At Least I Didn't Burn the Beer

Creamed Spinach with Sunny-Side-Up Eggs (part 2)

Click Here for Part One

So… I found time to make more of the dish (this time without the pepper corn), and I can finally comment honestly on the “Eating” portion of the experiment.

Eating

Honestly? It was okay. It was a good experience and a good addition to my recipe collection, and I could easily seeing me making this again. There are not a lot of ingredients and (if you read the instructions), it’s pretty easy to make.

But it’s nothing to call home about.

On the whole, I would call this “average”.

Cooking Experiment 3: Creamed Spinach with Sunny-Side-Up Eggs

So it’s been a while. And I know people have requested more. And it’s not like I haven’t been cooking, I just haven’t made anything not from a box or I forgot my camera and to take notes for the blog.

I’m not going to offer excuses, I’m just going to dive right into this!

So, I haven’t been feeling too hot lately. I’ve been feeling sluggish and not up to my regular energy levels and, trying to find the source (because I wasn’t sick or anything) I reviewed my past few meals. Needless to say, they are embarrassingly college-stereotypical. No ramen, but almost no vegetable or fruit in sight.

No wonder I was feeling so sluggish!

I often pride myself on having a pretty balanced diet, including some sort of vegetable in most meals.

Obviously I had to rectify this problem.

So I immediately rushed out to get the ingredients for a recipe I had recently found: The Nesting Project’s Creamed Spinach with Sunny-Side-Up Eggs.

Ingredients

The ingredients were definitely more costly than I imagined, but what really pushed me over were the spices, which generally are on the costly side. If your grocery store has an ethnic aisle, look there first. Usually they have all the same spices for cheaper AND in bulk so you get more for less.

Money Factor: ~$20 (and this was me in a hurry, had I had time to gouge prices, I probably could have whittled that down)
Most Expensive Items: Thyme, Olive Oil (but these will last you for a lot more projects, so it’s not a hard sell)

Cooking

I am going to open up right away and say that I made it a lot harder than it should have been. Due to my spontaneity, I didn’t get to sit down and make sure I was coming home to the proper, clean tools.

Still, I found what I needed and I started cooking.

And then… disaster strikes.

The recipe calls for pepper and I asked my friend to hand it to me. She asks me what kind and I stupidly respond it doesn’t matter. So she hands me a full bottle of pepper corn.

Now I thought that it was a pepper grinder, so I turned the bottle upside down and started to twist… the top off.

The entire bottle of pepper corn went into the spinach. We tried to get them out with a spoon but to no avail.

My friend and I looked at each other and shrugged when we saw that there was no way to extract all the pepper corns, and decided to just go ahead with the meal.

And with the proper side dish…

…we were ready to try the concoction.

Eating

It was really good… when we were able to get around the pepper corns.

So… we agreed to have retry. Tomorrow morning. So stick around for Cooking Experiment 3.5 for the “Eating” portion of this blog. :)

to be continued…

Cooking Experiment 2: Tomato Bisque

So I actually did this last week, but I never got around to actually posting the results.

After my ratatouille, I had an excess of onions, garlic and tomato puree. Now the first two were easy enough to get rid of, but what do you do with tomato puree (that wasn’t too complicated)?

Luckily for me, the can had a simple recipe for today’s entry: tomato bisque.

Ingredients

Due to having most of the ingredients in my possession (and also generously donated by my roommates) I cannot give you a price range. I can, however, give you the recipe itself!

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves fresh garlic
1 cup frozen seasoning blend (contains onions, peppers and celery)
1 (15 ounce) can sliced carrots, drained
1 (14 ounce) can chicken or vegetable broth (I used vegetable)
1 (29 ounce) can tomato puree
1/2 cup Alfredo sauce
3-4 fresh basil leaves (optional)

Steps:
(A) Preheat large saucepan over medium-high heat 2 to 3 minutes. Place oil in pan and swirl to coat. Crush garlic into pan; add seasoning blend and carrots. Cook 6 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender.
(B) Place vegetables and broth into food processor (or blender); process until smooth. Return to pan and whisk in tomato puree. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low and cook 5 to 6 minutes.
(C) Whisk in Alfredo sauce. Chop basil finely and sprinkle over soup. 

Preparation wasn’t that hard. Almost everything was cut for me. The worst part was when I realized we didn’t have a blender.

So guess who got to run to Wal-Mart mid-cooking and is now the proud owner of a blender? Oh well, at least I’ll be able to blend things now.

(Like my last Chinese test. … JK! … but really.)

Cooking

Aside from the whole blender thing, cooking was smooth. Nothing too messy, though you do transfer a lot of liquid eventually so you should definitely keep a sponge on hand.

Prep Time: 30ish minutes
Difficulty Factor: (assuming you have a blender) 2/10
Mess Factor: Depends on your specific abilities of tidy-ness
Ingredient Leftover Factor: Seeing as how the purpose of this was to get rid of leftover ingredients, little to none. But I have no idea if that would be different if you actually started with everything new.

(as seen with pieces of a beget)

Eating

Now, I did have a lot of left over bisque, but it’s a good thing that it took me a while to get this specific recipe up because now I can say that this reheats every well. And in college that is important.

So this gets a half a star as a recommendation to college students.

Overall rating: 8/10

Simple Cooking: Tilapia

I’m not calling this an “experiment” because this is something that I do when I need something healthy but don’t have time for anything as time consuming as a full recipe.

Basically I get one or two pieces of tilapia the same day that I plan to cook it. This is a really cheap fish and rarely exceeds $4 for two pieces.

I then spray a frying pan with Pam and cook the fish on each side for about four or five minutes, sprinkling each side with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

I usually like to include some green beans (from a can, admittedly) and then some sort of starch.

This is a good meal to cook for your parents to show them “Hey, our kid is responsible and eats healthy!”

(Just make sure you throw out all the pizza boxes first.)

Cooking Experiment 1: Smitten Kitchen’s Ratatouille

The first entry in this blog is a homage to probably my favorite animated cooking rodent, Remy, star of Disney Pixar’s Ratatouille from Smitten Kitchen.

Ingredients

The ingredients weren’t terribly hard to find. All found conveniently at my local Publix. (Although I did have to ask where the tomato puree was, because, believe it or not, there is a difference between puree and soup.)

I also bought a little bit more of the garlic because future endeavors will require it.

Money Factor: $17.81
Most Expensive Items: Elephant garlic, thyme, goat cheese (for topping)
(Note : I was already in possession of olive oil, salt and pepper.) 

Cooking

The cooking was fairly easy, if not a little bit time consuming. (It took me roughly over an hour for prep time. It was mostly the chopping and slicing.) But as long as you keep everything contained and clean as you go, all that is left after the dish makes it to the oven is a bit of measuring spoons, spoons, measuring cup, one or two knives, and a chopping board. (And of course, a quick wipe down of the counter.)

My only complaint is that afterward I had more than a “handful of vegetables left” and a half an onion was more than enough.

Prep Time Factor: approx. 75 min
Difficulty Factor: 3/10
Mess Factor: 2/10
Ingredient Left Over Factor: Depending on how much you are making, you might want to be really conservative in the size of your produce.

(Note: I did not get parchment paper because I didn’t notice until I was cooking and I was not about to drop everything for parchment paper… we’ll see how it goes.)

Eating

I had to estimate the amount of garlic because it was pretty clear when I opened the Elephant garlic, two cloves was too much. The smell when it came out of the oven was overwhelmingly garlic. However, when eaten with the accompaniment of rice and/or bread, the garlic is barely noticeable and does not overpower the dish.

As for the missing parchment, I do not see how having it would have made it better.

Overall Rating: 8/10
Good for one or two people. If cooking for more, adjust as you see fit. 

I would definitely eat this again. :)