Key lime pie

We saw a bag of key limes at Meijer for $1.99 which I was naturally unable to resist due to my affinity for key lime pie.  Once I found out how easy key lime pie was to make (3-4 ingredients plus the crust), there was no stopping it.  I used elements from multiple recipes which were more or less all the same: beat egg yolks, add condensed milk, add lime juice (and zest if wanted), pour into crust, and bake in order to kill bacteria.

Our notes:

• Juicing the limes was the hardest part of the whole endeavour.  We probably used about half of the bag to get the 1/2 cup of juice needed, but at the same time, that's really only about $1 worth of fruit.
• I used about 1 1/2 tsp. of lime zest.  This was probably too much for the resultant pie we had; at first glance it looked like I had made a quiche with green onions in it.  Ordinarily I would have just slathered on a bunch of whipped cream (none of that Cool Whip stuff, thanks) to cover any blemishes, but because of the circumstances I couldn't do this.  So the solution is to either use more lime zest and cover the pie with whipped cream or meringue, or not use much (if any) zest and just serve the pie straight.
• However, the amount of filling the recipe produced only filled the pie shell maybe 2/3 of the way up.  Given this, I would tend to just use the lime zest and then use whipped cream to fill the rest of the pie shell.
• One of the few variations among the recipes I looked at was baking time.  Technically, key lime pie does not need to be baked due to the chemical properties of the ingredients, but with bacteriological concerns today most recipes tell you to bake the pie.  I baked mine for 12 minutes; it's hard to say whether a longer baking time would have resulted in a firmer consistency as this pie was a bit softer than I had been expecting.
• This is definitely not a pie to eat before chilling it for several hours.

Multiple people gave their approval; I would consider that a success in any culinary adventure!

Not Pac-Man.  Also, not a quiche.

Slow cooker Cuban braised beef and peppers

Real Simple lived up to its name with a very easy slow cooker recipe that did not require much prep work (my kind of recipe).  The result was several hours of amazing aromas wafting through the apartment followed by a very tasty dinner.

Our notes:

• We generally cut the recipe in half since there are only two of us; we only used half an onion, one red pepper, and one 14-oz. can of tomatoes.  However, we probably used more than half of the amount of flank steak called for.
• We had an abundance of canned stewed tomatoes in the apartment, so we used those rather than diced tomatoes.  Breaking up the tomatoes a bit before cooking rendered them indistinguishable from the diced variety.
• Cumin was not used.  We don't keep cumin around and I usually don't like buying an ingredient that will probably be used only once.
• Cooking time: 4 hours on high and then intermittently on low and warm (our slow cooker switches to warm when the timer ends; when I remembered to I turned it back to low to cook it a little longer)
• We also did not use fresh cilantro.  While I find cilantro delicious, we figured that the dish would be all right without it (and it was).
• Avocado was a fantastic accompaniment, but then there are very few things that I would not say that about.

Due to extenuating circumstances, we had a small amount of leftovers even a week later, but these were still edible and, more importantly, quite tasty.  Next time I would probably make a full recipe in order to have a better amount of delicious leftovers.

A lot of flavour for not a lot of prep work.  My kind of recipe.

Pasta all'amatriciana...all'americana

In a quest to try new pasta recipes I found one for pasta all'amatriciana, typically a tomato-based sauce with pancetta and pecorino cheese.  While grocery shopping yesterday, we decided to make this for dinner and consequently we had to substitute for items not commonly found at Meijer stores since we didn't want to have to make another stop on the way home.  Thus we called it: pasta all'amatriciana...all'americana.  It was still quite delicious but probably not anything like traditional.

Our notes:

• Meijer does not carry pancetta which is hardly a surprise.  Thus we used both Canadian bacon and regular bacon as a substitute (though if it had been up to me, I would have skipped the Canadian bacon and only used regular bacon...).
• Meijer also does not have bucatini pasta (again, not a surprise).  Linguine worked fine.
• The recipe called for a can of plum tomatoes which would then be run through a food mill.  Not owning a food mill, we opted for a can of crushed tomatoes.  Our dish looked much like the photo from the recipe's original site so this was probably all right.
• The addition of a very small quantity of baking soda (<1/8 tsp.) near the end of cooking reduces the acid in the sauce nicely without much affecting the overall taste.
• Red pepper flakes are not as inexpensive as you might think given that every single pizza joint has a jar of them on every table.
• We used closer to 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes; even I think I could have put in a few more to make it a bit spicier.
• A bit of black pepper made a fine addition to the sauce.
• BelGioioso Romano cheese was perfectly serviceable.

Verdict: a recipe to try again, though with a little more planning next time around in order to get the traditional ingredients.  What we made was delicious already but presumably with the actual ingredients called for it would be even better.

An American interpretation.

Chicken pot pie

We've made it before, usually using the version on the back of the Bisquick box, but we wanted to try the Joy of Cooking version.  It ended up taking much longer than we'd thought to put everything together and we discovered Joy of Cooking's interesting method for information organization, but we ended up with a pretty delicious meal.

Our notes:

• There was the recipe for chicken pot pie, but the first step was to make creamed chicken.  The first step of the creamed chicken recipe was to make poached chicken which was itself its own recipe.  Only too late did we see that there was a "quick creamed chicken" recipe that used cream of chicken soup rather than making a sauce out of flour and butter.  Oops.  There went several minutes, but the results were worth it.
• The recipe called for a lot of flour relative to the amount of butter, but despite my misgivings it did not seem to be a problem.
• The actual chicken pot pie recipe called for us to cook the carrots, onions, and celery before throwing it into the baking dish with the chicken.  It was later than our usual dinner time, and we didn't want to have to wash another pan, so we didn't bother to precook anything.  I thought this added some nice texture to the chicken pot pie.  I view homogenous textures as the epitome of boring food.
• BUT, the poached chicken recipe told us to poach the chicken with onions and celery; instead of discarding these as the pot pie recipe called for, we just threw them in with everything else.  A good idea as they added some flavour and texture.
• The pot pie recipe did not call for any spices except for some chopped parsley.  Dried parsley did just as well.
• We made a half recipe, which included making a half recipe for the top crust.  Would make somewhat more than a half recipe of batter next time as there didn't seem to be enough.
• The top crust turned out more like drop biscuits--better than a solid crust over the entire thing.
• Cooking time: 18 minutes in an 8"x8" glass baking dish

No photo as we were both too excited to finally eat after all of the prep work, but definitely a recipe to make again as there were also no leftovers.


Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 103

Various varieties of carbohydrates.

A busy several days as you get not one, not two, but three different foods with this one post.  The value!

First, Dom made a batch of fresh pasta using our pasta maker, a snazzy drying rack that we'd gotten as a wedding present, and the Joy of Cooking recipe.  (I was busy being all professional with Adobe Illustrator which is why I wasn't helping at all.)  We'd only made fresh pasta once before, but just comparing the drying rack to having sheets and sheets of waxed paper with pasta all over the countertops and dining table, I'd say the drying rack wins by a lot.  The pasta was dry after 24 hours, though that may also be influenced by making pasta on a dry winter evening versus making pasta on a humid May evening.

The pasta turned out delicious, but much lighter than we had expected it to be.  Perhaps something to do with the drying process, or the use of the new stand mixer to mix the ingredients together...it looks like we need a larger sample size and a more rigorous experimental design.

Direct from Italy.

Second, we made pancakes using Greek yogurt because the carton of Chobani I'd picked up at the store had a recipe on the side (and, perhaps more importantly, a photo of a stack of pancakes).  The batter was intensely think and made pancakes roughly 3/8" high.  Flavor was good especially with the addition of a few blueberries, but as both of us prefer thinner pancakes made with milk rather than thicker pancakes made with buttermilk or yogurt, we will most likely not be using this recipe in the future.  Not to mention that these leftovers were not as delicious for subsequent breakfasts as compared to those made with milk-only recipes.

The griddle was an excellent registry item.

Lastly, and representing the largest time commitment of all three of these projects, I decided to make sakura mochi: red bean paste, sticky rice, an association (in my mind, at least) with cherries, and a lovely pink colour?  Sold.

No Japanese ancestry?  No problem for Google.  I loosely adapted a recipe I'd found after multiple searches and ended up using one that required making your own bean paste.  I found that, while soaking beans for 18 hours is less than ideal (see the red beans and rice experiment below), soaking them for 5 hours is also less than ideal; I ended up cooking with a ratio of 1 cup of beans to 3 1/2 cups of water (about 1 1/2 cups more water than called for in the recipe), and the paste turned out fine.

The rice traditionally has no actual cherry flavouring in it, though it can be coloured pink.  Because I wanted both, I cooked the rice with half a cup of tart cherry juice along with the sugar and water.  It worked like a charm.  I used plastic wrap to shape these so that the rice wouldn't just end up on me and managed to make nine more-or-less rounded sakura mochi, minus the pickled cherry leaf.

Red bean paste on the left and pink, cherry-flavoured rice on the right.  I'm so Asian.

The lovely pink colour seems to have come out best in this photo.  That's probably too much red bean paste for the amount of rice, at least for how I had been making them, but I think this was the first one I assembled.

They were delicious fresh, but they were even better after a day in a Ziploc container (no joke).

So, while these were not what you'd get if you were in Japan for Hinamatsuri, it was still a fun experiment.  Oddly, these seem to have gotten better with a few days' age; peak awesomeness was reached the second day after making these, after which the rice finally became a little dried out (though still edible).  Packing these four to a Ziploc container separated with waxed paper may have helped keep them moist for the few days after making them.  Definitely a keeper of a recipe.


Pasta recipe: Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 324

Almond pudding/jelly/Jell-O

Whatever it might be called in a cookbook or at a restaurant, it's delicious.  I came across this recipe while flipping through a dim sum cookbook; I got the impression that the cookbook as a whole was designed for people like me who know and enjoy dim sum but are slightly nervous about attempting it at home.  Since the recipe in the book only required one ingredient that we didn't already have, I figured it was worth a try.

Unfortunately, the finished product had no business calling itself "something delicious that you would want to consume".  When I took the dish out of the fridge it was still a liquid and nowhere near set, even after 18 hours.  Upon closer inspection, I discovered some watery milk (milky water?) lying atop a sickly-sweet almond-flavoured morass of still-grainy gelatin.  It wasn't even one of those culinary mishaps that still taste all right, like the Great Annapolis Pizza Fiasco of 2009.  This went into the sink immediately.

Our notes:

• Total time elapsed from measuring out the sugar and water to putting it in the fridge to set: 15 minutes, from 11:01 PM to 11:16 PM.  Not too bad, though see the point below about letting the gelatin soften.
• There was a very strong almond flavor, more than even I would want in this dish.  Perhaps 1 or 1½ teaspoons would be more appropriate rather than the 2 specified, though this may not have been an issue had the gelatin set as expected.
• The recipe only said to let the gelatin soften for 5 minutes; the box of gelatin (consulted long after the fact) called for 10 minutes. Might this have been part of the issue?
• Apparently, you can't just go by appearances on this one: on the stove the water-sugar-gelatin solution looked like just that, but as we would discover later, the gelatin had not, in fact, dissolved into the sugar water.
• Like the red beans and rice experiment, this recipe seemed like it was designed for beginners, calling for gelatin rather than the more traditional agar. Next time we'll try and get actual agar; we live right down the street from a fairly large Asian grocery store so I don't think this will be a problem.

It's very sad when a recipe doesn't turn out even after following the directions to the letter.  We'll try a different recipe for almond pudding next time.


Blonder, Ellen. (2002). Dim sum: The art of Chinese tea lunch. New York: Clarkson Potter.