When It Rains, It Pours...

Lest you be misguided by such blog entries by the title of "Domestic Goddess," there are, in fact, plenty of disasters in the kitchen around these parts. Disturbingly, I seem to be having quite a few of them lately, though I do have the good fortune of most of my dishes being edible at least, even when they aren't as tasty as hoped. I have prepared a couple of truly inedible meals in my new kitchen, and I hope that this alarming uptick in their occurrence can be traced to the much-increased volume of cooking I'm undertaking, as well as the new equipment to which I'm trying to get accustomed.

For instance, one Saturday several weeks ago, I attempted to prepare a North African chicken stew, and I completely burnt it to a crisp. My burners run hotter than they did at my old condo, and I'd expected Justin home for dinner at any moment. I laid down on the couch for a quick nap (I wasn't feeling well at the time), fully anticipating that Justin to come home in five to ten minutes and wake me up, upon which we'd have dinner. Justin, however, decided to run several errands after work before he came home, and I slept long enough for all the liquid to evaporate from the pan. I awoke to the smell of burning food, and found a carbonized mess awaiting me, with a few edible chunks of chicken near the top. It was a disaster, and I was livid with myself for the wasted time, effort, and food.

Yesterday, I had another epic fail in the kitchen, though thankfully there was no risk of fire this time. I had selected a recipe for pork chops, glazed in a maple-mustard reduction and cooked in a cast iron skillet. For side dishes, I decided to make Alton Brown's garlic mashed potatoes again (they were that good!), and try my hand at making Brussels sprouts at home for the first time. I've only discovered that I can actually tolerate eating them in the past year or so, so I thought it would be a good idea to see if I could replicate all the deliciousness I've been experiencing at various restaurants around town on my own.

As it turned out, the side dishes were the star of the meal, and even those didn't go smoothly. The potatoes were fine, but after I got everything trimmed, sliced, and measured for the sprouts, I put them in the oven to roast and set a timer when I'd need to stir them. Being busy with the pork chops, it didn't occur to me until much later that it seemed like an awful long time had gone by with no alarm. I opened the oven door to find the sprouts were barely even soft, much less browned. I looked at the display on the oven to discover that the clock wasn't on. All the buttons were non-responsive to my touch. Something had mysteriously gone wrong, and the oven appeared to be completely dead.

Panicked, I went to get a pan to finish the Brussels sprouts on the stove, and suddenly the oven came back on, albeit with the clock about twenty minutes behind. I'm not sure what happened, and now I'm faced with a deeply-rooted fear that I may have to replace my stove/oven in the near future, which will probably be ungodly expensive. At least the Brussels sprouts came out perfectly: tender on the inside with a hint of sweetness from the apples contrasted with salty bacon bits and nicely browned exteriors. Still, the whole episode was very strange...

The pork chops, however, were a total bust. I must have over-reduced the glaze, as it quickly solidified into a sort of maple and rosemary-scented caramel. There was no way to brush it onto the chops at that point, so I did my best to glob a piece on top and hope that it melted over the meat. All this fiddling and fussing with the sticky "glaze" caused me to utterly overcook the meat. It didn't burn on the outside, but it was completely dried out, hard and leathery. You could barely cut it with a steak knife, and the consistency of it in your mouth was somewhat akin to sawdust. I wanted to throw away the leftovers in disgust, but Justin insisted on keeping them and not wasting the food.

The misery didn't even end there -- the maple mixture burned onto my new cast iron skillet, and was practically impossible to remove. I fear I may have to reseason my pan after the valiant attempt Justin made to clean it, which is exactly the kind of kitchen project I'd rather avoid.

At least the meal wasn't a complete waste, but it was still a pretty disheartening experience. I don't think I'll be tackling pork chops again for a while, though I've gained enough confidence to try Brussels sprouts on the menu more often. I've got a few more recipes for them pinned to my Pinterest board, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with them. Hopefully the meals that they accompany will go better than the one we had last night...

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Apples

adapted from Back To Her Roots

1 lb. Brussels sprouts, washed, trimmed and halved
1 large apple, cored and diced
4 slices, thick-cut bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/4 c. olive oil
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 375.

1. In a large bowl, combine sprouts, apple and bacon and stir until evenly distributed.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, maple syrup and balsamic vinegar.
3. Pour olive oil mixture over sprout mixture and toss to coat.
4. Pour out the sprout mixture in one layer onto a greased cookie sheet. Season liberally with salt and pepper.
5. Roast in oven for 10-15 minutes, turning once halfway through cooking, or until sprouts are tender and brown.

Let There Be Light...

Today we conquered one of the few remaining roadblocks standing between us and finishing the work on our house: the electrician came to install all our new light fixtures today. Previously, our light fixtures were a motley assortment of hideous, broken, and cheap dreck. Our rooms were dimmer than they needed to be, and as the weather has gotten warmer, we've realized that the master bedroom, located at the back of the condo, doesn't receive very good air flow, necessitating the installation of a ceiling fan. I'd purchased all new fixtures months ago, and they've been piled up under a window in the living room since before we moved.

In addition to the two new fixtures in the kitchen and the futuristic chandelier in the living room, we also added a third recessed light above the island.

We were finally able to get an electrician to come today to put them all in, and the difference they make is dramatic. Not only does the place look classier and more finished now, all of our rooms are much brighter. This has mixed results -- my work space in the kitchen is much better illuminated, and it'll be much easier to tweeze my eyebrows in the bathroom, but suddenly many of the surfaces that I've been meticulously trying to keep clean look far dirtier. Life is all about trade-offs, I suppose.

The mancave. I couldn't get the new fixture in the photo, but you can see how much progress has been made in there now.

Most importantly, now that we've swapped out the light fixtures on the bathroom walls, we can paint in there, which is the last big project we have on the list to tackle ourselves. There are still smaller things for us to do, like hanging the curtains in the master bedroom (which will be no small feat, considering the scale of the bank of windows in there), and hanging all our artwork -- both projects that will help add the finishing touches to our home. Plus, we have a list of projects that we're going to hire a professional for, like installing a tile backsplash in our kitchen and installing stone tile on our window sills to prevent water damage from all the condensation that forms on them. 

There's just a hint of the ceiling fan in this one, but I really like the stainless steel finish with the room.

For the first time, I really feel like the end is in sight. Stay tuned to see how it turns out!

Wake and Bake...

Though I've been undertaking most of the cooking in our newly-minted household, there is one domain where Justin still reigns in the kitchen -- weekend breakfasts. This tradition goes back to the early days of our relationship, and I still think there are few things greater than sleeping in on a Sunday and getting to watch the man you love prepare a delicious meal for you while you kick back and relax. Today, I even got to play executive chef and pick out the recipe that Justin used to prepare us both breakfast.

I selected herbed-baked eggs, one of the most popular recipes by Food Network personality Ina Garten, whose recipes I more or less trust implicitly, though many of them need to be scaled back to feed a modest number of people. I've only made one recipe of hers that didn't turn out well, and I think that was more due to my error than hers (it was for potato leek soup, and I think I delved too far into the dark portion of the leeks when slicing them, because there were tough, fibrous bits in the otherwise well-flavored soup.) Plus, I have a soft-spot in my heart for Ina, because she could have been my mother's twin before my mom lost almost a hundred pounds. Watching her is kind of like learning to cook from my own mom, who is an excellent cook but has never enjoyed being in the kitchen.

Baked eggs had a particular appeal to me because Justin recently used the Crate and Barrel gift card he got at his Christmas office party to purchase a set of ramekins for me. It's a major bakeware item that I didn't already have (a rare thing in my well-stocked kitchen), and I knew there were whole categories of recipes that lay out of my reach until I acquired some. I've saved several recipes for pots de crème to my Pinterest board, and you can look forward to those going forward, but for now, I knew we could use our new dishes to make baked eggs and I wanted to put them to use as soon as possible.

This dish was very quick to put together, faster than anything involving potatoes, like a hash, though Justin didn't enjoy meticulously mincing herbs when he was starving. (I think he would have preferred a quick bowl of cereal this morning, but he acquiesced to my request because he is the greatest boyfriend ever.) We're still getting the hang of our broiler, which either seems to brown the surface of food while the rest of it goes raw, like this morning's eggs, or it never browns the surface at all, as with some garlic bread we made last month. We ended up having to finish the eggs in the microwave, which we overdid, leaving the eggs hard instead of soft and just-barely done, but the flavor of them was excellent.

Once we master our broiler, we'll definitely be trying these eggs again. It's always good to have more recipes in your brunch arsenal, and this was a delicious change of pace. Plus, now that we have those ramekins, we'll be sure to get our money's worth out of them!

Herbed-Baked Eggs

adapted from Ina Garten

1 clove garlic, finely minced

1/8 teaspoon dried thyme

1/8 teaspoon dried rosemary

1 teaspoon dried parsley

1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons heavy cream

1 tablespoon butter

4 large eggs

Preheat the broiler for 5 minutes and place the oven rack 6 inches below the heat. 

Combine the garlic, thyme, rosemary, parsley, and Parmesan and set aside. Carefully crack 2 eggs into each of 2 small bowls or teacups (you won't be baking them in these) without breaking the yolks. (It's very important to have all the eggs ready to go before you start cooking.)

Place 2 individual ramekin dishes on a baking sheet. Place 1 tablespoon of cream and 1/2 tablespoon of butter in each dish and place under the broiler for about 3 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Quickly, but carefully, pour 3 eggs into each ramekin and sprinkle evenly with the herb mixture, then sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Place back under the broiler for 5 to 6 minutes, until the whites of the eggs are almost cooked. (Rotate the baking sheet once if they aren't cooking evenly.) The eggs will continue to cook after you take them out of the oven. Allow to set for 60 seconds and serve hot with toasted bread.

All The Small Things...

One of the fundamental aspects of learning to live together is compromise, and in our household, the kitchen is no exception. I've been begrudgingly trying to consume more vegetables and integrate them into our meals, as per Justin's preferences, and my hot sauce collection has gone from zero to five different bottles in the nearly two months we've been living together. Meanwhile, Justin has been trying to cope with a smaller range of snack food choices, and a decreased emphasis on noshing between meals. Still, this merging of culinary traditions has been fruitful; I'm constantly confronted with new items in my pantry and refrigerator that need to be used, and that forces me to get creative with some of my ideas.

For instance, Justin, a huge fan of hummus, purchased a glut of tahini about a month ago when he found it on sale. Tahini may have a long shelf life, but it was taking up valuable cabinet space, so I looked to a recipe I'd spotted in last year's Food & Wine anthology, which I recently acquired from Grandma Betsy, who'd decided she was unlikely to make any of the recipes from it. (It's not exactly easy to source specialty ingredients in a rural town of under three thousand people.) Unsurprisingly, the recipe that caught my eye was for cookies, and the idea of using a ingredient usually associated with savory dishes in a dessert intrigued me.

I haven't made cookies yet since we moved, in part because I'm still a little leery of our oven, and partially because I hadn't quite gotten over the post-Cookie Bonanza burnout that afflicts me every year. Still, without any pressing distractions like a turn at Cake Day or celebrating Pi Day, it seemed like it was time to finally christen my oven with its first batch.

These tahini cookies came together very quickly, with a bare minimum of ingredients. The most difficult part was rolling out the dough into a 1-inch log, as all that fluid tahini made for a very, very soft dough. I also made somewhat of a mess trying to roll the squishy dough logs in sesame seeds, which I likened to making a craft project with glitter -- the tiny seeds went everywhere, and I just know I'll be finding them all over my kitchen for weeks, regardless of how much I vacuum and wipe.

The resulting cookies turned out unlike anything I've ever made. They are exceptionally tender and soft, to the point where you can score them with a fingernail, but still sandy, like a shortbread cookie. The tahini gives them a nutty, toasted flavor, while the sesame seeds along the edges give them a bit of extra crunch. They almost have an addictive quality to them, and their ultra-petite size gives you the illusion that it's okay to eat a handful of them, even though tahini is a fairly calorie-dense food, and they also feature a decent amount of butter.

Because they're little and the recipe makes over 100 cookies (I got 139), it seems like these should make a good gift, but they're also so delicate that it would be hard to pack them without them crumbling. I think they'd make a perfect dainty bite at a bridal or baby shower, if you were hosting one at your house and didn't have to take them very far. Since I don't have any of those coming up on my social calendar, I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do with this recipe, but I'll certainly file it away for future use, as these tahini cookies are definitely worth revisiting.

Tahini Shortbread Cookies

adapted from Food & Wine

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1 c. tahini, stirred

3/4 c. powdered sugar

2 teaspoons coarse sea salt

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 c. sesame seeds

In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter with the tahini, confectioners' sugar and salt at medium speed until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the flour and beat until incorporated. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and knead just until it comes together. Divide the dough in half and roll each piece into a 15-inch log, about 1 inch thick. Scatter the sesame seeds on a sheet of parchment paper and roll the logs until completely coated. Roll each log in parchment and refrigerate until chilled, at least 1 hour. 

Preheat the oven to 325° and line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Unroll one log and slice it 1/4 inch thick. Arrange the slices on the baking sheets. Bake the cookies in the center and lower-thirds of the oven for about 25 minutes, or until golden, shifting the pans from front to back and top to bottom halfway through baking. Slide the parchment onto a rack and let the cookies cool completely. Repeat with the second log of dough.

Wrapped Up In Books...

It's been a while since I gave an update on our house, but we've been a little stalled while we were waiting for our new bookshelves. We needed them in order to effectively unpack and organize the boxes that were filling up our second bedroom, but since they were going to be my birthday present from my parents, I had to wait for them. They were finally delivered late last week from Dania, and Justin spent the weekend assembling the shelves for the mancave and kitchen, and shelving our vast DVD/Blu-ray collection. With our cookbooks and DVDs properly stored, Justin can now move on to unpacking the rest of the den and making the room livable.

However, we opted to have the representatives from the store put together the massive bookshelf that we're placing against the accent wall in our back hallway due to its size and weight, and they managed to damage a highly visible component while they were constructing it. They offered to give us a discount on it, but given the nature of the damage, we demanded that they fix the piece, which they weren't able to return for until today. By the time I made it home from work, my highly-efficient librarian boyfriend had already alphabetized our book collection, sorted it according to fiction and non-fiction, and shelved everything. I think it looks great, and so much more tidy!

We still have several items left on our to-do list for the house, but having the new bookshelves in place really helps. Next on the agenda is having the electrician come next week to change out nearly all our light fixtures, and after that we'll be able to paint the bathrooms. Things are starting to really come together, and the end of this project is in sight! I'll be sure to keep you posted...

Celebrate Good Times...

I have some fantastically wonderful good news to share with you today: Justin has accepted a full-time job in the law library at a large, international law firm with an office downtown. He first applied for a job there several months ago, but at his interview, the person he spoke with suggested that he might be better suited for another position that would be opening up there. While we were in New Orleans last month, strolling through the Garden District, he got a call from them asking him to submit his resume for this second position, and he interviewed with them again shortly after we got back. After wringing our hands for the past few weeks, Justin received the offer yesterday and accepted today!

Justin is excited about this new opportunity, and I am so, so proud of him. He'll have a better commute, better hours (including no more weekends!), paid vacation time, and health insurance. It's amazing how well things have come together for us this year, even if all this change has been a challenge at times. We are truly blessed, and very thankful for all the good fortune that has come our way so far in 2012. Here's hoping this trend continues! Congratulations, babe!

Imagine Whirled Peas...

It's a well-known fact that I am no fan of vegetables. My mother accepted this fact years ago, and largely stopped trying to foist them upon me, after I would spend entire evenings at the kitchen table having staring contests with the peas that refused to disappear from my plate when I was told that I wouldn't be dismissed from the table unless I ate them. My significant other, however, craves healthy things in his diet, and has been waging an uphill battle to get me to introduce more vegetables into our shared meals. In large part, I've been trying to accommodate his tastes, and incorporating more vegetable side dishes and selecting more meals that have vegetable components.

That's why a heavily vegetable-laced chicken salad from the most recent issue of Bon Appetit caught my eye -- now that my antagonistic relationship with peas has cooled, I thought a three-pea chicken salad would make a perfect lunch for me and my vegetable-loving boyfriend. Luckily for me, I was able to pick up all two of the necessary types of peas (snow peas and sugar snap peas) for a song at H-Mart yesterday, and we had frozen peas and frozen chicken breasts on hand, so there were few barriers standing in my way.

Just because I was able to acquire all the ingredients easily did not mean that I was able to throw this together in a timely fashion. The writers at Bon Appetit classify this as a quick meal, but they are sorely mistaken. This chicken salad is a test of one's knife skills the likes of which I have never experienced before. I spent what felt like forever thinly slicing the snow and sugar snap peas and green onion into fine ribbons, along with finely mincing the garlic and shallots. Sure, it was easy to chuck everything into a bowl and stir it up once it was all prepared, but I'm not sure the dish merited all the effort.

That's not to say that it wasn't tasty. If you like vegetables, like Justin does, I'm sure you'd enjoy this chicken salad as much as he did. For me, however, there were just too many raw vegetables and too little chicken. It was fresh, crunchy, and full of bright, spring flavors, but I couldn't ignore the voice of my inner child screaming, "Eiw! Veggies!" If you have some time on your hands, and access to a farmer's market, by all means, give this recipe a spin, you'll probably enjoy it. As for me, I'll be sticking with my much-beloved chicken salad recipe, that still has some fruit and vegetables for interest, but is more heavily skewed toward the meat side of the equation.

Three-Pea Chicken Salad

adapted from Bon Appetit

2 large shallots, 1 halved, 1 minced
2 garlic cloves, 1 smashed, 1 minced
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
3/4 cup low-fat Greek yogurt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound thinly sliced stringed sugar snap peas
1 cup frozen, thawed peas
1/2 cup thinly sliced stringed snow peas
1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh green onion
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest plus 1 tablespoon (or more) fresh lemon juice

Place halved shallot, smashed garlic, and chicken in a medium saucepan. Add water to cover by 1 inch and season with salt and pepper. Bring water to a boil; remove pan from heat, cover, and let stand until chicken is just cooked through, 15–25 minutes, depending on size of chicken breasts. Transfer chicken to a plate and let cool. Shred or dice chicken. 

Meanwhile, whisk yogurt, oil, minced shallot, and minced garlic in a small bowl. Season dressing with salt and pepper.

Combine all peas in a medium bowl. Add chicken, dressing, parsley, green onion, lemon zest, and 1 Tbsp. lemon juice; toss to coat. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and additional lemon juice, if desired.