Week 28 - Danish

So many recipes sounded good for Danish week, but after much deliberation, I decided on meatballs (frikadeller, based on a recipe from Scandi Kitchen) paired with mashed potatoes (specifically, brændende kærlighed, which were topped with onions and bacon and based on a Nordic Food Living recipe; I will probably just refer to them as the mashed potatoes from here on, since I don't know the keyboard command for the æ letter).

I love meatballs, all different variations, but this was my first time eating or making Danish meatballs. According to the Scandi Kitchen site, meatballs are so common that they're eaten about once a week, warm with boiled potatoes (with parsley and butter, sounds delicious), gravy, and pickled cucumbers, or cold with potato salad, on sandwiches, and other ways. We had them with mashed potatoes and green beans, so not any of the "typical" ways, which means we might just need to make them again "properly" whenever we get to the Danish section of the AtWCC. (Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to make meatballs again, because I love meatballs.)

The original recipe for the meatballs was made with veal and pork, but since I don't really cook much red meat at home, I just went with a really fatty ground pork. I also made some other substitutions, like flax eggs, oat milk instead of whole, Better than Bouillon instead of a stock cube, panko breadcrumbs instead of fresh. The most interesting ingredient to me was the addition of sparkling water. I had never put those in meatballs before, and I was curious to see how it would change the texture.

Alongside the meatballs, we also made the mashed potatoes, which were fairly straightforward and just topped with onions and bacon. Can't really go wrong with that combination.

We really enjoyed this meal. We've had much more exposure to Swedish meatballs, but these Danish meatballs were delicious. I would definitely make these again, and I think they're going to be on the list for revisiting whenever we decide to focus on Denmark for the AtWCC. Maybe we'll do them both warm and cold!

Week 27 - Floral

Wow, where did the past couple of weeks go? I thought I'd be done with these challenge recaps for 2021 by now, but seem to have lost steam after the big end-of-year push. Time to get back into it!

The floral challenge took place back in July, but it turned out to be the last challenge I completed for the year (on the last day!). I intended to make it earlier, but I had decided on lemon lavender donuts based on a recipe from Short Girl Tall Order, and first, I needed to get a donut pan. (We actually got some silicone donut baking cups, but same thing.) Then, I had to get pastry flour, which wasn't always available during our online shopping (and isn't sold at places like Trader Joe's). Once I finally had that, I just never seemed to find the time or energy to actually make them until right up against the deadline.

Had extra batter after filling the cups so made "cake"

Making the donuts didn't turn out quite how I expected either. (New Year's Eve seemed like a cooking day full of mishaps anyway - just wait until the Week 44 post.) I followed all the instructions, but the batter was super thin and runny, thinner than most of my pancake batter. That didn't seem quite right, and I wasn't sure how it would hold together, so I added more pastry flour to it until it thickened up. I put the batter into the cups, and shockingly, they did turn into actual donuts, but they still fell apart pretty easily. I'm not sure what I did wrong.

Little B couldn't even wait for them to be glazed before eating one

I made the glaze and added more powdered sugar to make it thicker, but even after dunking the donuts in the glaze on all sides, you can't even see it on there. It was definitely there, and they were sticky from the glaze, but this is not what glazed donuts should look like (in my opinion). Again, not sure what I did wrong.

Invisibly glazed

I don't think the problem is the recipe since it turned out some great-looking donuts there, but my first adventure baking donuts didn't turn out too well. I haven't given up completely and will try again another time, but for now, maybe I'll just stick with cookies. Even though I was disappointed with my final product, it wasn't all bad though. It was the primary thing B ate for New Year's Eve night, and he really seemed to like them, so I'm still glad I made them.

Week 26 - Folding

Remember the TikTok quesadilla that went viral last year? (I originally wrote earlier this year, but it's not 2021 anymore.) The one where you put something in each of the four quadrants and then folded it over to make the perfect quesadilla? Once that started appearing everywhere, so did variations on the quesadilla, including folded kimbap, which was what I decided to make for the folding challenge last summer.

I decided to make ours with sticky rice, sliced cucumbers, spam (which I think I cooked with a glaze similar to the one for spam musubi, but don't know for sure because this was back in July and I didn't take any notes), and some jarred kimchi.

I followed the same method for cutting and then folding the kimbap, but it didn't turn out that evenly spread out or photogenic. There were several bites of just seaweed or seaweed and one other ingredient. Once I got to the part where it was all together, it did taste good, but it wasn't quite as easy as I was expecting it to be. Honestly, I think I'd rather just throw all the ingredients over some rice in a bowl, and would probably do that instead of this folded version next time.

Week 25 - Italian

Choosing an Italian recipe was so hard! I wanted to make something I hadn't made before, and I also didn't really want to make pasta, so after some looking around, I decided on arancini. I found a recipe for air fryer arancini at Cadry's Kitchen, and that sounded like the perfect plan.

The first step was to make the risotto, which I did in the Instant Pot the day before and then refrigerated. Our version was a mushroom and pea risotto. The risotto was formed into balls, rolled in seasoned panko, and then fried up in the air fryer.

We made this over six months ago, and I didn't take any notes, but I think I remember liking this and wondering about all the different variations we could make. Thankful for other people testing these things out in the air fryer so I don't have to deep fry!

Week 24 - Inspired by a Restaurant

We love trying restaurant food, so this was a really difficult challenge week! I started out by perusing a bunch of different restaurant cookbooks, but there were so many things that sounded amazing but were also possibly too difficult to prepare, and I was also just getting so overwhelmed by choice. I don't know how I ended up there, probably browsing internet round-ups of copycat recipes, but eventually I ended up deciding on Outback Steakhouse.

I'm not really a regular at Outback (only been a handful of times), but I do love their bloomin' onion, so that was an obvious selection (to be made in the air fryer, following a recipe from Blue Jean Chef). To pair with it, I decided on Alice Springs chicken that I found a copycat recipe for on Culinary Hill. I don't think I've ever had Alice Springs chicken at Outback, but checking my photo archive, I do see an appetizer of Alice Springs chicken quesadillas, all the same elements but in quesadilla form. The recipe sounded so good though, that even if I hadn't had it before, I couldn't resist trying it.

Doesn't look nearly as good as an actual Outback plate, and kind of looks like an unrecognizable mess, but tasty!

First up, the bloomin' onion. The hardest part here was making the cuts correctly, because it was super important not to cut through the root. Unfortunately the onion I got didn't have a very big root at all, so pieces were falling off everywhere despite my best efforts, and since the root wasn't that big, I didn't have a great handle on it for dredging and it was a little clumpy. Ultimately, I just air fried the "bloomed" part that I had along with all the extra onion pieces (which I also dredged a bit). It did taste pretty good, and since the dredging on the separate onion pieces was a little more uniform, those actually were even better. I think I would try this experiment again, but only if I could find the right onion.

Sorry for the out of order photos, but can't figure out how to edit that through Google Photos on the computer...

While the bloomin' onion didn't turn out quite as well as I was hoping, the Alice Springs chicken - chicken marinated in mustard, honey, mayo, and lemon juice, and topped with mushrooms, bacon, and cheese - was delicious. I followed the recipe fairly closely (other than using vegan mayo and not having parsley), and we were pretty happy with how this turned out. Not as pretty on the plate as the real thing, but I probably added more toppings than the restaurant does, since it was all for us. It tasted so good that I think I now know what I'm getting if I ever go back to Outback (no idea what their allergy handling is like).

Even if this meal didn't look the greatest on the plate, it was really tasty. I'm glad that this challenge week ended up going in this unexpected direction, and I would consider another Outback kitchen adventure sometime!

Week 14 - Forbidden Fruit

When the Week 14 theme came up as forbidden fruit, I wasn't really sure what to do with that. Using the strict definition of forbidden fruit, something desired because it's not allowed, didn't really work, since there isn't much that isn't "allowed" in our kitchen. We don't cook with eggs for food allergy reasons, so I wasn't going to make something with those. I choose not to cook much red meat or to deep fry in our kitchen, but that's a choice, not something forbidden. I ended up deciding to interpret this as "guilty pleasure" instead, something that I want a lot but don't make that often because I'm trying to be mindful of my health. Using that lens, I decided to make some cheddar bay biscuits (yes, I made them for a previous challenge, but it was a good excuse to have them again) and paired them with some shrimp chowder.

When the theme notes finally came out, they did have some other possibilities for how to interpret forbidden fruit. It could be something your spouse hates but you like, but there isn't much A dislikes eating that I enjoy. It could be actual fruit, like apples from the garden of Eden (or grapes or figs) or a sometimes-forbidden fruit like durian. I didn't feel like redoing the challenge for one of those interpretations, and the biscuits really are a guilty pleasure, so that was good enough for us!

Week 32 - Armenian

Armenian restaurants aren't very common where we are, and I think in our lifetimes, we've only been to two Armenian restaurants total (one in Chicago and one in Tarzana), but I knew fairly quickly what I wanted to make for Armenian week - lahmajoun!

Lahmajoun, also spelled out lahmacun, lahmajun, consists of thin dough topped with, according to Wikipedia, "minced meat, minced vegetables, and herbs, including onions, garlic, tomatoes, red peppers, and parsley, flavored with spices such as chili pepper and paprika, and then baked." We've had it before from Turkish places, and had a lahmajun wrap at the Armenian deli in Tarzana which was amazing. After doing some searching, I found a recipe for a "shortcut" version of lahmajoun at The Armenian Kitchen, and that sounded like exactly what we needed.

The shortcut here was using flour tortillas as the base of the lahmajoun instead of making your own dough. What a genius idea to save time! I mostly followed the recipe, except that I substituted Impossible Burger for the meat and didn't use a food processor for the vegetables (so it did take a little bit longer). They did take a little while to cook since we only have one oven and you could only make so many at a time, but it was still quicker than a lot of our other dinners.

We loved these! We ate them with some tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and parsley on the side, and I was so happy to have found an easy recipe to make something I've liked eating in the past. Will definitely make these again!

Week 37 - Shells

Clearly I didn't finish the posts for the 52 week cooking challenge for 2020 before the end of the year. I really tried, but December just got so unexpectedly busy. I did finish all the challenges though, even if I did do two of them on the last day of the year. Finishing these posts is priority #1, because otherwise it will get really confusing once I start posting for the 2021 challenge. Priority #2 will be finally telling the AtWCC story, because that is long overdue and at least half the posts were already written ages ago!

The Week 37 challenge theme was shells. This one was a little challenging for me, because I didn't really want to make shellfish with shells on, taco shells seemed too hard and crispy for a small toddler, and pasta shells just didn't feel that challenge-worthy. But in the end, I decided to go with some medium-sized pasta shells. because I do love the shape, pasta is an easy dinner to put together, and it still meant I was making a recipe new to us.

I made chicken fajita pasta using the recipe from Closet Cooking, and it turned out delicious. The ingredients were:

- 1 package of pasta shells

- olive oil

- 1/2 packet of taco seasoning

- 1 onion

- 3 bell peppers

- large spoonful of garlic

- 1.5 cups of chicken broth

- 1 can diced tomatoes

- 1/2 cup sour cream

- 1/3 bunch of cilantro, chopped

- shredded Mexican cheese

My arms were tired the day I made this, and I was kind of tired of stirring, so we ended up just putting the sour cream on top of our bowls and mixing it in ourselves. It did taste better with the sour cream than without, but it worked.

If I made this again, I would probably mix the entire thing together as intended, but for the challenge, it was good enough.