Cooking is one of my favourite hobbies to begin with, and
when I’m deep in the books it’s one of the only indulgences I can justify – I can
live without another episode of TV, but I am going to have to eat, right? I
tried a lot of new recipes this year, and some of them turned out
spectacularly!
Savoury Things
This is from Alton Brown’s new cookbook, Everyday Cook,
which as a sidebar is really good and you should definitely check out. When I
read the description, I was skeptical that roasted broccoli would be robust
enough to carry an entire sandwich, but I decided to try it anyway, and I am so
incredibly glad I did. This is one of the best things I’ve made all year, and I’m
so obsessed with it I’ve made it five times in the last month or so. I made it
for dinner on Christmas Eve, too. God, I’m hungry just thinking about it.
I tried a few variations on salad rolls this year (including a pad thai one!), and came to the conclusion that they’re endlessly flexible and not as hard as they seem. It took me a few tries to master working with the rice paper, but now that I know how to handle it they come together in a snap. And let’s be real, the most important part of salad rolls is really the peanut sauce anyway.
Did everybody else already know about polenta? Am I the last
to find out? Why didn’t anybody tell me? I tried polenta for the first time
this summer and was floored by how delicious it was. It was easy to prepare and
it held up well for leftovers, so it’s basically my new favourite thing.
Polenta with everything!
Chili without meat in it? I know, I know, but hear me out:
it was freakin’ fantastic. Without meat to carry the chili, the flavour is much
stronger and just better, and the
partially blended chickpeas actually gave it a really pleasant texture. It’s a
little hard to source all of the chilies up in the frozen wilds of Canada (I
made it while I was in Vegas, with better access to chili peppers), and I
accidentally made my batch terrifyingly spicy, but it was a great meal that I
wound up eating for almost a week straight. Try it, you might like it!
Sweet Things
These are a bit of production, with steps like browning the
butter and piping Nutella and freezing it to “stuff” the brownies with, but it
pays off! They’re complex, with lots of different flavours, and very, very
tasty. Not a brownie to make on a whim, but still worth the effort!
I’ve had a few popsicles on my “to-try” lists for a while,
and with the ridiculous heat this summer I finally made the time to get to it.
This one is very simple but very good. I cheated and used store-bought brownies
which meant that the whole thing took about twenty minutes to assemble, and
then much longer as I waited anxiously for the damn things to freeze. They were
an easy, cool treat on the hottest days though, so the wait was worth it!
Another Alton Brown recipe, these cookies were completely
fantastic. I honestly don’t understand how they don’t crumble into pieces,
given that they’re basically made of chocolate and nothing else, but I don’t
really care as they’re a way to convey four different kinds of chocolate and cocoa nibs into my mouth in one
convenient bite.
This is a really quick, simple cookie recipe that’s made
even better by the addition of colourful, tasty sprinkles! It’s my new go-to
cookie, can be whipped up in minutes (even with the short refrigeration
sometimes needed), and the sprinkles make them stand out amongst beige &
brown baked goods of all stripes. The main problem with this cookie is that
they’re so bright and irresistible, it’s hard to stop from eating the whole
batch!
These took an entire day to make (longer, actually, since it needed to be refrigerated overnight) and I stayed up entirely too late making them, but as a project, it was really satisfying. Kneading the dough, punching it down, rolling it out, flipping it, and doing it all over again – it was a meditative process that brought me into the moment. And the end result was very tasty. At the time, I thought I would never go through the process again, but I find myself thinking about the afternoon I spent working with the dough with a touch of nostalgia. If I do it again, I might not make my own puff pastry, but then again, maybe I will.
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