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2013 Cookbook Project: DONE!!!!

November 15th, 2013 by pladd

Woo! Finished with my goal to make one recipe out of each of our cookbooks! That’s 35 in all!

Nothing is better than seeing 100% on a spreadsheet

Here’s a breakdown of the final 4 since last time we talked:

The Cooking of Italy by Waverly Root and the editors of TIME-LIFE BOOKS

Sorry for the all caps, but that’s how it’s formatted on the title page. It doesn’t surprise me that Time-Life books can’t figure out how to get their caps lock off. Check out the weird cover too:

Not even a title. I guess they think that picture says it all

I’m like 96% sure Steven bought this at Half-Price one day because he’s compulsive and only recently learned that there are lots of recipes on the Internet. It’s cool, this book is pretty alright. It’s organized by region of Italy and has a section at the beginning of each chapter where it talks about life in that region and specialties. We chose to make spinach ravioli with pesto:

Ta-Dah!

Neither was very difficult, especially since I made Steven do all the work:

Kitchen Hack: coerce someone else

The Hungry Scientist Handbook by Patrick Buckley

This book is more about theory and crazy things that take too much time, effort, and equipment for the likes of me. Steven was really into the section on catching wild yeast to bake with, but that seemed too time-consuming and iffy. You have to check pretty regularly to make sure you aren’t catching mold instead.

I mean, I have my own labcoat, but I mainly wear it while making spreadsheets

However, there was one recipe I thought I could excel at! Wonton wrapper cranes! Basically, you get wonton wrappers, which are already little squares, and then fold them using the power of origami! Then you fry that sucker and it becomes a chip shaped like a crane!!!! Well, that’s the theory. They’re really hard to fold without breaking.

My ridiculous attempt, with a paper one for comparison. See if you can spot the difference

Steven was way better at it than me, probably because he has more patience:

Also, he refused to put a shirt on for this process, even though I TOLD him I was taking pictures for the Internet

So you get bonus footage of Steven’s man-nipple. Enjoy!

Eventually, I gave up on cranes and turned to the only kind of origami I can reliably fold: fortune tellers!

What will your wonton fortune be????

Oops, you’re going to die

The frying process was also fraught with peril, because the origami shape would unfold in the oil if you didn’t kind of hold it awkwardly in place with some tongs.

It took a few sad tries to perfect this process

Here are the after shots:

Fortune teller: not really recognizable

Cranes?? Or blobs?

Hard to believe that that was the easiest thing in the book I could find!

Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook by Terry Pratchett

This one is kind of a joke, supposedly written by one of the characters from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. It has some good illustrations, life advice, and also some legit recipes.

I REALLY wanted to make Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s Sausages Inna Bun, but I don’t like sausages

So I had to go for the next-most famous: Banana Soup Surprise. Nanny Ogg has this to say about the soup:

People say: ‘What’s so surprisin’ about bananana soup?’ And I say, it’s got banananas in it. Of course, if you’ve ever read my book The Joye of Snacks you’ll spot that some of my special ingredients have been left out. People complained they made the soup a bit too surprisin’.

The recipe involves cooking mashed banana (or bananana) with vegetable stock, sherry, and some spices. What really stands out, though, is the presentation:

Laaaaaadies

Unfortunately, the soup didn’t taste that great. Maybe if we had a higher quality sherry or I had used the food processor to puree the bananas. As it was, it mostly tasted like banana chunks floating in sherry. Ew.

Still, can’t beat the presentation

Cake Pops by Bakerella

Look at this

This one was the last cookbook, and I’m not ashamed to admit, I was putting it off for a reason. Look at that cover! These cake pops are way too advanced for me. And I found that I just didn’t care enough to gain the necessary expertise even to fail at making them for you. My cooking strategy is very results-based to maximize deliciousness and minimize effort. I’m not adverse to work when it pays off, re: my homemade pie crust or bread, but if you’re spending hours on something that’s just cosmetic? Yeah, I’m good. Plus, unlike the last time I sucked at art for this project, I would have needed to buy a lot of stuff I would then proceed to never use again ever, so I just said screw it and made the “basic cake ball” recipe. You remember how to make cakeballs, right? That was probably the last time I made cakeballs, actually, two whole years ago! Also in the corner of one of those pictures is my old purple netbook.

I miss you purple netbook! So stylish

Anyway, this time I let Steven choose the flavors, and he went with lemon cake, cream cheese icing, and milk chocolate coating on the outside:

Deformed as always, but delicious! Just the way I like it

That’s two of my 2013 goals down!

Tagged: 2013 goals, cookbooks, Steven

Posted in 2013 Magnificent Seven, Uncategorized |

Cookbooks: Extra Credit

July 24th, 2013 by pladd

Last weekend I knew I wanted to knock the book of ice cream recipes that came with our ice cream maker off my cookbook list. Every time I use the ice cream maker we have, I’m shocked by how easy it is.

This thing was not pricey, but is completely amazing. I recommend it 100%

I decided to make the cream cheese ice cream… but it was almost TOO easy, you know? With this thing, you mix the ingredients together in a bowl or whatever, then chill them for a few hours. Then take the bowl of the ice cream maker out of the freezer (where it lives), hook it up, pour the stuff in, and let it go for like 20 minutes. Then you have soft serve! You can then freeze for longer if you don’t like soft serve for some freakish reason. Or if, like me, you decide to make red velvet ice cream sandwiches!

Ice cream goes in a cake pan to firm up so that I can cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter

After making up the cookie dough and chilling it in the fridge overnight, I rolled it out and cut out cookies with the biscuit cutter:

I thought this step would be the hardest, but it was way easy compared to rolling out pie crust (which I am, of course, a pro at)

Then you chill those guys on the baking sheets for awhile and stick them in the oven. They don’t take long.

Cookies!! Wait till they get to room temperature before putting them in the freezer too

After everything has been frozen to satisfaction, it’s assembly time!! Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this because I had to work fast so the ice cream didn’t melt. Using the same biscuit cutter, you just press out rounds of the ice cream sheet and smoosh them between two cookies. Then Steven was in charge of wrapping them in plastic wrap.

Now they are just waiting in our freezer!! Happy summer!

The cookbook project is now at 69% completion because I (well, Steven) got through The Ultimate Book of Cocktails the same day! He’s way better at mixology than me.

Planter’s Punch: Steven version

According to the book, “This long, refreshing, old colonial drink originates from the sugar plantations that are dotted throughout the West Indian islands.”

1 measure/1.5 tbsp fresh lime juice
1 measure/1.5 tbsp orange juice
2 measures/3 tbsp dark rum (we always use KRAKEN, because that name. And it’s delicious)
0.5 measure/2 tsp grenadine (Steven uses the juice from a can of maraschino cherries. Because we’re classy)
dash of bitters
soda water of lemonade, chilled

Steven is more of a gin fan (to me, it tastes like Fresca that hates you) so for himself he made this:

Horse’s Neck!

Apparently: “The name derives from the shape of the lemon rind that hangs in the glass.”

1 lemon
2 measures/3 tbsp gin
dry ginger ale

Cut the entire rind from a lemon, spiral-fashion. Dangle it from the rim of a tall glass so that it hangs down inside. (I think Steven skipped this step because it was too annoying even though it is the whole point lol)
Add cracked ice and the gin, and then top up with ginger ale. You can also add a dash of bitters if the mood takes you (see? this book is awesome).

“Let me take a picture of your process”

Tagged: baking, cocktails, cookbooks, dessert, ice cream

Posted in 2013 Magnificent Seven |

Three Cookbooks In One Night

July 17th, 2013 by pladd

According to my spreadsheet, I’m about 59% done with my cookbook project, despite only working on it once since the last time we talked. How have I accomplished this? By knocking out three in one night!! Okay, so Steven did like half the work, but still.

Lemongrass and Sweet Basil: Traditional Thai Cuisine by Khamtane Signavong

We made the entree out of this book, which is divided up by region and has a lot of great pictures. We chose mussaman beef curry. It was stew-consistency, with rice, and cooked for about 4 hours so our apartment smelled great.

Maybe it looks weird, but it was super tasty!

Then we made a side dish out of Japanese Cooking by Shunsuke Fukushima. It was really simple, but completely delicious and refreshing.

Cucumber pickles!

The name is kind of misleading since there’s no vinegar used at all. It’s just cucumbers, cabbage, seasame seeds and salt, but the salt makes the cucumbers express water if you let it sit for about an hour.

Finally, I decided to try out this book for dessert:

Mini Pies: Irresistible Pies to Make and Bake

This concept is awesome. Pies you bake in cupcake pans? Individual tiny pies? Sign me up! Unfortunately, the subtitle should read “How Many Different Expletives Can You Yell At Your kitchen?”. Nothing about this was really irresistible including, sadly, the finished product.

Look at these freaks

If I had thought about it for half a second, I would have realized this would not be fun. It’s like twelve times the work of a normal pie, and then when you’re done you have less pie. After you make the pie crust, you have to cut little circles of it to smoosh down into the cupcake tin. Of course I didn’t have a round biscuit cutter big enough, so I used the top of a canister. It didn’t go great. Then you have to cut little strips to be the “lattice” on top, which went about as well as you can see. This process took way too long. I am just not into it. Ugh and then I still had to make the filling which involved pitting cherries and a weird mascarpone-yogurt concoction.

It’s possible I picked the wrong recipe to try. Because this filling was weird. It was like it was trying to be cheesecake but didn’t want to make the effort to actually taste like it, and was just settling for being squishy and disappointing. I made Steven take them into work because otherwise I would have punched them, individually, into my kitchen counters, and the one coworker who had any comment about them at all just said “The fillings kind of blah but the crust is amazing.”

Of course I ignored their crust recipe and used mine. So, way to fail, Mini Pies. They’re less messy to eat than a real pie, so maybe they would be good for a picnic or something, but I can’t see myself doing it again ever. It’s just too much work for not enough pay-off. Plus, I now hold an irrational grudge against this book. I made a beautiful delicious pie crust, Mini Pies, and you made me waste it on mediocrity.

Looking at the cookbooks I have yet to complete, they mostly involve desserts or cocktails, so the rest of this year is going to be fun.

Previously: Halfway Update

Tagged: cookbooks, pie, recipes

Posted in 2013 Magnificent Seven |

Cookbook update: Six Down

April 9th, 2013 by pladd

4 months in to my New Year Plan to make one recipe out of each of my cookbooks, and I’m not doing as good as I thought I would be. Time to step it up.

Hello, Cupcake! by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson

You may remember this book from that time I tried make fake spaghetti and meatball cupcakes (incidentally, to find that link I went through every blogpost tagged “cupcake”. It was a delicious odyssey through my past.) This book is awesome, but often sets the bar way too high. I’m terrible at art things in general, and feel very accomplished if I can frost something better than a five-year-old. The technique explanations in the front are helpful, but I think I would need a lot more practice to do most of the suggestions in here. Others look really cool, but might not taste very good, like the fake corn on the cob cupcakes made out of yellow and white jellybeans. Anyway, it took me awhile to choose a recipe that I thought looked easy enough for me to accomplish and also good enough for me to eat:

You’ve seen these guys before

The hardest part was separating out the Oreos so that all the frosting was on one side. Recipe at the end.

Also, the slightly less dramatic:

The Everything Pressure Cooker Cookbook by Pamela Rice Hahn

This one may be less flashy than cupcakes, but there’s no denying it’s super useful. We got it as a wedding present from the Wiess masters (well, I guess the ex-Wiess masters by then) along with a magical pressure cooker/slow cooker/rice cooker device. It is easily the best kitchen thing I own. Seriously, you should get one if you like cooking at all. We use it at least two or three times a week, whether to cook rice or chicken fast or to slow cook a whole meal. I decided to try something I’ve always wanted to make:

Pear butter!

The recipe was really easy (as you can see after the cut), but it didn’t turn out like I was expecting. In the end, it was more like an applesauce consistency than a butter. Still delicious on a toasted English muffin though!

Recipes: Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: cookbooks, cooking, cupcakes

Posted in 2013 Magnificent Seven |

Broccoli Rabe with Chickpeas

March 1st, 2013 by pladd

This is my favorite thing I’ve cooked for this project so far!! I originally chose it because we had all of the ingredients besides the broccoli, but I’m glad I did. It was really easy to make and so delicious! It uses broccoli rabe or rapini instead of normal broccoli, which I find much easier to prepare and cook with, so totally okay with me.

This picture doesn’t do it justice

It’s from this book:

Lidia’s Family Table by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

This one is originally Steven’s and I guess is from a PBS cooking show of the same name. Unlike the other Italian cookbooks I’ve found in our bookcase so far, it has a lot more than just recipes. There’s lots of information about techniques, pairing pastas and sauces, stocking the kitchen, and background on different Italian styles. I hope the rest of the recipes are as tasty and easy as this one was!! I will definitely be making it again.

I guess it’s good that so far I haven’t discovered any cookbooks I want to get rid of! Well, except maybe the gimmicky coke one. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: cookbooks, recipes

Posted in 2013 Magnificent Seven |

Soup is the best: two more cookbooks down

February 12th, 2013 by pladd

I love winter for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that my obsession with soup stops seeming really weird when the weather gets colder. I never let something like 100 degree heat stop me from enjoying delicious soup, but it seems more socially acceptable in the winter months. The perfect time to knock out some of my cookbook goals! First up was this guy:

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups by Brother Victor-Anotine d’Avila-Latourrette

Soup was probably the first thing I learned to cook on my own because of its simplicity, and I’ve had this book since high school. The recipes are divided by month to help in using seasonal ingredients, and the bottoms of the pages are decorated in medieval woodcuts and proverbs about soup (“Eat soup first and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past”). Often the recipes have stories about their origins or different variations too. Most of them are pretty simple, but hearty, and if any meat is used at all, it’s only in the optional chicken broth. You have to fiddle with some of these recipes, but it’s not hard because they’re usually pretty simple. I’ve had the book for so long that I have a lot of notes penciled in the margins about that, but I can see how some people would find it frustrating. I chose to make the Pasta and Lentil Soup, because lentils are delicious!

I know this picture isn’t beautiful, but it was definitely tasty

I had to add a lot more water than the recipe called for, and it still ended up being more stew like, but still delicious with some bread and a little Parmesan cheese. Of course I am keeping this book, I can’t get enough soup!!

As evidenced the week after when, with a whole book of Italian food to choose from, I still decided to make soup again:

Italian & Pasta: Quick and Easy, Proven Recipes

I got this book as a wedding present from my favorite math teacher (sorry, Mom, but I was never in your class) along with AMAZING HOMEMADE POTTERY, and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t cooked anything from it until now. It’s not as tall as most of our cookbooks (though just as thick: 350 pages of delicious!), and I think it was getting lost behind some of them. Well, that mistake has been rectified because this book is SO GOOD!! Each recipe is only a page spread, one of which is a giant picture, so none of them are too complicated and I always know what I’m aiming for (Steven always makes fun of me for this, but cookbooks really can’t have enough pictures in them–I want to see what I’m making to whet my appetite!). The only weird thing about it is how the recipes are divided. The table of contents has sections for: “Soups & Appetizers”, “Fish & Shellfish”, “Meats”, “Poultry & Game”, “Vegetables & Salads”, and “Entertaining & Dessert”. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of overlap, especially because “Entertaining” just seems to mean appetizers and entrees for larger groups of people. Luckily, there’s also an index so finding the recipe you’re thinking of need not be that difficult.

I decided to make the Classic Minestrone

I’ve made minestrone before, but this one was a little bit different, because it included bacon. I was wary of this step (I’m not really a huge fan of bacon), but it ended up tasting good since there wasn’t very much of it. It just added a more meaty, salty flavor to the broth. I can’t wait to try more recipes from this book! Both recipes after the cut: Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: 2013, cookbooks, recipes

Posted in 2013 Magnificent Seven |

2013 Cookbook Project: Coca-Cola: Refreshing Recipes

January 18th, 2013 by pladd

I wanted to start off my New Year’s Resolution to make one recipe out of each of our (completely underused) cookbooks with this one, partially because I considered it a challenge! Also because we’ve had it for like two years (I think it was a Christmas gift to Steven) and have never used it once.

Plus, I spent at least once of those years thinking it was a joke

This book actually has a ton of recipes in it, with chapters on Soups & Starters, Beef & Pork, Poultry & Seafood, Sides, Sauces & Salads, and Desserts. A lot of them don’t really use that much Coke–maybe a little in the sauce where you might normally use sugar–which would explain how they could work in so many different kinds of recipes, from Asian beef to paella. But, let’s be real, you could easily make any of these without Coke. In fact, for most of them I think you could follow the recipe in the Coke cookbook, but omit the Coke, and still be fine. It really didn’t seem like it made too much of a difference in most of these recipes, which is probably for the best tasty-recipe-wise. The one I decided to make was “Sweet and Spicy Shrimp Tacos with Mango Salsa” (recipe after the cut):

Steven and I are both pretty bad at folding tacos so the stuff doesn’t fall out so we usually don’t even try

It turned out delicious! I’m always a little nervous about cooking shrimp, and the process usually involves me yelling “What do you think now?” at Steven multiple times before we both agree that they’re probably beyond done. I really liked the mango salsa, although we started late so it didn’t get to steep the required 1 hour in the fridge before we ate it. This meal was kind of weird, but good, and not really as much work as its length made me think it would be. I guess this book makes the cut, even if it is a little silly. Especially since I still want to try some of the desserts, like Coca-Cola Float Cupcakes.
Recipe: Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: 2013, cookbooks, recipes

Posted in 2013 Magnificent Seven, Food, Things I've Made |