Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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KitchenKatalog: Blog 284
Monday, July 08, 2013, 07:44 PM
I made reuben cupcakes using the usual cupcake idea (375 for 18-20, though I'd use less time next time). I made the filling by taking a bunch of sauerkraut, 1/2 lbs of sliced lean corned beef and cooking them in the pan for a while. I added a small julienned zucchini (for filling and bulking it up). I then added two Laughing Cow swiss cheese wedges and about 4 tbsp of Lite Thousand Island dressing. Finally, I added some crushed caraway seeds to get a bit of rye-like flavor. I topped the second layer with a quarter of a lite swiss cheese slice.
They worked pretty well. The bottom layer didn't stick too well since it didn't have much cheese but that wasn't too big of a deal. The flavor was pretty good. Definitely had the reuben flavor. Nice crunch as usual. I liked the addition of the caraway seed to help it seem like rye.
I was a bit disappointed by the nutrition numbers when I calculated them out. It made 12 so 2.5 each. I had 7 for dinner and 5 for lunch.
Item
Quantity
Cal
Fat
Carbs
protein
fiber
per
Total
2 oz corned beef*
4
70
3.00
3.00
11.00
0.00
2.10
8.41
Lite Swiss
3
70
4.00
0.00
6.00
0.00
1.58
4.73
Lite 1K island dressing
2
70
5.00
7.00
0.00
0.00
2.05
4.09
24 wonton wrappers
3
160
0.50
31.00
6.00
1.00
3.96
11.89
Cheese Wedges
2
35
1.50
1.00
2.00
0.00
0.68
1.35
Total
1180.00
38.50
121.00
84.00
3.00
30.48
30.48
*I have trouble with the Weight Watchers values because of the amount of fat they assume for lean corned beef. I could tell there was little fat. So I used nutritional information from here
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6271, 2013-07-08_194449
Sunday, July 07, 2013, 08:22 PM
I made grilled chicken and salt and vinegar potatoes. For the chicken, I marinated chicken breasts (cut in half) in Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce and then cooked it on the grill. Nothing special. I did overcook them a bit, but I still enjoyed them. The sauce caramelized nicely.
I was originally going to make salt and vinegar butternut squash but my squash had gone bad so I used potatoes. I made lots of changes to the recipe. I used white potatoes instead of waxy, and I used apple cider vinegar since white wine vinegar was expensive. I assumed I could let it boil for less time since the potatoes were different so I only have them 3 minutes at a low boil and then turned off the heat. They were lacking a bit of the vinegar flavor so next time, I'll use a longer boil and maybe white vinegar instead. Since I suck at using a charcoal grill, some were more cooked than others. I had to move them to the center where it was noticeably hotter
I had two pieces of chicken for dinner and I ate the third for lunch on a multi-grain english muffin
Grilled Salt and Vinegar potatoes (From Serious Eats)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6261, 2013-07-07_202205
Saturday, July 06, 2013, 01:40 PM
Meredith and I had Wes and Rebecca over and we did a make your own pizza with oysters on the half shell as an appetizer. We bought 2 dozen (though they gave us more) and it was a nice sized appetizer. We all took turns shucking them and did a pretty good job with most. We served them with the regular stuff: tabasco, cocktail sauce, other hot sauces, lemon slices, etc.
For the pizza, we had frozen, leftover Trader Joes dough from a party. We defrosted that along with the leftover cheese. The sauce and all of the toppings were purchased though. The dough is a bit strange. It stretches really, really well but it doesn't really rise at all before the oven. Also, I cooked it at 400 instead of 350. Each pizza was made from half a 16oz dough ball.
Everyone got to make two pizzas however I only took pictures of the first. (and most saved the second for later)
They are:
Justin's first (Pictured lower left):
Justin's Second:
Meredith's First (Picture, top left). Tex-Mex style
Meredith's Second
Wes's First (Pictured, bottom right)
Wes's Second:
Rebecca's First (Pictured, top right)
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6257, 2013-07-06_134033
Thursday, July 04, 2013, 02:40 PM
Meredith and I made horchata from the recipe below (tripled). However, we felt like that was too much sugar (3 cups!) so we only did two and figured we could add splenda later if we had to (but we didn't). We also dissolved the sugar in when the water was hot. We used a mixture of thai black rice, and a few others (giving it all a dark color). We added the almonds and let it soak overnight.
The immersion blender was struggling to get through it all so we added some more water and blended it all. We strained it and saved the leftover almond meal.
Here is the real cool thing we did. We took the almond/rice meal, added a bunch of flour (over a cup), about 2 Tbsp baking powder, and 2 beaten eggs. We added flour until it was a nice mixture. We then laid it out on a baking sheet (lined entirely with Non-Stick aluminum foil) and baked it at 350 until it felt done. Basically, entirely by feel. Note that the color comes from the thai rice. There is no coco powder, etc.
The flavor of those bars were really interesting. They didn't taste too sweet at first (almost like it needed more) but then they had a really nice finish and after taste. The rice, being not really cooked, gave it a nice bite and the almond added some good taste. Of course, this is the kind of thing I could NEVER do again. We just played it by ear too much!
The horchata was also good. I liked the flavor and it was better than what I have had in restaurants. Still, it seems like you can buy rice milk and almond milk then infuse cinnamon and sugar for the same basic idea
Horchata De Almendra (From Chef Bud)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6252, 2013-07-04_144005
Thursday, July 04, 2013, 01:40 PM
Meredith made scones. I helped a bit, but it was really all her. She followed the idea of the recipe but used sliced cherries and chocolate instead of those fillings.
Also, Meredith cooked it all together (but sliced), then then sliced it. That meant it needed more time. And, we then cut it and baked them a bit more.
Lavender Blackberry Scones (from Joy The Baker)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6248, 2013-07-04_134016
Wednesday, July 03, 2013, 01:35 PM
This was my standard seared salmon with just salt and pepper. Meredith was getting in late so I had this ready as a fast and easy meal. It was good as usual. Maybe it was the salmon, or the cooking time but it had an almost buttery texture and taste.
I also tried pan frying the remaining salmon skin to make the "bacon of the sea." Once you get past the idea that you were eating fried fish skin, it was pretty good. Still, most of it went to the dog who liked it more than us.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6246, 2013-07-03_133549
Tuesday, July 02, 2013, 08:38 PM
I had this idea when I was at Costco. I decided to give it a shot making one of my favorite dishes,broccolibeef, but with brussel sprouts instead of broccoli. I didn't want to boil the brussel sprouts so I used the oven.
Even though (as I said here), I was tired of doing the brussel sprouts at the extremely high temp, I used it for this since I wanted them not too mushy but cooked. And I knew they would cook more in the sauce. So I did them for 15 minutes at that insane heat
I had used 1.5 times the normal amount of sauce since I thought I had so much vegetables but it turns out that two pounds of brussel sprouts takes much less space than two points of broccoli so I had too much sauce. It was okay though, it cooked down nicely enough. Just a bit more thick than usual. I also added crushed red pepper in both sauces but it wasn't too spicy.
All in all, this was an interesting approach. I wouldn't rush to do it again, but I am glad I tried something new
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6242, 2013-07-02_203800
Sunday, June 30, 2013, 09:19 PM
I was trying to make something out of leftovers and other things I had around so I came up with this meal. I started by browning half an onion. I then added 1/3 of the soy chorizo (from the other day), and I dumped in a bunch of salsa. In the mean time, I cooked up 1.5 servings of "Plus" pasta. As that was almost done, I added two wedges of laughing cow. I mixed in the pasta and topped it with half an avocado.
It was actually really good and super simple. Probably mediocre in terms of points but I didn't calculate it specifically.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6237, 2013-06-30_211933