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

Culinary Q & A with Janice

Occupation: Pharmacy Resident/Pharmacist

What did you eat today?

Dim sum at Golden Rice Bowl

What do you never eat?

Lamb

What is your personal specialty?

Banana bread (I know, it wouldn’t make a meal, but it’s sort of my specialty in terms of baking!)

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Spatula (also a must have utensil for pharmacists, haha)

World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.

Mostly Japanese meal: I’d start with some beef tataki or baked oysters, then fill up on sashimi (mostly salmon) and spicy tuna maki. For dessert, I’d want a warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream 🙂

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Moxie’s (I didn’t count Chinese restaurants cuz I mostly go to those with family for the sake of convenience/not wanting to cook rather than actually choosing a place to go to for a meal)

What’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?

Well, I can’t say I’ve tried every place in Edmonton, but I think Manor Cafe is a pretty nice place to eat.

If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?

I think I’d fly to Hong Kong and eat my heart out! I’d eat everything that I can’t eat here (especially the foods that I miss…too many of them to list) and then some 😛

Culinary Q & A with Violet

Occupation: Assistant Coordinator and Instructor, but secretly wishing I was a Madonna impersonator

What did you eat today?

Breakfast: Toast with peanut butter and a banana
Lunch: Buffet at Khazana with fresh fruit for dessert
Dinner: Rice, eggplant, fish and tofu
Snack: Couple of Pringles

What do you never eat?

Chicken feet

What is your personal specialty?

Chinese style spaghetti as my mum used to make

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Cleaver, I use it to cut just about everything and Tupperware peeler that has lasted forever

World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.

Tofu with broccoli and chicken, anything with seafood, and sushi

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Usually somewhere serving Asian food

What’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?

Vietnamese- La Pagode (cheap and good portion size) and Doans (good portion sizes but slow service)
Japanese- Banzai (always have coupons) and Ichiban (bento boxes are always reliable)
Malaysian- Tropika (look for coupons, mango dessert is yummy)
Chinese- Sai Woo Garden (good calamari and cheap but don’t show me the kitchen)
Greek- It’s All Greek to Me (love the potatoes)
Indian- Khazana (can’t go wrong with the buffet)
Everything else- Moxies west end (go for Margarita Tuesdays and a white chocolate brownie in this newly renovated hot spot)
Madison’s Grill (good place for business lunches)

The Entertainment book has lots of 2 for 1 coupons for some great places. I’m a frugal diner 🙂

If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?

The best seafood I’ve ever had was while cruising (and Vegas) so I’d love to be on deck watching waves in the middle of the ocean enjoying scallops, shrimp,clams, and mussels with pasta and a fresh fruit tart dessert.

Culinary Q & A with Dickson

Occupation:

Day: Evil Overlord
Night: Math Tutor

What did you eat today?

Breakfast: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes
Lunch: Sticky rice.
Dinner: Instant Noodles.
Late night snack: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes

What do you never eat?

Raw meat – especially fish

What is your personal specialty?

Beefy Cheesy Pasta – now with tomatoes!

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Oven/Microwave

World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.

Appetizer: I’ve never cared too much about appetizers so I’m just going to say Chicken Salad and today’s soup!
Main course: A 12 oz kobe beef steak, lobster dipped in melted butter, mash potatoes with greens smothered in gravy. Extra salt.
Dessert: Creme Brulee and Apple Pie from Joey’s

Where do you eat out most frequently?

I like to give equal patronage to the various restaurants around town so every few weeks I rotate. My rotation so far:

Tokyo Express
Pagolac
Denny’s
Garden Bakery
All Happy
Denny’s

Current Rotation: Sam Wok

What’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?

My two favorite dishes are steak and pho. So I’m going to have to vote for KEG and Doan’s (though I’ve just been told King Noodle House has the best pho in town so my vote may change).

If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?

International House of Pancakes. What can I say? I’m an expensive eater 🙂

But really, I don’t think I’ve travelled enough to give this question a thoughtful answer.

Dickson cooking up his specialty
(it also happens to be his birthday today – Happy Birthday!)

Kitchen Wish List

As I watch television chefs in action, I grow ever-envious of their kitchens: the wide cooking space, the gadgets, the quality utensils. While my Mum’s kitchen is fairly well-stocked (who knew we had a mandolin?), there are a few things I intend on adding to our collection:

  • an immersion blender – to more easily make fabulously creamy soups (as seen on Barefoot Contessa);
  • a pizza stone – to create authentically crispy thin crust pizzas (as seen on Ricardo & Friends);
  • a functional, multi-purpose dutch oven (as seen on Everyday Italian);
  • Linzer cookie cutters (to make, well, Linzer cookies); and
  • a set of stainless steel dry measuring cups (sturdier than their plastic counterparts).

I’ve found Winners to be quite a great kitchen supply store so far, but I’m willing to shop around for a while to find even better prices. The hunt begins!

Culinary Q & A with Annie

Occupation: Teacher, President of the Professional Procrastinators’ Club, sexy Paramagnus intern, ex-fanfic writer, and sane-person-wannabe.

What did you eat today?

Breakfast: Warm cranberry crumble with ice cream (at 9:30 in the morning…that is what my Dept Head decided to bring to school for our PD…it was delicious but I’ve NEVER eaten ice cream at such an hour. I am a strong believer that you don’t eat junk food at least until 10:30 a.m.).

Lunch: SwissChalet’s rotisserie chicken with a Caesar salad and sautéed mushrooms and an iced tea. And may I comment that SwissChalet’s gravy ALWAYS taste like DOG FOOD. It was so gross I ended up using trusty salt and pepper.

Snack: A baby container of Silhouette yoghurt. And a leftover cup of organic coffee that nobody wanted after the PD meeting. It was from the pot and I couldn’t bear to dump it.

Dinner: A nutritious breakfast: 1 cup of Kellogg’s Special Flakes (Vanilla Almond), a toasted sesame bagel with garlic & herb cream cheese, and an orange juice.

Snack: Bowl of apples and strawberries.

What do you never eat?

Donkeys, dogs, and cats.

What is your personal specialty?

Chewy, crystal-like spicy Korean instant noodles. You really have to be an expert microwave/electric water kettle user to tackle this feat.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

I was going to say spatula…but I think I’ll go with chopsticks. You can beat eggs with them, panfry your fish or whatever with them…eat with them…use them as skewers/toothpicks…and oh, they are great for drumming and hitting your dog with.

World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.

Appetizer: Chinese cold dish of jellyfish in sesame oil and my Dad’s famous shrimp salad (he always puts in tiny cubes of celery and apples for texture…works VERY well with the shrimpies)
Main course: A bento of sushi (especially tamago, avacado/tempura, and inari ~ you know, that one with the sweet tofu wrap! ) & sashimi (tuna, salmon, and beef).

My Grandma or Grandpa’s ginger fried rice…the story here is that this is what I survived on while on a train trip to Mainland China…I couldn’t eat anything else until we got to our destination. Whenever there was a stop, there would be vendors on the train platform, trying to sell us rice bentos…the problem was…I think they made the bentos on the street…every bite I took, there was SAND…and I remember my Mom finding tiny pebbles in it. YUM. This is how they made their living; I think they did their best for what they have.

A lotus seed bun. This is one of the most vivid memories I have of my Grandpa…when I was really little, he used to take me to DimSum in Hong Kong and I always loved lotus seed buns. When the waiter drops the bamboo steamer of lotus seed buns at our table, my Grandpa would immediately grab one, take the paper on the bottom off, carefully break the bun in half, and then blow on it to cool it down…and then he’d smile and give it to me. You have no idea how I can feel so loved from such a simple gesture. And he laughed when I told him this when he was visiting us in 2005…a good 20 years later.

Some BBQ pork & rice. When I was in kindergarten, my Principal/headmaster used to babysit me for my Grandma while she worked…she loved me and always took me out for lunch and BBQ pork with rice was my favourite. My headmaster also bought me my first plastic baby grand piano with its own stool! They lubbed me!

Dessert: A Japanese rice green tea. Some matcha (green tea) ice cream. Thai Sticky Rice with Mangoes. Bailey’s cheesecake. Fresh fruit. Clearly, all this stuff should be in the main course anyway.I’d probably die from eating all this food …no need to wait for the end of the world…but I digress…

Where do you eat out most frequently?

I want to firstly say ‘ew’ to Mackenzie Male who put down “Denny’s”. Hehe.
I’d say “Tokyo Express”.

What’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?

Marco Polo in Chinatown! HAHAHA. Yes, if I want to eat cockroach bits.

Actually, I’d say the La Ronde with their beautiful, well-stocked brunch buffet. Omelettes made to order…woohoo! And the scenery. Nothing beats a rotating restaurant. Worth my 28 bucks or whatever.

If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?

I suppose I will have to eat all the fresh sashimi in Japan. Spicy rice cakes in Korea. And last but not least, go to Spain and try this scary sounding Hake fish thing. I’d like the gigantic cooked eyeballs…very chewy.

My God…it’s all seafood! Um, how about breadfruit? Never tried that.

BON APPETIT!

Culinary Q & A with Amanda

Occupation: University student

What did you eat today?

I ate leftover taco for lunch and for dinner i had cauliflower and mushrooms

What do you never eat?

I never eat aspargus or brussel sprouts (ew)

What is your personal specialty?

I can’t cook but a can make a killer big breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, toast and hashbrowns

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Probably a butter spreader or your bread will taste like shit

World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.

All you can eat buffet ( pizza, club sandwiches, tomatos, bacon, californian rolls)

Where do you eat out most frequently?

McDonalds

What’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?

Banzai (with a 2 for 1 coupon)

If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?

There’s nothing I want to eat that I can’t get here

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

Culinary Q & A with Mack

Occupation: Among other things, I’m a geek, a programmer, a blogger, a podcaster, a businessman and a student.

What did you eat today?

Nothing yet, unless you count a Grande Starbucks House Blend. (It is currently 7:29 PM). I intend to go home and eat fish and rice, however.

What do you never eat?

Peanuts…sadly, I am allergic. Though I suppose I can’t say I “never” eat them. My friends have been known to “accidentally” include them in a dish.

What is your personal specialty?

I’m pretty good at making grilled cheese :).

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Wooden spoon. It’s a versatile item for cooking, and can easily be used as a weapon as well.

World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.

Lobster stuffed with tacos! Haha…I guess I’d like a really good steak, Keg classic style, medium, with sautéed mushrooms, rice, and a side of lobster tail for good measure. Followed with carrot cake and cream cheese icing for dessert.

Or, if I had to choose something from a restaurant, I’d pick the Royal Red Robin Burger. You can read the description at http://www.canadarobin.com/Menu-GourmetBurgers.html.

And of course, whatever I eat would be served with Coca-Cola Classic.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Denny’s or perhaps McDonald’s. Or Starbucks if you count coffee as eating out.

What’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?

I’m sure it’s not the “best”, but I rather like the Old Spaghetti Factory downtown. The food is always pretty good, and the service is usually excellent. It’s in a decent location, and the decor is friendly and inviting.

If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?

Some sort of “fast food” Chinese, on Sydney harbor.

Mack learning how not to break egg yolks

Culinary Q & A with James

Occupation: Employment Counsellor

What did you eat today?

Two deliciously noteworthy treats:
1. My colleague Judith’s home made chocolate chip cookies
2. A great provolone and red pepper omelet made with organic eggs from my folks acerate early this evening.

What do you never eat?

Chicken. Allergy. KFC’s good, but staying alive is better.

What is your personal specialty?

Omelets- see first question

What is your favorite kitchen item?

I couldn’t choose just one. I really like our garlic press, it’s really heavy and sturdy. We use it a lot and we’ve had it for years. Also, my cafetière carries memories of many great weekend mornings.

World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.

Sushi, with plenty of tuna and crunchy flying fish roe.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Eating outside of home or work? Honestly, probably at Starbucks; Sundays after a run, I’ll usually get a coffee and piece of carrot cake.

What’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?

I really have no idea, I haven’t been to that many places yet. Three recent meals I enjoyed were at 1. Kyoto, 2. Billingsgate Market, 3. Shan-E-Punjab

If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?

On the beach in Southern Brasil. Fresh fruit salad, a cool glass of caipirinha, and lot’s of coconut popsicles.