Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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KitchenKatalog: Blog 315
Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 07:07 AM
We followed the standard sloppy joe recipe except I also added some sriracha to kick up the spice. We let it simmer for a while which really is the trick with these. Our first ones were pretty standard on Arnolds but for the rest, we make into sloppy joe taquitos. They were pretty good and a different way to eat them.
I like this meal since it is pretty easy. Easy to prep and clean and you can do other stuff while it is cooking.
Of course, since we use 2/3 lbs of beef for both of us to make 4 sloppy joes, they tend to be rather clean.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1823, 2012-02-15_070732
Monday, February 13, 2012, 06:28 PM
We bought vealvenison steaks at Whole Foods to try something new. As per the instructions, we seared them and cooked them to medium rare. Well, the two larger steaks were still...whatever noise deer make...and the smaller steak was medium. Anyway, they had a gamey taste to them and neither Meredith nor I thought they were amazing. A fun experiment none-the-less.
Meredith also made mashed potatoes using fake butter, non-fat greek yogurt and a bunch of spices. It was okay but a tad chalky. We also had steamed asparagus that tasted really funky for some reason.
I guess just a strange meal all around
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1812, 2012-02-13_182806
Saturday, February 11, 2012, 06:27 PM
The main part of this was the avocado. We had read about it on Lifehacker but we changed it a bunch. Meredith made a stuffing out of egg beaters, cheese and Pace salsa. We hollowed out a bit of the avocado to make a bigger space and poured the egg in. We baked it for about 20 minutes. I think at 400 but I do not remember for sure and the site doesn't seem to have it. It was really good and cool. The warm avocado added a nice touch and the egg stuff was also good.
I also made a lean hamburger with a lot of different seasonings including curry powder and cayenne. It was dry but fine.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1806, 2012-02-11_182727
Saturday, February 11, 2012, 06:27 PM
Oh boy, this was an interesting meal. Not so much the food, but more because of the cooking it. Basically nothing went right. Not to ruin it, but, surprisingly, everything turned out okay.
We followed the recipe we used on 2011-07-28. We basically followed the recipe there including using real ricotta salata this time. We made both kinds again. They were both really good. Of course, we burned the toast so we had to scrape it off.
We made the pasta like we did on 2011-02-19 (halved) except this time, we used fresh roasted beets. Again, we used egg beaters instead of egg whites. Since we were using the food processor to grind the beets, we tried using it to knead and make the pasta. I do not know if it was just too wet or what, but it didn't work too well. It was so sticky. I had to quickly clean off a counter a knead it a bunch by hand and add a lot of flour. It had a nice red hue though.
Then, after it rested, I tried to roll it out with the pasta roller. Well, still being sticky, it barely made it through the rollers and it wasn't nice pieces. Then, when I tried to put it in the slicer ones, it wouldn't cut through it. It just mushed it.
So, again, I had to clear off a counter and I rolled it out really flat by hand. Then I coated it with a lot of flour (since it will wash off in the water anyway), rolled it up, then sliced it. I then had to manually unroll each strand. And it made a lot. Oh well. It had a really cool homemade look.
The recipe is on the linked page, but I did the one change I find makes a huge difference with fresh pasta. I added extra (maybe 1.5x) salt in the dough and I added a bunch of salt to the water. It makes a nice difference. I was worried that we would overcook it due to what happened while doing the scallops but they were fine.
We also sautéd the beet greens then reduced white wine. We mixed that with the pasta.
**
**Here is where it got interesting. First we weren't sure if we fully defrosted them but thankfully, they defrosted enough and all of the water came off of them (we think). The real fun came when we tried to cook them. Everything said to seer them and Meredith had read to use olive oil. We preheated the pan, added the oil and it started smoking right away. That was somewhat expected, but what came next was it auto-ignited and almost burned Meredith. It went out then we thought it was fine then it started again. I tried to move the pan onto a trivet off the stove. Well, that put some unburned oil back in the center and it ignited again. This happened one more time when I was finally able to move it to a cool burner. Of course, this happened while I had to take the pasta and of course, the smoke filled apartment set off the fire alarm (which has very hard to remove battery and is then plugged in. Oy.
We ended up using a different pan to cook them. They were still good.
**
**This was really interesting and worked fine. It basically required breaking the two rules of dealing with chocolate: Never heat on direct heat and NEVER let it get wet. Well, with this, you heat 1 cup (240 ml) of water with about 265 grams of 70% or higher dark chocolate over direct heat (we halved this though). Once it is all melted and consistent, you pour it into a metal bowl which itself is in an ice bath. Then you whisk it vigorously until it is a mousse consistency. It actually worked. And it was very, very good. The consistency was perfect and had a strong chocolate flavor (which makes sense since there is nothing else in it but water). The recipe says you can add some sugar but we didn't. Maybe we will next time. Oh, this is sometimes called Chocolate Chantilly
The picture and recipe are below.
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Instant Chocolate Mousse (Chocolate Chantilly) from (Cafefernando)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1809, 2012-02-11_182752
Thursday, February 09, 2012, 06:27 PM
Meredith made these so I do not really know anything, but I think she followed the same recipe as posted 2011-08-02. Unlike that time when it was extremely good, it wasn't as flavorful this time. It was just a bit dry. We do not know why. Maybe too little sauce, unlike the first time when there was too much sauce.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1803, 2012-02-09_182709
Wednesday, February 08, 2012, 12:34 PM
We made a beef and vegetable chili (and a lot of it). We used about 2/3 lbs of beef, two 28oz cans of tomatoes, a can of black beans, an onion, and a can of hominy. The hominy was strange but good. To make a chili powder, we first ground up two large dried ancho chilies and one small but jolokia (hottest pepper in the world), We deseeded both to ensure that we didn't make it too hot. We also added cayenne, oregano and some other seasonings. I am honestly not sure if we did cumin or not (I'll ask Meredith). We also used this to kind of clean out the fridge. So, we put some mini bell peppers and some artichokes (strange) into it as well. I do not remember what else.
It was already very thick so we simmered it covered so it wouldn't reduce too much more. We let it simmer for about 30 minutes. The chili was very good. It had a nice kick but it wasn't too bad. And, we had ample leftover for lunch! As you can see, we served it with some sliced avocado, 2% cheese and greek-yogurt. We also had some sliced green onion
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1798, 2012-02-08_123419
Sunday, February 05, 2012, 12:26 PM
We made a quick stir-fry. We used some sliced, cooked egg beaters, a lot of mini-bell peppers, and green onions. I do not remember what else for veggies. We also used instant brown rice but in the future we will use real brown rice and use the pressure cooker. The "meat" was a marinated Seitan I got at Whole Foods. I love seitan!
For sauces, I did a mix of oyster sauce, low-sodium soy and sesame oil. I really like the oyster sauce, but it is extremely, extremely salty so I didn't want to use too much.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1793, 2012-02-05_122640
Thursday, February 02, 2012, 09:18 PM
We made pretty standard taquitos using shredded chicken and anything else that sounded good. We also made patatas bravas using the recipe from 2011-07-19. It was a while ago so I do not remember all of the details but I think what we did was use 1+ Tbsp of hot (not smoked) paprika, plus two pinches of the smoked-hot. Then skipped the cayenne. We also used diced tomatoes which I immersion blended before adding to remove most (but not all) the chunks. Meredith cut up the onion into really, really small pieces. We used Yukon Gold potatoes and one leftover purple majesty. For them, I just roasted them for 45-50 minutes at 400. Reading the notes from last time, we remembered the bouillon this time.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1784, 2012-02-02_211807