Cookbook Project, Books #28 and 29

[ladysprite]

I promise I do have other stuff to write about; it's just that 1) I want to get these documented before I forget about them and 2) I've been living pretty deep inside my own head lately, working through some issues that, while good to resolve, aren't quite up for public display.....

Anyway,

"Best of America: Traditional Regional Recipes," Carla Capalbo and Laura Washburn

This is a giant coffee-table book full of shiny pictures and a surprising variety of even more surprisingly mainstream food. I've had it almost forever - I bought it for myself, when I found it as part of one of those 'extra-low-price, please buy this now' displays at the front of bookstores, and I use it every once in a blue moon. It's fun to look through, and among other things it includes a recipe for Peach and Blueberry Pie that is to die for.

This is not the season for peaches or blueberries, though, so I went looking for another recipe to try and wound up making Pecan-Stuffed Pork Chops for dinner last week. This was a first for me in a lot of ways - I've made pork chops occasionally, but I've never tried stuffing them before. Also, the stuffing was mostly made of chopped apples and pecans, and I'm still learning to tolerate main dishes that involve both fruit and meat. They were surprisingly easy and good, though. It's clear this isn't a perfect recipe, but it's enough to make me want to try something similar in the future, probably using Cook's Illustrated to hunt down the best possible recipe.

"Crock Pot Cuisine"

This is the book that came free with my Crock Pot when I bought it. It's actually a full book, not just a pamphlet, and it's got some pretty good recipes in it, including my favorite Sloppy Joe recipe. Which reminds me, I ought to make those sometime soon.

But I wanted to try something different, and wound up finding their recipe for Pepper Steak. I'm pretty sure I've made something like that before, but this version, at least, sounded new, and simple, and worth a try.

It turns out I am doomed when it comes to Crock Pot cooking, or at least I have been recently. Even though I am pathologically organized when it comes to other things, no amount of double- and triple-checking can let me get everything ready and cooking on time. This time, even though I checked to make sure the pot was both plugged in and turned on, I failed to notice that somehow the power strip, which never gets turned off, was turned off.

I figured that out only an hour or two into the cooking, at least, but that still threw off the timing. And later in the day, my doctor's appointment ran late, keeping me from turning down the heat at the right time. Surprisingly, even with all these issues, the food was still tasty, which makes me want to try the recipe again without all the complications, to see if it's even better when done right....

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

That's the real beauty of the Crock-Pot: It turns sloppy timing and circumstances beyond the cook's control into food that's still good. Heck, in some applications it can make a cook (and I'm particularly thinking of me here) seem like a genius when he actually just muddled through on the cutting edge of disaster throughout the process. :)

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

I'm a little paranoid with mine, so I make a point of feeling the outside of the pot about fifteen minutes after I think I started it, just to make sure it is doing SOMETHING. If I have to leave sooner than that, it makes me nervous. I've blotted out exactly what didn't cook when to make me like this. It could be the year my mom's holiday dinner was hours late because my dad thought he had left the oven on from breakfast and turned it off after she had started the turkey. Or it could be a failure of my own. All I know is that I check, often more than once.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I'm still learning to tolerate main dishes that involve both fruit and meat

I got used to that with all those SCA feasts. :-) There's no quicker way to make a meat dish "taste period" to me than to include some fruit in it or as a side item cooked with the meat (e.g. beef roast with apples and onions). I'm not normally fond of dishes that mix meat and sweet flavors, but apparently fruit is not-sweet enough to pass muster.

[gmkieran.livejournal.com]

I'm enjoying the cooking posts! And I've been playing with sloppy joe recipes lately, but haven't come up with one I quite like, yet. they all come out too sweet, though this last one was better