Recipes 9-13: Success!

5 recipes...4 people...2 spring form pans!

I had Mike and my parents over for a nice dinner this weekend for a belated birthday celebration for my mom. The menu consisted of (and yes, the names of the dishes are links to the recipes on foodnetwork.com):

Red Pepper Cheesecake

Tuscan Stuffed Mushrooms

Eggplant Timbale (with Giada's marinara sauce)

Hazelnut Crunch Cake

I am happy to report that all of the recipes were delicious! It's always nice when you put a lot of work into cooking, and then everything actually tastes good! I will definitely make all of these recipes again. Oddly, dessert was my least favorite of the 5...and for those of you who know me, you'll be shocked right about now to hear that sentence come from me!!

I was a bit nervous about the savory roasted red pepper cheesecake, mainly because it contained one ingredient that I am not too fond of...goat cheese. I am a big fan of cheese for the most part, but goat cheese has a very odd flavor to it, don't you think? It's like a cross between rancid lemons and what I imagine a teenage boy's sweat sock would taste like. A bit of an exaggeration? I don't think so. The last time I tried goat cheese was on the Alaskan cruise I went on with my family several years ago. I saw it sitting there on the buffet and decided to try it again - maybe my taste buds had changed. So, I took a small slice of it, put it on a cracker, popped it in my mouth, and what did I taste? Sweat socks.

So, needless to say, I wasn't too excited about it being included in this recipe, but I used it anyway hoping it would be drowned out by the yumminess of the ricotta and cream cheeses. It was! We spread the cheesecake onto tiny multi-grain toasts (instead of the pitas the recipe called for) and it was very delicious. It didn't taste like sweat socks at all! And as the ultimate compliment, my dad, who is not the cheese fan that I am, actually liked it. I know, it's practically criminal not to like cheese. If I didn't look so much like him, I wouldn't think it was possible that I was related to him!

The second appetizer was Tuscan Stuffed Mushrooms. Yet another recipe with one item I was afraid of, thinking I didn't like...green olives. For years and years, I've said "I don't like green olives". But, mixed with all the other stuffing items, they were absolutely delicious. This may have been my favorite dish of the evening. Very tasty.

The main dish was Eggplant Timbale. It was one of the first recipes I noticed when I bought the book. The picture of it is so beautiful. You take grilled slices of eggplant and line a spring form pan with them. Then you stuff the middle of the pan with a pasta mixture and fold the eggplant slices back over the top - encasing the pasta mixture in eggplant. I wouldn't say this was a difficult dish to make, but it was rather complicated - a lot of steps.

First, it calls for marinara sauce, and I don't use jarred sauce anymore. I prefer to make my own in large batches and then freeze smaller portions of it. I use a recipe from Williams-Sonoma that is very simple and versatile. However, for this one, I decided to make Giada's recipe (knowing I'd have to do it eventually to cross it off the list). Oddly, her recipe has carrots, celery and a bay leaf in it. It was good, but it tasted more like really chunky tomato soup than typical Italian marinara sauce.

Next, I had to very precisely cut two eggplants into 1/4" slices and grill them. I have a very tiny portable grill which only held about 6 -8 slices of eggplant at a time, multiplied by 4 minutes per side, multiplied by about 5 batches. Yeah, that took a while. Meanwhile, I made the filling which was penne pasta, ground beef, Italian sausage, onions, peas, mozzarella cheese, Romano cheese, the previously made marinara sauce, Marsala wine and some herbs and spices.

Next came assembly time. In the book, Giada had eggplants that were a little taller than mine. The ones in stock at Ralph's that day were on the short and stubby side, which made it a bit tricky to line the spring form and still have the long tails hanging over the side. But, I made due. I lined the pan with eggplant, filled it up with the pasta mixture and put another layer of eggplant on top. Eventually, it baked for a little bit and then came The Big Unmolding. This was the scary part. I SO wanted it to look as beautiful as it did in the book, but I figured - even if it falls apart, it should still taste good. Even after I removed the side of the spring form pan, it was still standing, so that was a good sign. And then, drum roll please, I cut the first wedge out of the round. It held together for the most part! It didn't quite look as perfect as the one in the book, but I was pretty happy with it. I did accidentally drop a small piece of it down the sides of one of my cupboards, on to my foot and then on to the floor, but other than that - it was served, and everyone really enjoyed it! Yay! It was very tasty - definitely worth making again.

Finally, dessert was Hazelnut Crunch Cake. I actually baked this up the night before since it also had many steps to it. Luckily, the cake part of it was just a chocolate cake mix. Thanks to Betty Crocker, that part turned out just fine. The frosting was mascarpone cheese, cream, a little powdered sugar and some vanilla. Really good - not overly sweet like so many cake frostings. The "crunch" part was basically like a hazelnut brittle. The hardest part of this turned out to be trying to get the skins off the stupid nuts. Let's just say that they were only about half skinned because I lost my patience. So I made the brittle, chopped it up and folded it into the frosting and frosted the cake. Then there was a topping of ground up bittersweet chocolate, orange zest and a little sugar that got crumbled on the top.

It was pretty good, but I didn't like the crunchy stuff in the frosting. And I didn't care for the orange flavor in the crumble either. It would have been better if it was just the chocolate cake mix and the frosting without the crunch. But then, it would have been really hard for them to call it Hazelnut Crunch Cake without the hazelnut or the crunch!

Recipes 7-8: Picky Eater?

I never thought of myself as a picky eater. I like most things. I especially like cheese, chocolate and almost anything covered in cheese or chocolate. Recently, though, I've come to realize that there's quite a long list of things I don't enjoy very much.

Not all of it comes down to taste. A lot of it has to do with what I consider textural abnormalities. For example, I can't eat an entire banana because the texture starts to gross me out about half way through. Unless, that is, as mentioned above, it's covered in chocolate!! Also, as mentioned in a previous post, I don't like raisins, sun-dried tomatoes or any other dried fruit (and if those are covered in chocolate, I still don't like them, but I will eat the chocolate off of it)! Another thing I will almost always tell you with disgust that I don't like...salmon.

I like fish. I don't have a problem with it at all...but there's something about salmon that bothers me. I've often wondered if it was the pinkish color that made my mind somehow think it wasn't cooked. So, imagine my dread, when I let Mike pick this weekend's recipes and he chose Salmon with Puff Pastry and Pesto (oh, I don't like pesto either)!

I decided to go ahead and make it, giving salmon another chance (but having a backup plan of some other fish for me to eat, just in case). The recipe was a layered dish, puff pastry topped with pesto and tomatoes with the fish on top. I bought swordfish as my back-up plan. I think I got a bad piece, because it was so tough - it was awful! It was either try the salmon, or eat a piece of puff pastry for dinner.

So, I dug in (cautiously). Hmmm....not too bad. The flavor was fine, but after a couple of bites, I realized why I don't like salmon. Texture. It's a little too smushy and fatty. So, I could eat about 1 1/2 ounces of it before it got to be too much for me. Then I loaded up on the side dish of Spicy Parmesan Green Beans and Kale. This was delicious (a tiny bit too salty, but otherwise delicious). It had onions, cremini mushrooms, green beans, kale and other seasoning items...all sauteed together. Very good.

So, another semi-successful evening. Salmon and I might not be completely over, but it'll probably be a little while before we see each other again.

Recipe 6: Congealed Orzo

A few nights ago, I made Orzo with Sausage, Peppers and Tomatoes. It was orzo pasta (obviously), some Italian turkey sausage, tomatoes and jarred fire roasted red peppers. It was pretty good right after I made it, but turned a little strange the next day.

This is the first time I've ever seen a recipe that directs you to boil the pasta in a water/chicken broth combo. I assumed it would add a little flavor to the pasta, and thought it was a brilliant idea! That is, until I saw the very weird filmy substance that appeared on top of the water. You had to reserve the cooking liquid and use it to make the pasta a little saucier. That was actually a technique that the chefs used at our cooking class in Italy, so it seemed o.k. But as that water cooled a little while I put together the rest of the ingredients, it got a film on top of it, and it turned very thick.

But, I carried on and ate the dish, and was pleased with it.

However, the filmy, thick water proved to be a detriment the next day when I went to eat some leftovers for lunch. It had congealed into one Gladware-shaped brick! Even after heating it in the microwave, it was hard to get it to loosen up. I added some hot water to it, which helped. It still tasted pretty good, at least, it was just kind of strange.

Recipe 5 (sort of): Somethin' Ain't Right

My mom and dad have a neighbor & friend named Tim. He hangs out with my dad pretty much every afternoon and he's hilarious! He likes to bake every now and then, and one time baked a cake but it didn't turn out how he'd expected. He had his wife, Karen, taste it...and her response was "Somethin' Ain't Right" and she had him take it over to my mom and dad for confirmation. He'd forgotten an ingredient - I can't remember what it was now - but today, I also experienced the "Somethin' Ain't Right" concept.

I decided to stop at the store on the way home from work so I could make Fusilli alla Caprese. It's basically a Caprese salad (fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil) on pasta instead of a salad. I figured, it only has a few ingredients, and will have big chunks of cheese in it. Sounds good, right?

I opened the container of tiny mozzarella balls and was so excited to throw one of them in my mouth.
Usually, you get that sort of fresh creaminess that mozzarella has. Well, I popped one (or maybe two) in my mouth and all I could say was "Somethin' Ain't Right" whilst spitting it promptly into the sink. It wasn't quite rotten or anything, but it was just sour...a tiny bit rancid maybe? I couldn't quite put my finger on it, I just know it wasn't right.

So, I continued to make the rest of the pasta and sauce figuring it doesn't really need the cheese (did I just say that? Because really, everything needs a little cheese).
I had some shredded mozzarella and just put that on. It was actually pretty tasty, even without the fresh mozzarella. I'll have to make it again (the right way), so I don't feel like I accomplished anything tonight. Except maybe that I ate rancid cheese. Does that mean I can stay home from work tomorrow?

Recipes 1-4: Extreme Mint

Last night marked the completion of the first 4 recipes on my quest:

Garlic and Sun-dried Tomato Corn Muffins
Artichoke Gratinata
Beef Roast with Spicy Parsley Tomato Sauce

Strawberry and Moscarpone Granita



Overall, I'd say the meal was a success! Except...

1. I don't like sun-dried tomatoes. Ick! For the same reason I don't like raisins, I feel bad for fruits and veggies that have had the life sucked out of them while they sit, helpless in the harshness of the sun. I didn't think it was possible for sun-dried tomatoes to taste like raisins, but they do. Kind of ruined the muffins for me, even when I tried to pick around the tomatoes.
2. Do you know how expensive frozen artichoke hearts are? Yikes! The recipe called for one pound. I found them first in those little boxes for $5.99 for 8 oz!! That would have been $12! Luckily I found some that were already quartered for $3.99 for 12 oz. Much better!
3. Trying to figure out which cut of meat is which is very confusing. It seems like there are 42,000 different names for the same cut! I wound up using a chuck roast which the recipe listed, but it didn't seem like it was the same thing in the picture. Also, I like it when recipes give time and temperature for a cooked piece of meat, but if they're completely conflicting, which one do you go with? I think there's an art to somehow compromising the two. OR...there's an art to learning the exact right spot to stick the meat thermometer! I inserted mine, it looked like the middle...but after just a few minutes, it said it already reach the 140 degrees I was shooting for! Uh-oh! I consulted another cook book which said a roast is usually 160 degrees before it's medium. So, I let it go to 160 degrees, but that was only 20 minutes or so! I wound up messing around with the thermometer and trying again, it went down to 109 degrees and took another 40 minutes or so. That was more like it. The meat was a little tough.
4. EXTREME MINT! Oh my goodness...mint overkill on the granita! Basically, you make a simple syrup with water and sugar and infuse it with mint. It was VERY minty. Then you drizzle the syrup into pureed strawberries with some moscarpone cheese. All I could taste was mintyness. I hoped it would mellow a little by the time it froze. It didn't. It wasn't very good.

The best things about the meal:

1. It wasn't that complicated. Even though I made 4 dishes, it really didn't require too much prep or clean up. Yay!
2. The artichokes were yummy! I mean really, I like artichoke hearts anyway, but sprinkle (or dump) some parmesan cheese on the top and make it all crunchy...and you've got yourself a winner!!
3. The meat, though a bit tough, was actually pretty tasty. The sauce, which you made with a whole bunch of parsley, roasted tomatoes and some other stuff, was not a very appetizing color (imagine what you get when you mix red and green), but it was yummy!
4. The only redeeming quality I can figure out with the dessert was that when I pureed the strawberries all by themselves, they smelled divine!

OK, 4 recipes down...90 something to go!! Stay tuned!!