It's been too long.

Oh no! I haven't posted in a year. This is a small tragedy. I have been cooking, but since starting at school at a private university- (as an English major no less!)- I have had little time or want to spend my free moments writing about cooking. But it's summer again, and I have the time and the urge to write.
Today, the weather is a perfect 80 degrees with a slight breeze. The fresh air is flowing in through the open windows, and I have a ton of summer school homework to finish. Work on that homework? No, thanks. Obviously, this is a prime time to cook and blog. I walked through the kitchen and noticed a handful of red russet potatoes and a large purple onion on the bring of going "bad" in a basket on the kitchen table. What's a chef to do? I had to cook. Right now the aroma is curling its way through the house and making my mouth water. Two hours and potato-y goodness will be mine! Update after it's done.

Why I Stopped Cooking: Food Disaster

I know, it has been way too long since I last wrote of my cooking adventures. What happened was, I cooked a couple dishes and forgot to write about them. As the days passed I thought, I have to update my blog! I'm becoming a slacker!, but I never did write. The more I cooked, the less I could remember the particulars of cooking each dish, who ate them, and their reactions, and the less I felt I could write about them. Frustrated with my lack of drive to write, waning self-discipline, and fearing I was in the early stages of alzheimers, I told myself I had to cook something SO good that I would have to write about it immediately. It had to be something memorable for my tastebuds. So I picked the Julia Child classic, Beef Bourguignon. Readers: DO NOT underestimate this recipe. It is difficult. If you want to cook it, you will chop. You will chop until your hand hurts. You will think you are done chopping, only to realize you've just begun. And the cooking the ingredients seperately, then cooking them together. Cooking on the stove, then in the oven. Here is where disaster happened. Remember, my parents had recently bought a shiny new set of cookware, which I used during this recipe. Six hours into the recipe - yes, SIX hours - I was using a large, deep, oven safe Emril fry pan with a glass, oven safe-to-350degrees lid. I put the wonderfully aromatic Beef Bourguignon into the oven at 300 degrees, turned around to prepare another part of the meal, and BOOM! I dreaded turning around to see what horrible thing had happened in the oven. I turned around, opened the oven, and saw that the glass lid had shattered into thousands of pieces. At this point, I colapsed to the floor, and began crying and laughing at the same time. This is the only time in my life I have actually done both simultaneously. I crawled towards the living room, where poor little oblivious David had been sitting patiently waiting for dinner for several hours. "It's done!" I wimpered. "It's done, it's done, it's done. HAH! HAAH!" Maybe he thought I was serious for a moment, and that the dish was indeed finally done, because his face lit up for a moment, but when he followed me back into the kitchen, he beheld the doom that had befallen. We tried lifting the lid off the pan without getting glass into the stew, but it was impossible. Six hours of cooking: gone. $50- worth of red wine, beef, and vegetables: gone. My will to cook and write about cooking: gone. On the other hand, the memory of the exploding Beef Bourguignon: priceless.



Needless to say, I stopped cooking for a couple months and my parents bought new, better cookware. Now my best friend Elizabeth is here and will be returning to college soon, and she wants to cook something French. How about Beef Bourguignon?



To be continued.

They Have Arrived.

One excited Lil' Chef! OK, so I look a little crazy here.

They're HERE!

And I'm so excited to put them to the test tomorrow night. I think the brand is called Emeril by Emeril Lagasse; a famous New Orleans chef. How appropriate then that I am christening them with jambalaya.

New Orleans Corn Bisque with Sausage and Blackberry Cobbler, Oh My!

I. Am. In. Heaven. I just finished a little mug-full of melty, crunchy, tart-sweet blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream- the best blackberry cobbler I've ever tasted - and I made it! Ok, so maybe I'm bragging a little. But really, it was that good! I think it tasted even better today than last night. Probably because I was so full and bloated last night after eating New Orleans Corn Bisque with Sausage, rolls and salad that it was a little painful to eat more.
New Orleans Corn Bisque with Sausage was incredibly simple and fun to make. There are only 5 steps in the directions. It felt like the thing just made itself, and it tasted like that, too; just effortless. Creamy, rich, sausage and potato-y goodness! But of course, even though the recipe was extremely simple, I made a big mistake, putting twice the amount of cubed potatoes into the milky broth. Thankfully, I realized there were too many potatoes before the pot overflowed. The dinner "guests", my parents and David, just loved the Bisque. This dish elicited the most enthusiastic reaction of all the dishes so far. As they finished eating, I started making Blackberry Cobbler. I knew I loved the freezer-to-oven kind - the only kind I'd ever eaten. But like a romance novel heroine who finally meets "the one" and realizes how frivolous her previous loves were, when I took the first bite I really and truly realized what it is to love a cobbler.
On top of all this goodness, my parents bought a new set of cookware. In one hour, my mom and I will pick them up from the store. I can't wait to put them to use!

Bon Appetit!
-The Little Chef

I Love Calories, Fat, and Butter!

I love calories, fat and butter! Yes, I proclaim it! Don't bother telling me how "unhealthy" saturated fats and that heavenly substance which is the backbone of most great recipes - butter - are for me. I know. But I don't run from butter, fats, and calories as if they were parts of an ugly, oozing Death Monster as some people do. You know the people I'm talking about. They talk about "calories" like they're the enemy, instead of recognizing that we NEED those little things, and lots of them, for energy. As for fat and butter: we need those, in my estimation, not only to live in the sense that we need them to breath, move, and function, but in the sense that we need them to really live. If you cannot enjoy a slice of cornbread dripping with butter and honey, or a juicy piece of bacon, or even a smoldering hot chocolate lava cake without feeling a pang of guilt in your chest, you are not taking advantage of one of the greatest pleasures God and life has offered us.
But enough ranting. Let's get down to business.
Tuesday night, I cooked two variations of the same main dish, Cajun Chicken Pasta. I was confronted by a little dilemma Monday when I realized that Mom and Dad, chief guinea pigs and enjoy-ers of my dinners, can't handle the spice of a Cajun dish. But Omar and Mary, dear friends of David and I, share our love of spicy food. What could I do but make two dinners? So I made the first variation of the pasta substituting a myriad of miscellaneous spices for the signature Cajun seasoning. I was a little disappointed with the results. I missed the spicy! But my parents loved it. Dad said it tasted like something from Macaroni Grill. This is one of the highest compliments my dad could ever offer. He loves Macaroni Grill.
An hour later, I prepared the second and true version of Cajun Chicken Pasta and served it to a warm reception. I looked around the table and saw my friends and love laughing and conversing while devouring hearty fork-fulls of my food creation and thought, This is why I'm doing this. Food, Friends, and Fun - what could be better?
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cajun-Chicken-Pasta/Detail.aspx
A few more Cajun dishes, and then it's time to go full-on French!
Thanks for reading!
-Little Chef

Gumbo!

Oh, how I love gumbo. I love eating it, and I just discovered that I love cooking it, too. I cooked "Boudreaux's Zydeco Stomp Gumbo" Sunday night, and it was a hit! I wisely started preparing and chopping the many ingredients - chicken, garlic, celery, tomatoes, onions, red peppers, green peppers, parsley, shrimp, sausage! - around 3pm. And I'm so glad I started early. The recipes says "Done it 2 hours". Hah! Maybe if you're a master with a knife, but I am not and do not pretend to be. It was a bit intimidating seeing the vegetables pile up on one cutting board after another until I completely ran out of space and had to transfer some to a pan to make room to chop. It was also a bit intimidating when I saw that the recipe required me to make a "roux". French. French is scary. But I swallowed my pride and prepared to make a mess of it. Ready to burn the thing or explode something on accident, I bravely made the roux by constantly stirring oil and flour over medium heat. I was mortified, but not surprised, when the thing began to smell like gasoline. Oh, crap! But I went on with the recipe, and the thing turned out so deeeelicious! I let out an audible sigh when I took the first few bites. David, (my fiance) and I sat down to eat it with warm cornbread and I remarked that it was the first thing I'd cooked in a long time that I was really proud of. He in turn said it was "really good" three times. If he says that twice, he must really like it, but three times - That's the equivalent of jump-up-and-down wonderful in David-speak.
I am in love with this dish, and excitedly await another opportunity to make it.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Boudreauxs-Zydeco-Stomp-Gumbo/Detail.aspx

First Adventure

I read a few chapters of Julia Child's memoirs, "My Life in Paris" today in between classes and meeting my aunt for coffee. Her writing is simple and marvelous. You can almost hear her operatic voice laughingly saying every word as you read it. I especially loved a chapter titled, "NEVER APOLOGIZE." Julia says,
"I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as 'Oh, I don't know how to cook...,' or 'Poor little me...,' or 'This may taste awful...,' it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings, and make the other person think, 'Yes, you're right, this really is an awful meal!' Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed... Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food it truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile - and learn from her mistakes."
Well said, Julia! I will never apologize for my cooking again. Had I read this chapter last weekend, I wouldn't have apologized for the first dish I made in this great adventure. The first dish was "Mariu's Spaghetti with Meat Sauce".
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Marius-Spaghetti-with-Meat-Sauce/Detail.aspx
My original idea was to begin with cooking Louisiana syle, Cajun/French dishes, but I made an exception and started with pasta because my fiance and his friend needed to "carbo-load" before their run the next day. The secret to this recipe was the sauce. Instead of containing mostly tomato, the sauce was beef-based and much truer to an authentic Italian taste. It took much longer to prepare than I'd anticipated - about 3 hours - but it was worth it. The aroma in the kitchen was quite nice and beefy, and the sauce turned out great. The only gripe I had about it was that there was not enough sauce in ratio to the pasta. And of course, being the rather timid chef and hostess that I am, I felt bad about this and apologized repeatedly. Julia in heaven - I will never make that mistake again!