Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Home > 205
KitchenKatalog: Blog 205
Thursday, July 28, 2016, 09:25 PM
We grilled salmon and a bunch of other stuff. The salmon wasn't a big deal. We just put some Indian spices (from Manav's Mom) on the salmon and grilled it on high for a minute on the non-skin side then 5 on the skin. That is what we do when we sear it but it was probably a bit too long.
The real thing for this meal was the brussel sprouts. I put them on a metal skewer and then read some suggestions on how to cook it. Turns out that most thing suggest microwaving it for a little bit before skewering it. Well, I already skewered it and was stubborn so I decided to just steam it. I did about 10 minutes (though the lid was open a bit since the skewers were too long). Anyway, after they were on the skewer, I grilled them around medium to medium-high and I kept coating them in teriyaki from the other day.
At the same time, I was grilling the eggplant. I tried to not overcook them, but as you can see in the pictures, I still went a bit too long.
Overall, everything was good. The salmon was a bit overcooked, but the brussel sprouts were good. I would try it again but hopefully with more homogeneously sized ones so I can cook it better. And again, the eggplant should have cooked a little less hot (and maybe a little less salt).
Wednesday, July 27, 2016, 07:10 PM
Simple grilled meal! We had purchased a thing of chicken sausage. They are already cooked so all I really had to do was reheat them. At the same time, we sliced up zucchini and grilled that with some leftover Teriyaki sauce.
Meredith also made a caprese salad with burrata. I liked it a lot with burrata even though it was messy. It had a creamier texture.
Everything was served on a bed of arugula.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016, 08:21 PM
Grilling continues! We marinated some halloumi in Franks Red Hot for an hour or so and then grilled it. I used a more gentle heat than last time. I also coasted it with some more Franks Red Hot while grilling.
We also grilled eggplant and some other stuff. There is seitan there (which I ate while grilling...oops...) and we also tried to make a grilled lettuce salad. That worked ok. Not the most amazing thing, but it helped bulk up the meal. We probably should have made a few more slices of cheese.
We made tacos with the cheese and the eggplant. Again, nothing special, but the cheese was really good.
Monday, July 25, 2016, 08:54 PM
Meredith made Fattoush for lunches using the linked recipe. She followed the recipe pretty much except no mint or parsley.
I grilled up a bunch of chicken tenders to cut up and go in as well. I just topped them with salt and za'atar. After grilling it, I chopped it up but it wasn't a ton of meat so we also added a can of chick-peas to it as well.
For the bread, we used Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Middle Eastern Flatbread. We toasted it in the morning and then put it in for lunch. It actually didn't end up too soggy so that worked well.
Monday, July 25, 2016, 07:10 PM
Experimentation with the grill continues. I tried using falafel dough I had frozen a while ago. I was a bit hesitant since the dough was super, super wet. That is probably from freezing it. Fresh may work differently.
Anyway, I actually tried two different things. I tried right on the plates and also on non-stick aluminum foil. You can see the clear difference in the photos below. For both, I did it on medium-high. The first side was not on long enough and the second was a bit too long.
Then I grilled the tomatoes. I had already pammed them and added salt. I grilled them on high/medium-high for about 2-3 minutes per side. At the same time, I heated the flat bread.
Meanwhile, Meredith made her regular tzatziki.
Sunday, July 24, 2016, 09:56 PM
We had yakitori night. We had eaten a big lunch so we decided to go light for this meal (though certainly not really easy).
We used the Serious Eats Teriyaki Sauce recipe (Local) along with the suggestion from the mushroom recipe (see below but also copied on the local sauce page).
It was really easy to make. Just combine the ingredients and let it simmer. We did add some scallion, ginger, and garlic which seemed to work well.
The sauce itself came out flavorful but super sweet. It kind of makes sense for grilling where you get the caramelization, but I think we could still get that and cut it down.
So, next time, use 1/4-1/3 cups of brown sugar instead of the 1/2 it calls for.
We actually added some extra soy to try to cut down the sweetness a bit. Also, it made a ton extra so we'll use it at some point in the future.
We followed the same recipe for quail eggs as 2016-04-20. As we noted then, we let it boil for a bit longer for 3 minutes. The hardest part of this recipe is trying to peel the little eggs. Meredith was able to do it better than I was. The eggs were pretty good. Could probably have used an additional day of marinating to infuse more.
We used the grill for them, but oiled the grates so they wouldn't stick. Also, we put some green onion on the skewers both for ascetics and flavor.
Also, Meredith actually made the sesame seed and salt thing to go along with it. That was very good and we used it for the peppers too!
Before turning in the marinade:
Again following Serious Eats' lead, we made shishito. (No local copy since I really didn't do much).
We used the grilling basket for them which kind of worked. I do not like that you can't close the lid or that they don't all get to touch the grates, but it did make this easier. We just used salt (not enough) and then glazed it (or tried to) at the end with the teriyaki. These peppers were small and not as good. We haven't had much luck with them in Albuquerque.
We followed the Serious Eats Recipe (Local) recipe for the mushrooms. We used Whole Foods house-smoked Green Chile Bacon. I think we grilled ours a bit too hot and/or too long since it was a bit charred. I also do not know why our sauce didn't stick as much (should it have been thicker)?
But I do think the mushrooms did a good job absorbing a lot of the flavors from the bacon. Also, the grill did smoke a good bit as the fat dripped off but I think that adds to the flavor.
Friday, July 22, 2016, 08:00 PM
We made Thai Basil with Beef from the Shutterbean Recipe (Local 1). We followed the general idea for the beef (didn't do the slaw) and also added snow-peans and chopped bell pepper. Also, one semi-major change in how we cooked it was that I stir-fried it. This meant that beef cooked in about 2 minutes rather than the 10 or so and everything else just happened faster. Also, we used 2/3 of a pound of beef since we only planned 2 servings.
Since we didn't do the slaw, we just added the dressing at the very end with the heat off. The idea being that it would mix more easily. And then we still topped it with extra thai basil and scallions (we also added some scallions to the stir-fry)
We both thought it was pretty good. However, it was super lacking in spice! Next time, we will do a bunch of thai chili peppers instead of a jalapeno. I thought the sauce was good but maybe could have been a bit more pungent (read: a bit more fish sauce). It was hard enough to get Meredith to make the sauce with the specified amount, let alone add more!
U: guest, P: name of my dog, lower case ↩
Thursday, July 21, 2016, 12:00 AM
Not much to this, but I decided to try to make a smore Quesadilla. All I did was heat the tortillas and then put on some marshmallow and chocolate. The marshmallow kind of expanded and made a mess. But for the 5 minutes it took to make this, it was pretty good.