Marathon of Cookery

Well, had today off, which was sort of weird, and mostly unexpected. So, I thought I’d do a whole bunch of stuff, from bringing the car to the shop (the idle’s a little weird on the Civic) to weeding the front yard. Ended up cooking all day. Prepped stuff for a lasagna I’m gonna assemble tomorrow (roasted squash, made the ragu – ~2hrs), made Chicken & Mushrooms for dinner (~40 minutes), and baked a cake from this recipe, which I can’t necessarily recommend.

The lasagna’s from Jamie Oliver’s “Simple Lasagna” recipe, which I’ve made a couple times before. It’s relatively simple, but it’s quite time consuming, even if you use a pressure cooker. I just made the ragu in a pot, and cooked it in the oven, since I had the time. I also roasted the butternut squash, since that takes a good long while. Tomorrow, assembly and cook time should be less than an hour, which makes it doable for a weeknight dinner.

The Chicken and Mushrooms is pretty simple – marinate some chicken cut into bite-sized pieces, and a bunch of white button mushrooms in a bottle of random cheap-assed supermarket Italian dressing for a couple hours. Cook up some white rice. Take out all the chicken, then cook it ’till done. Then slice up and cook all the mushrooms. Let the sugar from the dressing caramelize on the ‘shrooms and the chicken, giving it a nice glossy brown color. Take a spoonful of rice, and some of the chicken & mushrooms, and eat. This was, I think, the first meal we ever cooked together, and the two non-Ei-Nyung people I associate it with are Joe, who came up with the recipe, and Dylan, who spent one evening in the kitchen with us when we were making it. Good, nostalgic food.

The cake… well, it’s the first cake I’ve made in … maybe ever? I don’t know. I used to make cheesecakes, but was trying for something different, and for some reason, this recipe caught my eye. Seemed like each step was doable, and the ingredients looked good, and tasty. I don’t know what the final result’s supposed to be like, but the cake I ended up with was very reminiscent of a shortcake in texture. Tasty enough, I suppose, but not really what I was looking for, and I’d guess probably not what you’re looking for either.

Educational, I suppose, and sort of a fun way to spend a day off. Oh – I cleaned out the fridge, as well. It’s *incredible* how much redundancy we have in there. Five jars of pickles? Four of preserves? Four separate jars of sun-dried tomatoes? Come ON. I did some consolidation, a lot of throwing out, and created a bunch of space, at least enough for all the crap I ended up cooking today.

Good times.

Also: If you get G4, WATCH NINJA WARRIOR. It’s an obstacle course show, which is called “Sasuke” in Japan. They’ve brought it over subtitled, and it’s incredibly fun to watch. We ended up watching it for about 2 hours last night, and I could have watched another three or four episodes.

3 comments

  1. Joseph says:

    I, quite fondly, recall the memory of shopping in Boston for the chicken and dressing, going back to TEP, marinading it, then cooking up. You were pretty amazed at how simple it was, yet how good it tasted. I still am.

  2. Andre Alforque says:

    A friend of mine finds baking a particular challenge because of its precise measurements, and relative lack of forgiveness compared to cooking in general. I found this out the hard way while attempting to make creme bruele. Keyword: attempting; never came out with an edible batch outside the class.

  3. ei-nyung says:

    I made Seppo a ginger-orange creme brulee for his birthday. If only he’d upload his pics, so that I could post about it. 😀 There was a tiny bit of curdling near the edges, but otherwise, they were pretty good!

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