Aioli and Almond Flour: Day One

June 4 - Today's rainy weather was perfect for my first day as a personal chef. The entirety of the afternoon and evening (before the Bachelorette) was spent in the kitchen, trying out two recipes and dancing around to Saint Motel. Personally, I'm obsessed with the New York Times Cooking section, and the choices I made from their selection did not disappoint.

Before dinner, we tackled the recipe for blueberry, almond and lemon cake. I learned how to use a KitchenAid mixer, without covering myself in flour, and got to test out the hot bowl “hack” to soften butter. (It only works if you’re patient, which I’m not.) Otherwise, the recipe itself did not require a crazy amount of preparation, and most of the prep time was spent with the cake in the oven. Overall, the cake turned out pretty good! It was dense with the addition of almond flour, the taste of lemon was present and sweet, and the blueberries were a perfect companion to the flavors.

My biggest concern with the loaf was that all the blueberries fell to the bottom. Hearing Paul Hollywood nagging in my head, I looked into how to stop this and found that coating the fruit in flour before adding them to the batter should help. (Thank you, queen Nigella Lawson). Additionally, I got over excited and put the frosting on the cake way before it was cool enough. So, if you’re going to tackle this recipe, besides following the instructions, adding some flour to the berries and being patient with cooling should make for a yummy and successful bake!

For dinner, I make pan seared cod (subbing in cod for hake) with garlic aioli, asparagus, and glazed carrots. The fish and asparagus recipes came from NYT cooking, and I was super excited to make an aioli. I’m not entirely sure what the definition of an aioli is, but I have been known to order something from a restaurant solely because the word aioli made the dish sound fancier. However, this one sort of fell flat for us. It called for garlic, lemon juice, salt, egg, egg yolk, chives, and an ungodly amount of olive oil. The consistency was nice on top of the fish, but the flavor was overwhelmingly olive oil, so for next time I should measure less, or taste periodically while blending.

The asparagus and cod cooked separately, after one another in the same pan, and were seasoned simply. Despite the simple flavors, they came out wonderful, the asparagus especially tender and delicious, and the cod browned and flaky. We thought the dish needed a bit more, so we made another side of glazed carrots, using a recipe by Alice Waters. They came from such a basic recipe that I was shocked at how good they were, but I should’ve known better considering whose recipe I was dealing with.

Overall, today’s cooking exceeded my expectations, and I think did the same for Brenda and my mom. They were thrilled with their meals, and I was surprised I didn’t mess anything up too bad. Today has me looking forward to all the amazing meals to come and feeling a bit more confident.

Thank you for reading my first post! Check out the recipes to try them for yourself and let me know if you have any suggestions!

#food #dinner #cooking #recipe #cod #aioli #carrots #asparagus #cake #lemon #blueberry #cherrytable