Mayonnaise, Take 2

TARRAGON DEVILED EGGS AND BACON ON TOAST : TAKE TWO

I am not one to take defeat lightly, so after my mayonnaise failure yesterday, I was determined to master mayonnaise today. I made sure to add enough olive oil, and sure enough, it got thicker and thicker!



Once it was thick enough, I added chopped tarragon. This really makes the dish.



Next, add the chopped hard boiled eggs



Place on toast. Garnish with tarragon. I discovered that it is much better to chop the bacon into small pieces instead of leaving it as strips. It's just too clumsy to eat when the bacon isn't chopped up.

The finished dish!

A Sneak Peak: Creamy Carrot and Sage Soup with Cinnamon Croutons

We're having a couple of friends over for dinner, so I made some creamy carrot soup ahead of time. I got the idea of cinnamon croutons from Hubert Keller's dish (Hearty Carrot and Petite Pea Soup with Cinnamon Croutons) on Top Chef Masters.

http://www.bravotv.com/foodies/recipes/hearty-carrot-and-petite-pea-soup-with-cinnamon-croutons

I'm going to make his soup one day, but for now, this is my version.

Ingredients:

carrots roasted with sage and olive oil
sour cream
half and half
cinnamon
garlic
ginger
onions sauteed in butter
homemade beef stock

Ezekiel bread
cinnamon
olive oil

It is delicious! For dinner tonight I"ll garnish it with a dollop of sour cream, croutons and chopped bacon.

Coconut Banana Muffin Disappointment

Brad and I are going to a picnic tomorrow, so I made some coconut banana muffins to take. I followed this recipe from Gourmet magazine:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Banana-Coconut-Muffins-109473

Brad did a taste test and said that they were too dense and a bit dry. It must have had to do with the addition of the dried coconut. My previous banana muffin recipe is much better--it's basically just like this recipe, but without the dried coconut. (See "A (Not Very) Lazy Sunday" post) The result is moist and not too sweet.

But they look so pretty...

Eggs Baked in Ramekin (Ouefs en Cocotte)

For breakfast today, while Brad was out surfing I made myself Julia Child's Ouefs en Cocotte, or Eggs Baked in Ramekins.



Here's the recipe in pictures:

Boil some asparagus until they are tender, then place them in iced water to stop the cooking process. Mince and add them to a buttered ramekin. Add a tablespoon of cream and some chopped parsley.



Put the ramekin in a pan of simmering water (3/4" water) until the cream is hot.


Add 2 eggs, then put one more tablespoon of cream, a bit of parsley, and a pat of butter on top. Transfer the whole thing (including the pan and water!) to a 375 degree oven for 7-10 minutes. (Mine actually took longer than 10 minutes--closer to 15 minutes!) Take the dish out of the oven when the whites are set but still tremble.



The finished dish! (I took a bite out of it.) Look at that runny yolk. :)



On another note, all of this cooking has its rewards! Last night Brad treated me to a delicious sushi dinner at Sakura for all my hard work :)

The $50 a Week Challenge

You know how Rachel Ray has her show "$40 a Day" in which she tries to eat all her meals in various cities for "just $40 a day"? Well, I always thought to myself, "Big deal--$40 a day is a lot of money for just one day. She should try $20 a day. Or even $10 a day.." (Can you imagine that show? Hello McDonalds!)

Inspired by Rachel Ray, I originally wanted to challenge myself to cook every meal for just $40 a week. Then I realized that no matter how I stretch my dollars, that just isn't going to happen. I'd rather not sacrifice quality to save a few extra bucks, so I settled on the more reasonable goal of $50 a week.

Friday is my grocery shopping day, and since I've been cooking a lot (all 2 weeks worth :P), it's been sort of crazy. I go to at least 3 places to get all my groceries: Whole Foods for meats (organic when possible), Ralphs for veggies and fruits, and Trader Joes for the rest (butter, eggs, cream, etc--I prefer organic dairy, and TJ's has it cheaper than Whole Foods does). When I can, I also go to farmers markets and the Santa Monica Coop.

Today I bought $110 worth of groceries for both Brad and I. That's $55 each--not bad, but I didn't reach my goal of $50.. :( Maybe next week!

Today I came up with this simple but amazing desert:

BANANAS AND SOUR CREAM WITH CINNAMON



I remember seeing some recipes for sour cream banana cake and pancakes, and thought, "Why not just cut out the extra flour and sugar?" The resulting recipe is healthier, but still satisfies your sweet tooth.

Ingredients:
1 banana
A dollop of sour cream
a pinch of sea salt
cinnamon
stevia to taste

Slice the banana into coins, put a dollop of sour cream on top, a pinch of sea salt, cinnamon, and then finally sprinkle with a very light dusting of stevia. It is so good!

A close up of my second helping:



DEVILED EGGS AND BACON ON TOAST



I wanted so much to make mayonnaise by hand as Julia Child instructs in her cookbook, so I decided to make deviled eggs for lunch today. I'd made mayo before from scratch in the food processor; it was a piece of cake. However, Ms. Child said that one should really know how to do it by hand in order to gain a good understanding of the egg.

So to become "one with the egg", I whipped, and whipped, and drizzled oil, and more oil... I guess I stopped before adding enough oil, because the mixture never really gelled like it did in the processor. Oh well. I still made the deviled eggs with my runny mayo, and it was fine. File this mayo under "works in progress".

Ingredients:

2 hard boiled eggs
Handmade mayo made from 2 egg yolks, olive oil, mustard, pepper, salt, hot sauce
1 Niiman ranch bacon strip
1 slice toasted Ezekiel bread

The hard boiled eggs


The mayo "work in progress"...


LEAF'S SIDE SALAD

I did eat out once this week, at a raw restaurant called "Leaf". I got their side salad, which turned out to be quite large. It was surprisingly tasty--much better than their collard wraps. There are some crispy nuggets of raw nuttiness under all that yellow sauce.



LEFTOVERS FOR LUNCH

Yesterday's lunch: leftover boeuf bourguignon with added cauliflower and watercress. Oh, this dish just gets better and better the longer you wait!

A Flurry of Dishes

Days off tend to make me lethargic, but today was an exception. Chalk it up to the culinary wave I've been riding, perhaps. Instead of dilly dallying, I woke up, vacuumed the house (twice in one week??), furminated my bunny (i.e. brushed her to take out all the fur she's been shedding), went grocery shopping for stevia, and then made a whole flurry of dishes.

There were hits, there were misses, and there were what I like to call "works in progress".

Let's start with the hits...

CREAM OF CAULIFLOWER SOUP

I tweaked this recipe just a bit by using fresh ginger instead of powdered, a red onion instead of 2 leeks, no celery, both homemade beef and chicken stock (instead of just chicken stock), and a touch of sour cream and coconut milk to thin the soup out instead of half and half. I love this soup! It's creamy, but not heavy. It's also low on the glycemic index, unlike the carrot and sweet potato soups I've been making. Just one cauliflower yields a lot of soup. I also roasted some cauliflower florets in the oven to add to the soup as a garnish in the end.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cream-of-Cauliflower-Soup-350616



Before putting it in the blender..


PLUM RASPBERRY AND RED WINE COMPOTE

I had some leftover red wine from last night's beef stew, so I found this recipe on epicurious. I prepared it the night ahead, and it was just delicious the next day for dessert. Brad put it over vanilla ice cream while I was happy just eating it plain. For this dessert, it is important to give it time for the flavors to meld; I had a taste yesterday, and it was definitely not as good as it was today.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Plum-Raspberry-and-Red-Wine-Compote-5629

after 24 hours of marinating in the red wine syrup reduction


Brad's half eaten ice cream with fruit


The red wine syrup..


RED WINE BARBECUE SAUCE

Brad requested burgers for dinner, so I made hamburger with a red wine BBQ sauce (yes, I was trying to find a way to get rid of the extra red wine from last night!). It turned out great, and was so easy to make.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Red-Wine-Barbecue-Sauce-109711



Now let's move on to the "works in progress"...

FRIED POLENTA

I had a bunch of leftover polenta from last night, so I wanted to make broiled polenta for lunch. I cut some of the leftovers into slices, coated them with some olive oil, and put it under the broiler and waited.... And waited.... There was no browning whatsover. I took it out, put it in the toaster oven and tried broiling it again. And again, nothing.

Finally, I decided to eat my failed broiling experiment and try frying instead. I heated the oil till it started smoking, dried off one piece of polenta with a paper towel, and then put it in the olive oil. After 4 minutes on each side, I was left with a golden piece of fried goodness. It was heaven. Too bad I only made one piece :P

I tried making this again for Brad for dinner, but it just didn't crisp up like it did earlier. This is definitely a work in progress.

My one perfect piece of fried polenta:


My lunch today: fried polenta with leftover boeuf bourguignon



HAMBURGER WITH AVOCADO, SOUR CREAM, FRIED POLENTA AND RED WINE BBQ SAUCE

This was a "leftovers" meal. The BBQ sauce was the best part!



Finally, we've come to the "disasters" section. There was only one disaster today...

DOUBLE FUDGE BROWNIE (with Stevia)

I have never cooked with Stevia, but I figured I should start because sugar is not good for me and I don't want to get diabetes. I searched online for stevia recipes and found this one. I made some substitutions (butter instead of margarine, half and half instead of skim milk, 1/2 gluten free baking mix and 1/2 regular flour, and pure stevia extract instead of the stevia blend. I guess all of these substitutions was my first mistake. My second mistake was that I didn't measure out the stevia, but added it in little scoops to taste. The problem was, I ended up making it way too sweet! I tried to remedy this by adding more chocolate/butter/half and half. The result was just a mess. It stuck to the cupcake mold, was too moist inside, and was not sweet enough in the end.

On the bright side, I whipped my first egg whites by hand into peaks! Brad helped---it sure takes a lot of beating to make those peaks :P

http://www.cookingwithstevia.com/web/desserts07.shtml

The brownie tops (the rest stuck to the pan)



Coming out of the oven



The mess...



(The disaster didn't stop us from polishing off the whole plate of brownie tops tonight, though.)

Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon

Today I attempted to cook a dish I can't pronounce. In fact, it's a dish with a name I can't even spell--I need to google it just to make sure I'm spelling it right each time!

I finally bought Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". It's $40, and I was lucky to find it at a Border's in the Valley--it's been sold out everywhere else! Of course, the famous recipe from the movie Julie and Julia is Boeuf Bourguignon, so I couldn't wait to make this recipe. I bought all the ingredients except the bacon rind (they didn't have it where I went). I served it with creamy polenta, made from white organic cornmeal that Brad's mom gave us. The polenta was amazing--I cooked it slowly for an hour on the stove with this recipe:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Buttered-Polenta-233990

The Boeuf Bourguignon was tasty, but I think I seared the meat a little too long because it was not as soft as I expected it to be. The sauce was also very thin, so I had to thicken it with some arrowroot (trying to boil it down didn't do much). I had a lot of leftovers, so I'm looking forward to having this tomorrow because the flavors will only get better.

Boeuf Bourguignon recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/Boeuf-Bourguignon-a-La-Julia-Child-148007


The meat after browning, before going into the oven with stock and wine.



The slow cooked grits



The sauce, thickened with arrowroot



The finished dish..

Perfecting Fried Rice

Tonight I made fried rice, which Brad ceremoniously declared to be "the best fried rice I've ever had, hands down". Here's the ingredients list:

-1 cup day old brown short grained rice
-soy sauce to taste
-drizzle of sesame oil
-2 slices bacon
-2 eggs
-3/4 onion
-1 carrot
-dash of hot sauce
-handful of watercress

To make this fried rice, put the bacon/onion/carrots/other veggies in the pan first to cook. This releases the fat from the bacon, which will add a nice flavor to the rice. Once the bacon's crispy, add the rice and soy sauce and sesame oil. Finally, make a hole in the middle of the pan and add two scrambled eggs. Once the eggs cook, mix everything together.

I'm still working on perfecting this "recipe", but what I've got so far is definitely better than it was a week ago.



Here's my thrown together dinner. In the background is mackerel with hard boiled egg and mustard hollandaise on top (can you tell that I'm in love with this sauce?), and a salad. Yeah, all of that doesn't really go with fried rice... But I still enjoyed it!

A (Not Very) Lazy Sunday

With Brad at work all day on a Sunday, I had a lot of fun in the kitchen cooking up a storm. Yes, I made all of this in one day! (Plus I cleaned the entire house.. um, it's harder than it looks and I now have a greater appreciation for the cleaning Brad does every Sunday)

BACON CARROT SOUP

I made this soup today, and it was delicious! I just kind of threw it together, so there's no recipe, but I listed the ingredients below. I thought this soup was even better than the sweet potato soup in my last post, due to the tasty addition of the bacon and sour cream garnish. Brad's taking this soup to work for lunch tomorrow with a salad.

Ingredients:
-roasted carrots with sage, olive oil, pepper
-homemade chicken stock
-cinnamon
-cumin
-butter
-lemon juice
-garnish with sour cream and bacon




BANANA MUFFINS

We had some bananas bordering on overripe today, so I made a small batch of banana muffins. The recipe is my own, and to be honest, I just made it up on the spot. I'm sure it's not the best banana muffin recipe ever, but the results were really tasty. What makes this recipe unusual is the addition of gluten free flour and the use of evaporated cane juice in place of sugar.

BANANA MUFFINS
-1/2 cup regular flour
-3/4 cup Red Mill gluten free flour mix
-1 stick butter, melted
-1 egg
-dash of salt
-1/2 cup evaporated cane juice (or sugar)
-2 ripe bananas
-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line muffin cups. Mix flour, sugar and salt in large bowl. Mix mashed bananas, egg, melted butter, vanilla and egg in medium bowl. Stir banana mixture into dry ingredients just until blended (do not overmix).
Divide batter among prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Sprinkle tops with sugar. Bake muffins until tops are pale golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Transfer muffins to rack; cool.





FIGGY PIGGY CORNISH HEN

This is a recipe in Gourmet's September 2009 issue. Brad loved it and said that it blew our regular chicken dish (see the Chicken with Mustard Vinaigrette recipe in yesterday's post) out of the water. And we thought that dish was as good as it gets.
The pairing of the bacon and figs is perfect, and the hen was juicy all the way through. It's an organic cornish hen from Whole Foods. They're a little pricey at $10 each, but 1/2 a hen was enough for each of us for a meal.

You can find the full recipe here:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Figgy-Piggy-Cornish-Hens-354955

Bacon and sliced garlic are sauteed ahead of time and used for garnish


The hen after it's panfried, right before it goes in the oven




The finished product!


And finally, for breakfast today, I made leftover corn and salmon pancakes. This is definitely a keeper!