Cookies!

No fancy MC cooking today - just a whole bunch of cookie making! Ian came home last night and around 10PM said "Hey, we have a grad school potluck tomorrow - can you make some dessert?". I had no idea what to do because it was in Boulder, a 40 minute drive from Denver, making cold or hot desserts out of the question. Thus, my ability to make fairly yummy pies was of no use. Luckily, for our wedding we got "The Cookie Book" by Catherine Atkinson:

According to the insert Ms. Atkinson is Cordon Bleu trained and VERY fancy when it comes to cookies.

Now, I am not a huge cookie fan - I normally just eat the batter; however, I did find a few recipes that ended up being pretty good. The first was a Greek Honey Crunch Creme (appropriate for the Classics event I was about to attend). Unfortunately, I learned that Greek honey is the most expensive honey in the entire world. Since Ian and I are living on a grad student/stipend budget that was out of the question. The cookies still turned out great with our poor man's honey, and they were Ian's favorite of the night. It was a fun process of making the outer cookie from butter, baking soda, sugar and honey and then the creme part from honey, powered sugar and (surprise, surprise) butter. I found the ratio of creme to cookie not quite to my liking, so I made most of them open faced cookies instead of the oreo-esque cookies they were intended to be:

3.5 out of 5 on Yum Scale

The other "cookie" I made was a Caramel Chocolate bar, and they were extremely rich. I hadn't tried to do a homemade caramel before and it was both fun and kind of science-experimenty at the same time. It reminded me of what Top Chef contestants have been saying for the past 7 seasons - cooking is more of an art and baking is more of a science. It's really true, if you forget an ingredient cooking you can play around with it and perhaps come up with something better, but with a lot of baking, if your measurements are off you end up with a fallen flan or runny meringue no matter what. Luckily my experiment went well and I was able to thicken the caramel and get the chocolate top layer to melt AND re-freeze. Here was the result:

4 out of 5 on the Yum scale

To serve I sliced them up into 3 in x 1 in bars. One potluck goer proposed marriage based on my ability to make these bars alone, so I'm going to call them a pretty major success.  I was going to make some modern truffles as well, but I forgot to grab baking powder at the grocery store and god forbid I go to that place more than once in a day. I did some google research and turns out you can create baking power from baking soda, but it does not go the other way around unless you have creme of tartar (for a dry mix). Oh, the random things I'm learning in my cookery!

I also realized throughout the day that I have become more of a cook than a baker. I prefer the freedom of mixing and matching at the last minute to the more rigorous adherence to detail required with baking. I thought for a long time that I was more of a baker, and am kinda excited that I have grown comfortable enough with flavors to play with them in the kitchen. Maybe the next step is to come back around and be able to experiment with baking...but I think I am a ways off from that!

Kicking Things Off With A Bang-ish

I have cooked a few meals in Denver, but tonight was my first attempt at a serious Julia Childs inspired French Dinner. I made pork chops with a dry herb marinade and sides of butter sautéed potatoes and provincial tomatoes. It took me about 1.5 hours of heavy lifting in the kitchen, plus some prep time this morning. Most of it was worth the effort.  Here was the outcome:

Yes, my plating does leave something to be desired - hopefully that will come with time, like a fashionable streak of grey hair.

The pork chops were de-lish, I'd give them a 4 out of 5 on the yum scale. I whipped up the dry marinade, which I didn't know was a thing you could do until today, and let them sit in it for about 8 hours. I then did a quick browning of the chops  and then popped them into the oven for 35ish minutes, longer than MC [Ms. Childs] would have, but she did not live in altitude. They were definitely worth the wait. They were juicy, with flavor the whole way though, and more filling than you would expect. I will for sure be making these again.

The potatoes were less of a success, only getting a 2.5/3 on the yum scale. This made me so sad because I LOVE potatoes and butter and don't understand how the combo would go wrong. The recipe basically consisted of peeling the potatoes and sautéing them in butter for 20 mins then adding the spices. Unfortunately I did not have a potato baller like the illustrious MC, so mine were not the perfect spheres of wonder I am sure she made, but I honestly was not completely keen on the taste on its own. I think I can American-ize them in a way that makes them more palatable. I tried putting some lemon juice on the leftovers, so we will see if that makes them better. MC tends to suggest these potatoes with every meal, so I have a few more attempts to make them into something I like.

The last thing on the menu was provincial tomatoes. I ended up with a ton of them so they got some of their own side plating as well:

Poorly Plated Provincial Tomatoes 

They were quite good on their own, but were spectacular when mixed with the pork. I would give them a solid 4 out of 5 on the yum scale. The breadcrumb/herb mix was to die for and really complimented the flavor and texture of the pork. MC does NOT recommend these two as a pairing, so maybe I should question my own taste...however it is the only thing I know. And this is my blog (ha, MC!). They were pretty simple to make - you just juiced the tomatoes and filled them in with the herb mixture. I kept the leftover herb mix and think I might toss it onto some asparagus with butter later in the week if I need something to spruce up a meal.

All in all it was a fairly successful dinner. As Ian said "If this is the beginning of your cooking, I can't wait for what's to come." Me too. I don't think I'll have the time to cook this extensive of a meal more than 1-2 times a week, so in the future posts may be more about the moving/settling in process, but I have a feeling that my mom is going to be the only consistent reader, and I know she'll be thrilled to read about that.