Guest star: Liz

Was invited to a tasting last month for my friend who is in pastry school. She made this smashing pistachio creme brulee with chocolate cookies. The doily was a little girlie for my tastes, though.

Check out Liz's adventures at http://bakedbyliz.blogspot.com/

Poached eggs

Poaching eggs is surprisingly difficult. The timing seems kind of weird, because you get a bunch of carry-over after you take them out. Here's what I did:

1. Simmer a few inches of water.
2. Add a pinch of salt and half pinch of sour salt (or vinegar, but I didn't have any white vinegar on hand).
3. One egg at a time, crack egg into a bowl and slide the egg into the simmering water.
4. Cook for 3 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon. (Cook longer if you don't like runny eggs, but 5 minutes seemed to give me pretty hard cooked eggs and 4 minutes wasn't runny enough)

I put mine on top of hash browns and chopped proscuitto, with some hot sauce and S&P to top it all off. Next stop, hollandaise!

Salad night

Some avocado, peppadew peppers, tomatoes, field greens, and a hunk of rustic wheat.

Wok fired eggplant

This is a spicy dish that I unfortunately made inferno-hot. The recipe comes from Grace Young's book, The Breath of a Wok, which is beautiful if you ever are interested in stir-frying.

Basically it's steamed eggplant that is then stir fried with some chili and a basic stir fry sauce. I cut it in half as a main dish for one person, but forgot to cut the amount of chili in half. Fuego!

Braised cabbage

Sorry! Long hiatus due to the lack of motivation to cook much anymore. Here is some braised cabbage that kept me going for a good 3 meals. Basically cabbage + apple cider vinegar + garlic + onions + water + sugar. I'd use real apples next time to add some more flavor.

Banana ice cream topping

This one was completely off the cuff. Some bananas browned in butter, tossed with sugar, rum and vanilla extract. Turned out pretty decent, but I think next time I'll use higher heat to begin with, because the bananas got kind of mushy. And honestly, who likes a mushy banana?

Cream puffs

My mom's favorite dessert, prepared with some help from my top-pastry-chef friends.