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.