First Fall Feast

Saturday
10:00 AM 

It was the first day of autumn last Thursday and I have decided that this season is the best season for food. Coffee tastes that much better, opening the windows invites fresh, crisp air into my apartment, and a warm meal sounds like the perfect celebration to the day. Joe, my fiance, is on the road back to Madison from Dallas and is currently 3 hours from arrival. He's been living on Taco Bell grande burritos and McDonald's meal deals so I've decided to prepare a feast for tonight. On the menu... French cuisine!  

Sauteed Sourdough Bread

Fresh Beetroot and Goat's Cheese Salad

Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic

When I prepare a regionally-themed meal like this I enjoy pretending that I'm actually there. In this case, I'm taking Joe to France with me. I just went to the outdoor markets in the Southern Provence and picked up some fresh beets, bread and cheese and now I'm in my small apartment overlooking the bustling cobble stone streets of city with the smell of pastries and street violin notes wafting in through the window! Oh, and I'm the beautiful French cook of course... olive skin, bright lipstick, and a red floral apron. Although the bread recipe is my own creation, the salad and main course come from one of my favorite cookbooks called, "The Essential Mediterranean Cookbook." It is loaded with colorful pictures and takes you to flavors of Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East. This summer I thought it would be fun to "tour" France and cook myself through that section. Needless to say I'm still there, but there are worse places to get stuck. It requires quality ingredients and found myself buying a bottle of Brandy just to splash a TB into some olive tapenade. The upfront cost is always worth the culinary lessons, however, except now instead of money being the limiting factor, it is stomach capacity.  Joe has been busy rotating around Wisconsin (and TX) so I've found myself cooking less because I've found I like sharing the end product (and leftovers!) with someone. I get lonely in France all by myself. 

Garlic Galore! 

SO! I have prepared the greens of the beet salad and am waiting for the beets to cool. When draining the juices from boiling the beets I was acting as if it were a biohazard... anything that touched the beet juice needed to be cleaned so that traces of red don't show up later. I still managed to stain our hand towel!  I'm also starting to prep the chicken recipe. Forty cloves of garlic. For future reference its about 2 1/2 garlic bulbs. I bought six thinking it wasn't going to be enough! I don't have a casserole dish with a fitted lid (as the recipe requires) so I'm going to try using my crock-pot pot. It is glass with a lid but its deep bowl shape has me wondering if I'm making a mistake. I will brown the chicken first in a pan on the stove and then transfer it to the crock-pot pot to finish off in the oven. We will see... 

11:30 AM

Fingers stained pink and new pink freckles on my lower arms from slicing beets. I think its unavoidable. 

12:15 PM 

All ingredients are measured out for easy assembly for the chicken recipe. As much as I like to spend an afternoon in the kitchen, I like seeing Joe more. Early prep allows for more maximum time together this afternoon. And evening. 

7:30 PM

Chicken nearing its last minute in the oven. I ended up using a large cooking pot instead of my crock pot for the chicken. 

Later that evening
Dinner turned out well. The garlic was creamy as the recipe promised and the salad was fantastic! I think we will have great leftovers for tomorrow as well, but for now we must rest and digest. A great feast to kick off fall weather and great company.

Finished Product
Ready for eating!

Introductions

Hello fellow reader! 

Curious Cook
In the beginning...

I am the Curious Cook and welcome to my kitchen adventures! I picked this name because I do not, by any means, consider myself to have any raw talent when it comes to preparing food. Instead, I am simply fascinated by food and desire to deepen my relationship with it. As it stands, grocery stores seem to be operating in a time warp as for I get lost in the parade of colorful produce and shapes of pasta noodles. I find myself reading the pages of cook books as if it were a novel from Oprah's book club. Certain smells or social gatherings instantly trigger food-laced memories; the smell of charcoal in particular stirs up thoughts of corn on the cob that is so delightful you sacrifice clean hands and kernel-free teeth to experience the cocktail of warm, sweet juices and melted butter... and tender pork chops with... oh geez, where was I?  Oh yes, my love for food... I believe that food is of paramount importance beyond serving the purpose as basic sustenance. Food engenders childhood memories, cultural traditions, religious events, and emotions. It is a daily parallel that all humans have in common, creating conversational foundations for strangers to become better aquatinted and reasons for old friends to congregate. For me, cooking is a way for me to expand the limits of my palate, knowledge, and imagination. With a background in food and nutritional sciences, I am fascinated by a food's origin and journey into global cuisine. My kitchen (cramped and under-equipped being that I'm still a full-time student), is my three dimensional canvas where I can mix, puree, caramelize, and scramble up curious combinations of raw  ingredients into tasty edibles. This blog is intended to record and reflect (in no particular chronological or ingredient pattern) my culinary experiences of my journey to becoming a curious chef! 

Dedicated to Joe

The love of my life and guinea pig for my culinary concoctions. Thank you for your consistent support in letting me "indulge" in my wildest aspirations.