Battle of the Celebrity Chef Vodka Cream Sauce recipes

For "food with liquor," I made penne with vodka cream sauce from a recipe by Giada de Laurentiis.* Wait, you might say (especially if you were Anastasia), didn't Anastasia just make that? Well, yes, but in my defense, there is not technically a rule against making exactly the same thing as someone else. Um. Also, it's exciting because we can compare celebrity chef recipes for the same thing. It's RACHEL RAY vs. GIADA DE LEURENTIIS!! Here goes:

Baseline trust level: Giada 9, Rachel 3. Rachel is a bigger star (I think), but I think it's because her inhuman perkiness makes her terrifying and thus impossible to look away from, which is not the same thing as wanting her to cook for you. Giada is Italian, which gives her cred, and while her cookbook does include an unnecessary number of pictures of her ta-tas, they do not frighten me.


Recipe reasonableness: Giada 5, Rachel 8. Sorry, G, but the whole thing of saying "use 3 cups of the marinara sauce you made earlier on page 32 (and which involves simmering for an hour)" is annoyingly reminiscent of The Joy of Cooking. However, she does get credit for pointing out that the cream has to be at room temperature or it will curdle--good tip! It could have helped Myrtle last week, perhaps.

Rachel's recipe is easier, but she gets points off for "1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, once around the pan in a slow stream"--snort--and, obviously, for the name "You Won't Be Single For Long Vodka Cream Pasta."

Taste: Giada: 9, Rachel 8. This is hard to judge, since I didn't taste Rachel/Anastasia's. The Giada recipe was really good--it looked and tasted delicious, with the promised vodka-induced "kick in the throat." I was dubious about the fact that the marinara sauce had carrots and celery in it, but that ended up being totally fine. Anastasia's sounded delicious too, but I give Rachel's recipe one point off for getting Stazio drunk--sounds like the recipe didn't give the vodka long enough to cook off.

Giada wins! Admittedly, I am not sure that that means I wouldn't use Rachel's recipe.

*I used Giada's recipe from the book "Everyday Italian," which is similar to, but for some reason not exactly the same as, this version of the recipe from her TV show of the same name. Both of them have you make a base tomato sauce first, then add vodka, cream, and Parmesan cheese, but the one in the book includes salt and pepper in the vodka sauce recipe, calls the base sauce "marinara" instead of "simple tomato sauce," and does not include basil or butter in the marinara sauce.

Brief Intermission: Hanukkah!

HAPPY HANUKKAH!

Sorry, to briefly stray from Cooking With Alcohol, but I just wanted to do a quick post about my recent experiment with latkes. Yummy mummy in my tummy!






I made mine super easy -- 3 grated potatoes, 2 eggs, 1 finely chopped onion, bunch of salt. It was classic, and since it was the first time I tried to make them, I didn't want to mess it up by going too overboard with the gourmet.



Frying them in the olive oil is the scariest part. But fry them in olive oil I did, in honor of the Hanukkah miracle of 8 nights of light in the Temple of Jerusalem (when there was only enough oil for 1 night). (Go holiday cooking lessons!).

Here are the oily little potato wonders, drying out a bit on a paper towel.

And here is the finished product, with a dollup of apple sauce.

Just like (Arie's) mom used to make 'em!

Chanukah Sameach, yo.

Tequila!

After getting stumped on what to make for the Cooking with Alcohol challenge, I got the idea for cooking with tequila from my Dad. I searched around and found this recipe for Pasta with Tequila Lime Cream Sauce on several different web sites. If it's all over the web, it must be good--right?

During the first stage of the cooking process, I had really high hopes. The tequila and lime reducing made my whole apartment smell like toasty Margarita. Mmm.

Things started to go a little wrong when I added the cream. It curdled instantly. Not terribly, but enough that I thought I might have to toss the whole attempt. I was worried that I would have to switch to my backup recipe No Bake Margarita Cheesecake (is it just me, or does this sound like a glorified jello shot?) Thankfully, this effect went away as the cream reduced, and once I added the butter the sauce was nice and creamy. Phew.

But that still left me with one major problem. Way too limey. A little white pepper and a lot of salt helped (no salt called for in this recipe? That wasn't going to work.), but it was still all about the lime.

I completely skipped the corn starch step because once I had reduced the sauce by 1/2 it was definitely thick enough for pasta.

The recipe suggested adding chicken or seafood, so I decided to sautée portabello mushrooms to go on top.

After the pasta overkill incident of Pasta Sauce Not From A Jar, I played it safe and only made enough pasta for the night and dished the sauce out on top.

The tomatoes and green onions helped balance the lime, and the portabella mushroom was a huge improvement. And I added a lot of Parmesan cheese on top. But, sigh, still too much lime.

I still felt like it had potential. I think this sauce could be really good 1) with about half as much lime juice, 2) with fresh lime juice--I regret wussing out and going with RealLime, 3) on fish (and even then maybe with less lime).

Clearly I am better at drinking alcohol than cooking with it.

Update: The next night I tried making it with way less lime (only about 1/8 cup because that was what I had) and it turned out MUCH better. Yay!

Cooking with alcohol

Turning boozy booze into food.

24- Hour Mac and Cheese

We spent Thanksgiving this year at my sister-in-law's family's house. This made me a bit grumpy, as I have gotten to be in charge of the turkey the last couple of years at my parent's house and have grown to like it that way. Alas, this year it was not to be. I had to choose just one dish this year.

I opted for a macaroni and cheese recipe I found in the Best American Recipes cookbook a few years back, because I am a sucker for kiddie food and because my mom made me make it. This recipe is really simple and revolves completely around what kind of cheese you use. It calls for gruyere, which is lovely to be sure. Another time, I made it with good old Wisconsin Swiss, which was better. I usually top it with some Reggiano. But this year, I got fancy at Whole Foods (mom was buying!) with a delectable Leerdammer Swiss and then topped it with one of my all-time-favorites, Fontina.

So, this is what you do: the day before your big meal, you par cook the macaroni -- like just before al dente. Then you grate up your cheese and mix it with the pasta along with an assload of heavy cream. Salt and fresh black pepper to taste. Then let it soak overnight. The pasta absorbs all that creaminess. When you're ready to eat it, dish it into a casserole dish and cover with your topping cheese. I think I cooked it at 350 for about 20 minutes or so.

I have no photographic evidence. But, trust me, it's good and it's really, really bad for you.

Thanksgiving: Blue Collar Stuffing and Various Fruit Crisp (plus a flashback)

Mr. T&A and I hosted Thanksgiving for Mother-in-Law T&A and another friend last week, and I am very relieved to report it all went swimmingly. I wasn't worried because of the MiL's presence--she is a very lovely, non-stress-inducing person--but rather because the only other time I was involved in making Thanksgiving it went . . . not well.

~Flashback~

It was on my study-abroad program (Budapest Semesters in Mathematics '98 in da house!) The first problem was that we couldn't figure out the Hungarian word for turkey, nor could we identify one by sight, so we were entirely unsure what kind of fowl we had purchased, and thus of how to cook it. (Well, really the first sign was the presence of my college boyfriend, but this is not that kind of blog.) The second, and more alarming, problem was the power outage, which came halfway through the food preparation. I had previously idly wondered what would happen if the power went out in Budapest, because all the apartment buildings had main doors that required you to push a button on the adjacent wall in order to get out. As was confirmed when we left to buy candles, the buttons, in fact, did not work absent electricity. After quite a lot of freaking out, we figured out that there was actually a keyhole on the inside of the door.

Of course, after all that freaking out, Problem # 3--excessive drinking of vodka--was inevitable, and led predicably to Problems # 4 and 5, severe undercooking of mystery fowl and severe hangovers combined with possible food poisoning. Ahhh, college.

~End flashback~

Anyway, for this Thanksgiving we cooked cornish hens, stuffing, corn bread, mac & cheese, sweet potatoes, mixed-fruit crisp, and cinnamon ice cream. I will only write about the stuffing and the crisp because those are the things I was in charge of.

Blue Collar Stuffing

I was stressed about the stuffing because I had completely spurned Mr. T&A's proposals for stuffing recipes containing things like sausage and fennel, in favor of a word-of-mouth recipe from my mom consisting only of bread, poultry seasoning, and water. And onion. And maybe an egg. I have internalized my mom's dedication to Blue Collar Stuffing, which she learned from my Gram, and which became a Thanksgiving necessity when John Mohan (father of the illustrious Jake Mohan of Jakemohan.net) told my mom her stuffing was great because it didn't have bullshit like vegetables in it.

Anyway, the stuffing went great--would Gram and John Mohan allow anything else? The key is to buy a loaf of the blue collar-iest bread possible--white, soft bread, the kind you would feed to ducks--pull or cut it into small-but-not-crumb-size pieces, and dry it out considerably, like overnight or in the oven on low. You then mix it with a sauteed onion (we also used celery, but I would leave it out next time--bullshit vegetables), add water or broth until it sticks together some, add an egg if you want, and mix in a generous amount of poultry seasoning--more than it says on the poultry seasoning container, but less than the whole container. You want it to turn fairly green. Then bake it at 350 for, you know, awhile, maybe 45 minutes, covered with foil for part of the time.

Mmm, stuffing.

Crisp o' Various Fruits

I decided on crisp because I like fruity desserts, but don't like pie enough to bother figuring out the deal with the crust. I picked this recipe because it had good reviews and allowed flexibility in fruit selection, which is key in late November. Whole Foods didn't have peaches, so I bought blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and a mango. The recipe is very easy--you cut up the fruit, mix it together, add a bit of sugar and flour, bake that for awhile, and then separately make a topping, add that and bake for another 20 minutes.

The topping was fairly confusing, though. There are 50+ reviews on Epicurious, and many of them say to double the topping amount and to add oats. I was all over that because I like topping, and it seems like a crisp topping should have oats in it--otherwise what is the butter and sugar supposed to cling to? But the problem with following suggestions like "double the topping and add some oats" is, what's the stopping point? So, I ended up with too much topping. Next time I'd 1.5x the topping, and show restraint on the oats--limit it to one modest handful. Otherwise, it was awesome--the fruit stood out very well, and the topping was crispy, buttery, and sweet, just as the gods of dessert intended.

Thanksgiving-related food

You know what it is.

Spoooooky Southwestern-Style Dips

For this challenge, Myrtle and I united our mad cooking skillz and created appetizers for our annual Spookyfest. Every year we invite a bunch of friends over to watch two scary movies for Halloween. However, this year we only made it through the first movie (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and learned the scariest truth of all; that we are too old to stay up past Midnight on a Friday night. Sigh.

Anyway, I made this recipe from Emeril. My friend, Kristen, chopped the peppers for me and did a kick-ass job. She chopped them sooo fine! I would have been super lazy and would have made them much thicker. But it made me realize that laziness doesn’t pay in the kitchen; the tiny pepper pieces ruled. I also recruited Eva to grate the garlic for me. Although it wasn’t as mind-blowing as Kristen’s chopped peppers, I’m giving her a shout-out for the effort. Thanks guys!

The cheesy hot corn goodness was a hit.

Over to you, Red!

Amy’s choice of her corn and cheese-tastic dish (which, by the way, yum) inspired me to look for a good black bean dip as a complement. I decided to go with this recipe for Texas Caviar, but with black beans instead of black-eyed peas. The main reason why I went with this version was it was pretty much the only one I found that called for you to make the dressing yourself instead of just dumping a bottle of Italian dressing on the beans and veggies. Since this is Poff-Coff, I figured the more from scratch the better, right! Well….

When I mentioned to a foodie friend of mine that I made Texas Caviar, his first response was, “It always gets too watery. Maybe I just don't do it right.” Nope, that pretty much sums up my experience too. If I was going to make this again, I would definitely cut back on the oil and vinegar. Or, perhaps the beauty of Italian dressing from a bottle is it is thicker than homemade dressing and you don’t have that problem.

Also, next time I am totally taking advantage of Kristen’s pepper dicing skills.

All in all, it didn’t turn out bad, but it paled in comparison to Amy’s yummy dish, and couldn’t even stand up to the guacamole that I also made. But the three dishes together worked out well and I might try it again. Plus, Poff-Coffing as a team is fun!

This is Amy again. Erika’s Texas Caviar was freaking good. Erika left it at my house after Spookyfest, and I totally ate it like 50 times as a snack. Also, we made burritos two days later for dinner, and we put it on the burritos and that was really awesome.

My jack-o-lantern and Misha really enjoyed it, too.

Appetizers!

They're small and delicious.

$62 Chili, Now with pictures!

So far, it looks like the chili recipes have been an across-the-board success. Amy B's point is well taken that, well, it's just a hard thing to screw up. But I give us more credit than that -- I think we're learning, y'all.

I found this week's recipe from the Food Network's official site. It is credited to Michael Chiarello, who I heard once from a friend of a friend, so distant I can't even remember, was a big asshole. And today I say, who cares? Dude puts together a fabulous chicken and white bean chili.

You can follow the link for the full recipe -- I'll just include my notes/highlights.

1. The recipe calls for chicken thighs, skin and bones removed. I don't know if such a thing is possible, but buying your chicken already skinned and boned would cut back on a significant amount of prep time. (Of course, it would also deny you the opportunity to use those chicken parts for homemade stock...which, I didn't actually do, but meant to.)

2. The recipe also calls for 4 jalepeno peppers, with seeds and all. This scared me, so I used the seeds from only two and the chili was quite spicy. Seeds from four peppers would have rendered it inedible, imho.

3. Ok, but the truly beautiful secret to this recipe was the masa harina. Yes, I had to google it, too. It is a "corn flour of finer texture than cornmeal." And it is delicious. Basically, you mix the masa harina with a few other herbs and spices and use it as breading for the chicken, which you brown in 1/4 cup olive oil. The flour gets nice and toasty, like a great rue. And when you put it back in the chili, this flavor pretty much defines the whole thing -- the pot smelled like spicy corn tortillas. Yum!

4. Oh, and $62 dollars, you ask? Well, the recipe also called for a couple of specialty spices that I've been wanted to check out anyway, and couldn't resist buying. Namely, grey salt and smoked paprika. I'm sure just the regular versions of each would suffice. (Though I learned that grey salt is spicy. Interesting!) Also, I bought a $12 bottle of wine to put in the chili. That, plus all the fresh herbs I no longer have in my garden added up to, yes, a $62 chili. Which, you know, is probably a bit much...ya think?

5. But, Adam said this was the best thing I have ever made, and the pride I've been walking around with all week is well worth it. Right?

This Little Piggy Got Green

I've read that your taste buds change every five years, which might explain a recent change to my chili sensibilities...I used to love my chili chock full of beans (When I was vegetarian, go figure), nowadays, I'm loving more meat-centric chili like Chili con Carne.

So, for this challenge, I decided to try Chili con Carne's white meat counterpart: Pork Chili Verde.

I'd never made -- or even eaten -- green chili before, but this recipe was a hit: It's light on beans, heavy on pork and damn delicious. But avert your eyes, Sita, because this takes a lot of pig...


The recipe that I found called for a ton of pork and chilis, so I ended up halving it...a good decision, even if you're serving 4-6. The reduced version took:

• 3 lbs. of lean pork (I used pork chops)
• 2 and 1/4 c. chicken stock (the recipe has a typo -- use cups, not quarts)
  
• an onion and half a fist of garlic, chopped
• 1/2 T. cumin, salt and pepper
  
• 4 poblano chilis and 2 jalapenos, chopped
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 3 lbs of tomatillos, husks removed
• half a bunch of cilantro, chopped
  
• 1 can of white beans (this was a reviewer's suggestion and a good one

Here's what you do:

1. Sear the pork in a 1/4 c. of oil until just golden
2. Scrape the resulting fond and saute the onions and garlic. When translucent, add spices and chicken stock. Simmer for 1/2 hour.
3. In this time, you have lots of chilis to chop.
   
   
   I needed some help, so sous chef Carnahan stepped in to dice and prepare the tomatillos. The tomatillos are pureed with the cilantro.
4. You add the peppers and puree to the pot. This is when things get seriously beautiful (bright green!) and delicious -- light, spicy and fresh. Let it cook for another 45 minutes.
5. Then serve on rice, add some cheese for garnish and voila!
   
   

The verdict: The pork and green chili made a winning combination, and Tim voted this my best P-off/C-off venture yet. As a green chili neophyte, the chili's thinner not-so-soupy base took me by surprise. But it tasted great...and even better on day two.

This one's a keeper!

Sweeeeeet Potato Chili

And to think, I almost passed on POffCOff this week. Thank god I caved to chili-related peer pressure!

After looking at a million chili recipes that seemed like the same old, same old, I finally stumbled across this one--interesting, easy, and quick. Peeeeerfect.

I read over the recipe reviews and they were really helpful. Instead of "Mexican-style stewed tomatoes" I used Muir Glen Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes and they added nice depth and balanced out the sweet of the sweet potatoes and the orange peel. Several people suggested chipotle chili powder instead of regular chili powder. I couldn't find any at my fabulous grocery store, so I went with "Hot Mexican-Style Chili Powder" (what's up with all the Mexican-style?).


As you can see, this recipe doesn't make a huge amount of chili in comparison to most recipes. So if you are making it for more than two or want lots of leftovers, I would suggest doubling it.

I wasn't so sure about the sweet potato/pinto bean combo once I got everything in the pot, but in the end it was goooooooooood. Especially with sour cream on top.


It was so good I scarffed two big bowls and could have kept going, but I wanted to have leftovers for lunch the next day. I will so make this again. In fact, I think this is my favorite recipe so far.

The Beans May Be Cheap, But The Chili Ain't Free

WHY CAN'T I MAKE ANYTHING NORMAL?!?

Ok, so I found this recipe for a veggie chili on Epicurious. I was excited when I found it because the recipe called for swiss chard, and my last foray into the world of greens didn't turn out quite as planned. When I saw this recipe I thought of two words: REDEMPTION, BABY.

The recipe also called for butternut squash, and seeing as how it is autumn, and I'd never cooked a squash before, I thought to myself, perfecto, a couple of challenges in one. So, off I merrily went to the grocery store to get the ingredients. EXCEPT! the freaking grocery store had no swiss chard. Grrrrr. Feeling bold and adventurous, after failing to reach anyone on their cell phones for help, I decided to go out on a limb by myself and substitute spinach for the swiss chard. Wild, right? EXCEPT! I'm a friggin' idiot, and when I got back to my office I was summarily informed by my coworker that I had in fact not bought spinach, but rather, sigh, collard greens.

I hastily began consulting the internet for information on collard greens, and frantically emailed Southern friends for help (thanks, Jackson). And basically, everywhere I turned, people were telling me you simply cannot put collard greens in chili.

After drying my tears of initial frustration, I decided to just say fuck it. Who says you can't put collard greens in chili?!

What's that, bitches? Aww, schnap, it's collard greens!

Right. So here's how I "modified" the recipe. So, first of all, if you've never made them, collard greens need to simmer for a surprisingly long time. I cleaned them, chopped them, brought them to a boil, and then turned down the heat and let them simmer for a little more than an hour. At which time, I dumped them into the collander and left them to sit aside for awhile.

I then basically followed the recipe, cooked up some garlic and onions, added the cubes of squash (kind of a bitch to peel and cut, by the way), and then added the black beans, tomatoes and vegetable broth. Here's where I discovered yet another so-called "mistake" I had made -- I accidentally bought crushed tomatoes instead of diced tomatoes. And it turns out that crushed tomatoes are generally marketed under the more well-known name of "sauce." Hence, my chili had no tomato chunks. Whatareyagonnado.

Oh, and I didn't have as much chili powder on hand as I thought I had, so I doubled the cumin to make up for it. Personally I think that cumin has a more, um, sophisticated taste than chili powder, so, ya know. This wasn't a mistake either.

Moving On.

After about 15 minutes or so, I added the collard greens back into the mess. And I let it all simmer for about another half hour or so.

And voila: collard greens and butternut squash chili!

I know, it sounds disgusting. And looks pretty heinous. But there are a couple of valuable lessons to be learned from this pot o' craziness.

1. It's pretty freaking hard to make chili taste bad. If you put chili powder, beans and pretty much anything else into a pot, it's going to taste kinda good.

2. Butternut squash is really nice in chili. I'd totally do that again.

3. Collard greens are really weird, and probably don't belong in chili. But you know what? I'm glad I took the risk. Also, I was way too lazy to go to a different grocery store in search of a more appropriate green.

So, here's the final product with a dollop of sour cream on top. And I swear, it kinda tasted good.

Also, aren't you all jealous of my cute little pink cat soup spoons?! There are some perks to living in Chinatown. Having fully-stocked grocery stores is, unfortunately, not one of them.

Week 6: Chili!

Chili: Mmmm, so freakin' good.

Gnokay Gnocchi

This week I decided to take a perfectly healthy theme like greens and turn it into a perfectly carbolicious meal like pasta! I am not normally a gnocchi person because it tends to be a little heavy for my taste, but I recently had some spinach gnocchi that was awesome. The question was: could I make it myself? Um, not quite.

Overall the recipe was pretty easy considering it is pasta from scratch, but when I got to the step where you are supposed to roll the dough into a cylinder, the dough was waaaaay too sticky.


I tried adding more flour, but it never really got to the point where it was easy to work with. I think maybe there was too much moisture left in the cheese and/or the spinach. But eventually I was able to work with it enough to turn it into little gnocchis.

The first night, I just sautéed them with butter and grated cheese on top. Unfortunately, that was a bit on the bland side.


The second night I had it with marinara sauce and that made it much tastier. And prettier! (Sort of.)


Overall, it wasn't bad and the spinach did keep it lighter than your average pasta, but the pieces of spinach also gave it a slightly weird texture. I think if I were to make this again, I might try pureeing the spinach with the ricotta to get a smoother texture and then draining off more of the moisture with a cheesecloth. This is one of those recipes that seems like it could be good with a little fine tuning. Or, you know, a professional chef.

So Nice I Screwed it up Twice

This is the entry wherein we discover my central flaw in the kitchen: I like to cook like I know what I am doing, but mostly I do not. I can follow a recipe quite well, but I find it basically impossible to resist the techniques of more experienced cooks -- namely, the one where they don't measure spices.

I found another recipe on Apartment Therapy's Kitchen site. Israeli Couscous with Chard. It is a pretty simple affair, really. Ingredients are:

1 3/4 cup chicken or vegetable broth

1 1/4 cup Harvest Grain Blend or Israeli couscous

Drizzle olive oil

3 large cloves garlic

1 teaspoon whole white cumin

1 dried red chili pepper (optional)

4 cups chopped chard

1/4 cup chicken or vegetable broth

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Heat the broth to boiling in a small saucepan. Stir in the
grains and lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for about 10-14 minutes.
Remove the lid and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-low heat. Sliver the garlic and cook it on low heat with the cumin and chili pepper until soft and fragrant. Don't let it brown. Add the chopped chard and turn the heat to medium. Sauté for about 5 minutes, or until it is beginning to wilt. Add the cooked couscous and the 1/4 cup of broth. Cook for another five minutes, stirring, until the broth has cooked off and the chard is fully wilted. Add salt to taste, and vinegar, and serve.

...With PBR, if you are married to the guy I am married to.

Here were the two nearly-fatal flaws:

1. I am SO BAD at not browning my garlic. If you ever watch Emeril, you know that he always makes fun of people who don't use the heat levels on their stoves. He'll point at the knobs and say, "You know what these are for?" So, I really tried to keep my heat low, but once I added the chard to the pan, my garlic totally toasted. It didn't burn, so it wasn't that big of a deal, except I was trying desperately not to toast it.

2. As alluded to above, I eyeballed my spices, and went WAY overboard on the cumin. And underboard on the salt. And overboard with cracked red pepper, which I used in place of the dried chili pepper.

All of that said, this recipe is freaking delicious. Israeli couscous was a new thing to me, and let me tell you -- it ROCKS.

It was so good, that I decided to make it again the next night. I was determined to get the seasoning right. But, I also upped the ante by adding sausage. I was envisioning a light chicken sausage type thing, but I didn't feel like going to the grocery store. (I'm sensing a theme to my recipes...) So, I used andouille instead. Nothing like Israeli couscous and pork, right?

Again, it was good. But again, I winged it on the spices -- andouille has a huge flavor of its own and I didn't want to add too much seasoning lest it get overly intense again. So, I went totally underboard on the cumin, a bit overboard on the salt, and underboard on the cracked red pepper.

It was a real learning experience, though. And, I found something to add to my repertoire!

Lasagna (Without The Lasagna). Sigh.

I am the first to admit that I am the most foodily challenged of anyone contributing to this blog. As with most things in life, I blame my mother for this deficiency. Growing up, we NEVER ate fresh vegetables (canned and frozen, baby). And as a result, most friends can remember having a conversation with me at one time or another in which I displayed my food-related ignorance. Recently I was forced to duck into a bathroom at a fancy work-related dinner and quietly call someone from my cell phone to inquire about whether or not prosciutto is vegetarian (it's not). Which is why when Naomi suggested these so-called "greens" as this week's challenge, I seriously had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I was under the stupid impression that we were making salads. Turns out, lots of recipes include COOKED greens. Who knew? Ok, I knew spinach was a green. And I've eaten it. Cooked. Many times. I just forgot. Anyway! Friends suggested kale. Mustard greens. Collard greens. Chard. Problem was, I had absolutely no idea what any of these things were. So...this week's challenge was a true learning experience for me. I'm a better person now. The kind of person who cooks chard. (Even if I don't particularly cook it well. Oy).

Moving on!

I found a bunch of awesome recipes and was really looking forward to my first foray into the world of cooked greens. However, I went to the laaaame Chinatown Path Mark the same night that I bought my cookie ingredients, and everything was out of stock, I couldn't find anything, I was cold and wet (it was pouring rain outside), and I just wanted to go home. In the end, I ditched my cool recipes and wound up making this one.

I bought what appeared to be nothing short of a shitload of chard. But who knew -- when you cook it, it, um, goes away...

Chard: Starts out big, ends up small

So, my casserole thingee had much less greens than a greens-newbie such as me would have anticipated. So that was slightly disenchanting. However, I bravely moved forward with the recipe. Well, it turned out that this recipe was waaaay more work than it was worth. I chopped the onion and red peppers for, like, 40 minutes. I had to sautee the chard in its own pan, then transfer it into the casserole dish. Let's just say that it was a lot of chopping and a lot of dishes for what turned out to be, in essence, spinach lasagna without the lasagna.

Sooooo, we ate it.

And, ya know, it tasted good. Chard turned out to be tasty. Veggies are good. Who doesn't like cheese?

But really, it was kinda like a salad, but hot, and covered in cheese. Not the heartiest, nor the healthiest.

As you can see, I paired it with a not-so-special spinach, tomato and parmesan salad. I thought I was being cute -- ya know, matching my little green salad to our hot green meal. Turns out, it wasn't that cute. We ate it, and we were just kinda hungry.

Boo on this stupid recipe!!

Week Five: Greens!

Whatcha got, ladies?

Too Decadant Sugar Balls?

Obviously, my title is entirely rhetorical. While the Mexican Wedding Cakes I made are way intense, with a nice strong cup of coffee, they are delicioso!

So yeah, Mexican Wedding Cakes are those snowball-looking numbers that you might remember from the annual Christmastime cookie deluge. See below for a reminder.


I've always been a fan, but I've never made the suckers. I picked out this recipe, because it features one of my all-time favorite taste combos: pistachios and dried cranberries.

The process is almost ridiculously easy:

• Cream room-temperature butter, vanilla and powder sugar. (Nope, no eggs in this recipe.)
• Mix in chopped pistachios and dried cranberries.
• Stir in flour. (This part was kinda tricky by and because the dough gets mighty dense; I used my mixer on the lowest setting.)
• Scoop out heaping tablespoonfuls and bake for about 20 minutes.
  

• Then toss them in more powdered sugar, and you're done!

Words to the wise: I used half of this recipe, which claimed to make 40 cookies, but there were way less...about 25.

The cookies' butter content -- not to mention the sugar coating -- makes these suckers rich, but awesome. To deal with that, in the future, I might make ones that are a teensy bit smaller, or maybe I'll mix them up with some less rich cookies (like gingersnaps) for a good old-fashioned Christmas variety pack.

If you're feeling tough (or, say, ravenous, PMS-y or too underweight), I definitely recommend them.

Not The Cookiest of Cookies, Unfortunately

I haven't felt particularly succesful in my cooking endeavors lately. For the cookie challenge, I went with the following recipe:

Oatmeal Pecan Scotchies

1/2 cup margarine or butter, softened

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 egg

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup milk

1/2 cup pecan pieces

1/2 cup butterscotch chips

1. Beat margarine or butter and sugar in large bowl with mixer at medium speed until creamy. (Note: Mixture never became creamy). Blend in egg.

2. Mix flour, oats and baking powder in small bowl. Alternately stir flour mixture and milk into egg mixture. (Note: 1/4 cup of milk is totally not enough. I used more like a 1/2 cup). Stir in peacans and butterscotch chips

3. Drop batter by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350 for 12- 15 minutes or until lightly golden. Remove from pan; cool on wire rack. Makes 4 dozen cookies (Note: Makes 2 dozen cookies).

To be honest, I planned a much more elaborate and interesting cookie recipe involving apple slices, but when I got to the stupid Path Mark, they didn't have half the ingredients. It was raining and I was tired, so I just got the ingredients for a more simple cookie. And now I feel sad.

I brought most of the cookies to work with me this morning (see below) and my coworkers seem to be eating them and not dying. However, they have noted that they are more of a tea biscuit, better for dipping, as they are somewhat dry. Maybe a bit scone-ish. Which is fine, but I'm really a fan of a cookier cookie. Personally.

Up next: Amy's failed attempt at making something delicious involving greens!! Martha Stewart, I am not. Sigh.

Earl Grey Tea Cookies, Hard to Screw Up

I chose this recipe from Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen because it looked fairly interesting, and I had all the ingredients in my kitchen already. I realize that's a bit wimpy, and perhaps not exactly in the spirit of the Poff Coff. But hey -- I painted a ceiling yesterday! And while I painting 13 feet over my head, I was thinking, gee, you know what I'm really going to feel like doing after this back-breaking work is done? Bake cookies.

Anyway. The recipe is simple if you've got a food processor. Combine the following dry ingredients and pulse until the tea leaves are "pulvarized":

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon Earl Grey tea leaves*
1/4 teaspoon salt

Then add these wet ingredients and pulse until you've got dough:
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon water
1/2 cup unsalted butter

Voila! Now form this dough into a log and wrap in wax paper to chill for about 30 minutes or so. The rounder your log, the prettier your cookies might look in the end -- that's my theory anyway.



My log-rolling abilities are questionable at best. Anyway. After the dough is nice and chilled, cut the cookies into 1/3 inch slices. (I think I went a bit thin.) Preheat the oven to 375 and cook until the edges are just brown -- about 30 minutes -- until your cookies look like this!

Or, ideally maybe a little prettier than this. Next time I will slice them thicker. But, no matter. They were good! My taste-tester, notoriously uninterested in sweets, ate 5 of them.

I will definitely make these again. The Earl Grey flavor is positively sophisticated!

And lo! My most important discovery is that baking cookies is a lovely way to end a long day. It was relaxing, and satisfying. Plus, one thing I totally forgot to factor in when I was complaining to myself about the chore ahead -- cookie dough. Ah, cookie dough.

*As the recipe notes, there's no need to fancy tea leaves. I just ripped open a couple of tea bags.

Try as you might, you will not break my spirit, Martha Stewart chocolate gingerbread cookies!

Because I was behind in the Pants Off Cook Off schedule, I decided to make both Week 4 (cookies) and Week 5 (greens) in the same night. This constitues more cooking than I have ever done at one time. Look at all them ingredients! (I'll talk about the greens in another post, which is appropriate because, SPOILER ALERT, I ended up eating them on a different night.)

For the cookies I picked Chocolate Gingerbread cookies from the Martha Stewart Living cookbook:

7 oz best quality semisweet chocolate

1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 cup packed dark-brown sugar

1/4 cup unsulfered molasses

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup granulated sugar

These ingredients are more complicated than your standard Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookies, but I chugged along: chopping chocolate into 1/4 inch chunks; mixing together the flour and spices; beating the butter, grated ginger, brown sugar, and molasses; dissolving baking soda in 1 1/2 tsp very hot water; beating half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture; beating in the baking soda mixture; then beating in the rest of the flour mixture, and mixing in the chocolate. Kind of a PIA, but it seemed to be going OK ...

Until I finished the batter and tasted it, and noted that it was not very flavorful given all the spices, and EXTREMELY buttery. That's when I re-checked the ingredient list and realized that I had more than doubled the amount of butter that it called for, by using the amount called for in the next recipe over (2 sticks plus 1 tablespoon).

Christ. The reasonable thing to do might have been to throw it out and start over, but I had grated ginger and such, you know? So I decided to double the recipe instead. Re-grating ginger, re-grinding cloves, re-heating water to mix with baking soda. However, since I had already used all the butter, on Batch #2 I could not really follow the standard cookie procedure of beating the sugar and butter together and then beating in the separately-mixed dry ingredients. I also couldn't use the mixer after I mixed the second, butterless batch of batter into the first, extremely butterly one, because I'd already added chocolate chunks. Ugh.

Only after this saga was complete did I notice the last sentence tucked quietly into the end of Paragraph 3 of the instructions: "Pat the dough out to about 1 inch thick; seal with the wrap; refrigerate until firm, 2 hours or overnight."

Godammit, Martha! It was already 10:30 pm at this point. Into the fridge went the batter, looking like something 14-year-old boys might have set on fire and left on your porch to show they liked you, or maybe hated you. I kind of wanted to cry.

* * *

OK, but the story ends happily. The next day I got the (now rock-hard) plastic-wrapped poop out of the fridge, rolled it into balls, rolled them in sugar, and baked them at 325 for 10-15 minutes "or until the surfaces crack slightly." The sugar made them attractively sparkly, and the combination of gingerbread-brown and chocolate-brown was very appealing visually. And they tasted good! I even brought some to work and got several seemingly genuine compliments on them. They were quite spicy, but the chocolate saved them from being too intense. The only problems were that I hadn't ground up the cloves quite enough, so some of the cookies contained nearly whole cloves, and similarly I didn't pick out all of the little stringy things from the grated ginger, so some of those were visible in the finished product.

I would make these again, although I'd buy ground cloves and chocolate chunks, and try to use the right amount of butter the first time.

It's all about the coconuts

Browsing cookie recipes on Epicurious, I found this recipe for Coconut Macaroons. I don't know how I never knew that macaroons are like the easiest cookie to make in the history of cookies ever. Seriously, this recipe was so easy and fast it almost felt like cheating.

The kind of ridiculous thing about this recipe is it only makes 4 cookies. That's like a single serving as far as I am concerned, so I doubled the recipe. I used my measuring tablespoon to scoop out the mounds and give them a little more shape. Since my oven blows, I made them in my toaster oven, no problem. As several people mentioned in the comments section, they do take longer to cook than the recipe calls for--more like 30 minutes.

Once they were done and had cooled I felt so guilty about the minimal amount of effort that I put into them, I decided to fancy them up a bit. So I melted some bittersweet baking chocolate, a little bit of vanilla extract, and some half and half, and covered half of each cookie in the chocolate. Then I put them in the fridge to set the chocolate. I was very pleased with the final result.


There is no question that I will make these again. So easy, so yummy. Next time I might experiment with different dips, or roll the chocolate in almond slivers to fancy them up even more.

Week 4: Cooookies

And go!

More Pasta Than Sauce

I picked this sauce because I love pasta with olives. Instead of kalamata olives, I went with a Mediterranean olive mix from my favorite Middle Eastern market.

As Weed I, II, and III can testify, I seriously lack a green thumb, and any heirloom tomatoes that I tried to grow on my fire escape would probably become suicidal and hurl themselves to the sidewalk. So I went for the next best thing and picked some up at the farmer's market.

I had some basil leftover from my appatoulille so I decided to throw that in. All was going well until I did something very stupid. I followed the recipe.

The instructions call for a whole box of pasta to be tossed in the pan with the sauce. My instinct told me that was way too much pasta for the amount of sauce I had, but for some reason I convinced myself that the recipe must be right.

Not quite.


As you can see, I basically ended up with a mound of pasta with the occasional tomato or olive thrown in.

Determined to make it work, I served up some pasta and then tried to scoop out as much of the sauce as I could to add on top.


In the end it was okay, but I like my pasta really saucy so I was fairly disappointed. Next time I'll probably go back to sauce from the jar--and lots of it.

A Double Shot of Rachael Ray

When charged with the task of making homemade pasta sauce, I knew it would have to be vodka sauce (my fave) and I went straight to epicurious.com because it's my go-to recipe site.

But when I read the reviews for various vodka sauce recipes, lots of them said that Rachael's "You Won't Be Single For Long" Vodka Sauce was the best one out there. So, did I trust this face?

Yes, indeedy. I actually made two different dishes with what will hereafter be known as Drunky Sauce.

Shot 1: Making the Sauce
As the other ladies mentioned, making the sauce itself was surprisingly easy. For mine, you just mince and saute shallots and garlic and then add some crushed tomatoes, chicken stock and vodka. You actually add a full cup of the booze, which supposedly "cooks off" during the cooking process. Then, at the end you add fresh basil and cream.

The ingredients!

The verdict: Sort of like a creamy Bloody Mary. Seriously, though, I think this sauce made me tipsy. Which could be a good thing. It was also a little bland -- I missed the preservative and sugar-packed goodness in the good old jar of Newman's. Still, it was easy to make and even better on...

Shot 2: Baked Ziti ala Drunky
Because I had almost a whole pot of sauce left over, I decided to give it another go in one of my faves, Baked Ziti. This time, I improvised by mixing ricotta cheese with and egg and mozzarella cheese, and then layering that in a casserole pan on top of Drunkified penne. On top, I put healthy layer of mozzarella cheese and baked at 450 for about 45 minutes.

Cheesarific!

The verdict: Much better. This time, I think the vodka really did cook off, and it made for a creamy, mellow base for the ziti. Seriously, it tasted great, except for the noodles burned on the bottom of the pan. Whoopsie. I guess I forgot to coat the bottom of the pan with sauce. Thankfully, the insane quantity of cheese pretty much obscured any flaws.

Ultimately, I've gotta hand it to Rachael -- this was an easy, serviceable recipe that I'll probably try again (with a pinch of sugar and higher-quality vodka). Yay for Drunky Sauce!