I haven't been able to cook something new in a long time, so I overcompensated yesterday and went hog-wild and cooked eggs benedict, maple walnut scones, and a vegetable barley soup for dinner.

The eggs benedict were actually way easier than I was expecting. Of course, I overcooked the eggs a little, so we didn't have the slightly runny yolks that I was looking forward to. The hollandaise sauce was ridiculously easy. I found a recipe that uses a blender instead of a double boiler, so it was basically put a bunch of ingredients in and turn it on. I stored it in a pre-heated thermos while I finished the rest of the meal. Hollandaise sauce isn't something you can reheat. Although I can never be sure, it sounds like Laura did actually enjoy it. She doesn't usually like eggs, although she doesn't seem to mind whatever I make her, whether it be a nice omelet or scrambled eggs.

The maple walnut scones were from a recipe that I got off the Cooking News a while back. Its just your typical scone batter, but with maple and walnuts. Really just what you'd expect. They were good, but I think they'd be better with a little maple glaze on top as well. I hadn't made scones in a really long time. Probably more than a year. My technique has improved drastically. Still, I'm not sure if I'd be up to throwing something like this together and popping it in the oven before an afternoon tea with friends. It's still a little too much involved for that.

Finally, the vegetable barley soup is from a recipe that one of Laura's mother-friends gave us. This fantastically nice woman, Cynthia, has been such a help this past month. She's given us probably 75% of our wardrobe, and has dropped off several meals! Laura met her at the Knitting Room during one of her knitting classes. She made us this soup a while ago, and it lasted several meals. And so I made it yesterday. I couldn't find "quick cooking barley", so I had to settle with the quickest cooking that I could find. I think that threw the recipe off a little, since it came out as more 'stew' than 'soup'. But that's okay with me frankly.

Really, is there any other kind of fudge worth having? The last of it was finished off today, so I figure now is as good a time as any to post some pictures of this fabulous creation. If you want to make it, and I highly recommend that you do, you can get the recipe from the King of the Kitchen, Alton Brown. Sure, 234° may scare you off, but really its not that hard. I got my candy thermometer from the hardware store for $4!

What starts off as a simple mixture of sugar, butter, chocolate and half and half becomes the gorgeous fudge that you see below. The hardest part was the vigorous stirring required to make all the tiny crystals that give fudge its characteristic texture. But, just like childbirth, while it may suck at the time, looking back on it, I could totally do it again. (Did I really just compare making fudge to what the Kovixen is going to go through in a little over 2 months?)

I should mention, if you do make it yourself, please for the love of all things holy, line your 8" x 8" baking dish with parchment or wax paper. The directions neglect to mention that, and I had a heck of a time getting it out of there with no squishing.

For those of you who made it this far, be sure to check out this wicked awesome website I found. You can play these totally rad games online, for free! *cough* *cough*

I was due for an utter failure on the cooking front. I tried to make a lemon meringue pie for the football game on Saturday, but instead I ended up with meringue on top of lemon soup. It was still very good, but not very pie like. I looked over the recipe again, and I can't figure out what I did wrong. Next time, I guess, I'll just have to try a different recipe.

To make matters worse, I also screwed up my attempt at a pie crust. I had to pre-bake the crust for the first time, and so I put a piece of parchment paper in it, and filled it with black beans (since I have no pie weights). I cooked it for 10 minutes, then when I attempted to remove the weights, a huge chunk of the crust came with it. Yeah, that sucked. Luckily, Wild Oats had plenty of pie crusts for me (and frankly they weren't so bad either). I'm not ready to give up completely on pie crust making, but I'm definitely one step closer.

No picture tonight. I know, I'm a miserable failure. However, I did make this Chocolate Mousse from 101 Cookbooks. Its not your average mousse, since there's no dairy, but its still darn tasty.

I did make a few unsanctioned changes. I used 9oz of regular Toll House chocolate chips (its what I had in the cupboard), and I used Kahlua and vanilla instead of Amaretto and almond. It was just a tiny bit of Kahlua, so I'm not too worried about Kreacher.

This was possibly one of the easiest recipes to grace the pages of 101 Cookbooks. You should definitely give it a try.

Laura was away last night, and I was all alone for dinner. And you know what that means. That's right, meat! I decided to be a little ambitious, and to make chicken parmesan from the New Best Recipe cookbook.

We start out with a package of low-fat chicken breast cutlets from Stop & Shop. The recipe wanted me to brine the chicken. At least it sort of did. I was a little unclear on that part, and since it added an extra 40 minutes to the prep time, I decided to skip that step. Instead, I started by patting the meat dry with some paper towels, followed by dredging in flour, then olive oil and beaten eggs, and finally coated in a thin coating of panko (aka japanese bread crumbs).

I let the chicken sit for about 5 minutes while I got the whole-wheat angel hair and pasta sauce cooking. I then heated up some olive oil in my large skillet until it was shimmering and pan fried the chicken, 2 at a time until it was golden brown and felt firm to gentle pressure.

All this while I had my oven on to warm up the broiler. This was a mistake, as it made the stovetop unbearably hot. There's a little vent at the back of the stove where lots of hot air comes up. After repeatedly burning my hand while stirring the angel hair, I finally had enough and turned the broiler off.

So after frying all for cutlets, it was time for the next step. I covered each one with shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheese and stuck them all under my now roaring broiler. Just a few minutes until the cheese started to get a little brown on top. I served on top of the angel hair with sauce over everything.

The chicken was really nice and crispy. Of course, by the time I finished cooking, I was hot, miserable and starving. So I didn't exactly take my time to stop and enjoy what I had made. However, I made an entire batch, so I'll be having it for lunch and dinner over the next few days! (I actually just had another serving today for lunch, and it was awesome!)

This tasted better than it looks, if you can believe it. I skinned some Roma Tomatoes, chopped up a red onion (about 1/4 of the onion), and slivered a few leaves of fresh basil. Doused everything with olive oil, salt and pepper. I bought a roasted garlic "artisian loaf" from Wild Oats which I sliced on the bias. It took a few runs through the toaster before it was good and crisp. I tried rubbing with a piece of raw garlic, but I don't think it really made a difference.

Man this was good. I swear, the best bruschetta I've ever had. So good it doesn't even need any mozzarella. I think I'll be making this a lot more while tomatoes are nice and tasty this summer.

I made the best pancakes for dinner last night. They were based on Alton Brown's recipe from I'm Just Here for More Food, with a few minor changes. The recipe, from memory:

• 2 cups milk (I actually used about 1.5 cups milk, and 1/2 cup of soy milk, but i'm not sure this would actually make any difference).
• 4 T butter, melted
• 2 eggs

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t salt
• 4 T sugar

Mix all the dry goods together, and seperately mix all the wet stuff together. The combine, but do not over mix. Let the batter rest for 5 minutes while you heat up your griddle to 350 °. Lightly butter, and wipe all excess butter from griddle with a paper towel. Careful, that's 350 °! Wipe down the griddle after each batch with the paper towel.

These pancakes came out just perfect. They were wide, fluffy and perfectly golden brown. I couldn't really taste the soy milk, but I wonder what they would taste like if I upped the soy milk percentage. Soy milk has a certain nuttiness that I find very appealing.

I made these chocolate chip cookies over the weekend. Apparently Laura prefers thick and chewy over thin and crispy, so we made the thickest and chewiest cookies we could find. The recipe came from Baking Illustrated, and was simple enough: combine the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder in the food processor. Beat the sugar into 1 egg + 1 yolk. Add melted butter and vanilla. Combine with flour mixture, and finally stir in a heaping load of chocolate chips.

The tricky part: the technique which yielded the great texture on top of these cookies. After rolling the dough into a ball, split the ball in half and stick the two halves together so that the rough edges face upwards. Then place on a baking sheet.

These cookies were awesome, of course. They didn't last very long though, and were still wonderfully fresh even 4 days later. (Is 4 days a long time? I don't think so!) The only bad part? I only managed to get 12 cookies out of the dough. I probably made them a little too big, as the recipe was supposed to yield 18 cookies.

Okay, I think its time to share my secret brownie recipe. It wasn't really a secret at all, however the book I got it from, I'm Just Here For More Food, had the recipe incorrect. This was obvious because the instructions made no sense what-so-ever! The many times I made the brownies (about 5), I muddled through, and combined recipes from other sources. They always came out in ways that made me very frustrated. Until yesterday.

You see, perusing Alton Brown's website, I discovered the list of errata for the aforementioned book. In it are contained the correct ingredients and directions necessary for these brownies to come out perfectly! I affectionately call them AltonBrownies. Enjoy!

There's one complication that I still have to work out. I'm baking in a glass 8x8" baking dish. About an inch and a half of the edge is being overcooked. I guess the glass is getting too hot perhaps? I might try a metal baking dish, but alas I do not have one. Perhaps its time for a trip to the resturant supply store?

I plan on making these a few more times this week, as well as experimenting with a variety that uses chocolate, as opposed to cocoa powder. I will be sure to post some very appetizing pictures later!

This is my first creationg using puff pastry. The topping was excellent, but I decided that in the future, I should heed the recipe's advice and bake this in individual sized bowls. The topping lost its effect (and the filling is basically chile, and thus runny) when it had to be cut up to serve. Still, it looks fabulous.

This is from the fantastic Cook 1.0 book by Heidi Swanson, the author of 101 Cookbooks, a favorite food weblog.

I made this soup last night. Laura was a bit skeptical at first, as she usually is when I try to combine some different flavors. Tonights soup was a basic potato-vegetable hearty winter soup with an entire tablespoon of cayenne pepper and approx 1/2 cup of extra crunchy peanut butter. I got this off of one of my favorite food blogs Too Many Chefs. Although I've lost the original URL of the recipe you can find it in the Kovacs Recipe Archive.

This is definitely a great winter soup: nice and thick, hearty and HOT! Next time I make it I think I'm going to cut the cayenne in half. If you're not used to (spicy) hot foods, you should consider cutting it even more.

Last night I made something out of one of my new cookbooks: Cook 1.0. I had to make a few modifications however, as I couldn't find any chipotle chile's in adobo sauce, so I substituted some garlic hot-sauce and some smoked tabasco sauce. Its basically a nice thick and smoky corn chowder that's topped with some puff pastry. Unfortunately I couldn't find that either, so we had 2 bowls of corn chowder last night. Still very yummy though!

I'm going to take this opportunity to unveil my recipe archive. I thought long and hard about how I wanted to organize my recipes. Right now I have a drawer full of printouts, and a diverse collection on various websites. I've decided to keep my own website of recipes that I've actually done, or at least plan on trying in the very near future. Through the power of wiki, I can also plan out my menus. I can manage my own shopping lists thank you! The nature of the wiki page is that anybody is allowed to make changes to the page, so if you would like to contribute, feel free.

Laura had an Ornament Swap with her alumnae chapter on Sunday. She enlisted my help with the food preparations. I loved having the chance to try out some new techniques and recipes without having to eat all of the results. So I hard boiled 18 eggs on Saturday (10 minutes in the steamer basket), split them open and made 36 deviled eggs. Most of the yolks came out quite easily, and in fact none of them were green! I mixed them in with some finely minced onion, minced celery, celery salt, salt, and paprika (of course). Filling them was a little challenging, Someday when I have a set of pastry tips, I might opt to use them instead.

I also made a baked brie dish with caramelized onions, pistacios and dried cranberries. It probably needed another 5 minutes in the oven to really get the brie good and gooey. I didn't have any of this, but the onion mixture smelled wonderful.

Updated 8 Dec 2004: Ever wonder what to do with a huge plate of left-over deviled eggs? Well, besides eat them. Just mix them with a little extra mayo, and mash them with a fork (or pastry blender). I added a dash of cayenne pepper and had some very yummy egg salad sandwiches. Usually I don't go through the trouble of finely mincing onion and celery for egg salad, so there was a pleasant texture to these sandwiches.

There should be a BIG WARNING on all risotto recipes that says "You will be standing in front of the stove stirring this for 30-40 minutes". Other than that it was a pretty easy recipe to make. Although the recipe I was following didn't make it clear what parts could be easily parallelized. So I've learned: when making risotto, heat up that broth/stock ASAP and get that rice cooking. Luckily I've got an electric kettle so heating up the broth was a snap. In the end we had, I thought, some very yummy mushroom and asparagus risotto. A little lemon zest added some brightness to the dish.

The only problem: Laura got violently ill not long after dinner. Now, I don't think it was my cooking since I'm fine, but I have no doubt that Laura won't be eating my risotto dishes for a long time. Hey, I've done it to her in the past. The same thing happened to me after visiting one of Laura's favorite resturants in Wakefield. I think it was about 2 years before I could go back there.

A week ago I tried to make a sort of Mexican inspired casserole. I wasn't very happy with my first try -- it was extremely dry, and frankly it made me feel ill for a few days. There was no effect on Laura, so I think its just the sensitivity of my digestive system. Oh well.

Yesterday, Laura admitted to me that she was dying to have it again, so I made a few changes to the recipe and it came out pretty well. Its sort of similar to the Mushroom Vegetable casserole, but in the end I guess all casserole's are sort of similar. Again, if anybody tries this, please let me know!

Christina gave Laura a recipe for a casserole the other day. After a "girls night", Laura raved about this dish, so I thought I'd give it a try. Christina's recipe called for Cream of Mushroom soup and having just watched the Good Eats episode on casseroles, Casserole Over, I figured I'd make it with a few modifications.

Updated: I made the recipe with a few more modifications the other night. I think I'm zero-ing in on something pretty good. Again, I don't think I used quite enough sliced mushrooms, next time I'm going to try to up it to 1-2 cups of mushrooms. I'm updating the recipe below with what I did the other night.

Last fall I made a pumpkin soup a few times, it was pretty good, although a little bland. Here's an interesting looking recipe for a sweet potato soup that I think I'm going to try sometime this week.

Well, it seems that this is turning into a cooking 'blog. That's prefectly fine with me, as cooking is really fun! I still suck at it, of course, but I'm trying to learn from my mistakes (like 1 cup of lemon juice is always too much. Unless, maybe, you're making lemon curd). Anyway, I tried this Orange Cake recipe from Good Eats the other day, and I think it turned out pretty well.

The orange blossom honey I found at Wild Oats. It was a bit expensive, and I'm not altogether convinced that it really adds that much to the flavor. I think maybe a bit more orange zest could make up the difference, if you end up using wild-flower honey.

I also had a little trouble with the cooking time. Even after 40 minutes, the top of the cake hadn't set up completely, or so it seemed to me at the time. After 45 minutes it was done, but I think I overcooked it a little; a mistake I think I make too often. I remember hearing that you really have to take it out of the oven before its done, but when I put the toothpick in after 40 minutes, it still came out with some cake on it.

It is pretty tasty, and the honey keeps it moist (as honey is hydrophilic, it absorbs moisture from the air).

I tried this recipe last night, and Laura says she likes it. I think a couple of changes need to be made for a little flavor enhancement. I'm listing the recipe below the way I'm going to try it next time. I would say this recipe makes about 6-8 servings. We were using relatively small bowls.

I served this with some grilled cheese sandwiches for a very comforting dinner.

I did change this recipe a little, and so I'm not entirely sure it's going to work. The biggest change is to add a half-cup of wine to the soup. My concern is that this will add too much acidity, however tomatoes are already rather acidic so I'm not convinced it'll make a difference. There is always the option of adding a pinch of baking soda to the mix, but would that just add a bunch of bubbles?

The other change I made was to use a can of crushed tomatoes. Laura complained that the soup was a little too chunky after blending. I figure if I start out with something that's a little more processed, then we'll be in better shape at the end.

If anybody tries this, please let me know how it turns out!

In my continuing quest to become a better cook, I made some fantabulous french toast over the weekend. The recipe comes from my favorite TV Chef: Alton Brown. The key here is that you want to use stale bread. Yes, stale bread. This means, of course that you can't use bread that doesn't age correctly (i.e. any mass-produced store bought brand). I bought a nice loaf of brioche at my local bakery and had them slice it for me. I made a slight mistake and didn't ask them to slice it thick, so the bread was about 1/4" thick, instead of a good 1/2".

The night before I mixed up the custard mixture (1 cup half-and-half, 3 eggs, 2 tbsp warmed honey, 1/4 tsp salt), and put the bread on a drying rack in the open air so that it becomes sufficiently stale. The next morning, I just performed the standard french toast recipe, with a slight twist: after cooking on the griddle, I put the toast in a 375 degree oven for about 5 minutes, just to finish the cooking down to the inside. The result: the best tasting french toast I've ever had!

Next time I might try fat-free half-and-half. Probably won't turn out as good, but I am on diet after all! Also, be aware that the custard mixture makes enough french toast for 2 hungry people (about 8 pieces total). So adjust accordingly.

Updated 8/23/2004: So there's one improvement that I discovered over the weekend, and really this should've been obvious before. Previously, I had been putting the french toast directly from the griddle into the oven for 5 minutes, thus creating breakfast in batches. Instead, everything should be grilled, and once done, put everything in the oven at once for 5 minutes. It probably doesn't help that I'm making them 2 at a time, things might go a lot better if I could fit 4 in my frypan.