Hi. I'm Deb, a Realtor in Portland, Oregon. My wife and I have found ourselves busier than ever, and stuck in a food rut, and we have those nights - you know the ones.
"What do you want for dinner?"
"I dunno, what sounds good to you?"
"I asked you first, you pick!"
"I picked last night!"
At the same time, we are collectors. We have easily 100 cookbooks, only two of which (The Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book and Marion Brown's Southern Cooking) I use very often. So, we worked out a plan to combat our food boredom.
At some point during the day, instead of "what do you want for dinner?" one of us will ask "pick a number between 1 & 100." Then, we'll ask for a number between 1 and however many pages the book has. Whatever is on that page, will be dinner.
I'll take pictures, and introduce the kitchen and the books and the partner later. For now, tonight's dinner: Puffy Cheese Pudding, from Avanelle Day's Herb & Spice Sampler Cookbook.
1/4 tsp powdered mustard
1 tsp water
mix and let stand 5 minutes to develop flavor
2 cups soft breadcrumbs
1 3/4 c. milk
allow breadcrumbs to absorb milk
add the mustard mixture, along with
1 3/4 c. grated Cheddar
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
dash of cayenne
1 tbsp. melted butter
beat together one whole egg and three yolks and add to the above. Whip the three whites to soft peak and fold gently into the mixture. Turn into an ungreased one-quart baking dish. Settle into a water bath, and bake at 325 for 1 1/4 hours. Serve immediately.
The thing is, to me, recipes are guidelines, not rules. I'm going to do my best to follow these, because they're new dishes, but I'm also going to deal with the reality of my household, our likes and dislikes, and what we've got on hand. You know, real world cooking. So, we've only got about a cup of milk. Ok, add sour cream to bring that measurement up. No soft breadcrumbs, but a whole cupboard full of french bread ends, dry. That'll do. No ginger? Cardamom is close. No cayenne - how did we run out of that?? - but a shake or two of Tabasco should do.
At the end of an hour and something (did I mention my oven is touchy and old? No? I'll introduce her later, too), dinner is served. We had this with a side of leftover eggplant in sezchuan sauce, nice and spicy foil to the blandish eggs, although something crunchy would have been better. It really wasn't bad, although neither cardamom nor ginger are savory spices to me. I'd like it better if it had bacon crumbled in, and some onion. Wife says "needs more cheese!" She also suggested it would be good as a mushroom stuffing, if it had some bacon.
Our scale is 1-5, with 1 being "looks like it's peanut-butter toast for dinner, honey" and 5 being "omg that's the best thing I've ever put in my mouth." This is about a 3.
