Yes, you can make that at home!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Monday brunch

Joanna joined us for brunch today, and despite being snowed in this morning and unable to go to the store, we still managed to put out a pretty good spread. 

The star of the brunch was my cinnamon swirl bread, with my dry and much less successful banana bread hiding behind it.  (For those who love my usual banana bread, this was a new recipe, so I'll put up both but recommend that you stick with the Joy of Cooking recipe.  Lesson: whole wheat flour is not the same as whole wheat pastry flour.)  You can't see it in the photo, but the steam was actually still rising out of the cinnamon bread!  I'm looking forward to cinnamon bread toast for breakfast this week.

I find that a lot of people are intimidated by making bread, and I definitely was myself when I started a few years ago.  You need two things to make bread properly: 1) time, and 2) a good set of hands.  You need to let this bread rise for a total of 3 hours, and you need your hands to get used to feeling when the dough has been kneaded sufficiently.  But after a few loaves, you will definitely get the hang of it!  And don't ask me how to adapt this for a bread machine - I don't own one and never will.

Cinnamon swirl bread
Adapted from: The Joy of Cooking
      Grade: A- (time consuming to make, as most yeast breads are, but much simpler than many and extremely soft and tasty)
The original recipe is for a cinnamon raisin bread, but since I never stock raisins (Rob is not a fan...) I just left them out.  If you'd like to make this with raisins, place 1/2 cup raisins in a asauce pan and cover with cold water - bring to a boil, then drain and cool and apply them with the first application of cinnamon sugar.

This is based from a milk bread dough, which is very versatile and can be used to make a variety of different things, such as biscuits, sandwich bread, or in this case a sweet treat!

Girls night in

What's better than a girls night in with pizza, brownies and some red wine?  I can't think of a whole lot!

This pizza dough recipe is a staple in our house, and the sauce recipe is courtesy of our friend Sam. 

Pizza crust
     Grade A!  (Easy to make and delicious!)
 Adapted from: Italian, by Kate Whiteman, Jeni Wright, and Angela Boggiano


2 1/2 tsp yeast (or 1 packet - there are all types of yeast, but no need for anything fancy here)
1 cup warm water
pinch sugar (about 1/2 tsp if you must measure)
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
A drizzle of canola oil

Place the yeast in a mixing bowl and cover with the warm water and sugar.  Mix with a fork to blend and let sit about 10 minutes.  A nice bubbly head should form over the mixture while the yeast does it's job (i.e. eating the sugar and producing carbon dioxide so your dough will rise). 

Dinner for the in-laws

I had fun putting together this menu, and everything was made with things already in the house, since I had no car to go to the store anyway.

Appetizer: Rutabaga, broccoli and cheddar cheese knishes
     Grade: B- (very time consuming to prepare, and the flavor is not that remarkable)

Salad: Chopped spinach with apples, oranges, and raspberry vinaigrette
     Grade: B+ (very easy to prepare and quite tasty, but the dressing has a short shelf life) 

Side: Mashed potato and rutabaga casserole with carmelized onions
     Grade: A! (not much more work than making regular mashed potatoes, but much tastier!)

Main Dish: Sauteed pork tenderloin and pears in mustard-port sauce
     Grade: B+ (not too hard to prepare, but the flavor was a little dull) 

Desert: Blueberry pie
     Grade: A! (very easy to make - not your usual pie crust - and absolutely delicious!)



Appetizer: Rutabaga, broccoli and cheddar cheese knishes
Adapted from: 1001 Jewish Recipes, by Faye Levy
Caution: This is a very time consuming dish to make!

Dough:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks butter
~5 tbsp ice water

Mix flour and salt in a food processor. Add butter (cut into ~1/2 inch pieces) and process so mixtures becomes crumbly.

Welcome to my blog!

When I was living in Paris five years ago, I bought a magnet with the phrase "J'embrasse mieux que je ne cuisine." This roughly translates to "I kiss better than I cook," which was a pretty accurate assessment of my cooking skills at the time.

For most of my life, I had no interest or aptitude for the kitchen, despite the fact that my mom is an awesome cook and I love to eat! Throughout my time as an undergrad at MIT, where I studied chemistry, I always heard, "Oh you're a chemist? Then you must be a good cook!" That one silly comment, combined with the fact that I was awfully tired of eating nothing but pasta for lunch and dinner, motivated me to get into the kitchen and start fiddling around until I made something worth eating.

Fortunately, somewhere along the way, between the numerous pots full of inedible glop that had to be tossed, I started to get the hang of things. These days, I have no fear of trying new recipes because I've finally learned my cardinal rule of cooking:

The process of cooking is not going to magically transform a list of ingredients you don't like into a dish that tastes great.

This might sound a little ridiculous or incredibly obvious, but it actually took me a long time to figure out. But now that I have a grasp on which ingredients I like and what can be substituted for what, I only rarely end up with a dud.

So why did I start this blog? 1) I want to keep track of all the recipes I've tried, how they came out, what should be changed, and how I could improve their presentation; and 2) I want to hear from anyone who might be reading this about their suggestions for recipes, ingredients, or their stories (good or bad!) about their own adventures in the kitchen. And if, along the way, I can give some one a good idea for a recipe or inspire some one to try a new ingredient (something I've been incredibly resistant to most of my life), then all the better.

Every recipe I post on the blog will receive a grade based on ease of preparation and taste.  Additionally, I'll try to add tags to each recipe so if you're looking for something, say, Mexican for dinner, you can use the labels on the sidebar to find some inspiration.

One final note: Most of my recipes are adapted from previously published ones, so I will always give credit to the source of my recipes. Most of the time, I find recipes in my arsenal of cookbooks, but sometimes I also use Epicurious.

So with that, I just want to say thanks for stopping by my blog, and bon appetit!