Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe #66: Page 766-767 in the 75th anniversary edition of the Joy of Cooking. Yep, you'll have to look it up the old-school way, on paper.

Well, some days you just need something familiar to cheer you up so I figured a day of snow and cold temperatures would be a good time to make a familiar recipe for chocolate chip cookies. My mom makes these for my dad on occasion so I asked her for the recipe. Turns out it's in my very own copy of the Joy of Cooking that I got for Christmas in 2009.

I didn't really do much in the way of substitution for this recipe. That's not as easy in baking as it can be in cooking, or so I'm learning. The only thing I did differently was use Splenda in lieu of the (white) sugar called for.

I always thought this recipe would take a long time to make, but it's pretty quick. I'm glad I was wrong. My mom said she usually doubles it but since I'm not making mine for the masses, I used the original quantities. The book says it yields about 36 2.5 inch cookies.... I got 18 obese ones.

That reminds me of the time my best friend and I made this recipe in a fit of domesticity when we were young. She's always been better in the kitchen whereas I'm the better reader, but somehow between the two of us, we overlooked the fact that these are "drop" cookies, and we carefully flattened each of ours before chucking them in the oven. We ended up with two giant cookies pretty much the exact dimensions of our cookie sheets...

In truth and in fact, I prefer these cookies when my mom makes them. Hers are probably the proper size which means the middles aren't thick and almost not-quite-baked-enough like mine. Hers are a bit crisper overall too. If you like big, soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies, then by all means use their "heaping teaspoon" measurement literally like I did when dumping them on the cookie pans. Otherwise, maybe you'd better ask her what she does differently. Mine are still edible but things taste better when they're made by a mom with love.

20-Minute Chicken Linguine

Recipe #65: http://www.canadianliving.com/food/20_minute_chicken_linguine.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dinnerclub_14Jan2011

Right, so I've been off the air for a while, haven't I? I seem to have done nothing in the kitchen (worth blogging) for the month of December. Well, now that I've returned to school and am still working, which translates to even less spare time than when I was only working, I'm hoping to keep up better with the blog.

Tonight's recipe was a bit of a whim. It got emailed to me in the weekly suggestion list from Canadian Living. A few emails home to see whether a) the recipe would be agreed to for dinner, and if that was successful, then b) what ingredients I already had on hand. A couple of hours of rock climbing after work then a trip to the grocery store on the way home and I'm ready to go.

I'm not sure who thought to give a time definition for this recipe. It certainly took me far longer than 20 minutes - more like nearly an hour. Not good when I've been up since 0530 and I'm eating dinner at 2100. Mind you, some of the delay came from my having to thaw the chicken while I chopped garlic and onion (and mistakenly rubbed my eye afterward). Regardless, it wasn't 20 minutes at this house.

As for alterations: I had chicken thighs already, not breasts. I just used all the thighs in the bag but it probably equated what the recipe called for. I couldn't find cherry tomatoes so I used grape ones. We didn't have linguine at home so I used up the remainder of the vermicelli. I opted for spinach instead of raddichio as the Charmer doesn't like raddichio. I passed on the green onion altogether. Blech.

I chose to roughly measure the S&P into the plastic bag that had held the chicken, then returned the now-sliced chicken to the bag and shook it up to season it. The advantage to having used the vermicelli is that it took 5 minutes to cook al dente whereas the recipe calls for linguine that takes 10 minutes. I'm hungry and really tired. I haven't got an extra 5 minutes to wait for food.

So the end result it surprisingly tasty. I'm always a little skeptical of pasta without some kind of traditional "sauce" (white, red, blush), but this one still has good flavour. It has the added bonus of good-for-you-ness with the garlic, tomatoes, olive oil and spinach. Give it a try and tell me how yours turns out.

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Recipe #64: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/2541

There are germs floating around my house. We're already one man down so I'm making chicken soup to keep myself healthy. I would hate to miss out on our class backpacking/rock climbing/hiking/caving weekend coming up in a few days!

I can't afford to shop at Whole Foods on any kind of regular basis but I'm certainly not above exploiting their website for recipe ideas. They have a good selection of healthy recipes, vegetarian ones too which come in handy at times. I do get a bit annoyed, however, because sometimes they measure things oddly. Take, for example, a line from the recipe in the link above:

2 tablespoons of chopped garlic.... why can't you just tell me how many cloves to chop? Maybe they are hoping people will buy the pre-chopped kind? I chopped 5 cloves (3 big, 2 smaller) and didn't measure the results. So there.

Ok, that's my rant done now.

As for alterations, I didn't do many to this recipe. I bought a bag brown wild rice (Canoe brand if you care) and the grains look long to me. I used one 900mL box of Campbell's reduced-sodium chicken broth and an additional 2 cups from a box of Campbell's vegetable broth. I used an entire medium yellow onion, not necessarily the prescribed 1 cup. Who wants bits of an onion left over if it measures to be more than you need? Heck, it adds flavour. In it goes. I dug a bag of boneless, skinless chicken thighs out of the freezer and chopped them up without caring how much they weighed. Are you sensing a theme here? If you're keeping track and really care, they weighed just under a pound. The mushrooms only came in a 7-oz package so I chopped them all up.

Hmmm, I just added the 1/4 cup of dried parsley that is called for, but I think they might have meant a 1/4 cup of fresh parsley. My soup looks a little green. Oh well, parsley doesn't have a really strong taste and I'm going to imagine that it's good for me too. Just keep in mind that if you're making this recipe, you might want to consider the parsley issue.

Well, if you're looking for a hearty cold-and-flu-season, I-need-to-stay-healthy-to-go-to-school, feel-good kind of soup, this one seems to do the trick. My version hasn't got a TON of flavour but it's tasty nonetheless. The rice is a nice touch of bulk and the garlic is plenty good for an immune system boost. Soup's on!

Bruschetta Chicken Bake

Recipe #63: http://www.kraftcanada.com/en/recipes/bruschetta-chicken-bake-87734.aspx?cm_mmc=eml-_-rbecaen-_-20101020-_-1126

My recipe productivity has slooooooowed.... I do still cook but not a whole lot and if I forget to take a photo, I tend not to blog it. Forgive me the crappy photo in this post.

This recipe was a request from the meatatarian. Although Alberta beef is very good, it's important to have variety too. Besides, the chicken was cheap.

All in all, this recipe is easy to make. I happen to have used the lower sodium stuffing mix because it's a better food choice. The stewed tomatoes came with italian seasoning in them and I finally bought dried basil after confirming for the nth time that I did not have any. Somewhat surprisingly, I actually had mozzarella cheese on hand instead of using whatever random cheese was already in the fridge. I added a bit of extra cheese for the meatacheeseatarian.

The one part I don't like about this recipe is the length of time to cook until chicken is done. I checked it after 30 min which is the initial cooking time suggested. I saw pink meat so I tried another 10 min. Still pink parts! I realize now that a subsequent 15 min was too long - the chicken is cooked but the topping and sides are a bit charred. My mistake.

In the end, the food was still good albeit a little crunchy in places. I'm not 100% sure how much actual time you'd need when cooking this, but I suggest it might be close to 45 min. Enjoy!

Cheese and Vegetable Pasta Bake

Recipe #62: http://www.dairygoodness.ca/recipes/cheese-and-vegetable-pasta-bake

Another friend over for dinner, another excuse to get busy in the kitchen!

I was trying to find a way to use up a few ingredients I seem to always have hanging around: cheese, milk and bread crumbs. Strange combination but a true story. This recipe seemed the perfect way to kill 3 ingredients with one dinner.

I think next time I will add more pasta to this dish. It only calls for 1 1/2 cups of rotini, but I do love pasta and it seemed to me that the pasta got overwhelmed by the vegetables in the finished product form.

I was pleased with my choice of meat for this recipe. I waffled for a long time in the deli section before picking up a hunk of summer sausage. My trouble was: not all of the packages say that the meat is cooked so I looked first at the ones labelled so but didn't like any of them particularly. I thought long and hard and finally came to the conclusion that summer sausage is most likely cooked (in the form that I bought it) because I've seen people open it, cut it and eat it straight away. Mind you, I do that with hot dogs which aren't pre-cooked but that's not the point.

As for the creamy sauce, I am very pleased to tell you that I finally made a lump-free version! Turns out the secret ingredient is ridiculous amounts of patience. That, and one heck of a lot of whisking. The arm cramps will be worth it, however, when your masterpiece is nice and smooth. I was particularly happy that mine didn't taste like flour this time. I've done that before...

I didn't substitute anything major in this recipe. I used 1% milk that I already had, marble cheese for the same reason, salted butter, prefab parmesan cheese (too cheap to buy the real stuff often), a non-Italian-specific bag of frozen vegetables (I dislike most of the Italian-specific vegetables) and breadcrumbs with Italian seasoning built into them.

One piece of feedback that I did get from the diners is that I might want to tone down the cayenne pepper a bit next time. My tongue was tingling, yes, so I'll take that advice to heart. I admit it was a "rough" 1/2 tsp that I measured out in a hurry.

I probably wouldn't recommend this dish if you're watching your fat intake or weight in general. I mean, it's not horribly bad for you, but there is a lot of butter and cheese involved. If you're looking for a hot, vegetable-loaded creamy baked pasta dish with a nice crunchy topping, then I fully recommend this one!

Hearty Minestrone Soup

Recipe #61: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/448?utm_source=Responsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CAN_09_22_10_Recipe

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving! This recipe has zero turkey, stuffing or pumpkin pie in it, but I happen to have made it leading into Thanksgiving weekend. It also serves as my "untraditional" Thanksgiving meal since I'm not able to do the family feast thing back home this year.

Well, they weren't kidding on the website when they billed this soup as "a meal in itself." It's very hearty and filling. I also took their suggestion of serving it with crusty bread and a green salad, all of which was well received by the dinner guests.

For the most part, this recipe is pretty easy to make. You will need to set aside time for chopping endless vegetables, especially if you're still slow at it like me. May I also recommend you don't go swimming without goggles on before you chop the onion. You will not enjoy the resulting pain and blindness. It may be better just to wear goggles for both the swimming and the chopping.

I made a few adjustments to the recipe, mostly for the sake of convenience but also for the sake of flavour in a few cases. I was going to buy a yellow onion as required, but it was recommended to me that a white onion would have more flavour. Since I dislike onion and know virtually nothing about them, I took the advice of my sage co-shopper. I used a mixture of chicken broth that I already had on hand along with the recommended vegetable broth. Out of curiosity, how does a vegetable broth differ from a "vegetarian vegetable" broth? Aren't vegetables the same as vegetables? But I digress....

Ah, yes. The Savoy cabbage. What the heck is a Savoy cabbage? It doesn't seem to exist in these parts; at least, not at the stores I went to to find it. I settled for ordinary green cabbage, buying the smallest one I could find. I've still got nearly all of it left over - free to a good home! As for the parsley and basil, I used my dried herbs at about 1.5 - 2 times the amount called for in fresh herbs. I really should start growing some herbs sometime soon.

I already had baby carrots on hand so I used them to make adult-sized carrot shapes on my cutting board before chopping them up. It seemed like a scientific method of substitution. It was also pretty fun. I happen to have bought the chopped tomatoes with some flavour built into them, and I used my tiny winged pasta (farfalline) on request instead of the fusilli. I completely forgot the salt & pepper!

Now, it does say to drain some of the canned ingredients and not others (which I followed precisely), but in the end, I had to add another approximately 1 cup of vegetable broth to the soup as it was quite thick by that point. Presumably this would not have been the case had I cooked it at a lower temperature, but if you're crunched for time like me and your dinner guests have already arrived, you may be turning up the heat so keep the extra liquids in mind. It turned out well in the end as the guests took second helpings of soup and I didn't have to store a partial box of broth in the fridge for days.

I'm not sure exactly how long I cooked my soup for. I used the microwave for a timer while cooking the first batch of ingredients, but what I had forgotten was that the microwave beeper had been silenced a while back so I've no idea how long past that point it went before I noticed. I did use a bit of extra cooking time to get that cabbage good and soft. This might not be required with Savoy cabbage, but I can't yet say that from experience.

Overall, the soup was well received even by the person who doesn't particularly love soup. This may have been helped by the fact that mine was thickened more like stew. I've just finished the last of the soup leftovers for breakfast so the quantities on the website will last you for a few meals, more if you haven't any more guests to split it with. Enjoy!

Weeknight Ravioli Bake

Recipe #60: http://www.kraftcanada.com/en/recipes/weeknight-ravioli-bake-114755.aspx?cm_mmc=eml-_-rbecaen-_-20100929-_-1118

Happy first birthday, blog! I see that I've been, er, neglecting you of late....

I saw this recipe on my most recent email from Kraft the other day, but I actually had another one in mind to try until this one got requested. One just needs baked pasta some days and today is one of those days.

I should warn you that although this is a Kraft recipe (a.k.a. "easy/simple"), I had a horrendous time trying to find the bloody pasta for it. Kind of a key ingredient that I can't really go without, you know? I went to two different stores. Neither had "frozen" ravioli, nor did the chilled ravioli selection they had come in the required size. Grrrr! Ok, fine. I'll buy the not-technically-frozen one. But it doesn't give me enough because the package is 700g (family size was cheaper) and I need a cumulative total of 900g. Argh. I ended up buying one of the 700g family size packages (spinach and cheese) as well as one of the 350g packages (beef? I forget). I used my trusty kitchen scale to carefully remove 150g of the errant package to freeze for a later date. Yes, I really am that anal in the kitchen.

I also nearly had an issue with the spinach. You'll notice that it's an optional-add item at the bottom of the recipe. I had only 3 items on my grocery list, but when I found the spinach (300g), I read my list wrong and thought I needed 2 x 450g packages. I did some quick mental math and threw 3 packages of spinach into my bag. A few aisles later while hunting for the pasta, I suddenly realized that my pasta was supposed to add up to 900g and the spinach was just one 300g package. That would have been a very healthy mistake if I hadn't noticed...

Overall, this recipe wasn't too bad if I disregard the pasta troubles. When I started to assemble the meal in the dish, the one cup of sauce on the bottom really didn't look like much. It seemed that there was an excessive amount of sauce left in the mixing bowl. I added another cup of sauce between the pasta layers, but that didn't leave me as much as I was probably supposed to have for the top layer. It still seems edible; just something to keep in mind if you try this recipe.

As for substitutions, I didn't have a whole lot. You already read about the stupid pasta. I used basil and tomato pasta sauce because the label was pretty and sugar wasn't one of the first 3 ingredients (Catelli Garden Selects). I couldn't find no-salt-added diced tomatoes so I used ones with however much salt comes with them. I really only had one option at the store. I already had medium cheddar cheese on hand so I used that instead of the fancy expensive kind they try to tell you that you need. And I grated it myself. So there.

Before I forget: beware the Oliveri brand of ravioli! They're kind of scam artists because a bunch of their cute little ravioli pieces were just pieces of pasta. Not stuffed with anything or even pretending to be stuffed (there were some of those too). I wasn't impressed. I wish my friend Chef could have come over to make me some fresh pasta again, but alas. He moved to Nova Scotia and I moved to Calgary.

Consumption notes: OMNOMNOMNOM!! It's quite good, very flavourful and delicious. I think if you use the spinach like I did, don't put sauce between the layers of ravioli. Put it on the top like you're supposed to. A few of my top ravioli pieces got a bit dried out due to lack of coverage. And if you drop any pieces of ravioli on the floor while attempting to transfer them to your plate, they make a nice "splat!" sound and a big mess. I'm just sayin'........