I have been studying in Germany for the last semester. I haven't been able to work while I've been here due to some confusion with my visa and my mom has been having some money problems back in the states. I know this is really strange asking the internet for money but I need to buy a plane ticket back to the United States and my mom who was going to purchase it currently isn't able to. At this point any amount would be immensely helpful but I need a total of about $500.
Here's the deal - I will put the donation button up and then if you comment after leaving a donation I will be giving away four Harry Potter hats (homemade knit caps in each of the house colors) as well as twenty happy pictures of me at the airport when I arrive back in America.
Anything helps at this point and am extremely grateful if you even took the time to read this!
<3
Lauren
Monday, July 11, 2011
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Carne Asada!
(Cross-posted to my personal journal.)
In the spirit of my new-school-year's resolution to try a new recipe every week, a couple of days ago I made a dish that I'd tried many times before in restaurants, but never made - carne asada. I love this dish partly for the fact that it's steak - and I love steak - and partly for the things it's traditionally served with. (Avocado/guac, beans, pico de gallo and sour cream.)
The recipe, which I got from Simply Recipes, goes as follows:
To get a facsimile of refried beans without the effort and added calories involved with actually frying them, I put a can of pinto beans in my food processor with some salt, garlic and lime juice. They were great!
Finally, it was time to grill the meat. The recipe called for either an actual grill or a cast-iron frying pan; I only had a newfangled Teflon-type pan, so I went with that. I don't think it was a mortal error.
It took a little longer than I anticipated to cook the steaks, but luckily I like my meat pretty rare, so it could have been worse. Here's how they turned out:
Finally, after slicing the meat, I made up a plate with some steak, avocado, beans, sour cream and pico plus a few mini tortillas.
Shortly after finishing dinner, I emailed my dad to tell him I'd successfully grilled my first steak. He was proud.
In the spirit of my new-school-year's resolution to try a new recipe every week, a couple of days ago I made a dish that I'd tried many times before in restaurants, but never made - carne asada. I love this dish partly for the fact that it's steak - and I love steak - and partly for the things it's traditionally served with. (Avocado/guac, beans, pico de gallo and sour cream.)
The recipe, which I got from Simply Recipes, goes as follows:
Ingredients
2 pounds flank or skirt steak
Olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Marinade:
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño chile pepper, seeded and minced
1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed (best to lightly toast the seeds first, then grind them)
1 large handful fresh cilantro, leaves and stems, finely chopped (great flavor in the stems)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 limes, juiced
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
I eliminated the salt and pepper (because I'm lazy), the jalapeno (because I don't like it), and the cumin (because I thought I had some and didn't). I also used dried cilantro instead of fresh, because that was what I had already, and garlic from a jar. (Incidentally, I highly recommend Spice World marinated garlic. It packs the same punch as fresh garlic for a lot cheaper, and you don't have to go out and buy a couple of cloves every time you want to put garlic in something, which for me is a lot of the time.)
The rest of the marinade ingredients went into a mixing bowl along with the steak, which I had to cut into a few smaller pieces for the sake of not being so messy.
The bowl then went in the fridge for an hour and a half or so while I went to go do online homework or, more likely, poked around Tumblr for a while. The recipe recommends 1-5 hours marinating; I would have liked to let it sit longer, but I was getting hungry!
While I was waiting, I also prepared some of the things I was going to eat with the steak itself - plain old avocado (guacamole is sometimes just too much effort) and beans, plus some prepared pico de gallo from the grocery store. (For the record, the Marsh here has amazing avocados; I couldn't stop myself munching while I was cutting them up.)
To get a facsimile of refried beans without the effort and added calories involved with actually frying them, I put a can of pinto beans in my food processor with some salt, garlic and lime juice. They were great!
Finally, it was time to grill the meat. The recipe called for either an actual grill or a cast-iron frying pan; I only had a newfangled Teflon-type pan, so I went with that. I don't think it was a mortal error.
It took a little longer than I anticipated to cook the steaks, but luckily I like my meat pretty rare, so it could have been worse. Here's how they turned out:
Finally, after slicing the meat, I made up a plate with some steak, avocado, beans, sour cream and pico plus a few mini tortillas.
Shortly after finishing dinner, I emailed my dad to tell him I'd successfully grilled my first steak. He was proud.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Adventures in Macarons
They're cute, they're colorful, they're all over the Internet. No, not kittens, although that's a good guess. I'm talking, of course, about macarons - those little French meringue cookies that have suddenly exploded into popularity. And for good reason. Just take a look at these beauties!
I first tried these amazing little creations at Selfridge's in London, which turned out to be the best possible place to try them, since Selfridge's hosts the business of Pierre Herme, a famous pastry chef, and offers such exotic flavors as dark chocolate blackcurrant and pistachio apricot praline. (The graphic above is from his website.) When Lauren and I decided to make macarons our first official food project, we never aspired to anything that fancy, but ended up with some surprising combinations anyway.
The recipe we used was courtesy of food writer Tom Harte from the Southeast Missourian, and was supposedly a simpler method of making macarons than the traditional way, which sounded good to us. (Recipe can be found at the link.)
Unfortunately, being new to the process of photojournalism, we neglected to take pictures of the actual mixing process of the macarons. Suffice it to say that the meringue took absolutely forever to set up, a food processor is the perfect tool for grinding almonds quickly, and adding just a tiny bit of food coloring isn't probably the best idea, because if your macarons start out light pink and then you bake them, they end up looking like this:
Anyway, the macarons turned out more or less the right shape; a little practice with the homemade pastry bag should sort out that problem. But the texture was just right; crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside. A few of the smaller ones did burn a little bit, but that was okay.
De-panning the macarons was a cinch because of the parchment paper. (Unlike Lauren, I'd never worked with parchment paper before this recipe; it's now my new best friend.)
These were our potential fillings - three kinds of jam (strawberry, raspberry and apricot), Nutella, the last remains of a jar of lemon curd, and my favorite goat cheese (which we now inevitably refer to as "the happy goat cheese"). We ended up ruling the strawberry out right away - far too sweet when paired with the cookies - and the apricot got an "Eh". There wasn't nearly enough lemon curd to go on more than a couple of cookies, which was a genuine tragedy. But our favorite flavors turned out to be raspberry Nutella and - surprisingly - goat cheese. The tart cheese was the perfect balance to the mildly sweet macarons and the texture was perfect for spreading.
Nutella/raspberry macarons - messy and delicious.
All I know is, we must have a macaron-making party at every opportunity.
- Carly
I first tried these amazing little creations at Selfridge's in London, which turned out to be the best possible place to try them, since Selfridge's hosts the business of Pierre Herme, a famous pastry chef, and offers such exotic flavors as dark chocolate blackcurrant and pistachio apricot praline. (The graphic above is from his website.) When Lauren and I decided to make macarons our first official food project, we never aspired to anything that fancy, but ended up with some surprising combinations anyway.The recipe we used was courtesy of food writer Tom Harte from the Southeast Missourian, and was supposedly a simpler method of making macarons than the traditional way, which sounded good to us. (Recipe can be found at the link.)
Unfortunately, being new to the process of photojournalism, we neglected to take pictures of the actual mixing process of the macarons. Suffice it to say that the meringue took absolutely forever to set up, a food processor is the perfect tool for grinding almonds quickly, and adding just a tiny bit of food coloring isn't probably the best idea, because if your macarons start out light pink and then you bake them, they end up looking like this:
You know you need to get more sun when your cookies have a better tan than you do.
Anyway, the macarons turned out more or less the right shape; a little practice with the homemade pastry bag should sort out that problem. But the texture was just right; crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside. A few of the smaller ones did burn a little bit, but that was okay.
De-panning the macarons was a cinch because of the parchment paper. (Unlike Lauren, I'd never worked with parchment paper before this recipe; it's now my new best friend.)
These were our potential fillings - three kinds of jam (strawberry, raspberry and apricot), Nutella, the last remains of a jar of lemon curd, and my favorite goat cheese (which we now inevitably refer to as "the happy goat cheese"). We ended up ruling the strawberry out right away - far too sweet when paired with the cookies - and the apricot got an "Eh". There wasn't nearly enough lemon curd to go on more than a couple of cookies, which was a genuine tragedy. But our favorite flavors turned out to be raspberry Nutella and - surprisingly - goat cheese. The tart cheese was the perfect balance to the mildly sweet macarons and the texture was perfect for spreading.
Nutella/raspberry macarons - messy and delicious.
Macarons mid-filling, and the finished plate (or what was left of it; our sampling didn't leave much for the final product!)
All I know is, we must have a macaron-making party at every opportunity.
- Carly
Monday, June 7, 2010
Welcome!
I find that many of my friends are scared of even the simplest of recipes. Food shouldn't be frightening though. It should be fun! Yes, there are times where a new or difficult recipe can be stressful but for the most part it should be a process with a beautiful finished product. During the process there will be mistakes but that's part of the fun - constantly flirting with disaster, knowing that the next addition could be brilliant or disappointing.
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