no really, we have been cookin'

When I say our camera is holding everything hostage I am not kidding. The hubbs may or may not have sent the cable that connects our camera to the computer to long island.... and he may or may not have every memory card ever associated with our camera/computer stuck in his pocket in pants that he may or may not be wearing or in a pile in our room.

Either way, we had awesome figs and blue cheese, some heirloom tomatoes, Rich's most recent take on arepas(creamed corn rules), oh and steak that made me really happy that I started eating meat......
But, nothing to show for it....

Quick Panzanella

Yeah, I know the picture is terrible, but right now our camera is holding everything hostage, so we are left with camera phones.
I decided to make a quick Panzanella with some homemade bread and a wonderful heirloom tomato. I could probably eat this every day of my life. Just a bit of toasted up bread cubes, tomatoes, touch of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and a bit of parmesan cheese then munch away.....

farmers market haul

Nom, nom, nom.........

Here is a bit of our bounty from the farmers market yesterday. I cannot wait. We have some tasties lined up for the week. Look at those little eggplants, I seriously want to hang one around my neck as pendant!

Lookie lookie!!!

One of my blogging peers and friend (like actual in-person!) just got a rad shout-out in our paper the Times Union.

Check out the wonderful blurb here

And check out the The Ridiculous Food Society

So exciting!

Daring Bakers- Chipotle Chocolate Éclairs

The August Daring Bakers challenge came from Tony Tahhan and MeetaK.

I would love to say that my first Daring Bakers attempt went splendidly and without a hitch….alas I cannot. First, I had to enlist the help of wonderfully generous friend on account of the busted wrist. These were not a one-handed project. So we set aside a nice Saturday and got crackin.

We started with the standard Pâte à Choux and piped out our “chubby fingers”, my still slightly swollen fingers peeking out of my cast served as an excellent example. As we piped and they cooked we quickly turned into giggling children muttering things about wieners. In the midst of a very mature conversation we probably took them out a touch to early and most of them sank and looked like this
Some maintained their puffy namesake so we forged on…. To the chocolate pastry cream! We used the provided recipe with one addition that we all really, really enjoyed; to the cooling pastry cream we added about 2-3 tablespoons of the zesty delicious goo that comes in the can of chipotles. In my humble opinion this addition really stepped up the filling, prior it was kinda just an eggy-chocolatly-unremarkable filling, after there was a bit more depth and contrast.

We opted to use a Mark Bittman recipe for dark chocolate glaze out of How to Cook Everything. This is where things got ugly…..on paper sounded like it would whip up in a jiff and be wonderful. Not.so.fast. This is what we got.
The wheels were quickly coming off this bus. We decided to assemble the few puffy shells and coat the top with simple melted bittersweet chocolate. See not so bad.
The rest met a different fate. Being virtually unfillable, the chipotle chocolate éclair cake was born!
The “shells” were split, the really ugly pieces layered on the bottom of a 9/13 pan, filling smeared on top, and then covered with the nicer éclair bits and a bit of melted chocolate. I have to admit I am really not that fond of éclairs, these however actually benefited from some time in the fridge and definitely tasted better the next day after the cake sat-up a bit.
Hopefully I will have two working hands for the September challenge!

Ratatouille Style- Heirloom Tomato and Fresh Pesto Pizza

I can say with all seriousness that I look forward to August and the tomatoes it provides pretty much all year long. At our most-favorite farmers market, the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market we got our grubby mitts on some fresh and wonderful heirloom tomatoes and a hearty bunch of basil and this beauty was created.

It was nice, light, and really highlighted the simple yet amazing ingredients. This was good enough to be recreated a few days later, pretty much identically with the rest of the pesto.

Bum wing aside, I should be able to post a bit more frequently because..... drum roll please.... I have completed my masters! No more work full-time, school full-time drudgery. Now its just work full-time drudgery.

Ratatouille Style- Maki Dogs

As the wrist mends my hubbs has taken over a good portion of the cooking and other house duties. He has in the most adorable fashion, photographed a few of the meals so that I can post. We have jokingly referred to this arrangement as cooking "Ratatouille Style" where I give instruction and steps and he prepares. I also have been sending him e-mails of yummy looking blog links and recipes with the heading "I could eat this". After one such e-mail he tried his hand at the Maki Dog.....

We found this at Not Eating Out In New York and were pretty intrigued by the concept. It is a veggie dog with a bit of wasabi mayo, rolled up maki style with sushi rice and nori. All in all it was a tasty endeavor, next time I think we would split the veggie dog in half lengthwise before making the roll to better balance the textures. The winner of this meal was the delicious oven roasted blue potato chips that he made as well. We snagged these lovelies at the farmers market earlier in the day. Interesting paring, but they were delicious.