Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Home > 206
KitchenKatalog: Blog 206
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.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 07:00 PM
Meredith and I were having a friend over so ee decided to again try to replicate Torchy's Brushfire Taco (see 2016-04-07 but decided to use a different jerk chicken recipe (and method)
We decided to go (mostly) with the Serious Eats FoodLab (Local 1) recipe. Kenji, in typical fashion, goes overboard. We just used his original marinade.
I did make a few small changes to the marinade:
The marinade was really good. I was eating some of it with a spoon! I think we could try to thicken this (though it may then not be enough volume to blend) and make it into a sauce. Either way, we would certainly use the marinade again!
I marinated the chicken for 3 days (very long). I then followed 2016-06-28 and did the chicken at 145°F. I did it for about 2 hours with the chicken still in the marinade in the bags.
I then grilled it at the highest temp for 1 minute per side as the sear step.
Flavor wise, I like it a lot. I would certainly scale up using this recipe. Method wise, I was a bit torn. I love sous-vide but finishing on the grill was kind of a waste. It stuck some (since we intentionally not leaving it on long enough to cook) and there wasn't much benefit. Plus, it took a lot of time and propane to grill it. On the plus side, I could do it all at once, I didn't have to heat up the house, and I didn't set off smoke alarms.
I think next time, I will either sous-vide or grill, but not both. If I sous-vide, I will either just shred it or I will sear it and slice it.
Or, I will just grill it. Then you get the (appropriate for the meal) char, etc. And I may consider keeping the skin on, but we'll see.
Also, with the sous-vide, the chicken was almost too moist. It just didn't quite feel right for this. Kind of strange I guess.
Anyway, we just assembled with fat-free greek yogurt, chicken, marinade2,mango, Torchy's Diablo sauce, and cilantro. (I forgot to take a photo of mine. We used my friend's photo but we assembled hers differently and without Diablo sauce so it is missing in the above photo)
Tuesday, July 19, 2016, 08:05 PM
We made grilled salmon burgers. There wasn't much to them except that I used too high of a heat and didn't get the inside cooked enough so I had to put it back on a bit longer. I also did onions in aluminum foil and this time for long enough (though a bit too hot) to caramelize it.
The bigger deal was the curry roasted cauliflower. I tossed it with olive oil, curry powder and salt. I then tried to do it in the grill basket as you can see in the photos below. I took the pieces that fell through the basket and also tried to do them in aluminum foil.
The basket worked ok. It meant I couldn't close the grill all the way which was a bit annoying. It also meant I had to take it off the grill in order to do the cauliflower. They were hard to cook well and it was hard to cook them all evenly. I may look into other ways in the future.
Sunday, July 17, 2016, 06:10 PM
We again used the grill but went on the easy side. We bought the Trader Joe's Genovese Pesto Chicken:
Sure, this was a bit cheating, but it was also a nice compromise between time and prep work. We followed rough the Weber suggested timings and did about 5-6 minutes per side over direct medium heat. (Meredith wouldn't let me use the meat thermometer so we went by feel. Haven't gotten sick yet!... yet...)
We actually didn't love the sauce. It was too lemony and tangy. I do like the idea, but we will try a different one next time. It was easy though.
Meredith also made caprese salad. We used fresh tomatoes and also some she made into "tomato confit". They had been getting super old and shrived but tasted fine. She halved them, added some salt, (maybe pepper), some fresh oregano1 plus olive oil. She baked it for around 2.5-3 hours at 270°F. They were more like oven dried tomatoes, though they were already pretty dry.
For the caprese, she mixed that plus mini mozzarella balls, salt, pepper, some balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Finally, she topped it with some (garden) basil and more oregano.
We think it is oregano. It may be marjoram ↩
Saturday, July 16, 2016, 08:00 PM
We finally got a grill and put it together. We had some friends over to break it in. We also decided to go with a vegetarian meal (just for kicks).
There were lots of food that required various levels of prep. We went with a mix of easy and hard.
Nothing much too it. We just used salt and pepper on them. They were grilled for about 10-15 minutes on each side. As you can see, some got a bit burned, but they all came out okay. Actually, this was surprisingly not dry like most squash is usually. It may have been the grill or the 2 hours (ish) they sat with the salt and pepper. That may have had to do with it too
We just cut them put them in a pouch with a bit of salt, pepper, and oil. I cooked them for a long while but not really long enough. They could have been more caramelized a bit better. Next time, I will use some butter too and then I will also let it go for a good bit longer. Get some real caramelization on them.
Just salt and pepper. We went easy with these
This was the one marinade we really did by our selves. We used the miso-marinated carpaccio recipe. We followed the base marinade pretty closely except that we added a tablespoon of gochujang. We've done Sriracha before, but I figured that given that this was a miso-based marinade, we should use something else super fermented. It worked out well. A bit spicy. We did forget the rest of the recipe including the pistachios, but it still worked out well.
This also marinated for a few hours
We've used this a few times before (see 2015-08-01,2016-05-16). We marinated it in Franks Red Hot. Pretty simple but it also worked well. As you can see in the photos, I burned it a bit. They were kind of dry, but still good. I should be careful next time and use a lower heat. It is still kind of crazy that they don't melt!
Another easy prep. We used the Trader Joes "Super Firm Organic Tofu". We cut it into medium-sized slices and marinated it with Soyaki Sauce. Again, marinated for a few hours and then grilled. I really like working with this tofu. Anything else would need to be pressed for a long time but this stuff just works fine. It also came out pretty good. Maybe a bit dry, but still pretty good.
The bread was the Trader Joes sour-dough rolls
We made a pretty simple dessert Meredith found on Serious Eats (Local). There wasn't much to it and we forgot to buy the peanut butter chips. But the rest was pretty easy and it was good. We had to use some a toothpick to hold some it together. It was a bit messy as a lot of it fell over on the grill. Lots of chocolate and marshmallows on the plates1.
I thought they were pretty good. Maybe a bit strange having the warm banana but I did like it. Ours was certainly not as pretty looking as the ones in the original recipe.
Grilled Banana Boats With Peanut Butter, Chocolate, and Marshmallows (from Serious Eats)
Local Copy -- U: guest, P: name of my dog
They carbonized nicely and came off easily after I blasted the heat at the end. ↩