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April’s Gourmet cover – was a Strawberry Mascarpone Tart. It looked great – unfortunately my wife is allergic to strawberrries. Instead I went with a Kiwi & Raspberry combination.

This was a fun dessert – and it wasn’t very difficult. The pastry looked like fun – but I’m religious about keeping things simple – so I went with a store-bought pasty. The dessert looked fantastic. Unfortunately it didn’t quite make it into my ‘great’ category and was only borderline good. I think I could have used a little more sugar, and a little more lemon to really bring out the taste.

The pastry was also a little too hard… ( ok perhaps the keep it simple principle failed me here). My wife’s comment was that it would be better with a graham cracker crust instead of a pastry – although I think a flaky shortbread would work as well. I’d file this under “try again but modify”.

This recipe continues the saga of reuse of two roasted chickens. A leek and pea risotto ? Sounds like fun. The stock was great to make – just 2 hours of boiling and delicious smells. And I now have extra stock left in my freezer.

There wasn’t much  to this recipe – make the vinagrette, fry some leeks and start on the risotto. ( I think risotto is great for when you have people over. It’s fairly easy once you’ve started, all you need to do is continually stir, and you can talk/involve people).

The calamari was a little challenging – I hadn’t done this before. It wasn’t very hard however – once I accepted what I was doing.

The end result ? I think I made the risotto a tad too runny – I think it’s the abundance of cheese/butter at the end. But it was quite good – borderline great. The calamari was also good. However I think this recipe underseasoned it. My wife thought it would be better with a strong seasoning – e.g. lots of butter salt and garlic. Worth trying again.

All in all a great recipe. In the end I actually got a solid five meals from the chickens ( roast chicken, lasagne, and risotto) with two rounds of leftovers, as well as extra stock. Frugal is the new black !

March’s Gourmet magazine had a great section – “Birds in Hand” about how to cook four meals with two chickens. I thought it looked like fun so I gave it a whirl.

The first step was to roast the chickens. Rather than their recipe that called for a lot of basting – I just went with last November’s technique of salting the chicken. This was a great family meal, a little gravy, roasted potatoes and some homemade stuffing. A big hit with the family. ( and salting the chicken is still a great technique). One meal down !

Next up – the cheesy chicken lasagne. First I sauteed mushrooms, and chicken. One change I added one onion to the mix – it seems criminal to saute mushrooms without onions.

Next up the cheese/flour/milk mixture. One change – I used an American swiss-gruyere cheese instead of pure gruyere and it worked out great. I think I miscalculated on the roux – I should have stirred more vigorously on adding the milk. Then I layered the lasagne and put it in the oven.

The flavour was great – but it came out a little runny ( perhaps my mistake with the roux?). The easy-bake noodles on top were also too crispy. On the whole quite good – worth trying again and making it great !

I’m planning to give the Leek and Pea risotto a whirl next – the stock is simmering right now. So my next post will be about my third meal with the chickens.

Time for Round II ! This is inevitable right ? You’d expect that the “champion” – Spaghetti & Meatballs would just *crush* last month’s carbonarra. Or at least so it seemed at first.

This entire recipe was a lot of work. The meatballs were fun to make, Sebastian had great fun helping me roll them into little balls.  The sauce was also straightforward enough. However I think I made one critical mistake – I should have crushed the sauce using my “in pot” masher.

The result ? The meatballs were up-there, pretty good if not quite great. The sauce ? Extremely dissapointing, way too chunky and water-ey. Way too much work for the end-result.

So how did it stack up ? Without compare – last month’s pasta was so much better. Everyone loves spaghetti & meatballs – but this was extremely dissapointing. My wife pointed out that every-time I try to make a home-made spaghetti sauce – it never compares. I guess my lessons are to take the obvious short-cuts. Another lesson if your’e trying to out-do a “favorite” recipe it’s much harder than doing something unique. You’re competing with all the other versions a person has tasted, and it never quite stacks-up. The challenger is the winner !

In any-case a fun meal – and a fun way to watch the super-bowl ! Of course my biggest fan thought the world of spaghetti & meatballs  “I love it!”.

Both of the January issues of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazine featured a pasta dish on the cover. I thought this would be a great excuse to have a “pasta slugfest” or “battle of the pastas” – where I’d cook both and declare a winner.

I first did the “challenger” – Fettucine Carbonara with Fried Eggs. OK – fried eggs on pasta seems a little strange. But thinking about it, eggs and bacon are a fine midnight comfort meal, and I love eggs. Why not ? I gave up on trying to find broccoli rabe – I just tried brocollini instead. Other than that the recipe was simplicity itself, boil pasta, fry pancetta, whisk eggs and add cheese, boil broccoli and combine all.  [ One tip - there are quite a few moving parts to the recipe... don't try to do them all at once !].

The result was great ! The carbonarra was a nice cheesy sauce, and pancetta was great too. The fried egg was still a little weird – but tasted good ! Definitely one for the bag of weeknight tricks. At least one of us liked it a lot !

Not sure the challenger will be able to unseat the “champion” but it was a great try. Tune in next time to follow the saga of “Battle of the Pastas II”.

Just wanted to put in a plug for one of the great christmas presents we got this year ( thanks Nikii and Marika). We’ve wanted a sandwich grill for a while – so we were given the Breville sandwich press. It’s fantastic ! I’m onto my 3rd or 4th evening of panini’s. It’s also incredible how happy two year-old boys are with grilled cheese sandwiches ! Just the other night I made myself a “lamb and cheese”. Anyway a great kitchen appliance.

It’s become the habit of news magazines to do a year-end retrospective. So looking back what were the great recipes, the good recipes, and the not-so-goods of last-year? I’m not normally a dessert person but most of the “sweet stuff” was really great. The January pudding-pie, December’s cake, and April’s lemon-raspberry cupcakes were all great. Both September’s Chicken parmesan and February’s pancakes were also great. Rating the winners – my wife would say that January was the best ever, with December a close second.

The in-betweens – November’s chicken (stuffing was great, and so was the “salting” technique, but the chicken was so-so); September’s chili (the squash didn’t quite work); the chipotle burgers (great sauce, great onions, so-so with the English muffin). The corned-beef sandwich was good – but I wouldn’t rate it as great (I’ve since learnt that it’s easy to make a grilled sandwich taste good). The steak-frites were good, but alas not great.

The not-so-greats were the Cherry-pie (great crust but not worth the calories/effort); and the chocolate covered cherry ice-cream (my own personal Titanic).

Was there some incredible piece of wisdom I gained? There were a few – I think the cherry-ice-cream was the most illuminative. Keep the simple, simple (aka KISS!). I also learnt how important it is to not rush things, particularly cooking. Wherever possible give yourself enough time, measure everything beforehand, and make sure you have all the ingredients.

Was it ‘worth’ it? I enjoyed it immensely, and I definitely ended up cooking more than I normally would have. I also cooked a lot of items that I would have dismissed as being “too hard” .

So what will I do this year? I toyed with the idea of cooking a ‘letter-a-month’ from Larousse’s Gastronomique cooking encyclopedia but it didn’t seem that it would work ( I would only cook my way to ‘L’ in a year, and it would be very french). I also thought of doing a “meat a month” but unfortunately it didn’t seem like it could work ( what do you cook after beef, lamb, pork, chicken) ? I played with cooking fewer recipes – but it seems that would require me to change my domain-name. It seems like I was trying to find a way to force myself to “cook something” but I also wanted a little more freedom. It would also be nice to be-able to “cook ahead” a little bit, doing every month was a grind sometimes. I know I will be very busy this year from April (we are expecting a new baby) so a way to breathe easier was definitely something I’m looking for.

Thanks to my sister-in-law, I am now subscribed to both Bon-Appetit, and Gourmet magazine. So my final solution is to cook at least 12 recipes this year, from both magazines. I won’t just limit myself to cover recipes – there’s a lot of good stuff throughout both magazines. Instead I will only do six cover-recipes (hence I have a new challenge – choosing a recipe). I’m looking forward to another 12 months of cooking!

Last year’s December issue is what inspired me to start this blog. This December’s issue didn’t dissapoint – Devil’s Food Cake with Peppermint Frosting !First onto the cake. I love to use my blender so making the cake was a lot of fun. The one thing I was a little intimidated about was cutting the cake in half. But my wife showed me a fantastic trick to use a piece of thread to cut the cake. Thanks Andi !After the cake cooled we did the chocolate ganache, and the peppermint cream. One complication was I didn’t have peppermint essence ( and additional complication it was a blizzard outside). I subsituted with creme-de-menthe instead – and it worked out fine. The ganache and the cream were easy enough but all of the separate stages made this a was a fair amount of work. Luckily I had two assistants helping me.Final assembly was perhaps the hardest part. It was easy to get things messy and the cream was a bit hard to spread. I’m also not an expert at icing but I got it in the end. It looked great !

So how was it ? This cake was great. It was a great chocolate devil’s food cake – very moist. The ganache and the peppermint cream are also. The frosting I think was a little too sugary, it was a bit like sugared marshmallows. It was well done but I don’t think it quite went with the cake – I will do something different here next time.

Great cake and great recipe ! ( and clean-up is fun too!)

If you’ve been paying attention – you’ll realize that this posting concludes my resolution for the year. I did it ! Looking back it’s certainly been a lot of fun. So with 5 days left for the year… what will I do next year ? I guess it’s time to shut-down this domain

Nope I’m still thinking about keeping this up and going – just a bunch of variants running through my head. Come back sometime to see what I do !

The end of the year draws nigh !  I am down to my last 2 last recipes to finish my resolution.

One of my last remaining recipes are April’s lemon-raspberry cupcakes. When this issue arrived I just wasn’t into this recipe. The cupcakes seemed incredibly spring-like, and more than a little gratuitous. Given that we were still getting snow on the ground in April, I think I can be forgiven for not getting into the swing of things. Anyway – summer rolled around, then fall and somehow this recipe was always on the back-burner ( ok – the very very back-burner).

Today I finally got around to it. I’m not sure why I held back so long – this was absolutely no effort. Just mix the batter, add the jam and put in the oven. I used some of my wife’s homemade raspberry jam for the filling. I added a little butter and cream-cheese to the icing.

The result ? A bit super-sweet on the icing – but the inside was superb. Very “grandmothery” – had a great homemade taste. File this one under – “What took you so long ?”

I haven’t posted anything for a while but I haven’t been idle. Rather I’ve just been “planning deeply” ( is this ‘deliberate haste’?).

This month’s recipe was herb-roasted Turkey. Magazine schedules being what they are I received this issue in early October. It seemed a little early to begin the holiday season, so I wasn’t really in the mood to cook a turkey. I could have waited for Thanksgiving but then my wife prefers when I cook something other than a Turkey (currently planning a goose, and a ham). So I decided to just try this with a chicken and not wait for Thanksgiving.

The salting process was quite straightforward, I used fresh herbs rather than dried ones, and reduced the amount of everything given that a chicken was much smaller. I also went ahead and stuffed the chicken with an onion-sage & sausage stuffing. A lot of cooking experts frown on stuffing poultry as it “slows things down” ( what is the rush exactly?). I’ve never agreed with that, it’s much more fun to do a stuffing (and it’s a reliable crowd-pleaser) ! The end-result was beautiful the chicken was a beautiful golden roast color, and there was a fragrant herb aroma in the kitchen.

The chicken was incredibly moist and very flavorful. And the real star of the show was the gravy, it was absolutely fantastic. The combination of mustard with the rosemary was unbeatable ( my wife raved about the gravy). Normally I find that ’simple dishes’ like roast chicken are incredibly hard to get right. This was close to perfect.

The big question though is salting better than brining ? I’m not sure I can give the definitive answer with just one attempt. Brining has proven itself to me over the years, this seemed a little too magical. But still this was quite good, I’d definitely try this again !