Journal

2012 - Week 25 Cooking Results

Spicy Pork and Broccoli Stir-Fry (RC Cook's Country February & March 2012) (Crooked Gap, Cleverly Farms, Grade A Grass & Gardens)

So I had to mix it up a bit.  I didn't have the tenderloin, but did use a butterflied pork (Crooked Gap).  So the issue here was the difference between cooking pork lower and slower, or like what the recipe wants, high and very quickly.  Which led to a disparity in texture.  Now for the broccoli, I used a heritage broccoli from Cleverly Farms and some more modern from Grade A Grass & Gardens (I kept forgetting their name, I could see the A's on their sign, but couldn't remember what it was, even though I've met Thomas (part owner?) a number of times).  Anyways, it turned out pretty well.

Spicy Pork and Broccoli Stir-Fry

Grass Fed Beef burgers (Coyote Run Farm)

Oh how I missed you, grass fed beef.

Chicken Tacos (Foxhollow Poultry Farm)

Simple, quick.  Chicken breasts dusted with some chipotle chili powder, salt and pepper, then the rest was normal things out of the kitchen.

Stir-Fried Noodles with Singapore Lamb Curry (Hedgeapple)

Ok, so I had a leg of lamb from late last year in the freezer from Hedgeapple.  So I'm think that I need to clean out my freezer, especially since I'm able to buy most of what I need now from the market (at least most of time).  This recipe was done by a process of elimination.  I looked at others that looked good, but I didn't want a long cooking time (it gets hot in the kitchen) and I didn't want an extra long marinade (I'd probably forget).  So with all that I'm glad that it came to this recipe.  So I said it would've been nice to have a little help in the kitchen, and this was the truth.  I prepped for probably an hour to and hour and a half, then cooked for maybe fifteen.  It turned out very well, even though I messed up some of the execution at the end (added the sauce to the wrong thing) when it all combined together, it was delicious.  The thing that took the most time was the deboning of the leg of lamb and cutting it up into smaller pieces.  Now to be completely honest, I probably used more lamb (2.2 pounds w/ bone, recipe only called for 1/2 a pound) and more of other things too (including a lot more noodles, wouldn't have had enough for a second use), but it all worked out in the.

The ingredients before (lamb, Napa cabbage (top row), sauce, peppers, jalapeno / ginger / garlic / etc (lower row)After: Stir-Fried Noodles with Singapore Lamb Curry

Black Bean and Pepper Jack Burgers (p17 Fine Cooking June & July 2012) (again)

This time around, I had an idea in my head, here's the problem, I only halfway completed the idea.  I used chipotle chili powder, as I was thinking, but failed to replace some of the pepper jack cheese with some parmesan...  It still turned out pretty good, this combination seems to be fairly flexible, so we'll see how it goes.  Now I can see that since the cheese probably has more liquid in it then the parmesan (especially if I used my stash of the real deal, rather then the meh stuff).  What was funny about it, I actually thought ok, I should take out the parmesan so I don't forget.  Then proceeded to not to take it out and to forget all about it.  My memory has never been great, but I swear it's getting even worse.