Category: Cooking Chronicles

The Cooking Chronicles: Lemon Almond Polenta Cake

I was inspired to bake this cake after watching the characters in Dinner With Friends consume it. But who knew one of the main ingredients would be so hard to come by? After an exhaustive search of many major supermarkets (for the record, the grocery manager at Save-On Foods had never even heard of it), and with the help of my Dad, I was finally able to get my hands on a package of polenta flour (coarse corn meal) at the Italian Centre.

Corn flour vs. Polenta
The recipe in the playbill was written in Imperial measures, which meant the extra step of converting the quantities to Metric, but after that, it was fairly straight forward. Though I should have left the cake in the oven for a few minutes longer than I did, and let it set in the pan before attempting to overturn it onto the cooling rack (oops), I was very pleased with the end product. The combination of a generous amount of lemon zest and lemon juice resulted in a nice, refreshing flavor, and the ground almonds supplied a great texture and crunch.

As I still have quite a bit of polenta flour left, I may, out of necessity, have to recreate this cake again.

Lemon Almond Polenta Cake

EDIT: the recipe, from the Dinner with Friends program, as requested,

1lb unsalted butter at room temperature

1lb superfine granulated sugar

2tsp vanilla extract

10oz ground almonds

6 medium eggs

4tbsp lemon zest

2tbsp lemon juice

8oz polenta flour

1 1/2tsp baking powder

1/4tsp salt

  1. Preheat the oven to 320 degrees. Grease and flour a 12-inch circular cake pan.
  2. Whip the butter and sugar together until fluffy and pale. Stir in the almonds and vanilla, followed by the eggs, one at a time. Add the lemon zest and juice, the polenta flour, baking powder and salt. Stir well together. Put the mixture into the prepared pan and bake in the oven for around 45 minutes. The cake should be firm in the centre and golden on top.
  3. Serve alone or with ice cream. Serves 10-12.

The Cooking Chronicles: Super Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

This shouldn’t really qualify as a “Cooking Chronicles” entry, as what I made tonight was essentially baked peanut butter, but I wanted to include a picture, so here it goes:

Thwarted by my inability to find polenta flour, I was forced to switch from my desired Lemon Almond Polenta cake to my plan B craving, which this weekend has been Peanut Butter Cookies. I typically try to avoid recipes printed on the back of packages, but for ease and all-out laziness, I resorted to Kraft’s suggestion, albeit substituting the chunky version instead.

I think the preparation time worked itself out to 5 minutes, so topped off with 15 minutes in the oven, this was by far the fastest cookie recipe I’ve ever tried. The end product was all right – I should have omitted some of the sugar, but really, for 20 minutes, I can’t complain.

SEPBC

The Cooking Chronicles: Chocolate Pot du Crème

Knowing that I would have company over on the weekend, I planned ahead and made Chocolate Pot du Crème (a recipe from my handy Better Homes & Gardens cookbook) on Friday night.

Essentially denser, unwhipped chocolate mousse, the recipe was of the “prepare ahead” variety that my personal entertainment guru, Ina Garten, would have approved of. I did, however, have to separate egg yolks and whites for the first time (and learned quickly that the trick is to ensure that the shell is broken down the middle, otherwise there ends up being not enough of a ‘cup’ to transfer the yolk back and forth into).

I poured the mixtures into individual clear glass dessert cups, purchased earlier at Dollarama (a surprising boon for cooks seeking cheap but functional serving ware), and put them in the fridge to set overnight.

I was quite happy with the final product. I chose to top each serving off with raspberries in addition to white chocolate curls, which helped temper the richness of the chocolate and added some great color as well. One thing – it wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked, and an immersion blender in this case would have come in handy.

Though I prefer the lighter panna cotta, Annie commented that the pot du crème made for a nice winter dessert. It may be worth making again with flavor substitutions.

Chocolate Pot du Crème with Raspberries and White Chocolate Shavings

The Cooking Chronicles: Ricotta Pancakes

Armed with Bisquick, I set out to duplicate an Everyday Italian recipe of Ricotta Pancakes this morning.

The show had advertised them as a fluffier alternative to the usual result from pancake mix, and I did find that the case, but they definitely came out flatter than I was expecting. I should have substituted milk for water, and added about a quarter cup more frozen blueberries. But the best part was – they really weren’t any more difficult to make than regular pancakes, as long as you have the ingredients on hand to start with.

Anyway, pancakes are a great way to begin any day!

Ricotta Pancakes

Pre-New Year’s Potluck

May hosted a party in celebration of the New Year last night, and though it was meant to be a potluck, she ambitiously wanted to prepare several large entrees just in case the food guests brought went the way of desserts (as is typically the case with such events). Shiney and I offered to come early to help her out with the cooking.

Besides meatloaf and roasted potatoes, a “Better Butter Chicken” recipe, courtesy of Reader’s Digest, was on the menu. I haven’t yet reached the stage where I am comfortable dealing with raw meat, so I was relieved to find out that May’s Mum had already cooked and de-boned the appropriate amount of chicken for us in advance. Other than that, the instructions were really straightforward. This was my first time cooking with turmeric, and I must say, the aroma generated was fantastic (though from experience, it stains like crazy!).

Because this was a lower-fat version of butter chicken, the sauce wasn’t as creamy as those found in traditional Indian restaurants, but it was still pretty good. Simmering the sauce over low heat for 15 minutes really allowed the flavors of the spices to develop and come through.

While I still have much to learn on the vegetarian side of things, I hope to one day be able to make such a dish again, from start to finish, on my own!

Better Butter Chicken

The Cooking Chronicles: Mini Quiches

For the last (hurrah!) potluck of 2006, I decided to go with a variation of my tried and true baked egg theme: mini quiches. My Mum recently bought a large box of small tart shells, and had only managed to go through a quarter of the box, so I was more than happy to help her use up the rest.

Following a recipe printed on the side of the box (not sacrilege if done right), I decided on mushroom and parmesan as the filling ingredients. From my past experiments with cheese in such dishes, I’ve found that cheddar and mozzarella don’t quite provide the creamy texture that freshly grated parmesan does. And while I thought it unusual that the recipe called for a 1:1 quantity of eggs to cream (I substituted skim milk, as always), it resulted in a light-but-satisfying custard-like consistency for the egg.

Easy, and great as an appetizer, I will be making these mini quiches again soon.

Mushroom and Parmesan Mini Quiches

The Cooking Chronicles: Best-Ever Carrot Cake

Using a recipe from my trusted Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, I baked a carrot cake for Mack in celebration of his birthday. I haven’t attempted to make a cake from scratch in some time, as I’m typically a Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker mix kind of girl. But as the recipe seemed straightforward, this was a reasonable challenge to overcome.

First of all, I never knew finely shredding carrots would be such a task. I ended up with orange everywhere (my nails still haven’t returned to their original color). Also, the icing took longer than expected as well, as I had to gradually beat in about 5 cups of confectioner’s sugar (that’s where the stand-alone KitchenAid mixer would have come in handy).

Overall, it was fun to make. And might I say, much like the other dishes I’ve been experimenting with, creating something from raw ingredients really instills a sense of pride and ownership. Often it seems that the act of cooking itself, even without the promise of an edible product at the end, is reward enough. The food, as they say, is the icing on the cake.

*I will also take this opportunity to wish Mack a happy birthday, and to let him know that for one day only, I will relent in my dominance in the NHL2K7 shootout and air hockey challenges.

Best-Ever Carrot Cake, about three-quarters frosted

The Cooking Chronicles: Farmer’s Casserole

Continuing with the season of potlucks, Mack and I decided to jointly contribute a homemade farmer’s casserole for a friend’s party. Though the thought of a casserole made me feel like I should don an apron a la Donna Reed or June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver, the recipe was very simple – essentially an assemble-and-bake dish, slightly easier and requiring less clean up than a quiche.

We layered hash brown potatoes, diced cooked ham, grated cheddar cheese and chopped green onions in a rectangular dish, poured the egg and milk mixture over top, then put it in the oven. Comparable to the quiche, the most difficult thing we found was to wait for it to bake, and to decide via the “knife through the centre” test whether the egg had cooked enough. Though I think sixty minutes would have done the trick, the knife still came out slightly moist at that point, though when we finally decided to take it out the egg thankfully continued to set out of the oven.
The finished product was quite good, and I can see why the description for the dish lists it as a “hearty” selection – two servings and I was comfortably full for the rest of the evening. Next time, we thought mixing the filling ingredients (ham, potatoes and some of the cheese) before spreading it out in the pan would give the casserole a more coherent flavor, otherwise the cheese especially acts just as a topping and not as much of a “glue” as it could have. Also, one could potentially cut down the fat by using diced boiled potatoes instead of the hash browns.
Anyway, it was another enjoyable cooking experience!
Farmer’s Casserole

Real men make quiche, too

It seems that I am on a baked egg kick. On the heels of my frittata experiment last month, I enlisted the help of a friend and his spacious kitchen (in that order, of course) to test out a Better Homes and Gardens quiche recipe.

We opted to use frozen pie shells (why make from scratch what can be purchased “off the shelf?”) and chose smoked turkey breast as our filling ingredient. Like frittatas, “mix then bake” was the order of the day. Everything on the recipe was straightforward, even though we did prematurely combine the cheese and the flour with the wet mixture. Honestly, the most difficult part was waiting for the quiche to cook; nearly fifty minutes passed until we decided the egg had set enough to eat.

A photo of the finished product is below; it’s safe to say I’m pretty proud of our creation! We paired the quiche with a simple romaine salad (it seems that grape tomatoes taste infinitely better when you know the pint cost $4), but I think a vegetable or tomato soup would have worked just as well as a side. Next time, I would also consider adding a layer of cheese on top of the quiche before baking for extra flavor and texture.

Needless to say, I can now add quiche to my growing repertoire of cookery.

Quiche x 2

Plated and ready to eat! (Disclaimer for foodies: we knew white would have been the more appropriate wine pairing, but we only had red on hand…)

Mini Frittatas

Although I’ve dabbled in baking here and there, my experience creating appetizers and entrées have been limited. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for fast and easy recipes, particularly from my favorite TV chefs. Yesterday, I decided to replicate a frittata recipe I saw on an episode of Giada De Laurentiis’ Everyday Italian. Below is a picture of the result:


(So few product were captured because I ate the majority of them before the shot was taken…)

In my opinion, the recipe is foolproof, and you can substitute whatever you have on hand for the filling. In this case, I used mushrooms and turkey breast slices, though I admit a little greenery wouldn’t hurt the presentation. Another tip: if you fill the muffin tins about 3/4 full, the frittatas come out perfectly concave. This recipe would make a great appetizer, brunch item, or afterschool snack. I encourage you to try this out and share your favorite filling combinations!