Failure

I have officially flunked out of NaBloPoMo. Just completely forgot about it last night. I’m ok with that though. The night I had to post the asparagus souffle recipe I had to do it from my phone…

I’ll definitely try to post more though!

 

Asparagus Souffle

Look guys! I cook fussy food too! I loved this recipe. I think it took me two years after the February issue came out to make this souffle from Vegetarian times. That being said, it was perfect. Not easy but it came out lite and creamy. I hope you enjoy!

Asparagus Souffle

From Vegetarian Times

Ingredients:

Bechamel

3/4 cup low-fat milk
1Tbs unsalted butter
1.5 Tbs all purpose flour
pinch nutmeg
2 large eggs separated at room temperature

Souffle
2 egg whites at room temperature Pinch of cream of tartar
pinch salt
1/2 cup firmly packed grated “lite” Jarlsberg Cheese
1/4 freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2lb asparagus, trimmed, steamed 5 minutes, sliced 1/2 inch thick
Preheat oven to 375F. Place rack on lowest level in oven.

Butter two 8oz ramekins, and dust sides and bottom with 1 Tbs. Parmesan each. Place on baking sheet.

To make Bechamel: warm milk in saucepan. melt butter in second saucepan over medeum-low heat. Stir in flour until smooth, and cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring with wooden spoon; allow to bubble but not brown.

Take pan off heat, wisk in warm milk and return to heat; whisk vigorously, scraping bottom and sides to prevent scorching. When mixture simmers, reduce heat to low, and cook, stirring often from sides and bottom, 5 minutes, or until thick. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Remove from heat; stir 1 minute more. Beat in egg yolks 1 at a time.

To make Souffle: Using electric beaters, beat 4 egg whites in bowl, starting at low and slowly increasing until they begin to foam. Add cream of tartar and salt, and beat until satiny peaks form and hold their shape; do not over beat.

Combine remaining cheeses. Using rubber spatula, stir one-fourth of beaten chites into bechamel. Pour bechamel into center of remaining whites, and fold together. With each fold, sprinkle in a handful of cheese mixture and a handful of asparagus, giving bowl a quarter turn. When everything is added and mixture is uniform, carefully spoon into souffle dishes. Put baking sheet on bottom rack.

Bake 20-25 minutes, or until puffy and browned; do not overcook– centers should be slightly runny. Serve.

Good tasting!
Sarah

 

Picture free lemon caper chicken

I’m sorry guys, I still don’t have any pictures for you. I really enjoyed this recipe. Its great on its own with normal “chicken” side dishes, or over pasta. If you’re putting it over pasta I’d recommend a bit more olive oil in the pan at the end to get up all those flavors. My husband wasn’t as fond of it. He’s not real big on lemon and this is rather strong in that aspect.

I’m working on getting my camera back up so until then, you’ll just have to imagine.

 

Poached Turkey in Vegetable Consommé

In an effort to come up with more complicated food that isn’t me trying to throw something together, I went to my cookbooks. Alas, my collection is lacking. What I do have is Jacques Pepin’s Happy Cooking which has turned out to be a decent book.

 

beans on toast

It was a rough day for me food-wise. I had some time between jobs so I went to Binders to pick up some new paint pens and then stopped in at the newly renovated Disco Kroger. Kroger has started renovating their stores to turn them into these beautiful, open places with more exotic fruits and fresher vegetables. There was a manned sushi bar in the one I went into today. They’ve installed new shelves that keep the vegetables off of each other. Attended seafood and meat counters. It was like a Whole Foods Market but a Kroger! It was beautiful. But instead of getting to buy all those pretty fresh veggies, I had to go to work.

On my way home today I stopped at my dismal Publix to buy dinner. The vegetables there are ALWAYS lacking. I try not to shop there but it’s the closest grocery and I was tired. Spent the next half hour getting crankier and crankier as I couldn’t find what I wanted. Tomorrow I’m going somewhere else.

That being said, I absolutely didn’t want to cook and I really couldn’t without ingredients. So I went to a favorite of my friend Fara, beans on toast.

It was perfect for my day. The beans I used were just a little bit sweet. Over toast and cheese with a nice fried egg. mmm.

So here’s the “recipe”, great for a nice cloudy day lunch, or dinner when you’ve lost faith in your grocery store.

 

enchiladas and excitement

Okay, so first things first. I got blogged about! This is a first for me and it probably wasn’t even very big, just a mention of a creative cranberry recipe, but it means people are really reading my blog! So thank you Sugared Ellipses and thank you everyone else.

So I know you didn’t come here for the gushing, you came here for food. I have a doosy for you today. I made the most delicious enchiladas. They were so easy too. For simplicity I went back to my staple, Kroger’s rotisserie chicken. If you include the time it took me to de-bone and de-fat the chicken, this took 30 minutes, a good thing when you’ve spent the morning playing with a three year old (not mine). These were cheesy, salty and perfectly spiced. They did however use bottled taco sauce, it was really tasty taco sauce though. So here’s an assemble and go enchilada recipe for you.

Also, I’ve misplaced my camera charger so you don’t get a picture of this. Just imagine lots of cheese.

 

tortilla de patatas

I made this for the first time several months ago; once again borrowing recipes from Smitten Kitchen. She talks about diving into a cookbook with such glee that it makes me want to start buying cookbooks. While I love fussy food, I never seem to want to make anything I see in a cook book. But this recipe is far from fussy in my opinion. From “Honey what’s for dinner? We’re out of food.” to “Dinner’s ready.” was thirty minutes at the most. Even with my gimpy food processor. So here’s the recipe, complete with her notes on the bottom!

I will say it didn’t look that dark in real life… Maybe tomorrow you’ll get a recipe from somewhere other than my blog crush.

 

This Galette involves cabbage

So the galettes I’m posting are a little small, well, too small to serve 8 atleast. For the party last night I made two kinds. The butternut squash one I posted last night and this one with cabbage and mushrooms.

I pretty much said all I had to say about these yesterday. I will say that I should have used more dough on this one, I don’t know if its really more or if I just used too much cabbage… Alos, it’s really good with the horseraddish sauce so don’t leave it in the fridge and forget about it like I did.

 

Galette. No I don’t know what it means either.

It’s game night over here. Every month or so we try to get friends over or we go over there, have dinner, play some board games and catch up. It was at my house this time around so I got to make the fancy food.

I made pastry dough from scratch!!!! No really this is a big deal for me. I’m a big fan of refrigerated dough. You know that cranberry pie I gave you yesterday? This year I might make dough myself. I’ve fallen in love with this pastry recipe. It turned out really light and flaky.

 

The best cranberry pie EVAR (and an apology)

So it’s 10:30, I’m exhausted and I sooo didn’t cook tonight. I therefore have no pictures for you. Instead, I’m leaving you with my favorite pie recipe ever. Maybe when I make it this season I’ll take pictures. This takes everything you like about cranberries, adds butter and serves it like a cherry pie. How can you not love this?

Also, I have friends coming tomorrow and I swear I will give you the most beautiful galettes over the next couple days.