Week 8 - Used to Dislike

The challenge for Week 8 was called "used to dislike." The first year I did the challenge in 2014, there was a challenge for an ingredient you hated as a kid. I chose lima beans and made two lima bean recipes (here and here), neither of which convinced me to jump on the lima bean train. I didn't really want to do that again, but I had a bit of trouble coming up with foods that I disliked at one point and loved now.

Eventually, I settled on cilantro and eggs. As a kid, I didn't love finding cilantro in dishes. I don't think I thought it tasted like soap, but just that it was strong and overpowering. One day, it was like a switch flipped, and I suddenly realized how amazing cilantro was and couldn't get enough of it. I also didn't love eggs when I was younger, other than omelettes. Didn't like the texture or taste hardboiled, found them boring scrambled (and whatever they were in those "scrambled egg" dining hall trays), and didn't like runny eggs at all. Omelettes were fine, filled with meats and veggies and cheese, but why would I choose those other types of eggs when there were so many more interesting things I could eat? Combining herbs and eggs led me straight to kuku sabzi, a Persian herb frittata usually eaten at the start of spring for the new year. (Note: We made this in February, and I'm just a little behind in posting...)

Kuku sabzi wasn't really a perfect answer to this challenge. First, frittatas are similar to omelettes, so not exactly something I would have disliked. Second, I couldn't actually make eggs due to B's allergy, and I didn't dislike chickpeas at any point (garbanzo flour would be the substitute for eggs). Was this really the best thing I could make? In the end, I decided to go with it for two main reasons. One, I'd never made it before, and the point of the cooking challenge generally was to expand my cooking horizons, and two, I may have disliked how strong some herbs were when I was younger, but maybe I could avoid that for B by continuing to introduce them to him at a young age. Looking around, I found a vegan version of kuku sabzi on Golubka Kitchen and decided to start there. It sounded delicious.


Before I go any further, a quick plea for help if anyone is reading this and has any ideas. This challenge, out of all the ones this year so far, took the longest to prepare. I didn't take any breaks or play games and just worked the entire time, but somehow it took 2.5 hours to prep everything and get it in the oven, with the majority of that time spent prepping three things - parsley, cilantro, and dill. How can I get faster at washing herbs, picking them off the stems, and chopping them up? What are we doing wrong? How could it possibly take so long? There has to be something we're missing, but internet sleuthing and YouTube haven't turned up anything yet. We just don't understand how it could have taken so long. Anyway, on with the challenge.


The ingredients for our adapted version of the vegan kuku sabzi were:

for the frittata:
- 2 cups chickpea flour ($1.50)
- salt ($0.02)
- turmeric powder ($0.15)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 3 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.50)
- 2.5 cups water ($0)
- 1 onion, finely chopped ($0.79)
- 1 cup of leeks, chopped ($1)
- 2 garlic cloves, minced ($0.10)
- 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped ($0.99) *
- 1 bunch of parsley, chopped ($1.49) *
- 1 bunch of dill, chopped ($1.99) *
on the side:
- 1 box of grape tomatoes ($3.99)
- 1 container of garlic spread ($2.99)

* The recipe said 1.5 cups of each of these, chopped, and I really tried to do that. We had some giant bunches of cilantro, parsley, and dill that we bought from Wegmans, larger than what we would ever get at Trader Joe's. I felt sure that this would be way more than 1.5 cups, so much so that I only washed half the parsley initially, and then was shocked when it didn't even fill an entire cup. In the end, it probably came out to just under a cup of cilantro, just over a cup of parsley, and about 1.25 cups of dill.

All of that came out to $8.58 for the frittata and $15.56 for the total. It seems most of our challenge meals are coming out around $15 these days. It did last for two dinners though, so no complaints there and more economical than some of the other stuff we've made lately.

The steps for the recipe itself weren't difficult, but it just took a lot of time to make, with the bulk of that time being prep as mentioned earlier. The steps for our adapted version were:


- Prep the onion, leeks, garlic, and herbs.
- For the batter, combine the chickpea flour, salt, turmeric, black pepper. Whisk in the oil and water, and then let it sit while preparing the other stuff.
- Saute onion, leeks, and garlic until soft, and then add to the batter.
- Add the chopped herbs to the batter, and mix in well.
- Oil a pie pan (two in our case), and then pour the batter into the pan.
- Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes.
- Serve with garlic spread (looked for a yogurt dip or yogurt-based tzatziki, couldn't find what I wanted, but this worked so well) and chopped tomatoes.


The final product here tasted good, but we thought there wasn't as much flavor as there should have been considering there were all those herbs plus garlic plus leeks plus onions. If we made this again, we would add more garlic, more leeks, and green onions. Honestly though, there probably won't be a next time for this exact recipe unless we can figure out how to process the herbs faster. It took way too long to prepare something that should be so simple.


That said, the texture was good, and we all liked it, so we decided to reuse this as a framework for other "frittatas" that would be easier to prep. We've already done that once now with a combo of mushrooms, onions, and Mexican cheese, which was definitely easier to make, but also came out with far less flavor than we thought it would (and zero cheese taste). Something to work on for the future, I guess. Another bright spot from this kuku sabzi experiment, besides finding a way to make vegan frittatas, was that B ate plenty of it and at this point in time, doesn't seem to have an aversion to herbs and stronger flavors. He was so willing to try it, and that made me so happy!

52W Challenge: Corn

I stopped doing the 52 week cooking challenge in late 2017, mostly because it didn't fit our lifestyle at the time, but also because it wasn't as much fun anymore. Lately, finding myself in a cooking rut and lacking inspiration, I've found myself checking in more and more to see what the weekly challenges were, hoping that, even if I didn't start participating every week again, I could at least find something interesting to put on our weekly meal plan. I missed trying new recipes and adding new things to our repertoire, so when the Week 37 challenge came up as corn, I decided it was finally time to plunge back in.

Corn is that quintessential summer ingredient (although we love eating it in all seasons). A good corn recipe, especially a salad, just makes me think of summer, and when I saw a recipe for fresh corn cakes with summer salsa on MyRecipes, I knew that was the one we had to make. It wasn't especially difficult, some of the prep work could be done in advance, and any leftover ingredients (from our modified recipe) could be repurposed for other things during the week.

The ingredients were:

For the corn cakes:
- 4 oz of all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup plain yellow cornmeal
- 2 tsp baking powder
- some salt and pepper
- 1 cup light sour cream
- 2 eggs
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 can of sweet corn
- 1 jalapeño pepper, minced

For the salsa:
- 2 small Roma tomatoes, chopped
- 1 medium zucchini, chopped
- 3 large scallions, chopped
- apple cider vinegar
- olive oil
- salt and pepper

We didn't plan it this way, but I ended up making the salad/salsa and A ended up making the corn cakes. The salad was relatively simple: just chop the vegetables, add the oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste, and mix. The corn cakes were a little more involved, but fairly straightforward. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, pepper) in one bowl, and in another bowl, mix the wet ingredients (sour cream, eggs, olive oil). Add the sour cream mixture, corn, and jalapeño to the dry ingredients, and stir until combined. Then you just drop the corn mixture onto a griddle like pancakes, and cook them until they're done, flipping as needed.

We really liked this recipe. The corn cakes were tasty, and the additions of the actual corn kernels and the jalapeño were key. We thought that they could be improved with some cheese if we were to make them again, maybe some feta or some cheddar. The salsa on the side was an excellent accompaniment for a light vegetarian meal. I read some of the recipe comments afterwards, and someone had suggested also making some salmon with this, which would work really well with the flavors we tasted. This made 8 or 9 corn cakes, so it was pretty filling for the two of us, but if it were being split among more people in a family meal, the salmon would be a nice addition. The only negative to this recipe for us was that we were really bummed that we couldn't share this with baby B. The texture of the corn cakes would be great for a baby his age, and we think he would love the flavors, but the eggs make that impossible right now. If not for the egg allergies, this would be a great recipe to add to our family meal rotation.

Gnocchi with Sausage and Spinach

It's been ages since we've made a new recipe from scratch, between the dietary restrictions of pregnancy and my difficulty in moving around the kitchen, and then adjusting to hectic life with a newborn and schedules and exhaustion levels that aren't always conducive to cooking. I'm not saying that we didn't cook at home at all, but I'm not counting easy dishes with interchangeable ingredients like scrambles, pasta, sandwiches, stir-frying vegetables, or throwing things into a simmer sauce, or the Korean braised tofu that we always make. The only other things we've made since the beginning of this calendar year are the scallion pancakes that A made from his mom's recipe. I have to go all the way back to Thanksgiving when I made stuffing to find something I've made from scratch that isn't one of the "usual" dishes, and I don't even know how far back I'd have to go to find an experiment with a new recipe.

My focus now is a little more on recipes that are quick, easy, and nutritious as opposed to more complicated cooking projects, but a dish doesn't need to be difficult or time-consuming to expand my cooking horizons. There were many weeks when I wasn't even meal planning or looking for new recipes, so it felt really good to be back to even thinking about trying new things recently.

I've been cleaning out piles of old magazines recently (way too much clutter at home), and found an easy-sounding recipe in an issue of Real Simple from March 2007. (No, that's not a typo. The magazine was over a decade old.) We were heading to the grocery store over the weekend (don't go nearly as much as we used to since we were typically night shoppers), and gnocchi with sausage and spinach seemed like an easy thing to shop for and make. We already had Italian pork sausage in the freezer, and since we're trying to do a better job of eating the food we have in a timely manner, that made this recipe even more appealing.

The ingredients for the dish were minimal and included:

- 1 17-oz package of shelf-stable gnocchi ($1.69)
- olive oil ($0.25)
- 1 yellow onion ($0.79)
- 1 package of Italian pork sausage, about 1.5 lb, casings removed ($4)
- 1 heaping spoonful of minced garlic ($0.15)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.05)
- 1 bag of baby spinach ($1.99)
- grated parmesan cheese, about 1/2 cup mixed in plus more to garnish ($0.50) *

* I don't know exactly how much the cheese cost since my parents picked it up for us when they got some groceries after B arrived, but that's about what it would cost with the usual price of parmesan.

Just under $10 for a filling dinner for two was so much better than ordering yet another dinner from Seamless.

The steps for making the dish were pretty simple:

1. Cook gnocchi according to package. In our case, that was boil water, drop in gnocchi, and cook for about 3 minutes. (So quick!) Once gnocchi is cooked, reserve 1/4 cup of cooking liquid and then drain.
2. Heat olive oil over medium heat, and cook onion until soft.
3. Add sausage and crumble while cooking until browned.
4. Add garlic, salt, pepper, and spinach. Cook until spinach is wilted.
5. Add drained gnocchi, reserved cooking liquid, and grated cheese. Toss well.
6. Serve with additional cheese on top.

I really liked this dish, not just because it was simple, and not just because it was the first new thing I'd made in a while. The Italian pork sausage gave the dish so much flavor, like it does in just about everything it's added to, and it was nice to have the spinach to balance out the heavier sausage and gnocchi. The gnocchi soaked up all of the sausage flavor, and the cheese pulled it all together (even though I often forgot to garnish the bowls with more cheese). I think it would probably be better with straight parmesan cheese, but we used a shredded parmigiano reggiano stravecchio because that's what my parents picked up that time, which has a slightly different flavor. Nice and quick, we would definitely make this again.

52W Challenge: Salt

This is the last post from the 2017 challenge for the 52 week cooking challenge. In my last post about why I quit, I mentioned I was starting to twist whatever I was making into a theme to check the boxes, and there is probably no better example than this challenge right here. I wrote this back in November when we made the soup, but had been waiting to post it until I finished all the challenges in between, which as you know never happened. This was from Week 41 since I was jumping around, but going forward I'll just note any posts with themes from the challenge with 52W Challenge in the title instead of the week number since I'm no longer following along, officially or unofficially.

The Week 41 challenge was all about salt. The challenge was supposed to be about using salt in cooking, which is something we do all the time but rarely with salt as the focus. They had a bunch of suggestions, like encasing food in salt or doing a brine or curing. I didn't really have any interest in those types of projects at the time I was going to do the challenge, and the only thing I could think of was seasoning some vegetables with onion salt, not exactly much of a "challenge." Since I'm not officially participating, I decided to switch it around. How could I get the flavor of salt without using any actual salt itself?

Around that time, my grandparents had split a giant winter melon that had grown in someone's backyard into three sections, and I had to figure out what to do with a third of a winter melon. (Yes, the winter melon in the photo below is about a third of a single melon.) The easiest thing to do with winter melon is soup, so we decided to make a soup without using salt. Instead, we would use chicken bouillon to make chicken broth and also incorporate some chopped ham.

The soup ingredients were simple: half of the winter melon, a pound of carrots, a bowl of shiitake mushrooms (plus the soaking water), about 3 big scoops of bouillon, that entire ham steak, and a little white pepper, plus some more water to make broth. No salt itself.

The steps for making the soup were:

1. Prep: Soak shiitake mushrooms in warm water for about 20 minutes or until soft, and then remove mushrooms from water but save the water. Squeeze excess water from mushrooms and chop into slices. Peel and chop carrots.

2. Add carrots and mushrooms to large soup pot. Add the mushroom soaking water plus however much water you think you need for soup broth. (Didn't measure, but we ended up removing at least a few ladles full later because we had too much water.) Bring to boil.

3. While waiting for water to boil, prep winter melon. Scoop out seeds and peel, then chop into smaller chunks. Chop up ham.

4. Once water is boiling, add winter melon, bouillon, and ham. Season with white pepper and stir everything together well. Bring back to boil over medium heat, and then lower to simmer. Simmer half-covered for about half an hour.

This was a very simple soup to make, and we based it on the soups that a lot of Chinatown restaurants serve before meals. We didn't plan to eat the entire pot of soup in one night but we did, mostly because it isn't exceptionally filling with just winter melon and carrots and mushrooms in it. It had so much more flavor than we were expecting it to, and it definitely tasted like there was salt added even though there technically wasn't. Probably wasn't what this challenge was intended to be about, but works for me. Would definitely make this again.

Week 36 - Stacked

I couldn't figure out what to make for the stacked challenge, so I asked A for some ideas. He immediately said a short stack of pancakes. I don't really make regular pancakes (like the breakfast kind), and it was going to be for dinner, so I decided to make zucchini pancakes, following an Ina Garten recipe.

The ingredients we used were:

- 1 lb zucchini, grated

- 1/2 large onion, grated

- 2 eggs, beaten

- 7 tbsp flour

- 1 tsp baking powder

- onion salt

- freshly ground black pepper 

- butter

(Again, cheese in picture but did not use...)

The steps for making the stacked zucchini pancakes were:

1. Prep: grate zucchini and onion, beat eggs.
2. Stir onion and eggs into zucchini.
3. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper, and stir well. (Initially added less flour but seemed too thin, so recipe said to add more.)
4. Melt some butter in a large sauce pan and once melted lower heat to medium/medium low.
5. Add batter to pan in scoops of about 1/4 cup.
6. Cook pancakes on each side until browned. (Recipe said 2 minutes per side but it took much, much longer than that. Unfortunately did not time it.)
7. Continue frying pancakes in batches until they're all done.
8. Stack the pancakes and eat!

I don't know why, but in my head, I had this idea that these would come out soft and fluffy like regular pancakes but made with lots of zucchini. That wasn't the texture at all, but I don't know why I thought it would be. They were more like pan-fried potato pancakes, very soft. As far as taste, they were good, but I thought they would have more flavor. Frying them all up took a while too, so I'm not sure if I would do this again.

Week 32 - Salad

For over a year now, I've carried around a list in my phone of ingredients for a recipe that I hoped to make, roasted sweet potatoes and fresh figs, the first recipe in the cookbook Jerusalem by Ottolenghi. I was hoping to start a cookbook project where I started from the beginning and just made the recipes in order, skipping over any that we wouldn't make at home normally (deep frying, for example) or couldn't eat for intolerance/allergy reasons. But the ingredients sat and sat in the notes app on my phone, waiting for the day when we could find the fresh, ripe figs that would be needed for the recipe.

When we were at Trader Joe's during the weekend of their anniversary sale (and what a great sale that was), A noticed that there was a big display with boxes of fresh figs. They looked pretty good, and after getting advice from a nice gentleman who was buying multiple boxes for himself, we picked one up and decided we would finally get around to making this recipe. I didn't think of it at the time but realized later it would be perfect for the Week 32 salad challenge.

The ingredients for the dish (adapted from the original) were:

- 4 sweet potatoes, small to medium sized

- olive oil

- salt and pepper

- 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

- 1 bunch of green onions

- chili flakes

- 8 fresh figs

- 5 oz goat cheese

For whatever reason, I kept thinking of this like an appetizer so wondered if we needed to eat more afterwards. But when I stopped to think about it rationally, it would be equivalent to eating 2 sweet potatoes each, which would be enough for a good dinner.

The steps for making the dish (as adapted) were:

1. Wash sweet potatoes and slice lengthwise, continuing to slice into wedges until they are desired thickness.

2. Cover sweet potatoes in olive oil, and top with salt and pepper.

3. Bake sweet potatoes skin side down on a baking sheet at 475 degrees for about 25 minutes. [They were definitely done by then, but probably could have done it for less time.]

4. Once sweet potatoes are soft, remove from oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

5. Make the balsamic reduction by adding the balsamic vinegar to a small pot, and simmering until it thickens.

6. Wash and chop the green onions into medium sized pieces.

7. Add olive oil to sauce pan, add green onions, and shake on chili flakes. Cook for a few minutes until green onions are softer but still have some sturdiness to them.

8. Slice figs into quarters.

9. Plate! Sweet potatoes on the bottom, then the green onions and infused olive oil, then figs, balsamic reduction, and topped off with crumbled goat cheese.

Wow. That was really, really delicious. I didn't doubt that the dish would be good since we've had Ottolenghi salads from our time in London, but that first bite of a little bit of everything together was amazing. And I say this as someone who doesn't especially love fruit in savory dishes, but this definitely worked. Not a ton of ingredients, but every one played a role in the flavor. We would definitely make this again.

Week 29 - Dim Sum

I put off the dim sum challenge for a long time. The challenge week was in July, and I didn't make anything for it until September. I'm behind in challenges generally, but I just lacked motivation for this one. I think a big part of that was because dim sum has always seemed like a lot of work for something that is consumed very, very quickly. For example, A's mom made dumplings completely from scratch one night for dinner when we visited, and the 130+ dumplings she made were consumed in maybe half an hour. Another part of it was probably because we've had a lot of dim sum over the years, and I knew whatever I made wouldn't live up to it. Yet another part of it was probably because I wasn't going to make a multitude of dishes, but only one, and that really wouldn't replicate the dim sum experience. It just seemed easier to go out for dim sum than to do this challenge.

But part of this challenge is forcing me to go outside of my comfort zone, and sometimes to do things that I don't actually want to do. So I eventually forced myself to pick up some dumpling wrappers and try to make the dumplings that I used to love when my grandmother would make them for family get-togethers. It had been a while since we had them, but we sort of remembered what went into them and got some tips from her and my mom. The ingredients we used were:

- 1 lb ground turkey

- 1 cup dried shiitake mushrooms (probably should have used more)

- 1 can of water chestnuts (probably should have used more)

- 1/2 cup of scallions, greens only (probably should have used more)

- about 1.5 tbsp of soy sauce (definitely should have used more)

- about a capful of shao shing wine

- 1 pack of thin dumpling wrappers

- 1 egg, beaten

- chicken bouillon + water, enough to cook the dumplings in

As you can tell, we didn't really measure anything, and we weren't working off a recipe so all the amounts are estimates. The one thing we both agreed on soon after trying them was that we definitely should have used some more soy sauce. Next time.

The steps for making the dumplings were:

1. Combine ground turkey in mixing bowl with soy sauce and wine, and let sit while prepping vegetables.

2. Rehydrate shiitake mushrooms, reserving the soaking water, and then cut off stems. Put mushrooms, water chestnuts, and scallions in a food processor until chopped well. Add to turkey mixture and mix well. Allow to sit for a few minutes.

3. Combine the water from the shiitake mushrooms with chicken broth (chicken bouillon and water in our case). Bring to boil.

4. Make dumplings. Put a small amount of filling in each dumpling wrapper and seal with egg. [I should have put in more filling. I always overfill everything, like tacos, lettuce wrap, etc, so I think I overcompensated here and didn't put enough. Next time.]

5. Boil dumplings in batches of 10-12 for about 10 minutes until meat is cooked.

Since I didn't put enough filling in each dumpling since I was afraid they would burst, there was a lot of turkey left over at the end. I ended up making about seven giant meatballs (with the turkey mixture, some of the beaten egg, and some more soy sauce) which, after pan-frying for a bit, we then added to the soup that would accompany the dumplings. The soup was my grandmother's idea. She said the dumplings would be even better made with chicken broth instead of water, and that you could then just add vegetables and drink it. Perfect idea. We added in some chopped mushrooms (regular mushrooms, not shiitake) and the rest of the scallions, along with the meatballs, and it was a really clean soup.

In the end, the dumplings were good but not great. There were hints of the flavors I really like from our family's dumplings, but there was something missing. I don't think it was just more soy sauce though. Maybe it was more mushrooms, maybe more water chestnuts, maybe all of the above. Maybe it was some other ingredient that I was missing. I also need to put more meat in each dumpling next time, because there was way too little filling in these. We did enjoy eating them for dinner though, and they were also good out of the refrigerator the next day (cold actually has always been my favorite way to eat them). May take some more experimentation and practice to get this right, but I'm certainly not opposed to it!

Week 25 - California Cuisine

When I thought of California cuisine, the first words that came to mind were local and produce, since the produce out on the West Coast is so much better on average than anything we can get here. In addition to local produce, even though we've never been to the restaurant, one of the places that really stood out in my mind when I thought about California cuisine was Gjelina in Venice, so I started off looking for fresh vegetable recipes inspired by or from Gjelina. Lucky for me, there was a Gjelina cookbook with some recipes reprinted online, and the recipe for braised sweet corn seemed perfect for this challenge.

Whole Foods had an amazing sale on corn - 10 ears for $1 - around the time we were going to do this challenge, which made this so much easier and more affordable. The ingredients for our version of the braised sweet corn were:

- 6 ears of corn, shucked

- salt

- 1 tbsp olive oil

- 2 shallots, minced

- crumbled feta cheese 

- onion salt (TJs), to taste

- juice of 1 lime

- 1/2 batch of cilantro, chopped 

The steps for making the corn were:

- shave corn kernels off cob and set aside
- scrape cobs with back of knife to extract milk and set aside milk
- cut cobs into smaller pieces
- place cut cobs in saucepan covered with cold water and season with salt
- bring to boil, cover, simmer on medium low until stock is cloudy and smells like corn (about 40 min)
- strain and discard cobs, but save corn stock for use
- prep shallots and cilantro while corn stock is in process

[I had no idea there was corn milk or that making corn stock was even a thing until I saw this recipe, but it felt really good knowing that we were using all parts of the corn and nothing was going to waste.]

- heat olive oil in sauce pan and add shallots, cooking until softer

- add corn kernels and season with salt

- add corn stock (1 cup), corn milk, some feta cheese, and cook for a few minutes until liquid has reduced a little

- add the lime juice and onion salt

- remove from heat and stir in cilantro and some more feta cheese

We ate the braised corn along with some baked panko chicken and avocado (how could I leave avocado out of California cuisine week?), and there definitely seemed to be California vibes to the dish. We really liked the braised sweet corn, but it didn't taste so dramatically different from and/or better than other similar corn dishes we've made before (if we were to make them with non-roasted corn, dishes like esquites or a simple corn and vegetables saute) considering all the extra work involved. Glad we tried this experiment, and it definitely had great corn flavor, but considering how slow I am in the kitchen, I think I'll stick to the easier versions.

Week 23 - On a Stick

The Week 23 challenge was titled on a stick. We came up with a number of different things we could make that are often served on sticks or cooked on skewers, dishes like adana, tsukune, kebabs. But no matter what we did, we would have to do it in a way that didn't actually use sticks despite the challenge being on a stick. I don't like buying things for challenges that I'm not going to use again, and I haven't really needed skewers for years. We aren't able to cook on an actual grill anyway, so the use of skewers wouldn't be as necessary in a grill pan.

Eventually I found a recipe for chicken satay, so the plan was to make that along with a peanut sauce and a little cucumber and shallot relish, trying my best to replicate what you would get in a restaurant. Since that probably wouldn't be enough for a meal, we also made a salad on the side with a Thai-style peanut dressing. It was a little ambitious for a single dinner, since there were technically five different components going on at once, but I was trying to get out of a cooking rut and got a little carried away. Thank goodness A and I could work on it together.

Chicken Satay

The centerpiece of the on a stick challenge was the chicken satay, which was also the first thing to be started since it needed to marinate for a few hours. After slicing up two boneless chicken breasts into smaller strips, we put together a marinade based on an easy chicken satay recipe on Allrecipes with the following ingredients:

- 1/2 cup coconut milk

- 1 spoonful of minced garlic

- 1 tsp curry powder

- 1.5 tsp brown sugar

- salt and pepper

I didn't measure everything exactly, but that's about how much was used. Once we mixed the marinade together well, we added it to the sliced chicken and stuck it in the fridge for about 2-3 hours.

While the chicken marinated, we worked on all the other components of dinner. When it was time to cook the chicken, we just stuck the pieces on the grill pan with some oil and let them cook through. The only problem is we don't always know when the chicken is fully cooked on the grill pan, so they were a little overdone. The flavor of the marinade tasted pretty good before we added it to the chicken, but somehow it was more subdued after the chicken was done cooking. They were fine, but not quite what we expected, and they definitely needed the peanut sauce that we made along with it.

Peanut Sauce

For the peanut sauce accompanying the satay, we used the same Allrecipes recipe as the satay itself. The ingredients for the sauce were:

- 1 cup coconut milk

- 1 tbsp curry powder

- 1/2 cup peanut butter

- 3/4 cup chicken stock (using bouillon)

- 1/4 cup brown sugar

- juice of 1 lime

- 1 tsp low sodium soy sauce

The peanut sauce was pretty simple to make, but just took some time and stirring. A took care of this while I prepped other stuff, and we stuck closely to the recipe. The ingredients (other than the lime juice and soy sauce) were mixed together, simmered for about 10 minutes until a smooth and thick sauce (so maybe a little bit longer than that), and then once off heat, the lime juice and soy sauce were added. The peanut sauce was delicious, and we knew immediately that we would be making this again sometime, even if we never made satay again. We had a lot leftover after this meal, so we used the rest of it with an assortment of vegetables over ramen for a tasty dinner.

Cucumber and Shallot Relish

I tried to model the cucumber and shallot relish after the ones we would get in tiny cups at restaurants, but it didn't turn out quite as well. I looked around online and found a relish recipe on Meaningful Eats, which I used for some ideas of what else should be added to it besides fish sauce. In the end, we mixed together some chopped cucumber (about 1/3 of a hothouse) and shallots with a few tsp of white vinegar, a few tsp of fish sauce, a tsp of agave, and some red pepper flakes. In our unmeasured version, whatever ratio we used didn't taste quite right, and the vinegar was incredibly overpowering, so we added more fish sauce and then everything just tasted like fish sauce. Not the fault of the recipe I don't think, but I kind of wished we had just stuck with the peanut sauce. Since we had the salad, we didn't really need the extra vegetables this time.

Overall, the satay was okay. The chicken wasn't anything special, the relish wasn't great, but the peanut sauce saved the whole thing. In the end, we probably won't make chicken satay again (at least not like this), but we will be filing that peanut sauce recipe away for further experimenting.

Thai Crunch Salad

The salad we made to go along with the satay was pretty straightforward, but just required a lot of prep. I did a lot of the vegetables with a little bit of A's help, while he put together the dressing, which was also peanut butter-based, just like the satay's peanut sauce. We were inspired by a salad recipe I found on Once Upon a Chef and used that as the starting point for our salad.

The ingredients for our version were:

- 1 package of shredded cabbage
- 2 carrots, shredded
- 1 green pepper, diced
- 2/3 hothouse cucumber (the rest of the one from the relish), halved, scooped out, and thinly sliced
- 1 cup frozen edamame, soaked in hot water until thawed and then drained
- 4 scallions, thinly sliced
- 1/3 batch of cilantro, chopped

And for the dressing:

- 1/4 cup peanut butter
- 2 tbsp rice vinegar
- juice of 1 lime
- 2 tbsp grapeseed oil
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp honey
- 2 tbsp agave
- 1 spoonful of minced garlic
- ginger paste (in an equivalent amount as garlic)
- salt
- red pepper flakes
- 1/6 batch of cilantro, chopped

Since it was a salad, it was pretty much all prep. It tasted so good, very fresh and crunchy with that excellent dressing, that we kept snacking on it while we waited for everything else to be ready. While we would make the salad again, the two superstars of dinner were really the peanut sauce and the peanut salad dressing, both of which we definitely want to make more of another time.

Week 21 - Presentation

Around the time that I started looking for something to do for the presentation challenge (one which I was not really looking forward to as I'm not really great at plating and most food I make for dinner doesn't lend itself well to good plating), the buzz about cloud eggs started heating up. These eggs have been around for a while with recipes going back years, but apparently there was an Instagram craze at the time. The Washington Post even did a piece on cloud eggs. What would be better for presentation than making something that was really all about how it looked? I decided to pair the eggs with corned beef hash and some roasted potatoes, sort of a "breakfast for dinner," until I saw something about the Pinterest popularity of a recipe for Southwestern roasted potato salad. Might as well make it an on-trend presentation challenge meal and just incorporate that too.

Roasted Potato Salad

I went with the recipe for the Southwestern roasted potato salad as a starting point and inspiration, and used the following ingredients:

- about 1.5 lbs of small red potatoes ($1.79)
- 2 green bell peppers ($1.78)
- 1 red bell pepper ($0.99)
- 1 large onion ($0.50)
- olive oil ($0.50)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- cumin ($0.10)
- dried dill weed ($0.10)
- chili powder ($0.15)
- 1 can of corn ($0.70)
- 1/2 batch of scallions ($0.65)

The steps for the potatoes were pretty easy:

- prep (scrub and chop potatoes into quarters, chop peppers, chop onion)
- grease 2 baking sheets (was going to use one but ran out of space) and put potatoes and vegetables on the sheets
- cover in olive oil, salt, pepper, dill, cumin, chili powder and mix well with hands
- bake in 400 degree oven for 50 minutes, stirring once in the middle, until potatoes are fork tender (these are basically all the same steps I would done for the roasted potatoes anyway)
- remove potatoes to a bowl and add the corn and chopped scallions
- mix together well and season to taste (didn't really do much seasoning as the bowl was a little too small for easy mixing)

Considering all the ingredients that went into the potatoes, they weren't amazingly flavorful. With chili powder, cumin, dill, we just thought there would be more to them, but after they came out of the oven, they mostly just tasted like lightly seasoned potatoes. You couldn't really detect the chili powder or the cumin in the flavor even though I used a fair amount. They were fine, since we like the taste of potatoes, but no different from normal. In general, this really just seemed like a roasted potato dish like we would normally make for the most part. The only thing that differentiated it and "freshened it up" a little bit was the addition of the crisp corn and the scallions. That was nice for making the dish a little less heavy. It was good overall and the flavor grew on us after a bit, and it was also a good accompaniment for the rest of dinner. Just don't know that I would call this a salad. I do like the idea of adding in the corn and scallions to lighten the flavors though.

Corned Beef Hash

Not much to say here, as we basically just emptied the can into a skillet and let it brown, but it added another $2.09 to the total and lots of flavor.

Cloud Eggs

For the "main event," the cloud eggs, we separated 4 eggs. The yolks all went into separate bowls, and then all the egg whites together in one bigger bowl. Adding the 4 eggs to all the other components of dinner, the total was about $9.80. Not bad considering how much food there was.

Making the cloud eggs was easy in theory. Whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, scoop out in four "clouds" with little nests for the yolks, bake at 425 degrees for about 3 minutes, add the yolks, and then bake at 400 degrees for another 3 minutes or so. It sounded easy but whipping the egg whites by hand took forever. We both took a turn at it and did about half the work. It did look hard in that mise en place challenge on Top Chef where they did this, but definitely not as hard as it felt for us amateurs.

The eggs were interesting. The texture of the egg whites when baked was light and fluffy, kind of cloud-like, also a little spongy. The yolks were still runny after the 3 minutes of baking, except the one that broke when it was going into the oven and spilled over like an egg volcano. The eggs generally were fine, but taste-wise, nothing special. Kind of amusing to look at, although questionable whether it's worth the work if you do the egg whites by hand.

Since it was a presentation challenge, I tried to make a landscape design on my plate and have it look nice, but it didn't really work. At least the cloud eggs still were presentation-worthy.

I'm not sure we would make the cloud eggs again. It was fun to try, even if just for the novelty of it, and they were pretty healthy as there wasn't really any oil or grease involved in cooking them, but they're a lot of work.

Week 15 - British

I really like Scotch eggs and was always curious if I could make them myself, but the fact that I don't deep fry at home posed a bit of a challenge. After we got back from London, I started looking around for alternatives and found a recipe for baked Scotch eggs on Food.com that looked promising. I saved it but never got around to making it, so it seemed perfect for the British challenge.

The ingredients for the baked Scotch eggs were:

- 5 eggs ($0.25)

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.50)

- salt and pepper ($0.05)

- thyme ($0.05)

- sage ($0.10)

- garlic powder ($0.05)

- flour ($0.15)

- bread crumbs ($0.35)

The total was about $5.50 but two eggs each wouldn't really be enough for dinner. (We ate a lot of other stuff along the way.)

The steps for the baked Scotch eggs were:

1. Hard boil 4 eggs.

2. While eggs are cooking, combine ground turkey with salt, pepper, thyme, sage, and garlic powder. [I didn't measure anything, but just used what looked like a good amount to me.]

3. Split turkey mixture into 4 even parts.

4. Cool and peel eggs.

5. Set up bowls for dredging system (this should have been my first clue that maybe this wasn't going to go perfectly) - one with flour, one with bread crumbs, one with the last egg beaten, one with water, and then the peeled eggs and turkey mixture in their own bowls.

6. Dip each egg in water, then flour, and surround with turkey mixture. Then dip in egg and cover in bread crumbs.

[When I did the first two eggs this way, they looked gigantic, way too large for a regular Scotch egg. For the last two eggs, I split one of the turkey portions into two and just used half on each egg. That left us with a quarter of the turkey mixture and no eggs, so I just made it into a turkey burger that we ate for an appetizer.]

7. Chill eggs for an hour. [It was supposed to be an hour but it was late, and I had somehow forgotten the chilling step was there. We ended up chilling it for maybe 45 minutes instead.]

8. Bake eggs at 400 degrees until turkey is fully cooked. We started with 30 minutes but they weren't done, so we probably cooked them for 40 minutes total.

9. Cut eggs in half and serve.

The Scotch eggs were okay. Not as much flavor as the ones in the restaurants, but healthier because not deep fried. Way too much meat surrounding the eggs, but I think that was my failure in execution rather than the recipe. I just couldn't seem to get a thin turkey layer to cover the egg evenly on all sides. I really don't know how they do it, even to deep fry it, and get it so even. The turkey wasn't bad as a substitute, but I probably could have added more seasonings to it. While this was good, I probably won't try this again as it's easier to just get them at a restaurant.