I have descended into full blown cooking nerd mode. (Saffron-Scented Halibut)

I spent most of high school and college avoiding chemistry.  Then I got into cooking.  My husband bought me an immersion circulator for Christmas!  I didn't know that there was a model that could hook on to an ordinary large pot instead of a giant plastic tub.  It looks more like lab equipment than a cooking tool. I've always been curious about cooking with one because I watch way too much Iron Chef America.  The Anovo immersion circulator is very easy to use.  I'm using it here with a pasta pot and some tin foil. One of the first things I wanted to try out was fish.  This is saffron-scented halibut with tomato compute and zucchini.  It was fantastic!  The zucchini was cooked through, yet still crunchy instead of mushy and gross.  The tomatoes had the right amount of softness.  The fish was perfectly cooked.  It was moist, flaky, and evenly cooked.  The saffron sauce had the right amount of zing from the oranges but it didn't overpower the flavor of the fish.  This dish did involve a good bit of prep work but total cooking time for everything was 17 minutes.

To make the meal, I attached the immersion circulator to my pasta pot, set it for 140 degrees F through its very simple touch screen interface, and covered the pot with tin foil.  The instruction manual emphasized that covering the pot is necessary and suggested tin foil if a special lid wasn't available.

I feel a bit like a mad scientist.  

Paper-Wrapped Chicken

This dish is probably in my top five list of most labor intensive dishes.  It looks cool, but it took a long time to assemble the packets, and I had help!  But, it was a fun step outside of my comfort zone.  Wait, what?  I'm supposed to wrap chicken in wax paper and then deep fry it in my wok?!  Uh...

Having never attempted anything like this before, I suspected that my neat little packets of chicken and veggies would turn into a peanut oil flavored mess wrapped in soggy wax paper. While some of the packets did get some oil in, most of them were fine! The marinated chicken was tender, the vegetables were flavorful and still had a little crunch to them, and the addition of some prosciutto to the packets was a nice way to add some saltiness.

Here they are before I fried them.  Packets filled with chicken, prosciutto, red chili, ginger, and cilantro.

Persian Sweet and Sour Stuffed Chicken

I've been dying to try so many of the chicken recipes in Food of Life, my Persian cookbook.  So many of them call for an entire chicken, and I don't know how well stuffed chicken leftovers would work the next day.  But, when I saw the recipe for sweet and sour stuffed chicken that could also be done with a Cornish game hen, I was stoked.  Before this dish, I'd never eaten Cornish game hen.  My mom told me that back in the 70s and 80s, they were a Big Thing for people to cook when they entertained friends.  Wikipedia tells me that they're basically small chickens, and it tasted exactly that way.  It wasn't gamey at all.

This was my first time roasting an entire bird.  I've never hosted Thanksgiving or Christmas, so I've never done turkey, and I've never had the guts to roast a whole chicken when I have guests for dinner. It's generally a bad idea to experiment on friends.  I was a little intimidated, at first.  I was nervous that the meat would be dry and nasty, but this dish turned out *amazing.* The meat was moist and the skin was tangy from the lime juice in the basting liquid.  The stuffing was sweet, but not cloyingly so, and the onion and spices made it very hearty.  I would definitely make this for my friends for a special dinner.  

Smoked Lasagna. Or, My Dad is Awesome for Humoring Me.

Last Sunday was Father's Day.  My mom is in Ireland with her cousin.  At my parents' house, she's the cook.  So for the past two weeks, Dad has been eating Bachelor Chow.  He's always been willing to eat my experiments, so I decided to feed him a few times this week.  For Father's Day, I made lasagna.  Now, one of my rules of cooking is never to experiment on guests.  Normally, I only cook tried and true recipes for my friends and family, because I know some of my experiments end up looking like Klingon food, and sometimes they probably taste like it, too.  But, I was having problems choosing the perfect dish to cook for my dad.   He's the opposite of a picky eater, but I wanted it to be special.  

I got it in my head that I would make lasagna.  Prior to this, I had made lasagna once in my entire life.  And that, according to the date stamp on my picture, was in June 2008.   So pretty much three years ago.  It was a spinach lasagna.  My dad is a meat fan, so I decided to use a new recipe, thus violating my rule about experimenting on family.

After extensive googling, I decided to make Michael Symon's lasagna recipe.  I love Michael Symon, to the point where I happily fangirled all over myself when I went to his restaurant, Lola, with my husband and in-laws.  Anyway, I picked his recipe because it wasn't super complicated.  And it was Michael Symon, how could it go wrong?!

The lasagna looks awesome.  But you should smell my house.  And my hair. 

This recipe seemed like it would make enough lasagna to feed a family of 25 for a month.  But, somehow, it all fit into this dish.  It's not deep enough to be a lasagna dish, but it's the most appropriate dish that I have. 

Before and After: Chicken Paprika

One of the very first cookbooks I bought was The Wine Lover's Cookbook, which is divided up by type of wine that pairs well with each dish.  Some of the dishes were extremely ambitious for someone learning how to cook.  When you don't really know what you're doing, an ingredient list with more than a dozen things can be pretty daunting.  But, I figured out that a lot of the ingredients for this Chicken Paprika with Almond Relish were spices and small things that got chopped up and tossed into a bowl, so I decided to give it a try.  It was also paired with viognier, which is one of my favorite types of white wine.  One of my favorite viogniers is Yalumba's Y Series Viognier.  It's fruity, but not too sweet like some Rieslings can be.  Also, the price is right at $15 or less. 

The picture below is from two nights ago.   After the jump is my version from 2007, guest starring Dave's lap.  When I was first learning how to cook, making more than one thing at a time was a little too complicated, so the result was a chicken breast plopped on a plate and covered some sauce and a ton of relish.  If you squint, you can see that there is, in fact, some chicken under the mountain of relish.  :)  The book suggests serving this with egg noodles or spaetzle and I always have egg noodles around, so now I put the chicken on top of egg noodles with caraway seeds mixed in. 

As the book says, having both hot and sweet paprika really makes this dish tasty.  Back in 2007, I omitted the mushrooms because Dave hated them.  Since then, he's decided he likes mushrooms so long as they're thinly sliced and not used as a meat substitute.  The mushrooms add a depth to the sauce that was lacking without them.  I don't really like peaches, and I've always got dried apricots around.  They're a good source of potassium and they keep forever.  So, my relish is always with apricots.  The caraway seed in the relish stops it from being too sweet and ties it into the sauce, which also has caraway seeds.