Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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KitchenKatalog: Blog 325
Thursday, October 06, 2011, 04:18 PM
We made lentil soup following the same recipe as last time(in the comments). We did make a few changes including using three (instead of two) stalks of celery and carrots to make up for the fact that we were about 1/4 cup short on the lentils. Also we put a good amount of beef Better Than Bouillon in to give it a beef base. We used chicken last time. Finally, we used apple cider vinegar instead of plain white. Because we had to be somewhere, we let it simmer on the stover for a very long time which probably increased all of the flavors.
it was very good though I think I liked it more the last time (but that was almost exactly a year ago so who knows). I don't know why the color is so different from the two pictures. Note that we used regular brown lentils for both. The nutritional information is very different for different lentil types (at least that is what I remember last time I looked).
Other than the simmer time, this is an extremely easy meal. And it is enough for a meal without anything else! We will probably do this again soon!
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1441, 2011-10-06_161857
Wednesday, October 05, 2011, 04:14 PM
Meredith basically made this meal so I do not know too many details, but we followed our standard shepherds pie. The mashed potatoes were with red-bliss potatoes and made with non-fat greek yogurt, fake butter, etc to make them rather healthy. This was our first time using a potato masher instead of a fork which worked very well. It certainly made it easier. The beef was 95% lean beef with some frozen corn and peas. Meredith put a lot of seasonings in, including garlic and onion powder and oregano. We do not really know why but it came out rather wet today. It could be the different potatoes or that we cooked it covered for the first half. I do not really know but it was certainly delish.
We also had swiss chard sautéd with garlic.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1438, 2011-10-05_161420
Monday, October 03, 2011, 04:10 PM
We made Asian Lettuce Wraps following the same recipe from last time1 except we made a bit more. Also, we added a good amount of bean sprouts to give it crunch and more volume. Overall, it was fairly easy and pretty good. The cellophane noodles are strange but they worked fine for this. I wonder how it would be with some other noodle combination.
We also had steamed asparagus. I do not know why but the asparagus was extremely flavorful. We literally just steamed it. Must have just gotten lucky.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1435, 2011-10-03_161046
2016-05-07: Changed the link to the actual page ↩
Sunday, October 02, 2011, 10:36 PM
We needed something fast and fairly light so we grilled the really light hot-dogs and following my normal issue with crappy break, used whole grain baguettes. They were a bit large and it was a lot of bread but I guess not too bad. We filled them with a mixture of stuff including horseradish mustard and hot peppers
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1430, 2011-10-02_223626
Wednesday, September 28, 2011, 11:57 AM
Meredith's sister was visiting and we decided to do a real chili cook off unlike last time. It was a while ago so I will not remember all of the things. Brooke's was the closest to normal chili. She used taco seasoning and normal chili powders. She also used some gimme lean which gave it a different but nice texture. Meredith's was based on the chocolate one from last time (link above). I do not know the exact changes. Mine was strange. I used a lot of adobo sauce from chipotles in adobo giving it a smoky taste. Then I added curry powder. Finally, instead of beans, I used lentils. So, it was strange to say the least. Mine is in the while bowl, Meredith's is the top and Brooke's
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1428, 2011-09-28_115729
Sunday, September 25, 2011, 09:32 AM
Meredith was away so I decided to try making a steak. I bought the smallest NY Strip steak I could find and followed a combination of many oven/pan cooking methods. I needed to keep the oven at 400 for the brussel sprouts so that limited me. I let the cast iron pan heat up in the oven (took a long time), I sprayed olive oil pam on the room-temp steak and sprinkled salt and pepper on it. After the pan was hot, I put it on the burner on hot for a bit longer. Then I put the steak on and seared each side for 1 minute without moving it. I put it in the oven with the pan. Most recipes said to cook four minutes on each side in the oven so that is what I did. When I took it out, I am glad I decided to quickly check the temp since it was still raw inside (not rare, raw!). So, I cheated a bit, I switched from the instant read thermometer to the one that has an in-oven temperature probe. Using that, and filliping one more time, I brought it up to about 135-140 for medium. It was a very thick piece so it wasn't too surprising that it took longer. I did let it rest for 2 minutes but it may have needed more to absorb more liquid.
Overall, it was the best steak I have ever cooked but that doesn't say much. It still was not amazing. I do not know what I am missing. Maybe it really does need butter? Since Meredith doesn't like steak, I do not imagine I will trying again anytime too soon but when I do, I'll investigate rubs. One nice thing about cooking my own piece is that I knew where all the fat was starting out so I could easily cut it off.
I also had roasted brussel sprouts. Always a favorite of mine. However, I got a bit nervous and took them out a tad too soon for my taste even though it was probably the right time for most people (I like all of my cooked veggies overcooked apparently)
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1425, 2011-09-25_093220
Thursday, September 22, 2011, 08:55 AM
We had company over and did make your own pizza. I used the standard dough but I didn't halve it so I made 8 pizzas. There were a variety of different toppings and everyone did a different mix of toppings. They were the normal with soppressata, goat cheese, ricotta, spinach, etc. We also had pineapple which I think was used once. I think I captured most of them but not all. Also, my pizza came out looking like a heart (below). We used low-fat or fat free cheesed.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1421, 2011-09-22_085557
Tuesday, September 20, 2011, 05:57 PM
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It got late and we needed to make something rather quickly. We basically made the empanada black bean filling except we used a different type of bean (I forget which one) and also added tomatoes. The tomatoes added an interesting sweetness to them. The other major change was to mix some Skinny Cow into the mix since we didn't have any other type of cheese. We rolled them into whole wheat tortillas and baked them until crispy. We also had broccoli.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1412, 2011-09-20_175731