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I’m going to try a new sauce tonight for seared lamb chops.  When deciding to make the chops for dinner, I thought about what I could do that was different than my usual schtick.

Remembering the frozen peas I’ve got on hand, I went out and bought some fresh mint.  My plan is to puree the thawed peas and mint with salt, pepper, toasted almonds, and melted butter.  I know darn well this combination is not a culinary revelation, but I’d like to make this fresh and bright “pesto” just from what sounds right, so that I can call it all my own. 

Maybe I should call it a chimicurri instead.  That sounds cute.  Ooh, and maybe I’ll include some red pepper flakes and lemon juice.  The more I’m tasting this in my head, the more I’m thinking some heat and some acid will put this sauce over the top.

My point today is to give a concrete example of the gist from yesterday’s post.  Yes, anybody can be a decent cook with some thought and practice, without a cookbook in front of them.  Of course there will be trial and error and sometimes dishes won’t taste so great.  Ah, but when they do, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment like no other.  And it’ll belong to you and only you because you cooked from your heart and your head. 

Curious about what I’m serving with the chops?  That’d be roasted red potatoes with onion and garlic, and sauteed zucchini with blistered grape tomatoes.  For wine we’ll have a red Cotes du Rhone.

I’ve got a wicked craving for Vietnamese noodle soup.  I’ve never tried making it at home before, mostly because it’s just the two of us at home, and making the vast vat of beef broth it requires seems a little silly.  Not to mention that it would be distinctly flavored, so freezing it and using it for other things might not work out so well.  I myself could eat incarnations of Vietnamese food everyday for the rest of my life, whereas my husband would probably tire of it on day two.  In his defense, however, he did let me talk him into eating pho twice on a four-day trip to Montreal.  I love that man.

I do on occasion make “bun” at home, which is the cold Vietnamese noodle salad full of herbs, peanuts, carrots, cucumber, and topped with hot grilled meat, often thin slices of skewered pork.  It’s easy, fast, and super-delicious.  I just might have to make it one night this week to get my flavor fix.  You want a shopping list? 

You’ll need pork cutlets (I should tell you that the marinade is very tasty on tofu and shrimp too), garlic, shallots, limes, lemongrass, cilantro, mint, cucumber, carrots, bean sprouts, fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, rice noodles, and wooden skewers.  And a grill.

First, make your marinade for the meat (this will go much faster if you have food processor).  Thouroughly blend some fish sauce, brown sugar, garlic, and lemongrass.  If you’re unfamiliar with fish sauce, it’s wicked salty and funky.  Look up an authentic Vietnamese bun recipe if you’re unsure of the proportions of what “looks” right, because too much fish sauce is not a good thing.  Pour it over your pork slices, cover and refrigerate for up to two hours.

Soak some wooden skewers in water.  Again, in your food processor, make the “dressing” for the noodles.  Thouroughly blend a small handful each of fresh cilantro and mint, along with a couple good splashes of soy sauce, the juice of a couple fresh limes, a fresh shallot, and a teeny bit of brown sugar.  Then, shred some carrots, thinly slice half a cuke, and chop some peanuts.  Oh, and bean sprouts are good, too.  But you don’t need to do anything with them until you assemble each plate.

Read the package directions for the rice noodles carefully.  They differ.  But they all can be done ahead of time because they’re going to be cold.  So make those noodles!

Light a grill.  Thread your pork onto your skewers.  When the grill is really hot, cook the pork until just done, but make sure it has a tiny bit of char on it for authentic flavor.

Toss the cold rice noodles with the herb dressing and plate them.  Top with some carrots, cukes, peanuts, and bean sprouts.  Lay a hot pork skewer or two on top.  Prepare for a blissful frangrance explosion!  Eat up.  If you like it spicy, pick up some Vietnamese chili sauce to add to your plate. 

Yesterday I wrote that braising season is upon us.  Yeah, well, it’s supposed to be over eighty-five degrees for the next three days.  Not only that, but after tomorrow, my husband will be away on a business trip, so my aversion to leftovers has returned.  I need to make something for dinner this evening, and as I so often find myself, I’m stuck for ideas.  I want to make sure I’ve got something fixed in my head before I head out to run errands, so I’m not meandering aimlessly around the grocery store.  I can’t stand that.  In short, I want to cook something tasty and fast, just enough for two, and something DIFFERENT.  I’ve been in a cooking rut.

So what am I in the mood for?  Sure, I could be in the mood for lots of things, but I try really hard to keep ingredients purchased for a single meal under ten dollars.  Pasta’s out (we had that last night), we’ve had a lot of chicken lately…Ugh, I feel exasperated and uncreative. 

Okay, another tack.  What protein haven’t I made in a while?  I love fish, but my husband kind of only tolerates it.  Ooh, wait, I’m just remembering that using crushed chips, cereal, or crackers makes a tasty, crunchy coating on just about anything.  I’ve got it!  I’m going to make some fancy homemade fish sticks (I titled this post “Fish Fingers” because that’s what the English call them, and I think it’s funny).  I guess I’ll buy some firm, white fish for them, and I already have sundried tomato veggie chips in the house.  

Here’s what to do.  Crush two or three cups of chips in a plastic bag, and dump them in a shallow dish.  In another shallow dish, mix some mayonnaise with salt, pepper, paprika, and dried herbs.  You could also use melted butter instead of the mayo.  Heat a skillet with a quarter-inch of olive oil in it to medium heat.  Smear each piece of fish around on both sides in the mayo mixture, then press it on each side into the chips.  Fry the fish on both sides until done.  Times will vary according to the type and thickness of the fish, and whether or not you fry whole fillets or cut your fish into “sticks.”

Can’t have fish sticks without something to dip them in!  Here’s my version of remoulade sauce.  Get out that mayonnaise again, and put a cup of it in a bowl.  Squirt a touch of mustard, a teeny-tiny bit of ketchup, and plop about a tablespoon of chili garlic sauce into it.  Add a little fresh minced onion, parsley, and capers.  Mix well and let the remoulade hang out in the fridge until dinner’s ready.

Tonight I think I’ll make sweet potato home fries and a salad to go with the fish sticks.  I’m just glad an idea finally came to me.  Cooking at home is so much harder at home than at work. 

I blogged about leftovers a couple of days ago, mentioning a pork loin.  It’s a yummy, hands-off recipe, wicked easy and very warming.

Smear your pork loin with good dijon mustard and pepper.  Cover it with plastic wrap and let it hang out in the fridge for a couple of hours.  Two to two-and-a half hours before you’d like to eat it, pull it from the fridge.  Heat a mixture of butter and olive oil in a large, heavy skillet (with a lid) and brown the pork loin well on all sides.  Remove it from the pan.  In the mustard-y fat that remains, saute half a large, chopped onion, a chopped, fresh apple, and a half-cup of dried cranberries.  Salt and pepper the mixture lightly, add the loin back to the skillet, and add water, white wine, beer, and/or stock (whatever you’ve got, you get the picture) to halfway up the pork loin.  Put on the lid, bring it to a boil, then turn the heat very low.   Let everything simmer for at least an hour and a half.  Pull the pork from the skillet and let it rest.  Meanwhile, turn the heat back up to reduce the sauce to however sticky you like it.  Check the seasoning.  Finish the sauce with a little chopped dill and parsley.  Slice your pork loin into rounds (it will probably be very tender, make sure your knife is SHARP), and pour the sauce over it.  C’est tout.  Delicious with brown butter noodles, mashed potatoes, or spaetzle if your feeling ambitious.

Well, it’s a little demoralizing to say it, but this cake was not fabulous.  It wasn’t by any means hideous, either.  The icing tasted assertively of avocado, which was a bit strange, and the mango flavor of the cake was not pronounced enough.  I can see why Alton Brown put lemon extract in his icing.  One of the many party guests who tasted the cake thought another flavor in the icing would have been an improvement, too, suggesting pistachio or mint.  After I made the cake, I got the feeling there would need to be more acid on the plate when the cake was served, so I made a mango coulis to go under each cake slice.  That helped.

First, the good news.  The cake itself was moist, but not flavorful enough.  If I make it again, I’ll be adding some chopped, dried mango and maybe some toasted almonds or pistachios.  The texture of the avocado icing was lovely, probably because I added a stick of softened butter to it, and ended up using an entire pound of confectioner’s sugar.  And if I make the icing again, I’ll definitely add another flavor, like Alton’s suggestion of lemon, or my friend’s suggestion of pistachio.

The bad news, which really isn’t that bad, was that every time someone took their first bite of the cake, they wore an expression that waivered somewhere between contemplation and confusion.  When I serve a dessert, I like to see an expression that hints at rhapsody, accompanied by “mmm.”  Is that so much to ask of a dessert?  I think not.  The Tropical Thrill Cake is not there yet.

I’m still not quite sure how to approach this blogging thing.  I’m new to it.  At my husband’s behest, I will give it a shot, see what happens.  “Run it up the flag pole, see if anybody salutes,”  my grandfather used to say.

So if a somebody like me (NOT web-obssessed, don’t even check my email on a daily basis) is going to blog, it had better be about something with which she is preoccupied.  In this case, she is me, and that thing would be food, and all those things food-related.

 Will I focus on recipes…equipment…technique…ingredients?  Yes, I will, and I’ll probably be including a good bit of opinion, too.  Hopefully, this blog will eventually create a useful and vibrant discourse for foodies, from which we can learn from each other’s cooking triumphs and errors.  It wouldn’t hurt if we could inject a bit of humor into things, either.

Without further ado, a CAKE is in the works for me right now.  A very experimental cake it is, and I’ll include the preliminary recipe below.  If the recipe works, that’s terrific.  If it doesn’t, then I’ll post my amendments to the recipe later.  If it totally sucks and tastes revolting, I’ll post that as well.  Anyway, this cake will be called something like Tropical Thrill Cake.  In my mind/ tongue’s eye (don’t forget, I made this recipe up yesterday and haven’t tried it yet), I’m picturing this gorgeous layer cake, glowing pale orange inside with a brilliant green frosting, decorated with mango slices and toasted coconut.   If it turns out as pretty as I think it will, I’ll post a photo of it.

The idea for this cake was inspired by Alton Brown.  I was half paying attention to his show during work one day last week (I work at an upscale deli and food market so we often keep the Food Network on the television) and he made cake frosting out of avocado.  It was so BEAUTIFUL!  Anyway, he put both lemon juice and lemon extract in his frosting.  I think I’ll leave out the extract because I’m not feeling it will fit seamlessly into the flavor profile I’m going for.  All week after seeing the show, I was trying to think of how I’d like to use that frosting, and it came to me…MANGO CAKE!  I’m planning on incorporating the barest hint of toasted coconut into the cake as well, with more of it being part of the decoration.

FOR PETE’S SAKE, DON’T FORGET THAT I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY MADE THIS CAKE YET!  I wouldn’t want my inaugural blog to be tainted by comments like “I made this woman’s cake and it tasted like poop.”  or “The Tropical Thrill Cake was more like a catastrophic Guatemalan mud slide.”

The cake:

2 3/4 c. cake flour

2 1/2 t. baking powder

3/4 t.  salt

1/2 t. baking soda

1 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 c. sugar

1 t. vanilla extract  (don’t you just love Penzey’s double-strength?)

2 eggs

2 c. fresh mango puree

 1/2 c. toasted coconut

Sift together the dry stuff.  Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla, then add the eggs one at a time.  Alternate adding the dry ingredients, the mango puree, and the coconut to the butter mixture until just combined.  Pour into 3   8-9 inch  greased round cake pans.  Bake at 350 degrees for 18-25 min., or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool on wire racks for ten minutes, then remove the cakes from the pans.  Cool completely.

The frosting:

 8 oz. avocado flesh

2 t. lemon juice

1 c. sifted confectioner’s sugar

 Whip the avocado and the lemon juice until smooth.  SLOWLY add the sugar.  Yum.  Store in fridge if not using immediately.

Assemble and decorate your cake as you please.  I’m planning on doubling  the frosting to use it as a filling, and then decorate the whole shebang with fresh mango slices and toasted coconut.

Talk to you later.  Sorry for the brevity of the baking instructions, but I think at this point anybody reading a food blog has made a scratch cake or two in their lifetime. 

Happy Kitchen Time to You and Yours!

-Samantha