What's cooking? part 4

I love them roasted - wonderful mildly carrot flavor.

Hey Jaq I made your spice cake this weekend (with orange cream cheese frosting; marmalade between the layers) and it was FAB! Thanks!

Prep for seasonal potluck #1:

Tourtiere - blend of pork / veal / beef / venison. 11 secret herbs and spices (ok, 7 or 8). Cream cheese pastry crust.
Vanilla bean cheesecake - because you can't ruin cheesecake, but it always impresses - good for inept bakers like me. Presentation is key
Turkish apricots - dried apricots candied in simple syrup / pekmez blend with cardamon, cinnamon, stuffed with mascarpone (because it's pretty difficult to find clotted buffalo milk in my corner of the continent.)

those all sound fantastic. nice.

we've got meals planned up through friday (mostly my dad's cooking): spaghetti squash and left over red thai curry, lengua tacos, homemade pizza (brother's weekly staple), shrimp & various mezes/bread/soup, traditional christmas breakfast of doom, and a ham dinner, to which i'll probably contribute vegetable sides (greens and some kind of gratin maybe). this happens whenever my trips home coincide with my dad's vacation time, and then my brother suggests going out to dinner and we're like, "...but what about all the food in the house?"

Christmas eve is going to be zakuski - blini and sour cream, smoked fish, potatoes with crab salad, beet salad, pickles, maybe some other Russian-ish kinds of stuff, plus a bottle vodka from the local-ish distillery made with all the wheat that grows around me.

Friday I'm making a peking duck and chinese pancakes. I expect a lot of semi-racist A Christmas Story jokes from my family.

<3 lengua tacos soooo much

Duck is our trad xmas dinner.

i need to make lengua tacos i think! tongue is so cheap. do you have a good recipe maria?

nope, never tried myself - if my dad's is good tonight i'll ask for it though!

tacos were excellent! he cooked the meat according to this: http://www.examiner.com/x-4059-Chicago-Mexican-Food-Examiner~y2009m6d13-Tacos-de-lengua-beef-tongue-tacos (did take a full 3 hours, and was incredibly tender)

jaq's recipe was so good we made it again tonight:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/821832/cooking%20pics/P1010955.JPG

but this time we changed it a bit:
quinoa instead of rice (my first time eating quinoa! it's pretty nice)
didn't mix it all together - layered it on the plate instead
left the sugar and apple cider out of the dressing
added caramelised onions again

served w/roasted brussels sprouts (done w/garlic and mixed fresh herbs, squirted w/lime juice once they were cooked)

this is by far the best meal i've possibly EVER cooked (but lol i am a terrible cook so that's not saying much) - super simple but great combo of textures and flavours. i owe you big time, jaq! you're my hero!

This makes me so happy! :) I'm really glad you're having fun mixing it up too - I'll bet the quinoa was awesome with the other flavors, it's got such nuttiness going on.

it was! everything just magically went together so well. we feel so proud of ourselves! ytth, too, who has never actually cooked a meal in his life (apart from boiling pasta/quinoa and adding marinara/fake meatballs)

this is pretty easy and quick thing to make too - the only downside is that the buttercup is a BITCH to cut and peel, but it tastes so good :/

thanks for that recipe maria! will definitely try it

i made this for xmas eve dinner
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_3CnQQEvhUBQ/SzUkIqQWOFI/AAAAAAAAB88/97DLeFAq48c/s512/IMG_0218.JPG

did not end up making any fancy dessert this year, tho!

what's in there?

lovely photo, btw

yes, looks wonderful.

It was a cioppino. It was too sweet! Fishes, crab, mussels, clams, shrimp (mom insisted on more varietty eather than lots of fish but whatever!).

Now baking! Orange_scented bittersweet choc cake with a candied orange compote.

Roman beef stew and tagliatelle with fennel. First time I'd done the tagliatelle and it worked very well, the lightness contrasting nicely with the richness of the stufatino.

Could've wished for slightly more flavour in the fennel, but it was perfectly adequate.

stfuatino

I got a nice slow-cooker for Xmas from my friends!! What do I do with this???

Split pea soup!

This is a tasty beef stew, tho my husband likes me to add potatoes. Idahoans, you know?

Slow cooker/crock pot recipes

Not v much on that thead tho

country-style ribs slow-cooked with sauerkraut, A+

Yeah, recpies online have a disturbing tendency to include things like "one pack of french onion soup mix" and "one can of cream of mushroom soup". NO! No, no, no, NO!

aarrgh no kidding

it is the worst

opening cans of glop & pouring them together = not a meal

Oh, I want to do that chicken in a pot thing. My slow-cooker is officially bigger than my good stovetop stew pot, so it ought to make a nice big chicken and lots of veg.

Pulled pork...mmmm.

olive oil stir-fry made with six chopped-up plain pork sausages, plenty of garlic, plenty of ginger, several spring onions (chopped), vermicelli (broken), halved portobello mushrooms and two eggs. served with plum tomatoes which had been slow-roasted in olive oil and cinnamon.

by far the most successful of my recent cooking endeavours, this came out really nicely indeed! lovely flavours (can't go wrong with garlic and ginger eh?) and the only worry was that the vermicelli may have been a little al dente. in the end there was enough olive oil to cook the vermicelli to a lovely, still slightly-crunchy consistency. and the chopped sausages fared very nicely indeed. plus, roasted tomato and cinnamon is a good mix.

small portions for a family of 5 but we all need to eat less in this world ^_^

pulled pork is good stuff indeed.

tonight i made baked squash samosas (unfortunately, under-filled them due to previous problems over-filling DUMPLINGS!...perhaps next time will be perfect) and a pound of creamed spinach, which i then ate half of at dinner and plan to finish off at breakfast or lunch tomorrow. this creamed spinach addiction is perhaps a little out of control.

er, i have no idea why "DUMPLINGS!" is capitalized. they are not that exciting. all right, i really love them, but they just aren't.

i have potatoes, liquid vege broth, pureed cauli, oninons, garlic, some broccoli. i want to make a soup. should i cook the potatoes in the broth and then chuck in everything else, and then blend it a little so it's chunky? i've never really made soup before.

i'd sautee the onions and garlic separately before tossing them in, but yes i think that is exactly what you should do! soup is the easiest/most flexible thing ever and that sounds good.

thank you maria! yeah i think i'll sautee the garlic/onions, run them through the blender with a little broth and then add to everything else.

spicy tempeh and cashews from Clean Food (xmas gift, thx sis)

soup was a complete success btw and super easy. except for peeling tiny potatoes. i never peel them for cooking and forgot how much of a pain it is. you think it's ok to leave the skins on for a soup or would that be a gross texture?

I love potato skin in all forms but can see how it might become grape-skinnish and slippery in a soup. I'd leave them on personally. but I'm afraid of residual pesticides and stuff

Having a kitchen in Rome was pretty awesome, and I cooked a bunch of stuff. Especially excellent was a breakfast casserole of bread, eggs, cheese, and prosciutto - like a savory bread pudding. We were a few blocks from a huge covered market (like 6x the size of Pike Place and only for fresh edibles) and got awesome tomatoes and greens and meat and fruit.

Now I'm home, I'm determined to perfect pasta amatriciana. Also, so glad to be reunited with my cast iron pans.

i pretty much always leave the skin on potatoes, even in soup

OH MAN i have a major crush on andrea nguyen's cookbooks. ASIAN DUMPLINGS! is great, great, great, and i have made the momo, a bunch of the pork DUMPLINGS!, samosas, and like half of the water DUMPLINGS! (including the delicious soup dumpling) she has written about. i am also in love with her INTO THE VIETNAMESE KITCHEN, it is the best of the best of cookbooks -- like julia child or rick bayless, but for vietnamese food, and a lot less fussy. she regularly updates content at vietworldkitchen.com and asiandumplingtips.com, which you should all go check out now. see also: steamykitchen.com's crock pot pho.

Jaq you were cooking in Rome? Dreamy!!

cooking in italy is so much fun!

i just made pad thai on a whim and i gotta say, i did a pretty awesome job! i used this as a guide but also sorta winged it.

OMG MY NEW FOOD PROCESSOR ARRIVED TODAY!!! gonna have to make some hummus and pesto this weekend ^_^

Hey I can make pesto too! I planted some basil not even a month back and it has gone KAZAM mad crazy growth thanks to our bizarre combo of bitingly hot weather and heavy rainstorms.

my ikea basil is pretty much kaput. i should throw it out but i feel bad :(

remy i love her blog! really want the asian DUMPLINGS! cookbook, it's sitting on my amazon wishlist.

i just wanna make stir-fry all the time lately. i feel like i've figured it out.

i want to make garlic soup tonight but am having trouble deciding which of several recipes i've seen i'm least likely to screw up. better to thicken with flour before adding broth, or egg after?