recent cooking successes

As much as I like to cook, living by myself often means that I don't do as much of it as I would like...for days at a time, I seem to survive off of cheese, yogurt, and fruit (okay, wine too, this is a fruit, right?). I'm placing coffee in the same category as oxygen and water. I realized that I hadn't eaten any meat aside from a sampling of Thankgiving turkey for weeks, so I decided to roast a kosher chicken from Trader Joe's. I'm not sure if it was the kosher nature of the chicken or my decision to roast it back up and then turn it over to let the breast brown during the last 20 minutes of cooking or simple luck, but it was the BEST roasted chicken I have ever made. I stuffed it with lemon quarters and big pieces of peeled ginger root, on a bed of tiny potatoes, celery, tomatoes, onion and garlic. Finally, I brushed the whole thing with some spiced tamarind sauce my mother sent me. At the moment, I am simmering the leftover carcass for soup, which I anticipate will be delicious.

I also made two chocolate zucchini cakes for a graduation party on Friday (sadly, not my own!). These cakes are almost annoyingly good and easy, beating out my previous orange chocolate zucchini cake from years ago...this one use more zucchini and seems to be fairly impervious to overcooking.

Here's the recipe:

Grate zucchini to equal 2.5 to 3 cups, lightly packed

Chop 1.5 cups frozen cherries

butter and flour: one bundt pan or two layer cake pans (parchment paper makes these easier to deal with)

For cake pans, preheat oven to 375 degrees F

For bundt pan, preheat oven to 350 degrees F

1) Beat together:

three eggs

2/3 cup white sugar

2/3 cup brown sugar, packed

approximately 1 T vanilla extract

approximately 1 t citrus zest

2/3 cup neutral vegetable oil

3/4 cup cocoa

2) Sift/sieve and then mix together:

1.5 cup flour (Cake flour is best, but all purpose works too)

1 t baking soda

1 t baking powder

1 t cinnamon

1/2 t ground cardamom

1/2 t salt

3) Mix zucchini into sugar/oil/egg

4) Rapidly fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients until about half mixed, then fold in chopped cherries and about half a package of chocolate chips until flour streaks are gone...nuts are also good. The batter will start to puff very quickly and I try to get everything mixed before this point so that I don't beat the bubbles out.

5) Quickly transfer batter to prepared pans, knock pans on counter to get rid of large bubbles. Bake until knife inserted in middle comes out clean...about 25 minutes for layer cakes, 45 to 50 minutes for bundt pan.

Let the cakes cool completely before taking them out out the pan, otherwise they will fall apart.

Most recently, I frosted these with a mix of cream cheese, mascarpone cheese, powered sugar, vanilla, orange zest and Triple Sec.

This cake seems to be best when served the day after baking...all of the flavors meld, particularly the spices and orange.