30s (2023)

I really, really, really need to get better about posting and documenting things here before I am two years behind on cooking challenge memories. We're in Week 40 now, so this is probably as on-time as I've been in a while. This set is from the "30s" weeks and anything not covered separately/by the AtWCC.

Week 31: mint

I wasn't feeling very creative when the mint challenge came up, and even after doing some internet research, my best options seemed to be either a sauce with mint (similar to the yogurt sauces we were doing during the Afghanistan AtWCC) or a salad. Since it was the middle of July and I always want salads when it's hot, that was an easy choice. I decided on a summer salad with mint that I saw on The Clever Meal, with chickpeas, roasted red peppers, cucumber, feta, and of course, the starring ingredient for this challenge, mint (both chopped and whole leaves used as a garnish).

I don't often buy mint for salads, even though I know it's great in them, because it just goes bad so quickly, so this was a nice change. The dressing consisted of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, garlic, agave (swapped for honey), dijon mustard, salt, and pepper, and it went really well with the salad. Very nice, refreshing salad side dish. The only negative here was that the salad ended up costing around $12, with the cost of feta (since we ran out of our Costco-sized box and I had to get it from the local store) and mint being about 54% of that total. I haven't been doing the cost breakdowns as much as I used to (just not as much time with a little one running around and playing, which also shows in how rarely I get a post up timely), and it was a bit of sticker shock when I finished doing the math. Not the fault of the recipe, but the cost of groceries is just so high right now!

Week 33: Cutthroat Kitchen

I used to watch Cutthroat Kitchen back when we had cable, so when this theme came up, I had no idea how that would get implemented as a cooking challenge. Apparently, a lot of people wondered the same thing, so it was suggested that you basically sabotage yourself in some way. Considering I really hate food waste, and the chances of making something inedible were high if I were to use some of the actual Cutthroat Kitchen sabotages and be surprised by them, I decided to just use two "sabotages" from the start: using the microwave as the only cooking appliance and giving up my usual knives in favor of B's child-safe knives. This did mean I could plan in advance, but neither would have been my go-tos for the meal I chose.

I decided to microwave fish, since I remembered my mom used to do that when I was younger, and adapted a fish recipe from Chew Out Loud. Along with that, I made some microwaved green beans (recipe from Baking Mischief) and brown rice (instructions from Hungry Huy). I was most worried about the rice, because when I used to microwave rice, I had a specialized container that was used for microwaving rice. I wasn't sure how it would do with just a dish towel, but it turned out to be fine. Not as good as the stove or the rice cooker, but fine. I thought the green beans might be a little soft and overdone, but they were actually perfect. Greener than when I cook them on the stove, not overcooked mush, not too crunchy. I think I might do this more. I was pretty confident in the fish, since we'd done that before with other recipes, but I liked this so much that it might become a recurring recipe in our meal plan. I would use my own knives on the onions and scallions though, because these were a bit of a mess with kid knives. Pretty successful partially "sabotaged" meal!

Week 34: chips/crisps

This one was a tough one for me to choose, because I've been trying to choose some healthier meals to make (although the recent week that included both Swedish meatballs and shrimp and grits on the meal plan was a bit heavy...), and chips/crisps don't necessarily lend themselves to that. In the end, I decided to make Frito pie based on a Spend With Pennies recipe. 

A layer of Fritos, a layer of cheese, a layer of meat (used Impossible) mixed with onions, Rotel, tomato sauce. beans, corn, and taco seasonings, another layer of cheese all baked in the oven and then topped with Fritos. I debated counting Frito pie for Texas or New Mexico, but as of the time of the challenge, hadn't found a clear answer on where it originated and whether it started as a walking taco or not, so for now, not part of the AtWCC because I need to do more research (and maybe make it again).

Week 35: Afghan

Usually this type of challenge would lead to its own AtWCC post, but this time, I remade the kebabeh degee morgh that I made from Parwana and already posted about. It was just as good making it from my cookbook notes as it was from the original cookbook page, which felt like a success. Highly recommend this one if you're looking for an Afghan curry.

Week 36: reduction

I was really not inspired when I saw the reduction challenge, as my mind immediately went to sauces, something I don't tend to make much of when cooking dinner. After mulling it over with A, he mentioned making tiny sized versions of foods, and that sparked some ideas. Tiny was probably a bit more work than I had time to do (and no food tweezers), but a reduced size version of chicken pot pie made in a muffin tin? That would work. I used a recipe from AllRecipes and made one with condensed chicken soup, canned chicken, mixed vegetables, cheese, and seasonings stuffed into biscuits. They were delicious, no (reduced) sauce needed.

Week 38: wartime

I first learned of Depression cake (aka war cake) from B's preschool when discussing egg-free cake alternatives. I knew about rationing during the war and shortages during the Great Depression, but not specifically this type of cake which didn't include any eggs, milk, or butter. I wasn't sure what to make for the wartime challenge, but A suggested this immediately, and it seemed like the perfect idea. I followed a recipe from Budget Bytes, and overall it turned out good, except it completely stuck to the pan on the bottom and came out a bit messy. Not sure what I did wrong. Maybe slightly too much oil? The cake parts itself were fine, and the frosting wasn't bad, but it wasn't as "presentable" a cake as I was hoping it would be. At least taste and texture were good!

Another set of successful challenges!

From Soup to Burgers

First group post for the 2023 cooking challenge!

Week 4: instant

I knew immediately I wanted to make something new in the Instant Pot, since our IP doesn't get enough use, and this potato corn chowder was delicious. It tasted very much like a spring soup since I also added some chopped asparagus into the mix, but that was not unwelcome, even in the depths of January. 

Week 5: mustard

I initially thought about making my own mustard, since during the pandemic I did a virtual class that taught you how to make mustard, but then I got a little scared off when I read someone's comment about needing proper ventilation (our kitchen has no windows). What I ended up making was probably even better though since these smoked salmon toasts with homemade mustard-dill compound butter (well, the combination was homemade, not the butter itself) I found on Food52 were amazing. Like cocktail hour hors d'oeuvres amazing in flavor, so now not only do I have a great toasts recipe, but also a recipe for compound butter that I can put on all sorts of things.

Week 7: dyed

I've been trying to avoid artificial food dyes, so I wasn't sure exactly what to do for this challenge. Then I found a recipe on The Healthy Family & Home for vegan and naturally-colored chocolate coconut eggs, and that seemed like the best option. I used turmeric, matcha, and ube powder for the colorings, although the ube one turned out a little more reddish-brown than purple, which was a little disappointing. They were pretty good though and kept well in the freezer for future snacks, which was another plus.

Week 8: celebrity chef

Years ago, I was an audience member at a few tapings of Beat Bobby Flay, so I decided to make some Bobby Flay recipes from his cookbook, Sundays with Sophie. So many recipes there sounded good, and I made some crunch burgers with BBQ mushrooms and quick pickled onions with a side of pan-fried asparagus with garlic-lemon bread crumbs. Two dishes, but four different recipes in the cookbook, so lots to do but very tasty results. I've already made the asparagus again, and would make the burgers again on a day when I had some extra time to cook.

Khetayee

After two great recipes from the Parwana cookbook (the meat kofta sauce and the bolani), I was really excited to try something sweet. I had bookmarked two different cookie recipes, one that was traditionally eaten around Nowroz (new year at the beginning of spring) and one called khetayee that was traditionally eaten for Eid. So to celebrate Eid (last year), I decided to make khetayee on our day off from school!

The recipe seemed pretty straightforward. Combine the dry ingredients (flour, milk powder, baking powder, confectioner's sugar) and then slowly add the oil while mixing everything together. Then shape the dough into balls, flatten them a little, make thumbprints where the ground pistachios would be added (side note: the pistachios in the recipe photo were bright green, but ours weren't - where do the bright green pistachios come from?), and then bake until lightly golden.

I was excited to make these for a bunch of reasons. First, I didn't really make any desserts for Afghanistan the first time around unlike all of our other geographic explorations. Second, B doesn't get much pistachio in his diet other than some ice cream, and I thought this would be a good way to increase exposure (for prevention of allergy purposes). Third, I had never made anything with milk powder before, and I was curious to see how that would affect baked goods.

Unfortunately, the cookies I made were not good. I think that's likely user error, because these cookies would not have been passed down for generations in Afghanistan if they had this texture. They were incredibly dry and hard to eat, so stick-to-your-mouth dry that I couldn't even think about giving them to little B for safety reasons. At least I was able to give him a spoonful of ground pistachios before I made the cookies.

So, what may have gone wrong? First, I used nonfat milk powder instead of whole milk, because I was able to get a big bag of that at Whole Foods. The specialty store had whole milk powder, but I wasn't sure that packet was going to have enough for the recipe in it, and I didn't want to run short. Looking online before buying, it didn't sound like there would be a dramatic difference between the two in baking, but maybe I got that wrong. Second, I had to keep adding flour during the mixing/shaping step, because it was impossible to shape the dough I made into balls. It just kept spreading and would not keep the shape until I added a fair amount more of the flour. Third, maybe I baked them too long. I added a minute or so to the time because they weren't golden on top, but I didn't think that would turn them into bricks of chalk.

Who knows what other missteps I might have made, but the cookies were not good. Edible, but not good. I'd say the best parts of the experience of making these was being able to give B some pistachios and just how soft the dough felt when mixing it. I probably won't make them again after the disappointing results, but I'm glad I tried.

The First Third

Making our way back to the beginning of the challenge before next year's challenge starts, here's a group post from the first third. Besides the ones already posted, skipping weeks 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 15 for the AtWCC (managed to fit in a lot!) and week 6 because I wrote most of that one already.

Week 4: on a stick

I had high hopes for this Serious Eats tsukune recipe, because those Japanese chicken meatballs skewers are one of my favorite izakaya dishes, but these were just okay. Considering we made these almost a year ago (I really need to get better about more timely writing), I don't remember a lot about them except that they didn't live up to my expectations. I don't know if it was because we had to use an egg replacer, or because they were made on a grill pan instead of an actual grill, or what was different about ours, but they just didn't taste as good as the ones you would get at an izakaya. Because I love tsukune, I do want to give them another shot whenever we make our way to the Japan section of the AtWCC, so I'm not counting them for that here.

Week 5: plant milk

I decided to go sweet for the plant milk challenge to try something different instead of just using store-bought plant milk as a substitute in dishes like we often do. First, I made some vegan condensed milk based on a Make It Dairy Free recipe (far easier to do than I thought it would be), and then used that to make some lime coconut snowballs (a MyRecipes recipe). They were different than how I thought they would come out. I was anticipating something solid and chewy like cookie dough, but they were soft and sticky, plus incredibly sweet. Tasty, but I couldn't eat more than a couple at a time because of how sweet they were. B and his sweet tooth liked them a lot.

Week 7: molding

The molding challenge was a complete failure. I made, or tried to make, dinosaur fruit jellies based on a YouTube video from Let's Stella. They looked so simple to make - Naked juice smoothies, sugar, and corn starch set in an ice cube mold. I got some cute dinosaur molds, thinking that we'd have lots of juice-filled fruit snacks that would be healthier than the store-bought ones. Except they didn't set. There were also supposed to be orange ones but I couldn't get those out of the mold at all. The taste was fine, but they were not the jellies they were supposed to be.

Week 11: inspired by art

I always have a little difficulty with the "inspired by" weeks, whether it's movies or TV shows or video games or books or art. I guess I'm not very inspired. The only thing that came to mind for this (besides a Mondrian cake, which I am not talented enough to make) was Campbell's soup, based on Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans. I found a recipe for tomato soup meatloaf at The Kitchen Magpie, and I went with that, subbing turkey for the meat portion. This was over 9 months ago, so I don't remember much about it except that it turned out a little too watery on the bottom and it had nice flavor from the tomato soup. We have other meatloaf recipes we like more, so we'll probably stick with those, but this was nice for the novelty.

Four more recaps done, 24 more to go (at least it's less than half a year?)!

Butter, Berries, and Botched Burmese Bowl

It's been a while since I posted here. May?! I thought it was more recent, but then realized there was a lot of stuff in drafts. So, what's been going on since May? Summer came and went in the blink of an eye. We went on our first plane trip since COVID arrived in 2020. We've explored more destinations in the AtWCC, and I've been keeping up with the 52 week cooking challenge, but you'd never know that since there aren't any posts here.

To remedy that, unless there is a reason for a separate post (like if it's also counting for the AtWCC), or unless it's one of the ones already languishing in drafts, I think I'm going to group together some of the 52 week challenge posts. For some of them, there just isn't that much to say. I made them, they fit the challenge, and that's that. So, in an attempt to catch up and so that I'm not finishing writing about the challenge next March like I did for last year's, here are weeks 31 through 35.

Week 31: Butter

For Week 31, I made a mixed berry cake with butter sauce. It wasn't the most photogenic cake, but it definitely spotlighted the theme ingredient - butter. The original recipe from Taste of Home used cranberries, but it was the middle of the summer with no cranberries to be found in the grocery store outside of canned cranberry sauce, so I used strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries (frozen, actually, since fresh berries are expensive and we prefer eating those fresh). It was the rest of the bag of frozen berries from last year's failed akutaq plus some extra frozen raspberries, and I just kept hoping that this would be a better use of those berries than the last time.

Following the instructions, I actually got a little bit stressed out that this was going to be an akutaq repeat, because after I added the milk to the creamed butter-sugar mixture, everything started to look clumpy and curdled. It was still lumpy after the flour, so I had very low expectations. When it came time to make the butter sauce for the top, I ran into another complication because I hadn't noticed the half-and-half on the ingredient list. Oops. From some internet research, I found out that someone mixed olive oil with soy milk, and it had the same effect. I was skeptical since it looked like a pool of oil when it started on the stove, but it really came together as a nice, thick glaze. I have no idea why it worked, but it did. Overall, the cake turned out delicious. Super sweet and super buttery, but successful! If we can get some fresh cranberries in the fall, this may turn up on our meal plan again.

Week 32: Chamorro

This one is going to get its own post, because it's going to count for Guam!

Week 33: Allergies

For allergies week, I tried to get as many of the top 9 allergens (wheat, milk, eggs, soy, fish, shellfish, peanut, tree nuts, sesame) in one dish as possible. So this pasta dish had tricolor spaghetti (wheat) with peppers and onions in a peanut ginger sauce (peanuts, soy, sesame), topped with crispy tofu (more soy), salmon (fish), and slivered almonds (tree nuts). I've made this dish a number of times before (with just tofu), but it had been a while, so I didn't realize we were out of unexpired almond butter. The slivered almonds look like a last minute add-on, and they were, since I wanted to do tree nuts but didn't have almond butter.

The ones I left out were shellfish (inspired by a recent back of the cupboard challenge, I tried to only use proteins we already had at home), eggs (because of B's allergy), and milk (lactose intolerance over here). 6 out of 9 was pretty good! The dish didn't come out as well as I would have liked because I think it needed more sauce and had more sauce in the past, but at least it still tasted fine.

Week 34: Oats

Oat-crusted chicken and oat risotto were on the menu for the oats challenge. The chicken was brined in vegan buttermilk that had an oat milk base and then crusted with oats. A did most of the work for the chicken, since these are chicken tenders he makes often and they're always so good. For the oat risotto (which A really wanted me to call ris-oat-to), I used a recipe from Allrecipes, added mushrooms, and it was fantastic. I would make the risotto again.

Week 35: Burmese

Burmese week sounds like a shoo-in for an AtWCC post, but this one was an absolute failure. I was hoping to make tohu thoke, a yellow tofu salad and one of my favorite Burmese dishes ever. (If it looks familiar here, this salad made our top 10 food memories list back in 2010, and we also posted about Rangoon in Philadelphia, which sadly no longer exists). Unfortunately, it didn't set at all. The tofu had the consistency of pudding and was not solid at all. I'm not sure what went wrong. Did I chill it for too long? Did I mess up something from the recipe (which I followed from YouTube because I couldn't find the related website)?

The yellow tofu itself was made of chickpea flour (besan), water, salt, and turmeric, and it really thickened up on the stove, so I thought it would just need some time to solidify. I used different toppings from the video, trying to mimic the ones we've had at the food fairs, using cilantro, fried onions (didn't have fried shallots or an easy way to get them), lime juice, fish sauce, tamarind, and garlic. The taste, especially in certain bites, was really reminiscent of what we'd gotten in the past, but the texture was not. I do intend to try this again (have a giant container of besan right now), and hopefully it will turn out better next time and be worthy of an AtWCC post.

More challenge catch-ups coming (hopefully very) soon!

Week 44 - Native American/Indigenous American

We've finished the Alaska section of the AtWCC (although, of course, I haven't written any of it here yet, since we still have to post all of Afghanistan and Alabama), but this was not the post I wanted to write to kick off the series. This dish was technically the last thing I made for the Alaska part of the AtWCC and also the last thing we tried from the 2021 cooking challenge, but it was a bit of a disastrous experiment and did not end either on a high note!

One of the things that I was most intrigued by for our Alaska exploration was a dish called akutaq, sort of like a Native Alaskan ice cream. In Alaskan tradition (more on Wikipedia), it seems like this was made with whipped fat (like from moose or walruses) mixed with meat (like dried fish) and berries, making it a very hearty meal, and was also sometimes made with fresh snow. These days, the fat is often substituted with vegetable shortening or Crisco, making it more accessible for those of us not in Alaska and also those of us who might not want to work with actual animal fat. Even with that change, I'll admit that I was a little nervous about making this and just ingesting that much pure fat, which is probably why I kept procrastinating and it ended up being the last thing we made for Alaska.

I followed the recipe from Spoon University, and it sounded so easy. Liquify the shortening (but don't let it get too hot), dissolve the sugar, add water to thicken it up, fold in the berries, and then put it into a container to freeze. I didn't think any of the steps would take too long, so the first thing I did was to take out a bag of frozen berries and chop them up a little bit. I didn't want whole frozen berries in case they were too hard for B to eat, so I thought that smaller pieces would work better and still contribute the same flavors.

Next up was taking out the shortening and then dissolving the sugar. Except... the sugar didn't dissolve, and the internet seems divided on whether it actually should dissolve in pure fat if you're doing something other than creaming it (which this was too liquid to do). I don't know all the science behind it, but what I do know is that ours did not dissolve whatsoever. I resigned myself to having crunchier sugar parts, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and moved on to the water step, which didn't really thicken up anything.

I kept trying and trying to make it act the way the recipe said it should, but it didn't, so I eventually gave up and decided to fold in the berries and hoped it would just freeze in some form or another. Except... the berries by that point, since it had taken so long to try to dissolve the sugar and thicken up the mixture, were all melted and full of fruit juice, and then for some reason, adding the cold berries into the mixture took it from somewhat creamy and smooth to weird and curdle-like. I just threw the whole thing into a container hoping the freezer would sort it out, knowing it could be more icy than creamy with the higher liquid content. Even though it looked like berry quinoa once I got it into the container, I thought maybe, just maybe, it would be fine.

We put it in the freezer, and we were supposed to eat it later that day, but we were full. Then we were supposed to eat it the next day, but never got around to it. Were we just afraid of how it might taste and subconsciously finding every excuse possible? Maybe. We finally tried it the next day, and let's just say the freezer did not fix it. Those clumps that looked like quinoa? They were like little lumps of fat sweetened by berries, and although the overall taste wasn't awful, the texture was just too hard for us to get past to eat more than a few bites. Even A, who pretty much eats everything and has far less textural aversions than I do, just couldn't do it, and while I hate throwing food out, this was just not going to work.

We'd had a pretty great experience on our Alaska journey to that point, so it was kind of disappointing to end on such a low note, but I had to remind myself that not all cooking experiments work. I think lately I've just been going into it expecting to add everything to our family cookbook, forgetting that we do encounter quite a few failures. Often, I'll try again (my attempt to bake mozzarella sticks over and over again, for example), but I think we might just let this one go this time.

Meyer Lemon Bars

One day while M and I were walking around Trader Joe's, we happened across some bags of Meyer Lemons. I know they're used a lot in baking so I was instantly intrigued by them. M made me promise that if we bought them I had to already have an idea in mind to use them. I didn't, really, but I wanted them anyway. The only thing I knew was lemon bars, so I half-lied and said that I did have an idea.

I ended up deciding to actually make lemon bars so I started doing some research on recipes. I didn't find one that I liked, but I found some recipes from which I liked the separate components. I opted for the following two:

Shortbread base

Lemon topping

For the shortbread, the ingredients are as follows:

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt plus more
• 1 cup (2 sticks) very cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 to 2 tsp ice water

You basically just pulse the dry ingredients to mix in a food processor before tossing in the cut up butter and pulsing until it becomes pebbly. The water is there in case the dough looks a little too dry. I didn't end up using any water, but I think I might put a little in if I make this again. The dough didn't seem too dry, but a touch of water might have made it a little easier to work with. I also think I'd put in less salt. Since I use coarse sea salt the flavor tends to be a little more intense so less should be needed.

Line a greased 9x13 baking pan with parchment paper, dump in the dough, and press it out to as close to the same thickness as you can all around while making sure to press it into the edges of the pan as well. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20-25 minutes until it's golden. Once done, remove the pan from the oven and set aside to allow it to cool while you make the topping.

The reason I picked this particular topping portion of the recipe is because the author mentions how the slightly higher sugar content makes it so that the top of the filling crystalizes a bit and gets a nice, sugary coating. Often lemon bars come topped with powdered sugar, and this recipe also does, but the crystalized sugar actually adds the right amount of sweetness in my opinion. The ingredients are as follows:

• ½ cup all-purpose flour
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• ⅓ cup fresh squeezed Meyer lemon juice
• 1 heaping tablespoon grated lemon zest
• ½ teaspoon baking powder

I beat together the eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest together with our stand mixer using the whisk attachment. I then mixed in the flour and baking powder and let it go until completely incorporated. Pour the mixed topping over the now-cooled shortbread base. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until the topping has set, and the top looks like it's a harder, crystalized shell.

I ended up accidentally lowering the temperature to 300 because the recipe I used for the shortbread base said to do that for baking on the topping, and I baked it at 300 for 25 minutes before raising the temp back up to 350 and baking for another 5 minutes. I think it turned out well, but we'll see how it goes next time when cooked at the proper temperature the whole time.

After the lemon topping finishes baking remove the pan from the oven and let it cool completely before cutting. As you can see from the picture above, the topping isn't smooth like most lemon bars; it has that aforementioned crystalized finish to it that I thought was absolutely amazing. I ended up cutting them into smaller pieces since I wanted to bring them to the office to share. M and I loved them, but there's no way we should have eaten this whole tray.

In the end, everyone loved these lemon bars. The only things I might change in the future are less salt in the shortbread, a little water in the shortbread, and maybe a little more Meyer lemon juice in the topping for a touch more tartness and freshness. Other than that, these were great. The night I baked them the shortbread was a little hard, but after a night of sitting in the Tupperware they softened up and were easier to bite through. It's a shame that Meyer lemons have such a short season, but I'll definitely be on the lookout for these again in the future, and I might try using regular lemons as well as a test since they're more year-round.

Krispy Kreme

One year ago today, after our delicious dinner at ShopHouse, we went to Krispy Kreme because I wanted a little dessert. They had a couple cute looking Easter donuts so we decided that we should get one. We opted for a regular glazed and a chick donut.

The neon sign out front of the store said they had hot donuts, but neither of these donuts seemed very freshly made or hot. That was a bit disappointing when it came to the glazed donut since we've had their fresh, hot glazed donuts before, and they are simply delicious. These, on the other hand, were a little on the cold side. The glazed donut was still airy and fluffy, but it was a little denser and less fluffy since it wasn't fresh. The chick was filled with cream and not custard and topped with glazing and crunch sugar along with some piped frosting for the design.

I preferred the glazed donut because it just tasted better. M preferred the chick because she loved the crunchy sugar topping, and she also (intentionally) didn't have much, if any, of the cream. I found the cream to be a little too sweet. I prefer custard filled donuts because custard tends to be a little less sweet when it comes to donuts. All in all we were happy with our dessert, but we know that we've had better experiences at Krispy Kreme in the past.

Goodbye Milkato

After our last dinner in Naxos, we decided to make another trip to Milkato to say goodbye and grab some more gelato. We had gone previously and gotten two flavors that were really tasty. We opted to try a couple different flavors this night, and from what we remember, they were stracciatella and cookies.

Stracciatella is vanilla gelato striped with chocolate and also flaked with chocolate within. It was incredibly creamy, and at the end of the day chocolate and vanilla are a great combination. The chocolate stripes on top were interesting because since it was striped melted chocolate it "froze" and became like a hard shell. The flakes within were softer and much more like regular chocolate chips you'd find in chocolate chip ice cream.

Cookies was, as we expected, just like cookies and cream ice cream. It was vanilla gelato studded with broken up cookies similar to Oreos. For all we knew it could actually have been Oreos. Cookies and cream is one of our favorite flavors overall, and this was definitely a good one.

We really enjoyed our trips to Milkato, and we hope that they're still around. Their Facebook page hasn't had a new post or picture in a little bit, and that worries us. If it is still there, we highly recommend that you sample the gelato they have to offer. We know we certainly will!

Chimney Cakes

When we were at the Bryant Park holiday market before the holidays one night, we saw a really long line for a stand selling chimney cakes. We had never had one before, but they sounded interesting. We made a mental note to remember these if we came back another day and there were less than fifty people in line.

Chimney cakes originated in Hungarian cuisine where Wikipedia tells us they are known as kürtőskalács. This style of cake has been around since medieval times, and is pretty simple in concept. They bake the dough in the oven in the same style as rotisserie chicken with a rotating spit. The chimney cakes vendor at the Bryant Park market offered them plain ($7 each) or with an assortment of toppings like Nutella or dulce de leche for $2 extra each.

We got ours filled with Nutella which was a good combination for a snack. We first tried biting into the cake directly to eat it, but found that it unraveled into spirals which would have actually made it easier to eat if not for all the Nutella getting all over our fingers. We would imagine that a chimney cake without fillings would be really easy to eat by just peeling apart the spirals, but we didn't find a great solution with the fillings.

The cake itself was sweet as it was rolled in sugar, and the Nutella added even more sweetness and a bit of nuttiness to the cake. The texture of the cake was a bit on the crisper side since it was so thin, but tasted really good. A thought it was a touch too sweet, but overall was still good. M was curious what it would taste like without the Nutella, since that made it extra sweet.

While we're glad that we were able to try out something new and from a new country for WorldEats, we don't know that we would need to get this again, especially since the line was always so long.

A's Favorite Food Memories of 2016

This was an interesting year for me with regards to eating and drinking. M and I did a decent amount of travel this year, and that's reflected in my list. This list, as always, isn't necessarily the best things I ate or drank all year, but it's a list of the most memorable events. It just happens that most of these are the best things I ate :)

1) Chesapeake and Maine - Warm Maryland Crab Dip
This is a dish of pure comfort and decadence. It's cheesy, sweet from the succulent crab meat, and simply amazing as a dish. We went to Chesapeake and Maine twice on our visit down to Rehoboth Beach, and we got this each time. In fact, it was so good that it was the only thing we duplicated.

2) Convivial - Scallop Boudin Blanc
I included this because it was so different from anything I had ever eaten before. It was scallop that was ground up and formed into a sausage of sorts. They topped it with sliced snow peas, sea beans, and roe. We couldn't place all of the flavors on this, but it tasted like a smooth, silky chowder.

3) Craft Beer
One thing that seemed pretty constant with most of our trips this year was amazing craft beer. With trips to Delaware, Portland, and San Diego we hit some of the biggest names in craft brewing, and these also happen to be some of my favorites. The highlights for the year are definitely Dogfish Head, Cascade, Stone, and Ballast Point. I had initially debated between adding in small batch coffee instead, but I opted for craft beer because it's something that M and I can enjoy together.

4) Dominique Ansel Bakery - Cronut
The original Dominique Ansel hype food! We finally took advantage of the pre-order option for cronuts this year and were able to taste one of their monthly flavor offerings. We got the June flavor: Blueberry Elderflower with Lime Sugar. Having had the real thing, I understand the hype. I've tried a couple imitation versions, and they never seemed like anything special, but after eating an actual cronut, I see that the imitators have yet to figure anything out. The combination of light and airy croissant turned into a denser donut is a magical mystery, and the fruit flavors and custard made for an amazing flavor. We're looking forward to getting more of these in the future.

5) Fork and Flask at Nage - Smoked Half Chicken
This is a dish that I know I wouldn't be able to eat every day even though I included it on this list. The reason for that is because it's just too rich and heavy for that to happen. The chicken was good and had a nice smokey flavor to it, but it was the accouterments that really made this dish shine. First and foremost was the black garlic infused mashed potatoes. They had such a rich and umami-filled flavor from the black garlic and butter, and I can still taste it today in my head. The roasted root vegetables offered a subtle sweetness to the combination, and it was also nice to have a bit of vegetable matter on the plate. While I couldn't eat this every day, I would certainly love to try my hand at making that black garlic mash at some point.

6) Mofongo with Pork - Vendy Plaza Harlem (La Marqueta)
I love mofongo, and I've always been intrigued by it since I first read about it over a decade ago. It wasn't until back in 2014 that I finally got to try some, and I instantly fell in love with it. Funny how it took me another year and a half before I got it again, but that wait was totally worth it. I don't remember the name of the stand this came from, but they had a wait because they made all of the mofongo fresh. The additional wait time made this even better because the anticipation built it up in my mind, and it lived up to its billing. The fried pieces of pork had just the right amount of fat on them to keep everything moist and flavorful, and the freshly made mofongo was so rich and hearty. The bowl came with a small cup of garlic water/sauce, and the heavy garlic flavor really tied everything together.

7) Seabra's Marisqueira - Acorda de Marisco (Dry Soup)
This year M and I finally made the trip out to Newark, NJ to get some authentic Portuguese food. For me the highlight of this meal was the Acorda de Marisco which is a soup that is then filled with cubes of bread that soak up the broth and make it a thicker, stewier concoction. I'd never heard of a "dry soup" before, but I could totally go for some right now in this cold winter weather. It has the right amount of saltiness to go with the sweetness of the seafood in the soup, and it's a hearty, comforting dish.

8) Thip Khao - Naem Khao (Crispy Rice Salad)
M and I have had really good luck with Southeast Asian rice salads in our lifetime, and this was no exception. The perfect combination of spice, heat, herbs, and crunch meld to form a near perfect dish. It's clean and light while still bursting with so much flavor. This is definitely something I could eat every day and not get tired of it.

9) Uncle Boons - Banana Blossom Salad
This wasn't my favorite dish of the night for this meal, but it was up there. The reason I chose this dish, though, is because it reminded me so much of a dish M and I had back in Chicago at a different Thai restaurant. It's creamy and fresh tasting, and the fried shallots offer that salty, crunchy goodness that we know and love. This dish brought M and me back to delicious and simpler times in our lives before all of these "adult responsibilities" came into being.

10) Zenebech Injera - Vegetable Combo with Doro Wat
This isn't the first Ethiopian food we've had in our lives, but it was a completely transcendent experience. Zenebech was known as being the bakery that provided injera to almost every other Ehtiopian restaurant in the area. They also had their own restaurant where they served, easily, the best Ethiopian food we'd ever tasted. The injera was light and fluffy, and it didn't leave a sticky residue like all of the versions here in NYC. The stews were so full of flavor and were like nothing we had ever tried before. The doro wat was so rich, and the chicken pulled off the bone so easily.

Gaufres

One of the things we knew everyone talked about before heading to Brussels were the yellow wafel trucks that could be found throughout the city slinging delicious Belgian-style wafels. There are, apparently, many colors of wafel trucks in Brussels, but it's the yellow trucks that are supposedly the best of the bunch. So it was that on our way between two of the few touristy spots we actually saw, we came across one of the fabled trucks.

What we ran into was an unassuming food truck that was parked close to the Musical Instruments Museum (the MIM), and we saw a very short line forming since it seemed like they had just parked and opened. We quickly got into line and waited the short bit before getting our wafel.

One thing of note if you've never had a Belgian-style wafel before, the "batter" that is used to make the wafels is much thicker than American-style waffles, and it's also much sweeter. It's more like a cake batter in consistency, and the added sugar helps the wafel exterior caramelize.

We opted for a simple liege wafel with chocolate sauce. Since it was fresh, the wafel itself was very warm and soft. As mentioned, the exterior of the wafel crisped up and caramelized from the sugar in the batter, and the inside was still very soft. You also got a distinct crunch every so often as you bit into and chewed on the sugar crystals in the batter that didn't melt/cook up. The wafel on its own was delicious, but the rich dark chocolate sauce added a divine decadence. High quality Belgian chocolate lent itself to an amazing and rich topping that finished the snack off. We really enjoyed our wafel, and that's definitely one thing we'd try to get again if we ever found ourselves back in Brussels.