Humdrum.

It's been an outstandingly mediocre couple of weeks in my kitchen. I tried three more recipes out of Best International Recipe, and I would have to say all three were a bit of a let-down. Let me detail the disappointments for you.

The tomato-mushroom tart (I fused the original, tomato-based recipe with a variation also listed) was fine in all its components except the crust. A fairly important component. I loved the (inexplicably surprising) notion of making a crust with olive oil instead of butter. It was very easy to work with and press in the pan. But. One thing that makes my stomach turn is sweetness where it doesn't belong. Such as in a savory tart crust. After reading that 1 Tbsp of sugar was to be added to the crust, which is the same quantity as in most (dessert) pie crust recipes I've come across, I scanned the informative pre-recipe "abstract" (one more thing I love about Cook's Illustrated & co.) and found that tasters apparently liked a touch of sweetness in the crust, playing off the tomato taste. To me nothing is more revolting than tomatoes + overt sweetness. I should have adjusted the recipe accordingly, but CI has me well-trained to trust them blindly. Unfortunately that weird taste combination ruined this tart for me. I'd be glad to try it again with maybe 1/2 tsp instead of 1 Tbsp of sugar, though sometime down the road, because my stomach still turns when I think of what it tasted like.

It looked halfway decent for something I made, though.

Tonight I finally made the Swedish-inspired cold-poached salmon I've been wanting to try, along with the creamy dill-cucumber salad, both in the central Europe section of BIR. This morning I swung by Fresh Market and got my Atlantic salmon fillets, which lay pale and sad beside their bright pink $20/lb Copper River counterpart. It's not as though my frugal (cheap?) self would really be tempted, but the visual difference was marked. I think it was almost certainly better salmon than I could have gotten at Kroger or Publix, or maybe Fresh Marketing is just working on me as intended...it's the classical music and the soothing forest green everywhere. Anyway, the salmon and sour cream sauce weren't bad, but it turns out that M doesn't go for cold fish, or really anything creamy (e.g., the sauce---what a freak). I was just so curious about this method, and it was tasty salmon, so I don't regret trying it once.

The crisp cucumber salad elicited that strange phenomenon where, during the first two bites, something tastes perfect; but after the third you suddenly don't want anymore---you want it off your plate entirely. I can't identify the problem here. Too much pungency, or potency, or something. Sad. The picture I took of this little ensemble was so horrendous I won't post it. I will post the picture I took when I got so excited about the beautiful onion slices my sharp little mandolin was churning out. Between the cucumbers and onions, I used it for like 10 minutes and didn't slice off so much as a fingernail! A pleasant surprise.

Hopefully better things are to come with homemade burgers tomorrow (finally breaking out the KitchenAid grinder attachment I got for Christmas), and an auténtico Rick Bayless recipe later in the week. I finally checked out a cookbook of his and it looks legit. I want to make everything immediately.