Day 2 - Cornmeal-Cheese Souffle

So, after a week off, Tricia and I decided to make a Souffle. The primary reason behind this is that we only needed to buy cornmeal.

"Prepare a 2 quart souffle dish" - souffle dish? definitely don't have that. options? ask the neighbors? tupperware? hey - any baking dish that will hold 2 quarts will work, right? we just need to make sure my baking dish will hold 2 quarts. cue the measuring cup! yes! next...
"Get out a large saucepan" - hmmm....maybe we should consider doing dishes more often!
"Stir 4 and 1/2 oz cornmeal..." - good thing Nick has a little tiny scale. one tablespoon at a time.
"into boiling water" - Said Tricia, "Oops, should we not have put it all in at once? Kat, it's lumpy!" Kat: "Want me to help squish out the lumps?" Cue dueling spatulas! Okay, that's good enough, we're blending it anyway.
"Transfer to large bowl" - is medium okay? dishes again.....
"Add milk, eggs, sugar" - check. there's just a little milk spilt on the stove....
"Blend on medium speed for 3-4 minutes" - it's pretty full now...when we put the mixer in, will it overflow? apparently we managed to choose a bowl that is exactly large enough for us, but not a drop larger. :)
meanwhile....Tricia is grating 4 and 1/2 oz cheese. Kat looked up at "hey....how do you use this grater?" Kat: "Are you using the right side?" Tricia: "I think so, yes....oooooh." So that's a no then? Tricia: "Works much better that way."
Tricia, holding up measuring cup: "Is this too much cheese?" Kat: "Those are fluid ounces dear. They meant for you to weigh it." Tricia returns to grating cheese.
"Add cheese and stir. Pour into souffle dish." - are they kidding? pour? the bowl is filled to the rim, and this isn't even a souffle dish! somehow the mixture got into the dish, and equally amazingly, the exactly 2 quart sized dish filled with 2 quarts of souffle made it into the oven.
"Set timer for 32 minutes" - what should we do now? have a Wild Grape Smirnoff and watch House.

Quote from House:
"I know you're on the fence about having kids, but Taylor really wants them."
Odd looks.
"What? It's in the blog."

After 32 minutes, we decided it needed another 5. After 5 minutes, Tricia exclaimed, "It looks the same! It still looks completely jiggly and undone!" Kat: "Well, it said up to 40. It's only been 37." Our fearless third roommate, who actually has time to cook and has used the oven before in the three months we've lived here (Kat counts on fingers), chimed in: "Is the oven still on? Because when the timer goes off, the oven shuts off. It's a safety feature." Well, you learn something new every day.

In case you're wondering, if you turn the oven off for the last 7 minutes of cooking a souffle, it's going to take a heck of a lot more minutes for the souffle to finish cooking. It's now been an hour. The souffle still hasn't risen.

****

After an hour and a half in the oven (was it the 1% milk? the non-stone ground cornmeal? the non-souffle pan?) we finally gave up on this thing ever looking cooked and ate it. The cornmeal sunk to the bottom and the eggs floated to the top. A little strange.

Kat liked it better than the baba ghanouj. Tricia liked the baba ghanouj better.

Next on the menu - something that uses some of the tub of plain yogurt we bought to go in the baba ghanouj. Biscuits?

A new beginning

So. Tricia and I decided that we should cook. We've been roommates for over three months and have made nothing but scrambled eggs and toast. In the spirit of Julie and Julia, we've decided to cook our way through a cookbook. This blog is in the hopes that it will guilt us into actually doing it! :)



Day 1. Baba Ghanouj



We have:

Pita Bread (it's been frozen since September but it's probably still fine)

Coriander (it's not ground. that's okay, we'll just dump the pepper out of the pepper grinder and grind the coriander. should we clean it afterwards? we're very resourceful)

Cilantro (3 tablespoons fresh....how much is that dried? 2-ish tablespoons? check)

Paprika (that just worked)

Salt (i know we have 4 canisters of salt, but 2 appear to be missing)



We need to buy everything else. We stopped at Brennans (on the way back from dropping off my car at Meineke because it's overheating even though I just paid Toyota $1000 to fix it 2 months ago) and ate tons of samples of apples, cheese, pears, mangoes, etc.



Eggplant (we asked the stockboy to choose one for us - hard is apparently the way to go)

Plain nonfat yogurt (oh, it was supposed to be nonfat?)

Lemon Juice (I know I have some at work....also from September. maybe getting a new bottle was a good idea)

Garlic Clove ("Do you just peel it?" Our other roommate, Nick, decided he had to help us at this point. He cut off the top - we'd already ruined that for him in trying to peel it - and slammed the cutting board on top of it. he then googled "clove" - do we put the whole thing in? the answer is no.....there are 10 cloves in a head of garlic. Tricia threw two cloves in the blender.....I picked them out saying "I don't like the skin....")

Carrot Sticks (we haven't gotten to them yet......)



We are right now baking the eggplant for 45 minutes. We were supposed to "pierce the eggplant several times", but after a recent issue with a microwave and a potato (that resulted in needing a new microwave), Tricia decided to make sure the eggplant was dead. We also needed tin foil, but only had a two inch strip left. That's okay, the eggplant can just balance on a two inch strip.



Tricia would like to mention that a tin foil roll can be used as a sword. There were demonstrations in the kitchen if you don't believe me. (By the way, speaking of new beginnings, we're going to plant a garden in May as well. We're also exercising. Lofty goals.)



********* <---to indicate time passing.



The eggplant is done baking. Time to add the lemon juice.....directions: "open lid. puncture small hole in top with pin." Huh.



Never fear - Tricia found a push pin. Onward!!



We only need 3 tablespoons yogurt? Good thing we bought 24 ounces.



Can you eat the skin of the eggplant? Let's see! Answer is: Yes!


We blended all the ingredients (puree'd in fact) and ate with pita slices (yes, pita slices are still good after being frozen for 6 months) and carrots.

Survey says:
Tricia and I agree that we would have preferred to eat the eggplant plain. It smelled much more delicious before we added everything else. Still, it was quite simple and tasty. B-