I Poached an EGG!!

I did it!  Check it out!

Boiling...

Done.

Delicious!

Turns out poaching eggs is incredibly easy.  Who knew.  Besfran bought some vinegar this week, so I borrowed some and gave it a shot.  Taadaaaaa.

The trick of whirlpooling the water which I read about at www.smittenkitchen.com worked wonderfully.  I am quite pleased.

Russian Cookery

Today was special, because The Russian decided that it would be a good day for the Russian House to have a Russian Thanksgiving. Not that Russians have thanksgiving, but we wanted to cook food and have a little break this weekend, so we had a nice, seasonal excuse. On the menu: crab salad, cake, kotleti (which are kind of like tiny Russian meatloafs), puree (really smooth mashed potatoes) and blini.

Besfran and I started out on the cakes. These are made with layered blini (Russian pancakes, like crepes but NOT crepes, please do not call them crepes, because they are Russian), strawberries, and a sour cream icing. That's just sour cream and powdered sugar mixed together. And it is delicious. We layered blin, then strawberries,

then sour cream icing

Here's a rare shot of Besfran putting icing on the cake and not eating it instead

Regardless of the amount of ingredients the both of us ate during construction, we ended up with quite the cake.  Go us!

The blini makers kept going, though, and we had lots extra after we ran out of strawberries.  There was lots of batter, so FlyBoy and Roomie had their work cut out for them.  The Russian supervises.

Action shot!  Blini cookery!  Spin that pan! We must have blini round like the sun!

Meanwhile, The Odd Couple was making kotleti... what would you call it?  Mash?  Batter?  Meat dough?

Ewwwwwww, squishy

And Besfran and I got in there to help. Things got messy

I will smell like garlic for weeks!

The kotleti got dredged in egg and flour, all ready for the oven

Meanwhile, someone made the crab salad... I didn't notice this happening, but it must have.  Doesn't it look delicious?  

Everything was ready except the kotleti!  Turns out they take way long to cook.

Delicious Russian thanksgiving dinner!  One big happy Russian House family at the table... some of it, anyway

And our cake looked beautiful, as did the kotleti!

Outtakes: we lost momentum halfway through, and Besfran, Rae, and I took a break and ate icing.

The Russian started out helping with kotleti until she realized she couldn't help anyone else if she did, because she was covered in meat batter (yes, that's what I'm calling it now).

That's all for now!  Guess I lied about a post with more text.  Bazinga!

-M

Macaroni and Cheese Pancakes

Two things I love: Allrecipes.com and This is Why You're Fat. And when This is Why You're Fat had this post I knew I had to try it out... is it bad that I got my food idea from a blog with that name? Don't answer that...

But my beloved allrecipes didn't have any help for me! Luckily the New York Times did, and I found this recipe with very little searching.

On to the execution! Besfran was dubious about the idea at first, but neither of us wanted to buy more food so close to going home for Thanksgiving break, and I needed to use up some milk, so we began. Ingredients, assemble! 

I had run out of sprinkle cheese a couple days ago, so we made do with stacking a bunch of sliced cheese and trying to grate it... 

it went better than expected...

Batter!  Besfran helps with eggs:

And, of course, simple pancakes are easy... you'd think...

I always was impatient, and mom does say the first pancake is for throwing away.  Or eating while you make the rest, if you're me.

I had planned to have step-by-step shots of the macaroni-and-cheese-ifying of the pancakes, but I didn't.  It's pretty simple, you sprinkle the noodles and cheese in the batter while the first side of the pancake is cooking, flip, and presto!

They're surprisingly tasty with syrup,

although some disagree.  The conversation with Besfran went something along the lines of

"Try them with syrup"

"um, no"

"Woman! Put syrup on that pancake!"

She didn't like it much that way, and they are good plain.

And, to finish, Besfran's attempt at an artsy food photo:

When I post at not 3 am, if that ever happens, perhaps I'll work on having more words than pictures.  But this works for me.  And maybe you, if you're visual, you may be, that's cool, some people are.

-M