KitchenKatalog: Blog 122

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Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook

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KitchenKatalog: Blog 122

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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).

Pumpkin Bread

Friday, November 29, 2019, 07:35 PM

Meredith made Easy Pumpkin Bread. She basically followed the directions directly.

The orange was just enough! Meredith said this will become her new go to pumpkin bread!

Thanksgiving Sides

Thursday, November 28, 2019, 10:10 PM

We were tasked with three sides for Thanksgiving at a friend's house. Salad, mashed potatoes, and a dessert.

Salad

For the salad, I made the Pomegranate, Kale and Wild Rice Salad. We were running low on time so I skipped the optional step of lowering the bite of the dressing by cooking the shallots. MISTAKE. I am glad we were serving the dressing on the side since it was super intense. I didn't like it!

(S)Mashed Potatoes

I used a 5 lbs bag of small, waxy potatoes from Costco. All I used in them was butter (~1 stick), sour cream (~6 oz I think...half a small container), and salt. We didn't use garlic or anything since we had people who don't eat it.

Cookies

We were told to be one dessert so we made a cookie tray...of two types. Each has its own post.

We actually planned a third (Lavender shortbread) but ran out of time¹. It was fine though. We had more than enough.

I was still getting over a cold or something and needed a nap! ↩

Lemon Sugar Cookies

Thursday, November 28, 2019, 10:08 PM

I made lemon sugar cookies for Thanksgiving. I decided to check some of my cookbooks and found them in America's Test Kitchen. That recipe talked about how they can be finicky but their recipe was not. And it did seem pretty easy so I used theirs.

To make them Lemon Sugar Cookies, I added the zest of two lemons. I added the zest of one with the dry ingredients and then remembered that Meredith and I had discussed a different strategy. For the second lemon, I took a bit of the sugar and pressed the lemon with it in a mortar and pestle. It is impossible to know which one worked better but in the future, I will just do the mortar and pestle method. I suspect that was the main one.

The recipe said it would be a soft dough and they were not kidding! It came out super, super, super soft. I thought it was going to turn to soup. I did use room temperature cream cheese. It helped it blend better but I wonder if it would have done better with firmer.

I did follow the directions of baking them in batches. Not sure if it was needed since I used convection.

Other notes:

Used convection at 365°F. I am not sure if our oven turns it down for convection or not so I just did a bit hotter
Used the air-bake cookie trays with silpats instead of whatever they called for
Scooped with generous scoops from our cookie scooper (~~Will come back with the size~~ 2oz). It worked well though I only made 22. Should have been slightly less generous.
Ended up cooking them for about 14 min each. Probably could have gone a bit lighter at 13.

Cranberry Crumb Bars

Thursday, November 28, 2019, 10:07 PM

Meredith made Cranberry Crumb Bars as part of our contribution to Thanksgiving. She use the Smitten Kitchen Recipe and I think she followed it pretty closely except she used extra orange zest.

Overall, we liked them but I do not think they will be come a staple!