A solid estimate of over 20,000 meals have been prepared in my kitchen during my adult lifetime. Yes, I did the math. This number accounts for vacations, take out nights, and the rare occasion of someone else cooking. All in all though, it's fair to say I'm on the search for something, anything new, and exciting.
I'm dabbling in Indian cuisine. As a result my spice cupboard has taken on a new light. Cardamom is an exciting flavor which has been under utilized for years in my cooking repertoire. Indian cooking has brought cardamom front and center in the old cupboard.
Last night I experienced a cross over from savory to sweet as I found myself grinding pistachio nuts with plain all purpose flour to create a beautiful pistachio flour. Mixed with freshly ground green cardamom pods, lemon zest, and the usual suspects of cupcake making, a flavor explosion took place. All on this Saturday night.
Rewarding. Now I'm thinking in terms of smaller numbers. Number 1. A homemade cupcake baked with a new exciting flavor.
How pretentious of people to take a recipe, alter it in some insignificant way, then claim it as their own. My usual approach is to prepare the recipe as written and give the original version a fair shake. Only then will I tweak the basic idea to my own liking afterwards. In this case however, I simply did not want to use my old bottle of ground cardamom and instead used freshly ground green cardamom pods. Unsure, though fairly certain, my guess was the freshly ground pods would be more pungent than a bottled version so I erred on the side of conservative judgement and decreased the cardamom to one teaspoon rather than two. Of course, if you are making this recipe, use your own judgement. Aside from probably over filling my teaspoon slightly when adding the vanilla, I prepared this recipe exactly as written on King Arthur Flour's website. Credit goes where credit is due. Thank you King Arthur Flour for helping me over the slump of 20,000 and leading me into the single digits of new and exciting. All on a Saturday Night.
"Rain dogs howl for the century,
A million dollars a steak." Gavin Rossdale
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| PISTACHIO CARDAMOM CUPCAKE WITH CHOCOLATE GANACHE |
Last night I experienced a cross over from savory to sweet as I found myself grinding pistachio nuts with plain all purpose flour to create a beautiful pistachio flour. Mixed with freshly ground green cardamom pods, lemon zest, and the usual suspects of cupcake making, a flavor explosion took place. All on this Saturday night.
Rewarding. Now I'm thinking in terms of smaller numbers. Number 1. A homemade cupcake baked with a new exciting flavor.
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| A brilliant combination of flavors. |
How pretentious of people to take a recipe, alter it in some insignificant way, then claim it as their own. My usual approach is to prepare the recipe as written and give the original version a fair shake. Only then will I tweak the basic idea to my own liking afterwards. In this case however, I simply did not want to use my old bottle of ground cardamom and instead used freshly ground green cardamom pods. Unsure, though fairly certain, my guess was the freshly ground pods would be more pungent than a bottled version so I erred on the side of conservative judgement and decreased the cardamom to one teaspoon rather than two. Of course, if you are making this recipe, use your own judgement. Aside from probably over filling my teaspoon slightly when adding the vanilla, I prepared this recipe exactly as written on King Arthur Flour's website. Credit goes where credit is due. Thank you King Arthur Flour for helping me over the slump of 20,000 and leading me into the single digits of new and exciting. All on a Saturday Night.
"Rain dogs howl for the century,
A million dollars a steak." Gavin Rossdale
I wouldn't want to think about how many meals I've prepared, but holy moley, you've done your time in the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteWish I could help with the new and exciting but I make the same things over and over these days and there's only so much excitement you can get from tofu.
I'm planting chickpeas and cumin this year in the garden. Maybe adding a few unique items to your garden would refresh the time in the kitchen. I think you've made some interesting tofu dishes over the years. Tofu hasn't caught on in my household but, I did give it go at one point due to your posts.
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