The Hungry Engineer

With their distinct flavor, Brussels sprouts are not everyone’s favorite vegetable. In fact, they’re not my favorite vegetable. My husband, on the other hand, loves them, and they are very nutritious, so I suck it up and eat them every once in a while. Most recently, we prepared a Cream-Braised Brussels Sprouts recipe posted a couple years ago on the Orangette blog. This is for the Brussels sprouts haters out there: Believe it or not, when braised in cream, the flavor of Brussels sprouts changes into something infinitely more tolerable.

We’ve been eating a lot of greens lately. There are gobs to choose from (kale, mustard, collard, etc.), and generally speaking they’re very nutritious and reasonably cost effective. They can be a bit of a challenge to enjoy however. It takes some time and effort to clean and prep them, and often a fair amount of time is required to cook them to their tender, flavorful best. However, when given enough time and some flavorful sidekicks, greens make for excellent vegetable dishes.

While considered a variety of winter squash, acorn squash actually belongs to the same species as summer squash (zucchini, for example). Acorn squashes are relatively small. My specimen was maybe a pound and a half, and roasted it yeilded about 2 ½ cups of flesh. The most common varieties are dark green and may or may not have an orange blaze, but there are also golden and even white varieties. Look for squashes that have no soft spots and that are heavy for their size (indicating they’re not old and dried out). Like most winter squashes, these will store for months if kept in a cool, dry place.

Well, I finally did it. I purchased the bread baking book I had been considering. I have baked bread before, but have been clamoring for more information about the “why”. Without the “why”, the bread recipes read more like a list of strange actions designed merely to torture the would-be home baker. With the “why”, you understand what’s important and why all the effort is (or has the potential to be) worth it. With much glee this past week, I cracked into “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread” by Peter Reinhart.

The only Greek food Sean and I normally avail ourselves of is this semi-fast-food joint near our house that’s really pretty good for what it is – fast food. It scratches the itch in a pinch. However, with an out of town guest with us last weekend, we decided to venture into downtown for our Greek fix and tried out Athenian Grill.

Before the chef Ripert feast this past weekend, I had only tried Belgian Endive once, and it didn’t go well. It was ages ago and I tried to braise it … and it turned into a bitter mushy mess. The Ripert dish was a simple and elegant appetizer that made use of raw endive leaves filled with blue cheese, prosciutto, and pomegranate seeds. The gentle bitterness melded nicely with the saltiness and sweet-fruity crunch of the other ingredients.

I’ve been in Texas long enough now that barbecue means something very specific to me (and different than what it meant when I was growing up in Missouri). It means spicy rub on slow-cooked beef brisket, maybe an equally piquant sauce on the side, a super low-key venue, and often butcher paper for a plate. The folks at Lamberts Downtown Barbecue, on the other hand, have elected to give a fine dining touch to the otherwise humble fare.

Kabocha squash, also known as Japanese pumpkin, is a hard-shelled winter squash, not unlike the more familiar acorn and butternut squashes. I was introduced to this particular variety by way of a pumpkin soup recipe created by chef Eric Ripert as part of his Market Table Dinner Social - and though it was a lot of work to hack apart my squash, the soup was fantastic and completely worth it.

The concept: world-famous French chef provides a multi-course dinner’s worth of recipes on his website and invites us mere mortals to prepare the meal as well. We intrepid home cooks strike out into the world and throw our dinner parties, and then we all congregate back at the chef’s site to share our photos and experiences. This is what chef Eric Ripert is currently doing with the Market Table Dinner Social at his very elegant website, Avec Eric.

After this incredibly inspirational post by the folks at Bacon Today, I really and truly had no choice but to make my own rendition of bacon brownies. If you’ve been reading for a while, you already know that our house loves the salty bacon + sweet chocolate combination, so this was required baking for us.