Second February Menu

So after the success of the first Feb menu (on Feb 3), I made the next menu on Feb 6th from Chapter CX. The menu consists of:

Breaded Veal
Creamed Potatoes
Browned Sauce
Spinach with Hard Cooked Eggs
Bread & Butter Spiced Peaches
Fig Pudding
Foamy Sauce



The breaded veal was delicious. I was so happy that my butcher had veal and I didn't have to do a meat substitute again. So tasty.


The creamed potatoes were delicious as always. I have made these several times since that first menu in January, as they're so easy to make (and I'd cooked extra potatoes with the first menu so as to have the pre cooked potatoes needed for THIS meal).


The browned sauce was pretty straight forward and oh so tasty. As mentioned, I love gravy. Sadly, it's still in my fridge and that's a long time... I've not been as good at utilizing the full kitchen for menus and remembering to use up things this month.


And now we come to the trouble makers. Let's start with the Spinach with Hard Cooked Eggs. The book doesn't give a recipe for this. At all. And I looked. So to the internet I go! Turns out it's a pretty straight forward and common dish. Hard boil eggs, peel and slice in half lengthwise. Blanche spinach, mix with a cream sauce, settle the eggs into the spinach and top with buttered bread crumbs and bake. I made a little extra cream sauce for the potatoes and used it here. Easy peasy. But I wish the recipe had actually been given.


Spiced peaches are something I made years ago when I got 40 pounds of peaches for free. Mine are cooked a little more than Bettina's but that's fine by me.


And for our last bit of annoyance, the fig pudding. This is one of those recipes that was designed for the fireless. Well, Bettina's fireless had ceramic heated stones at the bottom. She also had a tin pudding mold. I used a mason jar and tried to heat up a iron weight. Suffice it to say, the pudding was not cooked. Or rather, the outer 1/2" of the entire thing was cooked. So then I popped it on the stove and tried to do the boil thing. It STILL was being recalcitrant at being cooked! But eventually it was heated into submission. But it was an annoying process to say the least.


The foamy sauce was underwhelming. Can you see it on the pudding in the picture below? Nope! But it added a lemony zing to the otherwise not impressive-tasting pudding.

First February Menu

I realize that posting this late in the month makes it look like I've been slacking on the cooking front. Not true! I've just been slacking on the blogging front. The first menu that I made for February was Bettina's Valentine's meal for her and Bob (Chapter CXI). It contains:

Broiled Steak
Baked Potatoes
Macaroni with Tomatoes and Green Peppers
Bread & Butter
Cornstarch Fruit Pudding
Cherry Sauce


The steak tasted delicious, as steak so often does. The baked potato similarly.


But the macaroni dish! There was definitely some confusion in my mind regarding this one. Firstly, it calls for 1/3 c macaroni. Just think about how much pasta that is. It's like nothing. The directions call for layering the food stuffs, and there is no way that one could make layers out of such a small amount of pasta. So I used about a cup of macaroni. I suppose it's possible that this is more of a custard that has pasta in it, but I figured I wanted to eat pasta (even though it was odd having it in addition to a baked potato AND bread and butter).


The cornstarch fruit pudding also gave me trouble. It didn't thicken. At least, not well. I wound up freezing it to get a better consistency, which worked fine. However, then we had the actual flavor to deal with. It tasted like cornstarch mixed with fruit juice, which coincidentally is exactly what it was. C- in flavor, IMO. And the cherry sauce should have cooked for a lot longer than they recommended. Note: I used actual cherry juice rather than the syrup that came with canned cherries and perhaps therein lies some of my problems?


Posting this makes me crave that steak and potato deliciousness, even though I just ate. :)

Final January Menu

One whole month is done! I barely squeaked by, using the last day of the month for this. But this was a reasonably successful meal,for all that my husband was nervous. :)

Menu:
Roast Beef
Browned Potatoes
Gravy
Bettina's Jelly Pickle
Bread
Grapefruit Marmalade
Date Loaf Cake
Sliced Oranges

I had intended on making this menu Friday, but then we had friends over and I didn't want to have to buy a large enough roast. But I did use some of the supplies, meaning that another grocery run had to happen in addition to the butcher visit. Side note, my butcher will let me know the next time they get mutton, and there will be veal by the end of the week! I won't have to buy grocery store meat next time I have a veal menu! This is very exciting.


Anyway, I made the cake when I got home from Y's house and before my afternoon students. Be prepared for a lot of sticky chopping, for it takes a lot of minced dates to make a full cup. Also, I realized while making it, that a liquid was needed. It's very difficult to have vanilla be your only liquid... I added milk, and just poured until it was a quick bread batter consistency. Maybe 2/3rds of a cup?< Everything else was cooked back to back.


I started by making the gelatin. Easy enough, although I misjudged when to add in the pickles, and it didn't gel smoothly. (Also didn't unmould well.)


Next I started the roast andd the veg. I used the broiler for the first section of the cooking, and then fluctuated between 350F and 450F as it cooked, eventually needing around 1.75 hrs to cook.


I had potatoes (with some carrots for good measure) cooking with the meat the whole time.


We almost didn't get gravy because someone wheedled Yorkshire Pudding out of me, and that takes drippings. (Recipe from Fanny Farmer, courtesy of my Aunt C.)


Luckily, we had the "chicken carcass turning into stock" on the back burner, so I made chicken gravy to go with our roast beef. (My college experience taught me to never avoid free calories.)


Which leaves us at our bread and marmalade. I bought marmalade rather than make it (although recipe was given), but had to settle for orange as no one sells grapefruit marmalade.

Verdict? Pretty damn tasty. Roast took an hour longer than expected, the jelly is fine but way more than anyone could eat, ditto potato portion size, and I opted not to do the sliced oranges, even though I have them. It was just a little much. But the cake! Glorious cake. Soft, moist, sweet, just the right amount of texture. And I didn't need to use the mixer for it. I will be making this again.

January Menu no 4

So I made the next menu yesterday, and had my buddy A over again with my husband and me. This meal was technically a luncheon for Bettina and her friends. My husband was very leery of this menu (and the next as well) because there are some very 20th century foods on these menus.

The menu is:
Chicken a la King
Toast
Light Rolls and Butter
Bettina Salad
Salad Dressing
Cheese Wafers
Strawberry Sherbet
Hickory Nut Cake
Candied Orange Peel

There were a few changes to the menu. Firstly, I skipped the candied orange peel. We didn't need more sugar. Secondly, I could not find strawberry sherbet, and I feared raspberry would be too sour. So I bought strawberry ice cream (although I forgot to serve it!)


The chicken dish was quite tasty - chopped chicken, from a roast I made that afternoon, in a cream sauce. My husband said it was a little bland. It was served on toast. The rolls were delicious and easy enough to make. This made pull apart rolls, which I didnt expect! The Bettina Salad worried my husband. It's a bed of lettuce, with a slice of pineapple, half of a pear, salad dressing in the hollow of the pear, whipped cream on top, a maraschino cherry, two walnut halves and two marshmallows. Yeah. It surprisingly wasn't terrible! I ate the components separately, and the pear plus salad dressing plus whipped cream was quite tasty. The cheese crackers were also on the side of the salad. This was also the first time I'd ever made a boiled salad dressing. Annoyingly, I had to reduce the recipe by three quarters, as the original recipe called for 12 servings and I needed 3.


The cheese crackers were easy enough to make, but I dont think that making a cheese spread and baking SIX CRACKERS is really a worthwhile use of my time. Just sayin'.


The cake went well, and easily. Although I subbed in walnuts as I couldn't find hickory nuts. Oh, and the frosting was delightfully easy, unlike last time's kerfluffle.


Round up, cheese wafers aren't worth time, and Bettina Salad is odd and awkward to eat. But everything else is worthwhile.

January Menu No. 3

I wound up making the third menu yesterday, as I am terrible at keeping to the schedule. But I had my buddy A over, and the three of us watched A Series of Unfortunate Events and ate the menu.

The menu was:
Swiss Steak
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Creamed Cauliflower
Bread and Butter
Chocolate Nougat Cake

This was a less successful meal. Firstly, I think that vegetables were smaller a hundred years ago. One cauliflower is more than two or three servings, and three good sized sweet potatoes is far more than what is needed for three people. Also, the cake was supposed to be frosted with white mountain icing, and boy oh boy is frosting an area that I am lacking! It's not a buttercream, it's beating molten sugar into beaten egg whites. And I think I'm going to cheat and use the mixer next time before I fully write off the recipe. Also the cake was so outrageously fluffy! I forget that that is a desired quality in cake, as it merely screams "box mix" to me, even though I know perfectly well that it's from scratch.

But dinner was very edible, and not terrible for all that the portions were skewed and it took longer than I would like. Boo. Oh, and for all that the meat recipe was supposedly good for the fireless, it was nearly cold when I pulled it out.

So this meal wont be repeated without some changes.

January Dinner no. 2

Coked the second meal today (I know, it was supposed to be Tuesday, but I didn't get around to making chicken for leftovers yet). Prep for the actual meal, I roasted chicken breasts for early dinner yesterday (and made chicken dumpling soup for midnight snack, yum!). I thawed the second package of ground veal. Cooked down cranberries for jam. And while making cookies this afternoon, I also baked all of the sad little potatoes we had in the house (they needed a lot of spots cut off, poor potatoes!). And then I was ready for this evening!

Menu:
Chicken Loaf
Creamed Potatoes
Baking Soda Biscuits
Cranberry Jelly
Caramel Custard

I was nervous about this meal. Many of the components needed to be in the oven damn near close to the same times. But, I came home from work, cooked the veal, added sugar and jarred the cranberries, and picked the chicken carcass. Then I made the loaf. While the oven was heating, I made the custard. Put both in the oven at the same time. Made the biscuits. Made the potatoes. And because all of the steps were back to back, I was able to use one bowl and one saucepan, just rewashing after every step. And then bing bang boom, dinner was all ready, all at once. Magic!

Both my husband and I feel this was a very successful meal. Add in a vegetable, and you have a very solid and well portioned meal for two! This will be happening again. I do find it amusing how everything is beige. :)

First Dinner!

Yesterday I cooked the first menu from the project. The official menu was:

Baked Veal Steak
Baked Tomato, Cheese and Rice
Bread and Butter
Tapioca and Date Pudding



I made the pudding yesterday afternoon, as it's to be served cold. Its a pretty easy recipe and went together quickly. It made three servings.



As my butcher does not sell veal, I bought two pork chops to make the meat dish, and used tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes in the rice. And how did it all turn out?



Delicious! It was a very tasty way to cook pork, and the rice tasted much as expected. The bread and butter tasted as expected. The only surprise was the pudding. Very lemony! Good, but uexpected for tapioca. Also the beaten egg whites did something unusual with the consistency. But very tasty!