Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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KitchenKatalog: Blog 317
Monday, February 27, 2012, 11:59 AM
Meredith prepared everything so she may have more details, but I got home extremely late and this was fast and easy. We made pizzas on sandwich flatbreads. Meredith had made sauce and she roasted mushrooms, peppers and yellow squash. We topped the pizzas with low fat cheese, some leftover ricotta salata and low fat regular ricotta.
We cooked them at 400 until the bread was crisp. I do not recall how long though. Probably around 10-15 min.
We liked this as a good, quick meal.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1844, 2012-02-27_115930
Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 11:56 AM
The salmon was basically the same technique described here with the time adjusted since these were thin pieces. However, I put some Emril Essence on to make it cajun salmon. The seasonings did blacken on the salmon but it was all very good. I may have slightly overcooked the salmon but only slightly. The nice thing about using good salmon (wild) is that it is more resilient to overcooking.
We also had roasted artichokes. Meredith did them so I am not sure of the details but I know they had some bread crumbs and then we roasted them for a while. And we had a Pasta Sides thing to balance out the meal.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1840, 2012-02-22_115619
Tuesday, February 21, 2012, 11:56 AM
I am writing this pretty far past having made it so my memory won't be great. We used the same Falafel recipe as in the past but with a lot of parsley and cilantro (hence the green). After flipping them, I gave a small press to make sure the side was in contact with the pan. This gave a bit more crispiness.
I also made Hasselback potatoes but unlike last time, I didn't put something in each slit. While they look really cool, they aren't all that special. Maybe they need all the butter and cheese that all of the recipes call for. On Meredith's suggestion, we put salsa on them and they were fine.
We also had tzatziki (home made) and pita (store bought) for the falafel.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1837, 2012-02-21_115601
Sunday, February 19, 2012, 07:08 AM
We made Pasole using the same recipe from The Homesick Texan again roasted the tomatillos. We also used double the poblanos and probably at least double the tomatillos. I also put a single dried Bhut Jolokia pepper in to spice it up. Despite the fact that I forgot the lime (lemon?) juice, these tasted rather lemony. Weird. It was good but not our best effort. I do not really know what is different though.
We also repeated our bean eggplant(basically white bean bruschetta but with broiled eggplant instead of bread). However, despite being my Dad's son, we didn't have white northern beans in our inventory. We debated between chick-peas or black-eyed peas and ended on the black-eyed peas. They had a chalkier taste that wasn't as good. We also cut up a tomato which was a nice addition. I still really like this side. It is easy, low in points, and has lots of veggies. Oh, we used Israeli olive oil my parents brought back for us. It was good though the flavor was lost a bit with the mix. We used it also when we made our valentine's day dinner
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1826, 2012-02-19_070803
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