culinary experiments and explorations

Late last week, I came across an Emeril recipe for roast chicken. Up until then, I'd never actually gotten a whole chicken at the market and prepared it for a meal. This, clearly, needed to change! I adapted the recipe slightly for what ingredients I had, once I'd purchased the chicken -- mostly in quantities of added ingredients, since the smallest roaster I could find at the local market was somewhat larger than the recommended size on the original recipe. (That, and I neglected to buy a lemon.)

( Perfect Roast Chicken (My Version) )

Now, I had my savory main dish -- and it smelled and tasted terrific. However, at the same time I wanted to serve it over something. The easiest thing to do was rice -- but I was rather bored with regular plain white or brown rice. Something inside me asked hey, what about sweet rice? Now, as far as I know, I've never even had sweet rice, so I didn't know what I was getting into, but I flexed my Google-fu and found an intriguing recipe for Lebanese sweet rice. I adapted it into the following:

( Sweet Rice (My Version) )

Tonight I had the roast chicken as the main dish, with the sweet rice as a side -- and overall, the tastes were surprisingly complimentary. The chicken and vegetables are rich and savory, and mixed with the sweet rice (which was sweet, but not too sweet), it made a memorable and quite enjoyable dish. I definitely plan to make both again in the future.

Again going with a recipe from Emeril's Potluck, I went for just a snack this time -- today's earlier experiment with Sausage-Stuffed Bread was enormously filling. This time, I decided to go for a starter, and despite the recipe not turning out quite how I think it was supposed to I was fairly well-satisfied with the recipe on p. 37 -- ( Spiced Nuts. )

Overall, a pretty tasty snack -- if you can get your fingers on some of the nuts which are well-coated or enveloped by the spiced brown sugar. However, it felt to me as though there wasn't quite enough of the sugar-binder to really make an almost cookie-like treat. What I got was yummy enough to warrant a second try, though -- maybe with more sugar/spices?

Last night after a mediocre day, I was in the mood for comfort food. I already had some tortilla chips, but was lacking salsa to go with it. Not wanting to spend more money at the grocery when I had plenty of ingredients here, I chose to make a recipe from my Emeril's Potluck cookbook (page 6) -- slightly modified, for a little extra zing.

( Simply Salsa )

This turned out pleasantly tasty, though perhaps not quite as immediately hot on the palate as I might have preferred. It had a nice afterburn on the tongue, but it required a lot of addition of various ground peppers to reach it. I'll have to tinker with the recipe (and remember to drain the canned whole tomatoes next time) and see whether it can be improved.

For my birthday yesterday, prior to my weekly poker game, I didn't go out to dinner. Nope, I went to the bookstore and bought (among other things) two cookbooks -- Emeril's Potluck (149 recipes) and Martin Yan's China (101 recipes). 250 new recipes in all, to try out.

Anyways, I had a thought along the lines of the book/movie "Julie & Julia" -- why not see how many of these recipes I can make in one year? 250 recipes in 365 days is definitely doable. Of course, this means I'm going to have one hell of a lot of leftovers to give away, as most of these dishes are meant for more than just a few people, but ... really, why not?

It'll be fun, and I'll vastly expand my culinary horizons. Plus I can post my reactions and critiques, if any. So, a goal!

Day: 1.

Recipes completed: 0/149 (EP), 0/101 (MYC).

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.