Remy: Yeah, anyone can cook. That doesn't mean anyone should. ~ Ratatouille (2007)
What a great movie. My father the chef adores it. As does my little brother, the six year old. But this post doesn't have anything to do with them really. It has to do with the amazing dinner that Sarah, Jessie and I made this Thursday. It might actually not be that amazing or fancy to other people, but in College, when you are basically surviving on anything that has "easy to make" and "microwaveable" on the box, it was pretty special. It started off with a light salad made by Jessie, and then this amazing Tortellini pasta with green beans made by Sarah and accompanied by this made from scratch mushroom soup that I whipped up and then dessert was Creme Brulee that I have recently learned how to make. Since I made only the Mushroom Soup and the Creme Brulee I can only post the recipes for those dishes.
Masha's Creamy Mushroom Soup
Ingredients:
Mushrooms (the more the better)
Half an Onion
Some Garlic
Cup of Chicken Stock
Cup of Half and Half
1/4 Cup of Butter
2 Tablespoons of Flour
Salt & Pepper to Taste
1. Chop up the mushrooms (I used White and Shitake mushrooms), as well as the Onion and the Garlic ( the garlic is to taste, I for one LOVE garlic, so I used one large slice).
2. In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and add the mushrooms, onion and garlic and saute until tender and smells great. Add the chicken stock and cook till its basically boiling.
3. In another smaller saucepan, melt some more butter and stir in the flour till smooth and then add the half and half until its creamy (though when I made it, it looked quite doughy and I was quite concerned).
4. Mix in the mushroom/chicken stock mixture into the half and half and flour mixture, and cook/mix until it becomes creamy and amazing. Add salt and pepper to taste.
I really like this recipe, and its pretty hard to fail at it. After you saute the mushrooms, all the other ingredients can be added in different ways (there are a bunch of different versions of this on allrecipes.com). It's pretty filling and really good to dip crackers in I think. I can't tell if the second photo makes it look gross or not. Hmmm. No I really can't tell. I think maybe gross. Oh well. It was delicious.
I already mentioned Sarahs amazing Tortellini Pasta concoction, but really it was quite amazing. I heard this rumor, that Sarah cooks like this all the time. Which makes me very jealous of her roommates, and a bit like a poser, because I might love to cook but I honestly don't very often. I mostly cook a whole box of pasta, dump cheese over it and then stick it in the fridge, taking it out, putting some of it in a bowl. Microwaving it, and then grating some fresh tomatoes over it. Thats it. I don't make masterpieces like this:
I wish I did though. But I do make Creme Brulee. So I am pretty proud of that. I got obsessed with it over the summer, mostly because I don't like many desserts. I hate chocolate, I don't really have a sweet tooth, and my favorite dessert to date has been cheesecake. Plain cheesecake. Though I did go through a strawberries with whipped cream phase. Point is, sweets are the enemy. Yet I do get these cravings for them once in a while, which are very annoying because I tend never to have anything sweet on me. I do like skittles, but I never crave them so I never buy them.
This summer I tried Creme Brulee at this fancy dessert place called Finale that just opened in Coolidge Corner. Or maybe they had been open for a while, but I only discovered it in the summer, so thats when it began existing. I SAID THATS WHEN IT BEGAN EXISTING. Do not argue with me. Anyways their menu was very uninteresting to me because everything seemed to contain chocolate, or came with a side that was chocolate, and so on and so forth. So I ordered Creme Brulee because it was Vanilla and came with fresh fruit and nothing chocolate. It was amazing. It was the best dessert I had ever tasted and suddenly could understand how women could compare chocolate to sex. I mentioned this to my father and he bought me my very on Creme Brulee making kit a few months later. With a torch and everything. So this is what I made for dessert.
Actually I had sort of over baked this batch so the consistency was more whipped than custard-y. Also it was sort of stress-full because it turns out Sarah and my friend Suma had never even tried Creme Brulee before so then I got all paranoid thinking that I could ruin the experience for them. Thankfully they loved it. Though I really think it was the whole melting of the sugar with my torch thing that sold it to them. Sorry for the blurry image, its the best photo of it. Clearly I need a new camera or to somehow develop the skills to master my very old one. I found the recipe on allrecipes.com so I wont bother writing it out since it isn't my own. Horray for the best dinner ever! Hooray!
Ingredients:
Mushrooms (the more the better)
Half an Onion
Some Garlic
Cup of Chicken Stock
Cup of Half and Half
1/4 Cup of Butter
2 Tablespoons of Flour
Salt & Pepper to Taste
1. Chop up the mushrooms (I used White and Shitake mushrooms), as well as the Onion and the Garlic ( the garlic is to taste, I for one LOVE garlic, so I used one large slice).
2. In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and add the mushrooms, onion and garlic and saute until tender and smells great. Add the chicken stock and cook till its basically boiling.
3. In another smaller saucepan, melt some more butter and stir in the flour till smooth and then add the half and half until its creamy (though when I made it, it looked quite doughy and I was quite concerned).
4. Mix in the mushroom/chicken stock mixture into the half and half and flour mixture, and cook/mix until it becomes creamy and amazing. Add salt and pepper to taste.
I really like this recipe, and its pretty hard to fail at it. After you saute the mushrooms, all the other ingredients can be added in different ways (there are a bunch of different versions of this on allrecipes.com). It's pretty filling and really good to dip crackers in I think. I can't tell if the second photo makes it look gross or not. Hmmm. No I really can't tell. I think maybe gross. Oh well. It was delicious.
I already mentioned Sarahs amazing Tortellini Pasta concoction, but really it was quite amazing. I heard this rumor, that Sarah cooks like this all the time. Which makes me very jealous of her roommates, and a bit like a poser, because I might love to cook but I honestly don't very often. I mostly cook a whole box of pasta, dump cheese over it and then stick it in the fridge, taking it out, putting some of it in a bowl. Microwaving it, and then grating some fresh tomatoes over it. Thats it. I don't make masterpieces like this:
I wish I did though. But I do make Creme Brulee. So I am pretty proud of that. I got obsessed with it over the summer, mostly because I don't like many desserts. I hate chocolate, I don't really have a sweet tooth, and my favorite dessert to date has been cheesecake. Plain cheesecake. Though I did go through a strawberries with whipped cream phase. Point is, sweets are the enemy. Yet I do get these cravings for them once in a while, which are very annoying because I tend never to have anything sweet on me. I do like skittles, but I never crave them so I never buy them.
This summer I tried Creme Brulee at this fancy dessert place called Finale that just opened in Coolidge Corner. Or maybe they had been open for a while, but I only discovered it in the summer, so thats when it began existing. I SAID THATS WHEN IT BEGAN EXISTING. Do not argue with me. Anyways their menu was very uninteresting to me because everything seemed to contain chocolate, or came with a side that was chocolate, and so on and so forth. So I ordered Creme Brulee because it was Vanilla and came with fresh fruit and nothing chocolate. It was amazing. It was the best dessert I had ever tasted and suddenly could understand how women could compare chocolate to sex. I mentioned this to my father and he bought me my very on Creme Brulee making kit a few months later. With a torch and everything. So this is what I made for dessert.
Actually I had sort of over baked this batch so the consistency was more whipped than custard-y. Also it was sort of stress-full because it turns out Sarah and my friend Suma had never even tried Creme Brulee before so then I got all paranoid thinking that I could ruin the experience for them. Thankfully they loved it. Though I really think it was the whole melting of the sugar with my torch thing that sold it to them. Sorry for the blurry image, its the best photo of it. Clearly I need a new camera or to somehow develop the skills to master my very old one. I found the recipe on allrecipes.com so I wont bother writing it out since it isn't my own. Horray for the best dinner ever! Hooray!