try a new recipe once a month

Tatoes and butter are heading for an overnight in the fridge. The mixture is a little… sticky? Not sure how that bodes for tomorrow.

Okay, second take of Quinoa was a cinch!

I soaked, re-soaked, and rinsed, then added to the pot with 1.5 cups of water instead of 2. Brought to a boil, then left simmering for 12 minutes and it was perfect. Woot!

I tried eating a bit with some Parmesan and green onions, but the green onions I had were really overpowering. I’m going to try it with different stuff throughout the week, though in the long run I think I may stick to The Whole Kitchen recipe.

Okay – making this was a bit of a nightmare, but of my mostly own doing.

Recipe: http://thewholekitchen.blogspot.com/2009/07/cinnamon-spiced-quinoa.html
Tutorial: http://www.squawkfox.com/2008/08/12/how-to-cook-quinoa/

First, I began soaking the quinoa, thinking I would get a mesh strainer at lunch, but last night was a late night and the strainer shopping got put off for after work (and a nap… and swimming). So I think it soaked a little too long. Also, in the tutorial it says to dump the water and soak in clean water after two hours. I did do that, but lost some of it in the process since I was just using my hands to strain it. And then I lost more when I was getting ready to cook it because the strainer I bought was way too small (I blame lack of sleep).

Okay, so all strained and in the pot, I added water—without taking into account how much quinoa went down the drain. Oops.

Anyway, once the quinoa, water, vanilla, brown sugar, and cinnamon stick were in the water, the boiling and simmering were a cinch. Unfortunately because of the water issue I ended up having to strain it, since it was cooked before all the water was boiled. Also unfortunately when I strained the water out, the sugar, vanilla, etc. went with it.

So, I took it out, fluffed it, and added half a tablespoon of butter and a couple teaspoons of sugar back in.

And it was good! I think it’ll be better cooked properly, but it was really good. The one thing I felt it was missing was pecans, but I really like pecans and cinnamon together.

I’m going to try cooking it again on Wednesday, a bit more carefully, hopefully with a bigger strainer from IKEA, and a lot more sleep. Plus, I’ll take pictures!

01. September 2009: Cinnamon Spiced Quinoa. I want to start off with something easy and try something new (quinoa at all is new to me).

02. October 2009: Gnocci. Something I’ve wanted to try for forever. I’m going to try it using Pamela’s Baking Mix.

03. November 2009: Peanut Butter Finger Mini Cheesecakes. A use for leftover Halloween candy. :D

04. December 2009: Fudge. I haven’t picked an exact recipe, but I plan on making a boatload of fudge for the holidays.

05. January 2010: Granola bars – I’ll modify the recipe in 1000 Gluten Free Recipes by Carol Fenster. I’ve made granola, but not bars.

06. February 2010: Hush puppies – also from 1000 GF Recipes, but I’ll sub the sorghum blend with Pamela’s. If that doesn’t work, I’ll retry later with something else (but not sorghum, it doesn’t agree with me).

07. March 2010: Pita bread. I need to get Bette Hagman’s book for this. I put this in March because it will require special flours, and hey, tax return! Also, not so hot out yet that the oven will cook the apartment.

08. April 2010: Quiche – undetermined recipe. It’s something I want to try. I might make a pie crust, I might not.

09. May 2010: Flourless Chocolate Cake – not sure on this recipe, either. I have a few saved.

10. June 2010: Roasted Cinnamon Nuts. This may get moved up and replaced. I don’t know if I can hold out almost a year to make them.

11. July 2010: Crumpets!. That recipe uses a flour mix that has “gluten free wheat starch” (seriously, wtf?!), but I bet I can find a mix over here to at least try it with.

12. August 2010: Ravioli. This’ll require making my own pasta, so, a big challenge for me.

I’ve finally started cooking again. I know, over a year! But I’m sorting it out, finally. I’ve actually cooked three new things recently – corn tortillas, granola, & poblano enchiladas.

Tonight I’m sitting down with my cookbooks and Evernote recipes and coming up with a 12 month plan. One recipe per month, and then I’ll finally clear this goal and move on.

I found out recently that I have a gluten intolerance, so no more wheat, rye, or barley (or anything that might be cross contaminated) for me. I do want to jump in to learning this new way of baking/cooking, but the supplies are crazy expensive, and I’m having to slowly acquire all new spices, so it may be a bit until I get in a cooking groove again.

I’m finally making good biscuits. I haven’t tried it with a traditional recipe yet, but whipping cream biscuits (2c flour, 1.5T baking powder, a bit of salt, and 1c heavy whipping cream), pressed down to one inch, and cut into 9 squares, but not separated at 450F for 15 minutes = very tall, fluffy, and yummy. Yay!

Besides the baked cheese sticks last month (which I made several times because they were stupidly good), I also played with wonton wraps. Those were overbaked a bit, but still alright. I mostly did garlic cream cheese, but put nutella in a few others. Next to try ravioli with them.

I’m not sure what to work on this month. Maybe homemade mac & cheese? I still, sadly, use a box, because I can’t seem to get it not-greasy without using American.

Biscuits still flat. Made really yummy baked mozzarella sticks, though.

I’m going to try rolling the biscuits to 1 inch next time. Something’s gotta work eventually… right?

I still haven’t perfected the biscuits. They may be my downfall.

In March I made two pies: one a Tollhouse Pie recipe from a friend, and one just off the cuff—homemade chocolate pudding minus some of the liquid, homemade whipped cream, and some nuts on top in a pie shell. So you could say March was pie month. I may have another pie month, saaay… around November? ;D

I’m going to try the biscuits some more (I collected a ton of recipes from a group I’m in), but what I really want to get to this month is gnocchi. I’ve never had it but I want to try it. And soon—pasta from scratch. I thought about trying it with lasagna first, but thinking now I may keep it to just some pasta and sauce for a first go. Keep it simple.

I’m thinking of trying baked or pan cooked cheese sticks this week. I’ve never done well with deep frying them and I’m not a big fan of deep fried foods anyway.

Since I couldn’t do biscuits again until I got to the store to get more baking powder, I went ahead and did the pretzels one more time, trying a third recipe. One of the Good Eats episodes on my TiVo was Pretzels!

These ended up more or less a combination of everything, and I think as perfect as I can get them. I learned the reason they’re not “perfect” is that I’m unwilling to do a lye soak (I’m just not that extreme). That’s a big relief! I thought I was doing things wrong within the methods I was using.

I also learned there is a very fine line in the baking soda bath between not-enough-time-to-brown and gooey-in-a-bad-way. One recipe said over a minute on each side, another said 30 seconds altogether! I found that for me, using a frying pan large enough to hold five cups of water (with 1/3 cup of baking soda), which is my largest at the moment, 23 seconds on each side was pretty much the line. 15 seconds wasn’t nearly long enough, and 26 was when it started absorbing water. If you’re very observant you can see it start to puff—just take a couple seconds off of that for the next.

Some might prefer an egg wash for shine, but I still prefer the butter as a salt-attachment device. I also prefer just using kosher salt to buying pretzel salt, since I prefer less salt in general.

The half-and-half wheat and white, while reducing some of the flour seems a good combo. The recipe I ended up with called for 4.5 cups of AP flour, and I did 2 cups each of AP and WW.

I really ended up with several great recipes out of this—both the straight-to-baking edition and the boiled-in-baking-soda version, and the straight white and the more nuanced whole wheat mixture variations. Any are better than the frozen supermarket and fast food versions, though probably inferior to a good pretzel stand pretzel (I’ve never had one of those). Not to mention additional applications such as pretzel hot dogs for the husband or cheese filled pretzels for me.