LCG's New Toy: Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i

Since LCG is getting serious about her blogging, my little point and click camera simply wasn't cutting it anymore, so I upgraded to a beginner DSLR. These days, you can get a pretty great camera for less than $1,000. After consulting with my fellow bloggers and photographers, I decided to stick with Canon and bought the EOS Digital Rebel T1i. If you're not into gadgets, then this post really isn't for you, but I have to gush about how sweet this camera is: 15.1 Megapixel Canon CMOS sensor, DIGIC 4 Image Processor, a 3.0-inch Clear View LCD with anti-reflective and scratch-resistant coating, and compatibility with the EOS System of lenses and Speedlites, the EOS Rebel T1i adds remarkable Full HD video capture at resolutions up to 1920 x 1080.
Not that this means much to me now, but it will, one day soon. I'm determined to become a better photographer. Here is my first attempt, with my cantankerous 11-year-old constant companion Kirby serving as my subject:

For a Clear View

I love Los Angeles after it rains. The rain washes away the dirt and dinge and allows the beauty of this city to shine through. Sometimes you have to look hard to see it, but it's always there. El-El took these pictures from our outside patio with her very cool camera. She's turning into quite the photographer (check out her Photojourna.lists)

The first is a view of La Canada looking out over our pool with Mount Wilson standing tall and proud in the background, and the second is a view of downtown Pasadena and beyond.

Recreation: Green Apple Rosemary Sorbet

As promised, I attempted to reverse engineer the Green Apple Rosemary Sorbet we had at Niche in St. Louis last month. My friend A at LickityList originally experienced this delightful treat with me, and we both formulated a plan to try to recreate it ourselves.

Here's how I attacked it: boiled rosemary in simple syrup until my entire house smelled like a Christmas tree. Grated 6 granny smiths (unpeeled) and the juice of one lemon in my food processor (because I broke our blender making bisque on Thanksgiving, boo), then pulsed until I had juicy puree. Strained the juice in my chinois, then added just a hint of the pulp back into the mix for texture and color. Then I added the juice mixture to the rosemary simple syrup and threw all of that into my ice cream maker. Unfortunately, my impatience got the best of me (as usual) and I made two critical errors: 1) I didn't freeze my ice cream maker bowl long enough to bring it down to freezing temperature, and to make matters worse, 2) I didn't chill my simple syrup enough before pouring it into the ice cream maker. You can guess that freezing the solution into a lovely sorbet consistency was pretty much a lost cause. Also, waiting around for the mixture to freeze caused me to lose some of my lovely green color, making my sorbet look more like pea soup, a problem also experienced by A at Lickity List (because as we all know, apples brown: polyphenols + oxygen = rust colorations).

Determined not to forfeit, into the freezer my concoction went. It froze as expected, I scraped and scraped the rock hard green mass with a spoon, and voila: Green Apple Rosemary Snow Cone...minus the cone.

The verdict: the texture was all wrong (because it wasn't, afterall, a sorbet), but according to Big N, the taste was actually better than Niche's. Mine had more rosemary flavor, which gave it a refreshing minty quality, but it wasn't too sweet. I may try this one again, sans Ice Cream maker mishaps. It'd make a lovely intermezzo for the wine pairing tasting menu I'm planning for late-January. More on that later.

Failed Attempt: Cheesy Churriscaria Rolls

This weekend my cooking adventure was to try to duplicate the delicious cheesy doughy goodness dinner rolls that I've devoured at the local churriscaria. The restaurant itself is so-so, but the cheese dough balls are to die for. I fantasize about having these rolls daily-- opening the flaky crust and digging out the warm gooey center. Heavenly.

So I started with a simple choux (1 cup flour, 4 eggs, 1 cup water), the same kind of dough used for profiteroles. I added fresh thyme and parsley, and grated in pecorino and gruyere, plus salt of course. I baked for 40 minutes at 400 and the result was tasty, but the texture wasn't quite right. The crust was flaky and slightly crunchy, but the inside was too eggy, and not nearly enough doughy goodness. Alas, weekend craziness did not permit another attempt, but I intend to nail these by Thanksgiving.

Churriscaria rolls will be mine to cherish any time I want. I'm determined.