were standing on the sideline again, cheering for us. I remember thinking at that point, "This is no problem. I've got this!"

Then, reality set in. The weather, which looked ideal, actually turned out to be extremely windy. At the water stations, cups were flying everywhere. There were a few consecutive miles that were gently uphill, with a few not-so-gentle hills, and all of it facing into the wind. By the time I hit mile 18 I was exhausted. My special gentleman ran the whole race by my side to support me, being the amazing husband that he is! I was appreciating him throughout the whole race but it wasn't until that 18th mile that I really needed him there. During the 18th mile I started to cry. I was just exhausted. In my training runs I always felt exhausted around mile 18 or so, but then I only had another couple miles to go so I pushed through. In the marathon though, at mile 18 I had another 8.2 miles ahead of me and I just couldn't imagine being able to finish. It was a rough point. My special gentleman informed me that there was no way I was stopping. This kick in the pants kept me running through another couple miles. The 20th mile was another rough one, and I definitely needed another pep talk. By the time I hit the mile 21 marker, though, I was feeling much better. The last 5.2 miles were pretty ok. I had to stop for a few seconds during mile 25 so I wouldn't puke, but other than that, the end of the race went smoothly. I listened to a Beyonce song on repeat for miles 22-25, and some Van Morrison to finish of the race. That, plus the almost constant reassurances from my special gentleman: "You've got this!", "You're rocking this marathon!", "You're making it look easy!", kept me going. My parents were cheering me on at the finish. I crossed the line, collapsed on the ground with a space blanket, and ate a banana.

Between then and now I have done a lot of eating and a lot of sleeping. And now, more than 24 hours later, I am pretty much feeling like normal again. My knees hurt a tiny bit, but overall my body feels pretty good. Up until about a year ago, a marathon seemed like something I could never do. Training was long, and the race was a little rough, but I pushed through and I did it! I'm proud of myself.

Individual B'stillas (Page 374)

RECIPE #1040

• Date: Saturday, October 24, 2009 -- 10pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

My special gentleman loves anything with phyllo, so I made these Moroccan chicken and almond pies for him when he visited a few weeks ago. This recipe was quite labor-intensive. I cooked onion and garlic in butter, then added ginger, ras el hanout (see post below), and pepper. I cooked it for several minutes, then added some chicken parts, chicken stock, and saffron soaked in boiling water. I covered and simmered until the chicken was tender. I then reserved the cooking liquid and my special gentleman took the meat off the bones and shredded it. He then boiled the cooking liquid and added some eggs in a slow stream, whisking. When the eggs were set he drained them in a sieve and discarded the liquid. We then mixed together the egg, chicken, parsley, cilantro, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. I then ground almonds, cinnamon, and sugar in the food processor. The individual pies were assembled via a lengthy process of brushing sheets of phyllo with butter, stacking them, dusting them with almond sugar, filling them with chicken filling, dusting with more almond sugar, rolling them up, and brushing with more butter. I repeated these assembly steps 9 times, to make 10 b'stillas. Then I baked them on a buttered baking sheet, sprinkled them with cinnamon and powdered sugar, and served. These b'stillas were pretty good. The phyllo was lovely and flaky, and I liked the sweet-savory aspect of the dish a lot. However, I didn't love the filling. My big complaint was that there was just too much egg in it. The chicken had a great flavor and I liked it with the herbs. But I wasn't loving the cooked egg in the filling, and there was a lot of it. Also, it seemed silly to go through all the work to make individual pies. It would have been much simpler to just make one big pie and then slice it. Were I to make this again that is definitely what I would do! Overall though, it was a tasty dish, and my special gentleman enjoyed it.

The recipe is here.

Marathon week is here and I am mentally preparing for the race. Last night I did my last training run -- a very short 5 miles. I am tapering before the marathon on Saturday, so no more running for me! Regardless of how the marathon goes on Saturday, I am quite happy to be done training! It has certainly been a big undertaking.

In some ways I wish the marathon had been about a month ago. Five weeks ago or so I did a 20 mile training run that went really well and I felt very ready to run the marathon. But things have been ridiculously busy since then. About a week and a half ago I did my last long run before the race. It was meant to be 22 miles. The long run was on a Sunday morning. The day before (Saturday) I spent 12 hours in my office. By the time I left I was so exhausted that I just didn't have the energy to worry about carbo-loading. I ate broccoli and tofu for dinner. Although it was tasty, it was not good fuel for a long run. I went to bed late and woke up early. I ate very little, then headed out for a run. Around mile 15 I just lost it. I was starving, and exhausted. I started crying on the trail. It was not pretty. My special gentleman came out to meet me, and he pushed me to run another few miles. I found another 3 miles in me, and I ended up quitting after 18 miles. It was not a good experience. Despite that trauma, I do think I am ready for the marathon. I just need to be smart about it. On Friday I will be sure to eat a lot of pasta, and I will try to get as much sleep as possible. Then on Saturday, with my special gentleman running with me for support, I am pretty sure that I will finish the 26.2 miles!

Wish me luck!

Ras el Hanout (Page 933)

RECIPE #1039

• Date: Friday, October 23, 2009 -- 9pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This was a component for a chicken dish I made last weekend. I started by removing the seeds from some cardamom pods and grinding them in the spice grinder with fennel seeds, anise seeds, allspice, cloves, black peppercorns, cinnamon stick, sesame seeds, corainder seeds, cumin seeds, and red pepper flakes. Then I stirred in ground mace, ground ginger, and grated nutmeg. This recipe made me glad I have a well-stocked pantry. The only things I had to buy were the cardamom pods! This Moroccan spice blend was very well balanced. I used it to season some Morrocan chicken pies, and this blend gave them a lovely flavor. This recipe was super quick to make, and it tasted very authentic.

This is the ras el hanout component of this recipe.

My mom is in town visiting and this weekend we went up to Michigan. My mom helped with various home improvement projects, including painting our seminar room. We have more bedrooms than we need in our new house, so my special gentleman and I decided to turn one of them into a second study, with a big chalkboard and some cushy chairs -- a.k.a. a seminar room. The only problem was that the room we chose for the seminar room was painted bright turquoise when we moved in. My special gentleman found this not offensive at all, even with our rust colored wingback chairs, but I thought turquoise wasn't really the best color for a study. And the clashing furniture gave me some extra motivation to paint. You can be the judge. Here's the before-we-painted picture:


Unfortunately, I forgot to take an after picture. But we painted the walls a lovely light brown color and it looks great! The wall that the chairs are facing has a big chalkboard mounted on it. The room is now very cozy, and perfect for our in-home math seminar needs!

The weekend was also full of furniture shopping, estate sale rummaging, craigslist furniture hunting, cleaning, raking, etc... It was busy, but the house is looking better and better!

Now my mom and I are back in Indiana, and I am getting ready for a busy week. Besides the usual teaching and reasearching things, I am running my first marathon on Saturday. Ah!!! Marathon day is finally almost here! Crazy!

Portuguese White Cornmeal Bread (Page 608)

RECIPE #1038

• Date: Friday, October 23, 2009 -- 11pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I was in the mood for some homemade bread the other day, and I made this recipe to satisfy that craving! I started by proofing some yeast in warm water with sugar. Then I added more water, melted butter, salt, white cornmeal, and flour. I kneaded the mixture on a floured surface until smooth and elastic. Then I let it rise an hour and a half. I shaped the dough into 2 balls, put each of them in a buttered pie plate dusted with cornmeal, and let them rise again. Then I brushed the loaves with milk, cut an X in the top of each of them and baked them until golden brown. This bread was very tasty. It was a simple bread recipe but the white cornmeal elevated it to something special. The cornmeal both contributed nicely to the texture of the bread and gave it a subtle, but lovely, flavor. It was tender but crusty, and held up nicely for sandwiches. This would be the perfect bread to accompany a hearty winter stew.

The recipe is here.

There has been a lot of excitement as of late here at The Gourmet Project! Today a picture of one of my cakes was featured in a photo gallery on the CNN website! If it's still up, you can see it here. It's the third picture in the gallery (the one with the mango ribbons!).

Also exciting: recently I arrived home one day to find at my doorstep a copy of Gourmet Today, signed by Ruth Reichl herself! Gourmet Today is a sequel of sorts to The Gourmet Cookbook. The idea is that this new book responds more to the latest trends in food: quicker recipes, more vegetarian items, healthy options, sustainable ingredients, etc... No, I don't plan on trying to cook every recipe in that book too (although my husband really wants me to!), but I will certainly cook from it. I am very attached to The Gourmet Cookbook now that I am 1038 recipes into it, and I am optimistic that Gourmet Today will also be wonderful!

Cosmopolitan Sorbet (Page 862)

RECIPE #1037

• Date: Wednesday, October 13, 2009 -- 10pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I picked this recipe because it was quick and boozy, which is just what I was in the mood for last week. I started by boiling sugar and water and then adding cranberries and simmering until the cranberries had burst. I drained the mixture in a sieve, then discarded the solids. I cooled the syrup in the refrigerator, then stirred in vodka, lime juice, and Cointreau. I froze the sorbet in an ice cream maker. This sorbet was delicious! It was certainly an adults-only dessert, as it was very boozy. But it had a lovely cranberry flavor with just the right amount of booziness. The dish was well balanced -- the Cointreau gave the sorbet a subtle orange note, and the lime juice went beautifully with the intense cranberry flavor. This would be lovely served in martini glasses as a dessert or intermezzo as part of a holiday meal.

The recipe is here.

Things lately continue to be busy. On Thursday after I taught my classes I drove up to Chicago. There was a conference over the weekend at the University of Chicago in honor of the 70th birthday of one of the big names in my field. It was a fun conference, but not super relaxing, as I was one of the speakers. There were 130 or so people present, making it the biggest audience I have given a research talk in front of. So, it was nerve-wracking, but I think my talk went well, and the conference was quite interesting.

I drove back to Indiana yesterday morning and now I am trying to get caught up with work. Between buying a house, commuting back and forth to Michigan, having 330 students, and the usual researching and attending conferences, things have been so hectic lately that I have been forced to all but give up some of the things that I love. For instance: cooking. Cooking has definitely taken a back burner this past month, and I miss it. As I eat cereal for dinner every night, while working, I look longingly at The Book. Things are going to calm down in the not-so-distant future, and then cooking will be on my priority list once again. The other thing I have abandoned is running for pleasure. The marathon is less than three weeks away, and I have continued to train of course. But I have so little time to run that I haven't even attempted to find time for shorter runs. So, in the last 5 or 6 weeks, I haven't gone on a single run shorter than 14 miles. Today I decided enough was enough -- I needed to have a nice, short, pleasant run. So I made time this evening to run 4 miles and it was lovely.

I am slowly checking things off my to-do list, and it is my sincere hope that a week from now I will have some time to relax. And in three weeks, once the marathon is over, I will really have some free time again. So, I apologize for my blog silence as of late, and although it will continue in the near future, I hope to be blogging almost daily again very soon.

Watermelon Rind Chutney (Page 905)

RECIPE #1036

• Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009 -- 6pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I had some watermelon in the fridge for another recipe, and no use for the rind, so I figured I would make this recipe with it. I started by peeling the rind. Then I cut it into 1/2 inch cubes. I put the rind in a saucepan with cider vinegar, water, sugar, ginger, serrano chile, garlic, salt, and crushed black peppercorns. I simmered the mixture for about an hour. Then I refrigerated the chutney for a day to let the flavors develop. This recipe was simple to make and tasted better than it sounded. I have only eaten watermelon rind on a small number of occasions and I have never been too excited about it. This version was pretty good though. The texture of the rind turned out nice, and the chutney has a reasonably well balanced flavor. There was the right amount of vinegar flavor and the spicy kick from the serrano was nice. It was extremely sweet -- a touch too sweet I thought. I liked it fine, although I wouldn't make it again. The watermelon rind itself didn't have much flavor to it, and hence didn't contribute much except texture to the dish. I prefer chutneys based around a more flavorful ingredient (e.g. mango) that adds additional depth to the dish.

The recipe is here.

Man, am I exhausted! I am commuting back and forth from Michigan these days. Typically my husband and I alternate weekends -- he comes to Indiana (where I live) one weekend, I go to Michigan (where he lives) the next. But we just bought a house, which means that there has been a lot of moving, unpacking, cleaning, getting settled, etc... to do in Michigan. So I have gone there the last 3 weekends in a row. What that means is that I spend Monday afternoon to Thursday evening in Indiana. Then Thursday evening, after I get done teaching my second class (which ends at 5:15pm), I drive the 5 hours up to Michigan. I stay in Michigan until Monday morning, when I drive the 5 hours back to Indiana, then go into the office to start my week here. It's a busy semester in more ways than one, so the net result of this schedule is that when I am in Indiana, I am always in my office. Today I got home from work at 9pm and that was typical. Tomorrow I will be in by 9am at the latest, and happy if I get home by 9pm. This coming weekend I am not headed up to Michigan, but rather to Chicago (which is almost as far) for a conference. It should be a great conference, although a bit stressful as I am one of the speakers. After that I think things will settled down a bit. I will return to traveling every other weekend, rather than every weekend! Maybe I will even unpack my suitcase for the first time in more than a month!

Truth be told, even though it is exhausting I love going up to Michigan. I am so excited about owning a house! Yesterday I raked leaves. It is a chore I am sure I will tire of in the years to come, as we have many huge trees in our yard. But yesterday I was loving it. They were our leaves! From our trees! In our yard! And I was raking them -- it was such fun. After raking I curled up on the sofa and worked all day. Then in the evening we started our first fire in the fireplace. We sat in front of the fire, peacefully enjoying our new home. It was great -- absolutely worth the long days at the office ahead of me this week!

Lady Baltimore Cake (Page 732)

RECIPE #1035

• Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 -- 6pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B
  

This recipe had been on the list generated by the random number generator since 2007, and it just didn't sound good to me, so I kept putting off making it. A couple weeks ago though I decided to finally give it a try. And it was much better than I expected! I first made the cake layers. I beat butter and sugar, then added vanilla and almond extracts. I added milk alternately with a mixture of flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl I beat egg whites with cream of tartar and salt until they held stiff peaks. Then I folded the whites into the cake batter, divided the batter among 3 parchment-lined buttered and floured cake pans, and baked the layers. Meanwhile, I made the icing and filling. I boiled sugar syrup until it reached 248 degrees. While the sugar was boiling I started beating more egg whites and salt. When the syrup reached the right temperature, I slowly added it to the egg whites, with the beaters running. I beat in vanilla, then beat the mixture until it was cool. I took some of the icing and folded in chopped figs, pecans, and raisins to make the filling. I assembled the cake by layering the cake and the filling, then frosting the top and outside with the remaining icing. This cake was pretty good. The cake layers themselves were awesome -- they had a great texture and a lovely almond flavor to them. I enjoyed the frosting for the first few bites, but it was rather sweet. The addition of dried fruit made it seem even sweeter, and as a net result the filling in particular was rather cloying. I have a serious sweet tooth but this cake was a little too sweet even for me! My special gentleman and I ended up scraping off much of the frosting and filling and eating the cake layers plain. They were quite delicious. I wouldn't make this whole recipe again, but I would certainly make the cake layers and frost them with a lovely chocolate frosting. Yum!

The recipe is here.

Running a marathon seems a little crazy. It's not particularly good for your body -- in fact the wear and tear can be quite painful. I signed up for this crazy feat solely to prove to myself that I could do it. I always thought of running a marathon as one of those things that I could never do. But after I ran the half, it seemed to me that maybe I could, and I wanted to try! So I started training, and in my training I learned something: there are huge benefits! I didn't see them before because I thought of running as a physical task, and physically marathon running is probably not the best for you. What I neglected to see, though, is that marathon running is not solely a physical task. It is also a psychological one. And the training is not only physical, but also psychological. During every long run, there comes a point when I don't want to run any more. Sometimes that point is a half a mile from the end. Sometimes it is 6 or 7 miles from the end. Getting over that hump is not about whether or not I am in good shape. It's not about my muscles or my endurance. It is completely psychological.

I ran 20 miles on Sunday, and around mile 14 I was ready to quit. I started making excuses for myself (I was too tired, I hadn't eaten enough, I had spent all weekend moving furniture, etc...). I convinced myself that I couldn't finish. I probably would have stopped running had I not been meeting my special gentleman at mile 15. I didn't want to walk before I even got to him, so I pushed through that 15th mile, and at the end of it my special gentleman was waiting for me. I was secretly hoping that he would tell me I should stop running. But instead, he ran alongside me, giving me encouraging words. That was enough to completely change my attitude. Not only did I finish the 20 miles but the last 2 were the fastest of the 20. Apparently I had it in me to finish -- I just needed to find it.

Marathon running is certainly a physical challenge, but it is also a psychological one. And if there is one thing I have learned throughout my training, it is how powerful a little psychological push can be. I have learned how to convince myself to keep running. I think that is the real prize that one gets from marathon training -- the ability to push past uncomfortability and keep going. That's a skill that is useful in many facets of life. I hope that long after the marathon is over, and my muscles have recovered, that I am still able to mentally rally myself to push through my perceived limitations. That is certainly a skill worth the many hours of training that went into it!

Veal Birds Paprika (Page 458)

RECIPE #1034

• Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 -- 6pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

It seemed appropriate on a day like today (see below) to post about a recipe from The Book that came from a long-ago issue of Gourmet Magazine. This recipe was published in the magazine in 1959. My special gentleman and I made this dish together. We cooked chopped onions and mushrooms in butter, then added bread crumbs, basil, salt, and pepper. We then pounded veal cutlets to 1/8 of an inch thickness then spread them with filling, rolled, and tied them. I seasoned the veal rolls and browned them in butter. I removed them from the pan and cooked onions in the pan until golden. Then I added veal stock, water, tomato puree, and paprika. I returned the veal to the pan, covered, and simmered for 35 minutes. I whisked sour cream into the sauce, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and served the veal and sauce with buttered noodles. In a word: Yum! This recipe clearly came out of a time before health-consciousness was all the rage. It had more than a stick of butter and a cup of sour cream -- and although it claimed to serve 6 my special gentleman and I ate most of it in one sitting! So it was unhealthy, but man was it good! The veal was perfectly tender, with a nice brown on it. The filling complemented the meat very nicely both in flavor and in texture. Veal and mushrooms are always a winning combination, and that was certainly true here. At first I wasn't sure that I cared for the sauce -- it was certainly paprika intense. But after a few bites I really came around to it. Ironically the tang from the sour cream seemed to cut some of the richness (although of course the sour cream itself was only making it richer...). It was one of those dishes where it was hard not to make happy noises while eating.

The recipe is here.

Six or seven years ago I was receiving a wide variety of cooking magazines. Each month I got Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Cooking Light, Cooks Illustrated, etc... I didn't have time to read them all, so I decided to cut back to just one. The choice was obvious. Gourmet is the premier food and cooking magazine. Long before I started the Gourmet Project, I read the magazine from which The Book was compiled. I don't remember when I first subscribed, or how many issues I have read. But in the pre-project days I would carefully tear recipes out from the magazine, make them, write comments on them, and file the recipes in my special folder. Gourmet magazine and I have a long history. The magazine itself has an even longer history -- dating back to 1941. So I was shocked -- no, completely floored -- to hear the announcement today that Conde Nast is closing Gourmet Magazine. November will apparently be the last issue.

I will (hesitantly) admit that I cried when I heard the news. Not only do I feel a kinship to the magazine, but strangely, I feel kinship with the people who work there. Aside from the people in the Gourmet test kitchen, I have probably made more recipes from their magazine than just about anyone. More than 1000 recipes into this project, I feel a connection with the people who wrote and tested the recipes I cook every day. And now, presumably, many of those people are losing their jobs. Jobs that they were very good at. It's sad. The magazine is an institution in the culinary world. And a couple months from now it won't come in the mail. I can't seem to get my head around that. Of all the culinary magazines, why does it have to be the best one that is closing?

It's just shocking.

Arista (Page 465)

RECIPE #1033

• Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009 -- 6pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

This recipe was on the list generated by the random number generator. The recipe called for a rib section center-cut pork loin roast, boned, then reassembled with the bones, and tied (I sent my special gentleman to the butcher to ask for that one!). Our excellent local butcher shop happily agreed to do this. I think the logic here is that the roast cooks better with the bones in, but carves better with the bones out. So if you bone it, then reassemble it with the bones, it will cook nicely, and be easy to carve! I made a mixture of garlic, rosemary, salt, and pepper. Then I made a slit through the center of the pork loin (the long way), and stuffed some of the garlic mixture into the slit using the handle of a wooden spoon. I rubbed the remaining garlic paste on the outside of the pork loin, then I let the meat marinate at room temerature for 30 minutes. I cooked the pork in a roasting pan in the oven until it reached an internal temperature of 145. Then I let it rest, then served it! This recipe was super simple and very tasty. The meat was perfectly cooked, and it had a good flavor to it. My special gentleman suggested that it might have been nice to have more than one garlic-filled slit in the pork, and I agree that the dish could have supported more garlic! The exterior of the roast got a lovely flavorful brown on it. I am typically a little skeptical about pork with rosemary, because often the rosemary is very overpowering. Here, though, it was in a lovely balance with the garlic and didn't overpower the dish at all. I would have like to have a nice sauce with this dish, but as it was it was still very tasty!

The recipe is here.

Today, for the first time in a long time, my special gentleman and I are officially not renting any storage units! I am irrationally excited about this fact. More than a year ago we moved all of my special gentleman's belongings to Michigan and put them in storage. He kept his math books and a few items of clothing with him, but everything else we stored. So he has been living more or less out of a suitcase for more than a year. Six months later, when my parents moved out of their house, they generously gave us most of their furniture and we put it in storage in Indiana. Before the wedding we put even more things in Indiana storage (to make room for the ceremony in our apartment!) and when I moved apartments this fall we put even more things in storage! So, by early this fall the vast majority of our belongings were sitting in one of our two storage units. But now, everything is out! Two weekends ago we moved everything in the Michigan storage unit into our new house. Last weekend we drove a moving truck up from Indiana with (almost) everything from our storage unit in Bloomington. Today I drove out to the storage unit to take out those last few things and remove our lock. It's a good feeling to have all of our belongings with us again. It was so exciting to see the furniture we had been storing (Matt was more than a little excited to see the ping pong table we took from my parents' house!). It also means we only have one more move on the horizon -- in May we will move all the things in my apartment in Indiana up to our house in Michigan. And then we won't move again for a long, long time! Yay!

Udon Noodle Salad with Grilled Chicken and Asian Dressing (Page 247)

RECIPE #1032

• Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 -- 12pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

I made this noodle salad for lunch several weekends ago. To start I marinated chicken breasts in a mixture of soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and rice vinegar. Then I cooked the chicken breasts on the stove in a grill pan. When they were cool, I cut them into thin slices. Meanwhile, I cooked udon noodles in boiling water, then drained and rinsed them. To make the dressing I combined chicken stock, cilantro, parsley, vegetable oil, and soy sauce, and brought it to a simmer. Then I pureed the dressing and stirred in rice vinegar and sesame oil. I tossed the noodles with the dressing and topped with chicken, scallions, and cilantro leaves. This salad was fine, but not great. The marinade gave the chicken some good flavor, which was complemented well by the char from the grill pan. The udon noodles were also very tasty (I do love noodles!). My real issue was with the dresing. I had two problems with it: one, the texture, and two, the flavor. The dressing was extremely thin and brothy. There was no body to it, so it didn't have a good mouthfeel at all. And the flavor was completely dominated by the vinegar. The lovely flavor of the cilantro was completely drowned out by vinegar flavor. Even the sesame oil (which has a strong flavor) couldn't make itself heard past the loud drum of the vinegar. I would have vastly preferred this salad with a different dressing. As it was it was only ok.

The recipe in The Book is very similar to this one, but the one in The Book includes soy sauce and sesame oil while the one online does not.

When I was in high school I took some math classes at the local university (UW-Madison). I was always a very respectful student when I was a kid. I listened in class. I never fell asleep. I never whispered with other students while the teacher was talking. But suddenly I was in a huge college lecture, with hundreds of students, and the professor was standing on a stage in front. He seemed so tiny up there, so far away. It didn't seem possible that he would even know if I whispered with my neighbor. A good friend of mine was in the class with me, and she and I occasionally did whisper. Sometimes we whispered about the calculus lesson -- sometimes about other things. We were both good students, doing well in the course, and it never occured to me that the whispering could possibly be bothering anyone. Then one day, a student down the row from us turned to us in the middle of class and said, in a not-so-whispery voice, "Will you just stop talking?!" I felt horrible. I suppose that much is clear since this incident took place 12 years ago and I remember it still. In fact, I feel bad about it still.

Today I was standing in front of my afternoon class, looking out at my 250 students, and waiting for them to stop whispering. That class alternates between being very well behaved and very badly behaved. Today it finally occured to me what determines it. On Thursdays we have quizzes, so almost everyone comes -- including the students who don't think they need to be there. On Tuesdays there are no quizzes, so the people who come are the people who actually want to hear me teach the material. On Tuesdays they are like little angels, taking notes, participating, etc... On Thursdays they whisper and whisper and whisper. If I stop talking for more than 5 seconds, say, to take a sip of water, or erase a board, they start whispering. At 5pm on a Thursday I am never really in the mood to deal with their whispering, and today I was definitely losing my patience. When they start talking, I just watch them in silence and wait for them to stop. This method works, although I feel that I shouldn't have to do it. As I stood there today, staring at them and waiting for silence so I could go on, I wondered if perhaps this was payback. My calculus professor never let on that he even noticed the whispering. But he did. Now I know that he did. The whispers, they carry all the way to that person standing in the front. And even though he never stopped and stared us down, I am sure he was bothered.

All these years I have felt bad about that incident. But I only felt bad for those students near me, who I was disturbing. Now, I know better. Now I feel bad for the professor more than anyone. He was the one standing in the front trying to impart wisdom, trying to be heard. And I was that kid in the back, whispering. That kid drives me crazy, and I if I could go back, I would definitely do things differently.

Miso Soup (Page 91)

RECIPE #1031

• Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 -- 12pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I picked this recipe because I have been trying to make some progress on the Soups section in The Book. This recipe was quite simple. I took some wakame (a type of seaweed) and soaked it in warm water to soften. Then I drained it. I stirred white miso into some dashi (see post below). Then I heated the remaining dashi, stirred in cubes of tofu and the wakame. I simmered it briefly, then added the miso mixture and some sliced scallion greens. That was it! This miso soup had exactly one flaw: there was WAY too much wakame! The seaweed completely took over the soup (as you can see in the picture). I have had many, many versions of miso soup in my life, and never have I had one so overrun with seaweed! Other than that, the recipe was lovely. The flavor of the dashi broth with the miso made a perfect base for the soup. The cubes of tofu and scallion greens were in perfect proportion to the broth. If only there had been about 1/4 as much wakame it would have been a fantastic miso soup! I will certainly make this recipe again, with that slight modification!

The recipe is here.

When I signed up to teach 330 students this fall, I had the idea that it wouldn't really be that much more work than the 150 or so students I have had in previous semesters. It turns out I was wrong about that. The lecturing itself isn't really any more work. Standing in front of 250 students is certainly different than standing in front of 80, but it isn't any more time consuming. The administrative part of teaching, however, is definitely magnified by the larger number of students. At 9pm tonight I was still in my office, more than 12 hours after I arrived in the morning, responding to emails and filing academic progress reports to the advising office. The extra work doesn't bother me -- in return for the 330 students this term, I am not teaching in the spring. It's a deal that definitely works out to my benefit. But as I was filling out this paperwork for the advising office, indicating which students are currently failing my course, I realized something that bothers me a bit. My 330 students are divided into two classes: a class of 80 and a class of 250. In the class of 80 I know each student's name. Many of the students I have talked to individually on a number of occasions. I have a good sense of who is struggling and who finds the class to be easy. I know the students, at least to some degree, and I enjoy that about the class. In my 250 student class I just don't know the students. Sure, I know the couple dozen of them that come to office hours, or talk to me after class. But I'm sure I couldn't put names to faces for more than 40 students in the lecture hall. Filling out the paperwork, I realized that I didn't even know who most of these failing students were. It would be very difficult to learn all 250 names, and I decided early on in the semester that I wasn't going to do it. But this is the first time I have ever taught students whose names I didn't know. And I don't like that about it. If I wasn't already at work until 8 or 9pm half the time as it is, I would just suck it up and learn the names. But between the 330 students, and moving into a new house, and my research, I am swamped. So I guess this will be the semester that I don't know my students' names. Hopefully the only such semester...

Dashi (Page 92)

RECIPE #1030

• Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 -- 12pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This Japanese stock was a component recipe for the Miso Soup in The Book, which will be my next post. This recipe was very simple. I added some konbu (dried kelp) to cold water, then brought it to a boil. I removed it from the heat, removed the konbu, and sprinkled bonito flakes (shaved dried fish) over the liquid. I let it sit for a few minutes, then poured the liquid through cheesecloth to strain out the bonito. That was it! This dashi was extremely flavorful, and had the perfect flavor for the base of the miso soup. Dashi is used frequently throughout Japanese cooking, and I would certainly use this recipe again for any of my dashi needs. It was quite tasty, with a great balance of flavors.

The recipe is here.

I am exhausted, but in the most delightful way! My special gentleman and I had an absolutely wonderful weekend moving into our new house! We closed on the house early Friday morning, and the closing went off without a hitch. On Friday afternoon we took my special gentleman's things out of storage, where they have been sitting for the last year, and we moved them into the house! We spent the rest of the weekend cleaning, unpacking, arranging, etc... Most of our things are actually in storage in Indiana, and we aren't moving them into the house until Friday. So the house is still pretty empty. But we absolutely love it! We spent the whole weekend saying over and over, "I can't believe we live here!" It really is a dream house for us.

Aside from how much we love the house, the neighborhood also seems great! The neighbors are incredibly friendly. All weekend people were stopping by to introduce themselves. So many people came by that we started making a list so we would remember who everybody is. Several people even brought us bottles of wine to welcome us!

This morning I woke up to the sound of kids playing football in our driveway, which happens to be the bus stop for the elementary school. It just warmed my heart seeing them outside waiting for the bus. When the bus came the kids all lined up in a very serious manner, each of them with a backpack half the size of their body. My special gentleman and I just watched and laughed!

I drove back to Indiana today and now not only do I miss my special gentleman, but I miss our house too! I am looking forward to being back there on Friday and moving in the rest of our stuff. It just doesn't even seem real -- a little over three weeks ago we went through that house with our real estate agent, and now we own it! Crazy!!!

Chilled Lemongrass Tomato Soup (Page 87)

RECIPE #1029

• Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 -- 6pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: C-
  

I made this recipe because I wanted to make some progress on the Soups section in The Book. To start, I made the Tomato Water from the post below. Then I boiled finely chopped lemongrass stalks in a bit of the tomato water. I strained out the lemongrass and stirred in some powdered gelatin. I warmed it until the gelatin was dissolved then I stirred the mixture into the remaining tomato water. I refrigerated for 8 hours, then I stirred in some chopped watermelon. I was supposed to garnish this with mint and chives, and indeed I bought both mint and chives. The grocery people bagged the fresh herbs with my raw chicken though, so I didn't use them for fear they had been contaminated (yes, I am a little crazy about food safety!). So our soup, as you see, was garnish-less. I really did not care for this soup. It looked appetizing enough, but it tasted bad. Frankly, tomato water just isn't my thing. And although tomatoes and watermelon go well together, even the watermelon couldn't save this dish. I took one bite, and actually I spit it out into the sink. It just didn't sit well with me. My special gentleman fared a little better: he took 3 or 4 bites, and managed not to spit them out. But even he didn't like this soup (and he likes almost everything!). It's hard to imagine who would love this. A person who loves, loves, loves tomatoes might like the flavor ok, but then he or she would probably miss the tomato texture. And for anyone who isn't over the moon for raw tomato flavor, this is much too intense to be enjoyable. This recipe, unfortunately, ended up down the garbage disposal.

The recipe is here.

I was bubble-wrapping ramekins and putting them into boxes earlier tonight. It seemed to me at the time that the worst part of this cooking habit of mine is that every time I move I have to move a huge number of cooking supplies. Whenever I move, almost every box is labeled "Kitchen." Generally speaking, I don't have a lot of possessions, but when it comes to kitchen supplies... that's a different story. So I was bubble-wrapping a ramekin tonight, thinking about how I don't like bubble-wrapping ramekins, and then it occurred to me: that might be the last time I ever bubble-wrap that ramekin!

It's so exciting -- 36 hours from now my special gentleman and I will own a home! And we will move our things into it, and we will likely stay there for years and years and years. This may not sound like a huge triumph, but to me it feels like one. I have moved 18 times in my life. The idea of not moving any more sounds almost too good to be true! The idea of owning the place in which I live is also almost unfathomable to me. If I wanted to have a cat, I could get one! It wouldn't violate any lease. No landlord would come and hunt me down. I can put all the nails in the walls that I please. I can even paint the walls. This is absolute craziness!

I am not really going to be living in our house until June (since I am finishing my job in Indiana before starting my job in Michigan). But we are moving most of our things into the house over the next few weeks, and my special gentleman will be living there. I am so excited! Although I have been entrenched in the home-buying process for the last several weeks, it is just now starting to seem real. Forty-eight hours from now I will be getting ready for our first night in our very own house! High on my agenda: taking my first bath in our jacuzzi tub! Whoo hoo!

Tomato Water (Page 88)

RECIPE #1028

• Date: Saturday, September 12, 2009 -- 2pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B-
  

I am trying to make some progress lately on the Soups section of The Book, and this recipe is a component for one of the recipes in that section. To make this tomato water I took 5 pounds of tomatoes and pureed them with salt in a food processor. I poured the puree into a sieve lined with cheesecloth, suspended over a big pot. I gathered the ends of the cheesecloth to form a sack, then I tied the sack to a wooden spoon and suspended it in the pot. I let the cheesecloth sack-of-tomatoes sit like that for 8 hours in the refrigerator. Then I discarded the sack containing the puree. What had dripped out of the sack into the pot was the tomato water! It's hard to grade this recipe. On the one hand, if your objective was to capture the essence of tomato in something with the texture and consistency of water, then this recipe certainly does that! On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly why you would want to do that. This tomato water had a specific purpose, which I wasn't too impressed by (that will be my next post). I can imagine that the tomato water could be used for other purposes with more success though. For instance, if you wanted to incorporate tomato into a martini, or other drink, this could be the way to do it! My special gentleman's reaction upon seeing the finished tomato water made me laugh. He looked into the pot, took a little taste, then said, "Ten dollars of tomatoes turned into that?" He was not impressed. So, did I enjoy eating this? No, not really. If I needed tomato essence in water form, would I make this again? Absolutely. The recipe, without a doubt, captured the flavor of tomato. It was shocking actually to sip something with such a thin consistency that tasted so overwhelmingly of tomato. Really, shocking. In that respect this recipe was very impressive.

The recipe is here.

I had chocolate pudding for dinner tonight, and I ate it in bed. That pretty much summarizes how my day went! My 340ish business calculus students have an exam on Thursday, which meant that I spent much of the day today writing the exam (ick!) and another big chunk of the day helping students review for the exam (much more fun!). Add to that two and half hours of lecturing, and the day was jam-packed. At 7pm I was sitting in my office, starving, and desperately wishing that my special gentleman hadn't eaten the emergency ramen supply in my desk. I couldn't leave until the exams were finished though. Cheating is a big problem in this class, so there have to be four versions of everything. Writing one exam is painful enough, especially when it includes multiple choice (which is much harder to write!), but the process of modifying one exam into four is particularly painful. By the time I got home I was dysfunctionally hungry and just wanted to eat the first thing that sounded good. That thing turned out to be chocolate pudding. So I had chocolate pudding for dinner. And although I wouldn't try to argue that it was a balanced meal, it did improve my mood considerably! There's nothing like a big bowl of hot chocolate pudding to put everything into perspective!

Now it's time to make answer keys for all four versions. I only hope that I don't find any mistakes in the exams! I went through each version carefully, twice! But I don't really trust myself when I am in the state of hunger that I was in...

Apple Butter (Page 916)

RECIPE #1027

• Date: Saturday, September 12, 2009 -- 2pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

Since I was already digging out my canning supplies and sterilizing jars to make the plum butter last weekend, I figured I would go ahead and make this apple butter too! I started by sterilizing jars and lids in my boiling water canner. Then I combined wedges of peeled, cored, apples, apple cider, lemon juice, dark brown sugar, cinnamon, and allspice in a pot. I boiled until the apples were tender, then I put the mixture through a food mill (read post below to hear how I felt about that!). I put the puree back on the stove, and simmered, stirring frequently, for about an hour and a half. Then I ladled the apple butter into the sterilized jars, sealed them, and processed them in the boiling water canner. Ok, that's not actually true. Although this recipe claimed to make 4 cups, it really made only slightly more than 1 cup. That meant I had only one full jar of apple butter. So I did not process the jars but rather just the jar of apple butter. It was a shame too because this apple butter was tasty! I would have liked to have four jars of it around rather than just a smidgeon more than one jar. But I knew this would happen when I read the recipe. The recipe only called for four apples. Anyone who has ever canned fruit will tell you that one apple is not going to make enough preserves to fill a half-pint jar. So there was no way those four apples were going to fill four jars. That issue aside, this recipe was great! The apple butter had a wonderful fall flavor to it: apples and cinnamon! It wasn't too sweet, but rather had a lovely sweet-tart balance. The texture wasn't quite as smooth as that of the plum butter (see post below), but it was still very nice. Overall, a solid recipe -- I only wish it had made more!

This recipe isn't online.

Yesterday after my 18-mile run, I napped for a couple hours. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the sun was barely peaking through an otherwise overcast day. I was laying in bed, mostly asleep, while my special gentleman sat in bed next to me watching a B movie about aliens. It was absolutely perfect. I love to sleep. I find it to be a great joy. In particular I love to nap. I rarely do it though, as I rarely feel justified sleeping in the middle of the day. Sometimes I sleep for 15 minutes in my office in the late afternoon, when I am desperate for a pick-me-up, but usually I only take long naps when I am sick. It's a shame -- napping is wonderful. There is something so luxurious about sleeping in the middle of the day, with the sun streaming in the windows. Luckily after a more-than-three-hour run I feel justified getting some sleep. My Sunday afternoon post-run nap has become a weekly tradition that I very much look forward to!

Today, unfortunately, was not the type of day that involved a relaxing mid-afternoon nap in bed. Rather, it involved exam writing, and talking to students about academic misconducts, amongst other things. Ugh. It was exhausting day. In fact, I feel like going to bed at this not-so-late hour of 9:30pm!

Plum Butter (Page 921)

RECIPE #1026

• Date: Saturday, September 12, 2009 -- 2pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Terry and Matty
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

Today is my dad's birthday (Happy Birthday Dad!), so I made this plum butter last weekend to send to him as a birthday present. He is trying to reduce the high fructose corn syrup in his diet (a noble cause that I don't think I could adopt -- I love candy too, too much!). Early in his efforts to cut out high fructose corn syrup he noted that one place it appears very frequently is in jams and jellies. There are a few brands made with good old fashioned sugar, but most of the jams and jellies at the grocery store are full of high fructose corn syrup. So, I figured I would make him some plum preserves, sweetened the homemade way: with sugar!

First I started by digging out my many canning supplies. I go through phases when I can frequently and phases when I don't. As of late I have been in one of the latter phases. Once I dug out all my supplies I went through the process of sterilizing the jars and lids in my boiling water canner. Then I scraped the seeds from a vanilla bean into a large pot, then added the pod, pitted and sliced plums, sugar, and lemon juice. I boiled the mixture until the plums were tender. Then I removed the vanilla pod and forced the plum mixture through a food mill fitted with a fine disk. I will admit, I don't like using my food mill. I love that thing because the results it produces are so fantastic, but it's a pain to crank and inevitably whatever I am trying to put through it doesn't want to go through so it takes forever! So I was cranky (haha!) using the food mill, but the results were wonderful: fantastically smooth plum puree! I returned the puree to the stove and simmered it, stirring often, for two hours. Then I ladled the plum butter into the sterilized jars, sealed them, and processed them by boiling them for ten minutes in my boiling water canner.

The result: yum! There have been some jams/jellies from The Book that I haven't liked so much (Nectarine Preserves with Basil comes to mind) and they eventually ended up in the trash. After my special gentleman took one taste of this plum butter he said, "Well, this one won't get thrown away!" Indeed it will not. The preserves are rich with plum flavor, and the vanilla is an excellent complement. The texture is also perfect: smooth and thick. My only complaint is that the preserves are a little on the sweet side. This bothered me when I was eating this stuff by the spoonful on the day I made it, but actually on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich it doesn't seem so sweet. I don't dislike plums, but I also never seek them out. This recipe, though, gave me a whole new appreciation for the flavor of the fruit. Yum!

The recipe is here.

When I called my dad today to wish him a Happy Birthday he was making bread. I imagine this plum butter would go well with a nice hot piece of homemade bread! I hope he enjoys it. Happy Birthday Dad!

Chicken Club Sandwiches (Page 188)

RECIPE #1025

• Date: Sunday, September 13, 2009 -- 6pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

Finding the perfect meal to make after a long run is tricky business. It's good to eat something substantial, with a nice balance of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. But I also usually want to make something that is quick, since after running 15 or more miles I rarely feel like standing on my feet for much longer. I have settled on the following routine. I do my long run on Sunday morning/early afternoon. When I get home I eat take-out (e.g. Taco Bell) or something that is easy to make (e.g. Kraft Mac and Cheese). I follow lunch up with a nice nap. And when I wake from my nap I am usually hungry, and feeling recovered sufficiently to stand up long enough to make something to eat! This recipe was the post-run selection from last week.

I started by poaching some chicken breasts, then slicing them into 1/4 inch slices. My special gentleman browned some bacon, then stirred together mayonnaise, sour cream, parsley, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. He toasted some white sandwich bread, then assembled the sandwiches with three pieces of bread, herbed mayo, bacon, tomato, Boston lettuce, avocado, and chicken breast slices. The resulting sandwich was pretty tasty. I have to admit, chicken clubs are not my favorite of all sandwiches, but for a chicken club, this was quite good. My special gentleman likes chicken clubs and he was very taken with this rendition. He thought the herbed mayo was too heavy on the lemon and parsley though. I thought the parsley was unobjectionable and I liked the burst of lemony flavor, so it seems that was a matter of taste. The bacon-avocado-tomato-lettuce combination is a tried and true recipe for deliciousness, and it worked well here. I didn't think the chicken added too much to the sandwich, but it wasn't bad either. There was nothing particularly special or grabbing about this sandwich, but it was tasty and I would certainly eat it again.

This recipe isn't online.

This morning when we started our long run it was cold and thunderstorming. There were four cars in the parking lot at the trailhead: mine, my husband's [we brought both cars in case someone needed to bail early], our friend Paul's [who my husband runs with], and another car with a bumper sticker that just said, "26.2." Paul, Matty, and I looked around the parking lot and all had the same thought: only the crazies are out today! Indeed the trail was empty except for people who were clearly in training. I was not super excited about the weather for the first 10 miles or so. By mile 2 my clothes were soaked, and by mile 6 my shoes were saturated with water too. Around mile 10 I began to appreciate the weather more. Since the trail was empty and I was running alone, I sang along to the music on my iPod as loud as I could. In the 16th mile it started to really pour, and the pouring down rain was exactly what I needed to get me through those last two miles. When I hit the 18 mile mark I was tired (and very, very wet!) but I felt pretty ok. My first 18 mile training run was about a month ago now, and it was brutal. I collapsed in the grass and my special gentleman had to pick me up. During the car ride home I had tears in my eyes from the pain (blisters, and chafing, and angry joints) and I remember doing a lot of whimpering. But I have learned a few things since then. Generous and intelligent use of Body Glide and bandages goes a long way towards preventing post-run pain from chafing and blisters. And I suppose my joints are getting used to the realities of marathon training. Today there was no collapsing. I drove myself home after the run and there were no tears. Also no whimpering. It was a hard run (of course!), but it's getting easier. And I am starting to believe in the possibility of 26.2.