Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
Sitemap ·
Our Recipe Book ·
Steven's Recipe Book ·
Ann's Recipe Book ·
Meal Ideas ·
Copied Recipes
Random ·
Random Links
Home > 193
KitchenKatalog: Blog 193
Sunday, January 22, 2017, 08:13 PM
We decided to be adventurous and try making a whole fish. We got two small striped bass at Costco. We read a few recipes and went with Alton Brown's (Local). We were a bit surprised by the temperature and time, and sure enough, when we took it out, the temps were way above the 120°F they suggests. Still, it was perfectly moist. We kind of struggled to eat it but we eventually just pulled the meat off the bones.
It was a lot of work and kind of gross but also fun to try something challenging and new. The flavors were also pretty good, though I do not think Bass is my favorite fish. We would try to do a whole fish again, but use a different fish and different recipe/method.
We also made roasted potatoes like we had before on 2016-12-03. We tossed it with some ghee and then used Za'atar, salt, and pepper. I roasted it for 60 minutes at 375°F. I forgot to turn them at all, but it was also very good.
Saturday, January 21, 2017, 09:12 PM
I had originally made three salsa chicken breasts to prep ahead but we decided to eat them tonight. I pounded out the chicken breasts and then topped them with salt, pepper, and Pace Salsa (Whole30 Compliant). I baked it at 375°F for 25-30 minutes until it was done. (actually, I went a bit too long).
I also made Shishito pepper using my recipe. I used some extra ranch dressing from the Cobb Salad we made (but didn't really write up, recipe here. Same as used for the Buffalo Chicken Casserole.
All in all, it was a very simple. but pretty good meal. And very easy too!
We used the leftover chicken and sliced it up to be chicken on a salad. We made a dressing by mixing Pace Salsa with the Cilantro Sauce. It worked surprisingly well as a salad dressing.
Saturday, January 21, 2017, 09:45 AM
We prepped ahead and made turkey scotch eggs. We used the recipe from Stupid Easy Paleo (LOCAL) (and using their gingerbread spice -- local is on the other page).
We halved it with an extra 1/2 lbs of turkey from the night before with 3 hardboiled eggs.
They were surprisingly sausage tasting, though a bit dry. I would consider this again either for breakfast or using this sausage mix for other things.
I made these again later with 93% lean beef. I did everything else the same except I did the eggs for only 9.5 minutes so that the insides wouldn't get overcooked. As you can see in the second picture, they were a bit undercooked after everything.
I did my very best to wrap them all and it worked well enough, except when I cooked them, the beef pulled back on some of it.
I think I liked the turkey more. With the beef, the flavors didn't meld as well and gave it a less-enjoyable taste. Certainly not bad, but I would do Turkey (or maybe pork?) next time.
Friday, January 20, 2017, 08:00 PM
We made Coconut Curry Meatballs from Wholesomelicious (LOCAL). We used this as the base recipe but made a few changes because of what we had and general preference:
Between the lean meat (and no sausage), the difference of coconut flour (maybe?), and the egg, the meatballs were dry!. The flavor was good but they desperately needed some moisture!
For the sauce, we basically followed the recipe except that last 1/4 cup of coconut milk was the light kind.
The sauce came out very good but desperately needed some heat/spice. We should have thrown a bunch of chiles in there! The flavors were good, but this was just lacking the spice we like with Thai food.
We still liked it though. It made a lot of food with 50 meatballs (we ate half). We also did it on cauliflower rice (which I adjusted down the temperatures on that recipe).
We need to put more fat in the meatballs (higher fat content turkey, additional other, some kind of real turkey sausage). They were simply way too dry! Also, everything needed more spice. There was none in the sauce and barely any in the meatballs.
Also, we really should have been using Thai basil, not Italian basil.
Finally, we need to up the spice level.
Friday, January 20, 2017, 10:03 AM
I made turkey chorizo for breakfast using the Feasting at Home recipe (LOCAL). I do not think it is even intended to be a Whole30 recipe, but it worked fine for it. I thought it was a bit heavy on the seasoning, especially the oregano. Less in the future. And maybe more smoked paprika.
We also made (purple) sweet potato hash. I chopped them and microwaved them with a little bit of water for 5 minutes. I then crisped them on the cast iron with some ghee and added salt as I went.
It all came out pretty good. A nice breakfast. And we have some leftover chorizo for later.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 08:43 PM
Meredith and I made Buffalo Chicken Casserole from Jay's Baking Me Crazy (LOCAL). It is a Whole30 recipe but it is also pretty good being full of vegetables from the squash and carrots. I used this Kitchn recipe (LOCAL) with some Frank's as sauce.
We followed the recipe, but used the ranch from this recipe (LOCAL) which we'll use later. We had to buy chipotle-lime Whole30 compliant mayo since that is all we could find at the moment.
It was pretty good and made 5-6 meals worth. It was also pretty tasty, though overpowered by the Franks Red Hot.
All local recipes are U: guest, P: name of my small dog, lower case
Tuesday, January 17, 2017, 07:55 PM
Second day of Whole30. We made shakshuka as a simple meal that we could also do some prep ahead. We cut the onions and peppers ahead of time to make life easier.
We had:
We sautéed the onions and red bell peppers (with some salt and pepper) until they were started to caramelize. I used a mix of ghee and olive oil. I then added the tomatoes and then a ton of spices:
It let it cook down and then poached eggs in it.
It came out very good. Wasn't too much work with the prep. The roasted tomatoes also gave it a very nice flavor. I also liked the caramelized flavor.
Monday, January 16, 2017, 09:18 PM
This was our first day of Whole30 and decided to go with a chicken recipe. We used the recipe from Wholesomelicious (Local 1). We followed it pretty closely except we used two larger breasts. And, since we didn't scale the chicken, we had leftover walnuts so I mixed them with salt, pepper, and egg and made a small snack.
I think I had the pan on too hot and started to burn the walnuts. I had to take if off the heat and finish it in the oven. I then made the sauce (with tapioca starch instead of arrowroot).
We also quickly tossed the spiralized zucchini in the sauce for a little bit to soften it. Finally, Meredith topped it with some meyer lemon zest instead of parsley.
We liked it a lot. There was a lot of flavor; especially the walnuts got nice and crispy. The sauce was a bit lemony but not too bad. We would likely not make this off of Whole30 since it is a lot of walnuts but was great for dinner while doing it.
U: guest, P: name of my small dog, lower case ↩