Journal

2022 - Week 2 Cooking Results

French Bread Pizza (using up the rest of the marinara sauce)

Made a bit of garlic butter, then added the sauce, cheese and pepperoni to the top. Simple and ok.

Brats

Good as always.

Thai Red Curry Noodle Soup With Chicken

I used the rest of a jar of red curry paste, which wasn’t as concentrated as some others and some angel hair pasta (the other half of a box from a bit ago). This came together quickly, though did use a lot of pots. Pretty good, though the chicken did settle tot he bottom of the leftover container so I didn’t get a lot of chicken, until the last lunch serving of leftover. I added Sambal Oelek to mine.

Vidalia Onion Pie

I will state for the record that sometimes when you reduce the “steps” it makes it hard to read the recipe. I think sometimes the Team at Cooks Illustrated has a limit to how many “steps” they can make so instead of do this thing and this thing and also this other thing, it should be do this, start this, do this as actual steps.

That being said, this was actually pretty good. Mostly onion based, with cheese, eggs and some heat. I used the pie pan I have (which if I remember right is from Shannon’s kitchen collection).

Split Pea and Ham Soup

I’ve made this a few times. I added more celery, carrots, and ham. This was done on Saturday, which was pretty much, eat, shovel, recover from shoveling, make dinner. It’s a quite a good soup.

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.

2021 - Week 52 Cooking Results

Mac and Cheese with Crispy Scallion Breadcrumbs

It was ok. This is the first one of the Momofuku set where I was like…I mean I guess it’s ok. There was something about the sauce consistency that were a bit less then desirable. I do have a bunch of ramen noodles to work through, so that’s nice.

Sheet-Pan Gochujang Chicken and Roasted Vegetables

I used the last of the squash I had, and some potatoes. I think I could’ve gotten away with making more sauce using more gochujang and going from there. It was a bit under flavored in my mind. Overall, not to bad, but I suppose I could make it more to my taste.

Pork Chops with Creamy Apple-Mustard Sauce

I was released from work early. Which is an extra odd concept now, that I literally work in a section of my basement. Anyways, I got the sous vide started to get the chops ready to just finish off in the pan. Shannon brought home a side and I put the together sauce. It was a pretty good dinner.

Frijoles Charros (sort of based on this)

I am curious how this came about. Hot Dogs? The rest makes sense to me, to some extent. I did salt and soak the beens then cook them separately. I combined the other ingratiates, more or less as they are called for, though the recipe ingredient list order was wrong. It was pretty good over all. I kind of want to know the origins, to perhaps understand the inclusion of the ingredients. It seems like it may be more of a family variant from time to time, so perhaps to bulk up on a cheap meat source, hot dogs. I used Hebrew National and went from there. I would perhaps make it again, but will probably need more recipe inputs.

Shredded Lamb Noodle Soup Recipe

Delayed. I got a bit confused when my brother was coming in. So I’ll do it early next week.

12 Beers and Christmas

For the first time since the the beginning of the pandemic we spent a significant amount of time outside of our house and inside someone else’s house. We, of course, thank the Matta’s for hosting us and taking the extra steps to make us feel safe (testing and all those things). We also met up with other friends and called our good friend in Japan. The topics varied widely, talking about the lives during the pandemic housing, and the difference between Japan, California, and Iowa. It was fun to catch up, actually see and hug people.

2021 - Week 51 Cooking Results

Leftover Turkey Pot Pie

In an effort to reduce the amount of stuff in my fridge, I used layers of pie dough, and perhaps a bit too much, to get through the last of the pot pie sauce.

Pasta

Hot Italian sausage, and well pasta sauce that I put tighter while the water came to a boil and the pasta cooked.

Mac and Cheese with Crispy Scallion Breadcrumbs

Delayed! We ended up going to the new Spider-Man movie.

Pork Tamale Pie

I’ve made this before, I’ll make it again. I swapped out the chili powder with jalapeño powder and used the entire package of pepper jack cheese. I was hoping this would use the last of the buttermilk, but it didn’t. It was good, the leftovers are nice. Topped with a bit of sour cream and maybe some salsa.

2021 - Week 50 Cooking Results

To see this on a random day in December, is a bit shocking:

Screen caputure of National Weather Service alert for the derecho on 12/15-16/2021

NWS Alert from 12/15/2021

As the last derecho caught pretty much everyone by surprise, we watched this one pass through. In Des Moines it wasn’t near as bad, since only a 8000 or so people lost power, as opposed to last time where 132,000 or so people lost power. Certainly it is an unpleasant experience to have the fears from last year combined with watching suspected/real tornadoes near areas you know, hearing the wind and hoping to keep power. Unlike last time where I was wearing headphones the entire time…well until I lost power.

Buttermilk Pancakes

Good Pancakes. I really like the pattern on one of the pancakes.

close up image of a pancake

pancake

Gammy Brown's Deviled Ham

Ready for watching a movie and tweeting, we had snacks, crackers and cheese ready to go, unfortunately, the second Derecho of my life (and in 2 years), happened and this became more of a button down the hatches and watch weather for hours and hope for the best. Most of the people I know made it out fine. That being said, it was pretty good. A nice thing to snack on while avoiding the worst of it.

Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry

Chicken from the freezer, sweet potato from the counter. It was a pretty nice meal.

Brats

Good as always.

Leftover Turkey Pot Pie

Delayed. It was still a bit frozen and I didn’t really want to over cook.