Weekend Evaluation: I've Tried Nothing and I'm All Out of Ideas

Sometimes I have an idea that I'm sitting on for days, and other times I can't come up with anything until I'm actually cooking.

This weekend I had both - a gratin dish (nothing special) that I wanted to make for a while, and on Saturday I had no idea what to make.

Peach/Sage Ice Cream

Positive - Well it took three additions of peaches (7 total), but it finally tastes like peaches.  The final product ended up tasting a lot like sherbert, which, I'm not sure, I would guess is somewhere in between sorbet and ice cream interms of fruit to cream ratio. 

Not a lot of people writing about sherbert out there, two years ago everyone was all about gelato; now the food media finally caught on that philadelphia style is good for flavored iced cream; but hipsters haven't gotten to sherbert yet; maybe I on the cutting edge....oh wait, it was just an accident. 

Aside - Don't get me wrong, you need eggs for some flavors - Vanilla frozen custard is the worlds best ice cream, but I feel like sometimes that slight cooked egg flavor can kind of get in the way for some flavors.

So this year I've been going egg free (with the exception of the corn ice cream). You just have to make sure you don't get an icy result.  I normally use 2 parts milk to 1 part cream, adding as much powdered milk as the milk will accept and the typical amount of sugar and alcohol.  Here I flipped it to 2 parts cream and 1 part milk, thinking that even if I macerated the fruit I'd need more fat to battle the extra water from the fruit.


Negative - The more peaches that were added, the less this tasted less like sage; which is all it tasted like at first.  The main reason I kept having to add peaches is that they weren't ripe.  I put them in the fridge way too early, I usually leave them out, trying a peach every 12 to 24 hours to test the ripeness, and had one that was fairly ripe, but the rest were still on the hard side.

I think if I called this sherbert it would be more successful, unfortunately it's not what I was looking for.

Blueberry Buckwheat pancakes

Positive - The texture of the pancakes were good - but these were horrible.

Negative -   I forgot to add salt to the batter - so these tasted like nothing.  I might as well have taken the ingredients blended them into a mush and drank it.

Roasted Eggplant Buckwheat Crepes, 

w/ Corn/green pepper puree and tomato sauce

I'm not sure why it took so long to come up with what to do with chicken stock (which I took out of the freezer earlier in the week with no plan), corn, eggplant and tomatoes. 

Corn, Eggplant and Tomatoes should be a natural combination, all summer veg., but Gretchen will only eat eggplant if it's cooked way down into mush (so no grain salad), and won't eat tomatoes unless they're sauce. 

So those were two restrictions, plus I wanted it to be fast.  Having some sort of guidelines when being creative in any sense, not just cooking, can give you a little focus, but I was having problems with coming up with anything on Saturday. 

Also, I wanted it to be somewhat creative, so no pasta or pizza.

I did fail to work the potatoes into the dish, but it came out ok.  Used the chicken stock in the crepe batter and corn/pepper/onion puree.

Positive - The corn is really good from S&SO right now; beat the crap out of the corn we had last week from the Jersey Tomato stand. Everything did seem to be seasoned well.

I banged this out in less than 45 minutes, which I thought was pretty good for the number of component

Negative - Crepes are another crutch for me- see SY marathon dinner menu.

I hadn't made crepes in a while and the first one was all messed up because the batter was too thick, once I thinned it things were fine.

The puree was a bit too heavy on the green pepper flavor (additionally gave the puree a wierd green color); but it tasted OK.

Fried Eggs, Home Fries, Breakfast Sausage

Positive - Since I didn't use the potatoes for dinner the day before, I used them here.  Had more peppers and onions from the CSA, so I used them in the home fries as well.  Everyone's got a different idea of what home fries should be.  I usually like crispy fried potatoes (squares), but here I went with the discs of potatoes that have browned crusty edges, but not that french fry exterior; they came out ok. 

The breakfast sausage is bad ass; and I cooked them right.  Always try to cook the eggs in the rendered fat from what ever breakfast meat I use, and that tastes good too.

Negative  - This was the last of the breakfast sausage, which I made months ago.  It's a sad day.

The potatoes had some technical problems, they could have been cooked more/better.

Pan Seared Sirloin Steak
Served Sliced w/ mushrooms over Polenta 

w/ leek, corn tomato gratin w/ smoked breadcrumbs

All corn this weekend.

Positive - Again I got this on the table in about 45 minutes; I thought the polenta wouldn't be great without simmering forever like some italian grandmother.  It was fine, got a little thin when I added milk and corn at the end, but it firmed up on the plate.

Used chicken stock in this too accomplishing that at least.

The smoked breadcrumbs were badass again; the leak/corn part of the gratin was good too.

Gretchen liked the mushrooms, I thought maybe they were too cooked.

Negative - The steak while initially cooked well it sat for a while, and went a little over, but not much. 

The gratin was successful in terms of flavor but not technique.  When I assembled the topping (tomatoes and bread crumbs) I completely didn't think.  First I put the tomatoes on top of the bread crumbs, so they didn't get toasted in the oven and then I threw the gratin under the broiled to cook the tomatoes and toast the bread crumbs - but the tomatoes didn't cook and the breadcrumbs almost burned.

Whole Wheat/Rye Levain Pullman Loaf

This has kind of a strange crumb, I didn't knead it much so I was surprised when it rose so much.  Did even really try this yet; just froze them.

Parsley/Sage Red bean puree

CSA

Zucchini

Red Pnions

Long Peppers

Green Peppers

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Parsley

Cucumber

Kale

Green Beans

Cabbage

Garlic