For my final meal, I chose to prepare mushroom and sage risotto with brie, sweet potato steaks and spelt chocolate chip cookies. The recipes that I followed for this meal are Porcini Risotto with Crispy Sage and Brie with Garlic Butter Butternut Squash Steaks and Spelt Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies. The theme I chose for the meal was fall flavors. I had to make a few modifications when I made this meal. This first modification I made was obviously using sweet potatoes rather than butternut squash. I chose to do this modification because I had some rather large sweet potatoes on hand and wanted to use them up before I go home for Christmas break. The second modification I did was using cremini mushrooms instead of porcini mushrooms in the risotto. I chose to do this because they were more affordable and the individuals I was preparing this meal for don't like mushrooms so I was the only one who was going to eat them.
One thing that I wish I would have done differently when making this meal was the time that I prepared it at. In hindsight I would have cooked it for lunch so that the lighting would have been better to capture the sweet potato steaks and the risotto. The sweet potato steaks were really good! They were seasoned with lemon, oregano, garlic and I thought that a small splash of maple syrup would really bring out the flavors so I made the executive decision to add that. This was the first time I've ever prepared sweet potatoes in this way and I was immensely pleased with the results and will try again! The risotto was wonderful as well! I don't always love brie, and ended up buy goat cheese brie (because that was the cheapest at Trader Joe's) and I really enjoyed it! I think that the goat cheese mellowed out the pungent flavor that brie usually carries. Finally, the cookies! The recipe was very interesting because it instructed to melt the butter before combining with sugar, rather than just creaming together room temperature butter and the sugar. Also, as I tried to capture in the second to last photo, the goal was to create "puddles" of chocolate. To do this, after eight minutes in the oven, you were instructed to pick up the pan and tap it on the counter before returning it to the oven. The recipe said to do this a total of 3 times. I think I would like to try this recipe again, utilizing a kitchen scale. The recipe was written by weight and so I had to try to do some conversions. I think that I added too much brown sugar in my estimations and that threw off the ratio which ultimately lead to my cookies being so flat. They were really nice and chewy and would make a great ice cream sandwich! Finally, I think that browning the butter, adding rolos and using a more pungent/distinct flour rather than spelt flour would have made these cookies even better!
One thing that I wish I would have done differently when making this meal was the time that I prepared it at. In hindsight I would have cooked it for lunch so that the lighting would have been better to capture the sweet potato steaks and the risotto. The sweet potato steaks were really good! They were seasoned with lemon, oregano, garlic and I thought that a small splash of maple syrup would really bring out the flavors so I made the executive decision to add that. This was the first time I've ever prepared sweet potatoes in this way and I was immensely pleased with the results and will try again! The risotto was wonderful as well! I don't always love brie, and ended up buy goat cheese brie (because that was the cheapest at Trader Joe's) and I really enjoyed it! I think that the goat cheese mellowed out the pungent flavor that brie usually carries. Finally, the cookies! The recipe was very interesting because it instructed to melt the butter before combining with sugar, rather than just creaming together room temperature butter and the sugar. Also, as I tried to capture in the second to last photo, the goal was to create "puddles" of chocolate. To do this, after eight minutes in the oven, you were instructed to pick up the pan and tap it on the counter before returning it to the oven. The recipe said to do this a total of 3 times. I think I would like to try this recipe again, utilizing a kitchen scale. The recipe was written by weight and so I had to try to do some conversions. I think that I added too much brown sugar in my estimations and that threw off the ratio which ultimately lead to my cookies being so flat. They were really nice and chewy and would make a great ice cream sandwich! Finally, I think that browning the butter, adding rolos and using a more pungent/distinct flour rather than spelt flour would have made these cookies even better!
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