Daring Bakers - French Bread

Well I'm officially a Daring Baker! I had wanted to join for quite a while and always enjoyed reading other bloggers db entries, but never had a blog. So when I finally took the plunge and started this, the first thing I did was join the Daring Bakers.
This months challenge, Juila Child's French Bread wasn't too daunting of a task, because i made french bread several times in baking school. I will say it's much easier with those lovely deck ovens equipped with steam buttons, but a simple spray bottle in my home oven did just fine.
I used my kitchenaid mixer to help out with the kneading, which made it a pretty easy task. Here's the recipe in case anyone is interested http://breadchick.com/?p=336

Ham & Asparagus Fritatta

On my days off from work I usually like to take the time to prepare something different for my meals...not the usual quick things i tend to stick to during the week (toast with pb, plain fruit, sandwiches etc). Today for lunch I wanted something relatively healthy, so I perused around the Cooking Light site and found this recipe. I had some asparagus sitting in the fridge so I gave it a try, and it was really quite good. A nice switch up from plan old scrambled eggs, and with all the veggies and extra whites, I don't feel guilty about eating it.
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=604813

Gooey Goodness!

Cinnamon rolls with Cream Cheese Glaze from the March issue of Bon Appetit!

Triple Berry Coffeecake

I made this coffeecake sometime last week...basically I was bored and in the mood to bake and this simple recipe fit the bill. I found a blueberry coffeecake recipe on allrecipes.com and adapted with the berries I had in my freezer. I used blackberries, strawberries and raspberries...I was going to throw in some blueberries as well, but then I couldn't call it "Triple Berry Coffeecake" hehe.

Howdy! This is just a quick post to tell you about a recipe from Culinary in the Country...I made the Lasagna Soup that Joe posted a while back and it was absolutely delicious...

Check it out! http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/05/lasagna-soup.html

Success!

Well, our quiet Valentine's dinner at home turned out to be quite the success!
I recently saw an episode of Giada's Weekend Getaways in which she visited a restaurant in my city that serves various specialty meats and cheeses. That's it. Meat and cheese. It's called Salt tasting room and pairs wines and various condiments with their selections, but there's no cooking involved. A restaurant without a kitchen...interesting. Anyway, back to Valentine's... I took a page out of Salt's book to start off; I bought cambozola, aged cheddar, dutch gouda and some serrano ham. I also picked up some neat things to serve with it: some citrus almonds I found at a gourmet store, a package of honeycomb, and some yummy artisan bread.

For the main course, I made a recipe I stumbled across on epicurious...Filet mignon with truffled mushroom ragu. The mushrooms, with our without truffle oil, were delicious and so easy to make! A simple conocoction of mushrooms, butter, garlic, marjoram, red wine, chicken stock and cream was all it took to top of the steak.

Dessert was three types of creme brulee...vanilla bean, lemon and dark chocolate! Tasted so good, but not so hot for my lactose intolerance, yikes.

I've spent most of the evening prepping for tomorrow night's Valentine's dinner...creme brulee and filet mignon are a couple of the items on the menu. You'll have to wait until tomorrow for those pictures, so I thought I'd post a couple of the dinners I made this week. Pulled pork sandwiches (crockpot!) and a chicken couscous salad.

Focaccia

Yum! I haven't tried it yet though...it's waiting for tonight's dinner.
Here's the recipe - http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/landing.jsp?go=DefaultRecipe&recipe_id=R67
I changed it a bit by using half all-purpose and half whole wheat flour; I also added some sliced garlic to the dough, and carmelized red onion and garlic on top. Seeing as how the onions got quite dark, I would precook them less next time.

Light Carrot Cake

I've always been a big fan of carrot cake, and in recent years I've found that it seems like a recipe that bids well to lightening. On a regular basis I just can't bring myself to eat something made with as much as 1 1/2 cups of oil, so yesterday I tried this lighter recipe from Cooks Illustrated. It only contains 1/2 cup of oil, albeit a hefty amount of sugar. I took the liberty of adding some chopped toasted nuts as well as raisins, and finished it off with cream cheese icing. The cream cheese icing was a bit too runny, I guess light cream cheese wasn't the way to go...oh well! It still tasted good, even if it hindered my decorating efforts, hehe.
http://americastestkitchen.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=3871&iSeason=7