Listening for the Unsaid

Step 1: R Visits CA, eats at charming courtyard italian restaurant, is highly impressed by the gnocchi (potato dumplings) with fresh mozarella inside them. Note to self: When he makes appreciative noises and kicks his feet because it's Just That Good....GAME ON.

Step 2: Discover fresh gnocchi recipe in Moosewood cookbook I insisted we buy so we'd be able to cook something vegetarian besides bean burritos.

Step 3: Buy food processor.

Step 4: Bake potatoes, stay up late food processing dough. Refrigerate dough.

Step 5: (Yesterday) Roll out dough. Cut into strips. Roll strips into 1" snakes, just like we did with play-doh as preschoolers. Cut up rolls into 1" chunks; roll into balls around pieces of fresh mozarella; toss small batches into boiling water; retrieve when they float.

All to get to step 6: Eat. (And yes, they were a lot of work, but really good!)

Step 7: Look at kitchen, which looks like the tasmanian devil has been cooking there. Sigh and clean up.

#39: Light chocolate panna cotta (from Everyday Food).

Do not make this. Save yourselves! Real panna cotta is made with heavy cream. This "Lite" panna cotta attempts to counterfeit that... with a mixture of bittersweet chocolate, skim milk, lite cream cheese, and unflavored gelatin. The result looks and tastes like an unholy union of jello and chocolate milk. Yecccccccccccch.

#40: Officially titled Orecchiette with broccoli-rabe....

Okay, I can't get Orecchiette pasta (clamshells) made from spelt grain (which I can eat). So I used spelt rotelli. I couldn't find broccoli-rabe (and the clerk eyed me suspiciously when I asked for it, as though I might be an eggplant-detonating bioterrorist) so I used broccoli. Last but not least, the chicken sausage I found looked nothing like the pictured chicken sausage when cooked. And besides, I used twice as much sausage as called for, because it was lean sausage and I was enthusiastic about protein that day.

So let's just say that the recipe I made did not resemble the published one even a tiny bit, but hey, it was still good.

#41: Wrap pizza.

_Everyday Food_ was claiming that using a wrap as a pizza base made it lighter. Yes, that's true, except not if you put half a cup of grated cheese on each wrap, then follow that by dotting it with ricotta cheese. Fat, anyone??

If you make this recipe, do not be intimidated by the small mountain of mushrooms that will adorn each wrap before you cook it. (They shrink. You probably knew that, though.)

Thus endeth "50 new recipes" for the year. I didn't get to 50, but hey, life got in my way. I'll try again in 2007.

I don't remember the last time I made a cake. Okay, so, this one:

http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=content&id=recipe4615&contentGroup=EDF&layout=edf&rsc=ns2006_r1

Brief review: The cake itself was good-- it seemed sturdy, leading us to fear that it might be... dense... but no, it was light and tasted like a perfectly reasonable cake.

The frosting, however, called for two jars of marshmallow cream. ("I am NOT eating that," said R. "I don't even know what that stuff IS."

This called for the judicious application of Mom's frosting (box of powdered sugar, stick of butter, beat, add milk until frosting assumes the desired consistency, frost cake.)

So I mauled the cake with frosting, and ended up with something that tasted good, but looked like a slightly squashed Matterhorn with delusions of ionic columnhood. (Sigh.)

Next up: I learn to frost a cake correctly. ;-)

This is minestrone, done in the microwave, from the latest Everyday Food.

The good:

- Crunchy vegetables, tasty broth, relatively fast cooking (once you get past the chopping you have to do).
- Mmm, another way to hide vegetables in dinner, so that at least a few servings per day slide down my unsuspecting throat.

This recipe earned the R seal of approval, to wit, "It tastes fresh."

The bad:

-There's a fine line between fresh green beans "cooked al dente" and "these are still raw". To land your soup on the correct side of that line, it probably needs to cook for another minute or two beyond what's stated in the recipe.

Mandatory Ingredients:

One can diced tomatoes
One can chili beans
Half an onion, diced
One green pepper, diced
Chili powder

Tomatoes and beans... in pot
Diced vegetables... also in pot
Chili powder... also in pot
Heat up

Optional ingredients
Ground meat (chicken, turkey, beef, venison, bison... I used bison from whole foods)
Saute' meat in separate pan, drain grease, add to original pot

Elbow macaroni (cook until tender, add to original pot)
Cans of black beans (add to pot)

http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=content&id=recipe3650206&contentGroup=EDF&layout=edf

As with all Martha pasta salad recipes I've tried... I doubled the stated number of vegetables to make it taste good. If I'd wanted it to look like the picture, I should have doubled the number of vegetables AND used half as much pasta.

This was very pretty, but not all that tasty. I don't think I'll make it again.

(From a recipe in an old Everyday Food magazine that I modified slightly)

Mix together equal parts black beans (rinsed, drained, 1 can), brown rice (recipe called for 1 cup, cooked then refrigerated, but who has time for refrigerating things after you cook them?), roast chicken pulled from the bone (recipe called for half a chicken, but that seemed like too much).

Add 1 jalapeno (seeds and ribs removed, then minced)
Add six plum tomatoes (AKA romas-- cut up, remove seeds and guts, cut the remainders into strips; I thought it could use more tomatoes, but then again, I'm a tomato freak).

Mix dressing: 3 tbs. olive oil, 1/4 c. white wine vinegar, 1 tsp. cumin. Pour over other ingredients. Toss. Refrigerate. Pack for lunches or otherwise eat.

From _Everyday Food_, June '05 issue...

This recipe can be summarized: "Make mushroom broth, add things to it including cheese tortellini, eat it."

If you try it, reduce the mushroom broth more than Martha tells you to. Aim for the consistency of mushroom gravy, in fact. The reducing process will also take longer than the five minutes she claims it will.

(From the June issue of Everyday Food-- no online link)

Okay, so if you add a couple of adobo chiles (plus some of the chile sauce), plus three tablespoons (Really, tablespoons) of chili powder to a bunch of broth and flour, you would expect the resulting sauce to be hot, hot, hot.

But wait! Actually, it was not, not not. These enchiladas had the kind of heat that grows on you over the course of several small enchiladas, and eventually conks you on the head and steals your lunch money. They were good! But the instructions are highly optimistic about exactly how much filling will actually fit in an enchilada.

I can hear you all say, "gra-what?"

A granita is made of fruit puree and sugar water. (This one had pureed watermelon and lime juice.) Blend, freeze, stir frequently, serve within 2-3 hrs. (They really mean it with the stirring. Make sure all parts of the granita have been stirred, and stir every thirty minutes or so. Otherwise it hardens, and it's not a granita unless it's grainy.)

Yum!

http://www.ehow.com/ehow/ehowPrintable.jsp?id=18234