My roommate's girlfriend makes a lot of chocolate desserts that he brings home to share with me. She made some really good brownies which inspired me to return the favor. However, I wanted to make it a little weirder, so I used Serious Eats' ginger spice brownies recipe. This is a heavily spiced dessert akin to gingerbread. The brownies are great with a complex flavor, but they ended up being cakier than I prefer. The recipe calls for the cake to register at 210°F, which may be the culprit, or perhaps too much flour.

Since it includes such intense flavors, I thought it would be nice to pair it with something fatty to balance it. I took the opportunity to try Adam Ragusea's 2 Bowl Ice Cream method.

I had a few problems with this method. While I did incorporate a significant amount of air, I never got to stiff peaks while whipping the ice cream base. I think that may be because I added too much milk, throwing off the fat to water ratio. The base didn't deflate much on the second mixing either. I also accidentally added peppermint extract instead of vanilla, so I had to pivot to a mint chocolate chip ice cream. Luckily, the ginger spice brownies still go well with mint. I ended up with 2 and a half quarts which was way more than I expected (probably due to the retained air).

In 2017 I visited New Orleans for a work conference. On my last day there, I had crawfish étouffée for the first time. It was so good that it made a lasting impression on me. Last year, I tried the crawfish étouffée from a new-ish Cajun restaurant where I live. Unfortunately, I was not impressed. To be fair, it was not bad, I was just comparing it to a rose-tinted memory of a dish made by the actual authorities on the dish. Nonetheless, the experience inspired me to make étouffée myself.

I used the Serious Eats recipe for shrimp étouffée since it's a bit difficult to get crawfish where I live. It consists of two major operations: making a shrimp stock and making the étouffée itself. The base of the stock is made from the shells of the shrimp used later in the main dish. It is a relatively quick stock since you are only extracting flavor and not gelatin like a bone-based stock or broth. However, it still helps to split the two operations up in time. The recipe also makes enough stock for two batches of étouffée. So, I froze one quart for a future use.

All of which brings us to the present day where I was searching for something to make and remembered the special purpose shrimp stock that had been in my freezer for a year. Making the étouffée itself is pretty simple, it's just make a roux, sweat some Cajun trinity vegetables, add spices and the stock, simmer until vegetables are soft, and cook your meat in the sauce. In my opinion, the most impactful step is making the roux. I like a "peanut butter" colored roux because it adds a complex, nutty flavor without overshadowing the other flavors. This time, I also added some home grown garlic scapes as a garnish. Finally, serve with rice and a dry white wine.

I little while ago I saw a video about various sandwich "salads" by Adam Ragusea.

I vaguely remembered the egg salad from that video and decided to make my own. In particular, I remembered that his wife made a deviled egg style filling that the chopped whites get tossed in. I hardboiled 4 eggs by simmering them in just enough water to cover for 14 minutes. I threw together a deviled egg filling loosely inspired by J. Kenji's deviled egg recipe. My favorite part of this recipe is the addition of a high quality olive oil. A peppery oil works very well.

This time I combined egg yolks, homemade mayo, stone-ground mustard, capers, diced celery and its leaves, diced dill pickle, salt, pepper, cayenne, and paprika to create the base. Then I whisked in some olive oil until it became a lighter consistency and added the chopped egg whites.

I served the egg salad in a wrap with a few leaves of red oakleaf lettuce from my countertop aerogarden. If you like deviled eggs, this is a great excuse to make a meal out of them.

J. Kenji's non-traditional mapo tofu video brought this dish to my attention.

He uses Japanese flavors to make something similar to the original dish. As he was discussing the traditional ingredients and why he was replacing them, I realized that I could get somewhat close to the original dish with what I had on hand. I still had to make some substitutions, but I wasn't trying to alter the fundamental flavors that much. Luckily, Kenji also has a "real-deal" mapo tofu recipe.

I replaced:

• Xiaoxing wine with a mixture of dry Sherry and sake.
• Chicken stock with beef boullion (I didn't want to thaw a quart to use 1/4 cup).
• Black bean paste with gochujang (Korean chili and bean paste).
• Roasted chili oil with my chili crisp.

I also reduced the amount of Sichuan peppercorns by half because the chili crisp already has some in it. For that reason, I only toasted and fried the peppercorns rather than grind them and add it back to the final dish. I felt like it was a reasonable step to take out.

I ran into a few problems making this dish. First, I used too much oil, so it was hard to emulsify into a sauce. I ended up adding twice the corn starch slurry and the sauce still broke easily when it cooled down. Even though I added no extra salt, this dish was very salty. The chili crisp and gochujang are fairly salty, but I think I added too much beef boullion for the 1/4 cup stock I was supposed to use. To fix this problem, I served the mapo tofu with unsalted, buttered rice to dilute the salt. The final issue is that there was not enough heat or numbing (the málà flavor). I wish that I had included more Sichuan peppercorns.

It's still a really good dish that I want to try again. Hopefully next time it will be strong enough to really activate some endorphins.

I recently saw Helen Rennie's video for stuffed cabbage rolls.

Since I love cabbage, I really wanted to try it. I have a few pounds of ground deer meat that I got from a hunter friend, so I replaced the veal in the meatloaf mix with deer. I also used the optional gelatin as a safegaurd.

Trimming the stems of the cabbage leaves was a great way to increase the flexibility of the leaves. The filling was still a bit too crumbly at the end. I could add more binders to the mix (breadcrumbs and eggs), and/or knead the mixture more to get it tighter. My sauce also didn't reduce much during the braise, but that is not a problem when serving the rolls browned as suggested in the video.

There are a lot of steps in the process, but it felt very manageable with two people. One of us focused on the cabbage and sauce while the other focused on the filling and forming of the rolls.

I had a lot of leftover frozen corn, so I made Korean Cheese Corn. I didn't have doenjang, so I replaced it with white miso and a little gochujang. It's decent, but I didn't like it as the main course. It would probably be much better with lots of beer and other appetizers like the article says.

I bought some chicory root online to explore some new tea blends and coffee alternative. However, I bought far too much for just some experiments. As usual, I searched around for some recipes to use more of it. I decided to make chicory chocolate banana cake. It's definitely a bit odd, but turned out very good after sitting for a couple days. I'd describe it as a coffee banana brownie.

I recently saw a video by a new-to-me food youtuber, Helen Rennie, for a Spinach and Feta Pie with Pizza Dough.

I really liked the idea of making a galette (laziest/best way to make pie) with a no-knead pizza dough rather than a fiddly pie dough. You mix up a pizza dough until it just comes together and then let it cold ferment 1-4 days in the fridge to develop gluten and flavor. The process makes the dough extremely easy to shape later on.

The real star of the show was the filling. Helen's suggestion to use all sorts of herbs really improves on the standard spinach pie formula. Spinach and feta alone, while it provides a nice earthiness, is too one note for me. So, the extra accents that the herbs provided are crucial. I added parsley, green onions, and a dash of dried tarragon. I couldn't get fresh dill on short notice, but I would have loved to add that as well. I also coerced my roommate into making his favorite tzatziki to contribute to the meal.

I did have a small issue with the technique presented in the video. My tongs are not silicone tipped, so they ripped the parchment that had become brittle in the oven. I wonder if a silicone mat might have worked better or if it would not have survived those temperatures directly on the oven rack.

I wanted to make Miso-Squash Soup With Sesame-Ginger Apples, but I couldn't find all the ingredients. In particular, I couldn't find bonito flakes at the normal place. Bonito flakes (katsuobushi) are simmered, smoked and fermented skipjack tuna. They give dashi (kombu + katsuobushi), a japanese fish stock which is the base of miso soup, a smoky/meaty flavor. I couldn't even find it (or instant dashi for that matter!) in the biggest Asian market in my city. So, I had to improvise a bit. A while ago, I was really into making different kinds of stocks. I had frozen quarts of a vegan stock and a French fish stock (fumet). I decided to replace the dashi with a combination of these two stocks because the vegan stock included kombu and dried mushrooms while the fumet was the only fishy stock I had.

I boosted the fish flavor with some anchovy paste that I normally use in Italian dishes. I also used two acorn squash instead of the butternut asked for in the recipe. I like acorn squash because you can eat the thinner skin once cooked and they work very well in braised dishes.

I really like this dish because it reminds me of fall with the squash and apples, but still has a distinct flavor from the Asian ingredients. Emptying my older pantry items is a big plus as well.

I visited my family recently for Easter. We cook a big meal with a ham and multiple soup options. My sister and I requested extra vegetables for crudités. We ended up getting too much and I brought home a lot of carrots. I was searching for a carrot cake recipe and stumbled across a carrot cake conserve recipe. I decided to make it because it was weird and I still had some commercial pectin that I was too scared to use in my raspberry hibiscus jam. I had reservations on using pineapple, but it turned out really well. It doesn't taste too much of any of the fruit included and truly does taste like carrot cake.

I combined this jam with my favorite sous vide cheesecake recipe to make carrot cheesecake. Instead of using graham crackers, I just sprinkled chopped walnuts on top. I like the cheesecake a lot, but my favorite way to eat the jam is on a bagel with cream cheese and walnuts.