Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
Sitemap ·
Our Recipe Book ·
Steven's Recipe Book ·
Ann's Recipe Book ·
Meal Ideas ·
Copied Recipes
Random ·
Random Links
Home > 276
KitchenKatalog: Blog 276
Tuesday, October 15, 2013, 05:24 PM
This was roughly a repeat of breakfast cupcakes[1, 2] I made with my dad. I followed the normal cupcake procedures. I cooked up 3/4 of a gimme lean and then added onion (added it a bit late but I actually liked how it came out). I then added that to scrambled eggs (5...and they were real). I added a bit of salt and pepper and then added it to the par-cooked shells. Again, the filling was a bit chunky making it hard to really control the amount. But, I used a bit of cheese to help the top layer stick better. And I did the top layer with less filling.
They were really good and flavorful. Using real egg really made a difference. I think in the future, I will try to do something like half real eggs and half egg beaters to get some of the flavor without the fat.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6766, 2013-10-15_172417
Monday, October 14, 2013, 11:02 PM
This was quite the meal. Emily wanted mexican so this is what we came up with. In no particular order:
I had read a few sites on artichokes and decided to simply cut it in half, trim the stem, coat with garlic and small slice of lime. I roasted them for about 40 minutes at about 400. I had to take them out because they were burning.
When we tried to eat them, they were still too undercooked. We couldn't get to the meat of the artichoke. I microwaved them for 5 minutes which helped a bit but not really enough.
I like the idea of using dry heat but it just didn't seem to cook them enough. I will look into steaming them and_then_ roasting. Or, I saw something that used a foil packet. Maybe, I simply need a lower temperature.
Meredith made the dips too. They were both fat-free greek yogurt based. One was honey mustard where she mixed mustard and honey (duh) into the yogurt.The other was tequila-lime (which tasted a bit like margaritas). Both were good though the honey mustard was more popular.
These were based on the recipe below. The idea is that you boil sweet potatoes and then press them (smash them?) flat. However, it became clear pretty early on that they were not smashing well. I do not know if they were too big or if I had done something else wrong, but they weren't really working. So, we microwaved them a bit more and mashed them. Then, we used the seasoning mix (doubled) and coated both sides. We baked them for about 25 minutes at 400.
They came out really good. The sweet potatoes themselves had a lot of flavor and the seasoning mix was spot-on. We will do them again
Meredith made the guac and it was absolutely amazing. She can come back and comment on exactly what she did, but it had some different ingredients than usual. Most notably, I very finely chopped some onion, cilantro and jalapeño peppers. I do not know what other seasonings she used but it was amazing!
I made the taco filling. First, I cooked lentils like I do for the moussakka. I separately sautéd an onion and a whole container of finely chopped mushrooms. I combined them all. I used taco seasoning but I also added garlic powder, pepper and crushed red pepper to the mix. I let it all cook down together.
We served it with chopped onion, cilantro, FF greek yogurt (as sour cream), cheese, low-carb tortillas (gummy. Would not rush to get again) and mini tomatoes.
Everything was very good except the chewy artichokes. The meal was a lot of work but it was fun. There was lots of collaboration and everyone (Emily was there too) working together.
Crash Hot Sweet Potatoes (from The Creek Side Cook)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6763, 2013-10-14_230214
Monday, October 14, 2013, 12:41 PM
I started a "brew" of hard cider. I used Whole Foods 365 Brand cider and Old Orchard Juice Concentrate. The general idea is from HowToMakeHardCider.com.
Here are my notes:
That was all there was to it. It probably took about 30 minutes! I do not know about this yeast but it is what the shop recommended. I haven't decided about back sweetening and what else I want to do.
I decided for the sake of simplicity, I wouldn't back sweeten and I'd just bottle as is. I put it in the fridge 3 days earlier to cold crash. I had taken off the airlock and put sanitized foil over the bung so it would fit.
Here are my bottle notes:
Bottling went well. I cleanly bottled 10 bottles with some left to drink. It tasted very good. Very clean and dry. It reminded me of a very lightly carbonated and very unsweetened version of that alcohol apple cider. It also had a kind-of champagne smell to it. I do not think it needed any sweetener! I'm very excited to try it and I think I will buy more jugs of juice and do it again.
Side note:
This is batch C01.
2013-12-07 note: 3 weeks will be 2013-12-14
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6760, 2013-10-14_124120
Monday, October 14, 2013, 11:53 AM
We had one half dough-ball (8 oz) left so I used it to make a smaller breakfast pizza. I took it right from the fridge and tried to shape it. I had trouble but I got it just enough to make a pizza. I put a layer of Pace (I think mild or medium) on the bottom and then TJ's four cheese blend and a few jalapeños. When it was almost finished cooking, I added scrambled eggs and a bit more cheese. The scrambled eggs were easier to spread than cracking an egg on it, but most certainly less fancy. Still, I think for our uses, I preferred that.
Anyway, the pizza came out fine. Nothing really special but still pretty good and certainly an easy meal.Because I didn't roll out the dough, there was also very little cleanup
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6757, 2013-10-14_115323
Sunday, October 13, 2013, 06:48 PM
I made the carrot pudding but I made a few changes (despite it being in my "recipe book" -- oh well). I made the following changes:
Note for future, reduce liquid if I am going to go with shorter cook time.
I do not know if it was the shorter (12 min) pressure cook time, the whiskey, or the water-based release (or something else), but it came out very, very wet. Actually, I bet it was the release method. Steam release removes a lot of that liquid. Anyway, any benefit from the shorter pressure cook was quickly removed by the extra liquid. I had to let it simmer for a very, very long time to get to the right texture.
This time, the flavor had a bit of a fake taste. I know it is from the Splenda but I feel like it was more fake today. Also, I didn't taste the whiskey.
Things to consider for next time:
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6752, 2013-10-13_184856
Sunday, October 13, 2013, 06:25 PM
Meredith and I made breakfast for us and Emily. I made the butternut squash hash. It was pretty simple. I just cooked the squash on low to medium low (with and without a lid) until they were mostly cooked then I upped the heat to brown. We added a bunch of sliced kale about 1/2 way into cooking. I used salt and pepper but nothing else too fancy since I was preoccupied while cooking. I finally poached a few eggs into the squash and finished it on the broiler.
Meredith assembled the breakfast pizza. We started with a whole doughball but it was one of the wet from the other day. Between the texture and it being right from the fridge, it was hard to form. As you can see, it is the size of a normal pizza (made with 8 oz) but this is with 16 so it was much thicker.
The pizza was a huevos rancheros (ish) pizza. The "sauce" was mild salsa. We first cooked it jalapeños and cheese and then about half way, added the eggs (just two), kale and then the avocado when it came out.
Both the pizza and the hash were very good. The hash could probably have used more flavor and more crisp (which is harder to do with squash). The pizza had a great flavor and texture but was too thick (as expected). I would have liked a bit more salsa but it was well within the realm of personal preference.
Overall, there was a lot of food and it was very, very good
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6748, 2013-10-13_182522
Saturday, October 12, 2013, 05:55 PM
We had a bunch of friends over and did make your own pizza. Not much to tell here. The usual toppings including:
We used TJ's dough balls. Note to self, when quick-defrosting a dough ball, put it in a bag. The included bag did not suffice and we had a few wet dough balls.
We also made our Roasted Broccoli Cheddar soup. We followed the basic recipe except roughly 1.5-2.0x it. And we used real onion in addition to scallions. Finally, we used Osem to keep it meat-free. A minor change we did was to cube the cheese instead of shredding. This to make it easier (no need to clean the food processor) and we figured it would cook fine. However, it seems to have burned a bit on the bottom. We need to be more careful of that.
Oh, we also added some crushed red pepper to the soup and some garlic powder to the roasting broccoli.
No picture.....
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6745, 2013-10-12_175500
Friday, October 11, 2013, 05:10 PM
Meredith and I made this meal together for when Emily was here.
First the tofu. Meredith had done something like this before and we tried again. We took extra firm tofu and pressed it pretty hard to try to drain it more. We then marinaded it. The original marinade was a combination of: garlic powder, liquid aminos (soy sauce), sesame oil, sriracha, rice vinegar, worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and a bit of water. We let it sit for two days however, we decided that we wanted a stronger flavor and darker color so we added some Soy Vey to it about an hour before cooking. We cooked it in the oven at 425 for about 30 minutes (flipped halfway).
They came out pretty good. Meredith said they weren't as crispy as before and not quite as good. Oh well. We still liked them.
The vegetable pancakes were inspired by the recipe below. We basically followed the idea but added extra carrots (grated by the way) and roughly 1.5 times everything else (except that salt, which was a mistake). We mixed them in two bowls since it was so much and kept combining as needed. We added the flour and eggs but kept adding flour and eggs until we basically liked the consistency. We were not super careful with keeping track of how much we added and kind of played it by ear.
We baked them on non-stick foil at 425 for 25-30 min, flipped them and then another 10 (inspired byzucchini fritters and the like). Instead of the included sauce, we used the marinade from the tofu. It was mostly Soy Vey but also some of the other seasonings.
The pancakes turned out pretty good. Lots of veggies! They could have definitely used more salt. And maybe a bunch of other seasonings.
I like doing this kind of pancake in the oven. They come out pretty good and we can skip the oil! Of course,_real_pancakes would probably not work out so well.
Japanese Vegetable Pancakes (from Smitten Kitchen)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6738, 2013-10-11_171014