Catching Up

I'm back! I guess I have been a lazy blogger. I have not stop cooking, just traveling and working. Here is a short recap to catch you up on what I have been cooking.

I went to central Texas for a long Memorial day weekend. We had a wonderful relaxing weekend. We did do some cooking, but I did not take a single photo. Lucky for you all the recipes we cooked were from America's Test Kitchen or from another food blog on Pinterest. Below is a link to the recipes and our review.

Home Fries
I had seen an episode of America's Test Kitchen where they made Home Fries. I love Home Fries, I love potatoes any old way. So we decided to try making them on our long weekend. When looking for this recipe, I discovered My Year with Chris. This is a wonderful blog chronicling cooking recipes from America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country. I will be going back to this blog often. We actually followed their post to cook our Home Fries. The technique is perfect. You really do get that crisp, brown coating on the potatoes with a soft fluffy interior. It would be easy to prepare home fries for a large family this way. Our only disappointment was the seasoning. We are use to spicy home fries from the diners around here. So we added some Cajun seasoning at the end. But the seasoning does not stick at that point. The time to season is before they go in the oven. We both agreed, we will try again with our own seasonings.


Fresh Pasta without a Machine
We also tried our hand at making fresh pasta. It is another recipe from America's Test Kitchen. We actually followed along with a recording of the episode. It was really easy. We took turns rolling out each sheet. We soon learned you need a lot of counter space to prepare this recipe. Our chopping board was a little too small to roll to the length recommended. Next time we will clear the counter and roll it out there. It really did roll out very easy. We also learned it is important to have counter space to let the sheets dry a little before you cut them. We had a few over lapping each other and they were harder to separate into noodles. I will definitely make this again. The flavor and texture was great, well worth the effort. I can't wait to make wide style pasta like pappardelle or tagliatelle. I have a hard time finding it here. I also want to try making noodles for soup. I may need a countertop addition.


Restaurant Style Filet
This is one of those Pinterest recipes you should try. It comes from Whit's Amuse Bouche blog. It is a great tutorial for a restaurant-style filet. Dear sister and I made it once at my house. We decided it did not need all the salt that is recommended. But it was definitely worth trying again. So we tried again Memorial Day weekend. This time I seasoned it with salt and pepper as I would any steak, but I followed the recipe for everything else. This time the seasoning was perfect. The only thing I want to experiment with is the compound butter. Whit's was good, but we are not use to lemon on our steaks. We will keep experimenting with this technique. It really makes for a moist, tender and flavorful steak.

Go check out all these recipes.