Weekend Evaluation: Summer's Greatest Hits

In my beer-centered calendar, once Oktoberfest starts, summer is officially over. We had Sauerbraten, choucroute garni, and speatzle for dinner, followed by beer and chocolates on Sunday night; safe to say summer is over.

It's ok - After this weekend I'm finally ready to move on - the corn is starting to look old, the eggplant are tasting a little bitter.

- Cinnamon Pudding - 

We usually stop at the day old section of the bakery inside Stop N Shop after happy hour at Sunswick on Fridays.  This Friday there wasn't much there; so I tried to quickly come up with a desert.  After the chocolate pudding last week I thought a pudding would be a good idea.

Positive - The flavor was actually pretty good.

Negative - This was a pretty big mess, I didn't use enough corn starch; I was in a hurry so I didn't look up the ratio and thought I remembered how much was enough.  It wasn't setting up in the fridge, so I decided to whip some cream and fold that in to make it more of mousse texture.  Didn't really work like folding in egg whites.

French Toast

Positive - Used some shitty cinnamon bread we bought from the day old section at Stop and Shop.  There was a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread in there for like a buck fifty a few weeks ago, so we bought it.

It was pretty bad bread, but I figured at the time I could make bread pudding or french toast, which I hadn't made in a while.  If usually will make a loaf of brioche if I'm planning on making this

Margarita Pale Ale Pizza 

Salad w/ Roast Corn, Red Peppers, Zucchini

Positive - Any time I can get the dough off my peel in one piece I'm happy.  The crust tasted good too - lots of yeast flavor.

Negative - Everything seemed to be pretty good; but it was under seasoned. I bought some new parm from Murray's in Grand Central, and it's way less salty than supermarket parm- even the real parm they have in the cheese boat.  It's a good thing, since it has a more complex taste, but it's throwing me off.  I just need to taste more.

I used the finest, cheapest fresh mozzarella from the store; I figure if I'm going to take the shortcut of going to the supermarket, I might as well take advantage of the commodity food system and get something that cheap as hell.

I'm kind of annoyed I that I haven't made mozzarella at home in a while; it's really easy and the stuff at the supermarket is a rip off; but we were out all afternoon so I didn't have time.

Lemon Pound Cake

Again - didn't have any dessert.  I haven't been able to fit the ice cream maker in the freezer.  Gretchen and I actually worked together on this one; but Gretchen did most of the work.  I just got together the ingredients, made the glaze and judged the doneness.  She actually assembled the batter.

Positive - This was pretty light batter.  We used a recipe that was the classic ratio (equal parts eggs, butter, and sugar).  It also tasted sufficiently lemon.

Negative - I kind of blew it with the oven temp.  I just turned it on to 350 without thinking; 20 minutes into the movie we were watching I realized that an hour of baking in a 350 degree oven struck me as a long time; checked the recipe - called for 325.  Turned the oven down.

I think this led to the outsides browning and inhibiting the 'rise' of the outside of the loaf.

Tomato Jam

Positive - I've been meaning to make a tomato jam this year and finally got to it.

Negative - This tastes pretty much like a really sweet/less acidic ketchup, which is what I get for following a recipe without thinking about it.  I added cumin, cinnamon, and few other spices in to the sugar, tomato mixture - which is exactly the spices you'd add for ketchup.

Normally, I'd just look at the technique of a recipe and then add whatever flavors I wanted; but was just too lazy here and paid for it.  I probably could have added a few more jalapenos

Pickled Jalapenos and Serranos

The jalepenos have been really good and floral right now; so I decided to pickle some more.  My first round of pickled vegetables were kind of lacking salt (trend for this week), so I wanted to get some more in the fridge.

Okra Corn Stew with Fried Green Tomatoes

over Grits w/ Tomato Jam/Basil Pesto

Positive - I'm definitely more confident about frying things well.  Some of the tomatoes came out awesome.

Negative - Reviving the Okra Corn stew seemed like a good idea; but this just seemed bland today.  The okra wasn't as good as last time either; and they were kind of over cooked, not too slimy, but just sort of over a bit. 

Everything is tasting bland to me all of the sudden.  Now I'm under seasoning everything?


CSA
Nicola Potatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Colored Peppers
Lettuce mix
Red Tomatoes
Acorn Squash
French Breakfast Radishes
Peaches
Apples