GCC: Menu 27 - Spanish Lentils

April 03, 2011 by Monica in Cookbooks, Cooking Club, Gutsy Cooks Club, Main Courses

It felt good to be back in the kitchen this weekend. First order of business was taking care of lunch and what better way to do that then serve our gutsy cook option for this week, which was Spanish Lentils.

I could go on about how lentils is a pulse and not a grain and all that jazz, but then I wrote about it in our Gutsy Cook pre-cook post and you can read about it here.

This recipe was super easy to do, the only thing I found difficult was to get the lentils to be soft enough for the dish. I cooked them as noted, but after 40 minutes they were still hard, not even to “al dente” stage, but “hard”. So, I cooked them an extra 15 minutes and they still did not reached the right stage. I was afraid of cooking them more, since they still had to be cooked with the other ingredients, so I took them out and hoped for the best.

GCC: Menu 25 - Sweet and Sour Chicken

March 20, 2011 by Monica in Chicken, Cookbooks, Cooking Club, Dinner, Gutsy Cooks Club, Main Courses, Quick Meal, Vegetable

I love quick food, so there is not surprise that I live anything that can be cooked in a wok. The prep work may be a bit long, since they use a long list of ingredients, but for the most part, that is the only thing you need to do, then it’s just a matter of firing up that wok and step by step you pile on the good stuff and end up with this:

Oh yes, it did taste as good as it looks.

HCB: Devil’s Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

March 14, 2011 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Cake, Cookbooks, HCB, Sweets

I just realized that the last post I did for my Heavenly Cake Group was the Cradle Cake, which was back in January – Yikes! I’m surprise Marie has not kicked my butt out of the club.

I do have to come clean and blame the fact that the last couple of cakes in the list have just not been favorites of mine, and I know myself well to know that if I’m not feeling it, then most likely I not going to make the effort.

But, I have missed it.

So, when I saw this weeks’ choice, I was ready to go, no only because I been craving chocolate cake like crazy as of late, but I also had a house party to go to on Saturday night and I figure this was a perfect cake to take and share.

This cake is the reason I love chocolate so much and Rose’s recipes go straight to my dark chocolate heart. The ganache is made with cocoa and chocolate, plus caramel, just to give it a punch and make it even richer. While the recipes does give you the option of adding dried sour cherries soaked in Cognac, I opted out of this – the fruit, not the liquor.

The cake does not fall behind either, since uses 99% cacao chocolate, cocoa powder and if that does not make it deeper in chocolate flavor, how about using Muscovado sugar to give it an extra punch? Yep, the cake is like a chocolate explosion. The batter (yes, I do try my cake batters) was decadent and I almost had to stop myself from eating a spoonful of the stuff.

I started the cake early in the day, since the plan ahead tells you to make the ganache at least SIX hours before using it. Miss your cocoa powder with the boiling water, vanilla extract and Cognac (without the cherries). Then chopped up an additional 200 grams of dark chocolate (since I did not want to dirty up my food processor, I basically chopped it up with my chisel and put in a bowl to await the hot, caramel. Then it was sugar time.