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!