I've started to accumulate quite the collection of recipes over the past year, but I'm racking up tons more since starting at Publix Aprons. For every class we teach or demonstration we put on, there is a packet of recipes given to everyone who attends.There is alwaysat least one recipe within the packets that I want to try at home. It's pretty cool for our customers to be able to leave with all the recipes for everything they get to make or try while they are here. That way, if there's something you particularly like, there's nothing stopping you from trying it out yourself at home.Asidefrom the insane amount I have saved on Pinterest and Ziplist, I have so many recipes that I've cut out of magazines and now from Aprons. I've been wanting to put them into some kind of recipe box or book and finally found the perfect thing at Barnes and Noble last week. It's a scrapbook with the cutest silverware design on the cover and filled with dividers with sticker labels of different categories of food and see-through pockets tohold the recipes. I love giving myself little projects like that and am very excited to say I finished it this past week. It looks awesome and I'm so excited that all my recipes are finally organized. Yay!
This was another fun-filled week full of new things for me to write about on my "What I Learned" post. For starters, I learned how to make my own cake flour. You take 1 cup of all purpose flour, remove 2 tablespoons and replace it with corn starch. Perfect for those times you randomly feel like baking something a little last minute and see that the recipe calls for cake flour and oops — all you've got is all purpose. I also learned about tomatillos. Though they look like little green tomatoes, they don't really taste like them. They are really more like a cross between a red tomato and a green apple. We made a vinaigrette with tomatillos, jalapeño, a little garlic, hot sauce and apple cider vinegar to go with a skirt steak salad. Obviously I didn't have the steak, but that vinaigrette was really good! That same class also included a recipe for onion focaccia bread. OH. MY. GOD. Honestly, that was one of the best things I've had since starting this job. We've made some delicious things, but this bread was it for me. I could have eaten the entire freaking loaf of it. The dough was full of onions, garlic, rosemary and thyme and then we topped it with caramelized onions that had been cooked with a little Madeira wine. YUM. Baking your own bread is much more satisfying than going out to a store and buying it. I have to tackle this recipe at home, and I have a feeling if I master it, I won't ever have store-bought focaccia again.
Recipes from this week's class I want to try:
-Onion Focaccia
-Farro Salad with Roasted Beets and Radiccio
-Eggplant Lasagna with homemade Marinara