More baking, or Willpower vs. Chocolate, Round II

Last night's chicken was GOOD. I tried "velveting" it for the first time, and man, did it ever change the texture -- much, much more like it is when it comes from a Chinese place. In a good way, that is. Next time, though, I'd try to add some flavour to the marinade. Not sure how it would affect it, if at all, but it's worth a try, because though the texture was good, it was lacking in flavour.

For reference, one egg white, a tablespoon each of cornstarch, rice vinegar, and a little less than that of salt. Put in some pepper, too, just because I couldn't NOT add some sort of seasoning to it. Let it sit in the fridge for an hour-ish, then poached in simmering water for a couple minutes until not quite done through.

Stirred it in to the veggies & sauce right at the end, heated through, and it was perfectly cooked. Sauce was good, but I would have liked the orange flavour to come out a little more.

Tonight: potato and veggie chowder, because I must use this milk before it goes. MUST NOT WASTE!
I was surprised at how much difficulty I had coming up with something for dinner to use the milk that wouldn't have a kazillion calories. I mean, I could just make some enormous Bechamel-slathered fat-boat, but given the bowl-licking I've been doing all day (literal bowls, like, mixing bowls... not, uh, the way it sounded) I do not need a single extra calorie.

Oops, off to go get that rolling, then.

I made the CUTEST little chocolate pecan mini tarts with my leftover pate sucree today, too. I didn't try one, but the scraps sure were nice.
Leftover tart filling. What do to but add flour and baking powder and call them cookies?
Well, in reality, they weren't really cookies. Or anything. They were cakey and dry and that made me sad, SOOOO...

Kahlua rum balls! With ganache made from (wait for it) those Bailey's chocolates. Which were on sale for debatably less than a similar amount of chocolate chips. Uh, no contest.

Okay, soup now.

Urrrrrrrg

I neeeeeeed to stop eating raw cookie dough.

Gingerbread house is slightly closer to completion despite my uncontrollable appetite AND despite my failure to differentiate between the 1/2-cup and 1-cup gradations on the shortening package (yes, shortening, I'm sorry.)

Yeah, about that last part. Heh, embarrassing. I guess I just wasn't thinking and used twice the amount of shortening called for, and it didn't register in my brain until after I'd creamed it with the sugar and molasses.

"Huh, that seemed like an awfully big 1/2 cup of shortening."
*pulls out empty box from garbage*
"An AWFULLY big 1/2 cup...
...
Oh shit."

So what to do? I couldn't double the recipe -- it already called for seven friggin' cups of flour, and what was I going to do with that much gingerbread? Fuck.
I added more sugar and molasses, to get the proportions of the mixture to some level of correctness, and set half of it aside. Tossed in an egg, random spices of various sorts, chopped dates, raisins, pecans, walnuts, cocoa, flour, baking powder and so forth; tossed it in the oven and kablam, fruitcake of some kind.

Though it seems to be more like greasy spice brownies with fruit and nuts. It's pretty damn delicious, though not what my stomach needed after all that gingerbread dough.

So much sugar. I'll never get to sleep...

God it smells good in here

Time for chili!
Wing-It Chili. Like, make-it-up-as-I-go chili. The most fun way to make anything like this.

Wait, no, I lied. Any way to make anything like this is fun. I love stews and braises and simmery things and anything where I can open the cupboard and say to myself "Hmm, what else would be good in this?"

God, I love it.

Anyway, the chili is packed full of heat from like five different sources (the only thing I didn't put in was samabl oelek -- maybe I should have!) and cocoa and cinnamon, mmm. I'd have loved to try a little coffee or beer or maybe whiskey? I'm all about the whiskey-related cooking lately, apparently.

Anyway, it smells beyond awesome and I'm about to go have a big hot comforting bowlful. It's cold outside and the Christmas lights are up and I hope there's some nice movie on TV that I can snuggle up to while full of chili.

Then, MORE GINGERBREAD HOUSE!

The cardboard pieces being all done, planned, cut and labeled; now is is time. Not quite the moment of truth yet, but the moment of mixing lots of delicious things together in a big bowl and baking them, which is almost as good.

Chili time. Off I go.

The Path To Pizza Perfection Is Long And Calorific

I wish I'd taken a picture, because it was gorgeous. You wouldn't think a big piece of crust covered in soft brown stuff would be gorgeous, but it was.
I took pictures of the last one but this one was mmmm better.

Caramelized onions (four) with salt, pepper and thyme. Roasted some portobellos. This is a weak point; they need more flavour. Broil? Grill? Roasted a clove of garlic in foil alongside, squeezed it and mashed it up with some salt & olive oil.

Grated up some NIAGARA GOLD. Oh, God, this cheese is amazing. It's soo rich and buttery, and the rind is nutty and firm and mmmmm.

Homemade dough rolled out, onto hot pizza stone. Niagara Gold goes on (after I finish snacking on the rind... omg), then mushrooms, then onions. Could have done some Parmesan but I didn't want to overwhelm the godliness of the Niagara Gold. I can't shut up about this cheese, seriously.

Into the oven! Out of the oven! Brown and gorgeous! Drizzle of garlic oil and, heaven.

I'm still interested to try a stronger cheese. Blue? Or a sharper goat?

I don't even know what I'm having tomorrow. I'm still enjoying memories of pizza.

Golabkiballs

All the goodness of golabki, in ball form.

Came out pretty well! Tossed in an egg and some breadcrumbs with the meat-onion-rice mixture that I already had, though in retrospect they probably would have been okay without the breadcrumbs. As it was they (the meatballs, that is) were nice and tender, with only a minor propensity for falling apart, hardly at all, actually, even after considerable forkage.

Made some quick sauce, tomatoes, onion, marjoram. Sauteed a sliced onion, threw in the brussels sprouts. Could have used a tad bit of garlic here but I had already washed the cutting board. >.> Sauce (pureed with my handy dandy serendipitously-found-in-the-basement immersion blender) goes in, then the browned meatballs, then simmering.

I've had better brussels sprouts, taste-wise (I think it had to do with the actual quality, or lack thereof, of the sprouts themselves) but the little meatballs of golabki meat were like awesome little bites of childhood.

Tomorrow I'ma use up all them chicken fat, y'all. Torn between doing fried rice and potatoes. Think I'll do chicken thighs, maybe some pan sauce of some sort, and roast the sad solitary potato in some chicken faaaaaaaat.

lunch maybe throw together some roasted red pepper and tomato soup? Mmm.