"Skordalia"

A nearby Turkish restaurant has this outrageous garlic dip. It's like a white fluffy cloud that looks like frosting, but tastes like a magical merry-go-round of garlic. Like, the spinning horses are made of hundreds of cloves of garlic, painted gold. I don't really know where I'm going with this but... it's good stuff, that's all I'm saying. I could never quite figure out how it was made. Texturaly, it was kinda meringue-like. When I saw this recipe, I got excited because I thought maybe I had found the recipe for my favorite mystery garlic dip.

The Recipe:

I feverishly googled Skordalia, and the pictures did not quite look like the garlic cloud dip. Skordalia looked thicker, like mashed potatoes. I was determined to find the specifics of the fluffy dip, and eventually found a garlic dip called Toum. It looked just like what I had eaten at my favorite Turkish restaurant. It has similarities to a mayonnaise or aioli, but with no eggs. Skordalia is characterized by the addition of potatoes, nuts, or wet bread. For realsies, there is much differentiation when it comes to garlic dips.

Anyway... it wasn't the dip for which I'd hoped, but whatever. I mean, a dip made of soggy bread? Sounds so very Bay Leaves (in that it doesn't seem like it will work AT ALL). We totally have to make it.

The Players:

After I got everything out, I had to go back and read the recipe several times. I had never followed a recipe quite like this, especially one that claimed garlic could nearly disappear. The garlic made sure to let me know that it isn't a magician, it's an illusionist. Whatever you say, garlic. I set Tim to work this time, and instructed him to grind up the fresh garlic in the mortar and pestle. I momentarily wondered which was which, the mortar or the pestle, and had to look it up. I learned that mortar derives from Latin mortarium, "receptacle for pounding" and "product of grinding or pounding". The Latin pistillum, meaning "pounder" led to English pestle. It all makes sense. *Giggles* Gawd, Latin, you're such a perv (or maybe it's just me).

It took a good 10 minutes to get the garlic broken down. Tim and I took turns working the garlic and peeling crusts off bread.

Soaked bread is not an ingredient I have used frequently, but we know from previous experience that it is something Wren is in to. Unfortunately for her, she was napping during this preparation. I briefly tossed two slices of bread at a time into a bowl of water, which all felt very strange. Maybe this recipe was conceived by inventive foodie river ducks, who have an entire food group devoted to soggy bread. "Oh Bill, what shall we have as an afternoon snack?" "Ah, my dear, well a smallish child hath thrown us this wet piece of stale hotdog bun, I daresay we dab it with some caviar and crème fraîche, old chap!" All ducks are British, by the way.

I started whirring the wads of bread in the mixer at a low speed. Then added the remaining ingredients as instructed. To our shock, the dip was looking smooth and creamy, and smelling pretty delicious.

I think anyone would assume this dip was cream based at first glance. It looked and poured a lot like an alfredo sauce. I wanted to find something fairly neutral to dip into it, and I had some yellow squash which served that very purpose. Timmy, you're up!

I think by "mild," Tim meant "in need of salt." My first taste I immediately decided to add another pinch of salt. I have to say, this was really quite delicious, but SUPER. EFFING. GARLICKY. I mean, not only was the garlic raw, but it was also crushed, which took it to level 8000 garlic. It was very tasty, but like 3 seconds after I'd swallowed a bite, I knew I was doomed to garlic mouth for the rest of the day, or maybe the rest of my life. We polished off the yellow squash slices and moved on with our day, but let's just say, the Skordalia stayed with us.

The following evening, I spread little dollops of the dip onto slices of zucchini and stuck them under the broiler as a snack experiment. The dip behaved much like cheese under the broiler, turning golden brown on top and kinda melty/crispy. It was still very strong even after being hit with some heat. I think if I make this again, obviously I would use less garlic or perhaps roasted garlic. I might add some other flavors like paprika and mustard powder to make an interesting cheese substitute. This could be a delicious dairy free casserole topper or garlic bread spread because of it's interesting behavior under the broiler.

Who knew bread could do this?! Not I. One of the reasons I decided to take this cookbook journey was the hope of discovering something like this, something totally new to me. Previously, I may not have realized that I was limiting what I could learn about cooking by only ever cooking things that sounded good, safe, or easy. Thank you for these miraculously educational (and sometimes gross) kitchen adventures, dear BAY LEAVES!

"Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake"

Mmmm, mayonnaise. It's creamy, salty, tangy, and satisfying. I like it on sandwiches, dips, salads, oh and dessert, DUH. Who wouldn't want mayonnaise ice cream, mayonnaise pie, and of course, mayonnaise cake? This is why I chose the super appetizing sounding Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake from the Bay Leaves cookbook.

The Recipe:

Ok, so in all seriousness, I get it. In a pinch, you could use mayonnaise to replace eggs and oil for a cake recipe. But that seems like something you wouldn't want to tell anyone, let alone publish in a cookbook. I don't know, whatever, I guess we're making this fella.

The Players:

I think this recipe was made to be quick and easy, because it really was pretty simple to put together. Like, Crap, I told Susan I would bring a chocolate cake to her dog's baby shower in an hour, and I forgot to go shopping. Whatever, chocolate might be toxic to the dogs but those dummies will never know that I used mayonnaise. Sometimes I can be such a genius...

Much like I've done with other Bay Leaves recipes, I made a smaller batch than the recipe suggested. I made a single layer cake, because last time I made a dual layer cake, we just had a whole lot of cake to eat. It immediately made us think of Sandra Lee's Single Layer Cake, which falls into the "WTF HOW DRUNK ARE YOU RIGHT NOW, SANDRA?" category. Oh, Sandra Lee. Our cake baked up perfectly well, and came out of the oven looking very nice.

The recipe said I could add chocolate icing, if desired. I mixed up some cocoa, powdered sugar, and whipped cream to make an icing that was not very cooperative as far as spreading, but very delicious, it tasted like rich chocolate pudding. It was pretty liquidy, so I just kinda poured it over and covered the edges the best I could. Tim had been hanging out in the kitchen, waiting for this one to be ready, so he was promptly ready for his taste test.

So, after the initial video review, Tim and I both tasted the cake and discussed it. His review went from "pretty good" to "not that good" rather swiftly. There was just a funky taste in there, the taste you get when vinegar gets hot. I do like desserts that are more mild in sweetness, but there was just too much tangy saltiness in there. My improvised icing was momentarily making it taste more alluring, but as a chocolatey baked good which just kinda sat around untouched for a few days, it probably wasn't anything worth making again.

So I guess it's official, cutting corners does not work out with desserts. Another dang reason that baking is the worst. Until next time, Bay Leaves!

"Cheese Krispies I"

Bay Leaves has a section called "Tea Time," which consists of many different kinds of cookies and other small bites. I imagine a group sipping their tea, discussing art, surrounded by delicate tea cakes in pretty pastels. It all sounds very elegant until you flip through the pages and realize how many of the recipes include the word balls. The recipe I chose this time doesn't sound particularly classy, but in my opinion, modesty and tastiness often go together.

The Recipe:

This was the first of two Bay Leaves recipes for Cheese Krispies. The second recipe yielded 8 dozen krispies which uh, is a crap ton. I used the smaller recipe, halved, in case they were inedible. At first I visualized a standard rice krispies treat, but with flecks of cheese throughout, until I realized by looking at the ingredients that this probably wasn't going to be sweet. It looked quick and seemed like something Tim would like (really, I'm doing all this for Tim, because he just loves eating all this weird shit so much).

The Players:

Does anyone even buy Rice Krispies just to eat like cereal? My memories of eating it in a bowl with milk include dumping like a pound of sugar on it to make it good. When it comes to texture, they are very unique, but let's face it, flavor-wise, they are pretty darn meh. They seem to do best slathered in marshmallow, or chocolate, or both. As part of my important research for this project, I read the Wikipedia page for Rice Krispies, and learned that the onomatopoeic "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" motto varies by country. In Sweden, Piff! Paff! Puff! describes the sound, and in Germany they say Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!

Now that I was fully educated on the history and worldwide appeal of Rice Krispies, I felt prepared to cook with them.

I mixed the dough by hand which worked pretty well. It was very similar to the dough used in the Cheese and Olive Nuggets we made a few weeks ago. It's a good dough to make in a pinch with a few staple ingredients. These were so fast and easy to make, they were done in less time than it took to put the toddler to bed. In fact, I was a little disappointed by how fast they were done because this was our fun friday night activity... that's how cool and social we are. Tim arrived to find them ready to eat. OH TIM?

YEAH REAL PROFESSIONAL, TIMOTHY. So apparently first-take videos of Tim sometimes turn into giggle-fests. Tim's review wasn't exactly a careful deliberation, but we did learn that Cheese Krispies I are "pretty good." Perhaps so good that they imbue those who consume them with so much joy they cannot contain their laughter!? Or maybe they're just dry. I should have known when I heard no Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!

I mean, they were a bit floury, and the ratios could be tweaked, but I thought they tasted good. The Rice Krispies definitely add their unique texture, so that makes them pretty fun to eat. I might make them smaller, maybe serve them with a jam to offset the dryness a bit. The would be great for a party, or a fancy tea time with a plethora of balls.

"Aunt Martha's Ring of Plenty"

What do super-cool, rambunctious, non-loserish people do on Saturday nights?! They make weird recipes and serve them to their household so they can blog about it. No, really.

After a Bay Leaves failure earlier in the week, we are really hoping for a winner this time. The one I chose has a funny name and a dated presentation, but the ingredients aren't that weird.

The Recipe:

I didn't know Aunt Martha, but I'm sure she was a lovely woman. I like to imagine she had this obsession with enringing foods, and had many different ones including her "Ring of Delight," "Ring of Disappointment," and "Ring of Carbohydrates." She only would eat cheerios, donuts, and spaghettios (occasionally adding a gravy) and her home was decorated with tinseled hula hoops and wreaths. She was well loved, ol' Martha.

The Players:

Ok, so Tim and I agreed that CUTTING UP MACARONI into short pieces seemed cruel and like a huge waste of time. Maybe this too was part of Aunt Martha's ring obsession. Instead, we got ditalini which is kinda like pre-cut-up macaroni. I can't imagine how long that cutting would take, or how much of a crazy mess it would make. We vetoed that. The type of cheese to use is not specified, but I did manage to find another version of this recipe that called for american cheese.

Once the pasta was cooked, this recipe was pretty easy. Several of the recipes we've done have included instructions to just combine everything in a bowl. Unfortunately, that typically leads to a slimy looking bowl of vomit. Oh look, no way that's totally what we ended up with.

I greased my bundt pan and filled 'er up, placing it into a dish with water as the recipe stated. I had to refer to an alternate recipe again because this one doesn't even say how long to bake it (35 minutes). I probably let it cool for about 15 minutes, then it was time to pop this thang out.

So I guess I didn't grease the pan quite enough, but once I kinda pieced it back together, it looked almost like a complete ring. The suggested filling of the ring seemed to be flexible, so I decided to fill ours with roasted Brussels sprouts instead of creamed mushrooms. I thought that really completed the look. What a BYOOT!

And guess what?! It tasted good! It was a lot like baked mac n cheese, and had a delicious buttery flavor. The pimentos didn't really add much for me, but they weren't bad, and they added some color which made it look kinda Christmasy and festive. Using white cheese instead of orange might help even more. Tim was pleased that we had finally made something that wasn't just brownish and ugly. I mean, its still ugly... but with flair.

Other than the omission of several important details, we liked this recipe. It was promptly gobbled up, and we didn't have to throw any of it away! BAY LEAVES WIN!

"Cheese and Rye Casserole"

It was risky, but had this idea that I could make a Bay Leaves recipe for our family dinner. Up to this point, I had only made appetizers or desserts. If they were inedible, at least we didn't go hungry. But what about a casserole, for dinner? A casserole isn't just a passing snack, it is a commitment. You gotta throw a bunch of stuff in there, and then live off it for a few days -- like a hastily-packed suitcase. The components of a casserole typically don't offer much until they come together in a hot, gooey baked mass. The goal being to make large quantities of modest ingredients better in unison. There isn't anything particularly elegant about casseroles, but with enough cheese and hot sauce, it can't be a complete failure... RIGHT!?

The Recipe:

Cheese + Bread = Da culinary bomb. The magnitude of cheese in this recipe was enough to pique our interest. It sounded like a tasty sandwich in casserole form. I merely glanced at the ingredients before I decided to make this recipe, and had overlooked 3 cups milk. That's a lot of milk. As I got out my ingredients and realized this, I began to feel that familiar Bay Leaves concern of Oh dear, this is totally not going to work, but I pressed on.

The Players:

The Bay Leaves recipe for this casserole was not super detailed. It instructed to butter one side of the bread, and mustard the other, but there was no information on arrangement -- butter side up or down, how much butter? rather vague. My goal is to prepare these recipes as close to the instructions as possible, but I did have to do a little guesswork for this one. I decided to put the butter side down and the mustard side up, with 1/3 of the cheese between layers. I guess this isn't exactly what the recipe describes, as adding cheese is only mentioned for one layer, without mention of putting any on top. But it is a flippin' casserole, and you basically HAVE to put cheese on top! I ended up with three layers of bread and three layers of cheese. We'll just call it a triple-decker version.

For a moment, I strongly considered using less than 3 cups of milk. But I tried to set my experiences aside and trust the recipe. Someone was confident enough about these amounts to submit this to the Junior League of Panama City, by Jove! BAH, fine! I'll use 3 cups of milk!

Wren was getting stir crazy, and I asked her if she wanted to help. With the added height of a step stool, she was ready for some cooking action, which she interpreted as sticking slices of party rye under running water and then sucking said water back out of the bread. Look, toddler, whatever floats your boat, as long as you are being relatively still and not trying to seriously injure yourself.

I poured the milk mixture over the layers of bread and cheese, and an appetizing vision it was not. The snot-like eggy stuff just kinda pooled on top of the bread while the milk soaked in. After all the intricate buttering/mustarding of numerous slices of bread, pouring like 10 gallons of milk over it seemed dumb. I am the one who picked this recipe, so who is really the dumb one? WU'LL NEVER NO.

Ok, so I kinda fudged part of this recipe: The 8-hour rest. Maybe it would have made all the difference in the world, but I did not have time to let it sit for 8 hours. It was more like an hour and a half. Perhaps around the 6th hour, some sort of magical melding would have occurred that made it seem like there wasn't 3 whole cups of liquid in here. Maybe it just required 8 hours of evaporation to take place -- I don't know. But my family was getting hungry, and bedtime was quickly approaching, so I called it, and it was time to bake this bad boy. It was going to take an hour to bake anyway.

Around the midpoint of baking, it started to smell very alluring and a beautiful puffy crust started to emerge. Right when it came out, the crust on top looked pretty good, other than the mysterious white patches, which I was worried was still milk but was actually egg.

There was no time to lose, so Tim was called to the kitchen. Perhaps we should have waited a couple more minutes...

I kinda liked it at first. I think maybe the fact that Tim singed off all his taste buds and sacrificed his oral lining for the recording impeded his enjoyment. I may have also been influenced in other ways, as I was starving by the time this thing was actually done. The inside bread parts were mushy and gross, but the top layer was delicious. It was perfectly cruncheweezy, one of food's finest textures which the gifted chefs at Taco Bell have mastered. I MAY have eaten the tops off of 3 slices. But then, clear greasy liquid started to pool in the baking dish between remaining slices. The appeal of this casserole was rapidly dwindling. The white patches of egg were kinda tasty, but the texture was less like egg and more like silken tofu.

I think there would be ways to make this concept a winner. Obviously, less liquid. I think the addition of another layer, maybe caramelized onion or sauerkraut, would take this to the next level of Sandwich Gone Casserole. The sauce could be one cohesive thing, like a prepared Welsh Rarebit-esque sauce poured over layers of bread rather than splitting all the components of a sauce all over the place and waiting for a thousand hours for them to meld themselves.

Basically, dinner was ruined. We each found substitute dinners while the mush continued to quietly weep. Note to self, read quantities of ingredients in the future.

"Fruit Cocktail Cake"

Twas time to explore the desserts chapter of Bay Leaves. BAKING. GREAT. Not my favorite pastime, traditionally. With the sort of spazzy, impatient, impulsive cooking I do, my baking projects often end in failure. Patience is one of the primary requirements of baking, and that is not really my forte. You mean I have to get out measuring cups and spoons? All sorts of appliances? UGGH so many dishes. Can't I just eat a bowl of granulated sugar with a milk poured on it and call it dessert? actually, that sounds good. Nevertheless, occasionally I do bake. In recent years I have gotten better about making sure I actually measure and read dessert recipes carefully. It's like science. It's like homework. And If I were to tell you my husband ate my homework...

Bay Leaves has many-a-dessert. Oddly enough, none of the weird jello recipes are in the desserts section. Thank god. Those are (oh-so-aptly??) housed in the SALADS section. I wanted to choose something retro, and I am always the most fascinated by recipes that I can not visualize from their description alone. I narrowed it down, and decided on the following:

The Recipe:

HOORAY! A disclaimer! So apparently aesthetics will not be this cake's strength. I'm cool with it, because often the prettiest desserts taste the worst. Fruit cocktail is one of those things that I am sure they still sell, but I can't imagine anyone buying it anymore, at least not in the can. My memory of fruit cocktail is mostly just the disappointment of a lack of maraschino cherries. Maybe the modern versions are just swimming with those cherries! I have high hopes. That may be a bad thing. Oh man, I had to buy a lot of stuff for this cake so I hope it is good!

The Players:

Ok, so nothing too outlandish here. The fruit cocktail is a little scary, who knows how it looks inside. I could not imagine what this icing would be like. I visualized white coconut cake-type icing, which is usually pretty, but we already know that this cake shan't be a charmer. I started the icing first, and it created a frothy sort of dull color. Ok, so, an ethereal white coconut cake, this will not be. I took it off the heat and tasted it, and HEY THAT'S REALLY HOT. It was like sugar magma. I am glad I decided to make this first because it took a very long time to cool. When my tongue recovered, I did actually taste it, and it tasted like diabetes. In a good way.

There were more components to componify! I mixed up my cake batter as specified, and when I looked into the can of now drained fruit cocktail, I found several cherries! Hooray! As I dumped it in, however, I discovered that the fruit was "layered" in the can. The three cherries on top were the only three in the can, followed by a layer of reject grapes, gritty pears, and slimy peaches. So fruit cocktail is still just how I remember it. A disappointment.

A few steps later, I had whirred up my nuts and coconut in the food processor and mixed those in with the icing. I baked two layers of cake, but I only had one cake pan so I did them one after another in between commercial breaks of Big Brother. I had to bake the cakes for more than 20 minutes as the toothpick test proved them to be gooey in the middle after the suggested 20. It was probably about 25 minutes for each layer.

Tim's interest was piqued by the extremely sweet smells coming from the kitchen. Everything was steaming off clouds of hot sugar. He arrived to watch me assemble and ice the cakes, and it was evident that this was going to look like a monster. As I spread the icing, described by Tim as "troll snot," I was definitely worried. I tried to pretty it up with some whipped cream, which is a bit like trying to put lipstick on a naked mole rat.

If someone in 1975 said, "hey, taste my homemade fruit cocktail cake on the buffet!" I would scan back and forth, repeatedly looking past this thing. Nothing about it looks fruity. I mean it barely looks like a cake. Maybe if someone said, "hey, try the inverted can of cat food I feed my mutant giant cat!" I'd be like, oh right! but, no, no thanks. Ok, so it's ugly. But, is it tasty? ...Tim?

I thought it was pretty good. The cake itself was a little too chewy and dry, but the flavor was very nice. The fruit cocktail was basically lost. I don't think anyone would pick that out as the feature of this cake. It tasted like the cake version of pecan pie. I suggest leaving out the fruit cocktail entirely, and calling it a pecan pie cake. There would be a lot less confusion, except for maybe the juxtaposition of the words pie and cake, that might actually cause more confusion. Is it a pie or a cake? I don't know! This cake is confusing! My braaaain!

With a whole cake, I would usually take some to work to share, but, I just can't. No, this cake is to be enjoyed in a dark room, alone. Wait, I got it! We will call it the The Shame Cake (with pecan pie notes and for some reason 3 maraschino cherries). Has a nice ring.

"Cheese and Olive Nuggets"

With all the greenish and congealy memories flooding back, I spent the last few days revisiting Bay Leaves and considering more of its mysterious recipes. Well I went a little crazy and tabbed many, many recipes I would like to attempt. There are some doo-hoo-hoo-zies in there. I was anxious to do one soon, so I picked one for which I already had all the ingredients (a rare find).

The Recipe:

The name is not very appetizing, but I suppose it is meant to be straightforward. To me, it just seemed like it would not work at all. I imagined a pile of greasy cheese melted around a nude olive. The combination of green olive and cheddar? questionable. But, it sounded easy, and I didn't have to buy anything, so what the hell. It took me mere moments to collect all the ingredients, including my adorable salty elephant.

The Players:

The first step, nailed it! ...my cheese was already grated. I kinda eyeballed the quantity. I tossed everything else in there and mixed it up *clicks toungue* really nice. I got a little excited at this point because the dough was turning out to be basically cheezit dough.

I rinsed and dried off the olives before wrappin' em up, and I only used 18 olives before the dough was gone. It was pretty easy to work with dough, which was appreciated. I hate it when flour is all over everything when making dough. This stuff was a lot like play-doh and the recipe would be great for kid participation. Wren tried to participate but she mainly just wanted to eat every olive in sight.

I chilled them in the freezer while we waited for the oven to pre-heat. These little guys smelled fantastic as they baked. They came out looking pretty great too.

Time for a Timothy taste test (with original score by toddler face):

Ok, so the combination of cheddar and green olive is still pretty weird. But this recipe is on to something. Tim and I tried to think of other things you could put inside that might meld a little better in flavor. I thought maybe a jalapeno, or just a plain old cheese ball. Maybe extra shredded cheese inside. Tim had a good idea too of putting a sun dried tomato inside. Considering how easy this was, we may just try one of those.

Between the three of us, ALL of these were gone in literally less than 8 minutes. We spoiled our dinner. Bay Leaves, you've intrigued us. Tim is a lot less reluctant to take this adventure than he was after the green congealed salad, so I guess you're doing pretty well.