ADVENTURES OF THE FORTUITOUS COOK

A leisurely search through my new books while sipping coffee and watching the girls play with their grandparents has resulted in two good finds that look yummy and meet the dietary restrictions of my in-laws: Dirty Chicken from Umbria by Julia Della Croce (http://www.juliadellacroce.com/books.html)  and Beet Salad from Fresh Moroccan by Nada Saleh.

At trip to the farmer’s market for the beets was a must, they are so much better than the grocery store variety!

Now in preparing this meal, I had a first. The Dirty Chicken called for a whole chicken that needed to be cut; now I usually delegate this job to my husband, but he was working. So I grabbed the butcher knife, took a few deep breaths, tried to envision all the episodes on various food network shows where I’d seen this done, and started hacking. Well, it was one ugly cut up chicken, but I achieved eatable results, and thankfully the dish is called “Dirty” anyway! The chicken was cooked with some fresh herbs from the garden and tomatoes from the farmers market along with lots of other yummy stuff. The result was a tender flavorful dish.

We have my amazing in-laws visiting us for the weekend. Jacob has been in charge of dinner the last two nights – he is the weeknight cook, I like to take on the weekends. Now my in-laws have some dietary restrictions, so we get to test out our creativity. Jacob’s mom can’t eat cheese and his step-father has a massive gluten allergy.  Now, from a family of carb lovers, the later is the bigger challenge for us!

So while this deviates from the intent of my blog, I learn so much from my husband’s cooking, so why not share that too?!

Last night was a delicious Indian inspired dinner with Lentils, chicken, a pineapple, jicama and mint salad and some naan for us bread eaters. The chicken was cooked to perfection. The lentils, topped with goat cheese were addictive, and the Trader Joe’s Naan – always yummy!

Tonight, well it’s some tri-tip with Jacob’s secret cocoa rub with baked potatoes (Sweet and regular) and some barbequed garlic bread. Oh goodness, I am one spoiled wife!

So remember that fudge cake, well, I decided to whip some up for dessert, yep, it was that good! NOTE TO SELF HERE: Don’t change recipes that were great the first time — so I thought this recipe had a typo – it said to mix the eggs with the flour. I thought that odd, as you usually mix the eggs with the sugar. So…I decided to deviate, mixing the eggs with the sugar. While the cake was still good, it was not as gooey and moist as the last time I made it – so stick with the recipe!

A few Saturdays ago we had a busy day of birthday parties and errands, well fun errands, like hanging out in our favorite local bookstore while finding birthday presents, resulting in no time to cook dinner. That combined with the delicious late lunch at the birthday party (my daughter’s friend’s father owns a scrumptious Korean and Japanese restaurant in town –http://www.takatucson.net/ – that catered the party) we decided to take the kids to their favorite Pizza place and let the parents have a light dinner of soup and salad and to focus our efforts on Dessert. Yes that’s right, we plan light dinners so we can have Dessert. It’s all part of a healthy life stye!

We are big chocolate chip cookie fans and have tried what seems like every recipe we can find until Jacob decided to create his own recipe and came up with the greatest Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe ever! Now the good part, since this is his original recipe I can post it!!

The highly recommended way to eat these is straight out of the oven with a cold glass of milk while watching Star Wars (or whatever movie your children are into at the time).

Oh, and one more note: only cook what you want for that night (we have a two cookie limit) and then roll the rest of the dough in long rolls and freeze until next time!

So here it is Mr. Jacob Chinn’s super yummy Chocolate Chip Cookies:

1 Cup Old Fashioned Oats (finely chopped)

2 ½ Cups Flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 Cup Butter (soft)

¾ Cup Sugar

1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

2 Large Eggs

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

12 oz Chocolate Chips (Ghirardelli highly recommended)

My 5 year old demanded Crepes from her daddy this morning. Now, Jacob is the king of crepes. He has used recipes, created his own, tried to add healthy ingredients, and is always looking to improve. Well, one morning I was in charge for breakfast and pulled out a new cookbook Weeknights with Giada (http://www.giadadelaurentiis.com/)– this might be a good time to mention I am a Giada fanatic; everything I have ever made of hers is amazing! Well, let me say, these crepes I made, while I felt kind of bad upstaging the king of crepes, were the best crepes I’ve ever had.  So, Jacob now uses Giada’s recipe, so this morning we were treated to scrumptious crepes with nutella and jam.

We were driving home from LA after a week of backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As we often do in LA, we stopped in China Town on our way home. Generally we pick up some dim sum items to take home, like custards and sesame balls filled with red bean paste. This time however Jacob, my husband, suggested we bring home a duck and invite our neighbors over for dinner!

So there we were, traveling home with the duck in the cooler and eight hours to plan out our meal. We decided on Taro rolls (using the recipe from the Polynesian Cultural Center http://www.polynesia.com/taro-rolls.html) – thankfully I still had some frozen Poi; fried rice using some frozen pork we had and a dessert of custards.

To prepare for our meal took a few different grocery store trips, a norm for us. We hit Trader Joe’s first for the staples and then made two trips to our neighborhood Korean market (two trips because we forgot the Hoisen sauce – a must!)

I was in charge of the Taro rolls. They are made using fresh Poi, made from a Taro root. Poi is not the easiest thing to make, so I was happy to still have some frozen!

Jacob, my  imaginative chef of a husband who does not need recipes, created amazing fried rice – made even better by using eggs fresh from our chickens.

The custards, using a recipe we found on the internet tasted just like the ones we brought home from China Town. But here is a note – remember to grease the custard pans, I was scrubbing those things for days!

Our neighbors (and friends) brought Sake to compliment the meal.