On the Eve of 2010

Well, seeing as this blog is mainly for me and my own enjoyment, I allowed myself to "hand in" this assignment late. A few days ago (cough cough), just because I wanted to, I made myself some James Creek Farm Ratatouille for dinner. This recipe has a lot of my favourite things: Eggplant, fresh tomatoes, oregano... yum all around.

Except that I found a worm in my eggplant while I was chopping it. EEEEP!!!!

That was quite a shock, I must say. After I was done very cautiously getting rid of the parts of eggplant that had been bitten through, I continued cooking. Everything went seamlessly. When it was all done, I felt like it was a bit sour for my taste, so I added about half a teaspoon of sugar. A bit unorthodox, maybe, but it actually made it taste very good! It lasted me 4 nights. I ate it with cubes of cheese a couple of nights, and with pasta another night. Very good indeed.

Why didn't I cook the pizza with my cousin the other day? Well, everything was going according to plan until there was a storm and a lightning bolt busted the transformer that brought electricity to my cousin's street. We were in the dark for 5 hours. By the time the electricity came back (or, should I say, the electricity company decided to send its team to fix the problem...) we were in no mood. Yay Costa Rican efficiency.

Happy New Year to all! Good eats and good living.

Back on the Road

After a plunge into finals, I have resurfaced with a 3.99 GPA for my first semester of college, and an eager desire to take up the Tassajara project again. Now that I'm back in Costa Rica staying at my boyfriend's house, I have access to a real (big!) kitchen to cook in to my heart's content. So, as my first adventure back into the world of Tassajara, we made ourselves an Arugula Salad with Radishes, Oranges, Feta, and Mint.

The pros and cons of cooking in Costa Rica: You don't have to worry quite as much as you do in the US about the organic quality of the food. We don't use half the pesticides and other chemicals that are used in US agriculture, so our food seems generally healthier. We also get a lot of really great, fresh produce. The downside is that since we're a small third world country, we don't get all the variety the U.S. has in its super markets. Blood oranges, for example. I've never tried them, so I really wanted to for this recipe. But alas, none could be found. We used navel oranges instead, which the recipe calls for if the blood oranges went awol.

Let me tell you: Toasting pistachios makes them fantabulous! Even more so than they are naturally. I thought that the 12 minutes the recipe tells you to toast them for sounded like too much, but I'm happy I believed in its wisdom. I thought they were perfect. My boyfriend thought they tasted too strong- to each their own, I guess. I gave Eduardo the meticulous task of taking the pith off the oranges and slicing them. The recipe says you need a serrated knife, but really, a normal knife was enough to slice through them like paper. I was apprehensive about the radishes. They never were my favourite vegetable. I was expecting to write this blog and say "I now remember why I hated radishes so much." But not at all! I was actually quite impressed at their subtleness. The feta cheese and the mint were perfect compliments. The sharp taste of the mint with the tanginess of the orange was contrasted beautifully with the creamy feta cheese and the smoky flavour of the pistachios.

We also made North African Vinaigrette as dressing for the salad. I have to say, I hate grinding out zest of any kind. If anyone has tips on how not to want to shoot yourself while doing this, it would be most appreciated. Invest in a good grater that won't make your orange zest get stuck. At first, the Vinaigrette felt way too oily, so I added some more orange juice. There was a lot of dressing left over after the salad was gobbled by the family (total success!!), so we put the rest in a jar for later use. Why waste perfectly good vinaigrette?

Tomorrow I'm headed over to my cousin Giannina's house, and we decided to make pizza. I will report then.

A Reversed Entry

So, I kind of cheated and did a recipe from the book before starting this blog. My bad! Anyway, this is the first recipe from the first section of this book: Antipasto Plate.

I was visiting my mother over Thanksgiving, and decided to take advantage of the fact that I would have a real kitchen with real cooking supplies to work with. Yay! This was my contribution to the Thanksgiving dinner. The original recipe asked for "Chioggia beets," the likes of which I have never heard of. My step dad and I don't like beets anyway, so my mother decided not to spend her money on something only she would eat (hey, I'm working on an external budget here). We got eggplant instead, which happens to be my favourite vegetable.

The first thing I did was roast the mushrooms. A completely painless process that made the kitchen smell wonderfully. Once they were out of the oven, I rolled them around in some tarragon and left them there until dinner.

I have to interject that with regard to the Zen aspect of this cook book, I have to admit I probably scored a C on that this time. Since I was at my mother's house, and since she had all my CDs that we shipped up here from Costa Rica, I was on an importing frenzy so that I could bring my music back with me to Dallas. As soon as I started the work on the mushrooms, a friend from Costa Rica called over Skype. I hadn't spoken to him in months, so I answered and kept talking while I cooked. So yes, even if I washed my hands for 15 seconds and using deep breathing techniques, as instructed, and even if I did not put on my music while I was cooking, I have to say I was not totally focused on the preparation of the meal. I'll get better at this, I swear! Also, I guess it doesn't help that my step dad had the tv going in the background. ET phone home, ET phone home...

I grilled the rest of the vegetables using a George Forman Grill, which my grandfather is apparently obsessed about. I have to say the only hard part of this recipe was working with the bell peppers. First of all- "cook over hot coals." Huh?? Who has those in a regular kitchen? I just used the grill again. Then I was supposed to steam them in a paper bag, but a ziplock was going to have to do. And it did. The bell peppers came out of that bag looking like they had been in a sauna, and there was a lot of excess water. Now came the tedious part. Peeling the very wet bell peppers. Sure, I could have just chopped them in half and discarded the part with the peel, but I like conserving as much food as possible. So I spent my sweet time carefully plucking the skin off the peppers (by this time the tv was playing Mamma Mia). I guess I felt like a sculptor must feel while chiseling. That, or a bikini waxer.

Super trouper lights are gonna find me!...

Once that was done, I made some Reduced Balsamic Vinegar to go with it. It was just like making caramel. The result was actually the same. Instead of being liquid, I ended up with the equivalent of a vinegar praline. It actually even tasted somewhat sweet! In hindsight, there's a lot of things I could have done with that. I remember making a cheesecake once where I had to make caramel and quickly pour the bubbly substance over some almonds, so as to make brittle. In the future, I might use this recipe to make some kind of garnish.

When all was said and done, the recipe ended up tasting good. There's not too much that can go wrong with the taste of roasted and grilled vegetables and feta cheese.

The Game Plan

Disclaimer: This is not my original idea. I was inspired by the courageous Julie Powell, who as many of you may know, has now been immortalized in the movie Julie & Julia. I admit, though I have read parts of her blog, I have never seen the movie. However, being the avid foodie that I am, the concept of the movie drew me in to no end. Cooking and baking has been an important part of my life for years. From gaining 20 pounds when I realized I was a good baker (and later taking the weight off!) to running a small home bakery service for my teachers and the cafeteria the last two years of high school, being in the kitchen has always been a joy. Add that to the fact that I love scheduling, love starting absurd projects and love doing things in a methodical, linear fashion, I seemed destined to take my own twist at the Julie/Julia project.

Now if I could only find the right book...

Desserts are of utter importance for me, so whatever the book ended up being, it had to have a good dessert section. However. I was not going to cook through a dessert cookbook. I did that once already, with the Hershey's Chocolate Lover's Cookbook. Remember those 20 pounds I talked about? Yeah. I wasn't going to do that again, as decadent as it was. I am also a vegetarian. Though I probably would have martyred myself and cooked some dead animals from time to time for the sake of the project, it'd be nice if I could actually eat everything I cooked. My third condition was that it had to include food from different regions. A year's worth of Indian food? Not my cup of tea.

That's when I stumbled upon Tassajara Dinners & Desserts by Dale and Melissa Kent. The book called to me from the shelves of the book store. It passed through all the hoops, and then some. This isn't just a regular cookbook. It speaks of cooking as a meditative, zen activity. I am a very high strung person, who is always multitasking in some way. It seems this book will be more than just a culinary challenge.

So here's the Game Plan. My challenge will be easier than the Julie/Julia project in a few ways. There are 121 recipes, plus a section on basics that has instructions on making different vinaigrettes, vegetable stocks and things like that. If I plan to cook through this book in a year, that means I can cook two, if not three times a week and stay on track. That's great for me, because at the moment I live in a dorm without an ideal cooking situation. I will also not cook through this book front to back. It would start out ok, but then I would get to where I was cooking two desserts a week for a few months, and... no. I will cook one recipe from each section consecutively, except for the basics section, since a lot of these dressings and such are included in other recipes and I will include them along the way.

So, on with the show!