Saturday, May 14, 2011

C is for...

Today was a day full of Cs. C is for...Crochet, Chef's Market, Cookie, and Chinese! In the morning, I spent some time working on a crochet project... More on that later as it will likely be more of a focus in a later post.

For lunch, we went for something a little more artisan and decided to go to the Chef's Market in North Conway. We've been here before and were glad to notice they were still open when we were in town yesterday. Supporting local chefs is very important to us, so we'll likely stop here again while we're in the area. Their food is seriously good.

Today's soup special was a lemon chicken soup. Ed jumped on it because he loves the Greek chicken soup we get at Zorba's back in Texas. He was hoping for something similar. While it wasn't nearly as lemony as Zorba's soup, it had a slight lemony zing - it just wasn't the focus of the dish. But the soup was excellent. Big chunks of chicken, a slightly thick broth full of herbs, celery, and onion, and overall very flavorful.

Next, Ed had the mushroom pie with a red pepper sauce, and I had a risotto cake and the quiche du jour. The mushroom pie was very thick, so I was a bit dubious of it. My fears were completely unfounded and the sauce served with it had an excellent flavor and left a slight burn on the tongue. Ed put it on everything. The risotto cake was good - and is how risotto should be served, I have decided. Having had green garlic risotto at the Noble Pig dinner recently enough to be able to compare, I find I do prefer the drier cake with a slight crunch to it. Finally, the quiche ended up having basil and thin tomato slices in it. The basil domniated largely because it could be tasted before even making it in the mouth, so it was extremely fresh. The red pepper sauce was nice on this and added to the flavor.


After lunch, we ran a few errands to pick some items we've needed or felt would make things easier on us in the RV... different coat hangers so my dresses don't end up on the floor, screws to put the license place on the front of the rv, etc. And a small food shopping trip for milk, hamburger, and cookie-making supplies.

As anyone close to me (or that is a coworker) knows full well, baking cookies is one of my favorite past times. My close family and friends receive boxes of cookies at Christmastime, when I make about 15 different types of cookies where a simgle batch will make anywhere from a mere 3 dozen cookies (these recipes get doubled) to a whopping 20 dozen cookies. During the year, I'm not quite so crazy, but before I shifted to working from home part of the week, my coworkers would often find themselves putting on a few extra pounds every few weeks.

So of course I was bound to try baking in the RV. It came equipped with a microwave/convection oven/2x oven combination, so there were lots of options to try out. One thing we didn't realize is that even when on either of the oven settings, it would rotate the dish. That doesn't work so well with a quarter sheet pan, so the first couple of batches, there was lots of clanking as the pan bumped against the sides of the oven without rotating. It didn't seem to impact the baking much, just might take a little more time.

Since the oven is so small, I could only bake 5 cookies at a time. I used a pretty standard recipe for me, nothing too fancy - basic chocolate chip cookies. Taking roughly 10 minutes to bake per sheet, 5 at a time takes FOR-EVER! I had the patience to make it through 6 bake cycles, and still had enough dough left for 4 more. I put the rest in the freezer for another day.

Here is a picure of the results, from left to right:
1. Cake pan, convection setting, 11 minutes
2. Cake pan, 2x setting,  8 minutes actual
3. Quarter sheet pan, 2x setting, 6 minutes actual
4. Quarter sheet pan, convection setting, 9 minutes actual


Overall, I think I liked the first batch best, which was actually #4 from above. They spread nicely and took a reasonable amount of time to bake, and came out with the nicest texture combination of crunchy/chewy. For my first time using either style of oven, I think I did pretty good. I'll be getting a round pizza pan to bake on instead of the quarter sheet pans, though. The cake pan sides were just too tall and wouldn't let the cookies spread.

One thing I did learn from this is the more runs through, the hotter the oven runs. The later batches (batches 5 and 6 were both convection and came after #1 above), came out very dark and very crunchy (moreso than #1), even though I had reduced the bake time.

Finally, after we finished nomming on cookie experiements, we decided to get some real food. Any time we're in the north east, we make it a point to get a few kinds of food that you can really only get here. This includes fast food Chinese.

The pork fried rice is very different - it gets rinsed and fried nice and dark, and has bean sprouts, onions, and egg... none of those nasty peas and carrots they feel the need to add in Texas! And chicken fingers - tender pieces of chicken in a fluffy batter that only has crunch on the outside. Not the same as what we get in Texas. And lastly, duck sauce. Lovely, just the right amount of sweet and slightly thick. I smother my chicken fingers and rice in it. Yum!


I go to bed tonight with a very pleased tummy.

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