The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

I followed the cake ( recipe exactly )





I used a spring form pan. I have to say, I wasn't very impressed. The texture of the cake is a little odd. It's moist yet crumbly at the same time. Also, it is a bit too rich. Admittedly, the addition of ice cream "fixes" these things. With ice cream on tip of the cake, the texture improves, the the neutralizing effects of the dairy in the ice cream reduces the richness of the cake. This is strange, because on it's own, the ice cream is very rich, too, but it matches well with the cake. I've made flourless chocolate cake before, so I don't know why I didn't like this one very much.

The ice cream, by the way, is a cinnamon ice cream that I often make. It's a custard-based ice cream (half-and-half (and/or cream, milk, etc.), eggs, sugar) with vanilla and cinnamon. It's delicious. Here's a photo of the ice cream right before putting it into the ice cream maker:

For dinner today, I cut up some veggies (baby carrots, yellow squash, asparagus, and apples, so it was not just veggies, but fruit as well), tossed them with olive oil, herbs and salt, and baked them until done. I committed a kitchen blasphemy by pairing the veggies with boxed mashed potatoes.


Because dinner was less than exciting, I made chocolate chip cookies for dessert. I decided to try a new recipe, because a friend raved about these on her blog.
She was right; they're delicious.

Yes, I know that most people would choose to write about voting, since that is on the forefront of everyone's minds today, but frankly, I'll stick to simply voting and keep it at that.

For those of you who don't know, November is National Blog Posting Month, which explains the sudden onslaught of posting by yours truly. At NaBloPoMo, all users are encouraged to post every day throughout the month. At the end of the 30 days, they will give away prizes to random members who have accomplished doing just that. We'll see if I can stick to it.

Anyway, yesterday I attempted to recreate one of my favorite meals from my time in Japan. No, it's not Japanese food. It's from a Peruvian restaurant called La Bodeguita.

(Thanks to some random gaikokujin living in Isesaki for that pic I found on flicker.com.

The meal is called Pollo Saltado. It's made with chicken, onions, tomatoes, french fries, and various ingredients for the marinade. It's usually served with rice. At La Bod, they had an AMAZING sauce that went with basially every menu item they served. We all loved it. A few people, right before leaving the country, asked for the recipe; they never got it.

La Bodeguita sauce

My attempt was a valiant effort, but it feel just a tad short of the real thing. I think I put too much cumin. For the sauce, the taste was divine, but it was not spicy enough, and the color was wrong, wrong, wrong. I used yellow chiles, so next time I will use some sort of red or orange chili.
My attempt