Journal

2019 - Week 18 Cooking Results

Citrus Cookies (Milk Bar Life, p 62)

This had a lot of zest. Like a whole lot. Like the kind of amount that I would expect to see a couple of cooks in a kitchen to do it. That being said, these turned out amazing. They are not an easy make, something to pull off at a short notice, but quite good. For me, it allowed me to work off a bit of frustration with my experience with Enterprise. I will state that it wasn’t fair for me to be frustrated and not watch Game of Thrones, but I was not in the best of moods, and it was better to just concentrate at the task at hand. I do still have the juice…

Franny’s Rice and Beans (Milk Bar Life, p 102)

Delayed!

Orecchiette with Sausage and Fennel

A little easy, I may have overcooked the fennel a bit, and let the water evaporate a bit too much. That being said, it generally came out ok. I tossed a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano in there too to top it off.

Chickpea and Chorizo Tostadas

Meh, it was fine, it was quick.

Mutton Burgers

Always good.

Ham Salad

My ham may be a bit dryer than the ham they were expecting so I think I should have added a bit more mayor something. That being said it was pretty good.

2019 - Week 17 Cooking Results

Mac & Cheese with Ham

I took a couple of hunks of the broken down ham and chopped them up. Then seared them in a pan. when the Mac & Cheese was close to being finished. Once again I could not bring myself to use Velveeta (or substitute), so I used some Holey Cow in place. It came together pretty well.

Ham and Grilled Cheese

I delicately try to slice very slim slices of ham, and combined that with some fresh mild Alp Blossom to a wonderful effect. I used some La Mie bread (Thanks Darren).

Tuna Steaks

In the sous vide, 45 minutes later, just a touch of heat on the plan on both sides, served with fresh spinach.

Butter Chicken

I didn’t end up getting the vindaloo spice, but used a mixture of curry and some dried peppers. It was good. I remember enjoying this. This is much later, I just remember this wasn’t posted.

Hamburgers Spiked with Sugared bacon

Diced up a few slices of bacon, mixed them in with some grass fed beef, cooked them relatively slowly (only 2 smoke alarm warnings and 1 smoke alarm). They turned out very good. Maybe I should have put the bacon and make it smaller, but it still turned out really well.

2019 - Week 16 Cooking Results

Vietnamese-Style Chicken Meatballs With Ginger and Mint

I was running a bit late the night I had planned to do this, so instead of making the meatballs I combined these into little patties for mini pretzel buns. It was pretty good like that. This was delicious.

Chicken Taco Casserole

When it describes it as backwards nachos, it’s not kidding. It really was like that. With the addition of black beans it was a bit better, but I suspect the salt level was quite a bit more then I should probably intake at any point in time.

Brats (Crooked Gap)

Good time, good tastes, good stuff.

Sloppy Goats

So I saw a vague website suggested doing this, after a bit of a discussion I supplemented it with beef to make it 50/50, then made a sloppy Joe as I normally would (semi-random mix of herbs and spices, tomato sauce / chunks, sometimes yellow mustard). Pretty good. Kind of a waste of goat if I must say so. I’ll probably make some curry.

Eggs and Bacon

I had some sugar cured bacon sitting in the freezer. Lucky George via the Story City Locker. It was a nice bacon. I guess it wouldn’t be may favorite preparation of pork belly, but still quite good. Scrambled eggs, a bagel, and a quick dinner in the bag.

Peruvian-American Pork Adobo (Sunday)

The problem with many recipes is the size associated with produce. Small, medium, or large onions. With no indication as to the end product and how much, by weight, the onions should be, you can’t tell if that mammoth set of onions you have actually are what they indicate by large. So that being said, there was a lot of onions in this. Like a whole lot. an entirely excessive amount. I enjoyed it, the house did have a lingering onion smell, and it wasn’t near as good the second time around, especially as I ran out of decent bread for dipping.

So, Ham.

I was really worried that I was going to mess this up. After a taxing day of waiting (at the barbershop, at the grocery store), I’m not quite sure how much smoke flavor got added to the the “cold smoke” because I didn’t really see a lot of smoke, but I did let it go from around 6:30 am to around 8:PM. Then I was worried that the smoke would go way to long, so the book recommended two temperatures, so I took the 250 over the 225. I swapped the wood chips completely once. The first round was a mixture of mostly apple wood and a touch of mesquite and cherry. Second round was a handful of cherry, jack Daniels barrels chips, and the rest apple wood. I was a bit surprised as to how quickly it got to temperature, because I guess I’m used to the stall that happens for BBQ. I tested in a few places and found that yes it was actually done. I cut into it and found that pink color. I was pretty excited. Now to figure out what to do with all that ham…

Deep in the meat, close to the bone, it does get a bit less pink from the curing salt, but it still tastes pretty good. I discovered this as cut the pieces apart and off the bone. That being said, not a bad first try. Luckily I’ll have a whole other ham to try again on, make some adjustments and try to refine.

I also made Cowboy Cookies, to bring to Easter dinner tomorrow.

2019 - Week 16 Cooking

Going after the freezer cleaning, I’m still left with quite a bit, but way way less then before. A good chunk of it, however, is organ meat, which is often hard to a. find recipes for, and b. sneak through for an acceptable meal for Shannon. Chatting with some of the dance parents at dinner, I couldn’t tell if they took my excitement over the organ meat as weird or interesting.. Meh. Pork liver pate is somewhere in the near future.

I understand that people want to track usage, and email usage, but can’t that be done without having 7 attached variables to the link? maybe to a redirector and then land on the page. I’m looking at you serious eats and food and wine. you make using your websites annoying, as the attached variables are longer then the actual web URI itself.

2019 - Week 15 Cooking Results

Piri Piri Meatballs

Unlike some weeks in the past where I have made entirely to many meatball dishes, having one is not to bad. I used some grass fed beef. Making the sauce was nice. I feel like my blender two often sits idle, to where sometimes I wonder why I have one. This week, twice! The Piri Piri reminds me a bit of the sauce that I bought once or twice but it lacked some of the flavor, even so, I think. It was nice, but I would be curious about an actual sauce, though getting the pepper here would challenging. This made for a nice dinner. Maybe it should be served with bread or on flatbread.

Peruvian-American Pork Adobo (Friday, Saturday)

I made the brine on Friday night before making a nice grilled cheese for dinner. I adjusted it a bit, as I didn’t feel like making the paste, but i did have some of the powder (woo Allspice). While I was going to start it Saturday morning, we are leaving the option open to go out with Shannon’s sister as they are up here for my niece’s dance competition. Unfortunately we won’t be able to go, but it’s nice that she is progressing in her dance. I’ll finish this on Sunday. I do feel vaguely guilty for using corporate pork. So Continued next week…

Buffalo burgers (Bare Bison)

To add cheese but not overwhelm the bison, Darren recommended the Consider Bardwell Farm Pawlet. It made for a nice combination. I did like the bison so I’m going to probably order more when I start to get the freezer to the point where it is ok to fill it up again.

Chacarero Chileno (Modified, Sous Vide) (Sunday)

Instead of taking out a grill and searing these outside. I took some steak cuts from Lucky George and sous vide then to just over mid rare. I then seared them for about a minute on each side. I was able to time this so that we could eat dinner at about the time we would. I really like the mildly pickled beans and steak on the sandwich. As a side note, I used the mayo and beans on several lunches later in the week. The beans did not go over well with Shannon but they garlic mayo did.

Easiest Lamb Gyros with Creamy Yogurt Sauce (Mutton, Lucky George)

Yes, this was very easy to do. So easy and quick that I think Shannon was surprised when I called her up for dinner. The mutton combined with a few spices made it easy to mix and prepare and the cooking led to allowing to do other things (unload and reload the dishwasher) while waiting for the sear to happen. I would make this again. I passed on the cherry tomatoes cause it seems like a paltry add (and spring has barely started so most tomatoes taste like garbage).

Ham Prep

Grilled Cheese

2019 - Week 15 Cooking

I’m going to smoke a ham. I’m using Project Smoke as a guide. I’ve got some spices to pick up, an uncured ham to thaw, and I’ll start the brine this week, and smoke it next week. I’m kind of excited. It’ll be my first smoking project of the year and will hopefully yield good results. I’ve got a second ham to do (yes seriously) and some fresh side to turn into bacon. My freezer is starting to get a bit lean, but I’ve still got a way to go (including rendering pork fat), and unlike last year, where I had good intentions but my brain wasn’t being very cooperative.

2019 - Week 14 Cooking Results

Green Mac & Cheese

This was a nice way to vegetables and fiber to the diet, making it hard to avoid. it was easy to do, if you have the tools, but would be challenging without a food processor. That beings aid, I used smoked hot paprika (instead of basically coloring paprika). I would add maybe a dash or two of hot sauce. Luckily the cheese shop had some mozzarella again, so I was able to use that to top it off.

Canadian Bacon Strata (I have a surprising amount of Canadian Bacon left)

I’ve been cleaning out my freezer and noticed that I had quite a bit of Canadian Bacon left. So This seems like it used a lot of Canadian Bacon, so there we went. I made it Friday night, then cooked it Saturday. I thought about making it for breakfast, but the long bake time and Shannon heading out for her hair appointment made it unlikely to get finished in a timely fashion. I popped it in the oven a little before 5:PM and we ate quite a bit later.

Spicy-Sweet Sambal Pork Noodles

Shortly after making this the first time, I stated, I need to make this again. It holds up. Delicious and easy.

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Unlike last time where I could’ve sworn I had bought wild rice, I actually had wild rice. The soup turned out just as good as last time. As a change, I used some chicken thighs and sous-vide cooked them one of the previous days (butter, salt pepper, chicken) Made for perfectly just underdone chicken to finish off in the soup in nice neatly chopped chunks.

Hamburgers (Lucky George, label for type obscured)

Good as always.

Chacarero Chileno (Modified, Sous Vide)

Delayed! (I was going to make this Saturday, but the Friday plan wanted to soak for 2+ hours, thus pushing this into Sunday)