things i feed my boyfriend

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Potato Leek Soup with Bacon

After such a successful cream of asparagus soup, I thought hey, what the hell. Potato time. To be honest, I was looking for more of a... white potato soup. This one again turned out green. Thanks, leeks. OH, also, I way over-peppered this one. Greeaat. But that's my own fault. Use pepper sparingly - learn from my mistake.

The recipe was, once again, adapted from the Potato Leek Soup recipe in Joy of Cooking by I.S. Rombauerm, M. Rombauer Becker, and E. Becker. What a handy little book. 1132 pages little.

Potato Leek Soup with Bacon
About 8 cups

Cream of Asparagus Soup

I haven't blogged in forever. Now I feel kind of bad. I'm gonna try to blog at least once a week - I got a bunch of photos of food piling up! Coconut cream pie, potato leek soup and a review of one of our absolute favorite places to eat delicious Indian food Namskar are in there somewhere. I gotta get back on track! I will. I promise. It's been a weird few months.

I LOVE my immersion blender. What a wonderful Valentine's Day present from my favorite boyfriend! ...Okay, let's be honest: I picked it myself. And damn, can I pick them! :D Excellent purchase.

Puree soups, obviously, are the result of this. Turns out it's pretty easy - cook some veggies in some stock, puree, add cream, season, and TADA! I like to make my own stock and coincidentally I had a carcass of a roasted chicken with some meat on it left over from a previous (lazy store-bought) dinner, so I threw together a quick stock. The roasted chicken really added flavor to the stock, so if you have that available, do use it.

Home Made Chicken Stock

Valentine's Day Feast 3: Vanilla Cheesecake and Coulises

Meh. Never made cheesecake before, but I sure have had lots of cheesecake and I know how it was supposed to turn out. I tried to find a fairly generic cheesecake recipe, and instead of a graham crackers I decided to mix in some chocolate cookies in there because Nick likes chocolate. Also, I decided to add some fruit on top, because why not? AND tried to recreate that clear jelly glaze that they top fruit tarts with (I could not find a recipe for that shizen anywhere!). Experimenting - good idea on the first try of an unfamiliar recipe, right? Uh huh...

Valentine's Day Feast 2: Bellinis, Lobster, Garlic Herb Lemon Butter and Baby Potatoes

I've made lobster once before but only the tail and it was previously frozen. Still really delicious but not quite the same as fresh live lobster, right? Right. So since I now know that Crowfoot has that seafood place, North Sea Fish Market, I figured it'd be better to buy lobster over there than at Superstore. So just as I remembered, $20 per 1.2 lb lobster. Yeah, expensive, but it's lobster, what did you expect. We don't live close enough to the shore to get fresh lobster for cheap. The guy at the Fish Market place, BTW - again, super nice and helpful, even gave us an ice-pack to go with the lobsters.

Valentine's Day Feast 1: French Onion Soup

A little preview of my Valentine's day menu:

Home made bellinis and a large ramekin of French onion soup to start
Boiled whole lobster with garlic herb lemon butter and baby potatoes,
Vanilla cheese cake topped with fresh fruit with cinnamon blueberry and mango honey cayenne coulis

What's better than French onion soup? You just can't go wrong with a piece of buttery toast with amazing melted Gruyère on top of a rich broth with caramelized onions. I've made French onion soup once before and it was, well, forgettable. This time, I think I found a keeper on Food Network!

Let me start by saying that Swiss Gruyère is mofuggin expensive. You may be tempted to buy smoked Gruyère instead, but don't do it - it's just not gonna be the same. I also discovered that I LOVE Swiss Gruyère. If you're tight on cash and Gruyère just seems like a luxury, use mozzarella or buy a smaller piece of Gruyère and mix with some mozzarella - I did that when I was running out the second $15 piece of Gruyère... Emmenthal should work nicely too.

This recipe is pretty simple to follow. Just be sure not to burn the onions, or you'll ruin the whole thing.

French Onion Soup
At LEAST 6 decent sized servings

Super Bowl Line Up Part 2: Awesome Banana Split Brownies

Everybody loves brownies. Everybody loves banana bread. This is kind of in the middle. While there's only 1/2 cup banana in the batter, it keeps the brownies extremely moist. These were delicious! Especially with the ganache and marshmallows on top. Totally awesome. I didn't think the steeping of banana in the milk added any flavor to the ganache, maybe it needed more time than it said in the recipe.

Awesome Banana Split Brownies
Makes a 9x9 inch pan

Super Bowl Line Up Part 1: Wings, Fries, Stuffed Jalapenos

FINALLY! After I took a ton of pictures with my old digital camera, I realized that I couldn't find the USB cord for it. Just bought a card reader today and was able to transfer the photos. I got a bunch of stuff piled up, so expect lots of posts!

Starting with the Super Bowl. We had a few friends come over to watch the game, so I figure I make some stuff. I recently (unintentionally) watched that cooking show with Buddy from Cake Boss. That dude is extremely annoying but the food actually looked pretty good! I looked up the wings recipe on the TLC website - horrible to navigate BTW! Anyways, I found it. I never usually marinade anything, so I tried it. Yeah, it's pretty worth it. Turned out pretty good! Okay so here are the recipes and pictures.