Move over Marie!

Marie as in Marie Callender... Past weekend, I made a chicken pot pie for my honey because he loves them. I'm not much of a chicken pot pie person but I thought I'd give it a try for our anniversary. He's been resorting to the frozen kind, poor thing, or the next best thing at a restaurant. The recipe I used was not a simple one but my friend at work swears that this is THE recipe for it. If you know me about cooking, I'm inspired by recipes but I create my own versions, it's rare (almost never) that I follow recipes to the T. But I was determined to follow this one because it's a special one. :)

I studied the recipe and planned it all out. I got all the grocery shopping done including the white pearl onions. I've never seen them except the jarred ones. You see how much of a gourmet cook I am. I prepared the chicken the night before so it'll be ready to go the next day. I was mostly afraid of making the pie crust. Never made it before. Frankly, I'm quite afraid of making any kind of dough (except for cookies).

Next day, I started with the pie crust. And yes I made it by hand not resorting to an electric mixer or a food processor. I thought I'd really get down to the rustics of it. Right away, my honey saw that this was turning into labor of love. And boy was he right, I've never worked so hard for making one dish. Not to mention how much time it took. The recipe said I should cook all the vegetables separately. So I did. The bechamel sauce was simple but took patience to stir every minute and wait for it to reduce while multi-tasking chopping herbs that would go in afterwards.

Just as I was afraid, the dough didn't quite cooperate with me. It started to break apart when I rolled it out. But I managed to work it by kneading more and put it in the pie pan. Wheaww! Finally I got all the goodies in the pan, poured the sauce, and put the top crust over. It went in the oven for one hour.

Now I started preparing for the appetizer--iceberg lettuce salad. For this I didn't follow the recipe to the exact but I kept it pretty close I think. The salad was no labor compared to the pie. Quite tasty.

*Iceberg lettus salad with tomatoes, bacon, croutons, and blue cheese dressing*

By the time we were finished with the appetizer, ding! the pie was done. Smelled and looked good with slightly golden brown crust. When I cut into it though I could tell right away that the inside was too dry. Maybe I've reduced the sauce too much. I don't know. We ate it though. Tasted good minus the dryness. But the next day, I made extra bechamel sauce and it was million times better. Mmmm, now that was an excellent pie.



I would say that my first challenge of following a gourmet recipe was a success with room for improvement. Now I'm inspired to follow more recipes...maybe roasted chicken?

Fusion Power

Have you tried Korean barbeque, pasta, and cucumber & pear salad? All for one meal? I have. It was a quite of an odd and interesting combination but it was quite tasty. It wasn't just me, my honey liked it too. He's such a good sport for trying my experimental dishes. I felt the need to exercise my creative fusion power the other day. One, I had marinated Korean barbeque in the freezer that I've been wanting to eat. It's my mom's. :) Two, I had a bunch of parsley that I didn't know what to do with. Three, I felt like having cucumber in some sort of salad form. So I decided to make a fusion meal.

For the barbeque, just pan-fried it. Excellent!


With parsley, I made parsley pesto. Followed a recipe. Never made pesto so I was excited to make it. But I think I like the traditional version with basil better. I incorporated into cooked spaghetti. Turned out pretty good.


Now the cucumber salad. I diced the Korean cucumbers. I think they may be called Persian cucumbers too. Whichever you prefer to call them, they're the smaller ones. Mixed with diced Korean/Asian pear. Okay here we go again with the regional thing...you know these, these are the round ones with brown skin. Tossed with some sesame dressing and a tiny bit of red pepper flakes. It looked pretty and it tasted refreshing.


Oddly enough, everything went well together and we both enjoyed the meal with some sake. Now that's what you call a culinary adventure! Bon appetit!

Oh my gravy!

I'm a newby at cooking pork chop or any pork for that matter. So far pork is not my culinary friend. The taste may or may not be there but definitely texture is a disaster. I attempted to make a pork chop dish yet another time past weekend. This time I followed a recipe pretty exactly.

It's pork chop with gravy. I browned the two pieces of thick pork chop in a pan then took it out, set it aside. Next I cooked the diced carrots, onions, and celery. Made gravy with flour, chicken stock, and bit of butter. Then returned the pork to the pan and cooked it for an hour. Appetizer in the meantime was Brie cheese, apple, grapes and strawberries. Yummy! I figured after an hour swimming in the gravy the meat should be tender and juicy...ready to be devoured... NOT! Not all all. In fact, the worst so far. The meat was hard and tough, made my jaw hurt chewing on it. What am I doing wrong here?

But oh my gravy! The gravy was soooo good. I could just have the gravy with rice and I'll be a happy camper. I can definitely use the gravy over chicken. I'm feeling hopeless of pork chop journey. There is one more recipe I'd like to try though. Amber recommends brining. It may take some time to get over this pork failure but I'm willing to try one more time.

Friday Night Home Cooking

This week's Friday night meal was home cooked Baked Panko Sea Bass and Fusilli with Pan-fried Asparagus. Sounds fancy heh...it's not, it's all about how you name them, right? I generally don't follow recipes when I cook for different reasons (baking, on the other hand, is different). Mainly because I'm too lazy to complete the ingredient list so I often substitute. Besides, I'm not inclined to buy an atypical ingredient to make one dish. I'm too cheap and lazy for that. So I usually get inspired by recipes instead and just let my creativity take its role. :) This time was no different but closer to following them than other times.

For the main dish, Baked Panko Sea Bass-- I was inspired to use breadcrumbs for a fish fillet. I didn't have the type of breadcrumbs nor the fish the recipe called for but close enough. I had Panko breadcrumbs and sea bass. My first time using the Panko. In fact, I have limited experience with breading anything. Somehow it makes me nervous. I baked the fish in the 450 degree oven. I also made the yogurt sauce for it which was also included in the recipe. I didn't have lemon yogurt so well...I just added some lemon juice. Both fish and the sauce turned out good. The fish was nicely browned outside and flaky, juicy inside. The sauce accompanied it quite nicely, gave a good balance of crunchy, creamy and slight tangy.

The side dish was Fusilli with Pan-fried Asparagus. The inspiration here was to use the asparagus, Parmesan cheese, and my pasta-craving. So thumbing through the recipe book...voila! I found a recipe that had all three. The recipe called for evaporated milk but I didn't have it, so I just used regular low-fat milk. This was actually my first time dressing up the pasta with milk and cheese so I was quite excited. It turned out very good. Thanks to my honey who grated the Parmesan. He's my favorite (and only) sous chef... :)

We accompanied the meal with 2008 Chateau de Sancerre. We really liked this French white wine. It was still crisp and tasty even after it was not cold.

All in all, I thought it was a great meal. A pretty good success for "almost" following the recipes.