Xan: Chicken and cucumber?

This was prettier than it was delicious:

I think the proportions were just wrong.

Xan: Chicken Soup for the Chris!

This post will not contain a single pun.

Back in December, Chris VA came to break our apartment.  Fortunately he was deathly ill the entire visit.  It took all the strength he could muster just to break the Santa Claus foam ornament we had helpfully clipped to the pull switch so he wouldn't fumble for it in the dark.  When I walked into the room, there was Chris, holding Santa's head, still connected to the body by a thin piece of stretched wire that had formerly been a coiled spring neck.  Needless to say, Chris went immediately on the naughty list and didn't get any good presents this at Christmas time.

But he couldn't do any serious damage in his weakened state.  Perhaps possessed of insanity, I took up the task of feeding him chicken soup.  

If you own Best Recipes in the World, you know that Mark Bittman is obsessed with homemade chicken stock.  "Chicken stock, preferably homemade" appears on pretty much every other page.  And according to Cooks Illustrated's New Best Recipe cookbook, chicken soup must be made with homemade chicken stock.  Now, I don't subscribe to musts in my kitchen.  And it's clearly not optimal to use homemade chicken stock no matter what.  But I was curious to see the difference.

By the way, in case I somehow haven't made this clear yet, there are few things more satisfying than processing a chicken from start to finish.  (The noble chicken is no match for mom's old Chinese meat cleaver, which I have de-rusted and sharpened).  And a side effect of all this chicken deboning is that I have a constant supply of chicken backs and bones that I just chop up and throw into a freezer bag for later.  3 chickens=stock! 

[Note: I've mostly been disappointed with the Cooks Illustrated cookbook.  (It's an interesting read, but most of the recipes I've tried so far took too much effort for not enough payoff). But their chicken stock method is a winner.  Basically, you hack the chicken backs and bones into small (2-inch or so) pieces, cook a diced onion for a few minutes, brown the chicken pieces in a few batches, then put all the onion and chicken parts over low heat, covered, for about 20 minutes until they release a lot of liquid.  Then you add water and cook for like another 20 minutes.  (1) The major innovation seems to be cutting the chicken into small pieces, which gets the flavor out much quicker.  (2) You people who know about these things are going to be like, where's the carrots and celery?  But according to their blind taste tests, the onion is essential and the others make no noticeable difference here.  That's good enough for me, because I believe in Science.]

So how was it?  Delicious:

Epic chicken soup!

Here's the product placement shot:

Yes, I used orzo, because orzo is awesome.  Look, here's Chris' reaction to his first encounter with orzo:

Even Cecil Sagehen is interested in what's become of his fellow fowl.

Linden's Curry Puffs

So I have just finished my intership, and it's time to try and work through a little backlog of cooking I did over the course of it. While I'm trying to progress towards a healthier diet, I often slip a little - right now, I'm really wanting onion rings for some reason...

A few months ago (before christmas) I decided I really wanted curry puffs. So I made my dough (I tried an all-oil crust, which I think I didn't quite do properly, as it was very crumbly and difficult to work with) and made my filling. The cat came to investigate, and I had to shoo him out, because he is very sneaky.

Post-shooing, I rolled out my dough and filled the puffs (they never fit as much filling as I think, and I try to overfill because there's so much filling and so little pie crust), and crimp them closed with a fork.

Pop them in the oven for a while, and...yum yum.

Linden's Wintery Chocolate Hazelnut Bites

So a month ago, before that whole "holidays" thing came and swallowed three weeks of my life (in a good way, but now I am reaping the consequences and leaving for work in a little while (on a Saturday)) I made cookies. This is in part because I have some ingredients obtained last year that I never used up, and given my impending complete lack of life stability caused by the end of internship and absence of boyfriend and absence of future job and absence of tough-cookieness, I am trying to use some things up for when I have to relocate all of my belongings once again.

So, cookies! Now, most cookies don't really involve rare and unusual ingredients, but these do! They call for three bars of dark chocolate, ground hazelnuts, and rum. Which, you know, on its own should make you think they're delicious. But then, they require you to roll them in powdered sugar. And then, once they're cooked, to do it again. They are small, so you don't even have to feel guilty about eating more than one.

And, they are super delicious! Fortunately, the recipe made heaps. Maybe around 50?

Catherine, Lauren, Xan: Panda Bears cupcakes!

Our friend Lauren T was in towne and we made these panda bear cupcakes:

Donut hole heads and oreo arms and chocolate cheerio ears...what's not to love?  We even got a bit of Lauren channeling Tammy:

What happy little pandas.  Eat me...eat me...that's what they're saying.  And so we did.

Xan: The cucumber sushi story

I will now tell you the story of Catherine's cucumber sushi.

The time and place: night before Thanksgiving at our apartment

In attendance: Me, Catherine, Pete and Anne, and Chariseeeeee.

I was ordering food from Noodles, Etc.  Allow me to recount the relevant portion of the phone conversation:

Me: ...oh and could we get an order of cucumber avocado rolls?
Them: We don't have those...
Me: I know, but in the past you were happy to leave the crab out of the California roll, and that's a cucumber-avocado roll.  Would that be possible?
Them: Let me talk to the chef.
Them: Unfortunately we're out of avocado tonight...
Me: Well then could we just have a cucumber roll?
Them: OK let me talk to the chef.
Them: ...OK, that's fine, it will be $2.50, is that alright?
Me: Great, thanks!

In my head I was thinking, wonderful, they are even being so kind as to charge me less for sushi that doesn't have any expensive ingredients.  But when the delivery arrived...

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...what we found was...

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Hint: not sushi.

Yes.  A 22' cucumber.  We ordered a cucumber roll and they literally gave us a cucumber.  In fairness it does roll, and they were kind enough to peel it for us, although it's questionable whether the length is truly 22 feet.

I think we would have been pretty upset if it wasn't so hysterical.  Also Catherine did technically eat the cucumber.  In any case, through our collective memory we were able to recall the ordering conversation and trace the source of the confusion back to:

Me: Well then could we just have a cucumber roll?

which must have been misheard as "Well then could we just have a cucumber whole?"

Of course this makes absolutely no sense in the context of the conversation.  There was a clear logical progression from sushi-with-cucumber-avocado-crab to sushi-with-cucumber-avocado to sushi-with-cucumber.  But evidently something got lost in translation.

In the future, we will be specifying that we want our sushi with rice and nori when ordering from Noodles. (But not just rice and nori).

Xan: Saffron rice pudding!

I'm posting this because it was interesting and colorful.  Made this rice pudding a few months ago:

I don't have the recipe in front of me, but it wasn't complicated.  I made it because (a) I wanted to try out the saffron I just got, and (b) no milk.  The little colorful bits you see are chopped pistachios, except the orange ones which are saffron threads.  There's no food coloring, just the incredible ability of saffron to turn everything bright yellow!

I love the smell and taste of saffron but Catherine apparently likes neither of these things.  Oh well, at least I got the pudding all to myself.