Corn Custard with Chorizo and Mushrooms

With Debbie late coming home from work and probably stressed, I sat and watched the chicken chorizo sausages I had had her leave out of the fridge that morning, and wondered what the h**l I would do with them.  Talk about having to eat your words.

We had had a week of chili, sausage and pasta, and other sausage and bean vehicles, but it seemed as if all the chorizo recipes involved either pasta or legumes.  Sigh.

Then I found this one.  In Epicurious, of course.  And, as it happened, we had mushrooms.  And Debbie loves corn.

Corn Custard with Chorizo and Mushrooms recipe

Above is their picture of it.

Sadly, I didn’t have quite enough mushrooms (and I could believe the quantities they were asking for).  And the chorizo didn’t get quite crispy enough, and didn’t seem to fill the baking dish.

We had a tasty dinner, but not spectacular.  Too corny, if you know what I mean.  Or too custardy.  Not enough savory oomph.

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Here’s mine.  You can just see the yellow-ness of the filling, as opposed to the savory darkness of theirs.

Anyhow, a noble pitching-in.  Reasonably tasty.

Criticism/Self-Criticism:

Follow the recipe the first time

Respect the proportions.

Osso Buco (again)

Had the yen to slow cook something on Saturday, and Debbie signed up to eat Osso Buco if I made it.

(It turns out that a lot of those slow-cooking things squeam her out.  Like oxtail stew, or even lamb shanks.  I was surprised.  I guess you can know someone for a long time and still find out things about them.)

Debbie loves Marcella Hazan, so I found this recipe for osso buco online.

Only thing is it calls for 2 hours cooking, and I wanted to put it in the slow cooker for like 6 hours.  After some dithering and fretting, I did just that.

It turned out fine.  The meat was tender and falling off the bone.  The marrow was satisfactory (and, because of squeam, I got Debbie’s marrow as well).

Criticism/Self-Criticism: I was afraid to brown the shanks too long and burn the pot/use up the oil.  You can’t brown stuff too long.