Puff Pastry Berry Pinwheels

I think I know what I'm going to make this weekend. Although I'm only a decent cook, I'm actually a pretty good baker, but there's one thing I've never made that I've always wanted to try, puff pastry from scratch. I've got a recipe in my beloved Fanny Farmer Baking Book, but I'll need a recipe in which to use it. After a quick search, I discovered this yummy looking Puff Pastry Berry Pinwheels on Pinterest and it came from the "Get Off your Butt and Bake" Website. I'll probably not include the little decorative pearls. I think I'll make these on Monday...if they aren't a complete disaster, I'll take them to school with me.

From previous experience with pastries, like croissants and strudel, I know it'll be a messy process. I hope I can capture some pictures, but it might be difficult because my fingers will undoubtedly be covered in buttery dough.

Everyday Food

I've been looking at recipes off and on this week...it hasn't been as consistent as it should be because I've started a new semester at school and I'm just plain pooped. I just picked up a pile of back issues of one of my favorite cooking magazines, Everyday Food. It was part of the Martha Stewart fleet of magazines. They've pretty much discontinued it, which is very disappointing. I learned a lot of techniques and acquired some really good new recipes from this magazine. One of my favorite techniques that I use weekly is poaching chicken. Hopefully, I can find another magazine to fill this void. But in the meantime, I'm still looking and I hope to find something to try this long weekend.

Decisions, Decisions

I so enjoyed cooking and writing about it yesterday, I'm very excited about the next recipe. I've been looking through back issues of magazines and through cookbooks. So far two things have really caught my imagination, but both would require getting out of town to shop and one sounds too similar to the Apricot-Rosemary Chicken thighs I made last night. The first one is Chicken Tagine with Almonds, Apricots, and Olives from Martha Stewart Living

What I like about this recipe is it is a Middle Eastern dish and it combines foods that my grandmothers would never even consider, but it's got those apricots, almonds, and chicken again. I think I might wait for this one.

My other thought is Thai Sticky Rice and Mangoes. Eric and I went to a Thai restaurant last weekend and had this, and I can't stop thinking about it. I found a recipe for it at allrecipes.com

However, I don't think I'll get to an Asian market any time soon.

So, I think I'll keep up my search. Lamb recipes often draw my attention. I love lamb, but it's really expensive and hard to find (figures, we're deep in the heart of farm country!). If anyone has any suggestions of something that sounds out there that they'd like me to tackle?

Oh, and the Dingels, Teri and Doug, have already tried the recipe I made last night. Check what Doug had to say.

Apricot-Rosemary Chicken Thighs with Roasted Almond Couscous

When I left work this afternoon, I didn't think I'd be up to cooking tonight. All of us at the college are getting things ready for the Fall semester to begin next week, so when I came home, I was pretty whooped. However, since I said I'd get this made tonight, I decided I had better do it, and I'm glad I did. This is a really good meal, and it's not terribly hard at all, and making it revitalized me.

THE MEAL

I really enjoyed the texture of the couscous with the almonds, but by itself, it's too dry. However,by drizzling a little of that incredible sauce on it, it's outstanding! This sauce would make anything good. I can imagine it on pork, but on the chicken thighs, you can't beat it.

NEW THINGS

As I said when I started this project, I want to try new techniques and equipment with each new recipe. For this recipe, I had to bone a thigh, which really wasn't all that hard, but I couldn't get just thighs from the store. All they had were hind quarters.

It was no big deal to cut off the leg portion of the quarter, but it was sort of messy getting that portion of the back off. The end product didn't look too bad, but I don't think I'm going to get a job as a butcher any time soon. And I'm sure if my dad, who butchered tons of turkeys when we were on the farm would have wept if he saw how I handled the knife (by the way Dad, I did sharpen it, a bit). Except for the skin and fat, I'll use the rest of the hind quarters to make chicken soup.

The other new thing was that I used a grill pan for the first time. I really liked using it, but I suspect that it might be a pain trying to get the charred remains of chicken and sauce out from between the grooves. Despite those grooves, I'll definitely be using the grill pan again.

SCREW UPS

Also as promised, I'm going to confess to my screw ups. My first noticeable screw up is that I thought I had white wine vinegar...well I had red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar and rice vinegar and white vinegar and apple cider vinegar...At first I thought I'd just substitute white vinegar, but instead, I checked the internet for substitutes. The internet machine said to use rice vinegar, so I did. I have no idea if it would have made any difference, but it was so good, I don't care.

I don't know if you'll call this a screw up or not, but I don't have a vent above my stove. I have a couple of push-out windows in the corner. I really got that pan hot before I put the thighs in. I wanted to make sure it really seared the chicken. It did, but it also smoked up the place. It's a wonder the fire department didn't show up...but then, my neighbors are pretty used to seeing smoke pour out of my kitchen windows.

INGREDIENTS

I'm not going to reprint the whole recipe here. You can find it at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/apricot-rosemary-chicken-thighs-50400000136935/ However, I did want to say that I used my own homegrown flat leaf parsley and rosemary, and I used my own previously made chicken stock. I cook enough chicken that it's easy to whip up some chicken stock to freeze. Although this makes it sound like I'm a great gardener, I'm not. I just wish I was. I can grow things in pots, and now that I realize I'm lousy in the garden, I'll be doing a much better job with my pot garden...(that didn't sound right).

So all in all, I think this was a fun first recipe. I'm not sure what I'll do next, but I'm thinking I'll tackle something a little more complicated.

Ingredients

I still don't know when I'll be making the apricont-rosemary chicken thighs, http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/apricot-rosemary-chicken-thighs-50400000136935/. Maybe Friday night. I'm sure not going to make them Thursday night after sitting through inservice all day. But I think I'll go shopping for the ingredients tomorrow. This recipe will be easy. There's nothing in it that I won't be able to find locally, and I'll use my own homegrown rosemary and parsley. But sometimes it isn't always this easy. I've gone out of town many times looking for ingredients. Rarely have I had to go any further than the Lakes. However, there have been a few instances in which I had to order ingredients online. This is the sort of thing we have to deal with living in such a rural area.

This recipe, includes one of my favorite ingredients, almonds. I love almonds whether they're raw out of the shell or baked into cookies. One of the things many people don't know is that if you are cooking with almonds, you really want to roast them in the oven a bit; otherwise, they are sort of plastic and lacking flavor, but once you've roasted them, they are crunchy and have that sweet nutty taste.

Once a long time ago, I don't remember when or where, I heard almond pronounced (ah-muh nd). I was curious and looked it up in the dictionary, and sure enough, the phonetic pronunciation was with the "ah." So, of course that's the way I started pronouncing it. My brothers gave me such a hard time about this, and they still do. I kept telling them to look it up, and they wouldn't, and I wasn't about to shove a dictionary in their faces. Now I see that at dictionary.com, they include multiple pronunciations; however, at this point in my life, I'm going to stick with my "ah."

Grill Pan

I think I've decided on what I'm going to prepare for my first meal for "Lorad's Kitchen." I think I'm going to make Apricot-Rosemary Chicken Thighs with Roasted Almond Couscous from this month's issue of Cooking Light magazine. You can find this recipe at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/apricot-rosemary-chicken-thighs-50400000136935/ The recipe says to cook the chicken thighs on a Grill Pan. Well, I didn't have a grill pan, and found this one in Sioux City at Kitchen Dressings, a store I will be visiting again in the future. It's obviously a cast iron pan, which pleases me. I love my cast iron skillets, and this one was reasonably priced.

I want to try to do new things with each recipe and because we can't get boned chicken thighs here in Estherville, I will be boning my own. I'm sure this won't be difficult, but there's little guarantee that it'll be attractive. The recipe shows how this thing is supposed to look. I'm sure mine won't look this good. I just hope it won't look like the thighs have been put through a grinder.

Oh, and as you can see, I figured out how to put the paragraph breaks in thanks to Eric's help.

My Mission Statement

I feel as though I need to write a mission statement for this blog. Crap, in the real world I really hate this sort of thing, but nonetheless, here we go. The purpose for this blog is so that I can share with you my kitchen experiments. I love to try new recipes. The crazier the better. Plus, I like to write...my photography sucks, so apologies in advance. What I'll do is try a new recipe on a semi-regular basis. Hopefully, I'll get at least a couple done a month. Sometimes I'll surprise you and do a couple two days in a row (snow days make this more likely). I've learned from experience not to have a regimented schedule. Feeling obligated sucks the fun out of it for me. I'll try to choose seasonal foods, and I'll include recipes or at least links to recipes. Before you get too excited, I am not a great cook. But I am pretty fearless. Cooking has always been how we entertained ourselves in my family, so this is what I do. To give you an idea of what you can expect within these virtual pages, let me tell you some of the things I've been doing over the last couple of years. A couple of years ago, I harvested yeast and made and have maintained to this day my own sourdough starter. I'm still trying to perfect my sourdough recipes and I've got a long ways to go. I brewed my own Kombucha (fermented tea). This turned out really well, but it's got its hazards and I decided to stop brewing it. I do want to make my own ginger ale and ginger beer which is much safer. A couple of years ago, I got into smoking meat on my little charcoal grill. This worked fairly well, but it wasn't the best thing I could have done for my sinuses. I'm sure I'll throw some of this crazy stuff at you; however, I'd really like to explore recipes from different cultures. I'd especially like to do some Asian and Middle Eastern recipes. However, I think I'll start slow and simply do something that's interesting, but not too far out there. And feel free to send me recipes. I may try them, I may not. I hope you enjoy this. (By the way, I wish I knew why this thing won't show paragraph breaks. Sorry!)