What Makes a Chowder a Chowder?

Potatoes.

Just kidding. That was what someone told me when I was telling them about this awesome Potato Chowder recipe I tried the other week.

The definition that Wikipedia gives is not as definitive. Regardless, my love of potatoes and chowder (um, fatchowder?!), remains the same.

There's a place near me that has an awesome Potato, Cheddar & Jalapeno chowder, which my friend assigned for me to recreate somehow. After a quick Google search, this recipe from a blog called Evil Shenanigans looked promising.

With the leftover potatoes from Thanksgiving (I bought 5 lbs with this in mind), and some substitutions here and there, this is what happened:

POTATOES!!!

I didn't take out bacon from the freezer ahead of time, so I had to do without this time (I know, shame on me). I also didn't have seasoned diced tomatoes from a can, but had a box of yellow cherry tomatoes, and used poblano peppers instead of jalapeno peppers. Instead of cheddar cheese, I used shredded monterey jack cheese and added corn. I also didn't have sour cream to garnish when serving (seriously, how did I even make this soup???), but at least I did have green onions!

Next time, there will be bacon, more red tomatoes, cheddar cheese and the potatoes will be boiled longer for a different textured soup. The corn stays.

From left counter clockwise: boiling potatoes & sauteing everything else; cheese & peppers;  chowder is served!; peeled potatoes

Thanksgiving 2012 - May the Odds Ever be in your Favor

Planning for Thanksgiving 2012 felt almost as chaotic as the events that preceded it - between my 10 day long trip abroad for work to dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, I started panicking 2 weeks before because I didn't even start my menu yet. My sister was kind enough (yea, I said it, you were kind, now you can get over yourself) to offer to send out the invite emails herself, and she quoted Hunger Games in the invite, which I decided later to theme our Thanksgiving. 

**I am also going to use all this chaos as an excuse for why I haven't posted in 2 months =X Apparently my mother even reads my blog and has been complaining that there are no new posts! I guess momma really is my biggest fan, haha.

There was supposed to be a game I found to play while watching the movie, but we didn't end up doing that so people just wondered why I had Hunger Game quotes plastered everywhere around the house.

As per tradition, preparation begins the night before. Something new that I was able to do this year was take a day off the week before, after I had compiled my menu and excel spreadsheets of when dishes were scheduled to be made and a comprehensive list of all the ingredients needed and what dishes they were used in (I am well aware that there is something seriously wrong with me).

I was lucky enough to get out of work early and was ready to go by 4:30 on Wednesday. I even got home before Miss Teacher! I was determined this year to have all the prep work done and everything ready before I actually begin putting a dish together the way they do on the Food Network. I wanted everything to be chopped and measured ahead of time. Due to this, my cousin helper was a bit disappointed when he got home and wanted to help, because all the boring stuff was being done that night. He missed the chaos and actual dishes coming together the next day to see the parade.

Here is this year's menu with links to the recipes:

Appetizers

Cranberry Orange Pecan Roll-ups

Bacon Cornbread

Sides

Sweet Potato Casserole

Acorn Squash Stuffed w/ Wild Rice

Cranberry Sauce

Creamed Onions w/ Bacon & Chives

Garlic Parmesan Mashed Potatoes

Green Bean Casserole

Entrees

Turkey

Papardelle w/ Pumpkin Poblano Sauce

Mushroom & Barley Pie

Desserts

Fruit Galettes

Upside Down Chocolate Pear Cake

Pumpkin Pie

Fruit Tart

The night began with the easiest thing that could be prepared and completely finished ahead of time: CRANBERRY SAUCE! I made it this Riesling, which is great, because what I don't use, I get to drink =)

Cranberry Sauce

Every year, I'm not sure why I haven't learned to accommodate for it by now, but I always forget that as some point, life goes on, and people still expect normal meals in the middle of all of my Thanksgiving madness. Somehow, we had a turkey leg and oxtail sitting around (I do believe our fridge is of the magical variety), and I had planned ahead of time to use the rest of the barley and beans mix that I had bought at Trader Joe's to make the soup that was on the package. From all of this, soup night was born. But silly me, after I threw all the barley/beans in the pot, I threw out the bag...so I had to make up the rest of the recipe. Whoops! I did however, get a rare compliment from my dad when I forced him to try the soup which was that it was of "restaurant quality!" He did not specify what sort of restaurant...but no matter, I'll take it where I can get it!

Then I decided I wanted to try my hand at oxtail soup for the first time. Pressure Cookers are my new best friend. In addition to a creme brulee torch set, I want to add a pressure cooker and a crock pot to my future kitchen wish list. Just saying..

From Top Left Clockwise: Turkey Leg; Sous Chef hurt herself (first of many times to come); Barley/Bean Soup; Turkey Leg & Veggies; Chopped Veggies; Sous Chef actually working

From Top Left Clockwise: Oxtail; Oxtail soup ingredients in the pressure cooker; Barley/Bean Soup

I actually almost didn't even make it through the whole night. I was so exhausted from the week that I took a break around 8 and watched AGT for about 2 hours. My sous chef completely conked out at that point, as usual. At least this year I had more helpers at my disposal, so my cousin took her place before my mom tagged in to help me with the turkeys.

Speaking of turkeys, I was only expecting one this year, so I was only planning on using the apple cider and citrus brine. This wasn't communicated very well to my mother, so she found something else that used cider and herb butter. Slightly thrown off by that, but it worked out. I was more thrown off by the fact that we ended up with two turkeys. I didn't want to make two birds for dinner again this year because I felt that it was just too much food - plus I didn't know what I wanted to do with the second bird. Then I thought of something that a coworker told me about once - cooking with beer, especially with poultry, kind of sucks out the fat but keeps the moisture in. Fact? Don't know, but I decided to give it a try and so the second bird was soaked in Budweiser for about 48 hours. I got real close to the first bird when it came time to butter it with sage and rosemary butter. Not gonna lie, things got a little weird...just kidding. But not really. You really have to get the butter under its skin. And melted butter is really messy. The things I do for amazing food...

Various Stages of Turkey prep and final products

I realize now that I've gone out of chronological order, and have already skipped to the main event, but let's get back on track to Thursday morning, which started off, again, as per tradition, with the Sous Chef that has gotten so much sleep from the night before, running around the house around 7 in the morning after I had gone to bed at 2, raring to go. I refused however, to get out of bed until 8.

Here's what followed in picture form:

From Top Left Clockwise: Excel Spreadsheets; Studying the recipes assigned to her; Her planning includes putting her recipes in the corresponding dishware; crowded oven; our food was made with dance; balancing; cleaning up one of many messes; Woodchuck Cider makes cooking/dancing more fun; results of food shopping

Orange Cranberry Pecan Roll-ups

Acorn Squash with Wild Rice Stuffing - they also make for very large ears. Shout out to Isgro for the idea

Bacon Cornbread

Mushroom Barley Pie

**A note about the mushroom barley pie - in Smitten Kitchen's recipe, she added that the recipe could use a bit of a kick, since mushrooms and barley tend to have more mild tastes. So I tweaked it a little bit by adding some Israeli couscous with the barley and beans mix instead of just having pearl barley, used some sesame oil for kicks and I added my go to for taste - red chili pepper flakes! Still needs a little bit of something else, but not sure what it is...

Papardelle w/ Pumpkin Poblano Sauce

**The papardelle was one of the two dishes that I was most excited to try. The other was the upside down chocolate pear cake that I've been meaning to try for the past few years. First of all, it is impossible to find the papardelle - um, Barilla, can you please get on that?! But I did find a lemon pepper papardelle from Trader Joe's, which went pretty well with the Pumpkin Poblano sauce. I should have put a warning on the dish though, because the poblano peppers really gave it a nice kick. Sadly I did not get a photo of the final product, but the taste will forever stay in my memory!

Fruit Galettes

Upside Down Chocolate Pear Cake Prep from Top Left Clockwise: Cousin at work chopping chocolate; Pears; Caramelizing Sugar (x2); Pear Layout on sugar glaze; Mixing Cake Batter; Cake Dry Ingredients; Melting Chocolate; Pouring out the sugar caramel into the spring pan

Upside Down Chocolate Pear Cake

**Let me just say about the cake, which was all I could have hoped for and maybe even more, that 1) next time I make it, I want to add chili powder to the chocolate because I love spicy chocolate and 2) the Spring Form pan helps to make it easier to flip upside down, but needs to have a foil lined tray underneath while baking because the sugar will melt and seep out and start burning at the bottom of your oven.

Pie Crust Repair for the Pumpkin Pies

Someone brought flowers!

From Top Left Clockwise: Sous Chef and the amazing Butter Garlic Biscuits that someone brought; all the "kids"; Round 1 food; "Seafood" Turkey; Digging in; Green Bean Casserole; Creamed Onions

Leftover Friday began with Dunkin Donuts quality breakfast sandwiches and some oxtail soup. I say that they were Dunkin quality because when the last cousin woke up after everyone had eaten, he was handed one of the bagels with bacon, egg and cheese, and asked if it was from D&D, haha. I also had a Thanksgiving Leftover dinner get together later that night (can you tell this is my favorite holiday? I just never want it to end!). That was when I cooked the beer bird, which came out awesome, if I may say so myself.

From Top Left Clockwise: Leftover Dinner; Turkey; Bacon; Breakfast Bagel; Oxtail Soup; Model Emily; Hairdresser Jake & Alex; Silly Kristalynn

Turkey Wreath Pre-baking using leftover turkey, cranberry sauce, celery & crescent rolls for a Housewarming party Saturday night

All the little elves, aka cousins at work helping Angela put up the Christmas decorations on Saturday  (as per tradition!...one would think we are living Fiddler on the Roof)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a most Happy Holiday Season!

Wafels and Pies

I've been wanting to try Wafels & Dinges for the longest time - not only does it have a cool name, is sold out of a food truck, it has also been said to be quite delicious. My friend promised me he would take me one day via Twitter (source of all things true), and the Waffletruck concurred it was a good idea. I had been waiting for that day...which finally came last Monday!

Speaking of things good and delicious, at the last place that I worked, I saw a sign for Pie Face opening soon. It's an Australian chain which I had read about earlier because there was a day that they were giving out free pies...but alas they were too far away from where I worked :( BUT THEY STILL HAVE NOT OPENED THERE!!! I did run into one while walking down through Times Square one night (**cringes at thought of crowds in Times Square**), but we did not have time to wait on line that night [insert another sad face here]. 

Last Monday though, the universe decided to give me an evening of epic food adventuring, and not only did we make it to the Wafel truck, we also had time to pick up some pies from Pie Face on the way home.

I decided to go with the classic "Throwdown" at the Wafels & Dinges truck with spekuloos (like peanut butter and Nutella had a baby with extra spices) and whipped cream. I am actually getting hungry just writing about it right now...

The Wafel "Throwdown"

Then at Pie Face (do you hear the angels singing right now?), I decided to go with the Minced Beef & Tomato pie...STACKED!!! What does it mean to get your pie stacked you ask? It means that the pie of your choice is topped with mashed potatoes, gravy & mashed peas. How could I not get my pie stacked?!?! And the woman was so excited that I chose to do so too...she did a sort of "I get to make a stacked pie" dance. I'm all for dancing, so it was all good. I almost started dancing down the streets myself, but had to stop lest I spilled or mussed up my pie at all.

The wait was worth it for all of the above. I can't wait until the next time I come across the wafel truck or the next time I drag someone to Pie Face with me :)

Pie Face!!!!!

Eating Devouring my pie on the train - classy as always

Anita Raid Your Kitchen

I have recently, and by recently I mean last night, come up with an idea for a new YouTube series. "Anita Raid Your Kitchen." Get it? Anita...I need to...ok, I'm over it (but not really)...

Apparently I love to take over my friends kitchens and figure out how to make something based on what they have - it's like an adventure! It's not my kitchen, so I don't know what is there that I can use. Come to think of it...kind of sounds like how the show "Chopped" works - except I don't make things half as amazing as what they do on the show. Then again, I'm not a professionally trained chef...I just like to eat a lot.

So last night just hanging out at my friend's house for girl's night in and the natives started getting restless...so we started investigating the fridge and freezer...when I saw the pesto sauce and frozen shrimp and vegetables, I got kind of excited and asked if I could take over. Luckily, my friends are rather laid back about this sort of thing and said they enjoy being cooked for? I suppose that is why the restaurant business is still booming. 

Alex, whom I have done this to earlier last year and featured in a Carbonara post was present as well and fully supportive of my kitchen nazi-ness and took my criticism well when I got a little bit aggressive about the frozen bacon.

Here's how it went down:

Found: Frozen Shrimp, Frozen Bacon, Frozen Peas, Frozen Corn, Frozen Broccoli, Whole Wheat Pasta, Pesto

I gave her the task of cutting off slices of the very frozen bacon...check out those guns!!!

Getting a bit territorial/aggressive about the bacon

Sautee-ing everything together - look at how colorful it is!

Dinner, is served.

Banana Crepe Cake X 2

When I see bananas getting overly ripe, I used to make banana bread. Now, I'm kind of obsessed with crepe cakes ever since seeing Smitten Kitchen's post on banana crepe cake w/ butterscotch walnut topping.  I have made it once before following her directions exactly and it came out pretty well, but the filling was a little heavy and too cream cheese-y for my taste. So I started looking into seeing if I could find an alternative using something closer to what Lady M Bakery uses.

And here is why I love Smitten Kitchen - she had that too! "Gateau de crepe" was her post. Please note the use of the brulee torch, which cemented even more my desire to own a brulee kit (will be one of the first things on my wedding registry when that day comes...many many years from now). 

I ended up making the banana crepe cakes twice this week. Actually the first time was Monday morning (I had off from work - Happy Rosh Hashanah!!!), and I had been debating between the crepe cake versus banana bread due to time restraints because my cousins were visiting and leaving later that morning and I wanted to make them an awesome breakfast after the Pesto Potato Pizza & Skillet Lasagna Dinner the night before. 

But then I could only find 2 bananas, which wasn't enough for the banana bread (I was going to make banana bread ice cream sandwiches w/ pistachio ice cream), so I guess my decision was made for me. Then the filling called for 6 egg yolks, so I used the rest of the egg whites plus 2 more eggs to scramble together with the leftover peppers and cucumbers from dinner the night before. 

Afterwards, I did end up finding another banana in the fridge, so I blended together batter to make later during the week. Helped that I had leftover filling anyway. This happened around midnight tuesday night - very therapeutic I might add. Helps to have the batter all ready and I found the rhythm of just flipping crepes to be very calming after a long day.

Egg whites & Milk w/ Vanilla (I didn't have any vanilla beans on hand)

Custard on the stovetop

Filling/Custard coming together

Crepes on the pan

Melted chocolate to cover some coffee beans

The leaning tower of crepe cake

A lot less prep is needed when everything is already made

Some beautious crepes =)

Whole crepe cake

View of the layers

Potato Pesto Pizza & Tzatziki Sauce

Last night, in celebration of some cousins visiting and just because I selfishly wanted to try some new recipes, as below. The driving recipe being the Potato Pesto Pizza for which I saw in an email from Tablespoon a  week or so ago. And since I was making the main course for dinner, I might as well plan the whole thing - 'tis the only logical thing to do.

A few weeks ago, I had finally started compiling a Google Document of sites and recipes that I wanted to try. This was definitely something I should have done a long time ago but for some reason never bothered to start...oh well, better late than never! Looking through what I had already added to the list, I figured a Tzatziki Sauce from FoodRepublic would be easy enough to throw together with some raw veggies as I already had enough carbs with the pizza. Then I really wanted to try making Lasagna cupcakes, but had to accept the fact that it just wouldn't be time efficient nor did I have access to wonton wrappers for the shells and didn't have time to experiment with using lasagna noodles instead...but since I had said lasagna noodles and ground beef and tomatoes, I figured I'd make some skillet lasagna instead. Sadly, this was actually the thought process that I had going back and forth in my head for hours during work and even as I was running around the supermarket on my way home.

Was a bit panicked when I first got home, thinking everyone else was surely as hungry as I was and rushing around the kitchen like a chicken without its head. Finally I settled down a bit and figured I would calm down a bit after finishing at least one thing - Tzatziki Sauce it was!

Dicing Cucumbers

Beautiful Peppers

Greek Yogurt mixed w/ the cucumbers, chopped dill, olive oil & lemon juice

Plated Veggies

Next I rolled out the dough (the last of the dough pre-made from my last pizza adventures), and baked it in the oven while I prepared the toppings. Sad to say, I had used a pesto mix b/c I didn't have time to try to chip up fresh basil and pine nuts, but for the purposes of this pizza, I think there was enough going on to let that one slide...During this time I also started on cooking the lasagna noodles. For once, probably because I was in such a rush and I've made it before, I didn't document any of the lasagna process! Tres sad, I know. Hopefully the potato pesto pizza will make up for it in all its glory - 

Slicing Red Potatoes

Peeled Onions

Sliced Onions - some for pizza, some for the lasagna

Crust w/ Layer of Pesto

Layer of Mozzarella 

All toppings added

Out of the oven =)