Unsweetened Chocolate Kerfuffle

Recipe: Chocolate-Espresso Snow Caps

Source: http://www.marthastewart.com/342387/chocolate-espresso-snowcaps

Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Ease: 5

Taste: 5

Leftover Value: 5

Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Down the Drain

When it rains it pours.  I love idioms, don't you?  Yet again, I have a Down the Drain rated recipe for you.  Even so, I must confess that I have made this recipe twice and that I have yet to throw it away.

Don't judge me.

What that says is, while this is a Down the Drain recipe for me, it still is worth trying because perhaps you might find yourself on the fence about it, as I am, or better yet, you may actually have a taste for it.

I get a lot of Canvas-On-Demand offers in my inbox.  Whenever I get them, I always think about having pictures from one of my blog posts printed on a 30 x 20  canvas to display in my kitchen or living room.  Pictures like this one are ones I often toy with printing.  Then I think about what my Hubby would say when he sees that I spent $30 on printing something of that sort.

Actually, it's not so much what he would say that worries me.  He wouldn't be mad that I'd spent money on it.  But he would definitely, definitely make fun of me.

While getting the dry ingredients sifted together, 4 ounces of bitter or semi-sweet chocolate need to be melted.  Do not do what I did the second time I made these.  I had two squares of bitter sweet chocolate and two squares of unsweetened chocolate.  I thought, 'What the hey, they are both chocolate.  I'm not running out and buying two squares of bittersweet chocolate just for this'.

While it didn't horribly affect the flavor, it gave them a bitter quality that, to me, only tastes good if warmed up and paired with a honkin' scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Yes, I said honkin'.

Deal with it.

So far, aside from my chocolate ignorance, this recipe was alright.  Not too difficult; a little sifting, a little blending, and life is good.

Here's another one of those pictures I'd like to hang on my wall.

This is the point where the recipe became trying...of my patience.  After mixing together the wet ingredients, the dry ingredients, and the chocolate, the batter needed to be wrapped in plastic and put in the freezer for about 45 minutes.

If you have read any of my posts about marinating foods, you know how I can't stand recipes that make me wait.

However, there certainly are foods worth waiting for.

This one is not.

After the batter has firmed up in the freezer, the next direction is to take it out and begin shaping the dough into 1-inch balls.

I forgot the second time around just how messy that eventually becomes.

Strike two.

You'll find that this recipe does not make many cookies.  The recipe says it yields 18, I can squeeze out around 25, but they are tiny.  I can't imagine with making 18 that they are much larger.

After forming the 1-inch balls, the cookie dough is then rolled in powdered sugar.

That part is fun, and a lot less dirty on your hands.

I like that.

They do look pretty when they first come out, but beware.  If you didn't roll the cookies in enough powdered sugar the sugar will start to melt and no longer be bright white but a wet brown color (some of the above cookies have the start of this going on them).

If done the right way (no unsweetend chocolate used) they do taste good, just as one would expect a chocolate cookie to taste, but they have their flaws, which certainly exceed their strengths.

Flaws:

Messy to make
Freezer wait time
Small batch
Small cookies

Final flaw:
I've had better.

That pretty much sums up why they are a Down the Drain recipe for me.  I had a student once who brought in these kind of cookies for a class party.  They were triple the size of mine, melted in your mouth, and probably consisted of the same amount of effort as these.

Those would certainly earn a Keep in the Strainer rating.

Mock Pillsbury Crescent Rolls

Recipe: Butter Crescents
Source: Great American Home Baking Recipe Card #4, but you can find it here:
http://www.recipelink.com/msgbrd/board_2/2007/NOV/21766.html
Time: 2 1/2 hrs, includes time for rising and baking
Ease: 6
Taste: 5
Leftover Value: Would love to tell you, but Hubby threw the leftovers away
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Down the Drain!

I hate rating recipes "Down the Drain", but after all, that is one of the main purposes of this blog.  To try out recipes and let you know how they tasted, if they were good leftover, and if I would ever make them again.  If I hadn't been bold enough to rate this one 'Down the Drain' hubby's reaction would have made it happen.

If we were rating them on looks though, they'd certainly pass. 

There were a lot of separate bowls needed for this recipe, something that I cannot stand.  I'm a big fan of one pot/bowl/pan recipes.  It makes my cooking experience so much the opposite of what it was last night: a clutter of chaos and screams of, "Why me?" 

Let's not talk about that.

What's worse about the above picture is that the mixture in my mixer (say that ten times fast: "The Mixture in my mixer...The Misher in my mizer, yeah I can't even do it twice) had to be heated on the stove top first.

Letting dough rise is one of the moments in the kitchen that truly tests my patience.  I know how important it is to allow it to rise, but waiting an hour for it to happen is asking a bit much.

What makes the whole rising process worthwhile is getting to punch the dough.  I love punching dough.  I should always keep some on hand in my fridge so that I can pull it out and punch it whenever I get frustrated.

But that rarely happens....

Wait....can you actually see my fist in that lump of dough?

This recipe had the audacity to then have me separate the dough and let it 'rest' for ten more minutes.  I can't honestly say I waited the full ten minutes.

This part was fun and reminded me a lot of making scones, another long, tedious, but delicious, process.

After flattening the dough into a circle, which mine surprisingly resembled, it is cut into six wedges.  My wedges seemed rather large to me...especially the one in the center of this picture which is clearly double the size of the two next to it.  If I was going to do this recipe again, I would either roll my circle thinner and cut more than six wedges, or split the dough into four circles instead of two.
  

Once you have the wedges, you roll the dough just like Pillsbury crescents are rolled.

And then, God forbid it finally be time to cook these bad boys, they need to sit for thirty minutes!  THIRTY minutes, people!

My impatience aside, the taste is truly why I will not make these rolls again.  Hubby ate one, but found the consistency to be too thick.  For a recipe which claims they are "melt-in-your-mouth" crescents, I found them to be more "stick-to-your-ribs" crescents.  Not that bread of that sort is a bad thing.  I love a good hunk of heavy bread and butter, but, not when I'm expecting light and airy.

I was willing to overlook this issue, since the next time I'd make them I would go into it with the knowledge that they would not be the Pillsbury Crescent Rolls that I'd expected.  However, when I thought long and hard about it (this was somewhere around the time that Hubby threw the nine leftover rolls in the trash) I realized that I can make a loaf of bread in my bread maker, that tastes much better, in the same amount of time and with a thousand less steps.

My conclusion therefore is, just buy the can.  If I find something else better along the way, I'll let you know.  I'm not sure any amount of effort can beat hitting a can with a spoon, popping it open, rolling the dough out, and then putting it in the oven to bake.

Finally, Hubby Makes a Mistake

I had planned today to write about something delicious that I had recently made.  Then I had an experience so disgusting that I knew I needed to share that with you instead.

On Tuesday morning, as Hubby was getting ready to leave for work, he asked me, "Could you throw a chicken breast in the microwave to thaw for me?"

*Note: He claims he never said microwave.  I know differently.

This is a perfectly normal and natural thing.  We buy a lot of chicken at a time.  We freeze it.  Then we choose a variety of ways to thaw it out.  Some of them are:

-Sitting in the microwave for a few hours to thaw
-Cold water bath for half an hour
-Turbo defrost option on the microwave
-Pulling it out the night before and letting it sit in the fridge

The last option almost never ever happens.  I do not think that far ahead.  In this case, I wish he had.

After enjoying my relaxing morning cup of coffee, I grabbed a chicken breast out of the freezer, placed it in a dish, and threw it in the microwave to sit and thaw while Hubby was at work.

I thought nothing of it until I was getting ready to make dinner, opened up the microwave, and saw the chicken breast.  It was the answer to all my problems.  I didn't need to thaw chicken because this had been already magically thawed for me.

I used Hubby's chicken breast for what I was making and in the midst of the crazy cooking storm that occurs anytime I am in the kitchen I kept reminding myself that I needed to grab another chicken breast to replace the one I had used.

My plan was that when he went to use the chicken breast and asked why it was still so frozen (considering it wouldn't have had a chance to truly thaw out in that amount of time) I would plead complete ignorance.

A wide variety of nonsense occurred when I began getting Hubby's original chicken set up for dinner.  I had two different people calling me, I was trying to book a hotel online, and I had just paused a Giada at Home episode that my grandmother had recorded for me.

No, I don't have cable.

Yes, sometimes it makes me sad.

Maybe not so sad when I think of how much of my time it would waste.

Regardless of all the hubbub that was occurring, I managed to grab Hubby his chicken and throw it into the microwave to thaw.

The night carried out as most of my night's normally do.  Yet, the chicken slipped from mind.  After all, it was Hubby's chicken.  In my mind, that meant I no longer needed to think about it.

It wasn't until today that the discovery was made.  Here's how it went.

It was mid-morning.  I was hungry.  I told myself I shouldn't be hungry, I had just eaten a blueberry muffin for breakfast at 8:30.  Still I was hungry.  Natural instinct said to eat another muffin, but the calorie count on the muffins told me not to.  Knowing I wanted to have a healthier snack, I decided to make oatmeal.  Delicious, I know.

If you cannot sense the sarcasm in my voice, please go eat a bowl of oatmeal and then tell me how much more delicious it is than a freshly baked blueberry muffin.

Point being?  It isn't.

I prepared the instant oatmeal in a bowl and opened the microwave to microwave it.

Then it hit me.  A smell so horrible, so pungent, so inconceivable, I honestly feel bad in just expressing it to you.  The only thing I can relate it to is five thousand bags of stinky garbage all compacted into a one-pound lump.  The smell doesn't sift through gently either.  It's not a smell that you think to yourself, "Hmmm, gee, maybe I need to take the trash out," or "Oooo, better get to scrubbing this out soon."

No.  It smacks you in the face and says, "HELLO! I'M HERE! NOPE, COVERING YOUR NOSE WILL DO YOU NO GOOD! AND BREATHING FROM YOUR MOUTH WILL ONLY MAKE YOURS EYES WATER".

For a second, tossing a grenade in my kitchen and just starting from scratch seemed ideal.

To say I didn't consider shutting the microwave, running out of the house, and leaving Hubby to the hell he had created in my kitchen, would be a lie.

I'm a toughie though, so I manned up.  I wasn't going to let a little bacteria infested chicken wreck my day.  I grabbed the dish it sat in and threw it beside the sink.  Somehow, in my mind, I was still thinking that I would be able to get it into my newly trash bagged trashcan and not have to take the bag outside.  If I had been clearly thinking about this, I would have just slid the chicken into the trash bag, said 'C'est la vie' to the fact I was wasting an entire bag on it and taken it outside.

But no.  I grabbed two Shop Rite shopping bags.  One for picking up the chicken.  The second for putting the chicken into so that I could magically conceal the horror raising smell.  (Note: It didn't work).

The most irking part was how warm the rotting chicken was.  I tried to ignore it, but the transformation that had occurred in that chicken over the course of two days has made me definitely not want to see raw chicken for at least a few days.

The one plus that I choose to see in this horrible situation is that clearly we don't use our microwave as often as I might have suspected.

And now, a few happier times with chicken...

Bruschetta Chicken 

Ranch Style Chicken 

(Uh, yes, that is bacon on top)

Healthy Fried Chicken with Pineapple Salsa

Gram's Magazine, Mom's Asparagus, and My Empty Fridge

Recipe: Brown Butter Tortellini with Toasted Garlic and Asparagus
Source: Woman's Day Magazine
http://www.womansday.com/recipefinder/brown-butter-tortellini-toasted-garlic-asparagus-recipe-wdy0513
Time: 25 minutes
Ease: 3
Taste: 8
Leftover Value: No leftovers, but I would imagine they are fabulous.  Perhaps even try them cold?
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer (said Hubby!)

Every month, my grandmother saves her Woman's Day Magazine for me.  She started this after she realized there were occasional contests held, starting with a random one which involved writing.  She said to me, "The clothing in there (the magazine) is corny, but you should enter the contests!  And they have yummy recipes in there too."

I am a magazine fiend, so it didn't take much convincing.  I have, sadly, had to give up some of my subscriptions because I just didn't have the time to get to them each month.  Whenever I do get the chance to veg out and leaf through magazines filled with recipes, house decorating tips, clothing combinations, and organizational strategies, I'm in heaven.

Last summer, in Woman's Day Magazine I found a fun ice cream recipe that doesn't require an ice cream maker.  That's a bonus for me.  Go here to read about it.

I hadn't tried any real food recipes until recently.  I do this thing where I tear out the recipes from magazines that I'm interested in.  I then let them pile up and either decide I don't really want to make them or I file them in my magazine recipe binder where they sit for a little longer before getting made.  Or thrown away.  It totally depends on my mood and my connection to the picture in the recipe.

My little brother, Jonathan, was over for dinner last Monday.  After flipping through my recipe binder, he found "Brown Butter Tortellini with Toasted Garlic and Asparagus", pointed to it, and gave the affirmative that he wanted to have that for dinner.  I found it to be a bit of a strange choice for him considering he hardly eats veggies, and the picture was chock full of the green of asparagus.

His mind was made up, so that was the recipe we would make.

What I liked about this recipe was that it had a short list of ingredients which did not involve an absurd amount of prepping.

What I did not like what that said ingredients were not items I currently had on hand.

After how easy and delicious this recipe was, I am definitely going to stock up on tortellini.  Hubby is a picky man when it comes to cheese filled noodles.  He does not like cheese raviolis, he does not like manicotti, he does not like stuffed shells.  You can see another reason why I hesitated in making this recipe.

His problem is ricotta.  He does not like ricotta.  He also does not like cottage cheese.

That makes me sad.

When we decided to have tortellini, I noted that they had ricotta in them, but decided Hubby would have to just live with it.

The good news is, I think he liked this recipe even more than I did.  I'm sure I have not brought him to the side of loving ricotta, but at least it is a start.

The next ingredient was lemon.  Note: I did have lemons in my fridge, but they were growing hair and other accessories so I decided to purchase a fresh one.

While the water for the tortellini is boiling, the lemon needs to be stripped of it's zest, then sliced thin.

This is fairly easy.  Once you've stripped the lemon almost bare, chop up the remainder and throw it into a cold pitcher of water.

Only if you're into that kind of thing.

Lay the lemon strips to the side and pull out the next two ingredients: asparagus and garlic.

Ah, both of these items should always be on hand in my house.  Sadly, that was not the case.  I'm thinking I have been slacking on grocery shopping.  Shhhh....don't tell Hubby.

I sliced the asparagus up into thirds.  Now, if you're one of those people that wrinkle your nose up to asparagus, don't knock it unless you've tried it.

I fell in love with asparagus completely by accident.  I was twelve and my mom and I were out on a mother-daughter-date in Princeton.  The weather was obnoxiously hot.  We had just been walking around the Institute for Advanced Study where my mom had once worked as a secretary.  It was time to eat, and we ran into the first restaurant we saw without thinking twice about what it looked like on the outside.

Our t-shirts and shorts were clearly too simple for this place.  The waiter came over straight backed, prim and propered up, and handed us our very short menus.  The only thing we cared about was the water on our table.  After we had completely emptied our water glasses we began looking over the menu.  There were only five or six items listed, and they were all a mixture of French and English.  I peeked over my menu at my mom, wondering if we were going to stay.  The prices were much higher than we'd ever, ever, spent on a mother-daughter-date.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Well, the only thing I see here that I like is filet minon," I said with hesitation.  "But, I mean, it costs a lot.  Do you think we should leave?"

My ever classy mom said no, that we were going to stick it out here, so long as there was something on the menu I'd eat.

"What does asparagus taste like?" I asked looking at the side that came with my over priced steak.

"Grass," she answered.

While that still today is my mother's (and most other people's) opinion of asparagus, that day I found a vegetable that I actually loved.

Melt some butter in a skillet.

Toss in your delicious, non-grassy asparagus.

Chop up two cloves of garlic and add it to the skillet.

Sprinkle in a little salt...

and pepper.

After the asparagus and garlic have cooked in the butter for a few minutes, add the lemon zest.

If you've timed your tortellini properly, they should be done boiling about now and be ready to add to the skillet.  If you're an over achiever like me, they have probably been done for about five minutes.  I just ran a little cold water over them to keep them from sticking and let them wait it out in the sink.

Here is an ingredient I didn't have fresh on hand or even in my spice rack.  In fact, I don't think I've ever even seen it before.

Tarragon.

FYI: It smells a lot like black licorice.

FYI: I'm not a fan of black licorice.

Add the tarragon to the skillet.

Then top it off with some fresh Parmesan (finally, something I already had in my fridge!).

At this point, I just let the skillet sit on the stove top for a few extra minutes with the heat on low to melt the cheese.  Then I tossed it around a little before serving.

Here's how yummy this side was, I made it for Jonathan and Hubby on Monday.  Then, I made it again on Wednesday.

The only complaint Hubby had was that there was a little too much lemon flavor.  But if you're into that, like I am, you can just ignore comments like that.