Adventures in Cooking

I was watching an episode of Master Chef the other evening.  The contestants were making fresh ravioli, and I thought "Why haven't I ever done that?"  It seems like it might be a little challenging to get the dough to be the right consistency and to roll it out to the proper thickness, but nothing that some practice wouldn't fix.

I decided then and there that I would in the near future make some homemade ravioli from scratch.  And then I started to think about the other kinds of foods that I'd like to try making and haven't.  I think it would be a lot of fun to pick a few of them to make each month and start trying out new things.  Some are things I've eaten in restaurants but haven't done myself, some are cooking techniques I want to learn and some will be things that I've heard about but haven't yet eaten and that just plain sound good.

My list so far:

• Fresh ravioli
• Bubble and squeak
• Something Irish (possibly Colcannon)
• Something German - I was thinking Schnitzel and Spaetzle, but apparently Schnitzel is Austrian; I may just do that, anyway.  Another one that sounds good is Hochzeitssuppe, a German wedding soup.
• Brining a chicken - I've never brined poultry but have heard that it imparts great flavor and keeps it from drying out
• Improving my grilling skills and increasing my repertoire of what I grill beyond burgers, hot dogs, smoked sausages and chicken.  I've also never tried doing a dry rub, and want to do that.
• Baking cakes and cupcakes more often so that I can improve my decorating skills and perfect my recipes for cake and frosting.  Two cake recipes I found recently that I want to make: Butter Cake with Browned Butter Frosting, and Chocolate Pumpkin Layer Cake with Brown Sugar Frosting.  Yum!
• Cuban food - probably garlic chicken with rice and black beans.  I also have a copycat recipe for Zankou Chicken's garlic paste that I really want to try.  Zankou Chicken is a small chain of restaurants in the L.A. area.  They have awesome rotisserie chicken and serve it with Middle Eastern side dishes, and the garlic paste is a spread for pita bread, or you can do like I do and put it right on the chicken.
• Homemade tamales
• Bread - James got me a book called Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, and I have to try a recipe from it.  Must remedy that one, and soon!

I'm sure I'll be adding to this list as I think about other things I want to try.  Plus I have recipes bookmarked in my AllRecipes Recipe Box that I have never tried, and ones that are in my recipe binder.

I need to get busy with planning meals so that I can schedule some of this stuff in and get started!