Simply red

Trying to cook simply, so we makes a basic beet ravioli with brown butter sauce tonight. Though I probably hurled any notion of "simple" out the window when I made my own pasta sheets. The sage was flowering today, so I threw some of the flowers in there too.

There were a few bursticated beet ravioli, so I recycled them back into the pasta dough to make Hello Kitty pink parpedelle.

So my attempt to cook simply tonight gets completely fo'cocked when I remembered it's day 2 of Yule Log 2008. I'm veering off the recipe completely when it comes to assembly and decorating the yule log. The yule log recipe writers have obviously snorted way too much cocoa powder and have never seen a fallen log in real life. Their bark is all wrong, and the branches would never grow that way in nature. If you're going to be inspired by a fallen log, you need to either do an artistic impressionist interpretation, or go for realism. None of this half-assed melted elephant poo lump that Cooks Illustrated showed in the book. So me, being me, I'm going to make anatomically correct yule logs.

Davy 1. Cook's Illustrated 0. Take that Cook's Illustrated beeyotches!

Meat cake

It's meat cake day! No winter birthday celebration is complete without a layer cake in meat form. I formed the patties with a divot in the center, so when meat cake puffs up in the oven, we will end up a flatter top instead of the usual dome that would need to be trimmed off for cake duty.

Ta Da! Meat Cake. Frosted with mashed potatoes. With bacon roses. Thank you sous chef MK for wonderful chopping and shopping skills.

We would have encountered fewer structural issues had we used instant mashed potatoes and a more traditional dry meat loaf recipe. But we wanted a tasty moist meat cake instead of 15 pounds of novelty meat brick. A turkey and mushroom layer on top, a roasted veggie beef layer on bottom. And instead of the usual ketchup, there's a sun dried tomato and olive pesto in between the layers. Delicious meat cake.

And that's not all. Fish in cake form.

And veggie cake. Eggplant and squash with 3 kinds of puree filling. Sweet potato, celeriac, and garlic russet potato. Topped with a parmesan crisp.

And mushroom cake. (I know. stretching it. turn your head sideways.)

And butter in cake form. Thank you Stuart for assorted sodas that don't taste like sodas. Such flavors as cucumber and rose petals and espresso.

Somebody ate a mouthful of butter thinking it was cake! Ha!

Fudgie the Whale Carvel cake makes an appearance. Ice cream in cake form! The fluke and blow hole was especially delicious.

And to finish up Winter Birthday Celebration 2008, Megan brings red velvet cupcakes in entree form. Go Megan! The butter is a starburst candy.

Lonely blahs

Whittling down the giant 3 lb tub of garlic that Nancy left since the Jerry wedding cook-a-thon. Roasted garlic soup. No vampires for sure. No dates either.



And cauliflower leek risotto. Tasted OK. The purple color was awesome though. I could make this better next time.



And a very disappointing honey pear upside down cake. I should have known better. The LA Times recipes are usually really bad. I don't like to waste food, but I tossed this one.

Happy Birthday Doug

Quince pound cake, sliced.



A bit of down time lets me re-jigger the media closet. Some color coded velcro cable ties allows me to tie up loose ends so to speak.

Beet this

Shuffling furniture around and tidying up a bit after a couple month's of client madness. The sofa may be on it's last legs. The cushions are falling apart and I may have to resort to duct tape.



Oh quince. How I love thee. I will make quince tarte tatine again.



But I left the quince tarte tatine in the oven 10 minutes too long. Aie ya! So now it's quince crumble.



I plucked out some beets from the garden and roasted them with the poblano chilies dangling nearby. I didn't realize that there'd be such a difference with really fresh beets. These were very good- better than the beets from Whole Foods. And completely different from the canned stuff that have destroyed the beet's reputation in most people's minds. If the canned stuff is the only frame of reference, of course most people are going to hate beets. This is completely different.



A quince pound cake.



And the roasted chicken makes it's debut.