Pork sandwiches

The Roasted Pork Loin with Warm Fruit Chutney looked boring at first glance. Well at second glance too. I'm used to meat requiring more prep to be good, but this pork loin had olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme. Hey, whatever works. Our sandwiches had mango chutney. I suspect any would work nicely. The pork will make good leftover sandwiches, with or without the chutney.

Rating: great

We used our cool remote thermometer and were surprised when the pork seemed done too fast. So we double checked with another instant read thermometer and it read 20 degrees cooler. Okay, we tried a third thermometer and it was yet another 30 degrees cooler. Shoot! Now we have to get fourth thermometer to verify which of our three is right!!

Perfect Eggs

I've always passed over recipes for snooty, froo--froo eggs, which of course, Martha has in her cookbook. Poached. Soft Boiled. Coddled. Seems a fancy vessel is required... how silly is that?

For whatever reason, we tried the Poached Eggs with Smoked Ham (though we had it with Canadian ham). I love runny fried eggs with buttered toast. This was the grand-daddy of runny eggs and toast. I didn't know eggs without the pan grease (or butter) could be so much better. Poached eggs are simply dropped in hot water and you scoop them out with a slotted spoon. It's pretty easy as long as don't crowd the pan.

Now I'm going to have to try coddled eggs. :-)

Rating: great

Roast chicken: attempt #1

I know, I know. It's chicken, making it a lost cause from the start. But I know chicken can taste like something gosh darn it. We tried Martha's Roast Chicken with some mixed results. I have a small fortune wrapped up in my kitchenware, and yet, I don't have a small roasting pan, or a fat separator for gravy.

Instead, we cooked it in ceramic a casserole dish - ceramic being an insulator, not a conductor. The top cooked fine but the bottom wasn't cooking. The potatoes around the side didn't cook all the way through either. And the gravy could have benefited from the fat separator...

So we will reserve our judgment for attempt #2 when we have the right tools.

coq au what?

Coq au Vin, we think, means "chicken in wine". Whether we translated it right or not, this recipe really was chicken in wine.

But alas, despite the fancy name, chicken is still just chicken. The sauce and mushrooms were good and mixed well with rice. The chicken, despite its stewing in a wine liquid, just wasn't interesting.

Rating: good
Reheat: same

gobble gobble

I've never made, or eaten a turkey burger. I know they are lower in fat and all that hoopla, but I also equate that to lower in taste. Granted it took a little extra effort, but Martha's Turkey Burger with Caramelized Onions changed my outlook. The meat gets mixed with lots of onions, Tobasco and Worcestershire, and the caramelized onions are fantastic - a little sweet with salt, pepper, and thyme. The final product includes olive oil toasted buns, tomato, lettuce and mayo. YUMMY! We at it with purple cabbage slaw with Brianna's Poppyseed Dressing (I couldn't get enough of this dressing!)

Rating: great
Reheat: same

Go Martha

February is Martha month. J.T. has chosen to cook from Martha Stewart's "Favorite Comfort Food". Now I wouldn't consider coq au vin or curry chickpea pie comfort food...but hey...it's Martha we're talking about here. She grew up on a different planet.

This book has already produced some winners for us in the past, including the "Best BLT" with roasted garlic mayo, "Toasted Oatmeal" and "Blueberry Pancakes".

Tonight we tried the Tomato Soup combined with the Grilled Cheese Sandwich: the ultimate in comfort food. Well, the tomato soup tasted like spaghetti sauce. Not ideal. The grilled cheese was predictable, though we learned that cooking it on lower heat for a longer time created a better result. I've tried covering the sandwich with a pot lid before, but I think it makes the bread a little soggy.

Tomato Soup Rating: okay
Grilled Cheese Sandwich: good

Final judgment: Off the Shelf

Let's see how "Off the Shelf" measures up to its claims.

Fast, Fresh, Inspiring, Simple.

I have to say it lives up to the claims. In fact every meal was easy and relatively quick to make. The recipes provide a nice change of pace by not relying on too many pre-processed ingredients, nor does it use cheese to solve all their flavor problems (which is an overused ingredient in lots of quick food cooking). Instead it relied on higher quality pantry items that, I'm guessing, most American pantries don't have. We had to buy our pantry item for nearly every recipe, but now that the investment is made and we know how to use these ingredients, we are inspired to experiment more.

The pantry information was well organized, putting stock ingredients in categories. It helped me get a feel for what went together and also gave me ideas for how to use ingredients more creatively.

This book is an excellent example of attractive presentation - thank goodness for a beautiful picture of every recipe. Sadly, the attractive presentation set us up for a let down with most of the food ranging from "okay" to "good". However, each recipe has a lot of potential to be tweaked - this is a great book for adapting recipes. I suspect we'll go back to this book for quick pinch meat dishes, easy sides and good sauces.