[Inez] Curtains

This is my first legitimate beautiful post, as mine are pretty much always delicious (except the orchids, for which I can take no real credit whatsoever). It's a pretty good one, too. See, Celeste and I kind of share a room (ending today -- whoa). Before I went to college, she and Christina shared a room. After I left, she got my room, except when I was home on breaks.

Anyway, our parents finally let us paint over the wallpaper that came with the house, and the color scheme we picked was pale blue with darker blue trim and purple curtains.

So I finally made the curtains! Looks nice, right?

Below you can see the light shining through the polka dot trim. It's kind of a fun, pretty effect.

[Inez] Basil-herb quiche with savory crust

I found this recipe online a while ago, and I'm afraid to say I copied it down without noting who the credit should go to. I did modify it a bit, so maybe it's okay? It's supposed to be a mushroom quiche, but ended up being a herb-corn-cheese quiche. Serves 5-6.

Crust

• 1/3 c cold unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cflour
• 1 t thyme (preferably fresh)
• 1/8 - 1/4 t salt
• 1/4 t pepper
• 2 T (or more as needed) cold water
• 1 t white vinegar

Add the herbs to the flour:

Cut butter into the flour mixture:

Then mix in water and vinegar (slowly), until just moistened. Pat into a ball and form a disc, which you will then cover and refrigerate until I tell you to stop.

Filling

(preheat oven to 350F)

• 1 t olive oil
• 1/4 - 1/2 medium red onion, diced
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• kernels from 1 cob fresh sweet corn
• 8 eggs
• 2 T fresh chopped basil
• 1 1/2 t oregano
• 1/8 t nutmeg
• 1/4 t pepper
• 1/2 t salt
• ~ 4 oz ricotta
• 1/2 c cream
• some grated aged gouda (or other delicious cheese)

First, saute onion and garlic on oil for 1-2 min. Add the corn and saute some more.

Mix the herbs, salt, and pepper into the eggs. Take the crust out of the fridge.

Add the cheeses and cream, mix.

Roll out the crust out. Put it in your pie pan, pinching the edges. This recipe makes a nice, thick crust. (If you look closely you can see the thyme -- yum!)

Scatter onion mixture on the crust, then pour the egg mixture on top.

Bake for 40-50 min at 350F.Let it sit for a few minutes after you take it out (before devouring it in one sitting).

Review: You can pretty much mess with the filling as much as you want. The original recipe I was using didn't call for cream, which is a travesty as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand, it did call for goat cheese. I sent my sister to get goat cheese and the brought me cottage cheese, so I used the ricotta cheese we had in the fridge instead. I also considered adding things like yellow zuchini and broccoli, but in the end balked at the chopping. I highly recommend keeping the basil, however. It's delicious. The crust is also phenomenal. Ruby said it was more crackery than our usual crust -- this may have been partly because the recipe called for only 1 1/2T water which wasn't nearly enough, so it did get handled a fair bit as I added more and more water (probably close to 3-5 T in the end). However, the effect was good, and this is a really good savory crust. I'm thinking substitute the thyme for sage when making chicken pot pie...?

[Inez] Birthday cake (chocolate, of course)

In my family, while our birthday cakes have different trappings -- flavored frosting, fruit filling, etc -- they're almost always the same cake. Chocolate compost cake. Except for Celeste -- she the adventurous one (who doesn't really like chocolate). Anyway, Jamie's birthday was July 30, and she likes German Chocolate Cake.

Ruby made the cake and I made the icing. It has a chocolate ganache between the layers, hidden cleverly (if I do say so myself) behind a ring of coconut-pecan frosting, topped with more coconut-pecan. I actually did end up frosting the sides, too, but I thought it looke pretty like this. And delicious.

Oh, and the beautiful in the background (the bouquet), that was my doing as well. Well, really mostly Ruby's doing, since she grew all the flowers.

[Elise] The final afghan!

I finished the afghan sometime in late April, or else in early May. The color is not done justice by digital cameras. It is soft and cozy, yet also very breathable, and my only complaint is it's tendency to shed little purple pills all around my room.


And here it is, looking much more appealing on my bed (in Denmark) than the white sheet ever did.


On other knitting notes, the slippers went mysteriously missing, so as far as pictures are concerned, they never existed. I also fell into an amazing yarn store in San Francisco with some friends and bought some wool to make myself a nie pair of winter wool sock, to be updated once I get the right sixe needles.

Angelfood Cake

So, after our failed Pots du Creme, we had left over egg whites. Our answer? Let's make some angelfood cake! The process made it clear why people don't generally just make it on a 'let's see what's in the cupboard' sort of whim. The recipe was a pretty standard one, but with a few tweaks in the dry ingredients.




Mixing the eggs and sugar took a long time until it was the right consistancy. We omitted the cream of tartar, because we didn't have any. Once it was all ready we added the dry ingredients.


The flour (which we used all-purpose instead of cake flour) called for being sifted five times, and having never made angelfood cake before, we obliged. Then because we didn't have much to put on the cake we decided to add a teaspoon of cinnamon, and then sift five times, again.

We baked the cake in a loaf pan because we didn't have a bundt pan, and spread it as evenly as possible. When it came out the top 1/8th of an inch had the texture and look of merengue. The inside was squishy and moist. It was a nice balance.

Here are two slices together, topped with strawberries! Yum.

Failed pots de creme still taste good

[Inez] We promised you we're use the ramekins, so a few days ago (yes, we're behind in posting) we set out to make raspberry pots de creme, like Ella and I made a few months ago. Except this time I had the genius idea to blend the raspberries (and blackberries) and incorporate them directly into the pots to creme, rather than leaving them whole.


I'm just going to ruin the ending for you and tell you that this was a terrible idea.


Oh, and also we bought chocolate bits, so there was no way to forget to chop the chocolate.


What you see above is the egg yolks with the blended blackberries and raspberries. It's kind of pretty, right? Pretty, but lethal to pots de creme everywhere. See, the texture turned out really grainy and weird, and the custard never quite set. My guess is that all the juice from the berries added way too much liquid to the recipe, not to mention way too much sugar. These babies were really sweet.



We used the exact same recipe as Ella and I used before, so I won't post it again. The only difference was that rather than putting whole raspberries in the bottom of the ramekin before pouring on the custard, we blended them and added them directly to the custard itself. Thus I can safely say that the only culprit for the weird texture can possibly be the blended berries.


Based on this failed experiment, I can make some recommendations.


First of all, if adding much fruit to a custard, use some unsweetened and some bittersweet chocolate, rather than all bittersweet.


Second of all, if you insist on blending fruit and then adding it to a custrd recipe, please strain off the juice or boil it down or something beforehand. Also, use a Vitamix if you have it, to pulvurize those little seeds. Getting berry seeds stuck in your teeth while eating custard really kind of sucks.


But really, if you want flavored pots de creme, I'd recommend adding a little bit of liqueur or extract or something highly concentrated like that. That way you can control just exactly how much liquid you're adding to the recipe. I think you'll be much more successful this way.


Elise and I are going to try to make time to re-do the pots de creme, only this time I suspect they will just be chocolate.

REUINTED

As you can see, we have been reunited!!! Yesterday afternoon Inez arrived in the rainy city of Copenhagen, and promptly slept for 5 hours as Elise finished writing her [theoretically] 14 page [we won't mention the realistic number] paper on Viticultural Soil Management. It was an exciting first day.


[Inez] Check it out, I got ramekins! Just about everything in Denmark is mad expensive, BUT I saw these ramekins in a grocery store for 5 kroner each (a little under a dollar). I got really excited because I have a set of Pyrex ramekins I got for about $5, but all the sets of ceramic ones I've seen run closer to $20. So I jumped at the opportunity to buy a nice set of ceramic ramekins for $4! "Why do I care?" you might be asking yourself. I'll tell you why: Elise and I promise to make something both beautiful and delicious in them before we leave Denmark. Okay? Cool.


[Elise] Mmm broccoli! With final papers and travel, my pantry and fridge shelves were pitifully empty. One of the key goals of today (aside from seeing pretty things like the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, in the background above) was to stock up on food. We bought lots of veggies for dinner then next few nights and lots of fruit for tomorrow morning.

On the menu for tonight. CURRY! I mainly just threw things together as I went along, and the end result, while delicious, still tasted like it was lacking something. Although the flavor was lacking, the texture of everything was excellent, so I'll give you a walkthrough of the process I tend to use when cooking curry.

First I (or in today's case, Inez) cut everything up, potatoes and carrots get cut up into bite sized chunks before boiling until tender (or just short of tender).





The ingredients. Today's curry: potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, chicken (not pictured), broccoli, baby corn, corn (not pictured), pineapple, pineapple juice, coconut milk, curry powder, and plain yogurt (not pictured).

While the root veggies are boiling, I heated up a very large, deep, skillet, coat the bottom in oil, and begin to sautée the onions and garlic (today I used slightly lower heat than normal and didn't burn the garlic!)

Once the onions begin to get translucent, I added thawed chunks of chicken breast. I continued sautéing until the chicken was cooked through.

Raw meat is gross!

Next I added the broccoli and baby carrots then drizzled a bit more oil (I was using canola) over the topbefore mixing them in. While I did this Inez drained the carrots and then I added those as well.

After about a minute or two more of sautéing, I added what was quite a small can of coconut milk, and some curry powder. after this was all mixed together I added about half of the pineapple juice from the canned pineapple, which was too much for the small can of coconut milk. To even it out I added about a third of cup of plain yogurt. Other curries I've made, I've just used whole milk and some pineapple juice and it tastes fine.

Add more curry until it tastes right.

The last thing I added was the pineapple and the corn. I mixed up everything really well and let to corn sink into the liquid at the bottom. Then I covered the pan and let the whole thing simmer for 3-5 minutes.


[Inez] Elise is really good at waiting, even when she's weak with hunger.

After letting everything simmer for a bit, we served up. Elise is right, it was missing something. You know how sometimes your belly feels full on the top, but not on the bottom? It was kind of like a flavor equivalent of that-- the flavor lacked fullness, somehow. I think it wanted more cumin, but it might have been something else as well. What's the complementary color [flavor] for curry?