Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Home > 201
KitchenKatalog: Blog 201
Monday, October 03, 2016, 08:44 PM
I made the standard broccoli beef but with seitan cubes from the grocery store. I also forgot the ginger and garlic, which was noticed, but it was still pretty good. It also made a ton of food but was relatively healthy meal.
I also liked these seitan cubes. I would use them again
Sunday, October 02, 2016, 08:29 PM
This was a really cool meal! I made corned beef hash but I made a few major changes:
Those were really the main changes but I also went heavy on the ketchup and Sriracha (using about 1.5x and using half and half). I followed the recipe's instructions including pressing it down to get the nice crispy pieces (which really worked). I used 2 x 1/4 in. cuts of deli corned beef.
This came out really good. A bit spicy from all of the pepper and the yuca was kind of hidden by the rest of the stuff. But I really liked it!
I should make corned beef hash more often since this was pretty good! And really not too much work
Saturday, October 01, 2016, 08:51 PM
I was invited to a Mad Science Party where the goal is to make (or bring) something you've never made before (See also: 2015-09-18 and 2016-04-16). I was going back and forth with different ideas but I actually had "Figs in a Blanket" at a tailgate and I decided to do something like this and jazz it up.
Also, Meredith is out of town so I use goat cheese since I could. I vacillated on whether or not to buy dough or make it and if I were to make it, did I want I want to make it with a yeast base or a different lavender.
I went with this one from Maya's Kitchen (Local Copy 1). I kept it pretty much as they say (including the boiling water, but with all white flour) and added a bit of salt. I was a bit worried that it would be kind of boring and not have the butteriness, but I guess the (copious) oil helped. Like I said, I added some salt, but it could have used a lot more.
I didn't really follow any recipe for the balsamic reduction, but the general idea was that I took about 3/4 cup of Kirkland balsamic vinegar with a bit of sugar and a bit of rosemary. I let it reduce to just about half.
Anyway, I rolled it out as seen in the photos. It was a super oily dough but I got it to work well enough. I certainly had some variation with the sizes but it worked fine. I put a small dab of goat cheese down, then half of a dried fig and a bit of the balsamic.
Like I said, I was a bit worried about the flavor of the dough but it was pretty good, though needed more salt. The other flavors were good, but you couldn't really taste the goat cheese and/or balsamic vinegar in some. I served it with some extra vinegar as dip and that worked well.
U: guest P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩
Friday, September 30, 2016, 05:19 PM
Meredith was out of town so I tried to make something she usually doesn't like: pork chops. I bought a bone-in (rib I think?) pork chop. I followed Serious Eats (Local Copy 1). I used salt and pepper on the pork chops and then I added some diced garlic, rosemary, and a Tbsp of butter to the bag. I did it at 142.5F (In between the table's temps) for about an hour and a half.
I decided to sear it in the grill pan so I needed more oil than usual since it would be below the "grates". I got it super hot with a bit of butter. It was searing pretty nicely, though splattering everywhere. Then I smelled the leftover liquid from the sous vide bag and it smelled amazing. I figured that in addition to following Serious Eats and adding more aromatics after the turn, I would also add the contents from this bag. Big mistake! I didn't think that some of the bag was water (from the pork and also butter is 20% water). Well, that caused the oil to super, super splatter and create a literal FIREBALL in the kitchen. Woah! Thankfully, it extinguished itself before I had to intervene. oops! I'll be more careful next time.
Either way, the pork was cooked really well as you can see from the picture. It was really moist and flavorful, though I did have to work around some fat.
However, will all that, there still were no grill lines!
I also made Kabocha squash (30 min at 400, flipped half way). I tried to cut it smaller but it was still a tight fit on the pan. Good though!
U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩
Monday, September 26, 2016, 09:01 PM
We made African Peanut Soup yesterday and reheated it for dinner today. I used the regular recipe except I went heavy on the vegetables (extra jalapeño and red pepper, plus others) so I also went heavy on the broth.
I also used the powdered ginger, cumin, and cayenne from the recipe. Though I used 1 tsp of cayenne (since adjusted down on the recipe). Anyway, when we tasted it, it was (a) spicy and (b) kind of flavorless.
We played around a bit and added worcestershire, soy sauce, and a bit more Better than Bouillon. That actually worked really well so I added it as an option to the recipe.
It was still too spicy so I added a tsp of sugar when blending some to try to cut it a bit. That worked well enough. We forgot to serve with any greens but that worked ok.
Anyway, we served it today with some scrambled eggs (with a bit of sour cream -- worked okay). I also had two soft-"boiled" (steamed) eggs done for 8.5 minutes which worked perfectly.
I updated the recipe for some of these changes.
Friday, September 23, 2016, 07:02 PM
We followed this The Kitchn Recipe (Local Copy 1) to make sheet pan chicken. The idea is pretty simple, you just cook everything in the sheet pan. We even decided to do it with skin-on chicken thighs (though we got ones with bones by accident).
We followed the recipe pretty closely except we also added some fresh (lemon?) thyme from the garden. We heated the pan in the oven as they suggested, and putting the chicken skin-down made quite a sizzle, it still was kind of mushy in the end! And since the skin was kind of mushy, we didn't eat that and therefore really lost all of the flavor.
The vegetables were fine. They didn't get too much more flavor than just salt. I think next time, they could use a bit more oil to get better texture and more flavor. (Though I dumped a thing of unground-salt on them but we were mostly able to avoid it). And we also did extra broccoli on the side.
So next time, I would either do a better treatment of the skin or just use skinless (and boneless). And maybe some more oil and seasoning on the vegetables.
I would also just consider this idea in general with other recipes.
U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩
Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 08:36 PM
We had kind of a boring dinner of just junky ramen but I wanted to try to make a ramen-style soft-boiled eggs (without any kind of marinade or anything).
I tried to use 3 different times. The only thing to really consider is that the steam may have been less intense at the beginning and also opening the pot may have made a difference (though probably not much). And I am at ~5500 feet. That will affect this for other locations.
I did the times as:
I think next time, I will aim for 8.5 minutes.
Sunday, September 11, 2016, 07:32 PM
We weren't very hungry so we kind of made a bunch of sides and no real meal.
We made grilled pizza mushrooms using the Delallo Vodka sauce, plus some mozzarella cheese, fresh tomatoes, and crushed red pepper. And then we added some fresh basil afterwards.
We also grilled some halloumi (with a bit of cumin and garlic powder). And finally some zucchini with some z'atar and salt.
I think the zucchini (and maybe the mushrooms) could have used more time and the halloumi a little less. It may have also been the way we cut the zucchini or simple that it needed more time.
I think I need to play with my timing a bit more on the grill. Maybe next time1 I will do the halloumi on the upper shelf and/or for less time. I am not really sure how best to do the mushrooms. They were starting to spill over. Maybe too much sauce?
Still a pretty good meal.
i.e. next year ↩