Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Home > 202
KitchenKatalog: Blog 202
Saturday, September 03, 2016, 08:18 AM
** Forgot to take a photo :-( **
Meredith made the Hatch Chile Breakfast Casserole from The Kitchen (Local Copy 1). She used fresh roasted green chiles. Her other changes were:
I also made yuca home fries. When I had them on 2016-08-15 I really liked them so I tried to make them for everyone. I followed this recipe and tried to roast them. The parboiling worked fine but I roasted them for too long. Some were burned and others were just cooked a bit too much (but crispy!). I just felt like the flavor of the yuca wasn't there. Maybe next time I will just roast them and for less.
Sadly, I forgot to take a picture. But it was all very good. We will do the casserole again.
U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩
Tuesday, August 30, 2016, 09:00 PM
Meredith and I made the Bell Pepper Taco Skillet from Inspiralized (Local 1). This was our first time spiralizing the peppers. Despite what the video showed, we found it best to core it and then use enough pressure on the balde to get the edges through. This way, we got the strips but didn't have to go through the needlessly hard center.
Anyway, the only real change we made was to double it and use turkey. I think Meredith also replaced some paprika with chipotles and tumeric. And we just microwaved the corn.
I do not know if it was that we did a double batch so it was crowded or if it was the super-thin pepper, but there was a lot of liquid. We ended up separating the batches and trying to get some of the liquid off.
I think they were pretty good. There was certainly a nice kick but also flavorful. I do think I prefer peppers non-spiralized and slightly bigger but this was different. It also made a lot of food!
U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩
Friday, August 26, 2016, 07:49 PM
The main thing of this meal was the beans. Meredith made Frijoles a la Charra using the Homesick Texan Recipe. The only changes were that we did the bean in the pressure cooker, skipped the bacon for one of the batches both batches (to make them vegetarian), and used fresh tomatoes.
For the pressure cooker, we followed the same guide. We did 2 minutes at high pressure with natural release. This sounds super fast, but the time doesn't start until it starts to escape steam (long time on the heat) and then with a natural release, you go until the pressure if fully back to atmospheric. So it takes a while. But it did work well.
The beans were awesome. Nicely cooked and flavorful
Wednesday, August 24, 2016, 09:07 PM
A quick meal. We quickly defrosted (pan with some water) frozen jerk chicken from 2016-07-31. We made cauliflower rice and then sautéed peppers and onions with some butter. Finally, we topped it with Diablo Sauce.
Quick, simple, and pretty flavorful. The chicken was a bit tough (and cold for some pieces) so I should be more careful with that next time, but the rest was really good.
Monday, August 22, 2016, 08:31 PM
We made Frutti Di Mari (Fruit of the sea). As with just about every time before, we used the mixed seafood from Trader Joes.
Reading through some older posts (2010-09-23, 2010-11-01, 2011-05-09), I knew to expect problems with liquid from the seafood. I followed what I mentioned in the later of those posts and partially steamed them first. Just enough to get them fully defrosted and having shed all of the liquid.
For the rest, I started off by sautéing a finely diced onion in olive oil. I let that go for a while and then added a ton of heirloom grape tomatoes (They were really old and somewhat shriveled but they worked fine). All the while, I was adding salt, pepper, some garlic powder, and some crushed red pepper.
I put the garlic in and then the seafood to finish cooking. Followed by a huge handful of zucchini noodles and some lightly cooked al-dente pasta1. With the pasta, I had also reserved some liquid and added a splash of that.
I let it finish cooking down just enough to evaporate the liquid and thicken it. I topped mine with parm cheese though Meredith skipped it.
I think this was probably the better Frutti Di Mari we've had! I liked all of the flavors and the simplicity. I also liked the mix of real pasta and zucchini noodles. It helped bulk it up without being too many calories.
Probably about 2-3 "servings" ↩
Monday, August 22, 2016, 06:30 AM
This is less about the actual wrap (though I describe it below) and more about the method. Meredith had originally heard of the idea from Inspiralized, though I also later read about it in The Kitchn (they may have gotten it from Inspiralized's instagram).
Essentially, you just use collard greens as a wrap. They are large and strong leaves that hold up well to being wrapped like a tortilla. I thought it worked out pretty well!
Anyway, this particular wrap was:
For other ideas are:
Anyway, this is a pretty cool idea and certainly something we will do again!
Sunday, August 21, 2016, 09:27 PM
We had friends over and wanted to make a nice meal. They were bringing sides so we focused on dinner and dessert (and eggplant).
We made Chicken Saltimbocca. All of the chicken breasts at the store were too big so we went with chicken tenders. I pounded them out a bit and then made a marinade of:
I let it marinate for a few hours. I then dried them off and laid down a layer of prosciutto and some fresh sage. I closed it up in half, put a toothpick through (the long way from the front to the fold), and dredged it with some flour (with a bit of salt and pepper).
I grilled them for about 6 minuted per side. They worked out pretty well. I think I a toothpick of two1. But other than that, they were good. I do not know if I really got the wine though.
We also grilled some eggplant. Our friends brought a caprese salad and some cauliflower-broccoli salad. I really liked them both. We didn't make it, but they told us they reduced the balsamic first. I think I would try that in the future! It coated the stuff better and had a nice sweetness.
Meredith had seen this Joy The Baker recipe (Local 2). We made the pound cake but made High Altitude Changes. The altitude changes were:
We also added a bunch of chopped lemon thyme from Meredith's garden and the usual heavy on the vanilla.
We planned to reduce the time. I do not know if the oven wasn't hot enough or I forgot convection (really not sure). But it took a lot longer. I eventually had to cover the top to not burn it and let the rest cook through.
That did work well enough though.
After it was cool, I off four slices (8 total). I grilled them with the heat really low and coasted with melted butter (instead of oil). After I flipped them, I turned on the other burners on low and turn off the direct one while Meredith finished the strawberries. She macerated them with some additional lemon thyme and also lemon zest (and just a Tbsp of sugar). We did less sugar for the whipped cream (and a more soft-peak).
I forgot to take the final picture, but it was pretty good. The cake had a bit of crisp. It wasn't as heavy as a normal pound cake but I liked it a lot still. And the lines looked really fancy (even though it didn't make much difference).
It was also nicely moist (a concern for Albuquerque) but pound cake is pretty forgiving.
Saturday, August 20, 2016, 09:38 AM
I've done this before on 2014-12-30 so I used a similar recipe, but I made some changes. For instance, we used Teriyaki sauce from 2016-07-24 which was very sweet so I didn't add extra sugar.
Anyway, it was:
The beef was super (!!!) wet. 1/2 cup of liquid is really the absolute upper bound I think for how much goes into it!
This was just my usual house jerky with bison. The only difference is that I wanted to use regular salt so I used about 2 1/4 tsp Diamond Brand1 kosher salt aiming for about 2500mg. I think it was actually a bit too salty this time. Other than that, I kept to my usual recipe.
I did both at 160°F.
Sure enough, the teriyaki did dry up pretty well. Still a bit more moist (and chewy) than I wanted but I think that is what should be expected
Also noted is a buffalo jerky recipe I was going to do but ended up doing teriyaki instead.
This one more coarse so this is still about 2500 mg sodium ↩