Tender Grilled Baby Octopus

Just walking through the grocery store, I see baby octopus. I love octopus and immediately grabbed a package excitedly!

Once I got the octopus home however I realized I hadn't cooked octopus in ages and though I love it at my favorite Japanese spots I had yet to discover how to make it tender and delicious at home.

Hence, this recipe from Mark's Daily Apple.

Quick Pickled Mushrooms

I love marinated mushrooms. Period.

It's just hard to find a nice, clean, easy, quick recipe. Look no further. Using the Chopped Cookbook as a base, I modified their recipe for Quick Pickled Baby Cremini into a slightly heartier and elegant recipe.

Meatloaf

This recipe is adapted from Alton Brown. It's the best way to use up a lot of veggies as I do vary this to sneak in mushrooms (I once tricked a mushroom hater), carrots, zucchini, and any other kitchen sink variant you can think of.

Our Salton Yogurt Maker

Homemade Yogurt

We found a wonderful vintage ehem, yes I said vintage yogurt maker in a thrift shop for $2. I was so excited at the prospect of making yogurt despite not having much money we ran out and promptly bought some milk and some fage (fah-ye) brand yogurt for a starter.

I looked up two things for this "new" machine - a Salton Yogurt Maker from the 1970s. I would swear ours seems even older but we lucked out with having all the base parts together. The original glass jars with plastic lids, the lid to the machine, and the machine base ... with the "reminder" knob still in the lid. Woohoo!

The Adventure of Hot Buttered Rum from scratch

Hot buttered rum.

Yes, it may be June. But it's a cold and rainy day. Normally, we'd go pick up a 6 pack but after watching the rain all lazily today while we worked on our computers generating income ... by dinner time ... we wanted hot buttered rum.

After scouring the internet for a few minutes, too many recipes were calling for ice cream or a dairy element I wanted to avoid. I really like the hot buttered rum batter from Trader Joe's which don't seem to have a lot of excess ingredients and I wanted to keep it that way.

Wild Boar Ragu

 This sauce pairs best with pappardelle, but any pasta shape will work. This recipe was originally developed for wild boar, but works equally well with pork shoulder. Use a good-quality, medium-bodied wine for this stew.

Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse Cake

Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse Cake

Cook's Illustrated
Because it is available in most supermarkets and has scored highly in past tastings, Hershey's Special Dark is the chocolate of choice in this recipe. Other bittersweet chocolates will work, but because amounts of sugar and cocoa butter differ from brand to brand, they will produce cakes with slightly different textures and flavors. When crumbling the brown sugar to remove lumps, make sure that your fingers are clean and grease-free; any residual fat from butter or chocolate might hinder the whipping of the whites. If you like, dust the cake with confectioners' sugar just before serving or top slices with a dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream. 

Makes one 9-inch cake, serving 12 to 16