The very first thing we did was head to the Islander on U Street for roti. They apparently don’t have roti on Sunday night. The boychick and I had stew chicken and Keifel and E.B. had oxtail and goat respectively. The pelau was quite good, but I have to confess that I think Keifel’s stew chicken is better.
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I wish I had tales to tell that involved me being so busy with Christmas cooking and endless party giving that I haven’t had time to think about posting. Sadly, the truth of it is that I’ve been up to my eyeballs in retail. I really enjoy both my jobs, but working 60 plus hours in the weeks leading up to Christmas left me drained and Christmas itself went by in a whirl.
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Between cooking school and work, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to decide what it is I really want out of all this. The false glamor of a television show has lost its appeal (& no I didn’t, finally, send a tape in). At work I’ve met literally hundreds of people with one thing in common – they love to cook.
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I know that artisans and bread purists will be distressed by the whole bread machine thing. I do make bread by hand fairly often.
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I know that artisans and bread purists will be distressed by the whole bread machine thing. I do make bread by hand fairly often.
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I’ve been busy and lazy. Culinary school is going well. I just finished with midterms and seem to have done pretty well. We’re making veg dishes in class tomorrow. Ones I was supposed to practice this week and didn’t. Mostly because I couldn’t see the boychick eating braised celery or pumpkin. I’ll have to wing it in class tomorrow.
Cooking at home has centered on soups, chili and chicken pot pie. Oh, and lots of baby spinach salad. Admittedly, I have been a bit uninspired cooking wise over the last while. I honestly think it’s the not working at an outside job. Now that I have all the time in the world to cook, I can think of all these other things to do. Funny that.
I was going to post my chicken pot pie recipe but it’s hardly worth posting a full on recipe. All you need is enough pie pastry for a double crust 9″ pie, leftover chicken chopped into medium dice, diced onion, diced carrot and diced celery or a bag of frozen mixed veg. I added leek and yellow pepper last night. Saute the onion, celery and carrot, add the chicken, then any frozen veg. Sprinkle the warmed through mixture with a tablespoon or two of plain flour. Stir until the flour is mixed in and cook about five minutes to cook off any of the raw flour taste and pour over a cup of chicken stock or milk to make a light sauce to hold everything together. Line a pie plate with half the pastry, fill with the mixture and top with the rest of the pastry. Cut a few vents and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes or until the pastry is browned and the sauce is bubbling. As it may run over, it’s not a bad idea to put a baking sheet on the rack below the pie. Make sure to refrigerate any leftovers as soon as they’ve cooled and reheat to bubbling in a hot oven.
When I came from the Caribbean in March, I came with a couple bags of washed grey sugar. Sugar, along with rum; in the Caribbean; are by products of the sugar cane plant.
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I’ve decided to do some experimenting this week. I have two appliances in my kitchen that I have never used: a pizelle maker and a pasta maker (an extruder type not the rolling kind).
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The boychick’s pizza making went well, though he acted more as executive chef than line cook. He read through the recipe and measured things while I grated cheese and all that good stuff. It turned into a lesson on dough making and why things work the way they do.
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In an effort to promote the boychick’s growth in the kitchen and, I am hopeful, to expand his palate beyond PB&J, i have agreed to his request that he be responsible for making dinner on Thursday nights.
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