Baked Apples

This sleepy Saturday morning R.D. got right into the kitchen making himself a backed apple for breakfast. He cored out the apple and added butter, cinnamon sugar and in to the oven at 350 for 30 minutes. When it came out he topped it off with whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon. It turned out good, but next time his is not going to core out the very bottom of the apple to keep in the goodness. A few weeks latter R.D. recreated this recipe for A.M. and his friends... it went over great. You will probably see many more apple recipes with fall around the corner and the apple orchard down the street!

I Survived a Japanese Game Show

After watching I Survived a Japanese Game Show on ABC (which we loved) R.D. decided to try to make mochi balls. This took several weeks because we needed to find glutinous-rice flour... we could not find this ingredient ANYWHERE. I just let it go hoping he would too, but several weeks went by and he asked about the flour again. My good friend Catherine was going to China town, so I asked her to hunt down this mysterious ingredient. Seems like now a days everyone is trying to get away from gluten, but not us... bring on the gluten! After working the batter into what looked like gum R.D. rolled the balls into chopped peanuts. The balls were gummy, but not sticky so the peanuts did not stick. I must say this was R.D. biggest failure... I think. We don't really have a reference of what mochi balls are supposed to taste like... so either the mochi in general are really gross or the recipe just failed badly. Enjoy the picture of R.D.'s face when trying the mochi.

Ice Cream... Ice Cream

After watching the Ice Cream episode of Bobby Flay's ThrowDown, R.D. decided to make some. He searched several cookbooks and recipes on line, but decided on a recipe for vanilla that needed to be cooked with many egg yolks. R.D. had to do a lot of stirring on the stove, watching carefully not to scald the milk. I think the recipe was a great choice because it wasn't just throwing the ingredients into the machine. Once done and it turned out that each person only got a fem small scoops, R.D. said, "yea I don't think i need to do this again it's a lot of work and the kind for the store is just as good." I really don't think this is true, his was very tasty! I hope to convince R.D. to give it another go, i found a recipe for blueberry ice cream sandwiches from O, The Oprah Magazine.... we will see!

Gnocchi

R.D. made gnocchi today... it was great. We visited New York City last week which included a trip to Chelsea Market where R.D. purchased a ricer using his own money ($$ from the Universe). The recipe used was from Lidia Bastianich's book and it called for steaming the potatoes. R.D. made Gnocchi previously in culinary class at the underground where the potatoes were microwaved, but we could not find that recipe so he went with Lidia Bastianich. Our friend Catherine picked up a basket steamer in China town so R.D. was happy to use this. The skillet we have doesn't quite fit the steamer, one side "leaks a little steam" so R.D. weighed it down with cans... worked great! Even though the potatoes were cooked perfectly it was very difficult to get them through the ricer. After combining the potatoes with the flour and eggs, R.D. ended up with a very dough. The gnocchi turned out great just using Ragu Sauce and cheese. We highly recommend this recipe and I am sure R.D. will make this again, because his Dad was out of town and LOVES Gnocchi.