My love for Donna Hay continues...

It's no secret how much I adore Donna Hay. Just about everything she touches or creates turns to gold. Her magazine? Gorgeous. The styling is clean and simple and just beautiful.

Her cookbooks are the same way. I own four of them and want to buy more (even though people say to diversify your cookbook collection). Donna's recipes are simple and only moderately difficult to translate into US measurements (since she's Australian). Well, it's only moderately difficult if you're like me and you're not a math whiz.

But one of her recipes that I keep going back to and wanting to make more of is her fresh chilli sauce.

(Photo by Chris Court for Donna Hay magazine)

The sauce is really easy to make and Donna uses it in several recipes on her website.

Steve and I made it the first time a few months ago and loved it. We originally tried it with chicken quarters but that failed (and caused me to have an aversion to chicken quarters until just recently). But then we used the leftover sauce with steak and - bam! - perfect combination.

So this past weekend, we tried it again! But we adapted it from Donna's recipe...

Here's the adapted version:

4 long red chillies (peppers), chopped 

3 cloves garlic, peeled

1 cup of cilantro leaves

1/3 cup fish sauce

1 cup lime juice

I deseeded the peppers to keep the sauce from being mouthonfire hot. Other than that - combine in a food processor and blend for a couple minutes or until everything is all mixed together. This is what you get:

Since we didn't use ginger or palm sugar (simply because we didn't have them), the sauce was a little on the limey (read: tangy) side. But it has a good amount of heat and packs a TON of flavor.

We marinated flank steak in the sauce for about half an hour and then just cooked it on the stovetop.

Forgive the flash and shiny metal bowl. Best spot for a photo? No.

But we love love love this sauce. So much so that we saved some of it and some of the flank steak and made it again tonight, with some shrimp, sauteed chard and brown rice.

So make the sauce! You won't be sorry!

I'm Julia Child...sort of.

Since this is an easier post to write up (I'm having serious issues trying to edit my honeymoon posts. Cannot. Stop. Writing.), I'm doing this instead of the 6 bazillion posts I've drafted on the honeymoon food. Preview: YUM. Food was awesome.

But back to Julia Child. I'll admit it - I'm a movie nerd, and after watching Julie and Julia on the flight to Europe last fall, I was determined to make boeuf bourguignon.

(Columbia Pictures)

Not because I thought it would be an amazing meal or the best thing I've ever had - just because it would be a kitchen triumph. And my parents will tell you that only a few short years ago, I could barely boil water for pasta. (The reality is that I could do more than that, but they don't acknowledge it. Ugh.)

So when we got our Le Creuset French oven from Steve's relatives as a wedding gift, I was ecstatic. It's a beautiful rosy red color and it makes me want to cook and cook and cook. (Photo from Le Creuset's Web site because my camera is still on the fritz.)
I digress.

Again.

Our friends had given us rides both to and from the airport - 45 minutes each way - for our honeymoon flights, so we wanted to cook them dinner as a thank you. We figured boeuf bourguignon would be a great way to thank them AND break in our French oven.

We found Julia's recipe online, along with side recipes for sauteed mushrooms and brown-braised onions. I love that her recipes all have little suggestions like, "This should be paired with a wine like a Chianti" or "This recipe is traditionally served with potatoes but you can use" x or y or whatever. So the boeuf bourguignon recipe suggested the onions and mushrooms and we happily went along with it.

The recipe seems to have this stigma of being difficult to make, but it really wasn't. It's just very specific and has lots of steps. Four minutes of simmering. Four minutes in the oven, uncovered. Flour, toss, salt and pepper, toss. And on and on and on. But it was SO worth it.

I would DEFINITELY have all of your ingredients prepped and ready to go. And give yourself (depending on how your oven cooks) a few hours. It can always be reheated. I had planned to reheat leftovers on Sunday, but there weren't any. That's a good sign, right?

So we took care of all the little steps and then put it in the oven to do the simmering for a couple hours. We just had one tiny glitch - I forgot to add the beef stock and went to take a shower. Steve knocked and said, "Um, did you want to use this beef stock?" and I shrieked and yelled at him to get out and hurry up and add it before it cooked much longer. I guess my sister gave me a metal case with this print on it for a reason.)

(Marigold's)

The onions, braised in beef stock and butter (of course - it's Julia Child), were freaking awesome. Perfectly tender and just oozing deliciousness. They were golden brown and I'm pretty sure we all could have eaten about 40 little pearl onions. The mushrooms were the same way - sauteed in butter and so rich and velvety and flavorful. How could they not be? They were cooked in butter.

Right before dinner, I whipped up one of my favorite go-to dessert recipes and threw it in the oven. I made Donna Hay's individual flourless chocolate cakes. They only have six ingredients - eggs, butter, dark chocolate, cocoa powder, almond meal and sugar - and are SO easy to make. And always taste amazing. We had leftovers and were pleasantly surprised that they stored well overnight. Not that they'll last much longer.

But dinner overall was a total success. No leftovers and we devoured a whole baguette sopping up the broth from the French oven. I'll definitely be making this recipe again. And maybe I'll branch out and make some more of Julia's stuff!

Take that, parents! Next time you come in town, I'm going to cook you under the table!

Catching up on the last few weeks...

So I have been a horribly delinquent blogger. I haven't really felt like it recently - but until about a week ago, I didn't really feel like doing much of anything! Work has been dreary, it's been cold and winter has been taking its toll.

But thankfully, spring is here! And everything is right with the world. Well, work is still dreary. But at least it's sunny and warm outside!

Wedding plans are humming along. There are still a few things left to do - specifically, centerpieces and table decor. I've picked it all out and sent my flower preferences, but I haven't seen a mock-up yet. It's making my little type A brain go slightly crazy. Other than that, Future Husband and I have been trying to pick out our first dance song. Do we go classic with something like Sinatra, Bennett or Armstrong? Or do we go a little more recent and do something like James Taylor? OR do we go cheeky and funny like the Backstreet Boys? In reality...I know we won't do the Backstreet Boys. But part of me is really tempted to do that.

I got a great email from Andrea Drexelius, the woman behind French Basketeer. I've posted before about her amazing bags - they're handmade in Morocco or Madagascar and are GORGEOUS. I had originally ordered this beautiful mango Cap Ferrat bag (that will be perfect for the honeymoon), but turns out it's out of stock until June or so.

So Andrea graciously offered to swap it out for any of the other bags she carries. But I just had to have the same style bag, so I'm getting it in fuschia instead.

Love love love love it. It'll be perfect for summer! If anyone needs a summer bag, I highly recommend Andrea's bags!

In other news, our new pillows are here! Elizabeth (Lilybethgoodies) on Etsy had some beautiful green damask pillows for sale but I had wanted them in a lumbar shape instead of regular 18x18. She was wonderful and customized the pillows for us and got them to us really quick. And they are beautiful! Now if only Pottery Barn had the 12x24 pillows in stock in Clarendon... Here's Elizabeth's shop on Etsy.

(Photo by Elizabeth)

In kitchen news, we've been baking and cooking up a storm. Among the things that have come out of the kitchen:

1. Pot roast. YUM. Mix a little cream of mushroom soup and some red wine (the more the better) plus a couple other ingredients and you've got yourself a DELICIOUS roast. And great leftovers.

2. Red wine marinated flank steak. Red wine + steak = always a good combination.

3. Donna Hay's sticky black pepper pork (and sticky black pepper chicken - basically the same recipe on chicken). Super easy and all ingredients are easily found in your pantry. 

4. Donna Hay's pork with horseradish cream sauce. Really delicious summery sauce that you could use for anything...Future Husband used leftover sauce on his roast beef sandwich with some Nancy's Camembert. 

5. Muddy dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate glaze and raspberry coulis. Soooooo wonderful. I spread a layer of the coulis in between two layers of cake. But instead of making two full layers, I just took my trusty Chef Tony (thanks Dad!) bread knife and sliced the cake horizontally. Very proud of myself! That's the first time I'd done that. And I'm just getting started. With the help of Bakerella, Noshings, TastyKitchen and a few new kitchen tools (like muffin tins, cookie sheets, spatulas, and maybe a new bowl for the mixer), this is the summer of baking!

Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying spring!

xo,

Carrie

Mmmmm...delicious

Lord help me.

With two months to go before the wedding, I should not be eating like this. My first dress fitting is four days away and I will be on a beach in 68 days. I'm sure I'll reflect like a mirror (from all those cold winter days when the sun didn't even deign to come out) and regret the days when I curled up with wine instead of going to the gym.

Oh well.

Anyway, there have been some seriously delicious meals coming out of my kitchen (thanks in part to Future Husband, who rescues me from any kitchen crisis).

I'm on a big Pioneer Woman kick - she is amazing! Her blog is hilarious and she always has sinfully delicious-looking recipes on it. So I tried a couple last weekend, and boy did they turn out good.

 

(Photo by the Pioneer Woman herself - Ree Drummond) 

1. Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin. And ohmygosh were they perfect. Full of cream and whole milk and cheese and DELICIOUSNESS. I highly recommend making them and eating them as soon as possible. You won't regret it. Two friends saw that I was making them and ALSO made them this weekend. Heavenly.

 

(Photo by Ree again)

2. Key Lime Pie. Sorta. This pie was gone within 48 hours of it being made. SO easy to make and nice and tart. I think this was part of my "I'm drinking white wine and eating summery foods" binge this past weekend. Ready for summer much? Yes.

I also did actually make the raspberry and ginger cheesecake from Donna Hay's most recent issue, but it called for gelatin and that was my downfall. Future Husband and I ended up combing through our slices of cheesecake for big chunks of unflavored, gelatinous goo. Nasty.

Donna's thai chilli sauce was awesome - really flavorful and just the right amount of spice to use over chicken, as a marinade, etc. We (well...Future Husband) marinated flank steak in it overnight and it was to die for. I could have eaten a whole cow marinated in that sauce. If Donna posts the recipe on her Web site, I'll post a link to it here. It's really easy to make and SO worth it. The only downside is the fish sauce - smells horrible.

Really really gross.

But worth it for that sauce.

I'm making another one of Donna's recipes for dinner tonight. Future Husband loves pork (as he told me last night when I said I wanted a teacup pig and he threatened to cure it and eat it - horrible, horrible man) and so I'm making sticky black pepper pork. YUM.

 

(Photo by Wiliam Meppem for Donna Hay)

Here's the recipe for anyone who wants it!

Sticky Black Pepper Pork 

 

Hopefully my camera will be fixed soon (once I actually remember to take it in to be fixed) and I can actually start posting my own photos instead of pilfering photos off other Web sites.

Happy Tuesday!

Carrie

Why don't you like the things I like???

Future Husband has a few foods that he doesn't really like. I, however, love a few of them (or all of them). Here are a few:

Pineapple
Mango
Papaya
Passionfruit
Grapefruit
Coconut (noticing a tropical fruit theme here?)
Eggplant
Overdoses of cilantro
Clementines

I just got the summer Donna Hay magazine and EVERYTHING in it makes me crave summer. The recipes (nectarine and amaretti tarts, granita, pork tacos, horseradish mayonnaise, etc etc etc...), the photos (Cook Islands!), the articles (50 easy and fast recipes, which the magazine does every year)...everything.

This glimpse of deliciousness is only on the Web site or in the Australian version of the magazine. Cause it certainly wasn't in the one that showed up at my door today! But it looks scrumptious.

 

 (Donna Hay magazine)

Maybe it's just the gusty winds and 35-degree weather we've been having, but it seriously needs to be summer. Now. Not just so I can make yummy, summer-y dishes and desserts, but also so my ears and nose can survive the walks back and forth between my office and the metro station without getting frostbite.

Meanwhile, I'll be having a winter BBQ soon. Grilled chicken, maybe that nectarine and amaretti tart (the photo looked so delicious that I wanted to eat the paper and I'm pretty sure Future Husband wanted to do the same thing for the quick and easy pork recipes listed in the magazine). If I can find nectarines, that is.

And I have to find someone who will eat things off the list above with me. Because I found an eggplant, ricotta and basil pasta recipe that is begging to be made!

S'now joke...

So, we've been snowed in for about 5 days - going on our third day off of work (well, three and a half if you include the 4-hour early dismissal on Friday). Every night has been like the night before Christmas - open? Closed? Open? Closed? We monitored all kinds of web sites (some that crashed)...OPM was a trending topic on Twitter and the OPM site that published the status of the federal government consistently crashed throughout each evening. And finding out that we were closed and that we had yet another snow day was like we had just won Oscars (or a million dollars).

Break out the bubbly...we're closed again!

So we celebrated with a little champagne and a little butter cake frosted with buttercream frosting. YUM.

 

Nothing better than buttercream frosting. That's what we're using for our wedding cake and after the little tastes I got of it back in October and just now, I am REALLY confident in our decision to go buttercream. So so so delicious. And so easy to make! I made Donna Hay's butter cream frosting - and here's the recipe.

Donna Hay's buttercream frosting

1 cup confectioner's sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

8 ounces of softened butter

 

Combine in a mixer and go to town! Of course, slather it on a cooled cake and then refrigerate until it's set. I was too impatient to do that, so my frosting was a little liquidy and not set (but still tasted good).

I've burned through all of the butter, milk, eggs and sugar in the apartment, and we're almost out of flour too. Things are getting desperate! Thankfully, Future Husband found milk at the market...

Meanwhile, I've been working my way through my list of things to do so I keep on some sort of a routine...sort of. I've done some wedding stuff, some apartment stuff and I've definitely been lazy. I think I've read to the end of the internet and back again. Google Reader has been my lifesaver these last few days...that and the pictures the WashPo has been posting online from "Snowmageddon." Have to say it - I'm REALLY lucky to live in an apartment building. We didn't shovel anything, didn't lose power, didn't have to drive anywhere to get groceries...

However - metro did fail us at the height of the snowstorm. We went to dinner at a couple friends' apartment and stayed long past the announced metro closing time (which was four hours earlier than normal). So what did we do? We walked the two miles home - mostly in the road since there weren't any cars out and we couldn't even tell where the sidewalks were. Totally worth it for the company and delicious dinner!

On a sad note...my camera didn't fare so well in the winter weather and is now dead. So all of the photos I'm taking now are on my BlackBerry. NOT the best quality.

Hope everyone else in the DC area has been faring OK (and warmly!) in the snowstorms...and if you're NOT around here, enjoy your normal weather!

Yummies amidst the mess

Hi everyone! I've contemplated starting a blog for awhile now...I even had a couple while I was in college. One for studying abroad, one that amounted to all of 3 posts (usually about school). But now that I'm getting married (almost 3 months exactly from today!), moving into a new apartment and starting a new chapter of my life, I figured this was as good as any time to start a blog and really keep it up.

Status of my life: As I said, I'm getting married in three months. To my best friend and the best man I've ever met. He's wonderful - hilariously witty, way smarter than me, kind and...well...jolly. He's always laughing and teasing me (which I need) and reminds me to calm down (in a nice, non-antagonizing way) when I'm being crazy or moody. AND - he cooks, cleans and does laundry. All in all, he's the perfect man!

Also - we're moving this weekend. So our apartment looks like this:

So while Future Husband was taking all the stuff off the bookshelves and getting everything ready to move, I made a favorite dinner - French onion soup and toasted cheese sandwiches. YUM. Except I didn't let the onions really and truly brown so the taste wasn't quite as deep and rich as it usually is. Toasted cheese sandwiches turned out well though. They're made of a mix of dijon mustard, sour cream and cheddar cheese and, as Future Husband said, "I could eat five of them." Here are the onions pre-soup:

 

And here's the soup simmering and almost done:

 

Delicious. Except not as delicious as it usually is. Future Husband still thought it was good combined with the toasted cheese sandwiches, as evidenced by this expression:

 

So the soup wasn't horrible. :) And it was the least I could do while Future Husband dismantled the living room. For fun, though, before he came into the kitchen to eat (since the dining table is covered in stuff from the bookshelves), I styled the sandwich and soup a la Donna Hay, whose recipes I used. I LOVE her. She's amazing. I own four of her cookbooks and can't find anything wrong with them (except sometimes the Australian names for things...that can be perplexing).

 

To top it all off, I made "thank you" cheesecake brownies (also from one of Donna's books) for our leasing agent and for Future Husband's groomsman, who is helping us move all of our stuff on Sunday. They were pretty good. And we polished off the little bit of muddy chocolate cake (also Donna) from last week. Needless to say, our bodies are oversugared and will not be ready for heavy lifting soon. Here are the brownies in production:

 

  

I've made it my goal to start baking more - I love it. But I'm trying to shed a few pounds, I'll be baking, trying a bit of what I bake and then dispersing it between work and our friends. I'll take requests, so if any of you out there want something specific, let me know! Otherwise, I'll probably be working my way through Donna's dessert book and her entertaining books. Everything I've had of hers (except my failed attempt at butternut squash soup, which my college roommate choked down so as not to immediately hurt my feelings) has been wonderful and gotten rave reviews.

Along with baking more, I've made it a goal to really and truly decorate our new apartment. I want it to feel more like a home since we'll probably be there for two or three years. I'll have a post on my decorating inspirations later - probably next week after the move. And I'll need plenty of advice and ideas, so if anyone wants to offer suggestions, I'm open!

Until then, happy Friday everyone!