Now that I'm getting back into my Rouxbe cooking lessons, it was time for some more tasty practice. Today's lesson: submersion cooking techniques (poaching, simmering, and boiling), as demonstrated by making a soup. There were a number of soups to choose from, but I settled on the red lentil coconut soup. (For those not on Rouxbe, you can see the ( Read more... )

For a few days, I've been craving mango lassi, but haven't been able to get anywhere that sells it. So I decided to make it myself. Problem #1: I didn't have any mangos at home, and all the stores were closed. However, I've seen recipes for "sweet lassi" that don't actually contain any fruit, so I decided to base myself on those ( Read more... )

Perhaps it was a stupid decision to make my first meal plan the same week I had an intermittent high fever for the first four days. But I was feeling okay when I made it (for certain definitions of "okay"), and I'd been tired of getting to 6 pm, looking around my kitchen, and saying, "There's nothing here to eat," so I figured it was the time ( Read more... )

Okay, you're all going to laugh at me this time. I apparently can't make hard-boiled eggs. I am the laughingstock of the culinary world.

See, I wanted to make some hard-boiled eggs for salads. I used the Rouxbe method: bring cold salted water to a boil, add eggs, reduce heat to a simmer, set timer for 12 minutes, then when the time's up place eggs ( Read more... )

This was my latest Rouxbe recipe, as I've started a unit on chicken. For those who have access to Rouxbe, the recipe is here. For those that don't, the short version is that you marinate chicken legs in olive oil, lemon zest, and red pepper flakes. Then you make a short stock with the backbones from the chicken legs and a bunch of vegetables. When ( Read more... )

Another long day of cooking, courtesy of my Rouxbe course. I was going to do a long write-up of the stuff I did today (sweating practice using garlic cloves, tomato sauce, roasted brussels sprouts, roasted cauliflower, and pan-fried steak), but I'm tired and don't really think I have anything deep and meaningful to contribute. It's all techniques I ( Read more... )

Friends, I think tonight may have been the first time in my entire life where I walked into the kitchen and felt confident at every single step of the way when I was cooking. This is a major milestone for me ( Read more... )

As I mentioned last time, all the knife practice exercises I've been doing this week have left me with quite a lot of vegetables leftovers. Today my boss decided that it's slow enough in the office that we were entitled to a one-day spring break, so I decided to put some of my newfound cooking skills to use ( Read more... )

Tonight was another practice night from Rouxbe. Today's lesson: minestrone soup. Ostensibly, this was more knife skills practice, the last of the knife skills lessons before moving on to other stuff. (Next up: pan frying.)

The short version: Very tasty, but too finicky and long for me to make again.

( The long version )

As many of you know, I've subscribed to a lifetime membership at Rouxbe, and right now I'm going through their Cook's Roadmap: Level 1 course. For a while, I'd stalled out, because I couldn't really do any of the practical tasks while my kitchen was being renovated. But by yesterday we finally had things under control enough that I could start ( Read more... )