Pumpkin and Shrimp Bisque

There is nothing more welcoming than a bowl of warm soup on a cold day. This soup is that soup. However you will encounter some unpleasant, fishy smells because you have to roast the shrimp shells. I felt slightly crazy cooking shells, but it turned out delicious so I'll do it again if I need to. I also felt a lot of asian guilt at having to throw out the onion and celery (though I did eat a few spoonfuls, but gave up after getting too many shell bits). Work through the guilt and make this soup. It is good and very easy.

Shrimp shells, it's whats for dinner.

I think I'm getting better at choosing wines to cook with- thanks to all the friendly folks at Trader Joe's. (PS: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!)

Bacon-wrapped Hot Dogs and Pickled Red Onions

If you haven't had a bacon-wrapped hot dog yet and you live in LA, you are missing out. My love of BWHD's (bacon wrapped hot dogs) was revived at a UCLA football game where I succumbed to the bacon aroma wafting from the various vendors outside the stadium. I was a little iffy about what kind of hot dogs and bacon they use so I decided to make my own (also they were charging $4 for one).



I also spiced it up a little by pickling red onions. I really like the idea of canning, jamming and pickling food, but I am also hooked by my overactive imagination and 20/20 specials on botulism. This is one baby step towards becoming a canning/jamming/pickling superstar. Also this was an excuse to get some pickling/mason jars, which I love so very much. The pickled red onions sparked the pickle-love in my roommate Jer and now there are ample supplies of pickled onions in our fridge, at all times. I pickled mine for about 2 days and at that point they were 70% rice wine vinegar and only 30% onion-y so I drained the pickling juice and replaced it with water.


And to make this worthy of a blog post, I made my own hot dog buns. This was surprisingly easy- it was no baguette. It's basically white bread dough shaped into hot dog bugs. They were tasty, especially when lightly brushed with some bacon fat. And yes you will have more hot dogs buns than hot dogs, but they were tasty on their own for sandwiches.


Ok, hopefully you know how to cook a hot dog? Wrap a nice thick cut of bacon around the hot dog, overlap a bit. I had to stick a toothpick in both ends of the bacon to keep it on the dog, but I pulled them out after it cooked for a bit so I could get all of the bacon fat rendered out. I prefer my BWHD closer to burnt so I cooked mine til they were very, very crispy. Also I made this on my ridged cast iron skillet so it was a little bit closer to being grilled. This also prevented the hot dog from being deep fried in bacon fat (too much bacon already).

BWHD + pickled red onions = SUCCESS

Cinnamon rolls

There was a time a few years back when I was as obsessed with cinnamon rolls as I am with pizza now. I went through a LOT of recipes and variations and then got sick of them. I found this recipe while perusing the cooking light website.


The previous recipes I've used make gigantic rolls, but this made 18 smaller-than-your-palm ones. They tasted okay up to the second day after I made them, after that they were lethal weapons.

Butternut squash and bacon pasta

Another baked pasta recipe, this time with SQUASH! Again, it's from cooking light even though it has a lot of bacon, but at least there's no cream. This dish is really filling and heavy- definitely invite some friends to share it. The shallots were really good, glad I made the drive to Ralphs to find it.

And if you happen to live near a World Market, pick up some animal shaped pasta. Not only will your pasta be delicious, it will also be cute.

Chicken Tikka

My first foray into Indian food. My knowledge of Indian food starts and stop with whatever is served on the India Jones food truck and the Dosa truck and... curry. I know curry is Indian... and there's frequently a yogurt sauce?? I really have no idea so this is my way of venturing out to untested waters and trying different food.

new spices!

I had chicken tikka marsala on campus when I had lunch with my boss. It was amazing and although I found a lot of recipes online I thought I'd start with this simple recipe for chicken tikka so I wouldn't have to make a sauce. It's awesome, but 1) I am scared of raw chicken so I overcooked these (aka they were dry) and 2) I had to buy a lot of new spices. I guess this means I'll be making more Indian food because I don't want to waste all those spices.

Perfect chocolate chip cookies

Another great recipe from America's Test Kitchen. These cookies are perfect because there is a freakish amount of butter in these and I am not normally shocked by butter, but this is like 1.5 tablespoons of butter per cookie. EH I'd like to live to 50 at least so I took out 2 tablespoons of butter, substituted whole wheat flour for 1/3 of the total flour and added some more flax seed. Verdict? Delicious- probably because of brown butter. I love brown butter, it smells amazing.

look how shiny the batter is!