Saved by Mary Emma!!!
Okay before I tell the tale of my new recipe (which YES I have cooked for this month, thank you very much), I would like to share with you all how mennonite cooking saved me. My very favorite auntie was visiting the area with brother chuck & his daughter, and we were having them over for dessert. Being the oh-so-pretentious hipsters that we are, we decided to fix creme brule', which we would all have the pleasure of carmelizing the sugar on our individualized portions with our kitchen torch (a gift from said auntie).
So I fixed a double batch of creme brule' before hand and put it in the fridge to chill the 4-6 hours. 5 hours later, creme brule' looked more like little puddles of cream with a skim on top instead of the decadent custard it was supposed to resemble. Not good. (I figured out later that I should have increased the oven time since I was doing a double batch). Fortunately I discovered this in time enough for Joe to run to the store and grab me some dates and voila! 45 minutes later we had some delicious date pudding steaming from our oven. Thanks Mary Emma! And my aunt and uncle were impressed, not by my gourmet cooking skills, but that I knew how to serve up a dish that they hadn't had in over 40 years.
But on to new adventures... haven't been feeling too inspired by MCC:FFR, but decided to venture into new territory, the "salad" section of the book. I put salad in quotes because the name seems to connote jello-molds and carb-&-cream-heavy-concoctions more than it does the leafy greens we currently associate w/ the word salad. I finally decided on Macaroni Salad (pg. 197), which I did with still a fair amount of skepticism (I've never had Mac salad w/ lettuce in it). Surprisingly, it turned out very good, although more a dish for a summer picnic than sub-zero comfort food. Maybe someday I'll even be bold enough to brave a jello-mold (the only problem being that we don't own one, and Joe turns his nose up at such silliness).
So I fixed a double batch of creme brule' before hand and put it in the fridge to chill the 4-6 hours. 5 hours later, creme brule' looked more like little puddles of cream with a skim on top instead of the decadent custard it was supposed to resemble. Not good. (I figured out later that I should have increased the oven time since I was doing a double batch). Fortunately I discovered this in time enough for Joe to run to the store and grab me some dates and voila! 45 minutes later we had some delicious date pudding steaming from our oven. Thanks Mary Emma! And my aunt and uncle were impressed, not by my gourmet cooking skills, but that I knew how to serve up a dish that they hadn't had in over 40 years.
But on to new adventures... haven't been feeling too inspired by MCC:FFR, but decided to venture into new territory, the "salad" section of the book. I put salad in quotes because the name seems to connote jello-molds and carb-&-cream-heavy-concoctions more than it does the leafy greens we currently associate w/ the word salad. I finally decided on Macaroni Salad (pg. 197), which I did with still a fair amount of skepticism (I've never had Mac salad w/ lettuce in it). Surprisingly, it turned out very good, although more a dish for a summer picnic than sub-zero comfort food. Maybe someday I'll even be bold enough to brave a jello-mold (the only problem being that we don't own one, and Joe turns his nose up at such silliness).
posted by A Knutson at 9:55 PM
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