Pi Day!

I like to make a pie for Pi day every year but this year I sort of forgot until it was 8 pm and I was starving for dinner. So I improvised. I used some roti dough that my mom had given me for a crust and topped it with mozzarella and some really delicious tomato paste from Greece that I had been saving for a good occasion and what better occasion is there than Pi day??










I kind of had to eat it like a taco but it was delicious!

King Cake!

In honor of Fat Tuesday, we made a bit of a feast with red beans and rice, andouille sausage, cornbread, and of course king cake!  In past years I've gotten this excellent New Orleans king cake mix from World Market (weirdly enough). In fact I made one last month from that mix to take to a super bowl party. We didn't end up going to the party and ate the whole cake ourselves, oy. But when I went to go buy another box of mix for Fat Tuesday, they were all sold out! What to do now, especially since I had promised our guests a king cake? Well I decided to try make a homemade one - a real legitimate recipe with yeast and everything!

This is the recipe I used: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/mardi-gras-king-cake/. 

First the yeast, mix with water and sugar and let bubble up. This took about 10 minutes I think.

Hot milk and butter

Pile of measured out flour ready to be mixed in

The premade mix came with a ziplock bag to help with the kneading so I stole that idea and used a ziplock for my kneading process too. Way less mess!

After you knead it, you let it sit for awhile in a warm place to rise. Then I dumped it out on the board to roll it out.

Rolled out and waiting for the filling

Filling made of butter, brown sugar, crushed pecans and cinnamon.

For the icing. I didn't have powdered sugar but I learned from an old college friend of mine that you can just put sugar in the blender to make powdered sugar! I used our fake Magic Bullet thing and it worked great!  I didn't really follow the recipe for the frosting, just added a little milk and water and a bit of vanilla and lemon juice. 

The final product!  I had some leftover colored sugar from the mix I used before which worked perfectly! I had also saved the plastic baby and stuffed it under the cake before icing it.

Turned out great and we all had a good time! My cousin's wife ended up with the baby so she'll be having the party next year (if we remember...)

Cheese?

I I think this is cheese but maybe not. This actually came about from a batch of failed yogurt where it didn't set up properly. We tried to heat it up a second time around but the curd separated from the whey. So in attempts to save it, we strained it and this was the result.


I think its cheese?

It was actually pretty tasty! Served with some sauteed multicolored peppers, spinach, and mushrooms.

Pig ears and jellyfish!

In honor of Chinese New Year, we went to a party where everyone had to bring an authentic Chinese dish.  Well on the RSVPs, everyone responded with things like Kung Pao chicken, stir fry, and even chicken satay (??).  So Ruch wanted to be actually authentic and decided to make this dish.

Pig Ears pre-cooking

Boiled in lots of random spices for a couple hours

Sliced into thin strips. That white in the middle is cartilage.

There aren't prep pictures of the rest of the process but the salad is made from strips of jellyfish, cabbage, carrots, and cucumbers which were all quickly cooked in a pan. The pigs ear slices were dredged in flour and shallow fried and put on top of the salad. The salad had a delicious dressing made from soy sauce, sriracha, seasome seeds, and a bunch of other random junk that R threw in.

You can see the other nonauthentic dishes in the back :)

All in all, I was surprised how decent the dish was. The salad with dressing was awesome! The pig ears were slightly weird, an odd texture but mostly just tasted like pork. We are taking a trip to China in a couple weeks so this was a great way to whet our appetite. Stay tuned for those food adventures as I'm sure there will be plenty!