Camacho Watcho

It’s May 1st and the April challenge is over…I did make it, but only barely. The last week was a bit hairy with all the recipes I needed to make, but I pushed through and pulled it off – now I just need to catch up on blogging.

This post covers five recipes – well, technically one was a suggestion from Bon Appetit on how to use leftovers but they listed it in their recipe index (did we really need a suggestion from them to throw leftover rice, snow peas and chicken in a bowl and microwave?). But given that the cod dumplings actually had two parts to it (dumplings and cabbage) but was listed as one recipe – I think it all evens out.

Let’s start with the Spring Vegetable and Mini Matzo Ball Chicken Soup. The matzo balls were a nice balance between light and dense – very tasty. The actual soup, however, tasted really chicken-brothy. Perhaps that sounds silly since it was made with chicken broth as the base, but I just felt that it needed some other seasonings to balance it out. In particular, it calls for low-salt chicken broth (which I used), but the result was very bland. I did add some kosher salt to it at the end which helped, but it would have been better to add it earlier in the recipe for it all to blend together.

The next recipe is for Cod Dumplings with Savoy Cabbage Saute. Talk about a recipe that just did not appeal to me. The caption in the magazine says that it is their “modern take on gefilte fish.” I had no idea what that was, but it didn’t sound good. A quick google and I found out that it’s just a poached fish patty – could be worse, I guess. Anyway, I was making a few recipes at the same time so I actually forgot to add the egg and matzo meal…pretty important pieces to keeping the dumplings together. But I didn’t realize this until they had been poaching in the simmering water for several minutes already. I went with it – and amazingly, they did not fall apart! The result was a really light, poached cod dumpling. The dill, lemon peel and horseradish added a great flavor to the dumplings and paired with the cabbage (I just used regular cabbage), they were really good. Who would have guessed?

Also up this week were the Pan-Seared Steak Pizzaiola and Five Spice Roast Chicken with Ginger-Scented Rice and Snow Peas with Toasted Almonds. We’ll start with the steak. It was just too nice outside to sear the steaks indoors, so we grilled them instead. Overall the recipe was good, including spicy tomato sauce, but I just didn’t need the sauce on my steak. I love steak and am not opposed to sauces on steak, but this was just a bit much I thought. I will, however, use this tomato sauce in the future – it’s quick, spicy and ultra-rich.

The Five Spice Roast Chicken was fantastic! In fact, Kyle said that with the exception of some amazing jerk chicken we ate years ago from a street stand in Jamaica, this is the best chicken he’d ever eaten! I wholeheartedly agree, which surprised me. I just don’t get very excited to cook chicken anymore, but this was really good. The five spice, made of fennel seeds, Szechuan peppercorns, cinnamon, star anise and cloves, is really mellow and sweet. I had never cooked with it before, but I will in the future. Instead of buying a more expensive whole chicken, I just bought two cheaper packages of chicken quarters (leg and thigh). The dark meat held up beautifully for roasting and its savory flavor combined nicely with the sweet five spice powder.

Tags: challenge, Food, recipes

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.