KitchenKatalog: Blog 196

Meredith did the work on this. We wanted to make our pretty normal cauliflower with soy chorizo but Costco was out of cauliflower so we went with broccoli. Meredith roasted it for about 30 minutes and then sautéed it with the soy chorizo and capers. She also tried something funky: she added some zested meyer lemon to it. I think that added a nice aroma, though I am not sure I really tasted it too much.

It was acceptable with broccoli, but was also much chewier and not as good as cauliflower.

Sweet Potato Chili Fries and Salmon with Brussel Sprouts

Emily was visiting and wanted to make use chile sweet potatoes fries (Local¹). Emily followed that recipe pretty closely. We did half with the cooling rack on the pan and the other right on a tray. They came out pretty good. I think I would try that again, though I would work harder to make sure they are uniform in size.

I also made roasted brussel sprouts. They didn't come our super amazingly. I think they got a bit bitter but we still ate them.

Finally, I made (and also overcooked) seared salmon. There wasn't much to it. I used some Emril and spilled a bit too much on one piece but were good other than that.

U: guest, P: name of my (smaller) dog, all lower case ↩

Roasted Carrot Soup

Meredith and I made carrot soup from our home-grown carrots! We had a ton of them as you can see in the photos. Our original plan was to not roast them but we changed our minds since they were a bit bitter. We chopped them up and roasted them at 400°F (+ convection) for 45 minutes or so. We then boiled them with an onion, Better Than Bouillon, and some salt.

At first, Meredith thought we went too heavy on the apple cider vinegar (though I liked it still) but after it sat for two days, the flavors really mellowed.

We served it with some toast and leftover Armadillo Eggs and topped it with Sriracha and Diablo sauce. I wouldn't say it was the best carrot soup ever, but it was still really good. It really tasted like carrots! And we grew them!

Divinity

Meredith and I decided at the last minute to make Divinity. Ok, so last year I said I didn't want to use this recipe again, but since it was so last minute and a lot of the other recipes seemed similar or were "cheater" recipes (e.g. uses marshmallow fluff), so we went with it.

But, I did listen to my last-year self and used silpats. That made all the difference! They were sticky and annoying but they also easy enough for us to take them off the tray.

While, we haven't tried them after sitting (I'll come back and update if I have to) but we liked them a lot. The vanilla flavor was missed but I still thought these were (a) the easiest and (b) still pretty good.

Note that we let it go a full five minutes from the time we finished adding the sugar. The mixer seemed to really struggle but it made it through.

By the way, we had tried some store-bought Divinity and it had the texture of some of our other batches that we thought was bad. Maybe that is the correct texture?

Pomegranate and Wild Rice Salad with Walnuts and Feta (Prepped ahead)

Meredith and I had to make a salad for a work party. We were actually told ot make for 40 people! So we doubled our usual Pomegranate and Wild Rice Salad with Walnuts and Feta. But we had planned to be at two other parties before this one (one was canceled). So we prepped everything ahead of time and split it up to assemble at the party.

We used 2 cups of dry rice -- a mix of brown and wild. We also ended up cooking it for too long since we lost track of the timer, but they were fine.

The rest was pretty standard. There was a good amount of dressing and it came out pretty good, as usual.

Stir-fry Broccolini with Chicken Sausage

We had been doing a lot of cooking and we were kind of tired so we went with something fast. We had defrosted a thing of chicken sausage already. I cut up about 1-1/2 lbs of Broccolini and then stir-fried it with some salt, pepper and then, once more cooked, some Penzeys Fox Point plus garlic powder. I then threw in 4 chopped up chicken sausages.

Armadillo Eggs

Meredith and I made Armadillo Eggs, one of her favorite christmas foods from home. We made them for a potluck later in the week.

Meredith's Mom wrote up some instructions HERE (but we're not sure about the times and temp).

We followed that pretty closely. It was kind of hard to do and took a two pounds of sausage to cover the jalapeños from the one can. I think we did it pretty well and close to the recipe though we had to cook it for much longer.

We did the 250°F for the hour and then turned it up to 300°F and had to do another 40 minutes for it to look done (all on convection).

Some of them seemed to explode a bit. We may have not done a good job with cutting them and/or sealing them. Or, it may have to do with trying neufchatel instead of cream cheese.

Ramen Rice Krispies

I made Ramen Rice Krispies again. There really wasn't too much to it including us doubling the butter as we now say in the recipe (though I am going to change it to 6-8 Tbsp). The other thing was I figured I could mix the furikake into dry ingredients and that worked well and made life easier.

I ate a few while putting them away and I liked them as usual. I do think we should change the butter to 6 Tbsp since I am afraid they will all stick by the time we serve them.