To celebrate July 4, my parents went for a visit to one of Mom's sisters. To celebrate our parents being out of the house, my sister and I pulled out a cookbook I got at my bridal shower and went to town.
Joe's Aunt Paula and I frequently discuss our eating habits, our reasons for vegetarianism, and our attempts at feeding ourselves, so it was no surprise that her bridal shower gift would put us in the kitchen. Her gift, Deceptively Delicious, (+ Honey Moon beer among other things–yum) is a cookbook that adds vegetable (or fruit) purees to each of its recipes, ranging from mac & cheese to doughnuts. The goal is to trick unsuspecting children into eating their vegetables.
There are tons of comfort foods and traditionally frozen, processed foods in this cookbook. I love the idea of bringing these recipes home, making them yourself and adding a bit of health to them. And what better person to test it on than my sister, who would subsist on meat and potatoes alone (literally, maybe some cheese added in) if we let her?
So we sat down and picked out our recipes: chicken nuggets (with broccoli puree), mozzarella sticks (with cauliflower puree), doughnuts and coffee cake (each with butternut squash puree).
Things were going well until the cauliflower starting steaming. The stench spread throughout the kitchen, and I can't blame Chloe for being a bit nervous. She got a bit more nervous when it came time to fry up the chicken nuggets (conveniently made with pre-cooked, pre-cut fake chicken strips). They were dipped in a mix of egg and broccoli puree.
"You can take that one," Chloe said. It was a bit more green than the others, a bit lumpy–signs of extra vegetable clinging to the thin chicken strip. I agreed to eat the lumpier nuggets.
But when it came time to eat, we both forgot about the vegetables and gorged ourselves on homemade, fried deliciousness.
The nuggets turned out great. They were golden, warm, popping in the pan and so good we burnt ourselves trying to eat them too quickly. Our technique needs a bit of work. Some of the nuggets did look a bit too green (though the flavor was great), and some were a bit naked.
The technique for the mozzarella sticks definitely needs to be adapted too... but again, with no change to flavor. These were Chloe's favorite part of the night; I'm trying to decide what I liked best. This recipe frustrated us the most, because the cookbook was definitely lying. Cook in 1 T oil? To get them golden brown and perfectly fried like in the picture? I'm calling bullshit on that one. That picture was deep, deep fried. But we tried to stick as close to 1 T as possible, adding a bit when the pan seemed too dry.
We froze for more than 20 minutes, but looking back I may leave them even longer... and let the cheese mix set a bit before rolling them in bread crumbs. Moral of the story: if you follow this recipe exactly, you'll have mediocre-looking cheese sticks that fall apart on you (as seen above), but you will eat them in less than five minutes anyway because they are delish.
So our dinner had been made. Chloe had mixed up homemade pizza sauce to dip our yummies in, and the sauce and cheese sticks were put into our margarita glasses (genius, Chloe!). We sat down to enjoy our picnic while watching Fried Green Tomatoes–a favorite movie and food of mine and a perfect match to our fried dinner.
Then it was back to the kitchen for another our hour of baking... then an hour of MASSIVE cleanup. The hardest part of the night? Deciding whether we liked the dougnuts or the coffee cake better, which resulted in stomach aches from eating too much batter. (So much that we got frustrated with spatulas and switched to spoons.)
I mean, look at that perfection. Both breakfast treats are flavored with butternut squash (a small change we made), cinnamon and brown sugar. They seem very fall-ish, but these doughnuts are so light and airy (just like the cookbook says) that they're easily eaten year-round. They'll be a great, light breakfast tomorrow before heading to Put in Bay for a day of family escapism.
(photo credit: Chloe)
As for this morning, it's time to get going. We're cooking up some eggs and sausage to have with the coffee cake, which is so heavy and so full in the pan that we thought it would explode in the oven.
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