FFWD February (Squash and Brussel Sprouts, Coeur a la Creme, and Pea Soup)

I don't eat pork so I skipped the tenderloin, but I did make all of the other February recipes--with mixed results.

I would give the Brown Sugar Squash and Brussel Sprouts en Papillote a C-.  First, I know I need to learn to be more adaptable, but it frustrates me when vegetable recipes don't make use of the entire vegetable.  I never know what to do with the extra half of a butternut squash.  Because the recipe didn't use up either the whole squash or the bag of brussel sprouts I bought, in addition to preparing this recipe I also cooked the rest of the squash and brussels on the same night.  I followed this recipe exactly, and then after preparing the remaining vegetables the same way (halving the brussel sprouts and cubing the squash) I just tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper and threw them on a sheet pan.  I put them all in the oven and then worked on the rest of the dinner.  After about 30 minutes, the sprouts and squash on the sheet pan were cooked through and browned in spots--exactly how I like them.  The ones in foil were still largely raw.  Because the rest of dinner was ready I decided to just serve the cooked ones, saving the ones in foil for the next night.  The ones in foil probably took at least an additional hour to cook.  They tasted just fine, but I didn't like them any better than the ones on the sheet pan, and will not bother with this recipe again.

I'm definitely not going to quit my day job to try anything artistic!  However, despite my best attempts to ruin it, the Coeur a la Creme was an easy and delicious dessert.  I'd give it an A.  I thought I had raspberry sauce in the freezer but didn't, so I decided to defrost and warm up some chocolate ganache I found instead.  Raspberries were also insanely expensive at the store (I'm guessing due to Valentine's) but blueberries were on sale, so I bought those instead.  In hindsight, while I actually really like the blueberry and chocolate flavor combination, the color combination didn't exactly scream Valentine's Day.  I also knew I was in trouble the second I tried to "drizzle" my chocolate ganache over the dessert.  It turns out ganache (at least mine) doesn't drizzle at all, and I was left with random puddles of chocolate on my white dessert.  Not exactly appetizing.  I started to panic, reminded myself that it was only Paul and I, and did the best I could to push the ganache off the edges and decorate the top with blueberries.  Still not pretty, though.  The taste, however, was excellent.  A lot like a cheesecake but not quite as dense, and so much easier to make.  When I make this again I'll either spring for the raspberries, or serve the dessert plain with sauce on the side.

I was really unsure about cooked lettuce, but we actually liked the Cheating on Winter Pea Soup.  I wouldn't say it was exciting, but it had a good clean flavor and was certainly easy to make.  I'd give it a solid B.  Next time I'm definitely going to pull out my real blender, though.  The immersion blender left some small pieces of cooked lettuce, which definitely weren't so appetizing.

FFWD Chicken Breasts Diable and Cheesy Creme Brulee

I actually made both of these recipes on the same night.  Since the creme brulee had to chill in the refrigerator anyway, I decided to go ahead and make it to serve on the following night.  Despite how easy and relatively healthy they are, I almost never make boneless skinless chicken breasts.  I have a very hard time cooking them so that they're cooked through but not dry, I find that they don't re-heat that well (key for me since we almost always eat dinner leftovers for lunch), and--most importantly--Paul doesn't really like them and is prone to complaining.  However, I absolutely love anything with mustard and this recipe definitely sounded easy, so I was happy to give it a try.  The verdict?  We both loved the sauce, I think it would taste good on almost anything, and given how quick and easy it was this is a recipe I would make again.  I served it with carrots provencal (an old favorite of mine from Jacques Pepin) and some hash browns I made with leftover boiled potatoes.  Definitely an enjoyable Sunday night dinner.

The creme brulee, on the other hand, I most likely will not be making again.  I'm very curious to see what everybody else thought of this recipe.  I love custards and am a big fan of creme brulee, so I had high hopes for this recipe.  The oven temperature called for seemed way too low to me, but Dorie's recipes almost always work, so I proceeded along.  When I checked the custards after the suggested amount of time, they were nowhere close to being ready.  I turned the convection on and kept cooking them, checking whenever I remembered, but they just would not cook.  At some point I turned the oven up about 50 degrees, but I think I should have gone higher.  I finally pulled them out after 2-3 hours (at some point I lost track of time), when they were finally set.  When I served them the next day, I was sad to see that the bottom layer of cheese hadn't melted at all!  I just don't think my oven ever got hot enough.  This is probably my fault, although I've never had problems with my oven before and double-checked the oven temperature in the recipe several times, but I thought this dish was pretty gross.  I normally have no problem eating very rich things, but the layer of rich (but pretty flavorless) custard followed by un-melted, room temperature cheese did not appeal to me at all.  Paul was a total trooper and made himself eat several of these (he follows in his father's footsteps and cannot bear to see food go to waste), but this is one of the few things in recent memory that I actually threw away.  It just didn't feel worth trying to make myself eat it.

FFWD Herb-Speckled Spaetzle

The problem with getting behind in posting (and I guess procrastinating in general) is that it just keeps getting harder to get caught up.  I've actually made every recipe (except for one) over the past two months so there is a very long catch-up post in my future, but I've decided to just try to start posting on time again and write the catch-up post when I get to it.....So, spaetzle.  I've always wanted to try making spaetzle (Sara Moulton has an excellent-sounding recipe for it that I keep meaning to try) so I was glad when I saw the recipe schedule for this month.  One of my few problems with AMFT, is that Dorie always makes everything sound so easy.  The way she describes it you mix the batter, put it through something with holes in it, boil it, and then very soon dinner is ready.  I thought it sounded perfect for a weeknight dinner!  I was very wrong.  Maybe it would have gone better with a spaetzle maker--I'm very curious to see if anyone has one and how much easier it made things--but I spent an awful lot of time holding my hands over a pot of boiling water trying to push the thick, sticky dough through the holes of the largest disk of my food mill.  (I also tried a colander and big slotted spoon, but this seemed to be my best option.)  My mom happened to be over and offered to help, but after trying for about a minute she said it was impossible and gave up.  Luckily, my mom did come to the rescue when I noticed that I didn't have anything to finish the dish.  I skipped buying the mushrooms (still don't like them) and I couldn't find the onion half that I'd saved for this purpose.  I probably would have panicked but my mom--who's much better at substitutions and cooking with what's available than I am--suggested adding celery and garlic and it worked quite well.  Dinner was very late on Wednesday, but we definitely both enjoyed it.  I made the spaetzle with half all purpose flour and half of an ancient grains mix that I bought from KAF, and really liked the nutty flavor that the anxious grains added.  The only thing I wish is that the spaetzle had gotten crispier.  A few of mine browned nicely but most did not.  I think next time I'll use a bigger pan to fry them in, and also won't skimp so much on the butter and oil (I was trying to be healthy!).

TWD Bagels

Even though I somehow managed to take another whole month off posting, I actually was keeping up with the recipes.  I'm going to try to get my thoughts/pictures from last month posted quickly this week, and then hopefully next week I'll be back on track with TWD and FFWD.  When I read this bagel recipe, I knew these weren't going to be my favorite.  My favorite bagels are dense and incredibly chewy, and so I was disappointed when these were described as more cake-like.  The good news was that it makes the dough much easier to work with.  These didn't take nearly as long as I was expecting to shape, and even I was able to make bagels that were reasonably circular.  The recipe was also forgiving.  I substituted about one-third of the flour with whole wheat flour, and thought they still rose beautifully.  As expected, these weren't the bagels of my dreams.  We certainly enjoyed them, but next time I'm going to look for a recipe that promises chewier bagels.  (Does anybody have a good one?)

TWD Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

I've mentioned before that my husband, Paul, loves to garden and I've loved cooking with everything he's managed to grow over the past two summers.  I don't think I've mentioned that Paul actually loves house projects of any kind.  If it weren't for my insistence on a "tools budget", I think he would spend the better part of every weekend at Home Depot.  We live in a house that's one story plus a basement, and Paul loves to tell anyone who will listen about his very-detailed plan to build an entire second-story addition on his own.  It somehow involves building the walls outside in the backyard, but he's yet to explain to me convincingly how in the world he plans to get the walls to the top of our house!  Anyway, luckily for both of us, Paul decided to start on a smaller project this year: building us a patio.  I think Paul has secretly enjoyed much of the time he's spent on the patio, but it has been quite an ordeal.  Our house is high up on a hill and we have no driveway, so the fun really started the day he arrived home with hundreds of bricks to carry up the hill.  The fun continued with digging out a hole for the patio, and then a couple of weeks ago Paul informed me that he had ordered eight (8!) 1.5 ton bags of gravel and sand to be delivered to our house!

By now you're probably wondering what this has to do with muffins.  Well, I told Paul that I most definitely was not waking up at 7am on Saturday morning to help haul gravel up the hill, but when he convinced his (insanely nice) friend to come over and help, I decided that the least I could do was make them muffins.  When I (guiltily?) woke up at 9am and saw them outside hard at work, I decided it was time to get started.  Luckily, these might be the easiest muffins I've ever made.  I love that they used ingredients that I always have on hand, didn't require waiting for butter to come to room temperature, and didn't even require a hand mixer.  I did everything with my hands and a wooden spoon!  I had these ready to go in the oven by the time it was pre-heated, and soon after we were all inside enjoying the muffins.  I had a hard time not thinking about how unhealthy these are (at least with blueberry muffins I can tell myself I'm eating fruit!), but they tasted good and the boys really seemed to like them.  This is definitely a recipe I'd use again if I wanted muffins without a trip to the store!

This post participates in TWD.  For the (easy) recipe go to Alisa's site, and to see what everyone else thought go to the TWD site.

FFWD Hummus

Today is my 31st birthday.  Turning 30 felt like a semi-big deal, but 31 really doesn't feel like a very important birthday at all.  To be honest, 30 has been a really, really hard year.  Parts of it have been incredibly happy, but much of it has been a challenge.  I'm definitely ready to start a new year.  I'm (cautiously) optimistic that things are looking up, and that 31 will be a happy year...What does all of my rambling have to do with hummus?  Not much, I have yet to think of a great tie-in.  I do know that I love, and have come to rely on, the constancy of food.  When I was younger and unhappy, I would go through phases where I would eat nothing but cereal, bananas, and cookies (or brownies!) for long periods of time.  Now, no matter what happens, after a couple of days of wallowing I force myself back into the kitchen.  To actually make something from scratch.  Better than anything else I've found, cooking forces me out of my own head.  For the time it takes me to cook dinner I am focused on the act of cooking (this works best if I'm making something complicated, or making several dishes at once), and have a break from the constant thoughts that swirl through my mind.

This bring me back to hummus, and homemade hummus in particular.  You can certainly buy hummus at the store, and may brands are actually very good, but I love the act of making it.  I started with dried chickpeas this time and still, the hardest part was remembering to soak them the night before.  After I cooked the chickpeas and waited for them to cool, I processed them with the other ingredients and some sun-dried tomatoes that I added for color.  During halftime of the Redskins game, I started work on the rest of the dinner.  I made falafel with tahini sauce and a cucumber and tomato salad to go with the hummus.  After the game was over (the Redskins miraculously luckily manged to win!), I toasted pita bread and also put out some pickled eggplant and stuffed grape leaves.  (I wanted to make the grape leaves myself but I couldn't find the leaves, so I bought some canned pre-prepared ones which were actually pretty good.)  Paul and I enjoyed the dinner--I was unsure about a hummus recipe in a French cookbook but I actually thought it was very good hummus--and, more importantly, I enjoy the routine of sitting down together to eat.   

TWD Cranberry Walnut Pumpkin Loaf

I'm so glad I read the P&Qs early this week.  From the recipe title I was expecting a quick bread, so I was glad for the warning that it's actually a yeast bread with an overnight rise.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed--I find quick breads so rewarding and love eating cake for breakfast and calling it "bread"--but I was still curious to give this one a shot.   I substituted half of the white bread flour for whole wheat bread flour, but otherwise followed the recipe.  This came together quickly in my stand mixer while I was finishing dinner.  

After we ate and watched the Breaking Bad Season 3 finale, the bread was done rising.  I left it in the fridge to wait for Sunday.  On Sunday it took about 3.5 hours to come to temperature, at which point I shaped it and put it into pans.  I don't have mini loaf pans and wasn't ready to buy them yet, so I decided to go ahead with my standard loaf pans.  I'll be curious to see if this worked for others.  Even after 2 hours my bread wasn't very risen at all.  I'm not sure if there wasn't enough dough for the pans, or if I just got a bad rise. If it's the latter problem, I'm guessing that the flour substitution contributed.  Oh well.  My breads were a little flat, but they still tasted surprisingly good.  I liked that they had a lot of flavor and weren't too sweet.  I enjoyed some toasted with cream cheese for breakfast this morning, but I'm not sure what to do with the rest.  I'm excited to see what everyone else does.  I'm thinking it could make excellent french toast or bread pudding.  I'll report back if I give it a try.