Week 10: BC - Book/Movie/TV Inspired - Low Cal Calzone Zone (Parks and Recreation)

If you haven't watched Parks and Recreation, stop reading this and go to Netflix or Hulu and watch an episode.  Any episode.  It is hilarious and it is one of my favorites these days. So with this week's baking challenge of media or literature inspired this show was a clear choice to honor/emulate.  Now, I could have made waffles topped with way too much whipped cream (Leslie Knope's favorite) but there is no baking involved so I went to the obvious second choice: calzone.  Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) talks about calzone in several episodes but my favorite is the one where unemployed Ben becomes obsessed with making the perfect calzone and opening a line of restaurants called "The Low-cal Calzone Zone".

So, here they are!  Not so sure they are low-cal, but they were certainly delicious.

Each one had different ingredients but some combination of the following: onions, broccoli, mushrooms, moose-a-roni (pepparoni made from moose given to us by the in-laws)

Stretching the dough to calzone shape was not too easy, but not as hard as transferring them to the baking stone. Note to self: next time build them on the baking stone. 

This one had the moosearoni, onion, and mushrooms.

Apparently I forgot to take a picture of the other before folding and getting it into the oven, but it has mushrooms, broccoli and onion inside. 

They both baked up quite nicely but one prettier than the other.

This one sorta exploded and juiced out everywhere.  It ain't no thang, cause they were really tasty and a perfect Friday night dinner.

I cut them and we each got half so we could taste them both. 

Pair with a beer and a ceasar salad, and A and I were happy campers. 

Week 9: Coffee - Coffee rubbed grilled salmon tacos

 I really wanted to avoid baking something with coffee in it for this challenge. It seemed like the easy answer and let's face it, the more I bake, the more I eat it; I'm a sucker for sweets. We bought some awesome salmon at Costco a day or two before so it needed to be used. Thank goodness for Google.  I searched coffee and salmon and this great recipe came up!

First I created the rub for the salmon. It included freshly ground coffee with coriander and other spices(left) made liquidy with EVOO (right). 

Salmon from costo (left) with some pepper and parsley on it already.  I wiped most of that off and basted the salmon (right) on tinfoil so we could grill it .

While I worked on the salmon, Andrew prepared the brussel sprouts and brocolettes for grilling

I whipped up the very simple red cabbage, lime juice, and cilantro mixture and set it aside to marinate while I moved on to the guacamole.

It was entirely appropriate at this point in the cooking to crack open a bottle of wine.  This bottle was a gift from my Reddit Secret Santa in Montana (see my post about that here) and I've been saving it till I was able to properly savor it.  It was a fruity delicious red, so a big thanks to my SS!

The guac called for boiled tomatillos to be added to jalapeno, avocado, lime, and cilantro.  It was very basic but very delicious; reminiscent of the guac at Taco Lobo here in B'ham (which is uh-maze-ing!)

With the red cabbage slaw it really looked pretty.

Andrew perfectly grilled the fish, which is not too easy to do.  Well, it is easy to cook it, but it is equally easy to over cook it.  This salmon ended up flavorful and tender and not dry at all.  

Here is the finished plate.  I chose white corn tortillas but both Andrew and I felt the flavor was over powering to the somewhat subtle salmon coffee rub and we both ended up just eating the guts of the tacos by themselves with no tortilla.

SO much better.  Here is a perfectly composed bite:

Without the tortilla we could really taste the coffee in the rub and although we both felt a little wired afterward, it is most certainly something I would do again.

Week 2 - Chinese - Sweet, Sour & Spicy Orange Chicken with Cashews and Broccoli

Andrew was the mastermind and expert chef this week for our second challenge. He scoured cookbooks and we talked about what to make for days.  He was off at a work retreat for a few days so the cooking had to wait and when he returned and we tackled both challenges in one night.  

The process was elaborate and Andrew remarked more than once how ridiculous this recipe was for needing 12 different bowls ready to give and receive a variety of parts of the ingredients.  Bowls for sauces, bowls for cooked things to be added to the mix again later, bowls for everything; basically, lots and lots of prep and it truly required finesse (which A has is spades).  Andrew is a seasoned chef having cooked in all sorts of environments, from fine dining to burger flipping, so there was no question he could pull off this complicated dish.

 

As you can see above, while cooking Andrew had a beer in his (or my?) favorite coozy!

Here is the finished dish.  It was certainly sweet and sour but we decided that perhaps next time to cut some of the vinegar as we both were a bit puckered due to the sour.  Next time we would also add more red pepper.  We like spicy food and the amount required by the recipe was not nearly enough for our tastes. 

The chicken was juicy, the broccoli cooked perfectly, and the cashews really made the dish complete. 

As you can see, it was disgusting and we could barely choke it down :)