Once again I gave Chris Kimball’s quick chicken breasts a try. (They’re the ones coated in parmesan and breadcrumbs.) I am still struggling with chicken-pounding technique; I think my 8-inch frying pan isn’t an ideal tool. Ben, who usually flees the kitchen while the chicken is being attacked, volunteered to give it a try this time, and though the tips of the chicken breasts were a little shredded he was certainly efficient. They were much thinner than before, but still not perfect.

I baked potatoes, dressed some halved cherry tomatoes in sherry vinegar and olive oil, and wilted a little spinach in the pan I’d used to cook the chicken. I’d planned on a spinach salad, so the quantity was off and once wilted the spinach was more of an accent than a side dish! Tasty, though. I’ve also been throwing leftover washed spinach or arugula into a bowl of ramen noodles for lunch lately.

While we were eating (which we always do at the table, with candles lit, in the grand tradition of my family!), Ben looked at me and asked why we never eat like this anymore. He’s right; we’ve only sat down to a real dinner a couple times in the last few weeks. I blame his finals period and increased social activity—we’ve been eating out a lot. I hope once we’re back from spring break we settle back into the routine of cooking and eating at home at least three times a week, and giving a dinner party or two every two weeks. A lot of our friends will be coming back from a term of foreign exchange, which means lots of excuses for dinner parties.

Another Bon Appetit recipe—this was an easy Chicken Saltimbocca recipe, served with a lemon pan sauce. I was slightly more successful pounding out the chicken breasts this time, though still not quite aggressive enough. Once the chicken was pounded thin, I pressed on sage leaves and covered them with a couple slices of prosciutto, then dredged the whole package in flour. The breasts cooked pretty quickly (though not as fast as if I’d gotten them thinner), and I’ve got a system down for keeping the house from getting too smoky when I pan-fry things. I close the door to the kitchen, then open the window we’ve left without a storm window and crack the back door. It wouldn’t work this week, when it’s literally 5 degrees out, but on a more temperate night the heat of the stove (esp. if the oven is on) keeps the room from getting TOO freezing.

Then I made the pan sauce. That was a total disaster–the pan was too hot, the whole thing thickened up way too much, etc. It tasted good (nice and tangy to cut the rich prosciutto) but looked gross, so no picture!

We ate it with the carrot orzo from the same article, which was ok but not great. A bit bland, and orzo is always so slippery!

Well, I made molasses cookies yesterday afternoon, and they’re very tasty but not what I want. This recipe turned out to be for the cakey sort of cookie, instead of the flat, chewy kind. Maybe it’s spice cookies I’m thinking of? Molasses-spice? I don’t know what they are called, but my mom used to make chewy cookies, quite spicy and definitely made with molasses, rolled in sugar, that flattened out a lot while they baked and cracked open so there were sugared parts and un-sugared peeks of the inside, which was very dark brown. Mom, do you still have that recipe?

The mixer was great—I scraped the sides down once, and my only problem came from not having softened the butter quite enough, so it took a while to make it stop being little lumps. One of the big advantages to the Pro is that the bowl is wider and shallower than the Artisan’s, so it’s easier to scrape the bowl down and add ingredients.

The cookies puffed up into little mounds in the oven, and then settled down a bit, but they didn’t spread like the ones I’m thinking of:

They’re tasty, and I undercooked them a little so they’re nice and moist, and they have a good buttery flavor, but I want the other kind of recipe. Does anyone have one? I also want a good gingerbread recipe—I love not-too-sweet dark gingerbread cake. Mmmm, gingerbread.

Ben has been experimenting with baking…here are the results of a joint scone effort a few weeks ago:

He has mastered the chocolate chip cookies he made before Christmas, and I expect an upswing in production now that we have…a mixer! Not just any mixer, either. After years of insisting I didn’t want a Kitchenaid, I did tons of research and realized that the KA Pro was probably my best bet. We went for the Professional instead of the Artisan because I want to experiment more with bread making, and I figure that in a couple years it would be annoying to have to upgrade to the bigger machine. We also both liked the design with the bowl that raises and lowers instead of the head of the machine lifting up. It also meant I didn’t have a color-picking dilemma, since the Pro comes in only a few finishes, including shiny dark green, matte pale green (too minty for me), matte copper, matte silver, and matte white. The black is gorgeous but would show every speck of flour, so I went with the silver:

Ben put it to the test as we got it home yesterday, and made banana bread according to Rachel’s mom’s recipe. It took forever to bake (at least an hour and a half, and we cranked the heat to 375 after the first hour or so) but was tasty even to my banana-loathing taste buds. It came out sort of dark, but soft and tender on the inside:

This afternoon I think I’ll make molasses cookies—I want to try the mixer for myself, and I have a stitch and bitch meeting tonight where cookies would be appreciated, I’m sure.

Three weeks ago we had my boss, one of Ben’s professors, and two of our friends from school over for dinner. I made everything out of Sunday Suppers at Lucques, though not all from one of the dinner menus. There are tons of photos here, and it was by far my most ambitious menu so far, so I’ll break this up a bit.

Chronologically, I started the brisket the night before and then braised it all day; baked the lemon tart shell in the morning and made the curd in the afternoon, made the lentils in the late afternoon and reheated them, cooked the raddichio while we ate our main course and while everything else reheated, and made the onion tart in the afternoon, then baked it when the guests arrived.

First course: Onion tart with Lardons
This is impressive and delicious but very simple. The shell is a frozen puff pastry sheet, scored around the edge so the crust will puff up.
On top of that is a layer of ricotta and creme fraiche, mixed with an egg yolk. That is topped with Comte cheese (or any gruyere, I guess), and finally a layer of lardons and red onions sauteed in the bacon fat. Hurrah!

It’s meant to be served with an herb salad but the Coop didn’t have enough nice looking herbs to eat them plain. I just served regular field greens.

Main Course: Braised beef brisket, served with lentils and roasted raddichio
As I said above, I started the brisket the night before–Goin recommends starting two nights before and braising it a day before, since you reheat the slices anyway. I will do this next time, but this time I just didn’t have the timing in order. It gets rubbed with crumbled chilis, garlic, salt, thyme leaves and cracked pepper, then rests over night in the fridge.

The recipe calls for a 6 pound brisket, since it’s great leftovers, and mine was closer to 6.5, in two pieces. That is a lot of meat, far more than I’ve ever cooked before. Goin is good about saying you’ll have to hang one side out while you sear the other, etc., and indeed I did have to. Then it went into the roasting pan while I cooked a ton of onions, carrots and celery, and cooked down balsamic vinegar, guinness and beef stock to make the braising liquid.

That got poured over the beef (I couldn’t quite cover it, since my pan was so big), and covered with foil–I ignored the plastic wrap instructions this time, having learned my lesson with the short ribs. Into the oven, for six hours. Once it was cooked, I pulled out the meat, chilled it so it could be sliced, strained the braising liquid, and when it was time to serve I reheated the sliced brisket in the liquid for a while. (Bad photo)

For sides I made lentils–cooked with onion, some chili flakes, etc. and roasted raddichio. I couldn’t find Raddichio Vecchio, the long narrow kind, and used the round heads. They are super super bitter, and I wasn’t a huge fan. The raw lentils and raw wedges of reddichio were pretty though:

To plate I made a long mound of lentils, put the slices of meat on top, the a few wedges of raddichio. All a big hit, but I want to try the raddichio again with the other type, or cook it longer, or maybe just do shaved brussels sprouts.

Dessert: Lemon tart with chocolate
(Entire recipe posted at link above)
I was a little dubious about mixing lemon and chocolate, but Goin hasn’t steered me wrong (flavor-wise) yet, so I went for it. I only had one meyer lemon, and made up the rest with regular lemons. I baked the shell blind in the morning, and then covered it with the melted chocolate and made the curd.

I had a little trouble telling when it was done–basically you whisk together eggs, egg yolk, sugar and lemon juice and cook it (stirring stirring stirring) until it thickens. I was jumpy about overdoing it, and instead underdid it a little–the tart set, but not as firmly as I’d have liked. The crust made a double recipe, though, so I froze the extra and made the tart again last week–much smoother this time, and I cooked it twice as long.

When the curd was cooked I took it off the heat, stirred in the butter and forgot the salt (oops), then strained the curd into the tart shell and let it set.

I learned a couple things at serving time:
1) My tart pan is not 10″, it’s 9. The shell was very thick, and there was a bit too much chocolate, so I really had to hack through it to slice!
2) When Ben is picking up more plates than he can carry, instead of mumbling “Please take two at a time,” I should remove the extras from his arm before he splats it onto the side of the fridge, the floor, and his pants. Hee. Particularly dramatic in this case because the curd was a little softer than normal.

The chocolate, by the way, is an amazing addition to the lemon curd. Somehow each balances the other–sweet/tart/acidic vs. bittersweet/creamy. It worked great.

Whew. I was in the kitchen from 9 a.m. until we ate, but it was worth it–everything came out great and I learned a lot about timing everything to get all the parts out at the right times. Whee!

Oh dear, I am weeks behind…

Tom came over for dinner a couple weeks ago, and I knew I’d be working all day so I hauled out the slow cooker and tried a recipe from a slow cooker cookbook I was given as a shower gift. I was told to use a pork loin roast or country style ribs, about 2 pounds of either, but the Coop butcher had neither, and offered me a bone-in loin roast (or something similar). I was suspicious, because it was a rather odd-looking cut, and super super cheap (I know, the delicious slow-cooked cuts are, but….really really cheap). It turned out to be great though, very flavorful and not too lean, and I do like cooking things bone-in.

I seared the roast, then cooked a TON of floured onions until they were brown, added and cooked down some hard cider, poured it into the slow cooker, and added in a handful of prunes.

After 7 hours on low the meat was completely shredding–this must be close to the cut used for pulled pork–and tender, the prunes were fat and jamlike, and the sauce was nice and thick and glossy. (Awful photos, I’m sorry.)

I was low on appropriate starchy sides (new potatoes would have been good) so I fell back on risotto, as per usual.

I tried the Gateau Piege from Chocolate and Zucchini again, but still ran into trouble. I’m not sure what’s going wrong–last time it was undercooked, this time it split horizontally so the top and bottom separated. Weird.