Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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All for 'fancy'
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Sautéed Cod over Homemade Beet Pasta with roasted Beets and Potatoes -- back to top
This was a good meal largely inspired by this blog post but with some serious changes. The thing is that their pasta recipe calls for 7 egg yolks though we would have halved it anyway. And it just doesn't sound healthy at all. We made the concession of just using white flour but that was too much egg. So we used egg beaters. Also, even though we had beets (which we roasted later), we did not have time to roast them first so we used canned and then puréed them. Well, still, it all came together strangely. I had to play with the dough a lot to get it the right moistness but it was a very, very streachy dough. After letting it rest for about 35 minutes we started rolling and cutting.
This dough was okay to roll but it did not want to be cut. We had to manually tear the cuts apart. And it was still very, very streachy. I also thought it would all stick but thankfully, in the boiling water, it came apart. I used a lot of salt in the water which did add a nice flavor to the pasta. It ended up fine and tasted good.
We basically followed their lead on the cod but it came out a bit salty. Also, despite our best efforts, it stuck to the pan a little bit. It was thankfully not over cooked but it was salty. Meredith liked it more than I did. Also, we used chives as a garnish/side.
Meredith found a few recipes and made a white wine sauce sans cream/milk, etc. It was okay but very thin. I like the shallot and leak scraps in it. I though they were good even if the sauce was thin.
Finally, we combined the beets we were going to use with some purple majesty potatoes and roasted them with olive oil, garlic and seasonings. It was funny because they were very hard to tell apart until you were in a different light. They were also good.
I had an interesting observation when making this. I have noticed that every time I have made pasta (not including ravioli), the seemingly straight strands twist a lot after coming out of the water. If you look back, this is fairly evident from the pictures. Today, while eating, I remember reading a thing about different dough kneading techniques and one of the things they said about using the stand mixer (my preferred method), was that it creates twisted gluten strands. I wonder if that is what was happening in the pasta and the twists cause them to curl in the heat of the water. Of course, I could imagine the twists counter acting each other but maybe a trend prevails. Just a thought. Maybe next time I will just use the food processor and compare. In that case, it is fully kneaded in like 3 minutes which seems too fast but we will see.
Local copy of recipe copied from comments
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1006, 2011-02-19_222259
Vegetable Lasagna with Butternut Béchamel (homemade pasta). Plus potatoes. -- back to top
This is the same recipe as last time, but this time, we use spinach. Again, we didn't have swiss chard so we had to use something else. Spinach fit the bill.
The biggest difference was that I made the pasta myself. I followed the recipe at the bottom of this post but we used 1/3 of the recipe. It was really good using my own pasta. It took a long time but it was nice and easier to use? It was also more flavorful and it cut nicely. That may also be because we used low-fat cheese instead of fat free. It also came out nicer because we used the pan lid instead of aluminum foil.
We also had roasted potatoes.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1089, 2011-03-24_091339
Red Velvet Cake -- back to top
This was for Thanksgiving so there was no attempt at making it any healthier. Anyway, Meredith had been looking at this recipe for a while and when making a cake for thanksgiving came up, she suggested we make this.
It is based on the recipe below. If you read the website, they talk about how classic red velvet cake was called that because of using brown sugar which used to be known as red sugar. Also, there is apparently some acidic reaction that goes on turning it red. This recipe uses that but also adds some red wine (we used red velvet cupcake wine to add to the name).
The cake was incredibly good! It was extremely rich but had a nice chocolatey flavor. The cake was rather dense but a nice texture. The icing, (which is based on a german buttercream) was also flavorful. It was surprisingly not too sweet and also had a really nice flavor.
The reviews were rather positive so I imagine we will keep this recipe in mind if we are asked to make a cake.
The recipe is below:
Red Velvet Cake (from Gilt Taste[Since Removed])
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1579, 2011-11-24_085807
Vegetable Lasagna with Butternut Béchamel -- back to top
We made the lasagna with the recipe from 2011-02-07 with spinach instead of swiss chard. Also, we were light on the spinach and mushrooms. Because of that, we made it in the smaller glass dish. We used Barilla no-bake lasagna noodles.
This one was interesting in that we made it, it sat if the fridge for two days, in the freezer for two days and then we defrosted it and cooked it. Surprisingly, it turned out to be okay. I do not think we made any other changes other than the type of vegetable.
As always, the points on this were extremely low since it is basically all veggies.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1639, 2011-12-19_135511
Grilled Scallops with Mint Pesto and Tequila Lime Roasted Artichokes -- back to top
Meredith and I made this together. First, the scallops were from the recipe below. We stayed pretty true to it but note that it makes lots of pesto so we aren't eating the whole 1/2 cups of olive oil. We used fresh mint from the farmers market. I used the cast iron grill pan that I let fully warm to medium-high. The scallops all seemed to be well cooked. Even the very large ones. I did cook down the balsamic vinegar too much. It turned into balsamic vinegar taffy. Kind of strange. I'll be more careful next time. When I first saw this recipe, my immediate reaction as that it was calling Meredith's name
We did the artichokes also with the recipe below. We couldn't get baby artichokes so we used small ones and scraped out the choke. Most, but not all, of the leaves were edible but we definitely had to leave some. Meredith also trimmed the stem so that whole part was edible. The only other change I know of was using greek yogurt for mayonnaise. It was still good with that, but a very different taste.
The bread was also from the farmers market.
Grilled Scallops with Mint Pesto and Balsamic Syrup (from Serious Eats)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Tequila Lime Roasted Artichokes (from Family spice: recipe,post)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 2228, 2012-09-02_093133
French Onion Soup and Moussaka -- back to top
My mom was visiting and we decided to cook. We started with french onion soup. We used the cast iron dutch oven and really, really caramelized the onions. I do not know what else we did differently, but it was probably the best french onion soup I have done before. About half and half chicken and beef base (maybe 6-8 cups) and a cup of white wine. We put slices of bread in and melted the provolone in the broiler.
The moussaka was the standard. It took a long time to cook down, but I am not sure it was more or less than the usual. I think I overcooked the béchamel since it was too thick. Based on my mom's comments, I should try to see if there are alternative more flavorful, yet healthy, ways to do the béchamel. It isn't a crucial part of the recipe, but I want it to be better.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 2930, 2012-12-25_220844
Coconut Shrimp, Mussels and Roasted Cabbage -- back to top
This was mine and Meredith's anniversary dinner. We had eaten a large lunch earlier so we didn't want anything too heavy so we went with seafood. We had Filipino (I think) coconut shrimp, mussels in white wine and roasted cabbage + broccoli.
Mussels: I did this so I know more about it. I lightly sautéed a bunch of scallions in some oil. Then, as they were almost finished, I added 4-5 minced garlic cloves. When they were all aromatic, I added about half a bottle of cheap white wine (Three Buck Chuck). Finally, I added a bit of crushed red pepper. I used the steamer insert to steam the mussels. Later, I actually decided to do another few minutes to cook them a bit more (this time without the basket).
They were really good, though I was disappointed by the number of dead ones before and after. The sauce was really, really good with the crusty sour-dough bread we bought.
Shrimp: Meredith did this so I am less completes sure of what she did. I think she followed the recipe below with a few major changes.
When she combined it all, it seemed to curdle but that didn't affect the flavor. I really liked them. You could taste all of the coconut flavor (probably from the flakes). I would make this again in a heartbeat.
(as an aside, it calls for 1 lbs of shrimp for two people!!!)
Cabbage: This was nothing special. Just the normal roasted cabbage but with some (old) broccoli that I had around thrown in. Kind of a let down with the other stuff.
Head-On Coconut Shrimp (from Burnt Lumpia)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7232, 2014-02-08_204217
Scallops and Lobster Tail -- back to top
We had planned sea scallops anyway, but after the lobster tail was frozen last night so we made that tonight.
We seared the scallops for about 2 minutes per side (with a bit of butter). We also grilled the butterflied lobster tails for about 10 minutes then topped it with green sauce and butter mix.
Not much to the meal, but it was quite fancy...especially for a Monday night. Also very easy though.
