Watch City Steampunk Festival

Kaila and me in our Steampunk outfits

For undergrad, I attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where I was a double major in Physics and Mathematics. As I've mentioned before, one of my roommates, Kaila, still lives in Waltham while she goes to graduate school in Boston. For the past few years, Waltham has hosted the International Watch City Steampunk Festival every spring, hosted by the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation. The main street of town is converted -  the park plays live music and sets up booths for individual venders, the shops and pubs and restaurants decorate and offer special deals for festival attendants, there is a live parade, and there are all sorts of panels and events all over town.

For those not familiar with steampunk, you can think of it as a particular brand of science fiction, based on 19th century/Victorian age technology: think Jules Verne, Orson Wells, where everything is steam powered and full of gears. An alternate vision of the future that people in the past might have conceived. It's a LOT of fun to dress up and be silly. Waltham used to be a center for industry and manufacturing during that time period, and is particularly known for its watch factory, which inspired the festival's name. So every year, I've enjoyed going back and visiting my old haunts from undergrad while dressed up to the nines. They always host it on Mothers day weekend (to my mom's dismay, but I've been in Baltimore a lot recently and so we celebrated early) so this past weekend I headed up for the festival.

And also, trebuchet demonstrations,
hurling ice into the river!

This festival had a myriad of activities. Panels (like Victorian Technology and the Steampunk Vision, and Waltham and the American Industrial Age), workshops (like Electronics for Minions, and Thrifty Steampunk), lots of ongoing music and shows (like the Dark Follies Circus, a pirate show, belly dancers, a fiddle circle, a one-man band who makes his own very odd musical instruments, and the improv show "To Whom Does That Line Pertain To, Perchance?"), the yearly pub-crawl (woo!), a steampunk themed LARP (live action role playing - lots of running after people with nerf guns and foam swords!), lots of venders (selling corsets and spices and games and trinkets and much more),  and just in general lots of wandering around having fun and looking at other people's costumes. And naturally, for a steampunk festival, I have to have an awesome costume of my own!  A few detail pictures:

Homemade cincher

My cincher also works as a holster

Key necklace

Pocket watch, or rather,
pocket sundial/compass

What I generally wear has developed over the past couple years, adding various elements as I find them - for example, my first year, I wore a skirt I got from my mom, and a different shirt, and I've added a number of accessories. The major pieces of my current outfit have come from various thrift stores - boots, skirt, and shirt. I bought the hat and the necklace at the first festival that I attended a couple years back. My gun (a painted water pistol) is also from my first festival -- I got it for participating in the pub crawl that year (We had to go from bar to bar, fulfilling quests and performing tasks for various characters in order to recover the secret plans. And drinking.) The bag I carry around all day is actually what I usually use as my computer case, which I got as a graduation present for high school and have been using for years, and is a great leather bag with brass fasteners and hooks. And the cincher I made myself, in preparation for the first first festival I attended: I found a pattern online, used buttons from my mother's button jar, and got the fabric from some old curtains I found at a thrift store -- a regular Scarlett O'Hara move, that! Anyway, it all comes together very nicely, I think, and was done relatively inexpensively. Honestly, making up your own outfit is a lot of fun, I highly recommend it if you want to attend this kind of festival, and there is a lot of room for interpretation and personal creativity within the genre. Examples:

A local group set up a working blacksmithery

Behold the mechanical arm!

All in all, it was a pretty awesome weekend, and a great excuse to go up and see Kaila and wander around Waltham again. It's always nice to visit my old favorite spots (like Lizzy's Ice Cream, or the More Than Words bookstore). I'll be going up to Waltham again in about a month, for my fifth(!) year reunion, but I won't get to wander around in a costume then, alas. But there is always next year for that - I'm thinking this summer I may try and mod my own nerf gun... we shall see!

At the Farmers Market: Winter Veggies

Right next to Columbia University, every Thursday and Sunday, there is a local farmers market where you can get fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, bread and grain, and all the rest of farmer markets greatest hits. During the winter, the selection is a bit more limited, but it's still really a good place to get produce, and I try to go fairly regularly. It's good for cooking inspiration and it encourages me to eat my vegetables - I love veggies, but it's easy to neglect them. While the exact selection changes from week to week, there are some pretty standard items you see frequently. Apples, potatoes, onions, garlic, various greens, etc; and this week, I picked up a nice acorn squash and some lovely parsnips. I've enjoyed both of these vegetables a lot, and both of them were originally introduced to me by my friend Kaila (who has been featured in this blog before). The roasted acorn squash recipe I got directly from her during college, and she was the one who first made pan roasted parsnips for me (pictures of which you can see in the blog post "Fun Times with Kaila and Benson"). This post is featuring a different parsnip recipe, which was inspired, indirectly, by my father.

My dad collects comic books, and is very fond of Disney comics - particularly Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the rest of Duckburg. One of the best (or really, the best) duck writers is Carl Barks, the man who first came up with Scrooge McDuck, in the late 40s. One of his stories is "the Golden Fleecing," where Uncle Scrooge goes in search of the famed golden fleece. Long story short, he runs into a tribe of "Larkies" (based on Harpies) who kidnap him and force him to judge a cooking contest (as the richest duck in the world should have the most refined taste). He throws the contest in order to escape, but the dish that he must cause to win is 'parsnip pudding' - and his least favorite food in the world is parsnips. So when I first mentioned to my father that I had discovered the deliciousness of parsnips, this story immediately sprang to mind, and he requested that if I was going to make parsnips for him, that I make Parsnip Pudding. Now, honestly, the recipe I made was just OK, but as I tasted while I went, I found that one of the initial stages of it, when you pureed the parsnip before mixing with other stuff and baking, was pretty good on its own. Parsnips have a very nice, distinct flavor, so you don't really NEED that much more. So, the next time I made parsnips, I decided to make something more like a mashed potato, a Parsnip Puree, rather than baking it with cheese and onions and all sorts of other things. So below, I present the results of this weeks trip to the farmers market!





Roasted Acorn Squash
Acorn Squash
Butter
Brown Sugar
Maple sugar or other flavorings (optional!)

A very simple, tasty dish with very little preparation. It does take a while to bake if you want it sufficiently soft, but if you are making it, it's worth the wait for it to be soft throughout. (Also, Kaila informs me that you can take your cleaned half squash, place it face down in a bowl of water, and zap for several minutes before you bake it, so that it doesn't take as long to bake - I haven't tried this yet.) First, slice the squash in half lengthwise, from stem to bottom, so you have two symmetric halves. Next, scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff, similarly as you would when carving a pumpkin (they are, after all, closely related). At this point, you can save the seeds to roast as a snack for later, or just toss them. They're pretty tasty, though, so I'd recommend using them! Take your two halves (or just one, and fridge the other one for another day - one half is one serving) and put in a small baking pan and fill the pan with a couple inches of water so that you don't burn the bottom of the pan. Next, cut a few thin slices of butter and put around the rim of the squash to keep it moist, and a couple bigger chunks (a bit under a tbs total) in the hollow of the squash. Next, sprinkle the whole thing generously with brown sugar, the edges and the middle. Now, I also have some lovely maple sugar, which I also lightly sprinkle over the entirety of the squash, for an additional flavor. You could also try it with cinnamon sugar if you'd like! Bake at 400F for ~1 hour, until the squash is soft and you can easily poke it through with a fork. At this point, you'll find that the squash is making a nice little bowl, with a sugary/buttery sauce in the middle. To eat, simply scoop out bits of the squash with a fork (or a spoon) and dip in the buttery sauce. Just be careful not to poke through the skin, or you will find your sauce drips through into the bowl - but the flesh itself should peel off the skin fairly easily.


Now, we still have those seeds from the squash, so there is no need to waste them. You can make an easy, light, crunchy snack out of them. I got this recipe from my friend Lauren, and there are many variations you can do. I like to use just salt and pepper (as I do tend to prefer salty snacks, as I've mentioned in SEVERAL previous posts), but if you prefer, you can make a sweeter variation with sugar and cinnamon, or a spicy version with cayenne pepper and garlic powder, or whatever your snack choice might be!



Pumpkin (or squash) seeds
Pumpkin (or squash) seeds
veggie oil
salt and pepper
      (or  cinnamon sugar, or whatever you want!)

Put a bit of oil on a cookie sheet, so that the seeds won't stick - or alternatively, line the tin with parchment paper. Take your seeds and wash them (making sure they're separated and don't have any stringy squash guts stick to them), and then pat them dry. In a small bowl, add a dash of oil - just enough to coat them so things will stick - then add your spices and mix well. In truth, when I made these the other day, I just put extra oil on the cookie sheet, mixed around the seeds a bit, then grated salt and pepper (as I have grinders for both) over the whole thing, then mixed them in the pan and grinded a bit more on top - you want the seeds to be in a single layer, spread out over the pan. Place the pan in the oven at 200F and bake for about an hour. After 30 minutes you should check on them, and mix them up a bit, then spread out into a single layer again. Check again at the 45 minute point, since you don't want them to become over done. By the time they're done, they should be nice and crunchy and a toasty brown; just pop one in your mouth to see if it's done!

Whipped Parsnip Puree (2-3 servings)
2 large Parsnips
1-2 tbs Butter
~3/4c Milk
Salt and pepper (to taste)

 Start some water on to boil. Meanwhile, peel and roughly chop your parsnips. The thinner you chop them, the less time it will take to cook them - but you don't have to make them TOO fine. Add a bit of salt to the water, and boil the parsnips for 20-30 minutes until soft. Strain, then put them in the blender, with your butter and enough milk that it will blend. As you blend, keep adding milk until it's a nice, light, fluffy texture that blends easily - this will be lighter than all but the fluffiest of mashed potatoes. Add some salt and pepper, perhaps a little cayanne, to taste. And voila! A nice, simple dish which you can startle guests with by not specifying what it is and letting them assume it's mashed potatoes. They really do look like mashed potatoes!

Of Cookies and Cupcakes

On Monday evening I held a board-game night, for people both from college and from my department. It was a great evening, with lots of fun boardgames played (Pandemic! Ticket to Ride! Cards Against Humanity! Taboo! Settlers of Catan! Dominion! Etc!), lots of fun people, and lots of fun food and drinks. My friend Kaila was here for the weekend, (as previously seen in the "Funtimes with Kaila and Benson" post), so she was extremely helpful in aiding my food prep for the evening. She made a delicious spinach dip, for example, as well as helping with numerous other dishes including finding a GREAT recipe for basil pesto bread in my bread machine cookbook. But the most awesome dish that the two of us made was a previously untested (by us) recipe that Kaila found online that looked really cool: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes - the original recipe can be found here.

This is exactly what it sounds like: cupcakes, stuffed with cookie dough. They're pretty straightforward, too - just drop frozen chunks of cookie dough on top of your cupcake batter and bake. But of course, you need to make the dough and the batter! So as a bonus, this post also includes a recipe for delicious Vanilla Pudding Cookies (with chocolate chips!) - a different recipe for chocolate chip cookies that was the standard at our place in college. Unlike my other chocolate chip cookie recipe (see "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post), this recipe is designed to put out large, fluffy, SOFT cookies which stay soft for a long time after you've baked them, as in, probably a week though they've never really lasted that long! And although you only need a half a recipe for the cupcakes, well, we made a full batch so that we could have cookies in addition to cupcakes! So two delicious desserts for one! Apparently you can also just use the standard pre-made cookie dough that comes in tubes to make this recipe even easier, just roll THAT in balls and freeze it instead of making homemade cookie dough. You can also substitute other cookie doughs or other cake mixes to mix and match.

Vanilla Pudding Cookies (makes 4 dozen)

2.5 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 3.4 oz package vanilla pudding mix
1 c. softened butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips
(1 cup walnuts)

Preheat the oven to 350F (assuming you are making cookies). First mix all your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, the sugars, the pudding mix) in a large bowl, thoroughly. Next, mix in your softened butter. Repeating something I said in my "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post, be sure to actually soften your butter, rather than microwaving it until it's melty. Melted butter and softened butter are very different animals, and the quality of your cookie somewhat depends on your butter consistency! While we did soften our butter as we were supposed to, if you are in a rush, there is an easy trick to make it soft really quickly, without cheating with the microwave - if you have a cheese grater, you can grate your hardened butter through it, which increases the surface area of the butter and lets it soften up right away. Plus, since it's already grated, it mixes easier than straight up hard butter does, even when each individual piece might be harder than truly softened butter. So a handy trick if you are ever in a pinch, like you've suddenly developed a massive cookie craving in the middle of the night and you MUST BAKE NOW. Yes, this has happened to me.

Once you've added and mixed the butter, proceed to add the eggs and vanilla as well, and mix thoroughly. Now, at this stage, your dough may look a little dry and/or flaky. If this is the case, you need to mix it more thoroughly, until it's completely homogenous. The easiest way to do this is just get in there with your hands and mix it thoroughly! So everything should look nice and smooth, as a cookie dough should. Once you've done that, add the chocolate chips as well. And if you like nuts in your cookies, I suppose you can also add those, though I wouldn't recommend them for the cupcakes, and personally I don't like nuts in my chocolate chip cookies! So, if you are making cookies OR cupcakes, you'll want to put the dough into 1 tbs balls and place them on a cookie tin (or, in the case of the cupcakes, into something that will fit into your freezer but keep the balls separated). If making COOKIES: bake for 10-12 minutes in your preheated oven, until they're nice and brown on the bottom.  Remove from the oven, let cool, and consume. These will stay soft for at LEAST a week, probably longer!

If making CUPCAKES: place the balls (24 of them, one for each muffin, though I added an extra one for luck) into the freezer for at least 2 hours, until they're frozen solid. The reviews of this cupcake recipe are very vehement that the cookie dough MUST be frozen solid for these cookies to turn out right. So freeze them well. Heck, overnight, if you so desire, I guess. When they're frozen, you are ready to make your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes



Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
1 box of cake mix
Any additional ingredients required to make said cake mix (this usually consists of some number of eggs, some oil or butter and water)
24 frozen solid 1 tbs balls of chocolate chip cookie dough - REALLY frozen.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix your cake mix according to the instructions on the box. In our case, this involved a red velvet cake mix, 3 eggs, 1 1/4 cup of water, and substituting a half a cup of softened butter for the half a cup of oil (because that way your cupcakes are more buttery! Can't go wrong with that!). Next, either line your cupcake tins with cupcake holders or grease the cupcake pan. We didn't have the paper cupcake things, so we just greased it, but next time I'd definitely use the liners: especially since if these are underdone they're otherwise quite difficult to remove from the pan. Fill your cupcake pan so that each cupcake thing is 2/3 full. I would emphasize that you are adding both cookie AND cupcake batter to your tins, so don't overfill: the cupcakes rise significantly. We overfilled ours, and they overflowed a little. Still tasty, but not as pretty! Next, place a frozen dough ball on top of each of the cupcakes, centered. It will sink as the cupcake bakes, so you don't need to press down or anything.

 In the comments from AllRecipes, it emphasizes to REALLY make sure the dough is frozen and DO NOT over cook the cupcakes, or they'll cook, and you'll have chocolate chip cookie stuffed cupcakes instead of chocolate chip cookie DOUGH cupcakes. Not a tragedy if you overshoot a little, but just be aware. Bake for 16-18 minutes - test the cupcakes by sticking a toothpick into it near the side of the cupcake - since you are testing the doneness of the cupcake part, not the cookie dough part. Once you think its done, remove the cupcakes from the oven, and let cool for 15 minutes (so it settles) before removing from the tins. Then you can pop them out, and they're ready for frosting!

Chocolate [Almond] Frosting
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 1-oz squares of unsweetened chocolate (melted)
1 tsp vanilla
Optional: small splash of almond extract
2.5 cups powered sugar

Bring the butter and the milk to a boil in a small saucepan, then blend in the chocolate, vanilla and, if you so desire, the almond extract. We actually didn't intend to add almond extract, but the bottle of vanilla and the bottle of almond extract look very similar, and some went in before we realized our mistake. But it was a very tasty mistake indeed, so if I made this again, I would replicate it! Next, slowly add your powdered sugar, blending as you go until it's smooth. You should probably taste as you go, and add more or less as you desire your sweetness level. While the original frosting recipe we were following (from my wonderful all chocolate-based recipe cookbook!) called for 2.5 cups of sifted powdered sugar, we cut it down a bit to 1 3/4 - mostly because that was all the powdered sugar we had. However, we found that it was actually just about the right amount of sweetness, so it wasn't a huge problem. The icing WAS a little runny, however, and tended to get a bit melty when in a warm room, so I'd probably go with the full amount of sugar if you have it. Once that's all done, you can frost your cooled cupcakes! And you have a delicious treat for you.

Our final products were very tasty, but NOT the prettiest cupcakes I've ever made. Our first batch turned out slightly overdone - so it was an absolutely scrumptious cupcake with a soft and fluffy chocolate chip cookie baked inside - which was delicious, but wasn't chocolate chip cookie dough we were going for. For our second batch (I only have 12 cupcakes worth of cupcake pans, so we had to do it in 2 batches), we overcompensated and undercooked - so we got the cookie dough part, but the cupcakes were almost falling apart because they weren't quite cooked enough. I'd error on this side, personally, if you have cupcake liners, since the main problem here was difficulty of removal from the pan. Note that the cooking time difference between the two batches was 2 minutes (18 minutes for the first, 16 for the second). So there is a fine, fine line here. And it probably varies based on the exact cookie dough and cake mix you use - so experiment a little! But all in all, very tasty, I would definitely make these again.

Baked cupcakes before the icing stage

The French Laundry's Gruyère Cheese Gougères

As I said in the last blog post, while Benson and I visited our friend Kaila in Waltham, we did a lot of cooking. This dish is from the same meal as the previous post, but I thought it deserved its own explanation. This recipe originates from the wonderful French Laundry Cookbook, featuring recipes from Thomas Keller's Michelin 3-star restaurant The French Laundry in California. It has amazing, gourmet recipes, with full explanations of WHY you do certain steps, and clear explanations of techniques which I might have thought were beyond me or too complicated until I tried them and saw how much they improved things. It was a Christmas present from a thoughtful, sweet, and hungry boyfriend. I've made other dishes from this cookbook, as well, and each of them have tasted delicious. My presentation skills usually are a bit lacking, but, well, the food is good. It's definitely inspiring me to improve myself, at any rate! Anyways, Gruyère Cheese Gougères are hot and crisp and moist in the center, great for a large group of people to munch on, and, despite the long recipe description, pretty easy to make!

This was the result of shredding
 a 3.5 oz block of cheese

Benson and I have made these twice: the first time, Benson described the taste as "like Goldfish" (you know, the little orange fish snacks?) - but the second time it didn't quite have that same flavor - it depends highly on the exact cheese you use. The first time we used an older, harder Gruyere and the second time it was a bit fresher and softer. Both times were good, but I could taste the difference. So, if possible, taste your Gruyere to make sure its a flavor you like. I think I'd go with the older hard gruyere, personally! You could use a different cheese for an entirely different flavor! Chedder, perhaps? I was pretty happy with Gruyere.

For another recount of this recipe, visit the excellent blog "French Laundry at Home" in which one woman cooks EVERY DISH from the French Laundry Cookbook, with her own minor tweaks and advice. Every recipe I've made from French Laundry, I've looked at her blog for advice. She also has a useful list of both the most approachable recipes, and her favorite recipes: and sometimes these two lists even overlap! Find that here.

Gruyère Cheese Gougères (makes 4 dozen puffs)

1 cup cold water
7 tbs unsalted butter
1 tbs Kosher salt (specifically Diamond Crystal, apparently)
1 pinch white sugar
1 1/4 cup white flour
4 to 5 large eggs

1 1/4 cup shredded Gruyere cheese (a 3.5 oz block is about right)
fresh ground white pepper

A brief aside on salt: I found these slightly salty (and I LOVE salt), so you might want to go a little easy on the salt. The book actually specifies Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, and warns that if you use some other kind of salt you may have to adjust your salt levels further, since different types of salt have different properties. Kosher salt dissolves fast and is good at mixing it's flavor into whatever your cooking. I've recently started using kosher salt a lot more in my cooking for this reason. I currently have not one, not two, but FIVE different kinds of salt in my house: iodized salt, kosher salt, a grinder full of sea-salt,  my flavored truffle salt, and my prized "popcorn and nut" salt . This last is a very uniform and fine flaked salt which sticks very well to things like nuts and popcorn (hence the name). I only use it for things like popcorn, nuts, and homemade fries - things that you want salted in THAT sense, not salted in the sense of a well seasoned soup. My dad always has this around the house, and, before the internet became so convenient for shopping, often had trouble finding it in stores. This resulted in him hitting up movie theaters (mostly the independent Charles Theater in Baltimore) and purchasing them directly from the movie theater. Though since he's a big movie goer, and after a while people recognize him at these places, he often gets the salt for free. This is how I got MY popcorn salt: when seeing Serenity (the movie from the tv show Firefly) in Boston, we noticed that the popcorn stand had laying out a ton of shakers of Popcorn salt. So we went up and asked how much they would sell two of them to us. This resulted in a couple very confused popcorn venders, who checked with the manager, who proceeded to just give us two canisters. It was awesome and highly amusing at the time. Anyway, that aside wasn't as brief as expected, but again, I really like salt.


Back to the recipe: Preheat the oven to 450F, then combine water, sugar, salt and butter in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add ALL the flour at once, reducing the heat to medium, then stir constantly for 2 minutes. During this time, the batter should reduce and start to dry up and form a ball of dough.

Next, transfer to a bowl and beat with a mixer with a dough paddle for 30 seconds. Or in the case of someone who doesn't have such a thing (*cough* me *cough*) just beat stir it with a wooden spoon.

Add 4 eggs, then mix more on the dough paddle thing (or at this point, blend it in an electric mixer on the "mix" setting). You want it to form a nice, smooth, silky dough, which when you lift up the mixer forms soft peaks which fall over at the tip. If its stiff, add the egg white of the remaining fifth egg, mix more, and if it's STILL too stiff add the yolk as well. Once its softly peaking, add 3/4 of the gruyere cheese and mix until smooth. Taste, and adjust the seasoning by adding additional salt (again, not TOO much) and ground white pepper to taste.

Now, line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or baking mat. In 1 tbs lumps (or perhaps slightly larger), you want to place the batter on the parchment, with 2 inches between each mound. Ideally, these are in nice little balls - we used a melon baller which worked nicely, though I think they turned out a little smaller than I'd like - when they're a little larger they fluff up a bit more. The French Laundry Cookbook recommends using a pastry bag with a pastry tip to put out the little balls - you can do this by stuffing the dough in a ziplock bag and cutting off the corner. Once you've done this, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the doughballs, a bit of cheese on each one! About 1/2 tsp of cheese on each puff, ideally.

Just before baking

We halved the recipe, so we ended up with just over one baking tin full of these: if possible, you want to fit all of your puffs in one batch, since you will be changing the temperature of the oven partway through and thus will have to do each batch completely separately and wait for the oven to get back up to heat between if you don't manage it in one go. So, bake for 7-8 minutes at 450F, until they've puffed up a little and hold their shape. Then reduce heat to 350F, and bake for 20-25 minutes more until they're a lovely light golden brown, puffy and beautiful to behold. Biting into one at this point (careful, they're HOT), you'll find it's mostly hollow, slightly moist on the inside but still crisp on the outside. Absolutely delicious, and best when piping hot. The next day they're still tasty, but they lose a lot of the oomph they have right out of the oven. At any rate, a tasty and DIFFERENT type of starch/roll you can add to your meal, full of cheesy goodness!

A lovely toasty brown, with the cheese all melted into the puff!

Fun times with Kaila and Benson

This past week, Benson (my boyfriend, visiting from California for a wedding) and I went up to Waltham for a couple days to visit a friend from undergrad, Kaila. I lived with her for two years while I was at Brandeis University, in a house with 5 girls total, including us. And I miss her cooking, she's a great cook. All three of us, in fact, quite enjoy cooking and eating well, so we made a very nice feast on Tuesday night. Again, a good way to bond and chat with people, with a delicious result. First, the main course.

My co-chefs, Benson and Kaila

Chicken Cordon Bleu, as found on that very useful site, allrecipes.
6 chicken breasts
6 slices of sliced cheese
6 slices of ham
3 tbs of flour
1 tsp paprika
a handful of breadcrumbs (not in the recipe, but we added it anyway)
3 tbs butter
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup white wine
1 or 2 bouillon cubes
1 tbs cornstarch
1 cup whipping cream

We altered this recipe a bit, namely in our cooking method and the addition of breadcrumbs, but I think it turned out really nicely (we also halved it). Mix the flour and paprika (and we added some breadcrumbs), which will make up the crust of your chicken. Pound out the chicken breasts flat. Lay the cheese and the ham up in a roll, securing with toothpicks. Then roll in the egg, and bread with the crumb mixture. Next, pan fry the chicken packets in butter until they're nicely browned, and bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes, until fully cooked.

Meanwhile, for the sauce, mix the cornstarch and cream in a small bowl, and add to the skillet with the wine and a bouillon cube. Stir constantly until the cube dissolves (as cream can be finicky), and taste to see if you want a stronger chicken flavor - if so, add another bouillon cube. You want to cook this on medium-low heat until it has thickened into a nice saucy consistency. Then, when both sauce and chicken are complete, serve: pour the sauce over the chicken (or allow each person to do that on their own). Watch out for the toothpicks! It might be a good idea to remove those before serving to guests, or at very least warn them!

As sides, we also made Mashed Potatoes and Pan Roasted Parsnips. The potatoes were from scratch, and pretty straightforward (peel, cube, and boil potatoes; mash with butter, milk, salt and pepper until the right consistency and seasoning is reached! Add a bit of garlic for fun.) Similarly, the parsnips were another simple and delicious vegetable. If you haven't tried parsnips, they're really simple and easy to make. They look like giant albino carrots, and have a wonderful nuttiness to them. Here, we just peeled them and sliced them thin, and cooked them with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Couldn't be more simple, couldn't be more delicious. An interesting and tasty vegetable! We also made Gruyere Cheese Gougeres (aka, cheese puffs), a recipe from the French Laundry Cookbook, but I think I'll save those for another post. They're a bit complicated, and French Laundry deserves it's own place to shine, really, it's a great book.


Finally, for dessert, we made:

Apples Pielettes (Cup-pies!)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 TBS salted butter
1/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp apple pie spice - aka some cinnamon, and a pinch each of cloves and allspice, with, in our case, a bit of nutmeg as well. Kaila cooking ALWAYS involves nutmeg!
1 tbs cornstarch
8 soft caramel candies
3 baking apples, pealed, cored, and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

Crust:
2 11-oz boxes of pie crust mix
1/2 cup water
1 egg, beaten

Anyways, you want to put the sugar, butter, apple juice, cream, spices, cornstarch and caramel in a pot on medium heat, so that everything melts all together, stirring constantly. Then add in the apples, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 8-10 minutes - you want the apples to still hold the shape, but the sauce to be thick and syrupy. Then remove from heat and set aside. This is delicious, and if you have leftovers, you can do what we did and make french toast the following morning and have this as the topping!

A dough blender

Heat the oven to 425F, then make up the pie crust. We actually used Kaila's pie crust recipe instead of the box kind: 3 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 cup crisco, and a bit of water to keep it sticking together, all smashed together with a dough blender (NOT electronic, though it sounds that way!). Usually, I admit, when I make pies or quiche I use the pillsbury frozen ready made pie crust doughs - the crust isn't pre-baked, it's still dough form so you can shape it a bit, and you can bake it exactly as required by the recipe, and that's just fine. They're pretty tasty. But I have been thinking I want to try my hand at making actual crust, especially as it's fairly straightforwards. If you have your own recipe for crust, you want enough for a two crust pie. So just make that up, and divide in half. Take one half, then roll it out to 1/4 to 1/8 thickness.  Using a 4 inch cookie cutter (or the rim of a 13-oz coffee can), cut out 6 circles which you put in the bottom of a cupcake pan as the bottom of the cup-pies, then cut out 6 smaller 2 3/4  circles (with a glass rim, perhaps), which you'll use as the top. Then repeat this with the OTHER half of the dough, for an even dozen.

Fill each of the up pie crusts with the filling, and put the tiny circles on top, pinching all around the rim to seal them - make sure they're sealed tight! then slice a few slivers through the pie crust tops so they can vent (in decorative patterns, preferably!). Brush all over with egg so the crusts are a nice golden brown. Bake for 15 minutes until nice and brown, then remove from the oven. You can remove these from the muffin tin after perhaps about 10 minutes of letting them cool. And then, delicious pie-letts!

Pumpkin Pie-lettes

We liked these so much, the next day we did the whole thing again, only with pumpkin pie filling, instead. Note that if you take a random pie filling recipe, you'll end up with extra filling, so we had to take some dough and make one extra big pie-lette (not shown).

Anyway, Benson and I had a wonderful time visiting Kaila. We didn't JUST cook, naturally, we also walked around Waltham, which is really nice to do, since I DID live there for 4 years; we went to see Wreck-it-Ralph (a lot of fun, worth seeing); we watched some Arrested Development (Kaila hadn't seen it, though Benson and I had); and generally had a nice time. Benson left to go back to California, and I stayed an extra couple of days. And cooked some more, but thats another blog post!

Dinner is served!!!