Learn to cook

I just made my very first risotto (wild mushroom and pea) and I think it turned out rather wonderful if I may say. In truth, I have never had a professionally-prepared risotto, so I’m not sure what it should taste like ideally, but I think mine turned out well enough—the peas are particularly lovely and the rice is creamy as it should be.

What I learned from this experience, though, is that to cook, you have to love all of the ingredients you use. Risotto is the first dish I’ve made that I’ve had to really pay attention to and I love that feeling. I tend to things…I like to take care of people, to tend to things, so I suppose in cooking, I should feel no different, but I have lately.

This was really the first time i felt like I was making something versus just putting ingredients together. This is what cooking should feel like and this is exactly what I mean when I say I want to learn to cook.

Maybe it was just the risotto’s requisite tending, but this is what cooking should feel like.

I’ve discovered a cupcake recipe I just adore…it’s an Ina Garten, of whom I’m not a huge fan, but her cupcakes are delicious.

It’s a rich chocolate cupcake with fluffy peanut butter icing, both of which are of an impeccable flavor, but what I love about the recipe is that it’s precise. I’ve made a lot of cupcakes, loving the whimsy of the whole process, but most of the recipes I’ve tried leave me with bowls of leftover icing, or one pan of perfect cupcakes and one of burnt or underdone ones, etc. Something’s just a little off.

Not so with these. They’re lovely, simply. The sour cream and coffee add a richness that you wouldn’t expect and the peanut butter is fluffy and light to counterbalance the decadent chocolate.

All in all, a favorite that I can’t wait to serve during a legitimate gathering.

I was exhausted and grumpy last night, so things didn’t turn out as perfectly as I’d hoped, but I made chewy granola bars, garlic tofu mashed potatoes, and a lovely broccoli coulis.

The granola bars turned out rather nicely, I think. A nice quick breakfast or a relatively nutritious snack. I may, however, stick with the Kashi bars to save quite a bit of time. It depends on my general mood with this one, I think.

I used reds for the mashed potatoes, which I knew I shouldn’t have done. Reds were all we had in the house, but they ultimately make incredibly elastic and starchy mashed potatoes, which isn’t an ideal consistency. Still, with the addition of garlic, tofu, half&half, cream cheese, and pepper, they taste absolutely incredible. Next time, though, boiling potatoes all the way.

The coulis is incredible! It’s meant to be served over the potatoes and couldn’t be a better accompaniment. Boiled broccoli, lemon juice, butter, salt, and pepper all pureed to a thick gravy-like consistency—it’s rather perfect.

I didn’t take the recipes with me when I went to the grocery store, so I think if I do this again (which I will), I’ll have to measure exactly and make sure I do have the requisite number of potatoes and pounds of broccoli, but as it stands—with my bad mood and my rather flagrant disregard for the precise, I think all three turned out nicely.

On-a-whim granola bars were not a success. Were, in fact, a dismal failure as I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Some peanut butter? Let’s see…honey? A little butter? These will stick together, sure!

...yeah, not so much.

So I’ve gathered up a workable recipe and will try again tonight.

For some reason, all I’ve wanted to do today is cook. Last night, I made absolutely adorable spinach lasagna roll-ups (typical ricotta/mozzarella with spinach filling, but rolled up in lasagna noodles and cooked in marinara) which turned out rather beautifully, I think. Today, I made two-bean sloppy joes on focaccia rolls (I didn’t make the rolls as I haven’t graduated to bread-making just yet), roasted red pepper/zucchini sandwich spread (an Alton Brown original), and a new batch of chocolate chip muffins are 3 minutes away from buzzing.

I wasn’t wholly satisfied with my last batch, so this time, I’m using fresh baking powder (a no-brainer, really), oats, brown sugar, applesauce and oil, and 62% cacao chocolate chips. They’re still snacky, just all-grown-up.

Oven’s buzzing—let’s see how they are.

...hold, please…

Oh, wow. They’re lovely. Finally, I’ve found a chocolate chip muffin recipe I like! Next time, I think I’ll go for milk chocolate chips, as the oats are really more suited to a slightly sweeter chip, but aside from that, absolutely delicious.

So very brilliant, this!

I’ve begun to seriously imagine myself as a literary critic, though if this sudden love for cooking sticks, we’ll have to see where it leads…

I was oddly craving chocolate chip muffins last week, so on my lunch break, I bought a bag of chocolate chips and when I got home, I made a double batch.

They turned out splendidly! The baking powder I used, however, had been sitting in the cupboard since I was 16, so they could be a bit fluffier, but regardless, a delightful recipe and a fantastic snack!

I may have my very first recipe-free delicious casserole down to a science!

Granted, the recipe itself has been appropriated from a legitimate recipe card, but as I make it again and again, I’ve started to tweak and memorize it just a bit.

Yum!

(I’m getting there. Slowly.)

Just before my birthday a few months ago, I received a package addressed by Amazon and subsequently sent by my ex-complete-disaster-of-an-almost-boyfriend Jason, who tends to send me gifts even when I expressly ask him to please don’t. In any case, the point here is that he’d shopped from my Amazon wishlist and sent the Rilke I’d been dying to read, the NFT guide to Boston over which I’d been nearly salivating, and a cookbook by Angela Shelf Medaris that I’d been really wanting to try. I’ve since made a few recipes from it and amazingly, haven’t screwed any of them up even a little. They’re amazing, they are.

Tonight, at the end of a long productive day, I decided to make her Black Bean Chili (cleverly named, non?) so that I’d have something to pack for tomorrow’s lunch. I altered it just a little (fewer chilies, more tomatoes) and truth be told, it turned out fabulously.

I’m still cooking from recipes and I haven’t defined any signature dishes, which is really what I mean when I say “learn to cook,” but in the meantime, I’m happy making brilliant meals from cookbooks. Someday, I’d love to be a sort of artist with my meals, but for now, this will do. :)

On a complete whim, I made a Food Network recipe the other day—Iced Citrus Crackle Cookies. Extravantly named, but a really rather simple cookie.

I chose lemon because well, I like lemon and because we have lemons and so I set to work. And they turned out quite splendidly, all in all. Granted, the bottoms are a little browner than they should be, but I’m blaming that on my lack of parchment paper or a silicone mat or, y’know, a high-quality cookie sheet.

Slowly but surely, yos, I’m making my way.

I’m not a baker. Very simply, no matter what I do, any type of dessert I concoct inevitably sinks, puffs, burns, or tastes awful. Yet I remain ambitious because well, that’s what I do. Yesterday, someone mentioned red velvet cake and as I’d never had it, I thought I’d make the attempt. It’s not pretty, but it tastes delicious.

I figure it’s best to perfect taste before moving on to plating, eh?