Sunday, June 26, 2011

Linden's steak and rolls and, and as they say in England, veg, and chocolate!

When I'm at school, I rarely have red meat. (Although in fairness, I did have both chili and tacos last week...) But mostly, my diet consists of chicken, sometimes fish, the occassional pork chop, and wegetables (and sometimes shocking things like lentils, which I acquired a taste for during my days of darkness, when I acquired a taste for almost everything I was allowed to eat.) . And then I wake up one morning and think, enough of this stuff, I want some red meat. Red meat! And then about a week later I actually get around to cooking some.

And sometimes, I miss all the delicious home dinners, so I try and steal one. Here, is steak, caramelized onions, mushrooms, and my own addition of zucchini, and homemade dinner rolls. Here, you see Steak! In the poorly-lit constraints of student living.


 Steak! In the glaring flash-lit overcompensations needed in studetn living..


And then, I made a chocolate volcano for dessert. (So called, by me , because as soon as you dip a spoon into the middle to serve a piece, all this chocolate sauce bubbles up from below.) It's like brownies with their own warm chocolate sauce. Served best with ice cream, although I was ice creamless and thus compensated with strawberries.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Linden's coconut shrimp

I made coconut shrimp.




Because my kitchen is really really not equipped to handle deep frying (and thus, alas, no spring rolls this summer!) I baked them in the oven instead of the traditional deep frying. They were delicious, and they would have been more delicious if England had anything other than dessicated coconut. Nevertheless! Delicious.

You may be thinking, "Linden, this is a sure Xan smackdown! He loves coconut shrimp and has never posted about the on the blog (although who knows, maybe once you post this, he'll dig up five instances of when he did it and have a little maniacal laugh in the corner, because he's not as nice as he fools everyone into thinking, and enjoys crowing like a crow. Why don't you sound more happy?"

It's because I'm going to link the recipe so that he can make them for himself, because I am a loving and devoted little sister.


Also, as requested in the comments, the link to the banana bread cobbler: that's the basic recipe, but I play pretty fast and loose. I think in the filling I subbed in 1/4C rum for 1/4 of milk, and used oil instead of butter. I think I left the topping as it is.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Full of Goodness: Linden's Tart, Wegetables, and Pasta Casserole

To continue posting food cooked months ago, here are dinners from mid-may. We have a cauliflower and caramelized onion tart, which is both delicious and not new to my repetoire. This time I did change the crust though - instead of trimming the edges and being left with (1) pie scraps and (2) a cooked tart whose edges have receded (like Papa's ... is this too mean? I think it might be.), I folded the extra back down over the crust, so the edges are double-layered. This has two benefits - leaving it overhanging a bit is okay, since there's more holding up the extra crust, so you can get a less shrunken crust, and, more crust per slice.  Other delicious highlights of this meal are that you roast the cauliflower beforehand (roasted cauliflower is delicious) and caramelize the onions. Everything that goes into this tart is delicious on its own! And they go really well together.


I submit that this fulfills half the requirements of goodness, since it is vegetarian and has cauliflower, and that we can round up and call this goodness. (I know this is sort of cheating, since it also has enough cheese to kill a wild Xanbeast, but I use skim milk.) Plus, we ate it with asparagus and salad, because I believe in wegetables (and because knowledge is beliefs that are true, I also knowledge wegetables):


Concurrent to this, since there's some occasional waiting with this recipe (even once you've made the crust and it's chilling, you have cauliflower roasting in the oven, and onion caremelizing on the stove, neither of which require much attention. So, I made a second dinner, which I divided up into meal-sized portions and froze, because the life of a student sometimes calls for freezing.

So, because I was feeling slightly bad about the whole tart thing, I made a pasta casserole with a higher goodness-cheese ratio. This one features spinach and almonds. I know, you say, spinach? and almonds? with pasta? how could this work? How could it possibly taste good? Like this, gentle readers:

You add cheese (fresh mozzarella, because that's how we roll here and studentchez-Linden). It was slightly bland, but the addition of pepper and fresh basil post-thawing whenever I ate some improved matters, and it made me feel very virtuous, which is almost as good as feeling decadent.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Linden's Dessert Dump

I have been very quite the last month, and I will continue to be quite, for I am revising! Which is the English word for studying. But I thought I would regale you with some of my past desserts. We have:

Strawberry-rhubarb muffins
oddly-rotated earl gray tea cookies
Banana bread cobbler with pecan crumble and rum.

I have also been making delicious meals, but they are going to have to wait until all this revising calms down.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Xan: Asparagawesomedogs

BEHOLD
I dub thee, Asparagawesomedog!


Yes, that is roasted bacon-wrapped asparagus with steak and eggs all in one of those absurdly good Costco hotdog buns.  A complete breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Top 5 invention right here.