Cook-A-Thon

I had a cooking marathon yesterday that I wanted to share. Picture this: Husband gone on an overnight bachelor party to Levenworth...no kids..bad weather..what does a food nut job such as myself do? Hello? Cook of course!

I planned ahead and did all the shopping on Friday so I wouldn't have to leave the house Saturday unless I absolutely had to, or wanted to..I guess.

On the agenda for today:
1. Potato Lefse
2. Chicken Stock
3. Roasted Vegetable Soup
4. Crepes
5. Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart
6. Olive poppers
7. Moroccan Chicken (for the weeks lunches)
8. French Chicken in a Pot
9. Wild mushroom and Gorgonzola turnovers

I am pretty pleased with myself for making everything BUT #9. I don't usually cook with wild mushrooms but, I wanted to try this Portabello app that my fellow food nut job, Laurie, told me about but I had some dried wild mushrooms and thought I could make the substitution. That would be a negative. News flash - wild mushrooms stink! They smell so gross that once I re hydrated them...the smell was so nauseating that I tossed them and omitted the entire #9 item. I still have the Gorgonzola cheese so next week, a portabello mushroom I will buy and make the recipe correctly. Incidentally it took awhile for the residual funkiness to leave the kitchen. Blech.

Let the cooking begin!

First on the agenda was to boil the potatoes and prep them for the lefse and then to reuse the same stock pot for the chicken stock. The chicken stock rendered the stock pot useless for the next 4 hours (simmering time) so I needed to make sure I didn't need it for anything else - drama! I have other stock pots but all the others are about 5 qts and this one is bigger so when you need it, you need it. Now, I have not made potato lefse before. My husband is from Norwegian decent and it is something he grew up eating. My neighbor, Amy, is also of the same and was kind enough to teach me AND bring over her mom's lefse making tools! Thank you Mary! And a big thanks to Chris' mom, Carol for the recipe.

So by the time Amy came over, I had the potatoes boiled, riced (in my new potato ricer) whipped with cream, butter and salt...and totally cool in the refrigerator. Chicken stock was simmering away on the stove and the house smelled delicious!



If you haven't had the pleasure of potato lefse..basically it is a potato dough rolled very thin with a special rolling pin with a teeny tiny waffle pattern on it and then cooked on a lefse grill at the temp of 500 degrees. It only takes a couple of minutes and you eat them warm with either butter and cinnamon sugar or I guess whatever you want. They are pretty tasty!


While the chicken stock simmered away, I roasted off the veg for the roasted vegetable soup. This is one of my favorite soups because it is easy, healthy and very comforting. Perfect for Fall, but truthfully you could make it anytime. You roast off carrots, potatoes, leeks, tomatoes and zucchini in the oven. You first toss them in a bit of olive oil (I refuse to call it EVOO) salt and pepper and that is it for seasoning. The flavor that roasting the veg brings out lends all the complexity to the soup which is pretty cool. It is the kind of soup that would be really good for a farm to table meal. Then, it is a matter of pureeing it with stock (either veg, or chicken) and that's about it. So yummy. It reheats very well and although I haven't ever frozen it, I imagine it would work ok.



Crepes. Not as easy as I thought. The batter was easy enough, and I know how to make pancakes so aren't these just a thinner version? They are not.

I made the batter in the blender and chilled it. Now, it took both Amy and I to figure out the best way to flip these things while not burning our fingers (which we both did do). My thought is that having a crepe pan would come in handy as I did not. These were ok, but looked too much like a thin omelet for my taste. And I thought they were just "meh".

The tomato and goat cheese tart was, I think, one of the highlights of the day. So simple it seemed too good to be true almost... sauteed onions, garlic, thyme and dry white wine that had been cooked down were put onto puff pastry and topped with goat cheese, tomato and basil. They tasted fresh and light. The only tricky part is making sure your puff pastry has thawed. These were one of the last things I made (around 7pm) because my puff pastry took forever to unthaw. Note to self - put it in the refrigerator the night before.


Oh yah, olive poppers. I got this recipe from "Sonjas Kitchen" which is another blog I follow. They are green olives with a dough of cheese, flour and butter wrapped around them. You bake them and they come out crispy on the outside and salty and warm on the inside. Yum, yum, yummy!

French chicken in a pot is essentially baked chicken. I made this because I had to buy 2 whole chickens (Costco of course) and figured that I could pick the meat off to try another kind of puff pastry thingie today. The Moroccan chicken I am making today to be eaten during the week.

It was a fun day of cooking, chatting and eating. What's not to like?