Recipe Suffering 119...116

Leek and Swiss Chard Tart
Bon Appetit, October 1999  (from Smitten)

Man! I can really cook good when I ignore all the rules of good nutrition!
Here's the recipe:

Make a quick pie crust (one part oil to four parts white flour and way too much salt).
Slab 2 huge tablespoons of butter in a skillet and saute chopped leeks until soft. Add chopped Swiss Chard and saute a few minutes longer, until all the butter is soaked up.
Beat 4 eggs (the recipe called for 3 whole eggs + 2 yolks) with a half cup of heavy cream and three-quarters cup whole milk; add a little salt and nutmeg.
Put in all in the pie crust.  It might have fit if I'd used the right amount of eggs, but I doubt it. Bake until set.

And wow. Perfection. Artery-hardening perfection.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp
author unknown

A crisp, if you don't know it, is a crustless fruit pie with crunchy toppings on it. In this case, it was a strawberry-rhubarb-blueberry pie and the topping was made with of oats, maple syrup, peanut butter and pecans. I had to stop myself from slipping the fruit into the compost pie and eating the topping right out of the bowl.

But I cooked it and it was good, although it reinforced the theory that I don't care for cooked strawberries. What if, instead of cooking the fruit, you just pressed the crumble into a pie plate and baked it until lightly browned, then ate it like a shortcake with the cold fruit on top? I wouldn't say no to a bit of whipped cream, either.


 
Baked Oatmeal Muffin Cups

Two thoughts on this experiment:
Can you really make muffins without flour? and,
Can a success be a failure at the same time?

The answer to the first one is yes, you can indeed. The stand-in was whole oats, and so long as the muffin tins are sufficiently greased, they hold together as well as regular muffins. maybe a little flat on top, that's all.


The answer to the second is yes, it failed, because I meant to do it differently and forgot. I meant to do it vegan, with flaxseed meal instead of the egg and nut milk instead of the cow's milk. But I was tired and the eggs and milk were sitting right there, and I forgot all about the alternative.  So now, if I want to know if it's worth making again, I'll have to make it again.

So even though they tasted good and smelled better (cinnamon!), I don't know if they're worth putting on the permanent repeat cycle.

 

Kale and Soba Salad With Miso Ginger Almond Dressing

Wiktionary says a salad is,
A food made primarily of a mixture of raw or cold ingredients, typically vegetables, usually served with a dressing such as vinegar or mayonnaise.

Pretty vague. By that definition, this might have slipped by if I hadn't insisted on warming it in the microwave. In fact, I pretty much trashed the recipe by cooking the kale, substituting rice noodles for soba, and replacing the edamame with blanched snap peas.  In the end, the soft noodles didn't play well with raw carrot and cabbage.

Good flavor; lousy combination of textures. Not a keeper.