Cooking Mag Mommy

I've noticed I've referenced song titles in the last several summary posts for the month. Music and food always go so well together. Well, let me tell you about my favorites and failures of the month of September. I will also admit to not completing two recipes in this month's issue. The first was the Cooper's Union Cocktail in the You Asked For It column. I've mentioned before that I draw the line at spending large amounts of money for less than an ounce of alcohol and since I didn't have St. Germain elderflower liqueur, this one was a no go. I also did not make the Squash Blossoms Stuffed with Ricotta on page 98. I wanted to and I tried to find squash blossoms but I had no luck. I went to several local farmer's markets and called several farm stands but they all said they are available only earlier in the season. My two favorite recipes of the month both came from the large alphabet menus, though not the same one. The disappearing Mini Provolone...

If you are driving along I-85 north of Atlanta and get off at the Pleasant Hill exit, you will notice the signs of businesses will look a bit different from other parts of the United States. Oh sure, most signs still have English but above or under the English is Korean. This area of Atlanta has a large Korean population and is often thought of as Little Korea. Finding the ingredients for tonight's dinner was very easy. Super H Mart, my local Asian market, is a Korean owned company and stocks a wide variety of groceries for the large Korean population in the area. Tonight I made the Seasoned Fried Chicken on page 35 of the June issue of Gourmet. This recipe is from the Gourmet Cook Book Club selection for the month, Quick and Easy Korean Cooking by Cecilia Hae - Jin Lee. This recipe was just what the book title advertised, quick and easy. The chicken fried up very well with the cornstarch coating. Eyrleigh ate the chicken without the sauce because of her current avers...

Today was pretty busy, not bad busy, but busy so I'm doing the short version of the blog. Here's what I made and here's how it tastes. Short and sweet. Tonight I made the Black-Pepper Salmon with Dill Smashed Potatoes on page 61 on June's Gourmet. (I've finished all of September so I'm going back to June to finish a few more of those.) I accompanied this main with the Grilled Tarragon Asparagus on page 16, also from June. Again, I was busy and so I simply put a tablespoon of whole peppercorns in a baggie and smashed them. It's much quicker that using a grinder and leaves the pieces big enough to look cool. This dish was a simple and good preparation of salmon and potatoes. The fresh dill added great flavor and made the dish a yummy weekday main. The asparagus was also very good. Much of the tarragon fell off while grilling or in the marinade but there was still enough to add flavor. Again, this was a good quick weekday meal for any family. Black...

I was a bit nervous that making tonight's meal would be an exercise in futility. Would my homemade attempts at ketchup, mustard, and relish really improve on years of brand marketing and corporate testing? How could I, in my first attempt make something better than Heinz, French's , and Vlasic? Well, believe it. When the June article of Gourmet challenged me to give making my own a try, I did and boy, was I impressed. Heinz got nothing on me! The Homemade Ketchup recipe on page 41 of June's issue of Gourmet had a wonderful mix of sweet and spice and had a depth that commercial ketchup doesn't have. The recipe says it lasts chilled for a month and I really hope that it does. The ketchup was by far my favorite, mostly because it was so distinctive. Richard is a ketchup freak and he too kept dipping his burgers (He had 3! He's still recovering from his 70.3 Ironman this past weekend and needs some serious calories.) The mustard was also very good but it s...

Eyrleigh and I have had the best time with the September Alphabet themed menus in Gourmet. We made place mats for the table with the letter of the day. We sang the alphabet song while we were cooking. We loved telling Daddy all about what we'd made and the letter we were making. Honestly, I could do this with every letter of the alphabet. Well, maybe not the tough ones, a menu with X may not have much in it and we'd have to run out for ice cream. Tonight was the letter P. This first picture on the left is probably one of my favorite pictures in this entire blog. I was trying to take a picture of the first recipe from the menu, the Mini Provolone Popovers, and all 4 pictures had Eyrleigh's hand in them. She absolutely loved these little popovers. Sadly, I halved the recipe because I only had a 12 cup mini-muffin pan. These were gone within minutes and all of us wished there were more. They puffed up beautifully and the chives, Parmesan, and Provolone added wonderful flavo...

What classifies one as a food snob? Is it the type of food you eat or the type of food you refuse to eat? Richard knows I get very disgusted by the thought of eating at most buffet style restaurants. I don't like the idea of food sitting out for extended periods of time before I eat it. That's not really being a food snob. That's just simple food hygiene. Richard also claims I am rather adverse to some classic country dishes that he just loves. White gravy, for one. I find it totally revolting in both texture and taste. But I can appreciate a good PB & J, the epitome of everyone's food. I guess a food snob is just a regular snob, who carries their snobbery into what they eat. Tonight's meal was not very snobby. Just chicken wings, Caesar salad, and some rummed -up pineapple but I'll make it sound a little classier in my evaluation . I made 3 recipes from the June issue of Gourmet that I never got to finish because we traveled the whole month. I began wit...

Traditional grilling season for cooking magazines is drawing to a close. Two recipes in September's issue of Gourmet had "grilled" in the title. Compare that to June's issue with 19 recipes with "grilled" in the title and you can see that grilling, though yummy year-round, is something we think more about in the sunny summer months. Even here in Atlanta, the weather has been less about grilling and more about building arks. Ok , I jest but seriously, our area has had 14 inches of rain in the last week and people around us are being flooded out of their homes. Not the kind of weather that makes you want to fire up the grill. So I turned on my stove top and used my 2-burner grill pan. It doesn't smell quite as good but it still leaves those pretty grill lines. Tonight I made the Grilled Eggplant Parmigiana Heros on page 38 of this month's Gourmet. These Eggplant Parms were a bit different than the traditional breaded version. These were si...

You would think that someone who goes to all the trouble to make every recipe in Gourmet magazine for over 8 months would be a really creative eater all of the time. Sorry to disappoint you. You remember that kid that ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch. I'm kind of like that kid. Eyrleigh and I have a very predicable lunch routine virtually every day of the week. We race home from whatever morning activity we've been doing, grocery shopping, going to Gymboree , whatever, with the radio blaring so she won't fall asleep. While she sits at the table and has some drink and maybe some apple, I make a quick cheese quesadilla in my red Salton Quesadilla maker. We share the quesadilla . She has two sections and I have four. Sometimes I have to finish hers. It's boring, but it works. She likes quesadillas and so she eats well and I do to. Nights like tonight, I'm glad I liked my lunch. This was not the most impressive dinner I've ...

I'm sure they teach all kinds of cool tricks to save time and effort in culinary school but I never went to culinary school. Some days I feel like a kindergartner in the kitchen. I don't know what to do half the time and I make a huge mess. But some days are like today. I think of simple things to make making dinner easier. They may seem pretty obvious but two things I did this afternoon were a bit of a revelation to me. The melon baller worked great to take the seeds out of the cucumber in seconds. I cut the corn off the cob in the middle of my cast iron skillet and didn't have to chase corn kernels all over the counter. But perhaps the best thing I did was make most of dinner ahead of time and just reheated the creamed corn right before dinner. Eyrleigh napped the whole time I cooked and I didn't have a small child hanging on my leg while cooking. It was wonderful. I try to do this most days but either because of recipes or time, it rarely works as well as it did t...

This is the blog post where I tell you about my incredible trip to Italy and all the wonderful food I ate there. Sadly, I can't. I've never been to Italy. I've been to much of Western Europe but never made it to the boot. Italy is a "must see" for foodies and it is on my short list of places to go next. Just because I haven't been to Italy doesn't mean I haven't eaten some great food while traveling, though. My best travel food memory was while attending the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. I was a member of a Christian drama team that was performing in and around the athletic venues. When not in the city, our group stayed at an old villa on a hillside twenty minutes out of town. A local woman and her daughters cooked for us each day and the food was incredible. I had never eaten paella before and I will forever be in search of a dish that perfect. I would love to take Richard and Eyrleigh back to Barcelona to experience the flavor...

I am a bit of an anathema in the world of food media. I rarely read other cooking blogs, have never watched the Food Network, and the last movie I saw was Mr. and Mrs. Smith so I definitely missed Julie and Julia . I really don't watch much TV and watching people cook isn't half as much fun as actually doing it. As for movies, I just don't like watching them in theatres. I feel trapped. But I have found one food show I like, Man V. Food, on the Travel Channel. The host, Adam Richman , does an excellent job of describing the food at classic eating establishments throughout the country. In each episode, he also competes in a food challenge. Unlike competitive eaters, he doesn't stuff the food in his face, making the viewer feel queasy. He tries to eat it but has a sense of decorum when he knows he's done. I'm watching it now and Adam is in Vegas eating hot spicy crayfish and is challenged to eat a 6-pound burrito. I'm getting kind of hungrynow. I did mak...

Back in April when I made the Sardine Escabeche that went with the Passover menu, I had to google " escabeche " to help me understand this cooking technique. I had never eaten an escabeche and certainly had never cooked one. Since April, tonight makes the third time I've made this style of dish and I must say I haven't quite acquired a taste for it yet. I feel a bit like that kid that tries coffee for the first time and wonders why adults like it so much, then by age 20, can't make it through a morning without it. This dish appears to be very common among Hispanic cuisines, particularly in South America. Perhaps some of the issue is the rather strong flavors of the fish that often accompany it. Both sardines and mackerel are very flavorful (translation: fishy) and the strong flavor contrasting to the tang of the vinegar/oil marinade is quite distinct. I won't say any of the dishes have been bad. They are just... well, different. Richard asked why I make a di...

I'm sorry to disappoint you but the title is a bit deceiving . Tonight's dinner was not so good, I was left without words. I am having a dickens of a time thinking of a way to pull this post together. You will notice that I often try to tie the night's menu into something either life or food related. Tonight I've got nothing. Asian flavors, already done it. Current events, don't relate to dinner and I have no idea who Kanye West is anyway, all I know is he must have been a punk on some show because President Obama called him a "jackass". I can respect a well-timed use of the word "jackass", even from the president. So here is the very concise , rather dull description of tonight's dinner of Gourmet recipe. I had originally had 4 recipes on tonight's menu but happily, the Ginger Green Beans were made by Nancy over Labor Day weekend. One of the recipes was pulled from the June issue of Gourmet, the Broiled Chicken with Bacon over Egg Fr...

I loved quiche when I was a kid but we never had it very much. I now know why. Making quiche from scratch takes a really long time. Make the crust, chill it, bake it, bake with filling, allow it to firm up. That's a lot of steps, I can see why Grandma and Mom didn't make it much. It felt like I was making it all day. It's interesting to look back and see how certain foods have fallen out of favor because of their labor intensive preparation. Roasts were a mainstay of many Americans up until the 1960's. Now it is rare to hear of someone making a roast anytime but for a special holiday meal. Conversely, some foods have grown in popularity because of their simplicity. Fifty years ago, pasta was the specialty of Italian immigrant families. Now it is a frequent meal option for virtually everyone. The Broccoli Garlic Quiche on page 32 of this month's Gourmet was worth the effort though. This was a very good quiche and could easily be adapted with different ingredient...

In a respectful nod to today's significant date, I will briefly explain my title. I lived in the New York City area eight years ago when the date 9/11 changed its meaning. I taught kids who lost their fathers in the World Trade Center collapse and saw the smoke on my drive to work for days. The thing I remember most at that time was the myriad of flags, banners, and statements of hope that covered every overpass on the freeway. The events of 9/11 were horrible but the response of Americans was amazing and I was proud of the courage displayed on that day and beyond. We have not forgotten but we have returned to life with a sense of joy that disappeared for a short time. Today Eyrleigh and I changed the tune and celebrated the letter B. We made place mats for dinner with giant B's on them and made sure we used colors that began with B. Honestly, Eyrleigh is a bit young to identify letter shapes but it's never too early to start learning. This month's Gourmet ma...

Cutting the segments of a lemon away from the membranes with a hangnail is torture. I know. Tonight I made the Lebanese Lamb Chops with Lemony Lettuce on page 56 of this month's Gourmet. The lettuce was dressed with lemon, sugar, and oil and it was delicious but there is no way to remove lemon segments without getting it on your fingers. Yikes, I should have taken a picture of my hangnail but if you've ever had one, you don't need the visual. Back to the lamb with lemony lettuce. I couldn't find the spice mix baharat premade so I got a recipe from the Internet and mixed it up. All the spices were common and in my spice cupboard and I now have quite a bit left if I need it again. The rub coated the lamb well and had spice and heat without being overpowering. The lettuce with lemon worked almost like a palate cleanser and was a great partner. I took a few liberties when putting together tonight's menu but I think it worked. I choose flavors from the same...