That said, although I’ve usually shied away from the pastry arts, it’s always been something I secretly wanted to master. I’ve tried my hand at a few cakes and pies…

The Josh, a rainbow-colored cake with peanut butter frosting.

Monkey Bread that destroyed my oven. No one warned me that caramel would be so difficult to clean up.

Apple Pie. My culinary Moby Dick.

I’m about to get even more practice very soon. I’m taking Baking Fundamentals at cooking school, cake decorating at a local cake shop, and just got an internship at a bakery that makes wedding cakes. I’m pretty excited. I can’t wait to start making crazy cakes!

It’s been a while.

Well to make a long story short, I quit my job. It felt a little crazy to do it in this economy, but it became a matter of “now or never.” We have some savings and not very many responsibilities at the moment so it’s as good a time as any to try out a little life experiment: I went ahead and signed up for a few more cooking classes, a cake decorating class, and applied for an internship at a bakery. Class starts in a couple of weeks and I’ll hear back about the internship next week so we’ll see how that all goes.

So in the spirit of trying out new things, I made a Moroccan meal a few days ago. I found this recipe in The Bon Appetit Cookbook. It didn’t seem very intimidating and I already had most of the ingredients on hand so I decided to give it a shot. Turns out, it pays to try new things every once in a while. Although a tagine is a particular kind of pot used primarily in North African cooking, I just used my Dutch oven and it worked out fine. Whatever heavy-bottom pot you have will work great.

Chicken Tagine and Vegetable Couscous
Adapted from Bon Appetit Cookbook
Serves 2-3

Ingredients

1 Tbsp olive oil
4 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on (about 2 lbs total)
1/2 an onion
1 1/3 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp turmeric
dash of cayenne
2/3 tsp ground ginger
2/3 c low salt chicken broth
small can of olives
lemon, cut into 6 wedges

Heat oil in heavy large pot over high heat. Sprinkle chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Working in batches, add chicken to pot and brown, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to platter. Pour off all but thin film of fat from pot. Add onions. Reduce heat to medium and saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add all spices and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Return chicken pieces to pot, in single layer if possible. Add chicken broth, lemons, and olives. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until chicken is cooked through, basting and turning occasionally, about 30 minutes. Season tagine to taste with salt and pepper.

This can be prepared 1 day ahead so the chicken can sit in the tasty stew but, well, we were hungry and ate almost all of it.

Since I’ve never had couscous before and wasn’t sure what the taste and texture is supposed to be, I just bought a box of instant couscous. I sauteed a quarter of an onion, one zucchini and one summer squash then mixed that with the cooked couscous. It was like teeny tiny rice! Quite delish.

I made Tarte Tatin as a dessert to Valentine’s Day dinner. We don’t make a big fuss about Valentine’s because if you need a special day to make someone feel loved, then you’re probably doing it wrong. It was just another day for us, but we made it an excuse to cook a special dinner. Around our house, that’s what most holidays/sports events/birthdays/weekends come down to: a reason to make ungodly amounts of food.

A lot of food blogs and magazines advocate chocolate anything for Valentine’s Day but Boyfriend is not a big chocolate-eater so I wanted to make something else. I made this tart because he loves apple pie, and because I’ve had an ongoing mission to create a really good one. I’ve tried to make apple pie maybe 4 or 5 times now, and of those, only the first one has ever come out right. It’s a little frustrating, as you can imagine, after all that godforsaken peeling and coring and slicing and dough-rolling, to bite into a mediocre pie. I will admit that my shortfall has always been the dough. I have no patience with it, you see. I helped (mostly watched) my sister make pie dough once and it seemed like an unreasonable amount of work. And the mess! Flour everywhere! So for all of my pies I have always used store-bought crusts.

Please put away the pitchforks. I know it was wrong. I bow my head in shame.

But for this tart, I decided to conquer my doughy fears and go for it. And you know what? It wasn’t all that hard. But it was still kinda messy, I’m not gonna lie.

This tarte hails from Hotel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, France, where it was invented by (happy) accident by the Tatin sisters. According to legend, Stephanie Tatin was trying to make a regular old pie when she realized she had overcooked the apples so she tried to salvage it by slapping pastry dough on top of it and sticking it into the oven. The result was a caramelized, heavenly dessert, and the rest is history.

Tarte Tatin, from Smitten Kitchen

When it came time to flip the tart out of the pan, I had to wheedle Boyfriend into helping me because that cast iron sucker is heavy. But truly, it was divine. Caramely and full of apple goodness, and the crust was just the right kind of flaky. The Granny Smiths tend to be quite tart (no pun intended) but the tartness mellows out after a day. And yes, it is still quite delicious after a day (store at room temperature for 3 days max). Of course you can just cut that tartness with some ice cream or whipped cream but if you want to experiment with other apples, I’ve heard Golden Delicious, Gala or Macintosh turn out great also.

So try this if you want to take a new spin to apple pie. It’s easy and it has a froo froo French name, so of course it will impress.