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I had a bunch of random things just laying around waiting to be put together into something fantastically yummy for dinner tonight–so I took advantage of them, of course! First, I cut up some onions and crushed some garlic as I heated some extra-virgin olive oil in a pan. When it was good and hot, I quickly cooked the garlic and then added the onions. Once they were nicely sautéed and slightly caramelized, I added some egg white to the pan. That finished cooking a little after the pasta was ready, so I worked quickly to finish the rest.

All put-together and waiting to be consumed!

In went a nice dash of slightly-spicy, very flavorful Korean red pepper flakes, and after a quick stir, a couple of splashes of Chardonnay to deglaze the pan and make a sauce. As soon as that reduced some, I removed it from the heat and tossed in the cooked linguine. A few minutes later and a very light sprinkling of fresh, sharp parmigiano reggiano, and it was ready to eat!

Sooo good… :yum:

While I wound up not liking the Chardonnay for drinking after tasting some, it worked beautifully for the sauce. All of the flavors came together so perfectly: the sweetness of the onions, pungency of the garlic, subtle fruity notes of the wine, spicy tastiness of the pepper, and the sharp and salty cheese. This was a perfectly satisfying dinner, yum! :yum:

2 Comments Categories: Egg Dishes · Italian · Main Meals · Pasta · Photos · Vegetables

Looking over my Flickr account, I’ve eaten quite a bit of yummy things and not taken the time to write about it here! That’ll change right now, then.

A little over a week ago, my sister decided she wanted to make some garlic knots at lunchtime, so we ordered a pizza to go along with them from the only place near campus that was delivering that day, Cosmos Café. The timing wound up perfect, as the pizza arrived just as the garlic knots were coming out of the oven.

Garlicky dough-knots

While they were certainly fresh and delicious, my sister and I agreed they could’ve used a bit more garlic-and-oil topping. Next time, we’ll be keeping that in mind. At the same time, we found that her baking stone makes a wonderful difference with the texture of the bread. The outside gets a nice, dry crust while the inside stays perfectly soft. While lacking a little in the flavor department, these garlic knots had truly authentic dough.

Cosmos pizza with peppers and onions

The pizza was pretty comparitive. It did possess the thin crust, not-to-much cheese, and yummy veggies that comprise my pizza preferences in those areas, but the sauce was just good, not fantastic. It well-satisfied my pizza desires, though, and I would definitely order from Cosmos again.

I ate it–yep yep!

Here you can see that the cheese and crust are in balance. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when pizza has more cheese than crust. That’s plain just too much greasiness, ick. At the same time, I much prefer thin-crust pizza to Sicilian-style, so dramatically more crust than cheese is also in the Terrible Pizza section of my book. This pizza could’ve had less cheese and that would’ve put it into the Perfect Pizza section, at least with respect to cheesiness, but it was certainly far from disagreeable. :]

Hmm…I think if I don’t paginate this entry, it’s about to get excessively long, so continue on to the full entry page if you’d like to read more about what I’ve eaten and cooked and eaten again!

Read more…

4 Comments Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Drinks · Fusion Cuisine · Italian · Main Meals · Pasta · Photos · Poultry · Recipes · Thai

As if I needed even more sweet, bready, browned lumps of dough, tonight I baked up a batch of apple coffee cake muffins. I actually do need them, though–to take with me to a party tomorrow. The professor for the drawing class I’ve been a TA (teaching assistant) for this semester likes to turn the final critiques for her classes into food parties. Since there’s a lot more space in the ceramics studio for a nice buffet spread, we really go all out in there with everything from appetizers to dessert all brought in by the students. However, the drawing studio has basically just one small stand we could put food on, plus it doesn’t get thoroughly scrubbed top to bottom like we do to the ceramics studio before the final crit, so bringing a lot of food isn’t really…safe.

So we’re just having a small breakfast party. One student is picking up bagels, another cream cheese and butter, Toby (the professor) is bringing orange juice and utensils, and I offered to bake muffins. :) Starting with a recipe from my now-beloved Martha Stewart Baking Handbook–no joke, I’ve been turning to this book whenever I’m looking to bake something because if she hasn’t included a recipe for what I want, she’s at least offered some tips on how to make it perfect–I modified it to use a fruit that is actually in season: apples. The result?

Muffins everywhere, oh no–er–yay!

A nice big tub full of mini apple coffee cake muffins. :D One suffered severe decapitation during my attempt to remove it from the muffin pan, so in its beheaded, dual-part state, it succumbed to the wrath of my tummy. These muffins can be very well summed-up in one word: fantabulous. While not quite like a coffee cake, they definitely have the flavors of one, and they bake up with such a light, delicate, airy, and very moist crumb that I could’ve easily devoured more if it wasn’t for the fact that they are already spoken for. It’s sad that food has to have a designated purpose for me to not eat it. Like the two remaining Portuguese sweet muffins all wrapped up and metaphorically labelled “Robyn’s” for when I see her on Friday. Otherwise they’d be swimming in my tummy with more maple syrup. Mmm.

Tumbly bundles of goodness

So hopefully my students will like these tender little morsels as much as I do. Mostly because I really don’t need to be bringing home a ton of super-yummy muffins tomorrow that no longer have any kind of reservation placed on them… ;x

4 Comments Categories: Breads · Photos

For some reason, I’ve apparently had a need for sweet bread-type things this past week. Last Wednesday, I made some sweet Indian roti, I mixed them up again on Friday, and today I cooked Portuguese sweet muffins. At this point, though, I can say that I am quite thoroughly breaded out. Oi. However, I did reach this point of sweet bread saturation quite deliciously, as you’ll see.

Happy little sugar-laminated breads

The roti is really nice to quickly satiate a sweet bread craving attack. Flour, salt, water, and sugar is all you need along with a little bit of time to mix the first three into a dough, roll them, sprinkle with the sugar, fold up, and roll out again before pan-grilling. They come out chewy and light, with fabulous layers of gooey sugar. For variation on Friday, I added a tiny bit of sugar to the flour and salt for the dough along with some oil before the water. The oil makes for a more tender bread that is easier to flatten. However, for some reason the sugar-laminating doesn’t work quite as well. Some seems to get…absorbed by the bread and it starts to brown before all of the sugar gets a chance to become melty. I think I like them without the oil better, though maybe if I’m particularly wanting a tender bread, I’d go with the oil.

As for other tender breads, today’s Portuguese sweet muffins were a fantastically fun and delectable adventure! I’ve had a packet of yeast lying around since I bought one from my sister over a week ago, and I just couldn’t decide what to make with it. Today, it came to me in a sudden craving for the Portuguese sweet muffins my dad used to regularly buy from Trader Joe’s (a natural foods supermarket chain). After searching high and low–or really, just a few minutes at AllRecipes.com–I came upon this recipe that, aside from a lack of lemon, looked like it would at least come pretty close.

No Portuguese were harmed in the making of this muffin

It surpassed Trader Joe’s by galaxies. While I would appreciate the addition of some lemon in these muffins, it certainly isn’t necessary. I can’t imagine it being removed from the Trader Joe’s version because it needs the freshness of the flavor to make up for the lack of freshness in the muffin. Seriously, now that I’ve gotten very confident in my bread-making ability with these muffins, I will never, ever buy packaged breads again. I so rarely get cravings for bread that it’ll be worth the time to spend baking my own. I get cravings for cakes and pastries much too often to completely exclude packaged stuff, though, as much as I prefer homemade. ;x

Soft and moist inside, firm and dry outside–perfect!

Being moist by nature, these muffins wind up with a completely different texture when packaged. The muffin becomes uniformly moist with tougher tops and bottoms in a package, whereas the fresh ones I made had a more extreme, pleasant contrast between the doughy, soft interiors and firm, dry tops and bottoms. Toasting is absolutely necessary for the Trader Joe’s muffins because the chewiness of the exteriors is just unpalatable right out of the bag, but I wound up eating my muffin sans toasting today. I think it could very well be enjoyed toasted, and at the same time, it isn’t a detriment to devour it as-is.

There’s nothing like sweet breads topped with maple syrup

I didn’t quite consume it “as-is,” though. ;) After tasting a small piece to see how it was plain, I had the sudden idea to top it with a little maple syrup and a pat of butter instead of my usual toasted-and-buttered treatment for the Trader Joe’s sub-pars. This concoction thus satisfied not only my desire for a sweet bread but also pancakes. While Portuguese sweet muffins are certainly not like a pancake, I almost exclusively have maple syrup on only either French toast or pancakes, so the association between “syrup” and “pancakes” is very strong in my mind. I’d never consider dressing a Trader Joe’s sad-excuse-for-a-muffin in this manner, though. I think I’ll stick to having those toasted-and-buttered.

So the moral of the story for all my bread-making recently is that if bread is on my mind, it’s time to whip out some mixing bowls, flour the table (the only flat surface large enough for kneading here–unfortunately), and heat up the stove or oven. Store-bought goods just aren’t worth it.

2 Comments Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Food Musings · Indian · Photos · Portuguese · Recipes · Side Dishes

More than any other cookie, my sister loves what are called either rainbow cookies or six/seven-layer cookies. Considering that, I had the idea to make her a rainbow cookie cake for her birthday today. :)

Looking fabulous even without fancy decoration

If you’re ever going to make these cookies–either in actual cookie form or a cake–I have one piece of advice for you: make sure you’ve invested in a good electric mixer first. Between thoroughly blending the almond paste with the sugar, then creaming the sugar-almond mixture and butter, and then beating egg whites to stiff, glossy peaks, I spent all morning yesterday from 7am until nearly 11 baking the layers for this cake. Let me tell you, bakers from the pre-electricity days must’ve been forces to reckon with, and I’d never want to run into one on a bad day. I’m more sore today from all that manual work than I’ve ever been after even the most serious strength-training workout.

Not only did I have to endure hours of hard mixing and beating, but less than two minutes into the baking adventure, I was left with a battle wound from the sharp edge of the can lid from the almond paste. Damn, that stuff is TOUGH and doesn’t like to come out of the can in the least! At the same time, it’s incredibly tasty, and I might just have to get more to make other things with, since it’s on sale at Waldbaum’s this week and all. ;) Though, if I decide that what I’d really like is marzipan, I actually would just buy it instead of making it, despite what I said to a friend to the contrary recently. ;x After what I went through mixing the paste and sugar yesterday, I’ve decided it really is worth the extra twenty cents or so to pay for someone else to mix in the sugar and egg and corn syrup to make marzipan for me. I don’t need any more wounds anyway. ;P

Oooh, pretty colors :)

So after going out to dinner at Red Lobster with my family (I had their Dockside Shrimp and Chicken entrée, which was very yummy and satisfying after purposely skipping my usually-late lunch in order to be sure I had an appetite for what was supposed to be an unusually-early dinner), we came back to the apartment to have the cake. My mom had brought with her candles, since I’d previously told her we didn’t have any here, and these were the niftiest candles ever! They came attached to glow stick candle holders! Even before the candles were lit the cake was all fancy and glowing! It was pretty. :)

So yummy! I ate too much! XD

Because there were friends having cake with us that needed to catch a train in short order, the dessert was cut and served quickly, and I received many compliments. Most importantly, my sister absolutely loved it, even before tasting any she was thoroughly impressed by just the concept. :D I have to say that even I am really pleased–I normally am not a fan of the cookie version, I think because packaged ones are often too dry, a common problem with cakes of this type. European sponge cake has a tendency to get dry quickly, but since these layers are intentionally underbaked–and because I am clearly an excellent baker ;]–in order to preserve their color and not get browned, they stayed really moist.

The crumb was nice and dense from the weighting process (the assembled layers are refrigerated at least 8 hours with a weight on top), but since it was formed with a sponge cake, there was still a certain lightness to it. Of course there was an almond flavor, but despite having both almond paste and almond extract, it was rather mild. Just enough to be noticeable but not confuse you as to why you are eating almonds but finding no actual nuts. The recipe called for apricot preserves, but since the apricot only came in 10-ounce jars instead of the 12-ounce jar called for, I wasn’t about to buy a whole other ten ounces when I only needed two more, so I subbed peach preserves, which did come in a 12-ounce size. A less punchy flavor, yes, but along similar lines and color, so it worked. Maybe next time I’ll make a half-recipe as cookies and buy the actual apricot.

As for the chocolate on top, that’s usually my least favorite part of these cookies-turned-cake, despite being a chocolate fiend. Mostly because I don’t care much for the texture of a bar of chocolate coupled with cake layers. Chocolate chips, chocolate flakes, or other such small pieces of solid chocolate are okay, but whole sheets of it just doesn’t appeal to me on a cake. However, I’d mixed in a little butter when I melted the bars of Lindt semi-sweet surfin chocolate with the intention of it keeping the coating slightly soft and thus easy to cut through without cracking all over the place. My idea worked beautifully, and I actually enjoyed the slightly softened texture with the cake. It wound up with a consistency somewhere between ganache and solid chocolate, so it didn’t defer too much from the traditional cookie but at the same time was more functional for a cake topping and more palatable to me.

All in all, I’d say this cake marks another fabulous baking success to add to my collection. :D

0 Comments Categories: Cakes · Desserts · French · Photos

Yesterday, I was really feeling like chicken, and I still have quite a few onions left from the 5 pound bag I got on sale insanely cheap a few weeks ago, so I made them for dinner last night.

Last night’s dinner–envious? ;)

I took a couple of the onions (they’re small), peeled and sliced them, and sautéed them in a little butter. When they were getting caramelized, I added a little sesame oil and tossed in chunks of chicken breast. I seared that well and then finished cooking it all. Once I was confident the chicken was done, the pan was removed from the heat, and I added teriyaki sauce to deglaze the pan. Oh, deglazing…getting all those little browned bits off the bottom of the pan. You don’t get that with non-stick pans, oh, no. You need good stainless steel pans for that. And let me tell you, those tiny caramelized flecks of yumminess make me confident my $400 investment in a set of Calphalon pans was well worth it. ;) :yum:

Mmm…perfection…

It was torturous giving it some time to rest and cool a bit, but it was so good I was bouncing while I ate it once I did. I’m incredibly proud of my ability to cook the chicken just right–all the way through, but still fantastically juicy and tender. And the onions…oh, the onions. I can–and have–been perfectly satisfied with a meal of caramelized onions. Balance, what? I don’t care. There’s nothing on the face of the earth like soft-but-al-dente onions that have been cooked until their natural sugars are in full force, browned and rich. It’s a guiltless treat, I say–they’re vegetables! And sweet like dessert! Woo!

Inspired by Robyn’s recent ramblings, complaints, research, and so on about her paper on Japanese snack foods and their “kawaii” quality, I’d been wanting to try the banana-flavored Koala’s March cookies my sister had about a week ago but couldn’t bear to save any for me to try they were so delicious.

Look at the happy Koala getting full of banana–for me! Mwa ha ha!

Suffering the higher cost here at the campus convenience store, I had a box in my possession after class yesterday. After opening the package, I was immersed in the scent of artificial banana flavoring. For someone highly allergic to and yet also highly fond of bananas, it’s about the closest I can usually get to eating them (cooked banana is okay, but since they have to be very thoroughly cooked, I tend to err on the side of caution and only eat even cooked ones when I’ve done the cooking and can be sure it’s well enough).

The cuteness of these cookies is too much!

The first bite of one assured me that I would be fully satisfied with banananess and yummy-cookie-ness. The Japanese have an incredible knack for making cookies that are just a million times better than American packaged cookie products. And their creme fillings are perfect–in consistency and flavor–every time. For a processed, packaged food, they seem to come the closest to what I call the “realness” quality of homemade foods. When I eat an Oreo, it feels and tastes like I’m eating something that was pumped out by some machine in a factory. When a happy little Koala jumps in my mouth, it tastes fresh and yummy and delicious and oh, how I wish I could make these myself!

…But the cuteness is not enough to save him from being DEVOURED!

Today is my sister’s birthday. :) She’s turning 21 already, which means I will no longer get requests for bottles of vodka or beer or anything else when I’m going shopping. We’re going out to dinner with the rest of my family tonight, and she’ll be able to order a drink for herself instead of just tasting mine. And after we get back, dessert will be had here, in the name of an amazing creation of mine that took four and a half hours of manual labor and the suffering of blisters, a deep cut on my finger, and impossibly sore arms this morning to produce. I’m sure it will be worth it, though, and you can bet photos will be forthcoming. ;)

4 Comments Categories: Appetizers/Snacks · Food Musings · Main Meals · Photos · Poultry · Vegetables

My sister and I baked cinnamon rolls today, and I think I’ll just let the photos do all the talking… ;)

My sister did most of the work–mixing, rolling, filling, cutting… I did the manual labor–kneading. ;) And she was distracted at the critical point of just-out-of-the-oven-ness for the icing, so I was designated the Icer of the Rolls.

Today’s kitchen adventure has inspired me to do some of my own yeasted bread baking, so I think I’ll be getting some yeast for myself the next time I’m at the supermarket. It’s becoming quite apparent that my sister and I have completely opposite preferences when it comes to the mouthfeel of various foods, so it’ll be good for me to make some breads of my own. She made what she called a foccacia earlier in the week, but really it was a foccacia-turned-chewy-bread-as-per-Crystal’s-likes. ;P Not airy and light with a nice crust. And then there are our divergences on the topics of frosting amounts, cookie textures, and so on.

So I’m going to be baking some breads in the near future. :)

Finally, I figured I should balance out my day with something a bit more healthful, so after having probably one too many cinnamon rolls, I later made myself some sautéed onions with soba noodles for dinner. At least I found room for some veggies today, if it wasn’t anywhere near my normal level of vegetable consumption.

2 Comments Categories: Breads · Photos

After I was done with work today, I went over to Waldbaum’s to buy the weirdest thing ever: three pounds of butter and a package of yeast, and I followed up that stop with a visit to the local Asian supermarket. For what, you may ask, was I in need of so much sweet dairy fat, dormant microorganisms, and non-Western goods?

I actually have no immediate need for such a large quantity of butter, but Waldbaum’s has it on sale this week for buy one get two free. That is an insanely amazing price for butter, so I figured I’d stock up. I enjoy baking, and that generally requires butter for the best-tasting results, so it’ll be useful to have around. I’ve got two of the pounds in the freezer, so they’ll keep for months yet. It’s all about getting good deals on pantry staples. ;]

As for the yeast, my sister’s been wanting yeast for a while now, and she kept forgetting to tell me so whenever I was going food shopping recently. I was thinking about it today, so I got it for her. I’m curious to see what exactly it is she needs microscopic fermenting factories for, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough!

Finally, the Asian grocery store was basically just for killing the 30 minutes I had left after my food shopping until the next bus back to campus would be going by. However, what began as an innocent visit to do a reconnaissance of what the store has as compared to what is contained in my growing knowledge of Asian foodstuffs became a TARO PURCHASING TRIP OF DOOM.

While passing by the refrigerated cases on the right side of the store, I came upon the so-labelled Steamed Taro Buns I’d spotted the last time I was there but forwent buying because I was on a mission to find sweet red bean paste or adzuki beans. This time, on the other hand, I had no such goal in mind, and so the last, lone package of hulking taro buns was quickly removed from it’s chill-house of solitariness into my possession for impending consumption.

The bus took seemingly forever to get to the stop I was waiting at, but that was certainly because I was impatient to steam up these buns and taste the taro-y goodness lurking inside. Almost as soon as I got back to my apartment, I set up a pot to steam them, and put two buns inside–one for me, and one for my sister’s friend Terry. Ten minutes later, we were both very happily devouring soft, moist, steamy buns of taroness.

When I say these buns are hulking, I mean they’re hulking. After it was steamed, the thing was easily the size of my fist. I wasn’t complaining, though! I certainly got my money’s worth with six of these insanely large buns for $2.75. :) After removing the paper lining from the bottom of the bun, ready to introduce it to my tummy, I was overwhemingly overjoyed to discover IT WAS ROLLED LIKE A CINNAMON BUN. I could PEEL IT APART INTO A SPIRAL.

So of course I did. ;D

Combined with the novelty of de-laminating the bun, the deliciousness of the barely-sweet, just-enough-taro-flavor mound of dough in front of me made this the most enjoyable non-cake-bread-eating experience I can remember. Forget about dinner rolls. Move over regular bread. Give me taro buns or give me…no bread! ;P :D

Once that entire hunk of taro bun delight was being submerged in tummy juices, I decided the steaming of another was in order. That’s how the trip to the Oriental Grocery became a Taro Purchasing Trip of Doom. While one bun was absolutely wonderful, two was…well, one too many, heh. I am so stuffed right now, but at least I am STUFFED WITH DELICIOUSNESS!!

3 Comments Categories: Appetizers/Snacks · Breads · Chinese · Photos

I had requested to do Thanksgiving dinner this year about a month ago. Starting after we returned from the diner on Wednesday night, I undertook making a complete meal from start to finish. On the menu was pumpkin bread for daytime nibbling, turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed cauliflower, green beans, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. With an incredibly brief break for sleep in the wee hours of the morning, I was in the kitchen from about 10pm Wednesday until 4:20pm on Thanksgiving Day. I tend to do things a little on the slow side when it a) involves an unfamiliar recipe and b) involves any sort of cutting–my knife skills, while safe, are certainly not yet very efficient.

My preparation got underway with setting up the turkey to brine for several hours. I cooked up a nice brine in a huge stockpot, let it cool, put in the fresh turkey, and let it soak up all the flavors and get succulently moist. Once that was resting out in the garage, I put together the cranberry sauce because it had to chill overnight. After that was done cooking and set aside in the fridge to cool, it was time to prepare the crust for the pumpkin pie. That came together pretty quickly (as is necessary with pastry crusts), and next up was to bake some pumpkin bread for everyone to munch on for breakfast and throughout the day on Thursday while waiting for dinner.

A happy loaf of pumpkin bread

There was a recipe in my brand-new The Baking Handbook by Martha Stewart that looked fantastic, so I passed on baking my mom’s traditional recipe, which she does every year at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Clearly, Martha knows what she’s doing and sometimes it’s definitely worth it to fix something that isn’t broken. While my mom’s bread hasn’t been labelled as “bad” in my book, it’s totally been knocked way down on the list in the face of this new recipe.

I simply had to try a piece as soon as it was cool enough!

Thanks to Martha, I’ve discovered the wondrousness and glory of a super-moist, super-tender, not-overly-sweet, very-pumpkiny-and-flavorful pumpkin bread. And I never considered my mom’s recipe terribly unhealthy until now–the Baking Handbook recipe uses one-sixth of the oil my mom’s does, and yet it’s still a bazillion times more moist. I’m going to attribute it to the buttermilk, because the red velvet caked I baked back in September had the same kind of moistness and also called for buttermilk. I have now decided that buttermilk is a Kitchen Essential and Makes Everything Better. Seriously, I think I’m going to be very critical of any cake-like recipe that doesn’t call for it from now on, and I’m going to continue experimenting with using it elsewhere (I’d tried it with oatmeal, and dude, does it make the best oatmeal EVER).

Consumption of that slice took place, the turkey was turned in the brine, and then I settled in to get some much-needed sleep for a couple of hours. After waking up a bit earlier than I had planned due to other people starting to make noise through the house, I got the turkey out of the brine and set up in the roasting pan to go in the oven later and put together the pie so it would be done and cooling all day and the oven could be devoted to the turkey.

While the pie was baking, I cut up the bread for the stuffing. I have to say, it’’s really ridiculous how difficult sourdough bread is to cut. Jesus. It took me an hour to cut it into pieces, and most of that time was spent just cutting the slices because it required so much effort! I actually had to take breaks to rest a couple of times!! While I loved the taste of the sourdough for stuffing, I don’t think I’ll be putting myself through all of that again. ;P The pie was done baking by the time the bread had succumbed to my will and sharp tool of doom, so I set that out to cool and toasted the bread cubes. Those were set aside until it was time to put the stuffing together, and I got to work chopping the aromatic veggies to stuff the turkey.

The turkey was stuffed and prepped for the oven and began cooking just about noon, right on time, woo! I set to work chopping up the seemingly massive amount of onions and celery and carrot for the stuffing, and then I started putting that together. I couldn’t help tasting after I browned the sausage, hee. Italian turkey sausage has been added near the top of the “Animal Proteins I Like” list. ;x Yum! :yum: The mountain of veggies were cooked down and stirred into the bread cubes, and that was set aside until the turkey came out of the oven and it could get finished.

Once I’d readied the stuffing, I took a brief sit-down break and then got working on the other side dishes. First was the green beans with pan-roasted red onions and balsamic glaze, then I cooked and mashed the sweet potatoes for the brûléed mashed sweet potatoes, and last was the beginnings of the prep work for my mashed cauliflower. All of the sides came together just in time for the turkey to come out at 3:30pm. It was set aside to rest while I gave the stuffing it’s final prep of pouring broth over it, putting it in some pans, and baking for 20 minutes. Around four, I started making the gravy, and by 4:30 we were sitting down to eat. Of course, not until I’d taken photos of everything…

All of the food set out to be served

Mmm…crisp grean beans and sweet red onion

Fruity, meaty, flavorful stuffing

Oh, the caramelized brown sugary goodness…

Smooth, creamy mashed cauliflower

That turkey tasted just as good as it looked!

Perfectly sweet-tart cranberry sauce

Everyone was getting impatient while I photographed everything. ;) As soon as I was done, my dad set to work carving the turkey, and soon we were all sitting around the table with our respective plates of food, ready to give thanks and dig in!

Waiting for everyone to be ready was torture!

I got compliments throughout the meal on how good everything was. My dad said that it was absolutely the best turkey he’d had in his life, and considering how many turkeys he’s had to compare it to–and the fact that it was the first turkey I ever cooked–I’m quite proud of myself for it. :) :) It was a very delicious turkey: incredibly moist but not undercooked, very flavorful, and gorgeously browned on the outside. As for the side dishes, the green beans were perfectly crisp-tender and very well complimented by the sweet red onions and light balsamic-brown sugar glaze; we polished off an entire dish of the stuffing during dinner and very little was left by the time I came back to school last night–we usually have apples in it, but I definitely like the pear so much better, and I already raved about that Italian sausage; my dad said that the mashed cauliflower really could almost pass for mashed potatoes, and it came out really good with chicken bouillon and a little milk and butter; the mashed sweet potatoes were definitely a welcome variation from the dessert-like sweet potato casserole we’ve always had; and the cranberry sauce was fantastic, garnering much approval from my grandma–and everyone else. ;D

Overall, dinner was an absolute success, and I’ve already been named Christmas Dinner Chef this year. :) Considering it’s only a month away, I can’t believe I already have to keep it in mind to plan the meal! I’ve become quite settled on doing a standing rib roast for the main dish. A bit more complicated to get right than a turkey, I think, but I have confidence my dad will be raving about it just as much as yesterday’s turkey. ;)

The crust was the best part

My mom, grandma, and myself cleaned up once everyone was done eating, and then we had dessert. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll use the same recipe for pumpkin pie again. While it had great texture, it wasn’t sweet enough. The crust was fantastic, though. The pecans were great, nuts make everything better. ;D My mom had also picked up a peach-praline pie from Stop and Shop, and that was quite good. It made up for the lack of sweetness in the pumpkin pie tenfold, heh. There was also some ice cream to have with the pie–Häagen-Dazs Light Dulce de Leche and Rum Raisin. Ohhh, boy. :D

We all rolled away from the table after that meal. And no one was averse to having leftovers the next day, either, it was all so good. :)

3 Comments Categories: Breads · Desserts · Main Meals · Photos · Side Dishes · Thanksgiving 2005 · Vegetables

After getting back to my parent’s house tonight, we all went out to dinner at the family favorite restaurant–the Terrace Diner in West Babylon. As diner’s go, this is definitely the best, in my opinion; the service is consistently good, the food is consistently good (I’ve never been at all disappointed by something I ordered), and the prices are average-or-better for this area.

Being a very small fan of fried/heavily sauced/otherwise loaded with fat meals, I generally only choose from a few items I know won’t send my GI tract into a violent storm of “you’ve loaded me with too much lipid, idiot!” convulsions–their vegetable wrap is one of my favorites. However, tonight I actually spotted something on the dinner specials list that seemed like something I’d enjoy: Pasta Angelica, a mélange of sautéed chicken breast, mushrooms, garlic, onion, and red pepper in olive oil and balsamic vinegar over penne. I asked for them to go light on the oil (which they did!), and lo! I was finally able to order a meal that included dessert for once!!

A lone little ball floating in my broth

My meal began with an appropriately diminutive bowl of matzoh ball soup. The matzoh was perfect souping consistency–firm enough to hold together in broth, tender enough to easily slice off bite-sized pieces with a my spoon. It was also lightly herbed, which was a pleasant addition to the normally plain dough. I was quite thoroughly pleased by the fact that the broth wasn’t too salty, and it was definitely well-developed, the chicken flavor was satisfyingly intense. :)

After the soup came a small, side-salad-size plate of the house Greek salad. I didn’t bother to photograph it because it was just your standard greens + cucumber + tomato + feta + olives salad with a little cup of the House dressing. My family goes to this diner primarily for this dressing, which really is unimpressive visually–it’s a cloyingly yellow, thick dressing almost reminiscent of custard. The taste, on the other hand, is remarkable: garlicky, smooth, and oh-so-tasty but not too rich. I never use all that they give you because of how flavorful it is; just a little bit goes a very long way.

Next up was my main event for the meal. Well, at least, what most, non-dessert-oriented people would consider the main event. ;)

The aroma of this dish was nirvana

What never ceases to amaze me about the Terrace Diner is how they always cook their chicken exactly right–it’s never underdone, and at the same time it’s never overcooked to the point of dry, stringy unappetizingness. I’ve tried a number of their chicken dishes, and each time it’s arrived in front of me at the perfect temperature and moist, tender, delicious. The Pasta Angelica’s chicken cubes had the benefit of being covered in balsamic vinegar and a teeny bit of olive oil. Everything in this dish was fantastically flavorful, and I’ve since become convinced that nothing goes with mushrooms like balsamic vinegar. Mmm! :yum:

Because I knew that I still had dessert coming to me, and while that pasta would be very hard to top, I had faith it would be the highlight of my dinner, so I deliberately only ate about a third of the main course. I asked our server to wrap up the rest, and after everyone else in my family had finished up their dinners, I took a short stroll over to the dessert cases and pondered my options. I was faced with the choices of rice pudding, chocolate pudding, Jello, chocolate cheesecake, plain cheesecake, strawberry-topped sugar-free cheesecake, apple pie, cherry pie, bluberry pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate layer cake, chocolate mousse cake, a streusel-topped apple tart, various small pastries and brownies and cookies, and the cake I wound up deciding on: carrot cake.

A moist, tender crumb sandwiched by cheesy frosting

On any given day, you’re bound to find me unable to pass up chocolate. I’m definitely a chocoholic. However, after such a filling meal as what preceded this dessert selection process, I wasn’t really up for the clearly decadent and heavy chocolate desserts (well, except for the pudding, but come on–who on earth in their right mind would select pudding of all things when faced with choices like the ones I had before me???). Besides, the cute little carrots on top were absolutely calling to me. I could here their squeaky little voices chirping my name as I thoughtfully considered all of my potential desserts.

And after all that consideration, the selection I settled on did not disappoint at all. The cake was splendidly most, with more than enough shredded carrot, walnut pieces, plumped raisins, and wintery spices to go around. Usually for me, cake is just an excuse to eat frosting, but I’d actually order this dessert with the intention of enjoying the cake in its own right the next time I go to Terrace. At the same time, this is not to downplay the glory of that frosting in any way, shape, or form.

The photo doesn’t do justice to that sweet topping

Seriously, this cream cheese frosting gets an A+++ in my book for Doing What Cheesecake Frosting is Supposed to Do. It perfectly balanced the spicy, carroty, tender cake with creamy, flavorful sweetness. It wasn’t so cream cheesey as to mislead me into thinking I’m eating a cheesecake when clearly I’m not, and at the same time it wasn’t so overly-sugared as to make my teeth hurt and my tongue go dry. It was Perfection. Except there should’ve been more; for the Queen of Frosting (i.e. me), there just simply wasn’t enough of this amazing concotion between and atop and around those cake layers. :P Alas, I really can’t complain too much in the face of the overal fantabulousness of my dessert.

Really, the cake in general was honestly the best carrot cake I’ve ever had. It’s inspired me to attempt my own carrot cake-baking endeavor, so not only can I have a wonderfully well-endowed cake with the epitome of greatness in the form of cream cheese frosting, but I can make sure there’s enough of said frosting. ;)

0 Comments Categories: Desserts · Italian · Main Meals · Pasta · Photos · Restaurant Ramblings