Journal

2022 - Week 1 Cooking Results

Shredded Lamb Noodle Soup Recipe

So, this required a pressure cooker. And so I went from going to make this on Monday, to starting to make it Monday night. So after Shannon went to bed, I started by salting the lamb shanks and then made some appropriate sized bags.

As a note, I need better scissors for cutting the plastic related to making bags.

I added the shanks to multiple bags, added some olive oil and then vacuum sealed them and put them in the water bath for 16 hours at around 150F.

After that was complete, I made the broth. I had to make a bit of a audible since they didn’t have anise pods, I had to guess as to how much ground anise I had to use. I added everything back to the pot and simmered for a couple hours or so.

I then made the topping. Iðunn is not a huge fan of my blade coffee/spice grinder that I used. This is where things started to become so very delicious. I started to combined the pulled lamb with the other ingredients and wow…just wow. That was very tasty, and a bit numbing.

Bringing everything tighter, with noodles, and the stock and the lamb it was quite a meal and worth the effort.

That being said, I used the lamb on ramen twice this week.

Sloppy Sammys

I used some ground chicken. I went to the grocery store on a Monday, as opposed to my usual Sunday, and it was quite a bit more crowded then I expected. Though I do suppose that is to be expected. There were a number of people that really didn’t notice their surroundings and so I did have to patiently wait for a number of things, including the ground chicken. Other then that it was a normal dish. Mustard, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, onions, spices herbs.

Spam, Egg and Cheese Sandwich or just Egg and Cheese bagel

So my younger chef brother dropped by and dropped off some sourdough bagels and a loaf of bread. I stuck the bread in the freezer.

Those bagels…

I honestly thing that him finding the flavor just speaks to our genetic connection cause it’s just a small and taste of heaven. There have been a handful of bagels around here and some of them are pretty good…but this…

I bought some spam from CostCo, and what to start using some of them. The idea was, originally to use them in dishes in places where they were used, but none have crossed my path recently.

Spam gave a nice fatty cooked flavor to it and the rest of it was pretty good over all. A good quick meal.

Crunchy Cheesy Bean Bake

I added about twice the mozzarella, and half of a large yellow onion. Other then that I followed the recipe pretty closely, except the fresh thyme sprigs. This didn’t take to long to do, though more then thirty minutes, it was quite tasty and filling.

Sausage Sandwiches with Marinara and Mozzarella

A few steps to step up the flavor of a jar of marinara, I got and extra ball of mozzarella and used that instead of the deli mozzarella. and only made 4 instead of 6. I used buns from a place in Ankeny that I order from my coop from time to time. It came out pretty tasty. Not to much labor, and a nice simple process to follow.

2022 - Week 1 Cooking

A new year. New things to explore. I’m gonna try to sped some time back in my books. Just cause. Some of them are overly complicated, but some are not and I should try to have a nice balance to at least reasonably justify my side of the argument when it comes to add or not get rid of cook books. I was reminded of that today when chatting with my brother about a cookbook that he got, that I already had. It has been a nice weekend to see my brother. I have a loaf of bread and bagels brought as a gift to enhance my life.