This past week, I’ve been subjecting Jaeger to all sorts of food experiments. However, I suppose this isn’t really abnormal behavior on my part. Surprisingly, I think most of them either turned out good or with potential.

Friday night I made Pasta Caprese, a recipe I found in the July/August 2007 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It’s a basic fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil pasta dish. However, the magazine recommended freezing the diced mozzarella for 10 minutes to prevent it from getting stringy when combined with the warm pasta. I neglected to seed the tomatoes with the result that the sauce was a little runny. However, Jaeger conceded that it was quite good even with the runny sauce.

Friday, I made a soybean soup and a Greek inspired sandwich with a Tzatziki sauce I found in Cook’s Illustrated. I was planning to make pitas from scratch but this part turned out a disaster. So, instead I used store bought pitas. I think the sandwich was good but I would have preferred to use fluffier pitas. The soybean soup was also good but was probably more appropriate as a winter soup.

For Sunday lunch, I decided to make a Grilled Mozzarella Sandwich with Roasted Peppers and Basil. This plan went a little awry when I had to go up to Greeley unexpectedly. However, I put the ingredients out for Jaeger and he reported that it ended up being pretty good.

Tonight, I made Spicy Carrot soup with Roasted Garlic, Tomato and Pesto Crepes and roasted beets. Jaeger didn’t seem terribly enthralled by the carrot soup but neither did he find it appalling. The crepes were good but as Jaeger pointed out, the filling tasted too Italian for what we expected to be in crepes. Jaeger thinks the crepe filling would be very good as a pasta filling and I would tend to agree. This means that I need to continue my quest for savory vegetarian crepe fillings. Currently, the only one I have really liked is for crepes filled with ratatouille and topped with swiss cheese. Oh well, I’m sure something good will turn up eventually.