Tortilla Soup

This blog is a bit late, but here it is now that I have time...
Well for those of you who don't know, I experienced making tortilla soup for the first time. My mom made it for the first time a few years ago, after she felt an urge to experiment (which is rare, because she hardly ever wants to cook at all). She had never looked at the recipe before, but thought instead that she could easily identify the ingredients from a soup-filled bowl she ordered at a Mexican restaurant. Much to our amazement, she pulled it off with her first try.
Now, here I type about my own experience in making this soup for the first time, using the very recipe she failed to write down for me. Hooray!!!
I was nervous about messing it up and completely ruining my creation, even before I started it. I boiled the chicken first, as that was always the first thing my mom did whenever she made soup. Once I thought it was mostly cooked, I added the flavoring, which consisted of ground comino, salt, and chicken bouillon. As I mentioned, my mom never bothered to write down the recipe for me, so all I had was my senses to go on. This was perfectly fine with me once I realized how easy sniffing the pot would be. Next, I opened a can of pre-spiced tomatoes and green peppers. I myself would have preferred using fresh ingredients, but as there was no recipe to follow, all I could do was listen to my mother's advice. I was glad to have used them in the end, however, when I realized that the chicken would have to suffer through more boiling and possibly over-cooking if I had done that. Overall, the soup was a fairly simple task.
I only had to focus on frying thick strips of corn tortilla for a few short minutes before taking my soup out for a test drive. Of course, I hadn't forgotten the anticipated cheese, and so I added mozzarella to my concoction. It melted perfectly, and so I felt confident, especially after adding the tortilla strips. Mackenzie was willing enough to taste it, and she agreed with me when I mentioned that it needed a little something extra. Neither of us could really put our finger on it, but overall I think it was a success!

Crepes

Well, over the weekend I cooked a traditional family breakfast with crepes as dessert. The breakfast was standard fare -- eggs, "naturally-processed" sausage, and tasty Ciabatta bread. My crepes came out surprisingly well, though, the first few I struggled to keep in one piece as I flipped them in the pan. I was following a recipe from a dusty "Joy of Cooking" recipe book. I stuffed the crepes with crushed nuts, fresh whipped cream, and slices of sugared strawberries. Then I poured prodigious amounts of unprocessed maple syrup over them. They were quite delicious. I think the secret as always is just add lots of butter in the pan and half & half never hurts, too. Next time I'll try lobster crepes, but I'll need to allocate a little more preparation time for those...

Ooooookaaaaay.......

Yeah, my experiment? It turned out... interesting. I dubbed it "Disaster Cake". The toppings themselves were actually quite good, in my opinion at least. It was the cake/bread part that went wrong....

In any case, I made an apple topping and a banana topping. The banana topping was basically a banana's foster, but without the rum and fire. Which infinitely takes away from the fun factor, I must say. :( As well as the taste. There just isn't that whole almost crunchiness to the edges of the banana. But it still tasted good.

The bread had no taste. At all. The texture was good, but it had no flavor, therefore was terrible. As Hayley told me, it has potential, and over time I can most definitely perfect it. 

I wonder if I'll ever be brave enough to make it again? 

Cooking - addendum/revision

Well I kind of have a switcheroo for both of my dishes - from an old Pilsbury bake-off winner cake recipe to Snowball sandwiches (I couldn't resist), and Amish Friendship Bread to Skip's Favorites. I was planning on making the bread for my home food but I decided against it for the time being.

Amish Friendship Bread takes about ten days to make- you mix milk and yeast together and let it sit out at room temperature, adding sugar and flour as the days progress. (No super processed hygenic white bread here.) I have to admit I chickened out - I was a little afraid of leaving it in the dorm kitchen (what kind of things could happen there..) and I didn' t want to be the roommate who leaves fermenting milk out and about. However, I am glad that this class reminded me of this childhood bread and I would like to try making it again soon. This was recipe was handed down to me from my grandmother, aunt, and mother - they always used to make it when my aunt came down to visit. I remember seeing the bags of starter in the fridge and, as a child, being a little creeped out by the whole yeast thing. "It's alive?!" "...[M]illions of these little worms have been born and have died, and from their dead and decaying bodies there rises a gas just as it does from the dead body of a hog."
Now, looking back, I think it was a pretty nifty bread. The starter batter makes enough for you and your friends and the cycle of making and giving can just keep on going. Additionally, I have never had to cook/bake anything that takes ten days to prepare - so the recipe is kind of enlightening in that way. Instant gratification recipes or food products are so prevalent nowadays. This bread reminded me of the "slow food" movement and mindset - I really want to look into that more. (Plus, it tastes really good - nice and cinnamony:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmP1rAc_KDnL_dfmckQ0mK3f0fVZ_3OhpnODd8uMxd1iLWAyWNQkjo44jaiD2r5FK3iOqUQWczo_3P-QeCgQVKsG2hYGbCFzUGIsQDqs3hGCI1ErTSdYB34PNFKPQ_LQLPE230WQCuiUo1/s1600-h/07-0611_amish+friendship+bread_04_e100.jpg)

So in the end, I decided to choose another old family recipe: Skip's Favorites. This one is also from my grandmother. She picked it up in Korea while she and my grandfather were stationed there. The recipe was from another army wife - these cookies were wildly popular on the base. The woman's name was Loretta and her husband was named Skip, thus "Skip's Favorites." My grandmother brought the recipe back to the states and it has been a part of my family's food culture for as long as I can remember. My father is who really got me into these cookies - he is now the one who makes them almost every holiday since I was very young. The smell of these cookies baking, the taste of the raw batter, and the sprinkling of sugar on top brings back a flood of holiday memories.

(I like how my parents have such different cooking styles. My mom doesn't cook as much as my dad but when she seems to have a knack at making strange food combinations work really well together. Her goulash was a delicious mishmash of whatever the pantry held. This dish makes me think of cold, rainy days, and how comforting and warm her cooking made the house feel. [Plus as a child I always confused "goulash" with "galoshes."] My dad on the other hand, is really serious about cooking - even when he's just making toast. The quality of ingredients is crucial and he is all about technique. It's not that he's extremely fastidious about cooking - he just likes to know the mechanics and science behind it. I'd say he likes to know the rules so he can then know how to make educated improvisations and experiments. I admire his style a lot and his dishes always seem to be great successes. For example, I can follow the same Skip's Favorites recipe but my cookies are never as good as his. I should really learn from him but my cooking style remains somewhat hapdash/hit-or-miss. I'm still trying to imbibe the value of patience - throwing out hours worth of work gets pretty annoying. On the bright side however, my stubborness and determination to give everything a try combined with this experimental method of cooking are slowly helping me develop tastebuds of steel. What is your cooking style?)

So it was fun to make them myself and see how they turned out. Cooking in the dorm kitchen is always a bit exciting - finding and washing all the utensils, hoping someone hasn't used up your ingredients, figuring out what the oven's cook time is like, etc. It's nice to cook in a public kitchen though, because at least one person usually comes in and keeps you company for a time. Taste-testers are always handy as well.

Better Luck with Baklava?

So I'm not sure why I was unable to make a successful chocolate pie, but was successful in making Baklava. The level of difficulty in making the chocolate pie shouldn't of been too much, but with two failures I guess it was. So when it was time for me to construct the Baklava, I was expecting the worse, Baklawrong. To my surprise, the Baklava turned out not only presentable, but edible as well. I'm thinking it was shear luck that led me to a pretty decent greek dish. Perhaps I had better luck because I had a partner. The chocolate pie was made solo, but Adrian assisted in the Baklava making festivities. Since I am unable to make edible foods alone, I have decided that I probably shouldn't cook alone.  

Snowball Sandwiches

Well I have to say these sandwiches were probably about as "interesting" to make as they were to eat. Though I'm glad I did - I was so intrigued as soon as I read about them. (I really want someone to make the flaming hot dog Sterno lettuce phenomenon.) I have to admit I was little surprised at how much work went into this dish. I think it took me approximately two hours to get them all just right. Maybe I'm slow or maybe the cutting and spreading and whatnot was just really time consuming. I can't imagine anyone happily putting that much effort into something that produces such a result. (More than once at least.) What an "appetizer." I found out quickly that straight-up cream cheese does not make for very frostable frosting and tuna fish and whipped cream do not have the most sweet-smelling odor after a while. Even pineapple couldn't really save the day. (Though I happily sneaked a few bites of the tropified whipped cream.) All in all, I think it's fun to try strange combinations and give your tastebuds a run for their money. And it's nice to have the privilege to play with your food.

(It was great making them in the dorm kitchen though - I was able to gross out a variety of people. Someone even tried a sandwich - even with me being too compassionate to not tell them what was in it first. Which was probably for the best - for my sake and theirs.)

Beneath the Coconut Icing

In my family there is a particular story related to German chocolate cake. A little background: my mom's favorite cake is German chocolate, my parents divorced when I was 7 and my mom remarried when I was 9.

The story starts at my mom's wedding. I, being nine, decided that it would be a good idea to eat two pieces of cake at the reception. It was a typical wedding cake, white cake, butter cream frosting and if I remember correctly it even had the cliche figures on top of it multitude of frosted layers. But the fun didn't stop there. Later that night we returned to our house for a continuation of the reception. It was here where I laid eyes on the largest German chocolate cake known to man. It was a brick, 2'x2'x6", a massive slab of the richest chocolate and sweetest coconut frosting you could imagine. I decided at once that I was going to eat as much as possible, which I did. Eight pieces later I was feeling, well lets just say a little queasy. I wandered out the backdoor and in to an unfortunate cloud of cigar smoke. The next thing I knew a nights worth of hard work was splattered on the back steps, all 8 odd pieces of it.

This tale of over consumption is, much to my dismay, told around the dinner table at least once a month, but is especially popular at parties. So for all of you a lesson, watch how much you eat for remember it isn't nearly as pretty splattered on pavement.

Almond Pears

So, tonight I made almond pears.  I found them in  Swedish cookbook that my mother bought and that I knew she wasn't using.  The picture looked delicious, and, trying to get in touch with my Swedish roots, I took up the challenge of making them.  At first this was something I just wanted to do for a fun dessert, but it turned out to be fairly difficult, so I think this was my stretch dish. I really had less trouble with the pie.  The end result turned out to be edible, and tasty, but I will be the first to say that it was not great.  

I made the thing from scratch.  First, I started with the almonds, which i had to smash up myself because I couldn't find ground almonds in the store.  I also had to whip the cream by hand and was very grateful that I found a whisk in the kitchen and that Dak was there to help me when I got tired of whisking.  That was my biggest mistake, because, in trying to halve the recipe, I forgot that I would need only one cup of cream, not two.  So my pears were smothered in whipped cream, but people ate them anyways. Thanks, guys!  The one plus to my dish was that the pears, which is rescued from the commons on pear day, were perfectly ripe and delicious.  So, that was my experience with Swedish desserts.  I'm going to wait until I get home and have a real kitchen before I try any of those again.