JC and I planned our second day of recipe testing to coincide with our publisher, Life of Reiley’s annual holiday party. In other words, JC and I would be cooking all the food and our guests would be guinea pigs. On the menu this time was Chocolate-Kissed White Bean Chili, Attitude Adjustment Anchovy Toasts with a side of whole wheat pasta, Crab Salad, Egg Bread French Toast with Blueberry Syrup and one of my go-to Christmas foods, Chocolate Mint Cookies as well as a little spirit to put us in the holiday spirit, a Limoncello Spritzer with a fresh mint garnish.

Testing went well this time. We’d each road tested our recipes on our own before we got together, so there weren’t any unpleasant surprises. (Lets face it, when you have two partners on a book with equal egos, they want to try and blow each other away. We came prepared and brandishing knives.)

This time we were pretty happy with everything – no exciting mishaps to reveal. I did burn the first batch of cookies. I could never make it in a restaurant kitchen juggling 8 tasks at once.

What was probably more interesting than the actual dishes during this day of tasting was what happens in the kitchen when JC and I cook.

JC is a gregarious guy and full of stories. He always shows up with his knife kit and his 2 dogs, a pair of terriers named Nick and Maggie. The beasts are immediately released into the yard, along with my little monster, Big. Nick and Big play hard while we cook hard – so hard, in fact, that Big, my feisty long-haired chihuahua, (think almond-eyed chihuahua with a Farrah Fawcett haircut), dislocated a rib.

While the pups were at play, JC filled me in on the latest novel on his must read list. Normally I prefer to read a book myself rather than get the verbal Cliff’s notes. But since I rarely have time to read for fun, its nice to read vicariously through JC. And he’s such a great story teller that his interpretation is probably more interesting than the original.

On this occasion, I probably bossed JC around a little more than usual. I was in charge of a party and we had a 3 hour deadline! We weren’t making a lot of dishes, so the stress wasn’t from cooking on a timeline. The important part of our testing is to take our skeleton recipes and note adjustments with complete thoroughness. This takes time and concentration you don’t need on a normal day at the stove.

The results of day two were very positive. I do want to go back and work on the Limocello Spritzer. It was a variation on a recipe I’d done for years but something didn’t quite work this time. I blamed my mint, which at this time of year tends to be without fragrance. I think I’ll go back and try muddling the mint next time to add that extra layer of flavor.

The chili was definitely the day’s. I wouldn’t change a thing. The recipe was based on my family’s annual tradition, a pot of chili with chocolate on Christmas Eve. But I added 2 ingredients that were a departure from the original: cocoa powder and acai fruit puree. If you don’t yet know acai, you probably soon will. Its rain forest superfood, packed with antioxidants. Its flavor is rich and not too sweet. Why I added it to the chili, I really don’t know. I was kind of thinking of trying to pack the dish with as many libido-boosting ingredients as possible. That, combine with the cocoa, gave the chili a depth of flavor and faint sweetness I’ve never before experienced in the dish.

The French toast was a fun addition to our collection of recipes. JC previously made the dish with a banana topping but we already have a breakfast dish that involves banana in the book, so we went toward blueberries, (a wonderful ingredient for life-long health). The syrup was bold in flavor but still tart, a great foil to egg bread. But the topping was a puree, smooth as maple syrup. We both agreed that an additional texture would really up the dish’s impact, so in future we’ll make it with a few fresh blueberries as garnish.

Since our second day of testing, we’ve continued to work on our own. Next week will bring day 3, our third chance to show off and swap stories.

Spreading the Cheese