Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Home > 347
KitchenKatalog: Blog 347
Saturday, November 06, 2010, 12:28 PM
We really just threw together a marinade with soy sauce, white wine, sesame oil, various spices, and garlic. After marinating it for a bit we bakes the fish for about 20 minutes.
We also made a lot of Brussels sprouts. They were not as good as we had been having in the past but they were fine. We made a lot!
Points: Fish 3 Marinade1 Brussel Sprouts0
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 647, 2010-11-06_122838
Friday, November 05, 2010, 03:45 PM
The chili is based on this recipe. It was pretty good. Of course, we used a sugar pumpkin that looks similar and tastes close. We added extra tomato and other seasonings because there was so much pumpkin. I liked it a lot. And, I think the points were pretty low. It is really hard to calculate because I do not know how to count the sugar pumpkin. Is it butternut squash pumpkin. There was a 1/2 cup of quinoa too. There was a huge amount! It also burned the bottom of the pan but I was eventually able to get that off.
The pumpkin was entirely thrown together. I made a crust by blending the cinnamon toast crunch fiber one stuff with some extra splenda. I added almond milk to bring it all together. For the filling, I added some almond milk, splenda, pumpkin pie spice, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. I then added a bit of egg beaters. It wasn't too bad considered how thrown together it was but could have been worse.
Points:
As I said above it was really hard to calculate but I figure around 3-5 for a serving of the chili and maybe three for the whole pie.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 644, 2010-11-05_154532
Thursday, November 04, 2010, 09:19 AM
The shepherd's pie was much the same as last time except we used purple majesty potatoes giving it the really cool (or strange) look you see. It was pretty good. I think it tasted better last time though. It was also a pretty easy meal. Just brown onions, beef, peas and corn and then top with mashed potatoes. Meredith did the potatoes so I do not know what exactly it was but there was the usual including greek yogurt, a bit of fake butter, and other stuff. The whole thing made over four servings.
The soup was also very good. We used a part of a sugar pumpkin (looks like a huge butternut squash). I also used a new chicken stock called Better Than Bouillon. I think I agree that it is better but it is also a bit expensive so we will try it again but may not make it our normal. I added all kinds of spices and on Meredith's suggestion, some grated parmesan cheese. The cheese was actually a nice addition.
Points for the entire shepherd's pie (over 4 servings)
Beef (11 oz, very lean)...11
Potatoes (~1 1/3 poind)...7
extra stuff in potatoes...2 or 3
----------------------------------
Each serving is about 5 or 6.
Soup:
Squash (hard to say exactly so a guess)...5
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 640, 2010-11-04_091934
Wednesday, November 03, 2010, 08:08 AM
I do not really know what to call this but it was similar to the same thing last time except I used much more vegetables and used a mix of regular and sodium free chicken broth.
Basically, I sautéed onions, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini and eggplant (previously broiled) and finally some chicken pieces. I then added 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth and a 1/2 cup of white wine. I let that boil down for 30 minutes. The end result was a nice (however not overly visually appealing) mix of vegetable and chicken mush.
It was more flavorful last time but I was really trying to watch the sodium intake on this meal.
Very low in points since it was just chicken, and not much of it. Per person:
Chicken...4
Vegetables...0
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 636, 2010-11-03_080854
Monday, November 01, 2010, 09:00 PM
The Frutti Di Mare was basically the same as last time. I do not think it was as good, but it wasn't bad. A note for the future is that the water takes some time to cook away so plan for that. We put the same type of seasonings on and everything.
The artichokes were based off of any number of recipes. We used drained, canned artichokes with some bread crumbs, cheese, pepper, crushed red pepper, oregano, etc. They were very salty. We will try frozen ones next time to reduce the salt a bit.
Points (per person):
Pasta...5
Seafood...3
Artichokes (misc, bread crumbs, cheese)...2
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 632, 2010-11-01_210009
Monday, November 01, 2010, 12:53 PM
We made pizza with the normal dough recipe and homemade tomato sauce. We make two large and two small ones. I do not remember all of the toppings but I think both of the small ones were with BBQ sauce. I put some leftover chicken with some ham on mine and I think meredith used spinach.
Both larger ones were tomato sauce based. I did prosciutto, spinach and broccoli. It had provolone and cheddar cheese. I think Meredith's was prosciutto and zucchini but I do not remember for sure.
They were okay. Not great. The problem is that we try to use very little bit of dough to save the points and that severely impacts the quality because we really have to stretch it.
This was a rare TV-dinner so we had to set the ottoman :-)
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 629, 2010-11-01_125346
Friday, October 29, 2010, 10:40 PM
My grandparents were in town and offered to take us out to dinner. Well, we decided to cook instead. The menus we printed and put at each seat is above. It is probably easier to go course by course.
This was the first thing we planned too. We got the idea a while ago from here (local) but we did it with spinach, grated cheese and toasted pine nuts. Meredith made a really nice vinaigrette with the orange juice leftover from dessert (below). We also used the orange juice to stop the pear from turning brown.
First I sliced a small bit off the bottom to get it to be flat, then we sliced it into three slices. I cut the core out of the middles ones and then we assembled the salad. We used a toothpick between the layers to hold it together. We were sure to tell our guests to expect two toothpicks so they do not get it by accident.
It was good but you didn't get much salad. Still, you had a whole pear. The pears were locally grown and had been sitting in a brown bag for a week. They were perfect!
Vertical Pear Salad (from The Novice Chef)
Local Copy (U: guest, P: name of my dog, lower case)
The chicken saltimbocca (done previously) was very good. It was just flattened tenders, with a slice of prosciutto and then some sage leaved. After folding (not rolling), we dipped it in just flour and sautéed it. For this, we prepped it fully and then I excused myself during the appetizer and sautéed it. They were good.
The quinoa was very good. Meredith just kind of came up with it. It was quinoa, some chicken stock and then a lot of basil (the Genovese region of Italy is known for basil and pesto). Then she added some steamed broccoli and grape tomato halves. Plus a bit of pine nuts, garlic and Parmesan. It was very good.
The Brussels sprout were pretty good but a bit overdone. We had to push dinner back a bit so they got a tad crispy but not too bad.
We also served a rye gruyere bread from Trader Joes.
We had seen something about cooking cake in an orange on The Kitchn recently and liked the idea but wanted to change it to brownies. Then, I googled it and found a Today Show thing on it. Well, their thing had the author of Cooking for Geeks telling them about this. I own his book and found it as well.
I cut off a medium slice from the top to get a nice opening. I then used a paring knife and cut around the opening. After that, I used a spoon to hollow it out a lot. Note that I didn't cut the bottoms because I didn't want it to leak. This led some to fall over but that looked even cooler (see photo below).
We used this recipe without walnuts. Also, we added a good amount of orange rind (from the slices) and some orange juice to the batter. It was low in points (see below) and okay. Honestly, it still tasted a bit fake but that is to be expected. I, wanting to have my brownie and eat it too (hahaha), want to find a recipe with similar points that taste better. We also served decaf coffee with dessert.
The pear salad was 1 for the pear and next to nothing for the very little bit of dressing. There was cheese and pine nuts but not much. I am not really sure about the nuts but lets just say 3 total to be safe.
Dinner: The chicken was 6 per person (calculated previously). The quinoa was 1 cup dry total. That is four servings for four people. And we had a good amount leftover. Forget the leftover and say 3 per person, plus one for the other stuff. The Brussels sprouts were zero. If I recall correctly, the bread was 3/serving and 7 total servings. So that depends (but still not bad).
The brownies are below: (cal/fat/fiber)
- 3/4 cup flour ... 300/0/0
- cocoa...40/2/8
- Margarine ... 200/20/0
- egg beaters... (1 point)
- 1/2 cup apple sauce 50/0/2
- chips 140/8/0
----------------------
total 730/30/10 + 1
Since we can assume there will be more than 3 servings, we can count all the fiber
20 points for the whole thing.
We made five oranges and didn't eat the orange itself so say 4 points each.
The whole meal, with 5 points of bread, is therefore 3+6+4+5 (bread) + 4=20. A lot but not bad for such a nice big meal with company!
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 618, 2010-10-29_224055
Thursday, October 28, 2010, 10:27 PM
We made Moussaka from the same recipe (copied into KitchenKatalog) and with similar modifications as last time. When I created the recipe page, I included the changes as well (including extra seasoning).
It was very good as expected. With the extra red sauce, I just ate some and it was incredible. A nice but simple spice combination.
See last time for point tally, but around 30 for the entire thing. We made two dinner servings and two lunches and still have about 2/5 leftover.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 610, 2010-10-28_222750