Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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KitchenKatalog: Blog 213
Sunday, April 10, 2016, 12:45 PM
We had bought mussels for the day before but decided to save them. Given that we live in the dessert, our only real option was frozen ones. Actually, this is the first time I've seen frozen, unsauced mussels. If you read around online, they are generally looked down upon, but I thought they were pretty good.
We tried to make a sauce out of white wine, shallots, garlic (and maybe onion?). We also added some water as per some suggestions. When we steamed them, I think they released a ton of water. The mussels were really good (maybe a bit chewy but really not bad) but the sauce was super, super wet. We will work on that part of it.
We also roasted the following vegetables:
Really nothing too fancy but it was good.
Saturday, April 09, 2016, 09:29 PM
We made a sous-vide steak on salad. We were going to make two small steaks and something else, but we weren't very hungry so we just did the steak and a salad.
We sous-vide cooked it like Valentine's Day but since this was sirloin, we did it as 57°C (134.6°F1) which is hotter than for tenderloin but makes sense for sirloin. We set the slow cooker on High and set the tolerance as low as possible. I didn't super watch it but I know the temperature fluctuated a bit.
Also, I got the water to the right temp and then added the steak. This brought the temperature down a bunch and got messed up. Next time, I will try to get it to temperature with the steak in there already.
It cooked for about 2 hours. I then topped it with a bit of oil, salt and pepper, and then seared it.
They came out ok. A bit overcooked given how thin they were. And they were just not a good of a cut of meat. Also, there was some liquid from the steaks which I used a dressing on the salad.
The controller only work in °C ↩
Thursday, April 07, 2016, 09:03 PM
Meredith has been really wanting to make something like Torchy's Taco Brushfire. Their description is:
Brushfire:
Jamaican jerk chicken, grilled jalapeños, mango, sour cream & cilantro. served with diablo hot sauce on a flour tortilla.
So we tried to make something similar. We used a Nigella Lawson via The Food Network recipe (local -- with lots of reformatting).
We followed the basic recipe with the following changes:
We shredded it with a bit of marinade paste (there was a lot). We made the tacos with heated corn tortillas, the chicken, sliced mango, cilantro, greek yogurt (instead of sour cream), and some bottled Diablo sauce from Torchy's. We actually made 6 chicken breasts and froze a ton of the chicken for another day.
The chicken was pretty good though not really anything like Torchy's. But the other toppings combined to make it at least resemble Torchy's (makes sense with the sauce).
Overall, I think we would do it again, but maybe with a different jerk chicken recipe (though we first have to use up these leftovers)
Home style Jerk Chicken (from Nigella Lawson via The Food Network)
Local Copy (U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case)
Wednesday, April 06, 2016, 12:00 AM
We made our usual Chicken Pot Pie (which I have now made into it's own page). We did the recipe and added Green Chile. I skipped both the lemon juice and the franks red hot. I think that the acidity/brightness was missed. But the chile was pretty good. It was spicy but could have used more flavor.
We also topped it with toast which was fine. Not as good as real biscuits (or presumably the phyllo). Worth doing again in the future.
Tuesday, April 05, 2016, 09:30 PM
We were originally thinking of making our usual seared salmon but Meredith had the idea of doing an asian version. We used this Cook Republic Recipe (local) with a bunch of changes.
First, we seared the salmon using the usual method. That worked ok except that the sesame oil caused a ton of smoke. We also used half the amount of sesame oil. I went slightly light on the fish sauce but not much. (oh, as just used the micro plane to make ginger paste)
Meredith made the dressing and the salad. She went light on the oil but stayed with the general dressing.
For the salad, we skipped the glass noodles and used par-cooked asparagus in place of the snap peas. We also skipped the cucumber since ours went bad. And no pine nuts. The mint was fresh from the garden. She used a vegetable peeler to slice up the carrots which worked well.
Overall, it was pretty good. Other than the smoke, I liked doing the salmon like that. It was certainly very flavorful and the salad and dressing also worked out well.
We will certainly do this again when we want salmon.
Sticky Seared Salmon and Asian Crunch Salad (from Cook Republic)
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Monday, April 04, 2016, 08:00 PM
We made Flat Out Pizza. Pretty simple and easy. We used Flatoush Flat Bread (~90 cal each).
I did one with BBQ sauce and one with Vodka sauce (the low cal one we often use for soup). I used rotisserie chicken and roasted red pepper with low fat mozzarella cheese. I also topped it with a bit of sriracha and salt (the cheese needed it).
Meredith also used the vodka sauce, red pepper, and rotisserie chicken capers plus the mozzarella.
I did it at 400°F for about 13 minutes.
Honestly, this is a pretty easy and mediocrely healthy. It is fast and the kind of perfect thing for a weeknight.
Monday, April 04, 2016, 08:00 AM
Meredith made modified chicken laap for lunches.
She did the stated recipe (except very light on the fish sauce and replaced some with soy). Plus the following
Of course, everything was really done to taste, but this is the general idea.
The biggest thing was the (untoasted) ginger and the lack of bite from the fish sauce. Meredith really doesn't like it so she went very low on it, but I think it really needed the bite and saltiness. She replaced some of the fish sauce with soy but not completely. I would do that next time. It would no longe be as Thai flavored but should still be good. Also, the ginger was extremely strong.
But, it was still a pretty good lunch.
Sunday, April 03, 2016, 12:16 PM
We made egg clouds based on the recipe from The Perfect Egg, by Teri Lyn Fisher & Jenny Park (LOCAL. We followed their recipe pretty closely and added chives fresh from the garden. It was actually pretty easy to do all of this. You just beat the eggs to medium-stiff peaks and then make a divot and add the yolk. We cooked it (on convection) for 11 minutes. I think next time, we'll do 8.
We also had it with some caprese salad.
Egg Clouds (From The Perfect Egg -- Book by Teri Lyn Fisher & Jenny Park)
Local Copy (U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case)
