Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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posts/2019/12
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Pizza -- back to top
We made pizza for dinner. I had forgotten to buy the crust at Trader Joes so this was some kind of "fresh" crust from the grocery store. It came rolled up so it was super easy to just unroll. However, I strongly suspect it was not a yeast-based crust as it didn't rise at all while waiting. It was also not as flavorful as we usually have. But it was a nice fallback. And super easy not having to roll or shape it.
We topped it with salami, cheese, and ricotta. We also used actual pizza sauce (Trader Joes' brand).
Roasted Gnocchi -- back to top
Roasted Gnocchi with fennel. We roasted it for 20 min before adding the gnocchi and sausage and then just 10 more. Should have either put the gnocchi on sooner and/or let it roast even longer. The gnocchi was soft but we missed the slight crunch.
Meredith made Minnesota Style Hot Dish from Molly Yeh's Recipe (LOCAL). She said she mostly followed the recipe but should have stopped cooking the sauce sooner since it got even thicker upon cooling.
It tasted great too! We probably could have cooked it a bit longer to get even more crisp on the tater tots.
Meredith made the Ottolenghi Simple Meatloaf with her usual replacement of beef for lamb. This time we used 88% lean beef since we got it at Costco. Meredith made one regular and a few (three?) small ones to freeze.
It was very good as usual!
Meredith had been craving crab dip for a while so she finally broke down, bought a thing of crab ($$$) and made some. She used the recipe from Sprinkle Bakes (LOCAL) and followed it pretty closely. It was very good and seemed to have hit the spot!
Cranberry Crumb Bars -- back to top
Meredith made Cranberry Crumb Bars again. She cooked them a bit longer than last time giving them a very rich flavor!
Stuffed Mushroom Casserole with Quorn -- back to top
I made Stuffed Mushroom Casserole using Quorn instead of real meat. I prepped it last night. Just the onions and mushrooms. I used pre-sliced mushrooms which made it so much easier but also meant I had to cook it sooner.
I basically 1.5x everything!
To make it, I added the cheeses (using Romano instead of Parmesan left from the meatloaf) and then made the bread crumbs sans crushed red pepper (for Caroline).
It needed lots of extra time. Initially baked for about 20 min but it wasn't enough (though a good temperature for Caroline). I put it back in at 400°F for about 30 minutes, then covered it and left at 325°F for another 30 or so!
Also, some of the fried onions were regular ones and others were garlic-pepper flavored.
Meredith made Tres Leches for a Mexican Themed party. She used the recipe from Pati Jinich (LOCAL). Overall, we liked it a lot. Someone else also brought a tres leches cake. Theirs, unlike ours, was more spiced which was better at first but then became too much. If we make this again from this recipe, we may add some more spices including nutmeg
I used the recipe from The International Cookie Cookbook as I've used many times before. They tasted fine but are really not very examples. They are all too thin, unevenly cooked, and spread too much and joined (you can see the odd shapes). I should have done each tray alone rather than all three at a time. I thought putting the air-bake trays on top and bottom would help but they still came out super uneven. I also thought that using convection would mean I didn't have to rotate them. Wrong on that one too!
While I am sure some (all?) of those are my fault, I think it is time for me to try a different recipe!
I made Taco Stew. I actually made it on Saturday but then cooled and refrigerated it until today for dinner. I roughly doubled the recipe since we had a lot of meat and, since there was so much meat, I also browned it separately. We apparently didn't have any taco seasoning so Meredith made a (double) batch of the one in Turkey Taco Skillets (which worked out just fine!). I also added celery since we had it. It didn't really add or change any flavor since the soup had simmered so much.
Soy Chorizo Ragu -- back to top
I made out Soy Chorizo Ragu except I added a little but of balsamic vinegar in place of the brown sugar (I had the vinegar idea before I even remembered that there was brown sugar in it). One thing worth noting: I made it as the recipe states at the moment but the original has some wine in it. I don’t recall (at least not at the moment) where that went. Maybe next time we will try adding it back in.
Also used dried oregano. Not as good as fresh but I still liked it!
I made three types of biscotti (yes, it was a bit crazy). I made:
For the traditional, I could only ever find green cherries. Not sure why but we couldn't get the red ones anywhere! So they were less Christmas than we would have liked.
On the lemon ones, I did double the zest but I added it with some sugar after mashing it with a mortar and pestle. I also (accidentally) quadrupled the lemon juice and had to add more flour to get the consistency right.
Finally, for the Coffee Toffee, I followed the suggestions on the recipe but also added walnuts
I did a few minor things differently than the recipe. First, I basically went up 25°F on al temps since I was waiting so long for them to cook. And I gave them much more time to cool before cutting. I think that really made my life easier as they stuck together better and were much easier to work with!
In order to do all of the batches, I baked in the top oven and toasted in the bottom. I still ended up backlogged since it didn't take long to whip up a new batch and the overall cook time for these is pretty long!
Turkey for Christmas -- back to top
I made a turkey for Christmas using the same basic method as I did for Thanksgiving 2018. The big difference is that I used a 12 lbs turkey rather than one twice its size. I spatchcocked it and dry-brined it for two days (with the plastic wrap as suggested)
I baked it as it 450°F but I think it needed longer than expected. I also went to 155°F in the breast instead of 150°F out of a combination of an abundance of caution and forgetting the target temp.
It came out pretty good. The breast was maybe a tad dry but really not too bad. And the dark meat was delicious. The skin was also super crisp.
I rubbed it with melted butter and fresh "poultry herbs" (I think parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme) before baking it. The herbs burned on the skin. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to use herbs like that. I am not sure1.
Also, no picture but I made roasted canned potatoes with just olive oil and garlic salt.
Next time, I will follow this recipe and do the herbs underneath ↩
Biscotti in Houston -- back to top
I made (and demonstrated) making biscotti for Meredith's mom. We couldn't find cherries anywhere so we again had to make the cherries ourselves using the King Arthur Flour Recipe.
In making the dough, we didn't have a scale so I used the volume measurements but I used 4.5 cups of flour. The weights and volumes on the recipe do not agree so I went heavy. I actually probably could have used more still.
The big issues we had were related to baking. I didn't realize the problem this would cause at the time and some of it is conjecture, but we overcooked the initial bake and then super-burned only the lower tray of the toast step. See, the oven is slightly smaller than a typical oven but standard 1/4 sheet trays fit in if you slide them into where the oven racks hold on the edges.
I think what this did was eliminate air-flow in the oven and, even worse, completely separated it into two (for the initial bake) and three (for the toast with two trays) sections. Making it worse is most ovens have the temperature probe at the top and the heat at the bottom. So the heating element stayed on for a long time to get some the top of the oven warm.
For the initial bake, I think it was okay though the bottoms were a bit browner and it expanded more. But for the toast step, it super burned the bottom tray!
The top ones tasted fine (though could have cooked a bit more) and the bottom ones were a mess!
-- back to top