How To Peel A Cooked Potato

Personally, I love the ineptitude of the person who can't do it, reminds me of infomercials. You mean if I turn the pan upside down and hit myself over the head repeatedly with a wooden spoon, my eggs don't seem to turn out right? Please invent something for me; please let all food be cooked in the microwave! Looking at my food while it cooks scares me. Thank you egg wave!

This however is just neat, so end comparison. I don't often (ever?) peel cooked potatoes, but now I know.

Three Berry Custard

Mmmm
There are reasons that I shouldn’t go to garage sales. Mostly, I have a ton of stuff already and don’t need more, but a woman specifically advertised she had a VCR for $15 plus an electric griddle for $5. So I thought ok I won’t look around I’ll just say, “Hi, we talked about the VCR and griddle” and leave. But when I got there, I instead said, “Hi, we talked about the VCR and griddle. Is that an ice cream maker?” Long story short I now have a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. Really it only costs about $45 now, but I got it for $15. That was on Saturday and last night Dave and I attempted an ice cream creation.

How three berries? After reading around on various blogs and cookbooks, I thought I'd make a strawberry ice cream. Unfortunately, some of the strawberries were a bit questionable. So I pulled one of the little bags of frozen blackberries my mom gave me out of the freezer and decided to use them as well. Then I decided that if I was doing this I might as well go all out, and decided to turn it into a bit of a custard. When everything had been combined and was ready to go into the freezer, I decided it was a little too sweet. So we tossed in a bit of cranberry juice - unsweetened, 100% cranberry juice.

Into the Freezer There were some issues getting it into the freezer to cool down. Or at least I thought there were, Dave maintains that it was stable. I still think it looked precarious, maybe it was just the angle I was at.

And the finished product was pretty good. Dave thought it had too much cranberry juice; I thought it was just enough. Oh well, I just have to remember to account for how sweet the berries are in the final sugar estimation.

1 pint berries
juice of half a lime
3/4 c sugar
2 c heavy whipping cream
1 c whole milk
3 egg yolks
2 T cranberry juice

Hull strawberries and slice. In small bowl combine strawberries, blackberries, 1/4 sugar, and lime juice. Let macerate for one hour.

Beat egg yolks. In small saucepan combine milk, cream and remainder of sugar. Over low heat cook bring to simmer. While beating the eggs yolks and going slowly, pour 1/2 of the cream into the egg yolks (be careful - you don't want scrambled eggs). Once mixed pour egg/cream mix into the remaining cream. But saucepan back on burner. Over medium heat cook until thick - coats the back of a spoon. Take off heat.

Put 1/2 the berries in a blender, with the juices. Blend until smooth. Pour berries into egg and cream mix. If you want results like mine, make sure the gasket on your blender is broken (see above picture). Stir together and set in freezer to chill.

Once cool pour into ice cream maker for ~25 minutes. At the ~20 min mark add the remaining berries. Eat!

Bagel Pudding with Asparagus and Mushrooms

Two posts! I'm officially joining the ranks of food bloggers everywhere. Anyway I made this a couple of weeks ago back when I was saying I should take pictures for my blog that I've never posted in. But now look - it came in handy.

This recipe was based around the idea that I should use up as many ingredients I had in my kitchen as possible. I had some eggs that I wasn't sure how old they were, asparagus that really didn't look that good when I bought it at the farmer's market - very thin [it was the last bunch for a reason but the guy gave it to me for half the normal price], a carton of cream for coffee which I hadn't used since I hadn't been making coffee, and bagels that were past their prime. The only non-suspicious item involved were the mushrooms. I have a paper bag on my kitchen counter. Every so often I buy 1/2 lb of porcini or shiitake mushrooms at the farmer's market for $4. Then I just let them sit in the bag and dry out. Then when I buy more, I either add to the bag or start a new one. With the result that I have a nice mix of mushrooms to choose from whenever the mood hits me. As an added bonus, I had a couple of morels left from Mother's Day which went in as well.

So considering the stale bread, I decided to make a bread pudding for the first time in my life. I ended up using the first savory bread pudding recipe that popped up from the Food Network's search page - I think it was by Emeril. I did end up changing it around because I didn't have any milk, and I wasn't going for his spicier version. So really I only used it for proportions on how to make the custard, but useful knowledge nonetheless.

The finished product was pretty good, but there were some problems. One I had no idea how much salt to use in the custard so I had to salt and pepper it pretty heavily when I was eating it. And two I only had egg bagels which were good, but it would've looked and tasted more interesting with different types (maybe egg and pumpernickel for next time). I probably should've peeled the asparagus as well, but it was so thin - I wasn't up to it. This reheated well, and lasted about a week.

4 cups bagels cubed into 1-inch pieces

100_0440
Originally uploaded by sabrial2002.

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup soy milk
6 eggs
asparagus and mushrooms (sorry I have no idea how much I used)
1/4 c ? grated parmesan (if I'd had fresh I would've measured it, instead I only had Mark's Kraft parmesan which I had appropriated.)
S&P

Preheat oven to 375. Butter a casserole dish. Mix together eggs, dairy, cheese and S&P. Toss in bagels and vegetables. Pour into dish. Bake until custard is set ~35 minutes.

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes

Well I'm finally starting this blog, so I'd thought I'd show a breakfast meal for the first post.
I woke up this morning wanting eggs, hardly unusual, but since I had some spare time I decided to try a recipe from La Bonne Cuisine. It ended up being much more Italian than French in flavoring by the end, but the primary idea from La Bonne Cuisine was to cook the tomatoes separately. Hardly a groundbreaking idea I know, but a first for me. Normally when I make scramble eggs and tomatoes I tend to toss everything in at once until the eggs are tinged by tomato juice, and its delightful mash of ingredients. This time I cooked the eggs and then the tomatoes - which actually let me do more seasoning to the tomatoes and made for more interesting flavors in the end product. Yes I know its a lot of butter in the eggs, but its actually half the amount that La Bonne Cuisine recommends. And the overall technique makes for incredibly creamy eggs. Oh this is also my first experiment at any sort of presentation - so don't laugh too hard.

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes

1 T butter
2 eggs
salt & pepper

Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed pan over medium low to low heat. Whisk (could you make a verb out of the word fork?) together the eggs with the s&p. Pour the eggs over the butter, and begin stirring. Stir the eggs constantly with a wooden spoon. And remove from heat just before they're set. Allow to finish cooking in pan, but off the heat.

olive oil (or butter - I used the last on the eggs)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small tomato, chopped
1/2 t Italian seasoning
salt & pepper

Pour a little oil or butter into pan on med high heat. Toss in garlic when oil is hot. Allow to cook until garlic becomes fragrant then toss in the tomato and seasoning. Cook until tomatoes are just heated through. S&P to taste.


eggs and my lovely pajama pants