K's Test Kitchen

I've been gone for a week: I need to cook. Tonight's goal: well, let me back up first. Last weekend when I was bored and watching the Martha Stewart video that gave me the inspiration for the black bean burgers, I also watched a bit of a baking video of hers and was intrigued by the presented version of the Red Velvet Cake. In the video, the chocolate was omitted and a whole lotta red food coloring was added to give the cake a rich fuscia color. I've made Red Velvet Cake before using a chocolate cake base and adding canned beets. But I didn't feel like making a cake from scratch.

So I bought a white cake mix and I'm substituting pureed beets (baked two days ago) for the oil (a one-to-one ratio). I figure that if applesauce can be substituted for oil in cake, bread, and muffin recipes, the same should hold true for pureed beets. I just pulled the cake out of the oven and it's pink. After it cools I'm going to whip up some lemon cream cheese frosting to cover it with. Should be good.

I've also got the hankering for polenta pie although I'm not really sure how that's going to be manifested. I'm currently working on making chicken stock (from a baked chicken I did Saturday night....I stuffed the cavity with sliced oranges and white onion...delish). When that's finished, I guess I'll sautee up some onion, red pepper, mushroom, and zucchini on one burner and cook up some polenta with the chicken sauce on the other burner (yes, we only have two burners). Then I'll mix the two pots together, pour it into a baking dish (with a lid) and bake it for, oh, 25 minutes at 350. I'll throw on some grated smoked Guyere, bake it 5 more minutes without the lid, and voila. Dinner.

Hmm...maybe I need bread or a stand-alone vegetable to serve with it.

The grapevine tells me that the kitchen I'll have in the apartment in Kosovo is less than postage-stamp size. I don't know what I'll do if it's not usable! I guess I'd better cook while I can.