I finally made risotto this weekend, in this case with porcini mushrooms. It was hard work, but definitely worth it.
Risotto, to this amateur, seems like a very flexible dish. Next time I'd like to make a more basic risotto to get a better idea of the foundation.
For some reason I'm really focusing on Italian cuisine for the time being, but I've always enjoyed Mexican and Indian also (spicy == good).
This weekend I made a (slightly modified) recipe from Giada De Laurentiis' cookbook, salmon baked in foil. You basically place a salmon fillet in the center of a piece of aluminum foil (other recipes I've seen use parchment paper), season the fish, add some chopped veggies (the recipe called for tomatoes and shallots; I used onion instead of shallots because I couldn't find shallots at Publix), close the foil, and bake in the oven.
The obvious advantage to cooking fish this way is the easy cleanup. But it also leads to very moist, very tasty fish. Highly recommended.
In the process of cooking, I've realized my kitchen is woefully under equipped. I don't have a good chef's knife, a pepper grinder (in case you're wondering, grinding pepper with a knive is hard), food processor, a large skillet that can go in the oven, and a ton of other things. Of course, this stuff gets expensive really fast. Of course.
That's why I sing this song
So I've been keeping various Food Network programs, like Everyday Italian and Good Eats, on in the background while I'm working at home. Mostly I'm just trying to soak up some cooking know-how, but eventually I'd like to get more serious about it. The only way to do that is to try, and luckily I've got a great mentor: my mom.
On Sunday, we made a recipe I saw on Everyday Italian, Linguine with Chicken Ragu. Sooo tasty.
We called them "sprinkles" when I was growing up, but apparently some people call them "jimmies". These people are INSANE.
Little did I know there are EVEN MORE INSANE people in this world who call them "hundreds and thousands".
I think I have a genetic predisposition to coffee and HEATH bars. See, my dad drank coffee like a fiend, and my grandmother loves HEATH bars. Ben and Jerry were smart: they took my love for coffee and my taste for HEATH bars to make Coffee HEATH Bar Crunch.