Salmon Steaks with Hoisin Glaze pg. 301

5 Toasts

My personal trainer suggested I go on the paliolithic diet. That's right I can only eat things that cave people eat. No to bread, chips, salsa anything that wasn't around then. You can google it for the details. Considering I sit at work for 8 hours and then 1 1/2 hours on the subway each way to work you can imagine the reason for this change of eating habits.

So tonight I thought we would make something that fits the diet - last night was pasta and grilled cheese.

My tips for making this dish:
- remember to reserve some of the marinade for basting
- don't grab the hot cookie sheet with your bare hand
- remember that your oven is old and the broiler rack falls when you pull it out
- change out of your fancy dress pants before cooking
- pools of marinade on the tray burn so don't pour too much

The salmon is nice with a arugula salad and balsamic dressing. I decided to skip going to the gym tonight. Anyone watching Modern Family?

Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Pineapple pg. 223 & Sauteed Bok Choy and Broccoli pg. 249

5 Toasts

We got the pork from Meat on the Beach. Easy to prep and cook, delicious to eat, maybe it could be sliced thinner next time. The quick ginger sauce was a nice alternative to gravy - thanks for the china gravy bowl Mom.


3 Toasts

The bok choy burned on the bottom of the frying pan, but I just kept on adding more and then we ate the top part. Next time lower heat and more stiring. Less in one pan at a time also. I will try making this again with big bok choy too.

Hard Boiled Egg: Martha Style Pg. 348

5 Toasts!

Thought I'd get an easy one out of the way. For those of you wondering, this wasn't an actual dinnertime meal - we didn't, say, hunker down in some corner in and devour our respective hard boiled eggs whilst communicating with a series of grunts and gestures. That's not how we roll. I had a couple for breakfast (like a civilized person), smushed up with generous dollops of mayo and spread onto a couple of old pieces of bread.

The thesis the book presents is that most of the time the egg spends in the pot should not be spent in boiling water as I had previously believed, but instead in water that is merely cooling down from a simmer. The stove isn't even on for most of the cooking process! "This is just the kind of lunacy that might work," I thought, and tried it out. The eggs were, as promised, not too hard (and the yolks therefore not caked with that blackish sludge we have all come to accept as an unfortunate but unavoidable part of the egg experience), and not too soft (too-soft eggs characterized by their nightmarishly nasty wet yolks).

When I presented the eggs to Martha (see picture) she said she couldn't have made them better herself. The book, she told me, just sort of outlines the theory of perfect hard boiled eggs. While she could grasp the concept, she (and many before her) always had trouble in the actual execution of her theories. Legend, she said, told of a 'chosen one' who would be able to make hard boiled eggs of such perfection that generations afterwards would tell his tale. She then looked at me with her sober, wax-like gaze and said "You are that person." So there you have it.

Roasted Cornish Hens with Grapes pg.198

4 Toasts

Add lots of salt and pepper to these hens and the skin crisps up really nice. I was a little un-nerved when we had to tie the hen's legs with kitchen twine. I actully started feeling a little sorry for them. The leg stubs looked gross where they were cut and I was re-thinking the entire dish. Luckily I had some un-opened kitchen twine (left over from my brother's birthday baloon bouquet-I didn't end up using it, that's why the balloons end up blowing around the table at the restraunt)which made me stick with the plan and continue.

Ever try to figure out which side of a cornish hen is up? After tying, untying and re-tying I can tell you that to have a hen breast side up there is only one option, it is the only side that the legs are long enough to be tied on.

I was actully quite excited when I dropped by Meat On The Beach to pick up these free range anti-biotic free hens. I love this local shop for hard to find ingedients and fresh organic produce. They have all kinds of cuts of meat and a lot of pre-prepped sides. Bring your reusable bag and a little more money than you usually spend and you can have a great time at this little shop: people watching, eavesdropping and ogling the specialty ingredients and steep prices for prepared goods.

For this dish, the smaller then hens the better, they really took over the tray. Who would have thought that the grapes would be so tasty even though they look nasty cooked, and I felt like I was wasting perfectly good fruit.


As a side note, anyone have any of the following kitchen tools that we can borrow for upcoming receipes: Spring form pan, whisk or electric beater, baster, oven grill pan? If you have one of these we will trade you dinner for the use of the tool for the receipe.

My tip for anyone making this dish and using bigger hens is to turn the temp a little lower -say 400 and then leave them in a little longer. The grapes were charred along the tray edges because we extended the cooking time.

Hope you are having a good weekend - eat something good for me

Mushroom Tart pg.306

3 Toasts

Good evening after dinner fans. We decided to use half cremini mushrooms to give the tart more taste. The verdict, less mushrooms, more spinach, more cheese, more caramelized onions - not as tasty as the asparagus tart.

Spatula liked everything on the tart except the mushrooms and onions. He did take one bite though. I didn't expect this to be a hit with him, but was encouraged that he tried a taste.

Again with the confusion in step 3 which tells us to cover the mushrooms and cook until all the liquid evaporated! What! I just left the lid off (thanks T).

Perhaps this would make a better hors d'oeuvre since the shell was so rich tasting. For anyone who is cooking along with us, what do you think dinner vs. snack?

Pasta with Lentils and Arugula pg.318

2 Toasts

Dish tasted bland except for the peppyness of the arugula - maybe I used too much. I couldn't find the measuring cups (maybe Spatula is hiding them until I do the laundry)so I just estimated measurements like all the great cooks do. I was really excited to use the Duram Wheat Semolina pasta. The texture and shape were a great change from the usual. Maybe we'll try the dish again with a variation of fusilli and parsley leaves.

Points For:
Using canned lentils - cuts down on prep time
Finding specialty pasta - Orecchiette


Points Against:
Using canned lentils - cuts down on taste
Adding 1/4 cup water before finishing browning onions - pasty!
Not triple rinsing arugula - grainy

Spatula will weigh in on his rating - he missed dinner

Chili Rubbed Skirt Steak pg 294 and Roasted Plum Tomatoes pg 329

Skirt Steak (4 Toasts)
Roasted Tomato (2 1/2Toasts)

I have this friend (who will recognize himself) who took a History of Black Music course in which he had to listen to and comment on 150 songs by black musicians before the 1990's. The comments had to be around 100 words per song (I'll surely get corrected on this), and they had to be consistently interesting (though I think this was a parameter he inflicted upon himself). Now while this sounds like an easy and perhaps even fun task, it proved to be anything but. Blogging seems the same to me. I like to skirt the issue when it comes up. The steaks are too high (yes, Mom, I meant to spell it that way)!

Which brings us to Skirt Steak, something we had a bit of trouble finding in the grocery store. What's the skirt part all about? Did it have ballet aspirations? Did it have to settle for the meat aisle? Did we redeem it somewhat by including it in a Martha recipe? Alas, we couldn't find Skirt Steak (unless that is the name of the recipe, in which case it was in my heart all along). Instead, we found another kind of steak whose name escapes me. It was cut as thinly as lunch meat, so at the end we had a sort of lunch meat steak dish. The dish wasn't disappointing, but only because it was steak. It was kindof salty (the recipe's fault) and kindof tough (my fault.

The tomatos (tomatoes?) were no better. Spoon liked them better than I did, and I can see how this could be, but for me, I'm not a huge fan of cooked tomatoes, and have honestly only really come around to uncooked ones in the past five or six years. Whether this fact automatically disqualifies me from writing a food blog is up to you. But really it's not up to you. But these tomatos were of the texture that makes my throat close up.

Me: It's good for you, throat! Anti-oxidants!
Throat (in a more throaty voice): Poison! Poison!

Anyway, I can't in good conscience recommend the tomato. In fact, I dislike them so much I would like to throw tomatos at them, but we used all the tomatos on this recipe.

You may wonder what, if this recipe I'd like to throw tomatos at still warrented 2 1/2 toasts (the toast system is out of five, by the way) what recipe could possibly earn the disgrace of a lowly 1 toast? Well, we don't know yet, but we'll know when we taste it (I'm looking at you "Brussels Sprouts and Hazelnuts pg 247")

Buttermilk Baked Chicken Pg. 35 3 toasts

Not a good start for Spatula. I was not looking forward to my first week of cooking, since it was sure to involve cutting and stirring and things of that sort. I was not disappointed. One thing I've learned: read the recipe before starting the recipe. On multiple occasions during preparations I was so sure I knew what the next step would be I skipped the actual reading part before finding out that no, you weren't supposed to put the bread crumbs (which were made slice by slice in a small drink blender as we lack a food processor) directly onto the oiled pan; no you weren't supposed to just dip chicken into the buttermilk willy nilly without drying it; and no, you apparently weren't supposed to make a greasy and mostly tasteless dish that left you slightly nauseous afterwards. In fairness to me, the recipe didn't explicitly state that last bit.

When I actually got the thing in the oven, it was like I was under a police teargas raid. I opened all the windows, but nothing helped - my eyes were burning like I'd sprayed them with lemon juice Visene. What's with all the smoke Martha?!?

The end result looked something like this, and while I don't exaggerate when I say it was greasy and tasteless, it had a sort of charm that Spoon says was helped by the buttermilk. It was also pretty crispy which is a definate plus for me, though I likely could have gotten the same effect by stuffing potato chips in my mouth while eating plain chicken. I could have had different flavors that way too.

One final note...it has come to our attention that our blog should be titled 250 recipes in 365 days...if one is in agreement with the Gregorian way of thinking. However, Spoon and do not subscribe to this way of thinking. I will admit the number was an accident at first, but after much (wikipedia) research and discussion, we decided that no, we would not bow to the Tyranny of Pope Gregory XIII and his outdated calender. We would forge our own path! Fun fact: did you know that Pope Gregory XIII was for the banning of books? Basically, if you disagree with us, you hate books, including ones written by the kitchen elves of Martha Stewart Living. A year now has 350 days. Pass it on.

Tostadas Salsa Verde (Rougde) pg 211 & Poached Chicken Breasts and Chicken Broth pg. 350

5 Toasts

Never mind that we couldn't find salsa verde, and that our pepperjack cheese was sans pepper but plus monteray (whoever that is), this recipe is the best yet from the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living.

For pepperjack cheese, just add pepper to Monteray cheese! Instead of salsa verde, just use really fresh red salsa! The shells were crispy, the chicken was sumptious, and I'm hungry just thinking about it...that last is a figure of speech. I just ate it, so I'm not hungry.

The only thing that I don't like about this recipe is that it took 15 minutes to poach the chicken when the book says the whole thing takes 20 minutes.

This leads me to recipe number two, Poached Chicken. It's a great way to make chicken broth in a small batch and save time for the nexyt recipe. Too bad I didn't save the broth, as after this Spatula starts his week, and I don't know what he's going to choose.

Bone apps!