The last time I made pasta from scratch was a good 10 years ago, in my junior high home ec class. It’s a miracle that I turned out to be a foodie consider how bad of a gong show that class—and by extension, my first exposure to cooking—was. I was partnered with a girl who was allergic to peppers, onions, dairy, shellfish, strawberries and more. While my classmates were making tacos, my partner and I essentially threw some unseasoned ground beef into a taco shell and called it a day. I also remember a boy mixing his apple crisp ingredients by hand (because … he’s a 13-year-old boy) and he and his partner ended up with a major case of food poisoning. From what I heard, he ALSO put too much cinnamon in his apple crisp. What a disastrous class.

Aside from the trauma, I also remember pasta dough being one of those messy, but easy to make things. You start with a well in the flour and crack an egg into it. Blend the egg in, add more flour if the dough was too sticky, and eventually you’ll get it right. The best part was to crank that dough through the pasta machine and roll it into thin sheets. That was fun.

I don’t have a pasta machine. I’m also not keen on getting one until my pasta consumption goes up significantly. So I just rolled it out with a rolling pin. I know the dough is not as thin as it can be had I used a pasta machine. But the end result was still very delicious.

The recipe is adapted from Anna Olsen. I scaled it back because her original recipe serves 4-6  and I don’t want to eat tortellinis for a week.

Difficulty: Generally easy. As I mentioned, it’d be easier to roll out the dough with a pasta maker. I’ve also had plenty of experience wrapping Chinese wontons (I used to help my mom out when I was a kid), so the wrapping part wasn’t hard either. Because of the way the tortellini is folded, it actually holds far less filling than you expected. I ended up with bout 1/2 a teaspoon of filling per tortellini.

Room for Improvement: The recipe is fine the way it is. I added in a tiny pinch of cumin because I like it. But that’s just me. I also toasted the fennel seeds right before I mixed it into the meat and the sauce.

Tastiness: Love it! The fennel cream sauce is pretty rich, but it mirrors the fennel in the tortellini perfectly. It’s actually a dish that I would serve to dinner guests. It’s a little complicated, but the tortellini can be prepared ahead of time.

Items I purchased specifically for this recipe: Fennel seeds. I’ve never cooked with fennel seeds before.

I was down with a light case of sniffles and sore throat last week. It’s not bad enough to consider myself a full-blown flu victim, but I did fall into that intolerable whinge-y mode that I normally adopt when I get sick. Anyway, times like this makes me reach out for a bowl of warm, satisfying soup. Sorry, Jewish grandmas, I don’t want chicken soup. I want something heavier, more filling. I want Vietnamese pho.

I always assume pho to be one of those dishes where it’s easier, and cheaper, to order from the restaurant. But it’s time to test that assumption. Unlike Chinese noodle and wonton soup, where the soup is usually an afterthought, the beef broth in pho is the star of the dish. No amount of fresh Thai basil or crunchy bean sprouts can elevate a bowl of inferior soup. This means I cannot skim on the beef bones or the spices. And no rushing! This broth needs to be slowly simmered to develop its rich flavour.

I tried out Steamy Kitchen‘s pho recipe. One look at the extremely LONG ingredient list and I remember why exactly I’m so unenthusiastic about making pho. That’s a long-ass grocery list for ONE dish.

Difficulty: Again, much like most of the recipes on my list, this is not difficult per se. It’s just time-consuming. Honestly, there’s nothing difficult about throwing a bunch of beef bones, onions and spices into a big pot. (And that’s after I slightly char the ginger and onions under the broiler.) But it did take me a good afternoon to buy everything. And really, half of that time was taken up by the impossibly crowded Asian supermarket. I swear, you need to be fluent in three languages in order to pick out what you need from the haphazardly-stocked shelves. Also, I’m not going back there on a weekend.

On thing I like to do when I make broth (chicken or beef) is to stick the whole pot into the fridge when I’m done cooking and then skim away the top layer of fat the next day. The fatty bits of meat is rich with flavour and I try not to trim away too much of it beforehand. So that’s an extra time-consuming step.

Room for improvement: I followed the recipe exactly, an yet, it tastes like there’s something missing (see below).

Tastiness: The finished product was spicy, delicious and rich. Very beefy. But it’s not an exact facsimile of the restaurant version. It’s hard to describe what’s so … lacking … about it. It certainly has the right combination of spices and it’s adequately seasoned with salt and fish sauce. I suspect that’s because I didn’t add any MSG to it, and not because of inferior ingredients or cooking skills. So good news, you know exactly what’s in your food; bad news, it pales in comparison to the Golden Turtle‘s pho.

Worth the effort? Depends. There’s nothing more enjoyable than a warm bowl of pho on a cold windy day. But the DIY version takes away the immediate gratification. It took me an afternoon to gather all the ingredients, and another 4 hours to prep and cook the broth. By then it was too late and I was too tired to have any of it. (I think, no joke, I had half a bag of cashews and a can of V8 for dinner that night. Balanced!) And when you think about it, a big bowl of pho usually cost about $7.50 at the restaurant. I think I’ll just eat out the next time. But I’m willing to make the broth from scratch when I have time. Only because it seems like that’s the healthier way to do it.

Items I purchased specifically for this recipe: loads of spices (star anise, cloves, cardamom) that I have no idea what to do with. I’ll probably call up my mom and see what she’ll suggest.

I pretty much consider this one of the most fool-proof recipes that I have in my arsenal. It’s easy prepare, easy to cook and mildly impressive if you use fancy new potatoes and a pretty casserole dish (You can’t see it from this angle, but that’s a Fire King peach lusterware dish). I have been trying to make Vietnamese pho all week and that recipe is giving me a rainbow full of disappointment. So I figure I’ll settle on something familiar, something delicious, before I ready myself to try a difference  pho recipe. I’ll post something on that within the next few days.

You really don't need two lemons worth of peel for this recipe. I was peeling the second one for something else.

• 1 tbsp lemon zest*
• 1 tbsp of oil
• juice from half a lemon (more if you like your potatoes extra tangy)
• 1 tsp rosemary
• 1 tsp thyme
• salt and pepper to taste
• about 2lbs of potatoes, slices in half or quarters

I find this to taste better if I mix the marinade an hour ahead of time and let the flavours mingle a little bit before I add in the potatoes. But this work just as well as a last-minute dish. Roast at 400F for about an hour, depending on how big your potatoes are and how wide your dish is.

* If you’re like me, and don’t have a zester, I STRONGLY recommend the OXO vegetable peeler with serrated blade. Honestly, it’s not the ultimate peeler—I once used a peeler that was so perfectly-weighted, so solid, that I wish I stole it from my former roommate when I moved out. The OXO peeler is lighter (doesn’t sit as well in my hand), but that serrated blade is magical! The super-sharp blade skims off the thinnest layer of skin and there’s none of that bitter pith at all. It was a godsend when I needed to peel all the apples for my apple pie and apple butter. For this recipe I just laid a few strips together and then sliced them into thin strips with a knife.

I was not kidding about all the extra apples left over from my apple pie. I bought around 8 pounds of apples for a 12″ pie (partly because all pie recipes are for 9″ pies and I didn’t scale up the recipe properly; partly because I wavered between the different types of apples and got too many extras.) That should give you a rough idea of how much leftover I’m dealing with. I thought of making apple crumble. But that will only add to my current “burden” of half a leftover apple pie and half a leftover pumpkin pie. Let’s not add another cinnamon-spiced dessert to the mix, m’kay. That’s why I’m going to make apple butter and can all of it until my cinnamon phobia dies down.

Apple butter is no more difficult to make than applesauce. It just takes more time. The idea is to evaporate all the water in the apples and concentrate the applesauce into a thick caramelized spread.

• approximately 5 pounds of apples, peeled, cored and sliced
• 1 cup apple cider (or really good organic, freshly-pressed, unfiltered, unsweetened apple juice)
• 2 cups granulated or brown sugar plus more to taste
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• cinnamon, allspice to taste

apples chunks that refused to dissolve

Remember what I said about Northern Spy being a great apple for pies? Well, that also makes it a horrible apple for applesauce or apple butter. This has been simmering for an hour and the inch-thick apples are still holding its shape, even as I mash it with the back of a wooden spoon. I guess I can just puree it with a submersion blender or a food mill later. I only threw in the Northern Spy apples because I had half an apple left over from the pie. The Cortlands, Crispins and Galas, however, dissolved just fine after half an hour of high heat. Lesson learned.

It’ll take about 4-5 hours to cook this down. Remember to stir constantly. It’s good to go once it’s cooked down to a thick, dark brown colour. If you’re lazy, you can dump this into the slow cooker and let it work its magic for 10 hours or overnight. I ended up with 3 125ml jars of apple butter. Which just blows my mind when you consider I started out with 5 POUNDS of apples.

Long time no see! Ugh, life has a way of sneaking up on you and disrupting your blogging and cooking schemes. And by “life” I meant parents visiting and treating me to various restaurant and home-cooked meals. No complaints there! In fact, I learned a few tricks and tips from my mom, who’s a fabulous cook, that will come in handy for future cooking endevours.

Unfortunately, the one thing my mom cannot teach me is pie-making. Pie is a pretty foreign concept in Chinese cuisine and my mom didn’t growing eating or making it. So we did not have the luxury of inheriting a fantastic pie dough recipe. But everybody I know (and strangers on the internet) have been raving about the Cook’s Illustrated vodka dough recipe. With apples in season, and a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner to host, now’s the best time to tackle the apple pie on my list.

(Sidenote: Speaking of Cook’s Illustrated, do you know America’s Test Kitchen is located in Brookline? I know because I’d creepily [read: pathetically] poke my head around the area every so often, hoping for a glimpse of Chris Kimball, back when I was living in Boston. True story.)

As you can tell from this picture, the secret ingredient in the CI pie dough recipe is vodka! Don’t worry, the pie crust is not boozy at all. The alcohol provides the necessary moisture to bind the flour and butter, but unlike water, it will inhibit gluten formation (the thing that results in tough pie crust.) The vodka will completely evaporate during the baking process. Vodka is flavourless, so its presence won’t affect the flavour of the crust. Alton Brown has an apple pie recipe that uses apple jack instead of vodka. The basic idea is the same though.

Another key is to use COLD butter. You’ll end up with a shortbread mix if you’re not careful and overwork the butter into melted lumps. I used a pastry cutter and I was careful to not touch the dough. (Your hands are warm enough to soften the butter. If you really have to  touch the dough, you can cool down your hands slightly by running them under cold water.) I blended my flour/butter mixture until I ended up with flecks of butter the size of cottage cheese. Then I added the vodka and water.

Difficulty: There’s a reason why people are willing to pay $9.99 for cold, half-stale pies at the grocery store. Because pies are not easy. At all. It’s tedious. I had to make the dough ahead of time and chill it before I can roll it out. The apples had to be peeled, cored, sliced, soaked in lemon juice, properly drained, seasoned … before they go into the pie. Pick up the wrong kind of apples and your pie ends up with an applesauce filling. It’s doable, but it’s time consuming and requires a lot of planing ahead.The dough is definitely the most finicky element and my arm is still sore from blending the cold butter into the dough. But having the proper dough recipe certainly helps.

Room for Improvement: I baked the pie at 400F for 30 minutes, and then reduced it to 350F for 40 minutes. The pie crust was great straight out of the oven. But it’s a little on the hard side once it cooled. I’ll reduce the second half to 30 minutes if I ever make this pie again.

The pie in the background is a store bought pumpkin pie.

Tastiness: I used a mixture of Northern Spy, Cortland and Gala apples for the filling. Aside from peeling far too many apples (I have enough leftovers to make a full recipe of apple crumble), I’m happy with the mix. People online complained that cortlands can get a bit mushy, and I agree. But I like a mixture of firm and mushy apples in my pie. Cortlands also have a floral, fruity aroma when fresh. But that was no longer noticeable after I added the other apples and spices. If you want to simplify things and use only one type of apple, I’d recommend northern spy. It’s a firmer apple that delivers a bright tang. Remember to adjust the quantity of lemon juice according to the variety of apple(s) you choose.

Worth the effort? Somewhat. I’m not a big pie person. This is delicious and worth making if you have company over or if you have to bring something impressive-looking for a potluck. But this pie serves 8—or 12+ if your dinner guests have been tearing into a Thanksgiving meal of appetizers, soup, salads, roast chicken and sides and simply have no room left for dessert—which is a lot of pie for someone who lives on her own.

Items I purchased specifically for this recipe: tart pan with removable bottom and a rolling pin.

Good lord. Moving is a HASSLE!

I’ve been meaning to do some cooking and baking this week (in fact, I’ve even offered bribes in the form of Wichcraft chocolate cupcakes to get my friends to help me move.) But moving turned out to be far more time consuming than I expected. Also, the fact that I’ve been sharing kitchen supplies with a roommate means I have a very odd collection of kitchen stuff—I happen to have a pastry cutter and a blender, but no mixing bowls or spatulas. Yet somehow I do have three different types of Ziploc bags! Serious baking supplies fail. I’ll need to replenish my pantry and my utensil drawer before I have the proper tools to tackle my list.

With that in mind, I happen to have just enough supplies and ingredients after a whirlwind shopping trip to make cornbread muffins. I also had a neglected ear of corn that I bought two week ago. I didn’t do a taste test, but that corn was probably too flavourless to stand on its own. (The sugar in corn starts converting to starch the moment the corn is picked.) So into the cornbread batter it goes. I reduced the milk by a tablespoon, anticipating the fresh corn to add a bit of moisture once it’s cooked. But that was really unnecessary.

• 1 cup cornmeal
• ½ cup flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• ½ stick of melted butter
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1 ear of corn

I mixed all the dry ingredients first, then dumped the wet ingredients in. (If I had a can opener, this is the part where I throw in a handful of chopped jalapeños.) I let the batter sit for a bit while the oven gets preheated to 400F so the cornmeal can absorb a bit of moisture. Then bake for about 15 minutes, or until the toothpick comes out clean.

(Oh btw, that’s not hair in my muffin. I just did a poor job of removing the corn silk before I chopped up the corn.)

Faced with 6 empty canning jars and a long weekend Monday, I tackled the next logical item on my list—jam. Technically, since this recipe contains citrus rinds, I’m making marmalade, not jam. According to Epicurious, Seville oranges are the most popular fruit for marmalades. According to my own eyes and nose, the Seville oranges that I came across at Whole Foods were pitifully unripe. (Not surprising, since September isn’t exactly the peak season for citrus fruits.) However, the grapefruits look (and smell) much better. So grapefruit marmalade it is!

I used a recipe from Canadian Living—a magazine that I neither subscribe to nor read unless I’m stuck at my optometrist’s office. (I think they once had a cooking show on TV. But I managed to avoid that entirely as well.) Needless to say. I’ve never tried out any of their recipes before. I followed this recipe mostly because it’s specific for grapefruit. But the ratio between fruit and sugar is not that different from Alton Brown’s orange marmalade or Martha’s three fruit marmalade recipes. In fact, all three recipes are pretty interchangeable except for the fact that one uses metric measurements, the other uses imperial, and the third measures by weight.

Difficulty: The shopping part was easy. Since citrus peel contains natural pectin, the ingredients are simply grapefruit, lemon (for extra acidity), water and … a god awful SEVEN cups of sugar! I had a moment of doubt when I scooped that mountain of sugar out of the bag. But I didn’t want to put in all this effort just to end up with crappy runny marmalade. So I followed the recipe exactly. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to eat all 7 cups of sugar at once … right?!

Room for improvement: I still don’t have a candy thermometer. Consider how many sugary items are left on my list, maybe I should get one. In the mean time, I used the frozen plate method to test out the firmness of my marmalade, which was less exact and more cumbersome.

Tastiness: The marmalade is technically perfect. It set properly, it has a great caramel orange colour and strips of perfectly candied peel, and it smells great. As for the taste … well … this does not taste grapefruity AT ALL! I mean if you conduct a blind tasting with the marmalade connoisseur that is Paddington Bear (who loves marmalade sandwiches so much he tucks one under his hat), he probably can tell this was made with grapefruits instead oranges. But I can’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s delicious and I’ll definitely make this again. But I won’t get too fussy over which type of citrus fruit I use.

Worth the effort? Yes. This tastes fresher and fruitier than anything store-bought.

Items I purchased specifically for this recipe: 2 organic grapefruits and 1 organic lemon. Loads of sugar.

I really didn’t plan on starting this blog until next month. I’m in the middle of moving right now and this is the kind of distraction I don’t need/want. I figure I’ll work on this once I’ve settled into my new home, with my new kitchen, with all my kitchen tool and recipe books properly unpacked. Besides, of all 36 recipes, I really shouldn’t start with the one that involves jars of preserves–ie a recipe that results in extra boxes to lug to the new place.

But I couldn’t resist. A few friends and I hit up the peach festival outside Hamilton and that put me in a peachy state of mind. (The Winona Peach Festival was kinda a dud. Aside from a peach sundae tent and a few peach pie/jam/jelly vendors, the festival was surprisingly devoid of its namesake fruit. But that peach sundae was very delicious. And huge!) So I bought a basket of peaches from a roadside vendor on our way back to Toronto and got started on this. (That’s the other thing–there weren’t too many people selling actual fresh peaches at the peach festival. Weird.)

I followed the 1951 brandied peach recipe from the New York Times, which was recently republished with updated safety instructions. It calls for 3 pounds of ripe peaches and 3 cups of sugar. I usually cringe at adding that much sugar to my food. But sugar is a hygroscopic molecule–that is, it attracts water–and that’s useful in preserving food. Hence I didn’t mess with this recipe at all. I did scale it down a bit because the peaches that I got weren’t completely ripe and a few were too green for making preserves.

(For some good basic backgrounder information, especially when it comes to food safety, I checked out the Jam Session episode of Good Eats. Design*Sponge also has a good post on canning along with a few additional links.)

Difficulty: The recipe was relatively painless. The process was complicated by my obsessive need to boil all the jars and tongs before I work with them (which the NYT recipe didn’t call for). I created a small soupy mess when I peeled and sliced the peaches. Otherwise, everything was pretty straightforward and the instructions were easy to follow.

Room for improvement: I’m disappointed by the presentation. The jars look a little half empty. I treated the peaches too delicately and didn’t pack them tightly enough. Turns out they shrank considerably during the final water bath. I think I’ll either use fewer jars or more peaches the next time. Nonetheless, this is a good effort for my first solo canning job.

Tastiness: I haven’t tried it out yet. I figure I can let this soak up the brandy sauce for a few more days before I crack open the first jar. I’ll add an update to this post later.

Items I purchased specifically for this recipe: peaches, brandy, 1 dozen canning jars, tongs (only because I, strangely, don’t have any)

1. Mexican mole sauce
2. fondant (possibly to go with the Wichcraft chocolate cupcake recipe)
3. some kind of dessert with orange blossom water (honey soaked spongecake? turkish delight? TBD)
4. pork roast (emphasis on juicy)
5. phở
6. pâté de canard en croûte
7. lobster roll
8. preserved peach with brandy sauce
9. paella
10. chicken pot pie (w/ puff pastry from scratch)
11. donut bread pudding
12. popovers
13. homemade ice cream sandwich
14. bacon crème brûlée
15. preserved lemons
16. profiterole
17. jam
18. Smith Island cake
19. fennel and pork tortellini with a fennel cream sauce
20. stuffed eggplant
21. braised beef cheek
22. lamb leg roast
23. fig and marscapone torte
24. madeleines
25. foccacia
26. apple pie (with lattice crust)
27. arancine
28. homemade marshmallow
29. crab cakes
30. duck breast with homemade plum sauce
31. ratatouille
32. seared fillet w/ green gazpacho sauce
33. beer marinated flank steak
34. some kind of fish cook en papillote
35. gnocchi (Maybe the traditional kind, maybe the sweet potato gnocchi w/ ham and chestnuts from Food & Wine)
36. Moroccan lamb tagine with apricots and spiced pine nuts

And the 36.5th recipe … cucumber gimlets!