Empanadas (sort of...)

OK- another theme you may have noticed on this blog is some sort of butter pastry wrapped savory filling. This is another one - spicy empanadas! The blogger also made a cilantro cream, but for the sake of our waistlines and fellow beach-goers I left that out. The dough is weird though - only 4 tablespoons of butter. How am I supposed to work with that???? It's predictably less buttery/flakey and more bread-like. It also rolled out much thicker... not sure if I like that- I could not crimp the sides into pretty little braids like the blogger. It's ugly, but still tasty.


Also I changed the filling. I don't need any more bacon in my life right now so I switched to ground turkey. And some potatoes because I had them lying around. So I don't know if this really counts as an "empanada" anymore, but it was good. I use a LOT of cilantro- an entire bag full.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Why doesn't any grocery store sell small containers of buttermilk? It always goes bad before I can use it all. Sadly that was the case again this week, but at least I made some biscuits! They were strangely not overly-buttery and somewhere inbetween savory and sweet. As in you could eat this for dinner or dessert. I don't have as many fluffy layers as the blogger, but I went and got some biscuit cutters the other day so I won't smash all the layers together when I'm cutting biscuits out with cups.

Chocolate Banana Cream Pie

Oh man this was such a fail I don't even want to post it, but this recipe is so good I'll share it anyways. It all started with a crazy craving for banana cream pie and lo and behold I had a few brown bananas. It was looking good until I made the pastry cream. It looked thick enough in the pan, but it was just messing with me. It was a runny mess. I hoped it would firm up in the fridge - nope! And I made some whipped cream.... which un-whipped itself. And a fat layer of chocolate. But the crust was delicious.

So when I cut the first slice, the cream slid down and so did the whipped cream.... and then the chocolate sort of melted into it. The pie plate was a funky mess of brown, white and pie crust. It still tasted good, but it was the ugliest pie I have ever made/eaten.

Sourdough Bread

I am a potato and bread fiend. I especially love sourdough bread, but was always intimidated by the recipes I found online. You have to make your own little colony of happy bacteria that will make your bread all nice and sour (and also help it rise). I was really turned off by most of the recipes I saw which involved specific proportions of pineapple juice and water. But I found this recipe and I figured I would give it a try. It only takes water and flour and it has specific steps for each day.


I was still sort of scared I might kill someone with my funky bread, but the comments on the daily pages helped sort out what a "bad" starter looked like. It takes a few days, but you can make your own starter too! I made 3 batches of bread, but only the 3rd one really tasted like sourdough. The holes weren't quite there yet and then..... I killed my starter. I killed it so bad I couldn't bring it back to life (which you can usually do quite easily- another reason to make your own starter). It grew mold. It got funky. I threw it away.


I'll have to save this for another time when I have time to bake bread more than once a month and can feed a starter more often. Poor thing, it only lived for a few weeks!

Shrimp Quesadillas and Mango Salsa

(please excuse the bite marks, I was hungry)

Ok I'm addicted to shrimp and making tortillas. It's an addiction and I can't stop. This variation is easy I'm sure you've had it before. It's easy peasy corn tortillas + shrimp and a really great mango jalapeno salsa. The salsa is sweet, salty, smoky and spicy. It was a pain to slice the mango - am I doing it wrong? But I gotta say I'm getting better at making tortillas without a press- instead of using my hands and/or a rolling pin I've been using a pot.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ok... sorry again I'm not done with the peanut butter - I had to use almost a whole jar. This might be my new favorite cookie. They're chewy and slightly crunchy and I loovveeee oats. (They look weird in my photo because I flattened them out right when they came out of the oven.)

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Brownies

Sorry peanut allergists, I really love peanut butter. I was tasked with getting rid of the "gross" peanut butter, which isn't even "gross" it's just the natural type where the oil separates from the rest of the peanut butter. So I had to make these brownies and I'm really glad I did. It takes the brownie to another level. There's only a slight peanut-ness to them. Delicious and not too sweet.

Spinach Stuffed Shells

This was so easy I'm embarrassed to post it. And yes it's just another variation on lasagna, but it looks cool. It's a stuffed pasta shell! I see them on menus, but I never order it - I don't know why. I want to say this is healthier than a lasagna since there is way more spinach per serving, but don't quote me on that. If you're sick of making plain pasta or lasagna, make this instead.

Ad Hoc Brownies

My sister got me 3 Thomas Keller cookbooks for my birthday, I spent a week (and actually I still do this) reading them before I go to bed. There are a lot of background stories and helpful tips about techniques and equipment. I also found the recipe for the Ad Hoc Brownies online. I've never actually been to Ad Hoc, but it is on my list of places to go.

The brownies were so chocolate-y. I think one slice was enough for most people- it was just so. much. cocoa! (one whole cup!) whew, make sure you share- you will not be able to finish it yourself.

Molten Chocolate Cake

This is a really quick and delicious recipe for molten chocolate cake. You don't need to break out the mixer for this, just stir a few ingredients together and pop it on the oven. Take it out of the oven, let it REST (I was too eager with the first cake and ended up with half a cake on the plate, half in the ramekin).

I made a cinnamon whipped cream while the cake was in the oven- also very easy. Make this the next time you're craving a rich chocolate cake.

Home made Pasta & Scarpetta's tomato sauce

Another home made pasta recipe- this was a bit better than the other one, less egg-y. I also added some dried herbs so there was more flavor. I used the smallest/thinnest setting to make spaghetti, but it clumped up a bit while cooking.

I finally made the tomato sauce from Scarpetta. It's $24 at the restaurant- why not make it at home? I was very skeptical about the amount of oil- it just seemed like it would be an overly greasy sauce. It turned out quite good, but yes a bit greasy. I don't know how they can manage to suspend the oil within the tomato sauce. It was my first time using San Marzano tomatoes (wow they are expensive) and they were very tomato-y even after cooking for half an hour. Often the tomatoes I get, unless I get them from the farmer's market, are taste-less, bland fruits. I'm definitely going to be splurging on a few more can of these great tomatoes.

Homemade corn tortillas and corn meal crusted shrimp

Home made corn tortillas are not hard to make at all- I would say they're a bit time consuming if you don't have a tortilla press though. I alternated between using my hands and a heavy pan to get them thinner.

Corn meal crusted shrimp sort of worked, but I think the original fish would taste better. A lot of the cornmeal ended up falling off the shrimp anyways so it was just... a regular shrimp taco. Sigh... don't worry there's a better shrimp taco recipe coming with a mango salsa!

Chicken Nuggets

Let me say I first made this with the intent of making these chicken nugget replacements healthy (that's lettuce under the chicken!), but the in the process of frying the chicken it turned into sort of deep frying the chicken because I put a bit too much oil in the pan. I also didn't have a meat pounder so I used a glass cup, which seemed to work fine. It was a fast process- easy weekday dinner.

Coffee Ice Cream

This coffee ice cream was awesome, it turned out amazing even though I only used 4 egg yolks. I thought it was just sweet enough, but my sister thought it was too sweet and soft, different ice cream tastes I guess! There is a lot of coffee in this- there are coffee grounds in the ice cream and the cream was steeped with coffee beans too. Another ice cream recipe winner from David Lebovitz.

Apple Pie, Apple Jam and Apple Tart

It's raining apples. Let me start from the beginning.... Ilya requested an apple tart for his birthday so I bought a few apples, which turned out to be too much. So I bought a few more apples to make miniature apple pies... and I STILL had some apples left over so I made some apple jam.

My first time making jam and despite boiling ALL the peels and leftover apple bits my jam would not thicken. A night in the fridge helped a little, but it was still a soupier jam than I would've liked. I have to work on this- Summer 2011 is going to be the summer of jam for me.

The pies were delicious and cute! The apple tart really was the simplest apple tart ever. There's very little sugar in the apples so it was rather tart, not sure if I like that or not... But if you find yourself with a lot of apples, give these recipes a try.

Peruvian Chicken

Peruvian Chicken, it should have its own facebook page. There are a few Peruvian chicken places in LA, the most popular being Pollo A La Brasa Western. The chicken isn't very smokey despite being cooked in a wood oven, but the chicken is tender and you have to get their delicious green sauce made of aji peppers.

This is similar only in name. The marinade is really good- made mostly of mint, cilantro and jalapenos. I got the recipe from Cooks Illustrated and I'll type it up soon. You also cook it with a half-empty can of beer .... uh shoved up the chicken. My first time doing that... my chicken was so small it barely fit. Also be sure you put some extra pans under your chicken, mine spilled everywhere and I spent a fun time scrubbing all the bits off.

Vegan coconut cake

One of my favorite cakes is the vegan coconut cake at the Golden Mean Cafe, introduced to me by an old roommate. She also managed to get me the recipe for the cake! Still have to figure out the recipe for the frosting so I whipped a batch of strawberry butter cream and, for fun, colored it pink. It tasted similar, but not exaccctttllyy like the real cake... time to experiment!

3 cups of spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
2 tbspn vanilla extract
1 tbspn coconut extract
2 cups vegetable cane sugar
2 cups cold water
2/3 cup canola oil
2 tbspn apple cider vinegar

bake 350 degrees.

and now... all the photos I didn't shoot

I lost my camera for a few weeks (later found thankfully) and here's a quick list of what I made and ate:

Chewy Pretzel Bites. These taste pretty much like Wetzel's Pretzels. They take a bit of time to make, but it makes a LOT of pretzels. Eat the day you make them or else they turn into stale bits of dough, no good.

Chocolate Kettle Corn. I used my leftover popping corn to make this gluttonous snack. There's butter, sugar and chocolate. You can't go wrong. It's good and it's bad.

Breakfast Pizza. bacon + eggs??? So good! Didn't try the dessert pizza, but it looks drop dead delicious as well.

Victorian Sponge Cupcakes. Not quite as light as I expected, but a good simple cake with a jam filling.

Houston Style Carnitas

You probably get that I'm very inexperienced at cooking meat by now, but I was even able to make these really, really good carnitas. I did exactly what the recipe said and even though it looked and smelled unappetizing in the beginning, I let it keep cooking and by the 2nd hour it was looking like real carnitas.


I added some guacamole, onions, cilantro and lime. Pickled red onions would be a great addition. Make this, impress your friends. (I forgot my camera so these are iphone photos courtesy of Ilya)

Jambalaya

Let me preface this by saying I rarely make rice in a pot- I mean I always use a rice cooker. That might explain how my "jambalaya" pretty much turned into a risotto. I guess I had too much liquid in the pot... but it was still good. Oh and those burned black bits? That happens when you forget to stir the rice and there's a nice burned layer of rice at the bottom of the pot... which you then accidentally stir up.... at least it still tasted okay.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

This is a reaaallyyyyy good recipe for carrot cake. I used this recipe for the cake and this recipe for the frosting. I didn't use the can of crushed pineapple and it was still ridiculously moist and delicious. I'm not sure how it would even stay together if I had used the pineapple.

I even liked the frosting! And I'm not a big fan of cream cheese frosting (tastes... weird to me), but I used a whipped cream cheese so it was very light.

YAY more PIZZA!

I've come a tiny bit closer to a good pizza recipe. This recipe comes from Saveur and was inspired by Pizzeria Mozza one of my favorite restaurants in LA. It was surprisingly easy to shape and there's a great accompanying recipe about how to shape a pizza. I ended up making 2 large (and way too doughy) pizzas, 1 of which was for lunch. There is just no good way to microwave this type of pizza, it gets doughy and chewy... egh. Next time I'll just make 1 pizza to eat right away.


I made my regular (marina with a lot of sliced garlic) and a potato rosemary "pizza." Not sure it counts as pizza when there's no cheese or sauce!

Chocolate and Pecan Cookies

This is another recipe to use the huge bag of pecans I bought to make the german chocolate cake. This is Dorie's Best Chocolate Chip cookie. That would be Dorie as in Dorie Greenspan. There's a great group of blogs that makes a new Dorie Greenspan recipe every Tuesday (known as Tuesdays with Dorie). A good way to learn how to bake although sometimes the recipes are beyond difficult.

Now the blogger I got this from tested various resting times and temps for the dough so I decided to pop my cookies in the freezer for a bit before baking. It seemed to work- I didn't have time to freeze the last batch and they spread out into thin (and burnt) cookies.

Chocolate cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

Sorry peanut-allergic friends, it's another peanut butter recipe. This time it's a dark chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. I had some soft caramel candies left over from the samoa's so I melted it in intervals in the microwave. Be sure to use a very large bowl because the caramel bubbles as it heats up and if you don't use a huge bowl you'll end up cleaning caramel off the bowl sides and the microwave like me.

These were really good- you can't go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter. I also chopped some pecans and sprinkled some on top so you weren't as overwhelmed by all the sugar. The cake was surprisingly not that sweet so you can eat the whole thing without feeling like keeling over from sugar overload.

Oatmeal Cookies

I know, I know- not like I've never made an oatmeal cookie before. But these are different- I usually use the oatmeal cookie recipe on the Quaker Oats box or a crispy oatmeal cookie recipe, but this is different. They are both crisp and chewy, without falling apart in your hands. They have a lot of butter though which you can feel free to decrease. I added raisins because I have a big bag of raisins to use and they're good for you.

Samoa Bars

I have a hate-love relationship with Girl Scout cookies. a) why aren't they available year round? b) why are the boxes SO SMALL.

Well now you can make your own- except they'll be called "bars" because you are much too lazy to cut out donut shaped cookies and they're delicious as is.

I made very messy cookies- I don't know how the blogger was able to have crumb-less bars. Mine were falling apart as I dipped them in chocolate so I had to freeze them for a bit. This was very helpful in using all the leftover coconut from the german chocolate cake.

Mac and Cheese (with broccoli)

I know what you're thinking- another mac and cheese? Well this is mac and cheese, with Beecher's Flagship Cheese Sauce. If you haven't had Beecher's mac and cheese, stop and book a flight to Portland go mosey on over to Beecher's. If you're a cheese hound you will probably find yourself suddenly overwhelmed, if you are lukewarm about cheese (like me) you will be amazed and a little weirded out by all the cheese products. You can even watch them make cheese!

It's not a ground-breaking recipe by any means, but the addition of chili powder is a welcome change. I added broccoli so as not to feel so depressed about the amount of cheese + pasta consumed. Also I used a gruyere from Whole Foods and it was the smelliest gruyere I have ever used! I had to use a outdoor micowave at work. beware...

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie

Your eyes do not deceive you, this is a whole wheat pizookie. Even though I accidentally dumped in 1/2 a cup of flax seed it still ended up being very moist and delicious. This is a great way to use your cast iron skillet by the way! My skillet is on its way to being very well seasoned so I'm excited to use it for a dessert recipe.

This was good even a week later, toasted briefly in the oven. The texture is a bit cake-y so I guess you can't really call it a cookie, maybe a cookie bar? But it's easy to make, goes in one pan and you can pretend it's healthy because it uses whole wheat flour. Win, win solution!

Indian Turkey Meatballs

These indian turkey meatballs are a great variation of the ginger pork meatballs. But because it's turkey instead of pork (and I used a white meat blend), it can be rather dry. The onions + tomatoes + cilantro are really good in here, as well as the blend of spices. I'm kinda feeling confident enough to start experimenting with my own meatballs recipes.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies

check out the silpat! I love it.

Another whoopie pie, this time chocolate with a peanut butter filling. I really love chocolate + peanut butter. I'm so excited every time a recipe calls for cocoa because instead of Kroger's cocoa, I have VALRHONA COCOA. YES! If you're going to make this- use less butter in the frosting, maybe 3/4 less or even maybe 1/2 the amount- you really don't need it. The full amount makes it too buttery and rich. The cookies are so fluffy and not-too-sweet.

Pizza & Home made ricotta

Oh yes, it's pizza time. Again. The last time I made pizza it was a disaster and made me seriously doubt my (few) pizza making skills. My pizza love was piqued by buying a pizza stone and a peel. I've read that you can use an unglazed quarry stone instead of buying a pizza stone, but I'm still worry about using a non-food grade material for baking so I decided to spend the extra money and not worry about lead poisoning. This time I went with a recipe from Serious Eats for a NY style pizza.

I tried out a different dough stretching technique and I think it really helped. I think a longer resting time will really benefit the dough too. I used a mix of APF and corn meal to dust the peel, not sure if I like cornmeal on it. Many more ideas to test out and more dough recipes. For now, at least, I know I can make okay pizza.


I also had some extra whole milk so I decided to make some ricotta. Turns out it is crazy easy to make. But it doesn't make that much- that one recipe made only about 1/4 cup of ricotta. I wanted to have it on my pizza in lumps so I let it dry out overnight.

Chicken Pot Pie

This recipe for chicken pot pie is a creamier, less chicken-y version of this chicken pot pie. I don't know which one I like better. I'm really stuck. Do I like a super chicken-y more soupy pot pie? Or do I like a creamy simple (as in there is only 1 or 2 herbs) flavor? AAHHH


It can't hurt to like more than one chicken pot pie. They are a very delicious comfort food.

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

So.... remember that German Chocolate Cake? I forgot to mention that I dropped my camera into the whipped egg whites and sugar so my camera's been a little... wonky. Most photos turn out clear though- but the lenses don't fully close now. I guess it's time to get a new camera. Anyways I had a TON of buttermilk left over from that cake (and blueberries) so I decided to finally make blueberry pancakes! I'm a devoted Buttermilk pancake mix user, but these have them beat. They're incredibly fluffy and soft and really easy to make. You could make your own pancake mix by measuring out all the dry ingredients and storing it in a jar.

Of course you can sub in chocolate for blueberries or I don't know... put some peanut butter + syrup on top? That's my preferred way of eating them though it's usually so sweet that I can only eat half.

Pesce al Sale

Sounds and looks fancy, but it's really so simple. This is a fish baked in salt crust. This is me trying to learn to make new things. I do not really know to make fish that isn't smoked, canned or already cut in a steak. The prospect of cooking a WHOLE fish was really frightening. This was made bearable by the fact that Whole Foods will fillet and de-scale a fish for you. But then you still have to take it home, unwrap and face it's bloody body and bulging eyeballs... all in the name of culinary learning. I'm sorry fish!


Guilt aside, it was good. Also 3 pounds of salt ends up being a LOT of salt- I used my entire box of Kosher salt. It was surprisingly not overly salty! I decided to make some aioli with the leftover egg yolks. Ah, yes another fear: RAW EGGS. But the fear is quelled by the lovely jar full of aioli. I ate some with the fish, but it turned out to be an unpleasant combination... I'll save it for french fries and roast beef sandwiches.