recipe

Nutella Chocolate Fish

DSC_7581s
 
I decided that my exciting first foray into making filled chocolates would be with Nutella-filled dark chocolate with cocoa powder and a drizzle of milk chocolate.   This first batch is certainly not perfect and it took a bit of patience, but it's surprisingly easy once you figure out how to make the shells and seal them.
 

Seafood Pot Pie

Seafood pot pie closeup!

This recipe is based on Paula's. I reduced the butter, caramelized onions, and replaced the celery with asparagus.   Celery supposedly doesn't have much of a taste for some people, but I find it rather unpleasant.  I considered using frozen peas, but I already had fresh asparagus so in that went.  The proportions of the recipes come out to about 3 cups of vegetables, 2.5 pounds of meat, and about 3 cups of sauce.  Onions reduce quite a bit when you caramelize them, so I sarted with more onion.
 

Creme Brulee

 

I decided to have a tea party with a few lovely friends and made some crème brûlée based on the recipes at Cooking for Engineers and Food Network.  The amount of egg yolk varies between recipes and in my experience, most people won't notice the difference if you skip the vanilla bean and just use vanilla extract.  Paula Deen has a chocolate version.

Ingredients:

  • 16 egg yolks
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 quart of heavy cream
  • 1 vanilla bean

Instructions:

Ong Choi and Tomato Soup

Marie's ong choi tomato soup

I had some leftover tomato, ong choi, ground pork, and an egg, among other things in the fridge to use up, so I made soup. 

 

Ingredients: