Limoncello

OK, so the thing about summer is that it's so frickin' hot that I never really have any motivation to cook anything. Who wants to stand in front of a hot stove/oven when it's 95 and humid? I mean, yes, I have A/C, but just knowing that the air outside is thick enough to swim through really takes away a person's appetite. So lately all I really want to do after work is sit on my couch, in my air conditioned apartment, and suck down an endless stream of cold beverages. Frozen margaritas, rum punch, lemonade, daiquiris, agua frescas...etc etc. 

After a string of recent posts on summer beverages, my friend Karen accused me of getting lazy with my blog. How rude! I obviously did that one post about stuffed burgers two weeks ago, and then there was the mille feuille post last weekend...and before that there was the...uh...Ok fine. I've been making a lot of drinks lately. Like I said, it's hot, and all I want to do is drink stuff. Whatever.

And this limoncello recipe wasn't a total walk in the park. I had to peel eight lemons. Eight! By hand. Without a vegetable peeler. Have you ever tried peeling a lemon with a butcher knife? Not easy, especially when you have to manually remove the pith from the peel too. Phew. Talk about cramped hands.

But aside from the lemon-peeling, this limoncello really wasn't too hard to make. It was more a matter of patience, since the peels have to be soaked in vodka for four whole days, and then once simple syrup is added the mixture needs to sit overnight before it's strained. After that, the stuff still has to chill for a couple hours before it's served. I am not a patient person, so I skipped the last two steps. I let the lemon-infused vodka and syrup marinate for about an hour and a half before I decided I just had to have a taste. 

Whew, this stuff is much stronger than I expected. I don't know why I thought it would be less strong -- it's just vodka and sugar water, after all. Very tasty though -- sweet and lemony and refreshing. But, probably would be better served chilled, as intended.

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of the Food Network's Giada De Laurentiis.

New Orleans-Style Bread Pudding With Whiskey Sauce

Happy belated Mardi Gras, everyone! I was planning to make New Orleans-themed foods for Fat Tuesday  this year -- gumbo, jambalaya, king cake, beignets, etc. -- but work this week has been all kinds of hectic, and I was too tired to cook anything but leftovers in the microwave. Now that Mardi Gras is over, and St. Patty's Day is around the corner, I was sort of thinking that this recipe could kind of represent both occasions, since bread pudding and whiskey are traditional Irish foods, and Emeril Lagasse tells me this pudding is "New Orleans-style," whatever that means. 

Bread pudding is one of those wonderful, mysterious foods that  I didn't discover until fairly recently. I'd seen it on menus and in display cases at various cafes, but nothing about the name or appearance enticed me to try it. Then Karen and I decided to have dinner at the Circle Bistro before our annual date to see the Nutcracker, and chocolate bread pudding was the dessert offering for the prix fixe meal we both ordered. One bite, and I was in love. The pudding was dense and rich and succulent, like an extra moist chocolate cake. From that day on, I was sold on bread pudding because I figured if chocolate bread pudding tasted this good, how bad could the other variations be?

Bread pudding really doesn't look very appetizing when it's being made, does it? After all, it's just soggy bread sitting in a pool of cream. But it smells fantastic, even before going in the oven. Sweet and cinnamon-y, with the heady scent of French bread. And after it's baked? Then drizzled with boozy cream sauce? We've got the makings of a nose-gasm, folks.

I didn't use as much brown sugar in the pudding as the recipe called for, and I wish I had. The bread pudding is good, but it would be even better if were just a little sweeter. Dan thought it tasted fine and polished off two bowlfuls, but I've got more of a sweet tooth than he does, and I'm the one doing the baking so next time...more sugar! 

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of Emeril Lagasse and the Food Network.

Chocolate Fudge

I was in Boston the last two weeks, visiting Dan. Unfortunately, while I'm done with school already, he's still got weeks and weeks of classes and final labs left, and a thesis project to work on. Which meant, of course, that I was left to my own devises at home all day while he did complicated engineering stuff at school. I was bored. A lot. Like, really really bored. So I made fudge.

As it turns out, fudge is not exactly a complicated thing to make, but it's also not easy to make good fudge. The ingredients are simple, and the steps are straightforward, but a lot of monitoring and stirring and temperature-measuring are required. 

I don't have a candy thermometer. Dan definitely doesn't have a candy thermometer. But you need one to make fudge. I was supposed to let the chocolate boil to 234 degrees, and then let it cool down to 130 degrees before adding the last bit of butter. Obviously I had no way of measuring that so I just stuck my hand above the saucepan and said "Yup, that feels pretty hot," then turned the heat down for 10 minutes and called it day. Sometimes I think I should have called this blog "Just Winging It In the Kitchen."

The fudge turned out to be rich and intensely chocolate-y, but...grainy. That's the only way to describe it. It's like the sugar didn't quite dissolve, and you could still feel all the individual grains of that undissolved sugar. Not exactly unpleasant, but definitely not what you'd expect in fudge. After talking to Dan's mother (who is my baking idol), I've come to the conclusion that this graininess is probably the result of not having cooked the ingredients to the right temperature. Apparently my super scientific hand-over-pan method was inadequate. This can only mean one thing: time to buy a candy thermometer. 

Recipe can be found at the Food Network's website, courtesy of Alton Brown.

The "Ultimate" Lasagna

I cook so much more when Dan comes to visit me. (He's getting his masters in Boston while I finish up law school in DC). Most of the time I eat sandwiches or salads for lunch, and when dinner rolls around I just throw some taquitos in the microwave and call it a day. It's just too much effort to cook for one person, you know? But I still like to read food blogs everyday and bookmark interesting recipes for later. This means that by the time Dan comes down, I'm bursting with energy to try all the recipes I've stockpiled in the intervening month. The most recent visit's project = lasagna.

(Oh hello!)

This is a Tyler Florence recipe, and boy does it live up to its "ultimate" moniker. There is so much stuff in there! 2 lbs of noodles, 2 lbs each of ground beef and ground sausage, 1 lb of mozzarella, 2 quarts of ricotta, etc etc. I was in a bit of a time crunch, so I actually left out a lot of the ingredients to save cooking time. Even so the resulting lasagna was epic in its massiveness.

Lasagnas are way more involved than I envisioned. There are so many alternating layers! But doesn't that look delicious? 

I was a little confused by the wording of the directions for this recipe. The top layer was supposed to just be ricotta cheese, sauce, and mozzarella cheese, but for some reason I thought that there should also be another layer of noodles on top of everything to close out the dish. I was mistaken. The noodles on top dried out in the oven and were hard and chewy, even with some extra cheese sprinkled over it. Next time I'm definitely leaving off the extra noodle layer.

Tyler claims that this recipe feeds 8 -- this is a lie. I swear the lasagna actually rose like yeast in the oven. I would estimate that there is actually enough food to feed 15 hungry people, and I cut out nearly 50% of the ingredients! I will definitely be eating leftovers for a while.

The recipe can be found here on the Food Network's website.

Chocolate Gooey Butter Cake With Peanut Butter Chips

"Some fellow asked me the other day, 'Paula, do you make any low calorie dishes?' I turned to him and said 'Honey, I’m not your nurse – I’m your cook!' Then for good measure I probably added some more butter!"  (Paula Deen)

I was going to a potluck today and needed to make a something that was delicious and could feed tons of people. This dish immediately came to mind -- Paula Deen recipes are always popular, and the portions tend to be very generous.

According to Wikipedia, a real St. Louis gooey butter cake has a bottom layer made up of butter and yellow cake. I don't actually like yellow cake, so I always go with chocolate instead. Yellow cake is just so boring, you know?

Mmm, look at all that powdered sugar. Powdered sugar, eggs, cream cheese, and butter -- is it any wonder that this cake is divine?

After the cake comes out of the oven, the middle is still jiggly, and it only solidifies a little bit during cooling. When you bite into a piece, the center is all hot and melty, and before you know it you've made a mess all over your face and hands in your haste to shovel every last delicious morsel into your mouth. In the words of Julia Child: "Mmm...BUTTER."

Chocolate Gooey Butter Cake With Peanut Butter Chips (A very slightly modified Paula Deen recipe)

Ingredients:
(Bottom layer)
- 1 pack of cake mix (CHOCOLATE.)
- 1 stick of butter, melted
- 1 egg

(Top layer)
- 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature.
- 1 stick of butter, melted
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 bag of powdered sugar (16 oz)
- 1 cup peanut butter chips (or whatever kind you like -- toffee is always great too)

Steps:
(1) Preheat oven to 350.
(2) Combine cake mix, melted butter and egg. Press dough into bottom of a 13x9 pan.
(3) In a large bowl, cream the cream cheese until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla.
(4) Gradually stir in powdered sugar until well mixed.
(5) Pour cream cheese batter into the pan on top of the chocolate cake layer.
(6) Sprinkle peanut butter chips on top of the batter.
(7) Bake for 40-50 minutes. Don't overbake -- the center of the cake is supposed to still be jiggly and gooey when it comes out of the oven.