Matthew Supert

A couple of weeks ago Megan and I won a goodie basket from the chocolate fair at the Morton Arboretum. In the basket was (obviously chocolate) some olive oil and some dark chocolate balsamic vinegar from the "Olive Tap". We decided to adapt the olive oil ice cream recipe from Jenu's ice cream book, leaving out the nuts in the recipe to instead make just a pure olive oil ice cream. 

First off, if you are into making your own ice cream. Get this book. The recipes here are not only fantastic, but they are super easy to make since they do not require you to make a custard with eggs. Instead Jeni uses cream cheese as a base. 

This ice cream came out incredibly smooth and in fact did taste like custard when we were mixing it. It probably helped that the olive oil was as high quality as it was. This was a super easy recipe that nailed it out of the park. 

My most recent recipe from my cookbook series comes from The Sriracha Cookbook. I have made a couple of recipes out of this book before, but this dish was probably the most involved one I made out of this book. It called for sushi grade tuna, which I had some trouble finding at first. Megan took me though to an asian grocer in Naperville called H-Mart. This place not only had the tuna that I needed, but it was one of the coolest grocery stores I had ever seen. All sorts of fantastic foods, fresh fish (they kill them for you) an more. If you happen to begin in the area, it is worth stopping by the mart just to check it out and perhaps buy some of the green tea kit-kats or some other Japanese candy.

So, back onto this recipes. This was actually a pretty easy dish to make.  It basically was some Sriracha coated tuna that was seared on either side for about 60 seconds and then served with rice and some stir fried vegetables. Add some sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds and you're done. For the veggies I used both Yu Choy Sum and Chinese Broccoli and briefly sautéed them with some more oil before putting it all together. The fish ended up being sliced thinly, perhaps 1/4" thick. 

It was a simple dish and one worth making again. 

It has been a while since I posted a cookbook series one. This was from two weeks ago when we were doing brunch with Megan's family. This is Râpée Morvandelle, which is described as Gratin of Shredded Potatoes with Ham and Eggs and Onions. The photo here unfortunately doesn't do the dish justice and this is an amazing brunch/breakfast dish to make. It is also surprisingly easy. It bakes for about 40 minutes until golden. 

You can find this recipe around online if you look, so check it out if you are looking for a brunch dish to make. 

I can't believe that I forgot to post this. All the way back on October 14th we did our second Cook Book Series recipe. Well, technically Megan did since I wasn't home to do the cooking on this one. The second recipe turned out to be just as big of a success as the first one. It was honestly one of the best beef stews I have ever had. Usually with most beef stews I get hung up on too much potatoes, but this one was really well balanced and also had some really delicious dumplings. Another keeper of a recipe. 

Added bonus was that Megan made Apple Slices to go with dessert which I had never had before. They were such a huge hit that we brought another batch to work for my birthday and they were devoured quickly. 

Last Saturday we did our first Cook Book recipe from our new endeavor to begin cooking more recipes out of all of the cook books that we own. This first recipe came out of the Marshall Fields Cook Book.

Overall results on this one were great. The soup was easy to make in about forty minutes and it was rich and creamy. It was made a bit easier by the use of a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. It saved on some additional cooking time and the rotisserie chicken added some great flavor. 

We did almost have a mishap on this one because we didn't notice that the wild rice package called for the rice to cook on its own for about an hour. We disregarded that and threw the rice into the pot while the soup was simmering. I think it resulted in quite a bit more starch than was anticipated but for the first dishing up of the soup it worked out great. Reheating though wasn't quite as fantastic. Between the cream and the starch the soup reheated a bit too thick and that could in part be because of our mess up with the rice. 

Overall, a great recipe that you could totally make for a group of people for dinner. 

While eating lunch this past weekend I commented to Megan that we have a whole bunch of cookbooks on our shelf that we almost never crack open to get recipes from. We consistently get recipes from the internet, which is great for making meal planning easy. But we have some great cook books sitting on the shelf collecting dust. 

So I figured we should start working our way through each book. One book a week, one recipe from each book and we will just work through all of the recipes in the books. It probably gives us several years worth of cooking hear, but I figured it could make for a good blog series. 

The first recouped coming up this week is the Marshall Field's Cookbook; Boundary Waters Wild Rice Soup. We'll see how this series turns out.