At any rate, this year's slogan caused me to evaluate just what I could do in my life to in fact calm the #$%* down and I came up with the following: get back into a regular yoga practice, further develop a skill, write to the point of which I could actually classify myself as a "writer", figure out which areas of my life are leading to such a slogan being necessary and either change or eliminate it, etc. So you are now reading this as a direct result of needing to fulfill further developing a skill and writing to the point of being a legit writer. Which reminds me. . . I still need to catch up on my "New in Town" reviews before I hit my year mark in Arizona and can no longer classify myself as new (nor can I claim ignorance on directions at that point considering the city is fairly easy to maneuver). My skill I want to further develop is my cooking. I currently work for a culinary school and am surrounded by food and people inspired by food to the point that my competitive nature kicks in and I want to be classified as an equally good cook when compared to the students. I lack desire to compete with the chefs and don't really care about doing a side by side comparison of myself on the skill level. I just want to create food that tastes good. And then I want to write about my experience doing so. My goal is to try doing one new recipe per week. This allows me to feed my creativity so to speak on multiple levels, pun intended.
My first week's attempt was Mexican Sweet Potatoes and a Mexican Coconut Custard Tart. I have never cooked sweet potatoes nor have I ever made a tart, so this was an undertaking in and of itself. Luckily the international cookbook I was using includes easily accessible ingredients. I had already made a dinner/dessert combo from the French section back in December so I figured what I had chosen couldn't be all that hard in comparison. Not hard, but definitely time consuming.
The sweet potato dish made me skeptical at first. The recipe calls for sweet potatoes, brown sugar, fresh cilantro, chipotle peppers, and some other stuff. The potatoes get roasted in the oven, another technique I typically don't do. It smelled delicious while cooking so that helped ease my anxiety a bit. The reaction of my boyfriend when he tasted the dish though is what made it worth the effort. I am not going to even pretend to be humble here, the dish was fantastic. So, thank you, Williams-Sonoma, for making an international cookbook I can actually use. The recommendation for sour cream as an optional topping was right on par as well. I will definitely make that dish again, although I won't be able to write about it next time since I am supposed to be writing about the new recipes I try.
Next up was the coconut tart. The custard itself was delicious but what really made it outstanding was roasting the coconut in the oven for the topping. So yummy! My tart edge stuck to the sides though because I tried to remove it from the tart pan before it had fully cooled. Lesson learned. Also, the recipe recommended trying fresh papaya or pineapple with whipped topping on it. Tried the papaya. No bueno. Did not try the whipped topping as the tart is already plenty sweet enough without it. Would definitely also make this again.
The moral of the story: Mexican Night at Casa de Erica was a success. Now on to the next challenge. . .
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