Cousins, Cooking, and Craziness!

Last weekend I had the wonderful privelege of meeting up with my faulous cousin Kelly. I was really excited by this prospect because I have not seen Kelly since I was 14. Yeah, long time. And now we live less than 10 minutes away from each other! Glorious, I know. Kelly is loads of fun. This is her, by the way:

Anyway. After much catching up and many giggles as well as fits of snorting laughter, we jumped into Kelly's car and off to Sunflower Market we went to get some supplies to make dinner. Yummy!

Our menu? Well, whilst giving darling Kelly the tour of my room, she noticed my cookbooks and we started looking at them for inspiration. One cookbook I have is from Princess Cruise Lines. Kelly went on a Princess cruise a little while ago and proceeded to find the recipe for a delicious chilled strawberry soup that she had fallen in love with on her cruising adventure. So strawberries and cream were on our list. The recipe for the strawberry cream soup calls for Frangelico, a hazelnut flavored liquor that really brings out the flavor of berries. But alas, as I am 18 and Kells is just a few months shy of the magical age of 21, we would have to make do with hazlenut extract. Do they make such a thing? Apparently yes. We even found an organic brand.

Groceries in hand, we make our way back to my apartment and bust out some delicious chilled soup. Which took about 7 minutes to make since there is no cooking involved. Just pureeing. Thank goodness for miniature food processors (thank you Mommy!).

So, my strawberry soup as pictured above. In the book they had this really cool strawberry flower that stood vertically in the middle of the soup with really beautiful thin strawberry petals. And then they filled the center with cream. So basically it was gorgeous. But I wasn't sure how to make that, so we ended up with a strawberry fan, some spatterings of cream and a few red peppercorns. Needless to say, the soup was delish!

We had some salmon too, with black bean, corn and mango salsa...also yummy, but I didn't take a picture, so I won't bother going into details about it.

After some tasty food and chatting, we rounded off our evening in the best way imaginable: drooling over Ewan McGregor's lovely feautres and gorgeous voice in Moulin Rouge. Ahhhh. Love that movie. I always feel inclined to stop it before Satine dies so it ends happily. But alas, I never do, so I always see her die and watch poor Ewan cry. Which makes me cry. Oh well! Just a movie.

Early Morning

For the past 7 weeks I have been getting up at 4:45 am Monday-Friday. Why? To go to Bakeshop of course! From 6-11:30 am every day I have been learning the basic skills of baking and pastry. At the beginning of this class, I was totally freaked out. But now I am producing things like this:

Pear bordeloue and brioche with cream cheese filling and berries

And this:

Creme Brulee

There are a lot more exciting things that I have made recently. More to come as I get the photos uploaded!

Future Restauranteurs

A couple weeks ago, I had the privelege of going back home to fabulous ABQ over a five day weekend incurred by the event of an ACF culinary competion. So my culinary classes were cancelled for 3 days. Whilst at home, I had the opportunity to finally do some cooking with my friend Zach! We've cooked together before and made a splendid 7 (I think it was seven) course dinner for our families.

Zach is totally fun. He shares the same passion and obsession for food that I have. My mom always laughs at us when we are together because we will literally spend ours just discussing food and bouncing ideas for new techniques and flavors off each other. Needless to say, this is somebody I would love to do business with in the future. Future restaurant partners, I say!

Anyway, while we were preparing our meal for my parents this time around, we shaped the beginnings of what may end up as an appetizer on our future menu. Voila! Bacon wrapped asparagus with a delicious (but secret combination - sorry!) sauce. :) My parents completely flipped over the sauce. My mom spooned more sauce on her plate after eating the asparagus and simply licked it off! If that doesn't tell you how good it is, I don't know what will.

There are still a few kinks to work out, but I think we have something here!

Zach, embracing his Asianness with a stereotypical pose...Haha, love this kid!

Customer of the day and other adventures

I am Sunflower Market's customer of the day. Why? Because I'm awesome.

While I was at Sunflower today to pick up some things to make lasagna (which will be discussed later), the produce guy (who will from here on be mentioned as "Justin", as was signified on his nametag) jokingly said to me "How would you like to sample one of our fine peppers today?" as he motioned toward the serranos, jalepenos, and habaneros. Thinking he was serious, I said "Sure, why not?" He looked at me for a moment and said, "I was just kidding. How about a kiwi instead? That's probably more appetizing. Besides, these are probably too hot for you." WRONG words to say to me, the queen of the overly competetive. Feeling the desire to show this ignorant Utah boy just how much heat an Albuquerque girl can take, I said, "Actually, I think I might go for the pepper."
He stared at me, quite taken aback. "Are you serious?" he asked me. Hah!
He proceeded to hand me a serrano, which I took no hesitation in biting into. "Is it hot?" he asked timidly. "Not at all," I said. And truthfully, it wasn't. "Okay, how about a habanero?" He held it out to me. I took it and bit in. Not too hot. Then he said, "Did you get any seeds in there?" I hadn't. So I took another bite, making sure to get some seeds. At which point, my mouth turned into a raging inferno. I didn't mind though. It was a welcome change after all of the sissy food these Utahns call "spicy". My eyes teared a little bit, but that's to be expected. After all, this was a habanero!

Justin the produce guy was quite impressed. "What is your name, crazy pepper lady?" he asked. So I told him. Later, when I was at the register, he went up to the cashier and made sure she knew I was the customer of the day. Go me!

Switching gears. As a chef-in-the-making, I have the frequent experience of spending hours on a masterpiece that is demolished in about 30 seconds. Yesterday, I made a beautiful, perfectly round, mouthwateringly tender loaf of sourdough bread topped with deliciously sweet diced onions. It was not a small loaf of bread. It was about a foot in diameter. It was 3/4 of the way gone within 15 minutes. It took me four hours to make. Granted, a lot of that was "waiting for the dough to rise" time, but still! At least I know my hard work was thouroughly enjoyed.

Lasanga. An Italian classic, and a tired American standby. I am deeply saddened by the number of people who equate the concept of lasagna with Stouffer's. Why on Earth would anyone eat that? It's not the way lasagna was intended to be I tell you! Anyway, I digress. I wanted to make lasagna. But not the tire, bolognese and cheese lasagna. This was to be a special dish that would use simple, clean flavors and be ultimately much lighter than it's meat and cheese laden counterpart. My lasagna features layers of sun-dried tomato pesto, ricotta cheese, pancetta, tender pieces of asparagus, all topped off with a healthy layer of shredded whole milk mozerella. Molto bene!

Just Muffin Around....

If the only muffin top you've experienced recently is the one hanging over your jeans...well then that's just sad! I am a huge fan of muffins, the tops being the best part, especially if they're covered in toasted nuts....delicious!

Today I was in a bit of a baking mood (the question is, when am I not?), so I decided to make up a muffin recipe. Anybody who knows me at all, knows that I'm kind of a health freak. Recently, I've been on even more of a health kick than usual. So I wanted these muffins to be filling and healthy. That kind of thinking led me to come up with these.

The great thing about this particular recipe I've created is they're so simple. You can seriously add anything to them! Blueberries, cranberries, nuts, apples, cinnamon, you name it! For my purposes, I added a banana cut into teensy little chunks and some chopped almonds on top.

Oatmeal Muffins

• 1 c oats
• 1 c vanilla soymilk
• 1 egg
• 1/4 c vegetable oil
• 1/4 c agave syrup
• 1 c flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Soak the oats in the soymilk for 20 minutes. Add the egg, oil, and agave, stirring to combine. Stir in dry ingredients and any add ins. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes. Makes 1 dozen.

Produce WINS!

Let me just throw something out there: I love meat. Meat, meat, meat, meat, MEAT! Seriously, nothing quite hits the spot like a juicy t-bone grilled with garlic and drizzled with delicious thyme oil. OH man. The only problem with meat is, no matter how much you love it, no matter how much time you put into your relationship with it, it just won't love you back. It's just not so good for you.

In 7th grade, I attempted vegetarianism. I was going strong for two weeks, loving my soy chicken nuggets, my red beans and brown rice, and totally digging the salads...until my parents wanted steak for dinner. If you've ever seen Finding Nemo (and let's face it, who hasn't?) just picture me as the shark when Dory gets a bloody nose. All I could think about was that tender, grilled-to-perfection steak sitting so deliciously on a plate less than a foot away. To put it delicately, my new vegetarian lifestyle was over.

Anyway. Living in America, where beef is practically the national food, I find myself frequently falling into a "meat rut". When I think about what to make for dinner, it's always, "Okay. We had steak on Sunday, salmon on Monday, and chicken on Tuesday. We could have pork tonight. Or we could have fish again, but maybe that's too soon." Why does it rarely cross my mind to go all veggie? I'm proud to say, last night I broke the cycle.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, my roommates and I are rolling in produce. It's everywhere. We have so much fruit and veggies in our fridge that we decided to skip grocery shopping this week (which means we saved $40! YAY!). That also means that our fridge is now meatless, as I used the pork roast I had on Monday. So I put all of my brain power into coming up with this:

Let me introduce you to vegetable curry (which isn't technically a curry, seeing as there was no curry to be found in my apartment). Tender butternut squash, carrots, and a small bit of red chile (my roommates aren't so big on spicy food. Which saddens me greatly, but we won't go into that), simmered in unfiltered apple juice, and seasoned with cinnamon, ginger, salt, pepper, and deliciously sweet notes of vanilla. We put it over brown rice and had salad on the side... TO DIE FOR!

I have never had a vegetable be so delicious. I mean, I love veggies with all of my heart and jump at the chance to eat them grilled, steamed, broiled, raw, you name it. But this was unlike anything I had ever had before. I almost want to be a vegetarian again....almost.

It's not a hobby...it's more like an obsession

Probably the first thing people learn about me is that I love to cook. I take pride in that fact and I take immense pride in the food I make. I put all of my heart and soul into the food I prepare. When it turns out to be less than I imagined, I usually have a small temper tantrum and whatever I made ends up in the trash. I once threw away a 3 layer chocolate cake that I spent 4 hours making because the icing didn't set up on the cake the way I wanted it to. The cake tasted perfectly wonderful and anyone would have been glad to have it, but I couldn't give anything away that I considered less than amazing. Conversely, when something I've schemed up and executed turns out exactly as I planned, or sometimes better, the joy I feel is utterly inexplicable. I imagine it's akin to the feeling a parent gets when their child does something praiseworthy -- they just want to tell the world. And that is how I feel right now.

And so, I present my piece de resistance: Roasted pork loin crusted with spices, accented with a blackberry and rosemary reduction, supported by a mound of luciously creamy mashed red potatoes, and a green salad.

As my down the hall neighbor said, "Man, if I could eat with my eyes, I'd already be full." And that, I thought/replied, "Just wait until you taste it."