Week 5: Vanilla - Cornish Hens with Vanilla Sage Sauce [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: Vanilla, which is usually in reference to something being boring or plain, is most definitely not! Where chocolate is rich and heavy, vanilla is it's lighter counterpart, although you could use both in a recipe! Vanilla can be found most often as an extract, or as beans. While extract can be less expensive, I encourage you to splurge on the beans when possible, as they have a great depth of flavor. Some ideas to get you started. The best kind of Vanilla?

I grabbed these cornish hens from Costco recently when I couldn't stop giggling about how they were like tiny chickens.  We decided to make a whole teeny tiny dinner party out of it with baby carrots, baby potatoes, couscous (baby rice?), and bite-sized cupcakes for dessert!

The sauce was surprisingly really nice and not overly sweet.  The milk, sage, and lemon help to temper down the vanilla flavor.  I poured it over my couscous too and that, mixed with the hen juices, was hands down the most delicious thing on the plate.

Recipe for the hens and recipe for the vanilla sage sauce.

Week 4: Australia Day - Chocolate, Red, and Blue Lamingtons [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: Time to expand your baking skills! Or make some favorites if you live in Australia. January 26th is Australia Day so you have all week to prepare. A few traditional Australian desserts are lamingtons, pavlova and Tim Tams. Another Australian product is vegemite! So if anyone is feeling adventurous it is totally possible to bake with. You can also take inspiration from non-food Australian things! Such as their flag, the wildlife or Ayer's Rock.

Lamingtons are delicious little cubes of shortbread cake smothered in frosting and then rolled in coconut flakes.  The traditional version calls for chocolate frosting, but colors are also acceptable.  I decided to spice it up with red and blue to reflect Australia's colors (along with the white coconut).

I borrowed from this traditional recipe and this recipe for colored lamingtons.  I used icing coloring instead of food coloring, as I find liquid food coloring tends to thin out my frosting.

Week 4: Ingredients You Hated as a Kid - Onion & Tomato Pie with Side of Beets [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: his week dig deep down into those repressed food memories and cook something you never would have dreamed of eating when you were 5. Maybe you can incorporate your hated ingredient into a dish even kids would like, or simply share the dish that changed your opinion on your most hated ingredient. If you’re looking for some inspiration, a UK survey lists the top 5 most kid-hated ingredients as avocados, leeks, marrow, melons and cottage cheese. You can find some recipe ideas here and here.

My mom hates onions and my dad hates beets.  So growing up, I guess I just internalized that I hated them too (and added in hating tomatoes for good measure).  These two recipes made me rethink everything I've known.

Recipe for the Onion & Tomato Pie (with greyere and olives) can be found here.  The beets are just simply roasted and then mixed with goat cheese while still hot.

Week 3: Breakfast - Popovers with Strawberry Butter [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: The most important meal of the day! Make it tasty!
There's so many different breakfast foods! Pancakes and waffles, breakfast bars, scones, quiche and so much more!

Big thank you to Emily for letting me experiment with these in her kitchen!  The recipe was super easy:

1. Whisk two eggs in a medium bowl.
2. Add one cup flour and one cup milk, stir until just combined.
3. Pour into a greased popover pan (fill cups half of the way).
4. Bake for 20 minutes at 450 degrees F, then lower to 350 and bake for another 20 minutes.
5. Enjoy!

This wasn't really the season for strawberries, so my butter was sub par, but the popovers were still tasty!

Week 3: One Pot - Northerner's Chicken Gumbo [Cooking]

Intro from the Cooking Challenge: Before the development of modern kitchen equipment, cooks and chefs would often make large pots of soups, stews and other concoctions using just one pot. Now we have more tools at our disposal, but the principle remains the same: Using a single cooking vessel, you can build layers of flavors in a dish to create a rich, hearty meal. Common examples would include beef stew and chicken noodle soup, but with a little ingenuity you can turn almost any recipe into a one-pot wonder!

This was delicious and super easy (not to mention the recipe makes a ton; I'm going to have the best lunches in the office for weeks).  However, it could definitely do with a bit more spice and kick - I'll definitely be adding more the next time around.  And fair warning: it takes a while to shred the chicken.  I highly recommend recruiting a good friend (thanks, Meeann!) to help.

Based off of Martha Stewart's recipe here - I added a few extra veggies and baked corn bread to go with it.

Week 2: Bite Sized - Mini Pies [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: Neeny teeny bits of deliciousness. For this challenge a mini muffin pan is your friend! You can bake pretty much anything in these. Cupcakes, muffins, tarts, cookies, brownies, or savoury things like quiche and cornbread. If you don't have a mini pans try out cakeballs. So many different flavours and designs! Or make one of these many different cracker recipes, top them with things and have a delicious snack!

I got too excited and forgot to take a picture of the finished product!

For this challenge, I decided to make mini pies!  In all, I made six different flavors: blueberry, raspberry, cherry, blackberry, pumpkin, and apple.

The key to a great berry pie is to cook down part of the filling before putting it in the pie.  Take about half the berries and muddle them in a saucepan with sugar and butter, then let it cook down until it's a delicious sludge.

Then mix it in with the whole berries and fill your pies!

I used the little metal tins from the mini graham cracker shells, but tossed the graham cracker for my own pie crust.  I found it easier to keep the shape and transport them afterwards.

Week 2: Polish - Whole Wheat Perogies and Kielbasa [Cooking]

Intro from the Cooking Challenge: Polish food is usually very homey (is that a word?) and rustic with lots of meat and potatoes. Some popular foods are barszcz (borscht), pierogi (like potato dumplings), gołąbki (cabbage rolls), and ogórkowa (sour cucumber soup). And don't forget the pączki (donuts)! For those that aren't familiar with Polish cuisine, there's some good information here. Or check out 18 Polish Dishes that will Rock your World. Still don't have any idea what you're doing this week? Here's a list of Polish dishes to get you started. And here's some interesting reading for those of you that like that type of thing.

I used to help my mom make these from scratch all the time as a kid, so I was super excited to have the chance to do it again.  As I was mixing the filling, I was having some serious flashbacks to my childhood :)

Mama Weil's Perogie Recipe

(makes approximately a million perogies)

1. Peel, wash, and quarter 6-8 white potatoes.  Boil for about 30 minutes, or until you can put a fork through them.  Drain.
2. While potatoes boil, melt a pound of butter in a frying pan on low heat.  Add one or two onions cut in large hunks and saute on low heat (we cut them in big hunks because we take them out for smoother perogies, but chop them finely if you'd like to leave them in for more flavor).
3. Add one pound of mild white cheese (Mama recommends American, I used a mild cheddar) to the drained hot potatoes.  Remove the onions from the butter and add the butter to the cheese/potato mixture.  Figure out what to do with a bunch of heavily buttered onion pieces.
4. Mash everything together until well mixed and uniform.  Add salt and pepper to taste (be sparse with the salt, as the butter and cheese already make it salty).
5. Bonus step from Mama Weil: Remove all calories (please let me know if you succeed).
6. Cover filling and refrigerate until ready to use (will keep for a few days in the fridge; I find it a lot of work to do this all in one go).
7. When ready to make the dough, combine 6 cups of flour (I used whole wheat) and 3 cups of sour cream (or as much as you need, just keep the ratio 2:1).  Add room temperature water as needed until you get a dough consistency.
8. Roll out the dough (I found it easier to do half at a time) on a floured surface and cut out rounds about the size of a glass (I used a biscuit cutter).
9. Plop a rounded teaspoon of filling into each round.  Wet the outside of the round with room temperature water and fold in half to close (it's easiest to keep a small bowl of water next to your working area for this).  Seal by pressing down with the prongs of a folk.  Repeat until you've run out of dough, filling, or patience.
10. Bring a shallow pot of water to a boil.  Bring the heat down to medium and drop a batch of perogies into the water.  When they float to the top, remove them to a plate (about 3-4 minutes).  Repeat for the rest.
11. You can eat them as is, but I like to give them a quick fry in a pan.  You can also place them in a roast pan and bake them in the oven with a little butter (I know, more butter) at 300F for about 20 minutes. 

Week 1: Eggs - My First Poached Eggs [Cooking]

Intro from the Cooking Challenge: Alright, so to kick off the new year; EGGS! Cooking an egg is a benchmark for skill. I actually worked at a restaurant as a server (yeaaaars ago) and the first thing I was asked was "Can you fry an egg?." If you're a super basic chef, learning to cook an omlete would be a great place to start. Let Jacque show you how it's done. Want a bigger adventure? Souffles are delish and a bit of a different challenge. Now, the egg doesn't have to be the -Star- of the dish, but it should play a big role in your dish. These recipes should give you some great ideas.

I did feel a little silly posting this when I've seen so many other amazing egg creations.  But I had never poached an egg before, so I figured I'd take this opportunity to try out the technique.

I used a little rice vinegar in my almost boiling water, and also used the circular lids from Mason jars to help hold the eggs together once I poured them into the water (cracked them in a mug first, then slid them in).  It's not a great picture but they came out really tasty and I was very proud of myself!

For the actual cooking, I dropped the Mason jar rings into the water so they were lying on the bottom of the deep pan I was using, making sure that the water level wasn't too much higher than the top of the ring (so the eggs stay cozy inside while they poach).  Then I carefully / quickly poured the cracked egg into the ring.  Once they were done, I used a big slatted spoon to fish out the rings/eggs, flipped them on a plate and wiggled the eggs free from the rings.  

Week 1: Cookies - Hot Cocoa Cookies [Baking]

Intro from the Baking Challenge: We're starting off simple. Bake a batch of cookies! There are millions of cookie recipes out there, from the ol' reliable chocolate chip cookie to nearly anything you can think of! So pick an old favorite or go for something completely new! To start off the year on a slightly educational note, here is a handy dandy little guide to how ingredient ratios affect the chemistry of the humble chocolate chip cookie.

I made these as part of my annual Christmas cookie extravaganza.  I was really pleased with how they came out - they were a perfect wintery treat!  And they definitely tasted like hot cocoa.  My only regret is that I couldn't find the Mallow Bits called for in the recipe, so I just used mini marshmallows and they ended up flattening out after the second stint in the oven.

Recipe taken from here.