So here’s the truth. It’s the holidays, and I’m getting burnt out. Work is becoming intense, to the point where I’m coming home with aches and pains and dreams about it all night. There’s the usual stress of gifts and trees and charities, plus I’m ramping up for the Christmas baking and cooking.

Which is to say that if there are few corners I can cut, I’m going to take them. Not things I care about, like cookie making and present shopping, but stuff that’s a little more disposable. For instance, I decided against working some optional overtime today. And, you may have noticed, I’m giving Top Chef a rest until after the holidays, when I’ll try to play catch-up. Also, instead of giving two completely different meals cooked weeks apart their full due, I’m going to combine them into one abbreviated post.

What these dishes have in common is that neither was based on an actual recipe. I often cook without a recipe, actually, although you wouldn’t know it from this website. The problem is that when I make something spur-of-the-moment, based on whatever I happen to find in the kitchen, and just designed to fill myself up or satisfy a craving, I never think that it’s important enough to take notes on, photograph, and document on this here blog. Here, though, are two exceptions.

The stirfry pictured above was prompted by some fresh squid in the fridge and an almost passing reference in Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries to a squid stirfry. I sautéed garlic and ginger in a little olive oil while boiling a couple handfuls of vermicelli. When the noodles were softened, I added them to the pan with some fish sauce. I sliced up scallions and squid, and crushed a couple dried red chiles. I added them to the sauté and cooked it all together just until the squid firmed up. It was a little too spicy for my taste, and the noodle to squid ratio was all wrong, but I consider it successful. Quick, spontaneous, and very tasty, it was an ideal marriage of exotic cuisine and convenient comfort.

Risotto snobs like to get their panties in a bunch about how to properly make risotto. You have to use arborio rice. You have to keep the broth just below a simmer. You have to stir it constantly. You have to dribble in the broth a half spoonful at a time. You have to sing it songs and validate its feelings. You have to read it bedtime stories and tuck it in at night.

This is what I did. I took a couple scoops of Chinese rice, a little olive oil, and some garlic and toasted it over medium-high heat. Then I poured a couple glugs of chicken broth directly from the can into the pot and swirled it around. I chopped up some parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (catchy!) and dumped that in with some lemon zest. Then I went and watched some tv, returning only occasionally to give it a stir and some more icy broth. When the rice was tender, I seasoned it with salt and pepper, scooped some out, and dug in. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t kill me either. In fact, it was very tasty. I even put some of it away as leftovers and reheated it in the microwave. It was still yummy.

Which is not to say it’s pointless to go through all that rigamarole of delicate handling and constant attention. It’s just that this was a corner I was willing to cut. It worked out, too; it’s very freeing to cook to the beat of one’s own drummer. Sometimes (and please insert dramatic movie trailer voice), to get it right, you have to break all the rules.

As the actual potluck weekend approached, I gave some thought as to what my follow-up offering would be. It would have been easy to bring cupcakes, the sequel, wherein I turn out some other frosted concoction. But there’s something you should know about me. When I cook, I often (try to) show off. Having shown that I could bake chocolate desserts, I turned my attention to a course in dire need of one. The signup sheet was awash in promises of pasta and chicken and sugar. But where, I thought, were the vegetables?

Vegetables often fall by the wayside, especially when they need to be made ahead. It’s much easier to reheat a meatloaf than it is to microwave sautéed asparagus. Even a salad dressed too far in advance wilts into a soggy mess. It’s also more difficult to gauge a vegetable’s reception. I’ll eat almost anything, but many people have strong feelings about them. After conducting an informal poll, I learned that at least one coworker hates spinach, several love raw broccoli, and that mushrooms are wildly unpopular.

Having already decided to bridge the gap between casserole and greenery by making a spanakopita-like dish, I chose to feature leeks. I built on a Greek scallion and feta pie from Diane Kochilas’ The Glorious Foods of Greece, via Leite’s Culinaria. After doing a quick recon of my house Friday morning, I bought the missing ingredients on my way home from work. Matt met me at home and mixed me a g and t while I sautéed, simmered, layered, and baked. Alas, my recon skills aren’t quite up to snuff; I ran out of milk and olive oil in the middle of cooking and made do without, only to find copious amounts both long after the pie was safely in the oven.

It mattered not. What you see above was a “before” picture of the kremmydopita. I had planned to take an “after” picture of the leftovers that would show the pie’s innards, but that proved impossible, for there were no leftovers. The creamy, salty cheese and sweet wrapped in crispy phyllo was gobbled right up, and I believe somebody even took home a good chunk for later. Everybody seemed to have nice things to say about it and while it wasn’t exactly the center of attention, it was definitely a featured player. All in all, my dish did pretty well for itself. Showoff.

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Things are getting a little crazy at work, and understandably so, given the rapid approach of Christmas and its related accoutrements. I work retail, and so the craziness is both inside and out. It sometimes takes me a solid five minutes to find a parking space, which may not sound like a lot, but can be the difference between late for work and on time. On weekends, it’s extra crazy, so there’s an annual potluck planned so that we don’t have to move our cars in the middle of a shift.

This year’s potluck was this weekend, though our story doesn’t begin there. Instead, it begins last weekend, which was the one I thought was potluck weekend. Yes, I woke up early that Saturday to put together the cupcakes I had promised. I was thrilled to find that we had some cupcake liners and unsweetened chocolate, which meant that I wouldn’t have to go shopping. I pulled up Chockylit’s recipe for cherry chocolate cupcakes over at Cupcake Bakeshop, and got to work.

I melted the chocolate and butter over a water bath and added the sugar. I threw in a little extra to make up for the unsweetened chocolate, which is supposed to be dark in Chockylit’s recipe. I let it cool, after which I got to beating with my hand mixer. The butter started out runny but firmed up as the butter cooled. I slipped in the eggs and dry ingredients easily, then reached for the dried cherries in the cabinet over the refrigerator. I had to get on a stool to reach the basket in which they were, and when I did, I found . . . no cherries. We were out of cherries, and my whole plan had to be rewrought.

Not one to crumble in the face of adversity, I turned to the pantry instead and found some marshmallows left over from the Thanksgiving sweet potatoes. These, I thought, would do nicely. I mixed them into my cupcake batter and spooned said batter into pretty pastel cupcake papers.

I was, of course, defeated by the obvious, which is that marshmallows melt. My cupcakes, while rich and chocolatey with a moist, delicate crumb, lacked the spongy, white lumps I had imagined they would have throughout. Instead, they were studded with caramelized holes which, while not untasty, weren’t as aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped.

I had already planned on the marshmallows, though. While the cupcakes were in the oven, I put together a coconut frosting, made with butter, vanilla, powdered sugar, some unsweetened coconut, and a splash of coconut extract. I also toasted some chopped pecans on the upper rack. When the cupcakes were cooled, I slathered them with a frosting, sprinkled them with pecans, and called them rocky road. Nobody at work saw fit to argue. In fact, while the food wasn’t actually scheduled for that week, my offerings were heartily welcomed, and I left at the end of the day with only a small fraction of what I brought.

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