Journal

2019 - Week 20 Cooking Results

Tomato, ramps, sweet Italian sausage pasta

This did not quite work out like I thought in my head. I was ok, but not the profile that my brain thought it might be.

French Melt

I’m going to push this on the side. I apparently sprained my foot at some point this week, so the idea of standing around for 45 minutes to caramelized onions doesn’t seem like fun right now. I used the cheese and some of the Prosciutto to make grilled cheese.

Sous Vide Flank Steak with Garlic Butter with Roasted Asparagus Wrapped in Prosciutto

We ended up making tiny little steak sandwiches, as I think I intended to use the buns for the goat burgers, but forgot. I had some extra (I had more and had it for lunch today too)

Spicy Merguez Scramble

I did not end up making the bread, not that I ever had planned to, but it was good on just normal flatbread. I was hoping to use Lucky George’s Merguez, but I think I’m one of the few that buy it, strangely enough, my local grocery store had a stash from D’Artagnan…I actually did a double take.

Lucky George Grey’s Lake Nessie Brats

Beer and brats, it’s the combination that is a good thing. I did pick up some Grey’s Lake Nessie to match with the brats (had to make a second stop), but it was a nice pairing.

Goat Burgers

I added a bit of harissa, salt and pepper and cooked them low and slow. Good things.

I did end up having a couple of gin + sparkling water + the honey rhubarb shrub, it was pretty good.

2019 - Week 19 Cooking Results

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

I was running a bit late, and decided that I wanted to do this, it did take a bit of time, but not to much, but it was a quite delicious meal to have. I’m not quite sure what the Sazon Goya added, but I do have a lot of it now (bulk on amazon, woo). I had it as leftovers the next couple of days, and it was good then too.

Tacos

Made with grass fed ground beef. My brain was playing the forgetful game and I forgot: sour cream, fresh onion, green onions. I made do, and toss the last of Franny’s rice and some other leftover rice that I had in there to. Still turned out pretty good.

Brats

Back to Lucky George and remembering to buy the beer with the brats, I clearly didn’t remember. But I wrote it down this time.

Ramp and Sausage Risotto

This is always one of those times of the year where you love what the early market brings you and you will miss it when it’s gone, but are glad for the cycles so you are fond of the season. This is good as always, and made for a lovely meal. I did have a minor WTF moment when I struggled to find the vermouth (I did, it was buried at the back of the liquor cabinet).

Mongolian Beef

So uh…this involves frying things…I don’t particularly like frying things, so skipped.

Pasta with Chicken, Tomatoes, and Feta

We tried the still in development Farmstead Feta from Lost Lake Farm. And while it was a bit salty by itself, it was nice mixed with the other things. Good dish.

Pinto Bean and Corn Dip with Cilantro

Relatively easy to put together, I may have added a bit more spice then needed, so it was a bit hotter then I suspect the recipe intends, but even so, it was pretty good. Maybe I’ll make it for a party or something. This was made for Shannon’s work thing, but there were leftovers

I also took the time make a honey rhubarb shrub. I have not tried it yet

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.