Valentine's Day Course 3: Roasted Butternut Squash Ravioli with a Sage Brown Butter Sauce

For our third course, I decided to make a tasty butternut squash ravioli. This is to be served in a sage brown butter sauce. The recipe is from Emeril Lagasse and can be found on The Food Network's website.

Here is the recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/roasted-butternut-squash-ravioli-with-a-sage-brown-butter-sauce-recipe/index.html

As with all of my Valentine's Day planning, I tackled this recipe the day before. I roasted the butternut squash and then made a lovely mix with them that included shallots, the roasted butternut squash and several spices.

While this cooled, I made pasta and rolled it out into thin sheets. I then placed dollops of filling on the sheets and layered another sheet of pasta on top. I pressed down in between the dollops and cut the individual ravioli with my rotating cutter.

I then froze the ravioli. On Valentine's Day, when we were ready for the third course, I boiled a pot of water and worked on the brown butter sage sauce while it boiled. I then boiled the ravioli for about seven minutes (until they were floating) and placed them in the butter sauce.

The ravioli were excellent. I had but one regret. Following the plan, I rolled out the pasta. I can NEVER get pasta as thin as when I break out my old fashioned pasta roller and really work it out. The pasta came out a bit too thick for my liking, but I know that by using the roller, I will definitely have a different result.

MMM...roasted butternut squash! I could eat it just like this!!

Sauteing the shallots!

Making the ravioli!!

Finished dish! Ready to be served!!

This dish was wonderful and made great leftovers for lunch the next day!! I served it with a heavier Chardonnay which was recommended to complement buttery dishes. They went very well together!

Rating:

The Clumsy Gourmet: 8 (would have been 8.5 if I had rolled the pasta thinner!!)
Awesome Sauce: 7.5

Valentine's Day Course 2: White Onion Soup with Chive Truffle Oil

For our second course on Valentine's Day, I decided to make White Onion Soup with Chive Truffle Oil. This recipe was also found on Epicurious. Here is the recipe:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/White-Onion-Soup-with-Chive-Oil-15102

I made this soup and the chive oil the day before and kept them in the fridge. When we were ready for our second course, I heated up some soup, shaved some Parmesan cheese on the soup and drizzled some of that beautiful chive oil on the soup.

This soup was very boring. The only interesting part was the chive oil (I MUST find another use for this delightful culinary treat!) and the Parmesan. This soup was so boring, we never finished it!! The rest of the soup went into the garbage! (This is a lot from us, Awesome Sauce is usually quite the bottomless pit and will eat even some of our biggest culinary disasters just to not waste it!). I wasn't impressed.

Here are pictures of the process and the finished product:

The white onions are in my soup pot slowly cooking down.

The finished product!! Yeah...I added a lot of shaved Parmesan and Chive Oil to attempt to make it tasty...

Ratings:

The Clumsy Gourmet: 3
Awesome Sauce: 4

Valentine's Day Course 1: Mini Crab Cakes with a Garlic Aioli on a Bed of Mixed Greens with Lemon Vinaigrette

So, as a new resident of Maryland, I have been searching for the perfect Maryland Crab cake recipe to impress visiting family and friends. Awesome Sauce and I met at the University of Maryland and in tribute, I decided that the first course in our Valentine's Day meal, I would make us Mini Crab cakes with a Garlic Aioli on a Bed of Mixed Greens with Lemon Vinaigrette. Yum!

I found the recipe on Epicurious. Here is the link:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Crab-Cakes-and-Baby-Greens-with-Lemon-Vinaigrette-5762

Here is the link to the Garlic Aioli:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Aioli-107026

I wanted to make sure that this was easy to do, so I prepared the mixture the day before. I looked to the comments and used some of their suggestions. I used panko instead of regular bread crumbs. I also added Old Bay seasoning to taste. I also prepared the Lemon Vinaigrette and Garlic Aioli ahead of time and kept them in the fridge.

On Valentine's Day, I formed little crab cakes and fried them in a small skillet. While they were cooking, I took some of the lemon vinaigrette and tossed it with the mixed greens. I was a bit disappointed to find the lemon vinaigrette had turned into a thick paste. However, as it warmed up and mixed with the greens, it turned into a lovely, refreshing vinaigrette. It became the perfect background for the crab cakes.

The garlic aioli was wonderful! It was a great complement to the crab cakes and I strongly recommend it if you choose to make this recipe.

These crab cakes were incredibly simple to make. I loved that I could mix them the day before and then merely fry them the day of. With slightly larger crab cakes, this would make a great and impressive entree for an elegant dinner party. I strongly recommend using the panko and the old bay seasoning. This was great advice.

Crab Cake mix ready to go in the fridge. I used jumbo lump Weis-brand crab from a can. Not the freshest, but it was simply wonderful. The seasoning for this dish is incredibly well balanced.

Frying the crab cake in some oil. (yes, I see the spill on the side, I spill many things...this is one reason why I am The Clumsy Gourmet!)

Beautifully fried mini crab cakes.

First course plated and ready to go!!!

The crab cakes are ready for their close-up!

The crab cakes were WONDERFUL!! We paired them with a light, fresh pinot grigio. Awesome Sauce, who is not a huge fan of crab cakes absolutely loved these. The next day, we even turned the left over crab cakes into a wonderful breakfast. We re-heated the crab cakes and put them on toasted whole wheat bread, added poached eggs and hollandaise sauce and enjoyed Eggs Chesapeake.


Ratings
The Clumsy Gourmet: 10
Awesome Sauce: 9-9.5

We really enjoyed them!!

UPDATE: Using our Eggs Chesapeake recipe, we fed both my mother and sister. Both LOVED the crabcakes and really enjoyed the brunch we prepared for them. Two more fans of this amazing recipe!

Shortbread

Randomly Awesome Sauce and I will make a large batch of cookies for him to bring to work to his coworkers. we decided that Valentine's Day was a good enough excuse to pull out Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and see if we can make a cookie.

We decided to make the Shortbread cookies on pages 714-715. We chose this recipe primarily because we could use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to create our Valentine's Day theme!

First thing is first...gather ingredients! Unfortunately, I did not quite have enough butter! I decided to improvise. I happened to have a left-over carton of whipping cream. So we made our own butter. See the pictures below:

Getting ready to whip!

For those of you who haven't used your stand mixer to make butter, ALWAYS cover with a cloth. If you don't, you will not have fun cleaning up the splatters that will be all over your kitchen. What? I didn't learn this from experience or anything.....

Finished butter!!!

A side-view of our mountain of butter!!

This recipe was simple to follow. The biggest trick is to refridgerate the dough between rolling it out or it gets too soft to work with. Some of these cookies I rolled out a bit too thin. Tip: Keep them nice and thick to that 1/4 of an inch thick! They are definitely better a bit thicker. However, the consensus was in: these cookies were great!! Junky Monkey had to request a few...just to make sure they were "still good." Awesome Sauce found them to be Delicious!

Dough out of the fridge!!

Making the cookies!

A tray right out of the oven.

The hearts are ready for their close-up!!

Finished cookie tray for Awesome Sauce's coworkers.

When Awesome Sauce took them to work he put a sign next to them saying: "Happy Valentine's Day from Awesome Sauce and The Clumsy Gourmet! Please tell us what you thought of the cookies!! Comments may be used on The Clumsy Gourmet's food blog" We asked for a comment and a rating. Here are some of our responses:

Awesome! Thanks (10), Excellente! (9.9), Very Tasty (10), Very good (9), The Best Cookies ever (10), 12:30pm..this is the fourth! (9), Nice tookes, not too sweet, but too tasty (9), Yum yum ummm (10), very good (10.1), tasty (9), I loved them (10), Bravo (2 to the 10th power....anyone figure out that Awesome Sauce is an engineer?)

Overall, these cookies were a success!!!


Rating:
The Clumsy Gourmet: 8.5
Awesome Sauce: 8.5
Junky Monkey: 9.5

Basic Polenta, Version 1

Last week Junky Monkey and I were having a girls-only dinner. We made one of our favorite entree's--oven roasted pork ribs! She has her rib with BBQ Sauce and I am all over the Honey Teriyaki. As always, we needed a good, solid base for all of this yumminess.

One of my favorite side dishes (and yes, the Italian in me is coming out on this one) is polenta. I have my own favorite recipes for polenta, but decided to take down my good, old trusty How to Cook Everything and see if perhaps Mark Bittman had a recipe to try. Turns out, Mark Bittman must love polenta as much as me because he had THREE recipes. I decide to try Basic Polenta, Version 1 on pages 187-188. We used the variation which included Gorgonzola. Hey, I love polenta, I love Gorgonzola...they must be great together!!

For those who don't know, polenta is made by slowly wisking yellow cornmeal into a pot of boiling water. The temperature is then turned down and you stir the polenta until you get a nice thick much. From that point you can add extra ingredients for taste, you can pour the polenta on a platter and slice with various toppings, you can chill the polenta and cut up the chilled pieces to fry or broil to make polenta fries....the options are endless!!!

Here are some pictures of this polenta-making experience:

Our Yummy Ribs before they went into the oven.

Boiling the water.

Slowly adding the cornmeal while whisking.

Stirring the polenta as it thickens.

You want to keep stirring until you get a nice drag behind the spoon like the one above.

Adding the gorgonzola.

Finished dinner with rib, polenta and a light salad with balsamic-maple vinaigrette. BTW, in my quest for a good picture, I put WAY too much food on the plate. Neither Junky Monkey or I could finish it!!!

Unfortunately, this recipe was AWFUL! The cornmeal wasn't quite cooked enough. I would have used a bit more water. Additionally....IMHO, Gorgonzola and Polenta simply do.not.mix.! Perhaps in a different recipe with some additional layers I could enjoy them together. But this polenta was simply awful! Junky Monkey completely agreed. The first words out of her mouth when she took the first bite were: "Do I have to eat this?" I agreed that we didn't. When Awesome Sauce arrived later that evening, even he wasn't impressed. He did try to finish the polenta....though later he told me, it only got worse!

Ratings:
The Clumsy Gourmet: 2
Junky Monkey: 0
Awesome Sauce: 2.5

Super Bowl Extravaganza!!! Part 2- Baklava

For our Super Bowl Party I wanted to make a different dessert this year. I decided to have two desserts. For the first one, I let my guests make their own smores. For the second dessert, I decided to take on the challenge of making one of my favorite desserts. I wanted to learn to make baklava!

First, I needed a good recipe. I found one on Allrecipes that looked awesome. It had over 600 great reviews and was given five stars!!! I knew this was the one I had to try. The recipe was submitted by NEONWILLIE. The link is as follows:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baklava/Detail.aspx

When I made this recipe I used walnuts. I also accidentally used a little more cinnamon than I had intended. Unfortunately, I was unable to photograph the making of this recipe. For those of you who haven't worked with it, phyllo dough can be very delicate and you must work quickly with it. In my haste, I did not take any pictures during the process.

Here is a picture of the result:

Yummy Baklava in the pan!!!

This recipe was AMAZING!!!! Everyone at the party loved it! Junky Monkey begged me to make it again very soon. Awesome Sauce also loved the recipe. He took the few left-over pieces to work the next day. The two co-workers he shared the baklava absolutely loved it. One of the co-workers said it was the best baklava he had in the United States! I absolutely blushed with pleasure at the high praise. Oh, and Junky Monkey got her wish...I made another pan (she got an entire half!!) the following week to take to a dinner party.

Rating
The Clumsy Gourmet: 10
Awesome Sauce: 9
Junky Monkey: 10

While I am blogging about our Super Bowl Party, here are some further pictures of the food made by Awesome Sauce and me.

Adding beer to the chili!! Notice the awesome wok in which I am making my chili. Yes, a wok!!! Thanks, Mom!!!

Doritos, Tostitos, Guacamole, Salsa, Hummus and my Mother's Mexican dip!!

Cornbread, Onions, Tomatoes and Sour Cream ready to go with the Chili! Hey where is the cheddar cheese?!

Smores Station with Baklava!

Chips and Dips again, this time with Mexican Corn Dip!!!

Our whole spread: Chili with fixings (the cheddar cheese has arrived!!), Potato Skins and Pepperoni Pizza!!

A closer look at the yummy food!!

Finally, GO STEELERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Super Bowl Extravaganza!!! Part 1--Alton Brown's Buffalo Wings with Blow-Your-Mind Blue Cheese Dip

Okay, for those that don't know me, my yearly Super Bowl Party is my absolute favorite party of the year! Why? Because of all of the unhealthy food that I get to make and eat!!!

Here I mys note that typically Awesome Sauce and I are very healthy eaters. He and I both have family histories of heart disease and diabetes and we want to be very careful. We splurge on special holidays, parties and the occasional treat, but attempt to keep our food very healthy the rest of the time. Many of the recipes you will see in this blog are "splurge" meals. But please try to keep in mind that portion control, drinking lots of water, eating lots of fiber and watching your fat intake are all very important. ::exits soapbox::

For our Super Bowl party this year we made the following:

Buffalo Wings (Alton Brown's Recipe) with Blow-Your-Mind Blue Cheese Dip
Pepperoni Pizza (Using Mark Bittman's Pizza Dough Recipe)
Turkey, Beef & Black Bean Chili with Corn Bread and toppings
Potato Skins
Mexican Corn Dip
Hummus & Chips
Guacamole
Mexican Dip
Salsa & Chips
Baklava (with an awesome recipe from Allrecipes)
Smores


Our party food came out great!! I am not going to go through each food. Most of these are recipes we have made before and have been quite happy with. The new recipes for us this time were Alton Brown's Buffalo Wings, the Bleu Cheese Dip and the Baklava recipe from Allrecipes. Therefore, I will only blog these recipes. This Blog Post will focus solely on the Buffalo Wings.

Alton Brown's Buffalo Wings

I was folding laundry one day a few weeks before the Super Bowl and had The Food Network on in the background (typical). Alton Brown was on the television teaching America how to make the best Buffalo Wings at home. I was entranced by his method. He explained why if you stick plain wings in the oven they can sizzle and get smoky. He explained how to get a "crispy" outside without frying. His method was simple. Clip the wings apart. Steam them for 20 minutes. Refrigerate them for an hour (or more if you need to). Finish in the oven and cover in buffalo sauce. Alton promised crispy wings without frying. Great!!! I couldn't wait to try this new method.

On Super Bowl Sunday I pulled out my laptop and turned to his recipe on the Food Network's website. If anyone wants to see this recipe, here you go:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_115036,00.html

Awesome Sauce and I had a great time preparing for this recipe. He was going around working on other foods while I clipped the wings. Every time he passed me he kept bumping into me in the kitchen!! I would shout "watch it, I have chicken!!!" It soon became our running joke of the day. Every time we ran into each other (purposefully or not...) there were cries of "I have chicken!"

We took the time to steam the wings. We had only a small steamer basket so we had to do this in three batches. This was easy enough. Baking them was uneventful, you merely had to remember to turn them. When we made the buffalo sauce, we made sure to use Frank's Hot Sauce. (Note: Awesome Sauce and I love hot sauce. He enjoys it straight. I love cooking with it. We have found a variety of hot sauces that we love to eat and cook with, however, for making Buffalo Sauce, I definitely enjoy Frank's Hot Sauce. Hmm...maybe we need to do a "hot sauce review" blog post sometime....)

Here are some pictures of the Buffalo Wing making process:













Overall, these were not a hit. They really weren't too crispy and were kind of boring. I actually enjoyed my former method better (I coated them in a butter/hot sauce blend and slowly cooked them at 350 degrees). We actually had many left!! I wouldn't make this one again. Awesome Sauce says these were "not memorable wings."

Rating:
The Clumsy Gourmet: 4
Awesome Sauce: 6


Blow-Your-Mind Blue Cheese Dip

To go with our wings, I wanted to try to make a good blue cheese dip. When we eat wings at a restaurant, I love having blue cheese dressing to dip it in. However, I have yet to find a blue cheese dressing that I like. Most of them are gelatenous, full of strong-tasing chemicals and just plain awful. I finally had enough. I called one of my favorite restaurants and asked them what blue cheese dressing they use with their buffalo wings. I found out that instead of a dressing, they used a blue cheese dip that they made in-house. Sadly, they were unwilling to share the recipe. Some quick internet sleuthing showed that many places known for their buffalo wings have their own blue cheese dip. I decided to search for a recipe. After finding several online, I found one called "Blow-Your-Mind Blue Cheese Dip." Can you find a blue cheese dip with a more fantastic name?!

I found the recipe on the Courier Press' website:

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/jan/28/homemade-blue-cheese-dip-can-help-feather-a-wing/

The recipe sautes shallots, mustard power and garlic in olive oil. This mixture is then added to sour cream, plain greek yogurt, mayonnaise and blue cheese. Fresh parsley and paprika are then added to finish the dip. It sounded great! I couldn't wait to try it! I was finally going to have a great blue cheese dip for my buffalo wings.

Unfortunately, this dip did not hold up to its stellar name. I thought it had a very strange flavor. It was also way too thick for "dipping." I was not happy at all. Awesome Sauce says, "Not Noteworthy." We were very disappointed. However, we were definitely not discouraged! Because I only make buffalo wings once a year, I will be keeping an eye out for a tried-and-true blue cheese dip for my Super Bowl Party next year. Any suggestions?

Rating:
The Clumsy Gourmet: 3
Awesome Sauce: 6.5