After nearly 5 months away from home traveling, it was with immense joy that I returned to my own kitchen. All of the recipes on Pinterest and on blogs that had tempted me in late night bouts of homesick web surfing were finally within my reach. I went on a rampage stocking up on ingredients, picking out recipes to try first, and then diving into my stacks of pots and pans and favorite utensils. It's been a busy few weeks, trying some out on my husband that I had perfected last year while away from him, then trying out the new ones, then my family arriving for the holidays and pulling out more. Here I will catch you up on the ones I managed to snag photos of before the item was tastily consumed.
One of the attempts involved my first try at ravioli from scratch. I probably won't repeat this again without proper equipment, but Talea has encouraged me to try again, so maybe I will. I made up a butternut squash filling instead of this recipe's recommended filling of pumpkin. The filling was tasty with only goat cheese. They turned out too thick though and didn't cook through, ending up soggy and hard.
One of the attempts involved my first try at ravioli from scratch. I probably won't repeat this again without proper equipment, but Talea has encouraged me to try again, so maybe I will. I made up a butternut squash filling instead of this recipe's recommended filling of pumpkin. The filling was tasty with only goat cheese. They turned out too thick though and didn't cook through, ending up soggy and hard.
I've always been tempted by the smell of those roasted nuts in malls and decided to make my own for the holidays, based on this recipe. They turned out very tasty and no one could stay out of the container.
Today I needed something extra to go with our left over soup for lunch and decided to try out this tasty recipe for garlic buttermilk biscuits. I had buttermilk left over from earlier breakfasts and about to expire, and garlic is always a hit in our home. I loved how they flaked and fell over in the oven while baking.
When I asked my sister what one dessert she would really like to have for Christmas, I couldn't convince her to any pies or fudges, traditions in our family, but we finally agreed on chocolate macaroons, tasty lumps of coconut with lots of chocolate stirred in. Because of the coconut's fineness they turned out more like no-bakes than light and chewy macaroons, but once again, that container kept opening up again and again while my family was here.
One of the biggest hits was a recipe my mom recommended from her cooking club, a curried red-lentil soup with dried cherries. This ended up being our Christmas lunch with my parents and it was very tasty with some toasted sourdough bread and sweet potato fried patties. I don't like chunky stuff in my soups so I ended up pureeing the whole batch with a hand blender, excepting the cherries.
Much tastiness!
Yum! Those biscuits look amazing. Did I tell you about the flop biscuits I made the other day? See, I followed the recipe...of course, I put in oil instead of butter, and less butter than requested, and some water to make up for it, and a lot of whole wheat flour. I don't know what went wrong. They were like lumps of flour moistened up with water.
ReplyDeleteThe cherries work in the lentil soup? Interesting. Do you like it better with the cherries? I'll have to try this. Sounds delicious.
Biscuits are my specialty :) They do have a whole stick of butter cut into them though :) I learned from a Southern cook and there is no substitute for butter or buttermilk. The flakes of cold butter is what helps make biscuits flaky and fluffy, so cutting that out and putting in oil would make them more lump like. I'll have to look for healthier biscuit recipes and see if there are ways to get around that and use less butter!
ReplyDeleteThe cherries are actually quite a nice contrast in the soup, with the coconut milk and the cilantro it makes for an interesting combination but the cherries are definitely a highlight. It was relatively easy to make just blending it all, then I didn't have to chop the carrots up so small.