Tamale Pie
This was supposed to be my offering for the January #LetsLunch gathering of chili recipes. Instead, I got carried away with other stuff like shopping for furniture rather than sitting down to write.
Priorities – I’m not sure I’ve got them in order, but I’m pretty sure my future guests will appreciate that I bought a sleeper sofa instead of making them sleep on the floor or whathaveyou. Maybe. We’ll see what they think after the sofa arrives.
Tamale Pie served with chow-chow and shredded cheddar
As for my late #LetsLunch recipe? It is the amalgamation of several recipes. And, as you might’ve noticed in the picture. There are beans in it.
Yes.
Beans.
Beans in my chili.
Any number of Texans are shuddering and shaking their fists at me right now since Texas chili is meat. No beans.
Quite frankly, I’m a little worried this could result in me being deported from Texas to some state like Ohio or something similarly terrible.
But I can explain, I promise.
Basbousa: Coconut and Semolina Cake Bars
In the hunt for a recipe to make for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, I flipped through The Great Big Cookie Book’s 250 some odd pages of pictures and recipes. For the cookie swap, piroulines won because they were challenging for me to make and because I thought they’d look pretty packaged up for my cookie swap recipients.
Basbousa (aka coconut and semolina cake bar)
When I read the recipe initially, I somehow managed to tell myself that the piroulines would be easy to make. The recipe for basbousa somehow struck me as being more complex because it called for making a simple syrup.
I could not have been more wrong. And clearly, my ability to read a recipe and accurately judge its complexity is flawed beyond measure.
Basbousa, described in the cookie book as a Middle Eastern dessert or tea treat, were stupidly easy, especially since I took the time to arrange my mise en place for once.
In terms of taste, these had a not-too-sweet, light coconut flavor with a cake-ish texture that reminded me of a good sheet cake. I’ll definitely be making them again, especially for potlucks or when I need a simple dessert to make on a weeknight when I get the itch to bake, but don’t have the energy for something too complicated.
Piroulines
When I started The Kitchen Trials, my thought process was that this would be a great place to document my successes and failures in the kitchen. After all, no one always gets all the recipes they try right the first time.
I know I sure as heck don’t. Most days it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not I’m going to slice a finger open, burn myself on the oven rack or manage to burn the living daylights out myself. And then there are the recipes that just don’t turn out right because I haven’t mastered the technique or I’ve totally misread the directions.
Regardless, I still keep at it. I still think my kitchen is one of the best places to be.
The cookie recipe I selected for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap tested that conviction, but it did not beat me. Well, it beat me up and singed the finger and palm prints off of my hands, but it did not beat me.
Sprinkles & Chocolate Make Piroulines Look Pretty
Here’s the deal with a recipe like piroulines; they take a ton of patience and practice. When you’re still getting to know your kitchen and all its quirks after a big move and starting a new job and celebrating a major holiday, piroulines might not be the best recipe to tackle.
Of course, I didn’t let that stop me. Nope. Not me. I decided I just had to make them; come burnt palms or singed finger tips.
Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Crumble
Thanksgiving is the Holy Grail of family meals.
-Virginia Willis, Dec. 8, 2011
This past Wednesday, I attended a cooking class led by Virginia Willis, who is on the road promoting her second cookbook, “Basic to Brilliant, Y’all!” that just came out this fall. Her quote above was in reference to her Winter Greens and Butternut Squash Gratin that has made its way on to the Thanksgiving menu of some of her friends.
Now, I know that Thanksgiving has come and gone. But in my family, the differences between our traditional Thanksgiving dinner and our traditional Christmas dinner were reflected in the desserts, not the dinner. And goodness help the poor soul who wanted to make a radical change to core elements of those traditions.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that we decided to chuck tradition out the window when it came to our Christmas dinner. Instead of turkey and the fixings, we had schnitzel and fried potatoes. Not to get into details that are not mine to share, but let’s just say we’d been through a rough time and letting go of this particular tradition was sort of cathartic in that we got to make a symbolic break with our troubles.
The perfect sweet potato casserole in my corning ware I got from my Mom's collection.
That Christmas dinner opened up the door for other crazy ideas when it came to our holiday meal traditions. And I was more than willing to exploit the opening by recommending new sweet potato dishes that had nothing to do with the yams in a can topped with marshmallows. As a kid, I liked this dish, but – as my Mom told me this year – it was never really the most popular dish on the table.
These new-fangled sweet potato casseroles have had varying levels of success with different family members. But in the back of my mind, I always knew that I was messing around with my Mom’s favorite dish, and it made me feel a bit guilty. Last year, we struck a compromise. I made a sweet potato casserole from scratch, but added marshmallows. It was a good effort, but there wasn’t much heart in it and it still wasn’t really my Mom’s favorite nor anyone else’s.
This year though, I struck the jackpot with a recipe from Saveur.
I swap cookies.
Well, I don’t swap cookies all of the time. Typically, I’m too greedy to even share my cookies. But then I heard about the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap.
The basic premise, as determined by Cookie Swap Masterminds Julie at The Little Kitchen and Lindsay at Love & Olive Oil, is that I send one dozen cookies each to three other food bloggers who raised their hands and volunteered to bake for strangers, too. In return, I get a dozen cookies each from three other randomly selected food bloggers.
Well, okay. Sure. Why not? Sign me up!
Uh… Wait just a second there, buster… Really? I signed up for this? In the midst of moving in to a new apartment in a new city while starting a new job during the holiday season? Maybe I’m crazy. But if I am crazy, I am not alone because 624 other people signed up to swap cookies, too. I wonder if Lindsay and Julie set me up with similarly crazy bakers?
Anyhow, logistically, my cookies will be made and shipped out this week to my secretly assigned cookie swap recipients. As of Sunday night, I’ve tested two cookie recipes. One is so much easier than the other, but I refused to be beaten by a cookie recipe. So, Monday night, I will tackle the tougher cookie recipe again. Now that I’ve got the technique down, I’m hoping it will work and look good enough to ship to strangers who’ll be subjected to my experimental cookies.
And, if you care to hear more about my cookie swap adventures and how I burnt the fingerprints off my fingers, check back on Dec. 12, which is the designated reveal date for Cookie Swap recipes.
Check out the results of these crazy antics in my Dec. 12 blog post.
