Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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posts/2019/08
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Dan Dan Noodles -- back to top
We made tofu Dan Dan noodles. We followed the same basic changes as last time for the sauce and again combined Every Grain of Ricen with The Woks of Life. Since it got kind of confusing, I will put it down here what we did. Essentially, make the sauce as below (note it does not put (sui mi/Sichuanese) ya cai1 in the sauce. It goes the meat along with five-spice powder).
Meat:
Sauce
We used 3 clumps of the noodles which was fine but had lots of leftovers
I also threw together a stir-fry from some snow peas. It was
Stir fry:
It was too much corn starch and/or too high of heat but it sizzled into thick globs. Not idea. And not particularly good as a stir-fry sauce. But I needed something quickly.
Overall, I think we liked the pork version more but were fine with the tofu. It still tasted really good. Just lacked some of the flavor and color from the pork (also, it was really hard to mix the tofu into the noodles)
Preserved Mustard Greens (碎米芽菜) -- see Omnivore's Cookbook ↩
except today we didn't actually use this since we were out ↩
For Caroline's Party, Meredith (and later with help from her sister) made a Croquembouche. She used the choux and pastry cream recipe as she had in the past. She actually made the puffs Monday before the party and froze them. Then she made 2 batches of pastry cream on Saturday so it would be chilled and ready for filling.
Meredith filled the puffs the morning of the party while Brooke was making the caramel. Brooke did the assembly on the day of the party. There are a bunch of recipes out there for the carmel part (TODO: Add them?) but none are very specific. In fact, they do not have temperatures at all! So it was a bit of a guessing game. It did work, though was a bit hard.
Salmon Croquettes -- back to top
From Grandbaby Cakes (LOCAL)
Meredith made these for Caroline for lunches. She subbed red pepper for the green and left out the salt and crushed/ground red pepper. She did a diy self-rising flour since we don’t buy that. Also, followed the instructions for baking instead of pan frying, 15 min at 375. She then thought they could use a little longer, so flipped them and let them go another 5 min or so. They turned out pretty well. Probably would have benefited from the salt, but Caroline seemed to like them, and it’s nothing a sauce or dip wouldn’t fix. I really liked the texture of the coarse corn meal on the outside. (2020-04-21 Note: These changes are now in our recipe book)
I ended up freezing most of them since Caroline seems to get tired of the same ol’ thing too many days in a row. I found heating them at 300F from frozen for 15 min was pretty effective. Warm, but not too hot. Perfect for baby.
Turkey Pistachio Patties/Meatballs -- back to top
Meredith and I made turkey patties using the Ottolenghi Recipe with the usual changes including turkey for lamb. Also, since we didn't have arugula, Meredith used kale (which worked well enough). As we did the past few times, we baked them only this time, I did it as meatballs. That made it a lot easier to make and was still very good.
Meredith premade all of the different mixed. I combined it all, shaped them, and then baked them at 400°F for about 15 min.
Carolines First Birthday -- back to top
Caroline turns one!!!
We had a big party for Caroline's first birthday! Meredith was in charge so, while we ample food, we didn't go too (too) overboard. Meredith made most of the desserts and we went with store-bought for the main meal/snacks.
Savory Food:
Dessert
Lemon Syrup Cake -- back to top
Meredith made a lemon syrup cake from Sprinkle Bakes (LOCAL) for Caroline's Party. She used the cake from there but the frosting recipe from Easter without the nuts or any limoncello/lemon zest. This was going to be Caroline’s smash cake, so she kept it booze free.
She also made a smaller cake as a smash cake for Caroline.
She used store-bought lemon curd which worked well. There were some issues assembling the cake but in the end it came together really well.
Pineapple Punch -- back to top
We made pineapple punch from A Beautiful Plate (LOCAL) for Caroline's Party. I think we used less lime in the punch and probably made about 6-8 batches. It was super popular! Also served spiced rum in the side for those who wanted.
Meredith threw together dinner inspired by Egg Bhurji but with ground turkey. Some notes:
Used poblano in place of Thai chili
Added a little curry powder and cumin
Overall, it was pretty easy and very tasty! Worth considering for the future.
Served with arugula salad and garlic naan from Trader Joes
-- back to top