White chocolate grapefruit brown butter cookies

Another random recipe that called to me, I love white chocolate, grapefruit, and cookies, how could I not try these? I had never had or made brown butter before. Fortunately I work at a bakery and was able to ask for help. Jill told me there was two things I needed to know about brown butter; all you do is put it on a medium-low and walk away, and that I would become addicted to it. I still Googled how to make it and was happy to see pictures so I knew what to look for when it was done.

The other thing I sprung for is a Microplane. The difference it makes in zesting compared to the zesting side of a cheese grater is amazing! Totally worth the $15 if you do any amount of zesting citrus, ginger, or garlic.

I don't own a mixer so I made these all by hand. Takes a little longer, but every bite made me happy that I made these.

I really like soft cookies so I recommend doing these on the shorter time. They will look a little soft but trust me, they will firm up as they cool down.

If you like cookies, make these! Recipe can be found here

Pork, Papaya, and Cashew stir-fry

I have not been very good at blogging. I have several recipes I need to post the problem is I just get going and forget to take any pictures, so I'll have to make them again, which I am ok with.

We have been watching all the James Bond movies in order with a friend. At some point we decided it would be fun to have food from the country that the movie takes place in or travels to. I don't really have the culinary cultural background to make food from all the places so I find a recipe that seems promising from either on-line or "The Best Recipes in The World" cookbook by Mark Bittman.

Tonight we watched "Tomorrow Never Dies" which partially takes place in China. I like to discover new things and turned to the Internet this time. The first recipe I looked at was translated from Chinese to English. It was a pig and papaya soup, sounded interesting. The recipe called for half a "catty pig." A Google search quickly revealed that catty pig is also guinea pig. I don't know that I could convince myself or my wife to eat it if I could even find it. Guinea pigs were some of the first domesticated animals and it was for food. I know lots of people in the world eat it, but it's not common where we live.

I liked the idea of papaya and pork, it's been cooling down lately and we have some snow so I thought soup would be a good option. My first Google search for a pork and papaya soup returned a recipe called "Green Papaya and Pork Rib soup, Big Breast Food" Um...OK, don't really think we need that, but if you think you do just Google it. I don't really think it will have that effect, I actually realized that we had had soup for two days in a row and wanted a change. Then I found the pork, papaya, and cashew stir fry.

 I have never done anything with papaya and don't recall that I've ever had it fresh. I think papaya is that weird unidentified pinkish fruit in cans of fruit salad people add marshmallows to and take to pot lucks. 

   I knew from researching how to purchase a good one, which some people say isn't possible in Montana, that the seeds inside would look like large caviar so I wasn't too surprised when the did. As I don't have a comparison, I was quite happy with my first papaya and the flavor it had.



The recipe calls for Chinese greens. The grocery store I went to only had napa cabbage. That is perfect since it originally comes from the Beijing region in China. This recipe goes together pretty quick and as with all stir-fries, prepare everything before you start cooking anything, trust me, you will burn something if you don't.

 
The first time I make a recipe I follow it pretty close to the instructions. The pork and papaya work together quite well. In fact, that's really the only way they worked in this recipe. A bite or pork without papaya was not bad, but sort of bland. A bite with the papaya was really good. Good enough that everybody went back for seconds. The overall consensus for the stir-fry was that it needed more vegetables and something to make the flavor pop. Everybody wants to try it again with water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and snow peas.

 
 Here is a link to the recipe, stir-crazy-pork-and-papaya-280370. If you have a papaya recipe you'd like to share with me please do.