80 Plates: A Trip To the Orient

Monday night, it was time to knock off another couple of countries. I changed Israel's blintzes to cover Ukraine. In hearing from a couple of people, it was suggested blintzes are Eastern European and my own independent research suggests Russia and Ukraine are where blintzes are heavily consumed. I didn't want to toss Russia away on blintzes--I want to learn to make a really good beef stroganoff--so although I haven't changed the post except for the title, blintzes are now Ukraine.

Anyway, I hadn't done 80 plates in almost a week, and if I am going to get through this project, that's not gonna fly. So I was at Borders the other week and found a cookbook, The Essential Asian Cookbook, for a whopping $5, so I picked it up. It's kind of exciting because the book contains recipes from a number of smaller countries and "weird" countries, like Pakistan and Singapore, where you might have a hard time finding good recipes. So I'm excited about this book for that reason too! Because we had people here to help with the baby's room, it seems like a good time to make the 80 plates meals--we always have waaaaaaaaaaaay too many leftovers and can never eat them all, which is kind of disheartening to throw away food like that. So if anyone's starving and has a country request, please plan to come to Fredericksburg for dinner. Seriously.

Also, Manda, if you're out there, do you still want these ham hocks? They've been in my fridge, but they don't seem like the type of thing to go bad. I've got 'em if you want 'em. Cindy, I don't have your email address to send you the beef wellington recipe, so I'm going to send it to you this week via Facebook.

Ok, so we read through the new cookbook and looked through the freezer at things that we needed to get rid of. There was a pork tenderloin in there, so we chose to do China and make Pork with Plum Sauce as well as stir fry vegetables. I wanted to make something from another country, so we selected Japan and as a dish, chicken teriyaki. This allowed us a couple main dishes and some veggies, plus lots of food for hungry builders. I was also going to make shrimp toast, but I just got to feeling like it was all too much and I'd never really attempted making 3 dishes before, much less 4 of them, so the shrimp toast got put to the side.

Unfortunately, we got so stinkin' busy, I didn't get the brown rice into the steamer till nearly 6:00, which meant that dinner wasn't really going to be ready till 8:00. I would have prefered white rice, but we didn't have any and it's not WW approved. So I let the brown rice cook. Besides, Lucas was taking a nap, Judy was doing something on the computer and I had Dottie's undivided attention, which I didn't mind at all.

Alas, an hour elapsed and I decided I'd better get cracking on dinner. I decided to do the pork and veggies first and then do the chicken second. But you know me, timing is not my thing and I should have done exactly the opposite. The chicken took twice as long to cook--less time to prep but more in the pan time.

Overall, however, these dishes were an absolute snap compared to the foods I've been preparing--the ease with which they were done was a real breath of fresh air. We're talking 15 minutes prep, 15 minutes to cook, and we're done. So let's hear it for Chinese cooking!

So, I did the veggies first. As you can see from the picture of my assembled ingredients, I did have shiitake mushrooms, but due to a food allergy, I was obliged to leave them out. Otherwise, the directions were quite simple: chop up veggies, fry them in a little oil, add some chicken broth, corn starch and sauces, and voila! Only, I suppose I was feeling over confident. And I did it wrong.

As I chopped each vegetable, I put it in a bowl. When I was done, I mixed them all together--I liked the color of them and how they all looked so nice together. Plus, it's not often I get to cook with fresh green beans, so I was enjoying that.



But once I did this, I read, "Fry carrots first, then add remaining vegetables." And I was going to be damned if I was going to pick out all those little carrots that I'd so thinly and lovingly sliced up. So I just threw them all in together. Basically, it was carrots, red pepper, and green beans. I heated the oil and put in some garlic, which I let soften and then I fried the veggies for 2 minutes or so, before it was time to make the sauce.

The sauce was comprised of a little bit of cornstarch dissolved into some chicken broth, to which was added a little bit of superfine sugar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. I mixed it all up and poured it over the veggies, letting it cook down a bit and thicken up to a nice sauce. It smelled so great that I had a feeling it was going to be a homerun. Of course the recipe said, "Serve immediately" but that was impossible due to the fact that the rest of dinner was not even close to ready. So I clamped a lid on the pot and threw it in the oven to wait it out.



One of the reasons I have trouble with cooking more than one thing at a time is that my work space is approximately 3 feet square. The ingredients pictures I take are taken on what amounts to all the counterspace I have for cooking. The area to the left past the kitchen sink is taken up by the mixer, canisters, coffee pot, and to the right past the stove is where I set up my electric frying pan, which is often in use for these recipes. If I'm not using the stove top, I'll put the electric frying pan on the stove and give myself a little more room to work. Otherwise, space is at an ultimate premium.

Anyway, I digress. Time to make the pork! Another lightning fast recipe, this one involving pork tenderloin. (I was in such a rush, the ingredient photo is blurry--SORRY! Man, that pisses me off.) Anyway, the basic gist of this one is that you fry up some onions and garlic, slice up some pork tenderloin, fry it up, put it and the onions together in the pot, and put some sauce on it. The longest part of making this was frying the pork.

I dredged the pork in a little bit of cornstarch--the recipe called for something called 'corn flour', which I hope is what cornstarch is because that's what I used. The sole mistake I made in this recipe was that I fried the onions in garlic in the full amount of oil called for the whole dish, as opposed to the one tablespoon. However, I was able to salvage the oil when I drained off the onions and not have to use more.

Before and after shots of the beautiful pork

The last picture there shows the pork in the sauce, which I made by just mixing together hoisin sauce, plum sauce, a little bit of sugar, and some soy sauce, and pouring it over the pork and letting it thicken.

It was at this point, I was starting to notice a disturbing side effect of working with all this hot oil, which is that my kitchen was beginning to look as if it had been at the Exxon Valdez spill site. There was oil EVERYWHERE. I need to get one of those spatter guards. It was crazy. My new cookbook--thank God I only paid $5 for it--it's totally wrecked with oil. If you look at the next picture, you'll see it everywhere.

On to Japan and the chicken! I put the pork in the oven with the veggies and turned my attention to the Japanese section of the cookbook. We had decided to make chicken teriyaki from Japan. I would have been willing to be a bit more adventurous with something like udon soup, which I know my friend Joe LOVES and it'd be nice to know how to make it for him, or something else, but in fairness, I also have to cook for my audience, and my audience declared chicken teriyaki the most acceptable of the recipes from Japan, so that's what we decided to have. The recipe, again, was super simple--a minimum of ingredients and a minimum of fuss, but this time there was about 40 minutes of actual cooking. Consequently, we decided to have a "chicken course" later--i.e. I would dish up the Chinese food as soon as I got the chicken cooking.

It was time to make the sauce for the chicken. The sauce called for soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Basically, you boil it until the sugar breaks down and it gets a bit thick and then pour it over the chicken, which you have fried up in (what else?) oil. I decided to use the superfine sugar since I already had it out and it seemed like it would not be as grainy, even though it was supposed to melt anyway. I cooked it all down and whisked the heck out of it with my whisk, and it was done!

Meanwhile, I'd been frying up some chicken drumsticks. Now, here again is where we are going to have to start taking creative license with these recipes. None of us likes chicken with skin and bones on/in it. However, I wanted to stay true to the recipe, so I used drumsticks. I think I'm going to have to start sticking with boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs. Just my thoughts on the matter. Because we've just gotten so used to eating chicken that way that to eat otherwise is unappealing to all of us.

Anyway, I fried up the chicken legs and poured the sauce over them. Then I clamped the lid on the pan and let it simmer for 20 minutes while we ate. It was time to call the troops to dinner and get ready to eat!



Up first was pork with plum sauce, stir fried vegetables, and brown rice. Everything smelled great, so I was definitely hopeful that we would have a great meal. I had inadvertantly forgotten to make the ever present mashed potatoes however! The General really wanted mashed potatoes, so I jumped up and put them on the stove to cook before we got down to business and ate. Fortunately those little instant mashed potatoes cook up pretty quick, but I wasn't waiting before we ate. He'd just have to get his potatoes in a bit. Of course we had to photograph the ceremonial first bite. The General declared it "Good". Then he made a terrible face and said, "This is the face he makes when he likes something!" So I took a picture of that face and here it is:



Then it was time for the rest of us to have a plate and dig in! I am not exagerrating in the least when I say that we were very nearly licking the plate that the pork was on. It was so freaking good. We ate all the onions, we ate the pork, we scraped the sauce onto the rice. It's a shame that tenderloin was only 1 pound, we could very easily have eaten twice that much. The veggies were excellent too, but the pork was a total homerun. We will definitely be incorporating that into our regular menus, no doubt about it.

By the time we'd finished, the chicken was done. It smelled really good, but when we actually ate it, it didn't taste like anything all that special--just tasted like chicken. It was unfair to eat it after we'd devoured the pork so voraciously and it was so flavorful. I got a little of the teriyaki sauce from the pan and poured it over the chicken and it helped, but it was such an anemic flavor compared to the pork, that it was not something we ate. We each picked at a leg, gazing longingly at the now-empty pork plate, and then gave up. I cunningly packed all the legs into a to go box for them to take home. Mwahahaha

So that was our most recent trip around the orient, bringing our total countries to 11. We are now more than 13% done with our quest to travel the world, and by and large, it's gone very, very well. We've both tried new things and made old things a new way, and it's been a lot of fun! We have a request in for Trinidad, which I am researching and this weekend we will hit SWITZERLAND! Wahooo! I also got a pile of actual recipes from Israel, so I'm trying to decide which one of them to prepare. Stay tuned!

And I would Walk Five Hundred...

This post marks historic post number 500. Yup. If you've been with me from the beginning, or if you're some sort of masochist with nothing better to do and have read all my posts, you have read 500 of my greatest hits. What's taken place in the course of those 500 gems?

* I broke my leg.
* I did Relay for Life.
* We've traveled to Georgia, North and South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Florida, and Kentucky
* Mike's had a driving lesson
* I've met Alton Brown, Stephen Schwartz, Dave Barry, Michael Ian Black, Christopher Plummer, Alan Alda, Caroline Kennedy, Christopher Buckley, Andy Rooney, Rachel Ray, Paula Deen, Jodi Piccoult, Laurie Notaro, and Dog the Bounty Hunter
* I've met and been befriended by the Glecks
* I've become even closer with the General's Chief Honey, Annette
* I joined WW and lost 60 pounds
* I've got a new car
* I've marched in a pile of war protests
* I shook hands with Barack Obama
* I started the Kosior Fall Fun Festival
* I've been cooking the hell out of my kitchen
* A new baby is on the way
* Found homes for new baby rabbits
* I've won NaNoWriMo 3 times
* I've gotten a Wii
* I've volunteered at NPR a bunch of times
* I've been hurt
* I joined a photography club and had my pictures featured online at Gather.com
* I've seen New Kids, Rod Stewart, Billy Joel, Kenny G and others in concert, and been to see Prairie Home Companion taped live several times
* My confidence was irrevocably boosted by a tubing trip
* I've ben featured in our local paper twice--once for reading and once for cooking. How great is that?!

It's not easy keeping up a blog. Writing is a lot of work and the entries take up a lot of my time. Often, there are posts not written and things not said, sometimes for personal reasons, sometimes for a lack of time or desire to write. Right now, I've got 2 entries banging about in my head, and I'm hoping I'll get them written. The blog is a lot of fun for me to look back over, and I've got my old entries from my first blog, way back in the day, which is no longer in existence. These are fun, in lieu of scrapbooks and diaries, which I suck at maintaining, and not only do I get to write things, you all get to add to my experience as I read your comments and think about what everyone's said. Yes, I've branched out to other blogs--notably the WW blog and the baby blog. By nature, I'm a compartmentalizer and I like things in their place. Still, I don't think that has detracted from this blog in any way, or at least, I hope it hasn't!

I hope you all have enjoyed the first 500 posts, and I hope there are 500 more in me. I plan to make it to at least 502. After that, we'll see what happens! Thanks for being here (and other places) with me on the journey.

Reading & Watching Revolutionary Road

Last night, the General and I had a little Thursday night date night. We've both been a little (lot) tense about the adoption and needed something to do together that we could relax and unwind. We had both decided to sort of skip Valentine's Day this year--no need to purchase overpriced flowers and chocolates when we have so many other things to do with our money. But at the same time, we wanted to celebrate somehow.

I've spent the last 8 days of my driving life reading Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road. And of course, Kate Winslet won the Golden Globe for her portrayal of April Wheeler in this film. And although she didn't get an Oscar nod for it, many people thought she should. Well, as I was reading the book, a single thought kept coming to me: how the hell did they turn this into a movie?

So I finished reading it Wednesday (and, coincidentally, started on The Reader by Bernard Schlink, whose main character Kate Winslet did win an Oscar nod for protraying and she better win, darn it!) and decided I just had to see the movie. Now of course, I'm a wee bit behind the eight ball on this one--the movie's been out quite a while. So when I looked at the movie listings, I had exactly one time to choose from in Fredericksburg for Wednesday and Thursday nights before it left the theater: 9pm.

Well, this would have been OK for me, but it's been a long time since we've been to the movies and the General was hot on going with me and so we decided to turn it into a Valentine's Day date. We looked at the listings in Woodbridge and fortunately at Potomac Mills last night, it was showing at 7pm. We decided to kick it off with dinenr at the Silver Diner and then went to the 7pm show--getting home before 10 which allowed me to still do my workout :-)

So, a brief synopsis for anyone who doesn't know what the book is about. The story centers around Frank and April Wheeler (played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), a young couple who move to the Connecticut suburbs after meeting in post WWII New York, falling hastily in love, and finding themselves expecting a baby. Frank takes a job at the same company where his father worked, while April busies herself as a housewife. Some years after, with two children, the Wheelers come to see their lives as a trap they've fallen into, and start to wonder if there is any kind of meaning in it, or if they can escape before it's too late.

I'm glad I read the book first, but I'm equally glad I saw the movie. The book spends the majority of its life plunged deep inside Frank's head, examining his thoughts and feelings about everything and everyone, and his motives are crystal clear. April's thoughts are clear, but only as an extension of Frank's own. There is very little actual 'action' to the book--Frank goes to work, April visits with the neighbors, Frank and April go dancing with their friends--the majority of it is truly their disappointment in their lives.

I don't know why, but in reading the book, I felt completely disconnected from the Wheelers. I didn't find them sympathetic characters, I didn't love them or hate them, I just felt total apathy. As they did certain things in the book, I was kind of like, "What the hell!?" but not in a way that made me seriously incensed by the fact that they'd done anything--just that in the overall scheme of things, nothing seemed like it was done because either of them thought that it would improve their lives.

This was the beauty of seeing the film. I was able to relate more to the characters and come to have feelings for them. I do quibble with the choice of Kathy Bates as the neighbor, Mrs. Givings, and frankly whenever I look at Leonardo DiCaprio, I see a 12 year old boy (hate him for that! He and Matthew Broderick never seem to age.), but the acting was excellent. I am pleased to note that Michael Shannon is up for an Oscar for his portrayal of John Givings, Mrs. Givings's crazy son. He was jaw-droppingly fantastic in that role. As was Dylan Baker as Frank's obnoxious co-worker, Jack Ordway.

I will say that the writers stayed as true as I think would be possible in bringing the book to the big screen. There were 2 scenes in particular that I had some issues with their changing, one of which was the very last 20 minutes, and the other which was when April and her neighbor Shep are in the car after a dance. The things that they left out were central to the very core of who April was, in my opinion and had they left in a couple of things, you would have gotten a much better sense of what was going on in her head.

That being said, seeing it acted out did make it all the better. There were times in the book when I would think, "They did what?!" But seeing it made a bit more sense. For instance, in the beginning of both the book and the film (and I'm not giving anything away here), Frank and April are driving home from a play in which April has acted and they start to argue. Frank pulls the car over on the side of the road and April jumps out of the car and the two of them proceed to scream at each other in a big dust up on the side of the road. And I remember the whole time thinking, "Seriously? People actually do this type of thing?" But actually, in the film, it doesn't really seem so weird.

The movie ended and the General said, "On the way home, you're going to have to explain a few things to me." And in fact, I did and to him that made the movie make a whole lot more sense. But because I had the novel's picture of what was going on in their heads, I was able to make sense of it for him and now he's interested in reading the book. So I think that will be a new project for him--I gave him the CD's to read.

If you haven't already seen the movie, do yourself a favor and read the book first. Despite my apathy towards the characters, I really, really enjoyed reading the book, and consequently, I really, really enjoyed the movie.

I'll have to see The Reader on DVD, as it doesn't appear to be playing around here any more. And I will probably miss the Oscars telecast as we'll be driving home from WV that day, but I'll be rooting for Kate all the way. She deserves it!

Dear CP BB

Dear Central Park Best Buy:

I want to thank you for the lack of service your team has provided to me over the course of the past year. If I'm not mistaken, to date your team's service procedures have probably cost you somewhere in the realm of $500.

Take this weekend, for instance. Sunday, we got the Best Buy circular in the mail and saw that you were having a nice monitor on sale for $129.00. We thought we'd go buy it, since my husband's monitor has been on the blink for some time now. We arrived an hour after the store opened, found the monitor on display with the advertised price, and waited while the Blue Shirt Cronies of Best Buy assisted a whole pile of other customers. Finally, one guy pawned us off on another guy, who checked his computer, announced that the monitor in question was out of stock, probably due to the fact that it was being discontinued, and that we could possibly get one at the Stafford store or if not, they'd have them in Springfield.

Um, what?

Do you mean to tell me that you are advertising products that aren't even being made, that your stores have no intention of selling? And what's more, you're displaying them on shelves?

To make matters worse, this is the second time in 6 months that we've gone into this particular store to buy a monitor on the day it appeared in the paper, only to be told that the monitor in question was out of stock.

Really? Why do you keep advertising them? Why are you advertising products you have no intention of stocking or selling?

Additionally, I was totally dismissed a mere two months ago when I attempted to find out about the purchase of satellite radio for my husband's Christmas present. The child working the car electronics section of the store literally gave me 30 seconds of his time to basically tell me no information whatsoever about the programming, much less the equipment, and then turned to work with another customer, who I suppose looks more likely to purchase something than I did.

In the past month, I've also been sent on a wild goose chase around the store to find an external card reader for my camera's memory card. No one knew where they were in three different sections of the store, including at the returns/exchange desk where I had turned in the internal card reader to swap for the external.

Let's not even get started on the dude you sent to my house to hook up my new TV a couple of years ago who ripped out a few wires, told me my TV was fixed and disappeared. And it took you another week to get anyone out to fix what he had undone and the first words out of their mouths when they got behind the TV to set it up were, "What the hell did Jesse do here?!" They were the only Best Buy employees I've actually felt didn't treat me like a dumb ass simply because I'm a woman, and apparently not a wealthy-looking one at that.

Well, screw you and your stupid monitors. I came home and bought the exact same monitor on Amazon.com for an amazing $97.00. It came with free shipping and was delivered direct to my front door. And I didn't have to deal with any annoying sales pitch about warranties or any of that crap either. Too bad Circuit City is going out of business. I'll always have Amazon.

Adios from an iPod listenin', plasma TV watchin', computer usin', digital picture takin', cell phone callin', Wii playin' disgruntled customer,
S. C. Kosior

80 Plates: Rule Brittania!

So this weekend's two countries, as stated, were Israel and England. I have since discovered that my dish from Israel wasn't so much Israeli as it was Jewish, so I think I'm going to have to have a do-over of Israel. As for England, it represented a true success and a true failure, the failure of which was a bit disheartening as I am a real tried and true daughter of England. And there is a recipe that has always been one that I have always thought I would very much like to try, but never have: beef wellington. I am a devotee of puff pastry, and I figured you wrap it around some beef and voila. Oh no. No, no, no. It's not that easy.

I decided I was going to try Paul Burrell's recipe from his book In the Royal Manner. Burrell for many years was Princess Diana's butler and is vilified for being a total sell out after her death. I have 2 copies of this particular book, one of which is autographed and I keep under wraps. I pulled out the other copy, but I noted with some disdain that the recipe was for mini beef wellingtons, and quite frankly, I wanted to go whole hog and make a big one, and also that it called for foie gras.

Ok, well, I did not know this about beef wellington. So I quickly defected from Mr. Burrell and went to Darren McGrady's book Eating Royally. McGrady, you will recall from my review of this book last year, was Diana's personal chef and also a chef for the entire royal family during his career before moving to the US. He had a recipe for a big beef wellington, but also his called for foie gras.

Crap. Well, that was not going to happen. Although I can actually get foie gras at my local supermarket, I have some issues with forcefeeding ducks until they die just so they have plump livers. Yes, you can make the argument that the cow was probably unhappy to face its end so unceremoniously, but at least it wasn't forcefed with a metal tube that could have punctured its esophagus. Still, I decided to put it to a vote--if the General wanted to try it, then I'd buy some and put it in there. But I wasn't going to like it. The conversation went a bit something like this:

Me: Darling, what's your opinion on having foie gras with dinner?
Him: Foie gras? Don't believe I know the chap.
Me: Oh, you know darling, foie gras. It's made of duck liver or sommat...
Him: Go on. Pull the other one then.
Me: No, truly.
Him: Well, if it's all the same to you, I mean...
Me: Right-o, darling.

Well, if we lived in England, that could have happened. What actually happened was:

Me: Honey, the beef wellington has foie gras in it.
Him: What the hell is foie gras?
Me: Duck liver pate.
Him: Like hell it is.
Me: Seriously.
Him: I'm not eating that.
Me: Yeah, me either.

And thus the matter was decided.

Everything else I was completely faithful to.

Sunday morning, I headed out for my supply procurement expedition. I hit Giant first, by virtue of the fact that it is closest. And then I nearly had a heart attack.

I needed 3 pounds of center cut beef tenderloin. Giant's price!? $14.99 per pound.

"Go on. Pull the other one then."

Seriously!? You have to be the Queen of England to afford $45 dollars for beef for one freakin' meal! This is a week when we needed very few groceries, fortunately, but I can assure you, there's no way I'm spending $45 on some beef. I don't care if that was the happiest cow on the planet before he surrendered to his fate. Sorry.

I looked around desperately for other options. Of course, as you well know by now, I know absolutely nothing about cuts of beef. And nothing appeared even remotely do-able. So I went home to think about it. My dad called. He suggested I should get a boneless prime rib. The General and I pondered the matter over breakfast and the Sunday paper. We were looking at the ads for Best Buy, as he needs a new monitor (that's another story in itself), and we decided to go over to Central Park. I figured I could try Shoppers for the beef while we were there. I also needed a souffle dish for the pudding. (more on that later as well)

Although my dad was skeptical that Shoppers might come through ("Really, Cheese, they specialize in very cheap cuts of meat"), I was undeterred, and Shoppers proved my faithfulness was well placed. I got 2 1/3 pounds of beef tenderloin for about $20. I have no idea if it was center cut or not, but the savings made me very happy. After a quick stop at Target, where I used the money I saved on a souffle dish by Corningware, It was time to go home and cook.

On one of the pages near to Beef Wellington in Eating Royally was a recipe for Andrassy Pudding. A chocolate souffle topped by a rich chocolate frosting, I thought this would be a great way to add a dessert into the mix--I don't believe we have done a dessert yet. I have always wanted to learn to make a souffle, and the directions in the book assured that this was a good one to start with, as if it falls, it's fine, you're going to let it fall anyway. Perfect, I figured! So, I decided to make that first, since baking was involved and I knew I would need the oven later for the beef. The ingredient list was pretty simple: butter, sugar, flour, cocoa, cream, milk, and lots and lots of eggs. I combined the dry ingredients--sugar, flour, and cocoa--and added them to a half stick of melted butter in a sauce pan, where they promptly formed a muddy paste.



However, the next step was to whisk in some milk, which made everything go nice and smoothly. It turned into a lovely smelling, smooth mixture, a lot like I suppose hot chocolate might be like if it had flour in it. Per the directions, I took it off the heat and poured it into a bowl to cool while I beat some egg whites into stiff peaked submission. And, if I may, I'd just like to take a chance to re-iterate how much I love my mixer. It's one amazing piece of machinery. It took no time to whip egg whites.



So that done, it was time to butter the living hell out of the souffle dish, which I enjoyed. Normally I don't like getting my hands greasy, but I was feeling optimistic about this souffle, so I enjoyed it very much. Then, I began to carefully fold everything together, and then poured it into the dish.



I baked it up and voila! I MADE SOUFFLE!!!!!!!!! It puffed up beautifully, cracked a bit on top! I was stoked! Not only had I conquered crepes, I conquered souffle, and I did it all in one day!



Per the directions again, I let it cool a bit and then slid a knife around the outside and then flipped it onto a cooling rack to fully cool. That it did not fall apart, I took to be a very good sign. But it was at this time I realized I was running dangerously short on eggs. Remember in an earlier episode when I stated there are certain things we just don't keep around the house because we don't tend to use them very often? Well, eggs is one of those things. However, the souffle part of the pudding called for a full dozen of them, which fortunately I had the foresight to purchase, and the beef needed some too, as did the 'frosting' part of the pudding. When I began this day, I had 17 eggs in my fridge. By the end of the day, I had zero, and I had used up my egg beaters too!!

However, this was to be the last good news on this pudding, which went on to turn into my first kitchen failure. However, my good friends Elizabeth and Jacalyn/Lady Ozma have informed me that I really should report on my failures as well as my successes, and so, despite my desperate need for all of you to think I am the perfect chef, I am going to report on the full treachery of this pudding. Later.

But isn't she a beauty?

For now, it was time to turn my attention back to the beef. I gathered up all my ingredients again and laid them out. The first thing I had to do was to make a paste out of a pound of portabella mushrooms. Knowing that they would be turned into a paste, I decided to get baby bellas, which I cleaned and then naively crammed into the food processor.



Note to self: the food processor is a powerful tool capable of annihilating many ingredients. It was not, however, designed to do a full pound of mushrooms all at once. So basically, after letting it run a good 4 minutes, I wound up with paste on the bottom and whole mushrooms on top. I had to pull the whole thing apart, scoop out the paste, slice up the mushrooms so that more would fit in near the blades, run it again, scoop out more paste, cram in more mushrooms, and so on until they were a nice mushy paste. Also, it should be noted that the feed chute for your food processor was not really designed to stick the handle of a spatula down to "try and stir things up a bit". There is a high probability that the food processor will not like this.


Isn't the color of the paste beautifully rich?

Then I hacked up some onions and sauteed them in more butter. When this was completed, I added the mushroom paste and let the whole thing cook until "the mushrooms release their liquid and the pan runs relatively dry."

This seemed like it would take a while, so I decided to turn my attention to the beef. If I'm being perfectly honest, I'm not that crazy about how raw beef smells, and also thinking about those poor little ducks got me to thinking about the poor little cow, and I got a little teary eyed over this tenderloin, which is not a happy looking piece of meat. I mixed up a spice rub of dry mustard, celery seed, and salt and fresh ground pepper and rubbed that beef down, giving it a final massage on its journey to becoming food. Then I put it into the only frying pan I had that was even remotely large enough to handle the task of searing the whole thing, which was my electric frying pan.




Yeah, for a cut of beef, it looks kind of hideous

While it may not have looked too pretty, I will say, the smell of it was FANTASTIC. The General came downstairs, stood in the doorway of the kitchen and just inhaled. We both did. It smelled amazing.

Ok, so then it was time to turn my attention back to the mushrooms, which I figured were in pretty good shape by now. I added some heavy cream to them, along with some Worcestershire sauce, and let them cook up a bit more while I rolled out the puff pastry into what I hoped was a large enough rectangle to cover this whole thing.



After that, the hard part was done, if you can call it hard. It really wasn't that challenging. There was a lot to do, but not anything difficult. I had the pastry on the counter, and then smeared it with the mushroom and onion mixture. Then I put the beef on top of the mushrooms and brushed the edges of the pastry with the egg beaters.



After that was completed, all that was left was to basically folded the pastry up, over, and around the beef and kind of seal it, and then brush it with more egg. Then I put it in the oven and finished cleaning up the dishes while preparing the rest of the side dishes. In this case, I acquiesced to the General's demands for mashed potatoes and I added a side of peas.

I decided to bake the beef on a piece of parchment paper, figuring that it would a) be less likely to stick, b) be easier to clean up, and c) make it easier to lift and transfer the beef from the pan to the cutting surface. It turned out I was correct on all accounts, and I highly recommend doing this if you don't have one of those lovely little silicon mats, which I don't. The beef looked glorious when I removed it from the oven. There was some moisture in the bottom of the pan, which I took to mean that I probably had not let the mushrooms cook up enough to really get good and dry, something I would do if I make this again in the future.



It was time to dish up and eat! I decided to get a little bit creative with my mashed potatoes and my Pampered Chef scoop, in honor of the Pampered Chef party last night, and I made a little daisy out of my mashed potatoes. Oh c'mon, you love it! The General just got a mound of potatoes, but I got a flower. It also made my meager serving of potatoes seem like more than they were, which is always a good thing. I expect mashed potato daisies to be all the rage in haute cuisine in the very near future. The beef sliced up beautifully--it was so tender. I cut off the two ends, as they contained only mushrooms and pastry, but I'll be quite honest--I ate the end later and it was amazing. The only thing I thought was that it was a bit salty, which was when I discovered I had used celery salt, not celery seed as I thought I had done. So read those labels carefully when buying this stuff at the store!

I asked The General to give me a thumbs up after he assured me that he liked it, so here he is giving the dish a positive review while not pausing to pose. He wanted to eat, damn it!



After supper, we cleaned up and the General requested that I put some beef in his lunch for the next day. Mind you, this beef was LOADED with mushrooms and onions. There is hope for picky eaters yet!

Ok, so I cleaned up everything and then it was time to turn my attention to the frosting for the pudding. I had actually made it earlier in the day, combining more flour, cocoa, and sugar with heavy cream, butter, and eggs. It was supposed to sit, so I wasn't too concerned with the fact that it seemed very, very soupy. However, as I returned to it at 8:00 that evening, it was still very, very soupy. I decided to make up some whipped cream, as the recipe said it should be served with whipped cream, so while my mixer was quickly making delicious clouds of cream, I debated the problem with the 'frosting soup'. Clearly, I had forgotten to put something in. I re-read the ingredient list and could not find a single thing I had missed. I went through it line by line and nothing seemed amiss.

I sliced up the souffle, and I was supposed to spread the frosting on the cut part. But there was no way it was going to spread. Honestly, it would have soaked right through. I was also left with another problem: the souffle, when sliced, was falling apart. It was very, very moist in the middle--not underdone, but just very moist--and when I pulled off the top half, it broke. I managed to sort of push it back together on the cooling rack, but this was devolving rapidly.

Ultimately, I decided that what I should do was to fold the chocolate mixture in with the whipped cream. Unfortunately, it was so thin that it really turned the whipped cream into soup too. But even more unpleasantly, some of the cream refused to give in and formed little clumps in the overall mess, so I had a kind of chunky tan mass. But there really wasn't anything to do with it, so I decided to just put it on the souffle and hope for the best. I poured some of it onto the bottom layer, and as you can see, it started to run out all over the place. After this picture was taken, it made a break for the counters even.

In for a penny, in for a pound, so I then picked up the entire cooling rack, said a prayer, and flipped. Well, when a fairly heavy substance hits a fairly soupy substance, you can imagine one result and one result only: splatter. I didn't get a picture of it, but there was soup in the toaster. Ugh. I was getting kind of upset now. I had been looking forward to this chocolate fantasticness for some time, and it was rapidly turning into something horrible. The cake was falling apart, the sauce was going everywhere. Ugh. I poured the rest of the cream over it and quickly snapped a picture, then called the General.



I mean seriously, could it look worse?

We 'cut' into it with a spoon and scooped out a couple of servings. And I have to say, despite its spectacular failure, it tasted delicious. It was chocolately and sweet without being too sweet or too rich. It really was an amazing dessert and I think I will try making it again without messing up the frosting this time! Because, you see, it occurred to me in the middle of the night that what I'd done wrong was to put in 1/4 cup of flour and not 1 1/4 cups of flour. And that clearly made all the difference.

Sadly, we had to put the rest of it down the disposal. While we were eating, it just literally fall apart and went everywhere. I've never had such a chocolatey mess to clean up!

I have lots more recipes to try from this book, but these are the two I'll count from England! Great success and great failure, but everything tasted great, as usual. And if Mikey likes it...

80 Plates: Ukraine Delight

Note: I have changed this dish to being Ukrainian after some additional research and comments about the history of the blintz. However, I'm leaving the rest of it be, as I am lazy and don't feel like editing out information about Israel. Sue me.

Today, we wanted to get two countries in, because we've been slacking off a little and don't have a clear goal for February! The General had picked our next country, Israel, which I thought might be a little complicated, but I also thought it could be fun. I do have a cookbook that my friend Joe gave me. He works for BBYO, Bnai-Brith Youth Organization (or as I seriously mistakenly speculated it stood for, Bring Back Yiddish Opera). However, as I was reading through Red, White and Blueberry: Kosher Cooking in Our Nation's Capitol, it became apparent that there was no real food in it from Israel. Unless suddenly Israel is known for its beef asian pasta salad.

So, I was forced to go back on line and do some research, which suggested that there is no such thing as native Israeli cuisine. It's more that there's Jewish food. So, we read through a pile of recipes and we decided to go with blintzes, which was satisfactory in two regards:

1. It is a Jewish food and thus probably quite popular in Israel
2. I have been dying to learn how to make crepes for a while, which is basically what a blintz is.

I found a couple of recipes, but ultimately combined one from the Recipe Hound with one from The Yeshua Connection. You can find the one from the Yeshua Connection HERE, and I only took one step from the Recipe Hound, which I will explain towards the end. (And yes, I realize I didn't 'face' the butter box properly. Get over it. :-D)

Now, I was slightly nervous about preparing the filling, which is step one on your way to making blintzes. We were having cheese blintzes, which is a cream cheese mixture and rather sweet. However, the recipe called for one thing that I absolutely have no desire to eat, despite never having eaten it before: cottage cheese.

Just looking at cottage cheese makes me break out in a sweat. I don't like that curdy texture of it, and I really can't imagine it going into my mouth. It makes my blood freeze in my veins. I know plenty of dieters who swear by it, but it is most definitely not for me. On the other hand, the General has been extremely daring during this entire experiment. He has tried a lot of new foods and frankly, I find that to be inspiring from a guy I couldn't pay to eat Chinese food when we first started dating (we've been laughing about this all week). So I decided to go for it. However, cottage cheese and I were going to have to come to an understanding. So I put it in my food processor and processed the hell out of it until all the lumps were gone and a nice, creamy mass remained.

Bye bye, Lumps!

That taken care of, I decided to just blend everything together in the food processor today. Consequently, I added neufchatel (in place of regular cream cheese), sugar, vanilla, and an egg yolk. I put the food processor on and let it ride. What emerged was a delightfully snowy looking concoction that I absolutely refused to taste on the off-chance that the cottage cheese had somehow contaminated the other ingredients and would cloud my judgment against the entire dish. But, it smelled really good and it looked good, so I was guardedly optimistic that it'd be something I'd like. I put it in the refrigerator and got to work on the pancake part of the blintzes.

I realized after writing my last post about using my grandmother's kitchen tools that I actually have a good bit of her stuff still in my kitchen. I find this kind of funny, as I don't remember her being an exceptional cook or even really enjoying cooking. Yet I find myself with (among other things) her strainer, her wooden spoon and slotted spoon, her crock pot, and--most useful for today's recipe--her blender. They don't make blenders like this any more. As you can see from the picture, this dinosaur of a blender, this old man of the kitchen was built to last. In avocado green, with a heavy duty glass pitcher, this thing was made before plugs had two different sized prongs. It has survived my dad's orange fizzy drinks, it has survived 5 or 6 moves, and I'm willing to bet it could survive a nuclear holocaust. But when you turn it on, it purrs like a kitten. It's really not that loud at all--which was important this morning, because a certain resident of our household decided to sleep in. I love this blender.

And so I decided to use it to make the blintzes, which were actually quite easy. Step one was to beat together eggs, oil, and milk.



I let it whir around happily and then added some flour and a bit of salt. I turned it back on and let it whir like crazy. And then I bravely took the lid off while the blender was blending and shot this really cool picture of my blender in action.


Can you feel the power?

Ok, so then it was time for the batter to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Just enough time for me to finish reading the book I picked up yesterday at B&N: Passive-Aggressive Notes: Painfully Polite and Hilariously Hostile Writings by Kerry Miller. Apparently there is a website full of these things. The book made me laugh till I cried. And then I did 10 minutes of Wii Fit step aerobics.

By then, it was time to steel my courage to the sticking place and learn to make a crepe/blintz. Yesterday, I had picked up a small, non-stick frying pan. My pans are all quite large and my smallest one was not non-stick. I didn't want to invest a lot of money in this pan for one recipe--although who knows, I may need it for other things--so I got it cheap at WalMart and am happy with it. It's a nice little pan.

So, I put it on the stove over medium heat and put in a small pat of butter. I let the butter melt, and then I measured out 2 teaspoons of batter, although the recipe said 1 1/2 was as much as I'd need. Well, as you can see, it turned into a hot mess. Either there was too much butter or not enough batter. Or both. In any event, this did not bode well. The whole thing was a sticky, greasy mess. I scraped it into the sink, took a deep breath, and tried again. This time I used less butter and more batter, and in the pan, the results looked much better. Rather than a mess of batter floating in a pool of better, the proportions came out just perfectly.



I liked the feel of rotating the pan to get the batter to go all the way around. It worked like a charm. And since I only had to cook one side of the blintz, I could just flip the pan over and the blintz would fall onto the wax paper I had laid on the countertop. Voila! A perfect blintz. I would say this second one remained a little tricky in just making sure that it got cooked properly. You want to cook it until it's golden brown on the bottom, but it stays kind of moist on top. I just waited until it pulled away from the sides of the pan and then lifted one edge to test its doneness. That worked very well.

In short order, I had 10 of those little babies cooked up right. The next step was to take the filling and fill them. The recipe called for 1-2 tablespoons of filling per wrapper, and I would guess I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons. I didn't measure, instead using a soup spoon from our kitchen cutlery. I spooned the filling onto the cooked side of the wrapper, folded in the ends, and rolled them up nicely. I soon had a beautiful pan of ten ready to go into the oven. As you can see, I inadvertantly wrapped one inside out. But it didn't matter, it was totally fine in the end.

The oven heated to 375, the phone rang. It was my dad. He and I chatted while I waited for sleepy head to wake up and then I figured I would have about 20 minutes to bake the blintzes, which was how long they needed. And would you know, I was spot on!? I put them in as soon as I heard the General head out of the bedroom into the bathroom, and as he came downstairs all dressed nice, he was greeted by the smell of fresh blintzes hot from the oven. This is the one step I took from Recipe Hound--the outside of the blintzes looked so uncooked that I just felt like they needed to be cooked up a little bit more.



I guess visually they don't look all that different pre and post oven.

I didn't take any pictures of us eating these. We're not really at our best in the mornings. Well, I'm not anyway. The General pretty much looks good any time, day or night. He absolutely loved these little honeys. He had 4 of them for breakfast, exclaiming all the while how great they were.

I thought they were fine. I'm not generally a fan of big globs of cream cheesy things unless it's actual cheesecake. I ate one of them, and it took me as long to eat that one as it took him to eat 4--and I should point out that he is a very slow eater, and in general, I am a very quick eater. I think I would have liked them better with some fruit or something on or in them, and I notice among the variations of blintzes that are suggested, apple blintzes is a recommendation. That might be pretty good. I liked them well enough, I just didn't love them. It was too much white stuff. Still, I did try a food that was far outside my comfort zone and I felt great about that.

However, SUCCESS at making a crepe! It boosted my confidence in the kitchen a good bit, conquering that hurdle, something I've often thought about cooking but never had. So a great morning! For dinner, we traveled to England, which I will post shortly. If anyone is disappointed in this choice and has a recipe they consider more authentically Israeli, feel free to drop me a line with a recipe!

Today is THAT Day

You know what day I mean. The day we can finally throw open the windows and doors and let in the fresh air.

It's heaven in my house. Absolute heaven.

10 Years!

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the General's and my first date. We met at 10:00AM in Newport RI at the Tennis Hall of Fame. While we lived in New England, we would take the day every February 5th and recreate our first date--walking the Cliffwalk in February is COLD, but it was unseasonably warm in 1999 and with a sweater and warm coats, we enjoyed ourselves in the sun.

It's absolutely freezing this morning in Virginia, but we're feeling warm and snug in our house. We've both taken the day to spend together, but aren't sure what we can do to celebrate. Ten years is an achievement. He's put up with me for a very, very long time. I don't know why, but I'm grateful.

I don't think either of us could have imagined the twists and turns life would throw at us over the past ten years. This time 10 years ago, I was living at home in New York, substitute teaching at my old school, planning my move to Arkansas. In the ten years that followed, we've lived in 6 different homes in 2 different states (two of which we owned), I've had 5 different jobs and he's had 3 different jobs, we're on our third car, we took our first real vacation and many trips to the beach besides, we met our best friends, and now we've got a little one on the way.

We used to play a game, "Where will we be in five years?" We've stopped even trying to guess. It's an adventure. Can't wait to see where it leads.

Question

Am I the only one who finds this whole Christian Bale thing incredibly pathetic and yet undeniably hilarious?

UPDATE: For my oh-so-out-of-it-pop-culturally friends, here's a link. It's NSFW. http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2009/02/asshole-of-day-christian-bale-nsfw.html. You may remember that last year, Christian Bale was arrested for allegedly beating up his mother and sister in a hotel room.

Book Club Adventures

Last night was the latest Lit Chicks meeting, and for our dinner theme we were tasked with bringing food that was associated with a happy memory. One of my happiest memory foods is chicken cordon bleu. I have 2 great memories of it.

1. When I was 15, I went to Europe for 3 weeks with the Girl Scouts. On the Germany leg of our trip, we took a trip to see a portion of the Berlin Wall that was still standing. (This was 1991) It was July, it was warm, and we had to do a LOT of walking to get out to where the wall was. On our way back, we were all hot and tired and wanted to just find someplace to get a cold drink and eat something. So we happened upon a little cafe out there in the middle of nowhere and we decided to go into the courtyard. The people who owned it came out and they did not speak English, and we did not speak German. So they took the whole group of us into the kitchen, opened up the freezer, and we all pointed to the same thing, which they prepared. And it turned out to be chicken cordon bleu. And it was delicious!

2. When I was living in Arkansas, The General came to visit me for Columbus Day. I wanted to cook him a really special dinner for his last night there, and I'm not sure why, but chicken cordon bleu popped into my head. I came up with my own way of putting it altogether and frying it up, and I have to say, it was DELICIOUS. And after dinner, he proposed. :-) Awwww... I feel all smiley and mushy just thinking about it.

So, my plan was that after work (I was working with one of my high school students yesterday until 5pm) I would go to the grocery store and buy the little frozen chicken cordon bleus. The General and I have been eating them for a long time and we love them--although at something crazy like 20 points, they are no longer on our menu selection. But we've never had any trouble buying them.

Well, apparently in Alexandria, they are unavailable. I went to three different grocery stores and the closest I came up with was chicken stuffed with broccoli and cheese. Not going to do it. So I stopped and thought for a minute and decided to improvise and make a chicken cordon bleu casserole. The idea kind of came at me from my mother-in-law, who when I hosted a book club meeting here at my house last fall taught me a chicken casserole recipe that was very good. So I decided I'd make a go of it with chicken cordon bleu.

I picked up a package of those little chicken pieces that you can buy already cooked. I got the honey roasted chicken for that. Then I got 2 packages of sliced swiss cheese, a ham steak, 2 cans of Healthy Request cream of chicken soup, and a bag of medium width No Yolk egg noodles.

I went back to Judy's, cooked up the noodles, threw in everything except one package of cheese which I actually used to cover the whole thing and baked it at 375 for 20 minutes. It was smelling darned good.

Meanwhile, Judy had baked The Cake That Ate Washington. She had gotten the recipe from the Sweet Potato Queens book and this thing was MASSIVE. Four layers, with a filling that consisted of cream cheese, Cool Whip, peanut butter cups, and sweetened condensed milk. We were so nervous about it that she stuck some skewers in it to keep it from falling over. We gingerly made our way to the car and then the fun began.

I have a GPS for the car. She speaks with a proper British accent. Her name is Jane, and she does not like to be disobeyed. I fear her, if I'm being honest.

Well, Jane was unhappy. She'd been stashed in the glove compartment for approximately 2 months, as I hadn't had any new clients and I'd known where book club was, and I hadn't required her services. She intended to teach me a lesson.

So I figured to get from Alexandria to Arlington, we should probably get on 395, but I didn't want to take Van Dorn with all the potholes and traffic lights. I was envisioning this cake splattering all over my dashboard. So I made my way for the Beltway, thinking we could take it to 395 and it would be a little less apt to cause us problems.

Jane did not like this. Jane wanted us to take the Beltway in the other direction. I decided maybe she knew a shortcut, so I would heed her sage advice. We got up into Alexandria towards Old Town, and she told us to take the exit right, where the highway splits into Express and Local lanes. I did so. Once we got over there, she told us to "Bear Left". Well, by bearing left, what she actually meant was keep right. It was a test to see how much power she could lord over us. Because, you see, when I bore left, it shot me back onto the main part of the highway, and in short order, I was traversing the new Wilson Bridge (which is lovely, by the way, just not what I wanted to see at that point).

I could hear Jane shaking her head and chuckling inside her plastic case. By now, we were heading for parts unknown in Maryland, Judy clutching a cake, the chicken cordon bleu casserole smelling heavenly in the back seat, me screaming at Jane, "WTF?! I'm putting the eye on you!" Because you see, I do not like to be late. Ever. I am always early. This drives my sister and husband crazy, because I also do not like to be the first one at our destination and so I sit outside in the car until 'someone else goes in first'. This also saves me the embarrassment of being in the wrong place--if someone I know goes in, then I know I'm in the right spot.

Anyway, this is all to say that fortunately we had left early. Because I can't be late. My sister once was reading Mapquest directions to go to Reston pre-Jane and sent us to Dulles Airport. We showed up at book club 45 minutes late. I was having an absolute panic attack. I was determined that this was not going to happen.

However, there was the small matter of us actually getting back to Arlington. Jane suggested we take 295. We had no choice but to follow her sage advice. We went past Bolling AFB, site of the General's former place of employment. I waved at it. We were heading north, on a collision course with Maryland. And mind you, on account of the cake, I'd been the least popular person on the Beltway, driving a stately 45MPH. I was at this point pushing the needle to 55.

Then Jane dumped us out on 395 and shot us straight through the District. May I just say, the Capitol is lovely in the evening, as are the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. We got off the highway and took a bunch of meandering roads around back into Virginia, and then she spit us off on Spout Run Parkway, which I have affectionately dubbed Serial Killer Highway as it's dark, there are tons of trees and it looks like the perfect place to hide bodies. The road is also very twisty, and I suspect that Jane was aware we were trying to keep the cake upright. I should also say that we were blasting the air conditioning to keep from the cake from melting, and we were both freezing.

In any event, very shortly, we were at Carrie's house, and someone had graciously left us a spot right in front of her house. Fortunately, I am a champion parallel parker, amongst my other great talents, so I pulled in and extricated my sister and the cake from the front seat before getting the casserole and going inside.

I think we set a new landspeed record: we left Alexandria at 6:50 and arrived in Arlington at 7:26. And we were only about the 4th or 5th people there.

But now, I'm gunning for Jane. She will be punished. Well, probably not because next time I'll probably go to book club via Tennessee.