Sad Thai Noodle Dish

Hopes were dashed, sadly, as I bit into this promising-looking Thai Peanut Noodle dish with sugar snap peas and shrimp. 
Turns out the noodles were dry, dry, dry as there was no peanut sauce in this recipe, only peanutty, soy sauce-y water that you cooked the noodles in.
Sigh.  I have to give this one a fail.
Anyone have a good peanut sauce recipe to share?

Microwave Strawberry Jam

. . . is not as grand an idea as one might think.

Paper towels.  My new best friend.

So what's going on in your kitchen?

Strawberry Shortcake

I am sorry to report that sometimes a low-fat, low-sugar, low-calorie strawberry shortcake bears a disappointing resemblance to a hockey puck.

Does anyone have a great shortcake recipe to share?

Today's Quiz

When your hobby is trying new recipes, you never know when you'll pounce upon an unexpected gem.

You also never know when you'll wind up with some . . . let's just say, less than spectacular results.

The last couple weeks have been bulging with mediocre results.

See if you can spot which of the following dishes was my favorite, the one I'll be making again. 

Was it this dried apricot/fresh rosemary yeast bread?

Was it these Scottish shortbread cookies, made with cornmeal?

Could my favorite be this retro chicken and rice casserole, topped with those '50s standbys, cream of mushroom soup and onion soup mix?

Maybe the favorite was these lemon custard cups, recipe from my great-great grandma Hattie.

What do you think?  Could the best of the bunch be this "light" recipe for fresh cranberry and lemon scones topped with powdered sugar?

Or could it be these ever-so-humble peachy carrots, a 3-ingredient recipe where carrots are simply heated with jelly and a bit of butter and served?
I'll give you a minute to think.
La la la la la.
Do you have your answer?
Give you a minute more.  La la la.
OK.  Time's up.
The dried apricot/rosemary bread was definitely interesting.  But the rosemary overpowered the apricots, and I couldn't figure out whether to eat it for breakfast or with dinner.  Dried apricots in bread is a wonderful idea, but I won't be pairing them with rosemary next time.  Pass.

Shortbread -- I've never tasted a shortbread I didn't love.  Until now.  The cornmeal in this made it dry as dust.  The bulk of these, sadly, ended up in the garbage.

On to the retro casserole.  I had high hopes for this one, onion soup mix being one of my favorite dip ingredients.  Also in its favor, the recipe came from a cute little booklet put out by the Republican Congressional committee eons ago, which even included a recipe for "General Eisenhower's Beef Stew." Alas, my California representative from way back when let me down.  It needed the extra zip of teriyaki glaze just to give it enough flavor to be edible.  Sorry, Mr. Congressman.

How about these  lemon custard cups?  While these were mighty tasty, I couldn't be sure I cooked them all the way as great-great grandma Hattie didn't give very explicit instructions on that front.  They were souffle-like on top, pudding-like on the bottom -- more like a pudding cake than custard.  With some tweaking, I bet they'd be good.  But as is, I was a little nervous that perhaps I was eating raw eggs.  Yikes.

Cranberry scones -- more like cake than like scones.  Not that there's anything wrong with cake.  I just wanted scones.  Sigh.

So have you guessed yet?  The very best recipe I've made in the last two weeks, the one I'll be making again?  It's Peachy Carrots, from The Four Ingredient Cookbook.  Who'd have thought such a simple little recipe would surpass the others?  Here's the recipe, and I will save you all that time-consuming experimenting.

You're welcome.

PEACHY CARROTS

1 lb. package of carrots (the authors recommend you slice and cook them; I simply took a 12-oz. bag of petite carrots and used them whole, without pre-cooking)
1/3 c. peach preserves (I used peach pit jelly I had made over the summer)
1 T. butter

In small skillet or saucepan, combine all ingredients and cook over medium heat until heated through.  That's it.  Sweet and yummy and pretty darned simple.

"S" Cookies

These sure don't look like the "s" cookies my grandma used to make.

Thaaaaat's more like it.
Turns out they needed a whole lot more flour than my recipe, "brought from Germany," claimed.
Anyone got any must-try cookies to recommend?

Chocolate-filled Rolls


Sadly, I'm going to have to give these chocolate-filled rolls a fail.  Not only were they too much dough and not enough chocolate, but they also took a lot of effort

as well as three expensive bittersweet chocolate bars.  Wasted.  Grrrrr.

If you want chocolate bread, try this chocolate chip bread recipe instead.

Meanwhile, I'll be trying to figure out how to get rid of 18 of these.

Summer Food Wrap-up

With Kahuna's gardening prowess and my enthusiasm for playing with my food, we've had a good summer here at the castle. Here's my wrap-up of the season -- or, What I Learned (about Food) on My Summer Vacation. 1. Most tragic food blunder: garlic paste. Thinking this was a good way to preserve

our garlic harvest, I used fully half of the year's crop, roasting and turning it into a paste to use on bread, in stews, etc. Result: a very mellow-tasting spread that doesn't even make a decent piece of garlic bread.

Grrrr.

Epic fail.

2. Most ill-advised historical food experiment: these muffins from a 17th-century recipe. I don't remember the name, but I do remember they tasted like chalk and contained enough baking powder to make a horse float. A castle record: amount of time from taking first bite until entire batch is pitched into the garbage -- 1.2 seconds.

3. Biggest surprise: homemade "butter," whereby cream, blenderized and promised to magically transform into fresh home-made butter, instead resolutely remained cream, albeit slightly dazed cream. Said cream's sole action was, upon seeing daylight as blender top was lifted, to defiantly and maniacally splash into blender wielder's eye.

"Butter" - 1. Castle Queen - 0.

4. Biggest (pleasant) garden surprise: eggplant.

Our first time growing this, we grilled, roasted, and baked it. Vegetable medleys, ratatouille, eggplant Parmesan -- all were delicious. All were eaten within minutes.

Our mothers would never believe it: we actually like vegetables.

5. Most frequently made recipe: pear nectar. Or maybe peach nectar. What can I say? I love nectar. Probably because I love sugar, and after a summer of eating vegetables, I am a tad sugar-deprived.

6. Most triumphant garden victory: enough basil for homemade pesto. The fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Totally worth the wait.

Never mind that we received said basil as a gift, already a very large plant. The point is, at this date it is still a very large plant, thriving in Kahuna's garden and popping out an abundance of leaves daily.

You go, basil. You go.

So how about you? Any summertime hits, misses, surprises? Feel free to leave a link if you've posted about your summertime food adventures. We'd love to read all about it.

Salad in Search of Dressing

OK, I'm trying my best over here. But I'm not having much luck in the blue cheese salad dressing department.

First there was this batch, a low-fat version made mostly of water and vinegar and tasting of . . . well, water and vinegar.

Then there was this batch, made of cottage cheese, buttermilk, and blue cheese, blended together. The texture was fine but the taste was bland and uninteresting and not at all blue cheese-pungent.

So help a girl out here, if you can. Know of a great blue cheese salad dressing recipe you'd be willing to share?

Not So Fond o' This Fondue

I was hoping to be able to share with you a wonderful, festive fondue recipe, dense with Gruyere cheese, diced shrimp, white wine, and tarragon.
Alas, what I am able to share with you instead is this glop. Rhymes with flop.
The cheesiness never quite came together with the white wine - apple juice - lemon juice liquidness, save for about 20 seconds mid-cooking, and even then I had to whisk furiously to keep the whole thing from looking like a chemistry experiment gone awry.
As Julia Child liked to chirp, Never Apologize.
So I shan't apologize, but simply direct you, if you have a hankering for a nice, festive dinner of cheese fondue, to try instead this recipe.
Cheers.

Julia's Chocolate Cake

Well I'm not too thrilled at how my Julia Child chocolate cake turned out, the one that took me TWO DAYS TO MAKE.

Neither layer would unmold properly, even with the buttered wax paper which resolutely stayed stuck to the bottom of the pan while the cake was dislodged by a knife, two spatulas, and moi.

Good thing I'm adept at jigsaw puzzles, because I had plenty of little cake shapes to fit together, tangram-style, to make this square.

I just looked up tangram in the dictionary and realized I could have made a cat.

It had better taste good, is all I'm saying.

Talk about your extra thick crust

Tuscan bread.

Can you say, "Crusty enough you could break a tooth on it?"

This begs to be recycled into something a little less dentally dangerous. Any ideas?

Just Say No

Cucumber soup.

No, no, no no no no.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time . . .

File this under food experiments you don't need to bother to try:
Blue Cheese Deviled Eggs.
And the less said about this, the better. We'll just not mention it again. 'Kay?

Spinach Comma Cooked

Confirmed.
Do not like cooked spinach.
Don't care how good it is for me.

Lemon Soup

Trying to make some soup over here, and not having a whole lot of luck.

The roasted vegetable variety I made recently had great flavor, but was too watery.

The potato-cheese recipe, from one of my favorite food writers, tasted terrific, but was so thick that after about five slurps I wondered if anyone had ever actually died of soup choking. After a whole bowlful, I figured someone could throw me over the side of a boat and I'd make a fine anchor.

The recipe I tried this afternoon, for lemon soup, had a lovely lemony flavor that I really liked. But it, too, had problems with consistency.

The directions said to stir over low heat until thickened. Maybe it's all in your definition of "thick" but mine never seemed to progress much past a slightly heavy broth stage.

Here is the recipe, for those of us with excess lemons who are not too picky about our soup's thickness. I suppose you could always stir a tablespoon or so of cornstarch into a tablespoon of water, slurry it around, and add it to the broth at the start.

And if anyone has any soup advice, I'd love to hear it. I'm about ready to head back to Campbell's.

LEMON SOUP

4 c. chicken broth

4 eggs

4 T. lemon juice

1 lemon, sliced, for garnish

In medium saucepan, bring broth to boiling. In medium bowl, whisk together eggs with a wire whisk until light. Add lemon juice. Add half of hot broth, stirring well. Return lemon/egg broth to pan and (here's the part that drives me crazy) stir over low heat until thickened. WHEN?!? Just WHEN will that be?! Perhaps sometime in October?

Grrrrr.

OK, I've stopped now. I'm stopping.

No Thanks . . .

Dude? The cranberries in a cranberry muffin recipe are so not supposed to coagulate at the bottom of the pan. Otherwise you have to rename them Just Plain Muffins made in Cranberry Goo Muffin Tins.

Cardboard-y with a Hint of Flavorlessness

I promised I'd share my occasional recipe flop on this blog, too.

I give you Exhibit A: Pistachio cookies, recipe originating in the Middle East.

No need for me to share the instructions here. Suffice it to say, if you'd like to replicate the taste yourself, just bite into the nearest wall and savor the plaster dust.

Kitchen flops? Anyone?