13 July 09

So full

I’ve cooked so much food in the last month. So very much. And it’s been phenomenal. I can’t say that I’ve fallen in love with every dish I’ve made, but I’ve liked almost all of them enough to make them again. Which is huge for me because I rarely like cooking the same thing twice and when I find that I’m cooking the same dish over and over again, I realize I’m in a rut and need to break out of it. But there have been some particularly memorable things I’ve made.

And I’d love to show dishes of them all with you, but guess what? I’m horrible! horrible! horrible at remembering to take pictures of food after I’ve made it. It’s really amazing. I get excited as a dish is close to completion and I think of how to light it and then the dish is done and I taste it, and all thought about anything else simply vanish from my mind.

So I don’t have as many pictures as I would like to have, but I’m going to upload what I do have to a Flickr set and go find previous cast iron shots I’ve taken to add to it. I know I’ve taken a few more over the last 5 or so years I’ve had a Flickr account. Yikes! I’ve been online a long time.

So some of the dishes I’ve been extra happy with:

  1. Fig and Balsamic Dessert Sauce (Oh! My! Gawd! Seriously so good that when I first tasted it I got lightheaded.)

  2. Cioppino (I have no idea how you could go wrong with an Italian tomato base filled with delicious seafood from The Fish Guy

  3. Coconut Milk Fried Chicken (There was no breading on this, but it was marinated for several hours in coconut milk and spices. And I gotta say it was far more flavorful than any buttermilk fried chicken I’ve ever had. This was a dish that I will be making again.

  4. Buttermilk Blue Cheese Biscuits (I really wish there had been leftovers with these, because it would have made a great ham sandwich and I can only imagine how good they would taste smothered in sausage gravy.

  5. Maryland Crab Cakes (The texture was phenomenal. The taste was perfect. But they didn’t hold together as well as I would have liked, so I guess I’ll be making them again. Darn!

  6. Jamaican Grilled Okra (Holy wow! These were fantastic on the grill. And yes I have a cast iron grill rack that I purchased from Cast Iron Cookware Shop.)

  7. Bacon-Wrapped Cheese Stuffed Jalapeños (o!m Perfection! and barely like cooking at all)
  8. Cornbread (Yeah, I know it’s a classic, must-have dish, eh? Well, I’ve tried several recipes and they’ve just not impressed me much. So, while doing some reading about baking, I began to wonder what would happen if I substituted buttermilk for whole milk. Well, I needed slightly more buttermilk than whole milk. But, I finally got the soft, tender, not dry center, with a crusty exterior.)

And there have been a few dishes I’ve made that didn’t impress me much, but that I know a few things I can do to make them better. For example:

  1. Boston Baked Beans (I used a pink South American bean that keeps it’s shape and doesn’t mush AND I didn’t add enough water to the pan. Fantastic flavor and seasonings, but not quite soft enough. I don’t want mushy beans, but I don’t want crunchy either.

  2. Dutch Apple Baby (I’ve had this a few times and each time I’ve thought that there wasn’t enough apple. So when I made it and it seemed like I had lots of apple when it went in the oven, when it came out there just wasn’t enough apple. Easy to fix.)

  3. Cheddar Cheese and Jalapeño Corn Sticks (Because they’re smaller, they need a different mixture so they don’t all turn to crust. I should have come up with the basic recipe before I came up with the alternate recipe.

  4. Fried Ravioli Appetizer (I should have put some grated parmesan in with the bread crumbs to provide a little salty to the crust. And I have to remember that things darken once they come out of the fryer. So I should take them out while they look slightly underdone. And it will also keep them from busting while they’re in the fryer. Which is fun to watch, but not fun to watch explode on the inside of your wrist. Thankfully, I’ve not got the urge to take pictures of all the ways I’ve burned myself.

  5. Spicy West African Yassa Chicken (This was tasty, but not nearly as spicy as the marinade seemed like it would be. So next time, more peppers. But the lime juice marinade did wonders on the stewing chicken I purchased. And I realized that I really don’t like cooking apart a stewing chicken. They’re HUGE!)

  6. Cajun Shrimp and Rice (The shrimp I picked up were amazing. Buttery, fatty, briney. But they were a bit tiny for this dish. And the spice mix I came up with was great, but I added more salt than I needed. I have a tendency to oversalt dishes because I love salt. But it was a touch too salty even for me.

Oh, and that is just what I made in the last week. Yes, really. I told you I’ve been cooking a lot. I meant it. Since I’ve been cooking, writing about food, reading cookbooks like they’re comic books I’ve not been doing any sewing. Which makes me sad. Cause I miss it. But thankfully creating food really does work the same creative muscle that sewing does.

Oh, and I’m hungry all the time. And I need to buy some new pants.

Comments

  1. from the first set, #4 was OUTSTANDING and #7 would be my second fave. I fail to understand how the buttermilk fried chicken did not make this list.

    and hello i don’t know WHAT you’re thinking on the second list because #s 1, 4 and 6 were all DELICIOUS.

    FYI.

    — carolyn on Jul 14, 05:41 am

  2. What about the mushrooms! THE MUSHROOMS!!!! :)

    — lauren on Jul 15, 09:08 am

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