Food Project 7-8: Dinner with Charlie

To prevent my brother-in-law from eating yet another sandwich while my sister is traveling for work, we had Charlie over for dinner.

Dinner consisted of some light and fresh Ravioli Caprese. I bought a $5 ravioli stamp at Sur la Table which worked great. The filling was filling and fresh with lots of basil and a hint of lemon zest. For the dough, I had to use a cup of wheat flour (only because we ran out of regular flour), which I think made the dough tougher, less malleable and thus harder to roll into thinner pasta sheets. Next time I'll use all-purpose flour for the whole thing. I served it with FRIED polenta (keeping up with the "light meal" theme) and cherry tomatoes (for redemption).

Nigella's Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake looked amazing on her show. The cake finished baking at midnight last night, after both Diesel and I had brushed our teeth. It was then that Diesel reminded me that we are both adults, and if we wanted to eat cake in bed after brushing our teeth, we should do it! It tasted really good fresh out of the oven. Today the cake was a lot denser; I prefer it warm and gooey. Not sure this was my fave choc cake...

Food Project 2-6

So I have not been so good about sticking to my cooking project, but I have indeed tried somed new recipes. Unfortunately, I have not been able to take pics of the final products, as Diesel had the brilliant idea of taking our camera to a RAFTING trip, and consequently brought it back broken.

Anyhow, here's a list of the recipes I have tried:

Gaucho-Grilled Skirt Steak with Chimichurri Sauce - A Tyler Florence recipe. Every Tyler recipe I ever tried has been simple and turned out great, and this was no exception. It's just unfortunate that the hunky chef ever agreed to "create" a dish for TGIFridays. I did a trial run for this with Charlie and Emy, and after the successful attempt, served it at Diesel's b-day.

Corn and Tomato Salad- This was a recipe given to me by my friend Emily. It's a refreshing and original salad and perfect for summer

Tiramisu - I'll count this one as well, as it's been about two years since I last made it. The recipe is Costa's, a real-life, younger Italian mama that I met while doing study abroad in Germany

Pasta Carbonara - I don't eat pork, but ever since Diesel made this classic dish, I've been hooked. It love it as a pre long run meal. I tried to make it myself last Friday, and everything was doing well until the step where I was supposed to toss the hot pasta with the raw egg + cheese mixture. The eggs cooked and turned into omlette, which was quite sad. Looking back, I should have used a regular pot instead of the cast iron pot I used, which holds a lot more heat

Food Project 2: Spiced Up

My second food project was inspired by my current fave Food TV star, Nigella Lawson. I had never made an Indian dish except for curry. However, seeing Nigela do a simple version of a traditional Indian meal made me think I could get past my intimidation. On the menu:

Mughlai Chicken Curry served alongside a fluffy rice pilaf, green pea and cheese curry Muttar Paneer (for recipe, see here).

I decided to start doing the cooking after my 12 mile run, which surprisingly enough did not wipe me out. It's a good thing I'm a good wife and cook for Diesel after such a long morning.

The meal called for my first trip to an Indian grocery store. Needless to say, I was the only non-Indian person shopping there. I had to enlist the owner's help to figure out what the best paneer and garam masala brands were. On a side note, the cinnamon sticks are a STEAL! You can get a huge bag for 5 bucks. Except for the register erroneous total of $126, the shopping trip was a success!

Cooking notes:

• The recipes are pretty simple, and I had fun using the concoction of foreign spices
  
• I used the original 8-servings recipe, but halved the chicken quantity, as both Diesel and I like more sauce and less meat
• When Nigella says that the paneer with "splatter and spit" when you're frying it, she ain't kidding. There was a lot of drama during this step, and Diesel ended up doing the frying
• Everything was delish, although I think I will kick up the spice mix in the paneer and pea curry next time
• Since pomegranate is not in season, I simply skipped it and the raita tasted good with just the scallions
  

Diesel's rating: 8.5

The Julie/Julia Project

Inspired by the Julie/Julia project, I decided to create my own cooking challenge. What is the Julie/Julia project, you ask? A crazy New Yorker, owner of a small kitchen and great ambition, set out to cook all of Julia Child's 524 recipes from her Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. She recorded her culinary failures and successes on her blog. Witty, entertaining and inspiring.

So now it's my turn.

With a bigger kitchen and lower ambitions, I'm challenging myself to cook one new recipe every 1.5 weeks until...well, we'll see. Instead of sticking exclusively to Julia Child recipes, I'll be picking recipes from our personal library. In addition, Diesel will be weighing in on how good/bad each recipe turns out. Other friends and family will be enlisted as tasters as well.

First up, cream puffs from the traditional Betty Crocker cookbook.

The recipe for the pate a choux is pretty simple. What's not as simple is trying not to burn the cream filling. I had to strain it to get rid of the burnt bits. Another thing I noticed (and was pissed at) was that the recipe called for 35-40 min in the oven for the little puffs. The timer barely showed 35 minutes when I did a first check, and I found out that the puffs were overdone. Also, I think I should have used non-baking chocolate for the chocolate glaze; it would have tasted better. Please note that that because of my inability to follow directions, I shaped the dough into puffs instead of eclairs.

Diesel's rating: 7 (out of 10)
*readjusted from an original 8, as Diesel wants to leave room for a REALLY good recipe