Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Home > 204
KitchenKatalog: Blog 204
Tuesday, September 06, 2016, 08:28 PM
Meredith and I made a really good meal. I had suggested a stuffed chicken of some kind and Meredith suggested a greek-spinach type stuffing.
I read a few things on how to prep it but there was a lot of mixed methods. I attempted to mostly-butterfly the chicken and then pound it out. Sadly, the cut was too deep on the first one. But the other was fine and I pounded it out pretty well.
We started by sautéing onions with some salt, dill, and oregano. Once they were ready, we wilted down some spinach. We added more of the seasonings then a bunch of chopped up lite feta. Afterward, we deglazed with white wine. As that simmered down, I added a tiny bit of half-and half. I let that cook down for a few minutes.
After we stuffed the chicken, we dredged it in flour. Again, different recipes suggested different ideas, but I decided to cook it on the stovetop for 2 minutes, flipped it for another minute. Then added a bit of white wine and put the whole pan right in the oven at 350. We tested it every once in a while until we felt it was cooked, about 15 minutes.
Meredith also made a tomato-artichoke salad. She mixed a diced tomato with artichoke hearts and seasoned it with salt, pepper, oregano, and red-wine vinegar. She also served hers with olives.
I really liked the chicken. There was a nice creaminess from the tiny bit of half-and-half. The chicken was cooked well (enough) and the flavors were pretty spot on. I need to work on cutting and flattening and stuffing chicken but I'll get better at it.
Monday, September 05, 2016, 08:35 PM
We wanted a light meal so we made our Roasted Broccoli Soup. We made a very large batch. We also added some Worcestershire and soy sauce to add some umami.
The only real change with this one was that we added a tiny bit of half-and-half. As usual, this soup was really good. And so easy. Plus, the only real unhealthy things are the cheese and the half-and-half.
Monday, September 05, 2016, 08:29 PM
** Forgot to take a photo :-( **
I made my regular huevos for my dad and Peter. It was just the eggs and the sauces. The only real difference is that I made it Christmas style. I used 505 brand Green Chiles and Tio Franks Hot Red Sauce.
I really liked it with the sauces on there. Spicy but good!
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" ↩