Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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KitchenKatalog: Blog 261
Thursday, May 08, 2014, 10:11 PM
We made a pretty simple and very good meal. We started with a Costco Rotisserie Chicken ($5!!!!) and I (attempted) to cut it up into pieces. We then put it into a salad with:
Meredith made a Wasabi Vinaigrette with:
It was very good and, other than carving the chicken, pretty easy. Note that I took off most of the chicken skin to save the calories but I left it on a in a few places to add flavor.
I also made a similar lunch the next day (pictured below). I had a tiny bit of Meredith's leftovers and I added:
I used my favorite salad dressing: Balsamic vinegar and fresh pepper. Actually, I also usually like to add some red wine vinegar but we either didn't have it or I couldn't find it. Oh well, the Kirkland vinegar is so flavorful that it wasn't really needed.
I really like meals like this. Lots of bulk from the salad, fresh flavors and pretty easy!
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7802, 2014-05-08_221137
Thursday, May 08, 2014, 12:59 PM
My first real cooked meal in the new apartment. I am trying to work down the massive pantry and this is what I came up with.
I sautéd half an onion and added 3 dried chile de arbo peppers crushed (incl. seeds). Meanwhile I cooked 2 oz of buckwheat soba noodles. I added a packet of "canned" salmon to the onions and peppers along with a minced garlic clove. I then added the pasta with a bit of the water and topped it with some salt and pepper.
Overall, it was pretty good. Nothing amazing but it was a well-balanced meal with some kick. Could have used some grated parm cheese and maybe more seasonings to boost the flavor.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7796, 2014-05-08_125945
Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 12:55 PM
My last meal at the old apartment. All I had was a non-stick pan and salt+pepper. I made a chicken breast but I almost certainly overcooked it since (a) I forgot to flatten it and (b) I didn't have a meat thermometer. I also made a fried egg.
Simple and did the job but not overly impressive
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7792, 2014-04-29_125520
Sunday, April 27, 2014, 12:52 PM
This was a use-up-stuff meal. I made cajun hamburgers topped with a fried egg. I made the burgers by adding a ton of Emril Essence. I used 2/3 lbs for two burgers so they were each a nice size.
I did this a long time ago so I do not remember the specifics but I think it was pretty good
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7788, 2014-04-27_125255
Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 08:05 PM
I made seitan and then a broccoli and seitan stir-fry.
I didn't take a photo of it but I used the seitan from below to make a broccoli stir fry. I just steamed broccoli, then added the seitan. I then added some teriyaki (not the high-cal one) and some other seasonings.
I read a few different articles online about pressure cooking seitan. Many said that seitan gets spongy from being cooked over a normal simmer temp (which is way lower than a pressure cooker). And to counter this, add some other flour.
So, I played around a bit and came up with the following recipe. Note that the extra 1/4 cups of water was too much. The dough was very wet but this did work very well so I wouldn't make too many changes. Next time, I also want to weigh the things for future reference since I hate going by volume. But anyway,
Dry:
Wet:
Broth (for pressure cooker)
I mixed the dry ingredients together and then separately mixed the wet. I added the wet ingredients (which was minus the extra 1/4 cup water). I then added the extra 1/4 cup since it was too dry. After mixing it all, I ran it in the food processor for 30 seconds and then kneaded it by hand too.
I let it rest for a little bit while I made the broth and started that. I then cut the dough into four equal pieces. I tried something different and rolled half of them in cheese cloth to make them nicely shaped. As you can see from the photo, it worked
I added them to the pressure cooker and cooked for 30 minutes (at_full_pressure) and a natural release.
This was probably the best seitan I have made in a while. I would work off of this recipe in the future
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7767, 2014-04-22_200522
Friday, April 18, 2014, 08:00 PM
We made Bahn Mi sliders and Zucchini Noodles in a Peanut sauce
We used the recipe below (halved) for the sauce but we made a few changes. The most major of which is we used fresh peanuts to make the peanut butter. We kind of just eye balled it but it was probably pretty close. And, to bring it all together, we added the sesame oil while chopping the nuts. We also used two fresh thai chile peppers instead of red pepper flakes which gave it a really good, fresh heat. And we used some extra honey to balance the heat.
The other major change to the sauce was that I screwed up and read that you cooked it. While it was a mistake and it made a bit of a mess, it actually added a nice complexity to the sauce.
We combined the sauce and the noodles on the stove but I think that cooked the zucchini too much making it watery. Next time, we will just lightly roast the zucchini and then combine with the sauce to keep it more together. Also, we had a huge amount of sauce leftover even though_we already halved it_
The sliders were made with mini-kaiser rolls. We used the following:
A few notes. We used some coconut oil to sauté the skirt steak. Well, between using too much of the coconut oil and the rendered fat on the steak, it was very oily. We will use less oil and maybe a different cut of meat next time. Also, you couldn't really taste the marinade. So, more and longer next time. And maybe tweak it to be more "penetrating"
We didn't have white vinegar so we used half rice wine vinegar and half apple cider. Also, the carrots pickled for about 30 hours.
The jalapeños were extremely hot! Probably from leaving the seeds in.
These also came out tasting really good. Lots of fresh ingredients. And they were pretty cute.
Peanut Sesame Noodles (from Smitten Kitchen)
local copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case)
Daikon and Carrot Pickle (from Viet World Kitchen)
local copy-- password is the name of my dog, all lower case)
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7764, 2014-04-18_200022
Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 08:00 PM
Meredith was introducing me to her spiralizer. We used it to make a dinner and a lunch.
This was a long time ago but to the best of my recollection, the ingredients are below. Also note that we lightly baked the carrots in the oven around 400 for a few minutes. I will come back and add to these lists when I get Meredith's input:
These were both very good. I wish I wrote this post sooner so I could remember the stuff more but either way, we would attempt these again.
After the shrimp was sautéed, garlic was added and then white wine. As it reduced, all of the ingredients were added to the pan and were tossed with the heat on for a little bit.
Roasted the carrots for 5 minutes with za'atar sprinkled on top. Added the other stuff and topped with some more za'atar. I also added an egg and some parm cheese to mine. Note for the future: this would have gone well with some feta or ricotta salata.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7758, 2014-04-16_200001
Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 01:55 PM
This was a very simple lunch meal. I simply used some Trader Joes Soy Chorizo (they had it again) and two eggs. I fried them up together and put it on a warmed tortilla.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7754, 2014-04-16_135532