A Fool's Kitchen

Notes on Indirect Grilling Chicken

2011-08-13T19:36:00.001-04:00

Our AC is out for the weekend, so it seemed like the time to grill dinner, and keep all that heat outside.

My gas grill, it turns out, runs pretty hot. The instructions I had said to set the temp on Medium, and use indirect grilling for 50-60 minoutes. I checked my drumsticks after 25 minutes, and they were done. They came out pretty darn tasty, but I never gt the chance to baste them, which would have given them a little more terriyaki flavor.

So, next time:
1. Preheat Grill.
2. Turn off third burner, turn second as far down as it will go.
3. Reduce heat on first burner to medium (5 second hold).
4. Grill chicken over third burner with the lid closed for 15 minutes.
5. Baste.
6. Cook for another 10 minutes.

Bread!

2011-08-04T15:26:00.001-04:00

So I found this recipe in my feeds, and stripped it down to the basics: 3 cups of flour, a half-tablespoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of yeast, 1.25 cups of water, and a teaspoon of honey to feed the yeast. Oh, and melted butter brushed on the side of the panand over the top of the loaf after it rises. The result:

Pumpkin Waffles

2010-12-05T14:04:00.000-05:00

My wife is very fond of pumpkin. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin latte, pumpkin donuts, pumpkin risotto, you name it. So this morning she wanted Pumpkin waffles. Now, I've never made waffles, aside from assisting my dad, so this is more than a little intimidating. Nevertheless, i do like to spoil my wife, so after a little searching, I turned up this recipe. They turned out pretty well, although it took some experimenting to get the cook time right. Turns out that between 5:00 and 5:30 produces a nice crisp waffle, without burning.

Roasted Chicken Thighs

2009-10-18T00:22:00.001-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted much lately. My cholesterol levels came back high, and the doc has me on a diet, for the first time in my life. That kind of knocked me off cooking for a while, but I'm starting to get back on track.

So I made this chicken recipe tonight. I thought the flavors in the marinade sounded intriguing, and they were, indeed. Only problem is, it came out a little tough. Not chewy, but a little tough to get off the bone. Should I cook it longer, or did I cook it too long? I roasted it for 25 minutes, checked the temperature, and it was only about 149, so I put it back in for 5 minutes, and it came out at ~162. Any ideas?

Orange Braised Pork Loin

2009-07-12T00:32:00.001-04:00

For my first attempt at braising, I tried this recipe. I used my cast iron dutch oven, because it has a lot less volume than the non-stick one I got for Christmas, so I figured that would provide better liquid-to-meat contact. It came out well, and turned out to go well with leftover potato glue. One thing that I noticed, though, was that it dried out pretty quickly once sliced. Fortunately, the sauce corrected that problem pretty well. I tried to use my digital thermometer to tell when it was done, but it never read above 111 degrees. The meat definitely cooked, so I'm not sure if there was a problem with the thermometer, or if there was some other cause. I didn't think to check with an instant-read thermometer. Next time, I'll have to do that.

Mashed Potatoes Fail

2009-07-11T18:38:00.001-04:00

I was inspired by the success of the mashed potatoes I made for the 4th, and I had about a pound of potatoes left over, so I tried to make garlic mashed potatoes. I thin-sliced the potatoes in the food processor, and set them to simmer. While they were doing that, I chopped up two BIG cloves of garlic. After draining out the potatoes, I sauteed the garlic in the same pot with a little bit of olive oil, some salt and pepper, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. As before, I used water to keep the garlic from browning. Then I returned the whole mess, garlic, potatoes, and all, to the food processor, and turned it on. The result had a great flavor, but was gluey. Did I just over-process it all, or do I need to stick with hand-mashing the potatoes altogether?

Grilled Steaks and Corn-on-the-cob

2009-07-07T22:48:00.001-04:00

I've tried grilling things before, but could never seem to get the heat quite right. My grill's idea of "medium heat" seems to be rather higher than most of the recipes I've tried. So I had to come up with some way of measuring the heat. I don't have a suitable thermometer, so I found the "hand method," and tried that for tonight's steaks. It worked pretty well, and (more importantly) fixed a variable for me. The next step is to start fiddling around with cooking times at a similar heat. Tonight's 1 inch thick strip steaks were cooked at medium heat (4-5 seconds before hand must be pulled away) for 5 minutes on the first side, and 4 minutes on the second. Done-ness ranged from medium rare to medium, depending on the thickness of the steak at that particular point. I'm pretty happy with that, but I'll have to play with those times a little to accommodate other folks, who may like their steaks a little more well done. One other note on the steaks: before putting them on the grill, I seasoned them with a mix of kosher salt and fresh-ground black pepper, and let them sit for about fife minutes.

Corn-on-the-cob is pretty straightforward. Once the corn is shucked (hungry roommates are handy for this task), just drop it in a stock-pot of boiling water (I like to salt my water just a little), cover, and let it boil for 8-9 minutes. Pull it out of the water, and you're done!

Greek Pot-Crushed Potatoes

2009-07-04T16:41:00.001-04:00

I got a text-message invite from a friend of mine to a Fourth of July cookout. The invite came in late last night, and so I sent back a text asking if we could bring anything. I got the reply when I got up this morning: BYOB and a side dish. I couldn't find my Mom's baked bean recipe (Hey, Mom, could you send me that? Those are yummy!), so I started looking around for a relatively simple side-dish. The Splendid Table to the rescue! The recipe is from their book, How to Eat Supper, which I think I've referenced before.

It's pretty simple, once you work through it. The secret is the food processor: use the processor to thin-slice both the potatoes. This reduces the cooking time to around 6 or seven minutes. Then dump the potatoes into a strainer, and use the same pan to saute up some garlic (also thin-sliced in the food processor) along with some salt, pepper, and just a little bit of red pepper flakes. Neat trick: to keep the garlic from browning, add some water to the pan. At the last minute, add a teaspoon of fresh oregano leaves. Return the potatoes, mash, and fold in some parsley, sliced scallions, and the juice of a lemon. It was really good, although the next time I think I will cut up the garlic a little finer, and perhaps add a few less scallions, maybe three instead of four.

Baked Chicken Legs

2009-05-30T23:46:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you see something, and you just have to try it out. I found this post in my feeds this morning, and was intrigued by the ideas for other breadings. I ended up using only the suggested cooking time from this recipe, but that was enough to get me going. I beat a pair of eggs to get the breading to stick, and then I mixed 3/4 cup of panko, 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan, and some "complete seasoning" from Publix (I know. More on this later.). It turned out really well. My Roommate and Former Roommate were both here, and they both liked it, as well. I served it up with some peas and a spinach salad. The original plan was to try out this green bean recipe that my Mom sent me a little wile ago, but when I pulled the beans out of the fridge, they were brown and mushy, the last victims of the Memorial Day Refrigerator Incident.

I guess I should tell you about that.

So, I'm sitting on the couch, minding my own business, reading comic books, because it's Memorial Day, and I can. I'm savoring my day off, thinking of grilling something, because that's what you do on Memorial Day, right? You set something on fire.

"Honey, do you smell that?" My wife has a much more sensitive nose than I do, so this is not an altogether uncommon question. In this case, the answer is, as usual, "No."

"Come into the kitchen," she asks, and so I do. And now I DO smell it -- the unmistakable smell of burning plastic.

I'd been getting my grill ready for summer earlier in the day, so my first thought was that maybe some part of the grill was still hot when I put the cover back on, so I rush out the back door, but no, the grill is fine.

There are certain sounds that I can live quite happily without ever hearing. It turns out that one of those sounds is my wife's panicked voice, yelling for help. I charge back into the house. The kitchen is full of acrid white smoke, and my wife is pushing at the refrigerator, trying to get it away from the wall.

"We need to un-plug it!" she says, and so I wrestle the thing out from the wall and the cabinet (adrenaline is a wonderful thing), and reach back and pull the plug.

We rent, and so I call our landlady. She tells me they have a spare fridge out in the back, and that she'll send her husband out to set it up for us to use until the repair guy gets out the next day. So, fine. He shows up, puts the spare right outside our back door, and plugs it in. He tells us it will take a few hours to cool down, so we decide to go see Star Trek. The plan is to move everything out to the spare when we get back.

We get back, and the spare fridge is cool, but not cold. We realize that the temp needs to be set lower, so we turn it down. This means another delay before we can transfer things, however, so my wife sends me to bed, since I have to work in the morning.

It's 5 AM, and my wife is coming to bed just as am getting up. This is Not a Good Sign. Turns out that the spare fridge never cooled down, so she went ot Wal-Mart in the middle of the night, bought the biggest cooler she could find, along with about five bags of ice, and stuffed everything in the ridge and freezer in there.

The upshot of all this is that we lost most of what we had in the fridge, and a few things from the freezer, as well. Most of the meat survived, thank goodness. We thought the beans were ok, but (as you know) they turned out not to be.

Oh, yeah, the part that burned? It was this little thing, about 1.5" X 1" X 2.5". Know what it cost my landlady to replace? $350.00! It's moments like this when I'm perfectly happy to be renting.

Shrimp Piquant

2009-05-30T23:13:00.001-04:00

I do love Publix recipes! My wife said she wanted to do something with some shrimp we had in the freezer, so I found this recipe for Shrimp Piquant. I made it pretty much straight up, and it was so good I forgot to take a picture until I was most of the way through eating it:

The rice was a little different from the recipe. We just mixed in some corn, diced tomatoes, and a little parsley.

The "trinity mix" called for in the shrimp recipe was really interesting to me. It gave a nice crunch, and added a surprising amount of flavor, as well.

We spiced the pasta sauce with red pepper flaked and Chipotle Tabasco sauce. Yummy!

Rice Bowl Fail

2009-05-30T22:49:00.002-04:00

I'm back! Sorry, I've been slacking for a while. I have a few things to catch up on.

Let's start out with a Fail, and get it out of the way.

I had dinner a few weeks ago at Tijuana Flats. The specialty was this rice bowl with spiced steak, and grilled veggies. It was really good, so I decided to try to reproduce it at home. We had some flatirons in the fridge, so I figured this would be a good opportunity. I sliced them across the grain, to make them seem a little tenderer than they actually were, and asked my wife to work her spice magic on them. I really didn't do a good job communicating to her what I wanted though. She took a completely different approach to the spices. She started with this recipe, and then used 1/2 tbsp. agave nectar to sub for the brown sugar and then only 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper. It was edible, but not what I was hoping for. We later determined that we need to look at fajita spices, rather than adobo. We'll come back to this concept later, I think.

Pan-Sauce Again

2009-04-30T09:51:00.000-04:00

I made that beef-and-mushroom dish again last night. I know, I seem to make this a lot, but I'm trying to get it right. This time, I added some corn starch to the pan sauce as a thickener. It worked pretty well, although I added the meat back into the pan a little too soon, and it ended up a little tough. Next time, I'll try Anne's butter suggestion.

I served it over brown rice this time, and the nutty flavor of the rice really complemented the dish well.

Apple Crisp Chicken w/ Honey Carrots

2009-04-29T07:31:00.001-04:00

Another Publix Recipe. I skipped the Tangerine punch, because... well, bleah!

A success, but not an unqualified one. The store was out of chicken cutlets, so i ended up using breast fillets, which are thicker. As a result, it took longer for them to cook, and the breading burned just a little. It wasn't too bad, and the apple butter gave it a tremendous flavor, but still... Next time, use the cut of meat called for, or cut what you get down to size!

The carrots were also pretty tasty, but I'm not convinced that this was the best pairing. It was an awful lot of sweetness.

My wife suggested that I try this with pork, some night when she is working. I'm definitely going to try that.

Pork Chops w/ Caramelized Onions and Spinach

2009-04-18T20:38:00.000-04:00

I had three medium-sized onions that needed to be eaten, and my wife (who is pig-tose intolerant) is at work today. These conditions led to this recipe.

My wife has made a couple of tasty recipes over the years that involved caramelized onions. She doesn't do it very often though, so I figured I ought to lean to make them. I see why she doesn't make them very often. They're not terribly difficult, but they take a fair amount of time and attention. The result is so worth it, though.

The spinach was my usual saute-with-garlic recipe, but I wanted to put a little twist on it, so I spooned on a little blue cheese after plating. I think goat cheese would have complemented the pork and onions a little better, but there was none to be had.

The whole thing came out well, and was nicely complemented by the red zinfandel that my roommate provided.

More Thoughts on Beef and Mushrooms

2009-03-30T21:01:00.003-04:00

My parents are in town for a visit, and tonight I made dinner for them. I tried to re-create the beef and mushroom dinner I made a few weeks ago, and mostly was successful. Everybody like it, but there were a few suggestions:

The last time I made this, the wine I used had turned to vinegar. This time I used fresh wine. The mushrooms came out all right, but I think they would have been better had I added a splash of red-wine vinegar to the mix. I also forgot to let the beef sit, and then pour the juice back into the pan when I went to make the pan sauce. The result was a winier-tasting sauce. Not bad, mind, but not what I wanted.
My wife suggested that I have ready a little bit of cornstarch in some cold water to add to the sauce, to make a bit of a roux. This would have stuck to the noodles a bit better.

Lemon-Ginger Chicken with Honey

2009-03-24T21:52:00.001-04:00

1.5 Lbs. Chicken Breasts
3 Lemons
.5 C. Wine, plus more wine (I used Yellow Tail Pinot Grigio, but choose whatever strikes your fancy)
2 Tbs. Peanut oil
~3 Tbs. Ginger Spice Paste
2-4 Tbs. Honey
1 Box sliced Baby Bellas
1 C. of Brown rice

Squeeze the juice from the lemons into the bottom of a shallow pan (I used a 9x9 glass baking dish).
Add the .5 cup of wine, and stir.
Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, and marinate in the lemon/wine mixture for about 30 minutes.
Rinse the rice, and get it started -- ricemakers are awesome!
Heat a stir-fry pan over medium-high heat.
Add the oil, swirl to coat.
Add one Tbs. of the ginger paste to the oil, let sizzle for just a moment.
Using a slotted spoon, add 1/3 of the chicken to the pan, and stir fry until cooked through.
Remove the cooked chicken to a plate, and repeat steps 7 and 8 with the remaining thirds of the chicken.
After removing the last of the chicken, drizzle the cooked chicken with just a little bit of honey, and cover with foil to keep warm.
Pour the used marinade into the pan, and boil until it reduces to about 1/3 its original volume. Stir frequently to keep the foam mixed in.
Dump the mushrooms into the pan, and stir gently.
Add in a little more wine, and bring to a boil.
Reduce the heat to simmer, and cover.
Let simmer for a few minutes.
Serve with rice, and a glass of the wine!

This is sort of a chicken version of the beef dish I made a couple of weeks ago. It was good, but it really needed some green veggies to provide color and a contrasting flavor. The original plan was to serve it with asparagus, but there was none to be had when I went to the store today. Oh, well, next time.

Make-up Post: Seared Steak w/ Wine Mushrooms.

2009-03-12T10:40:00.001-04:00

I've been sitting on this post for about a week or so, trying to pick apart where I went wrong.

I had this great idea. I'd sear a steak, and then create a pan-sauce for the mushrooms. Sounds great, and I did eventually figure out how to do it (see previous post). But this attempt...

I think now that my big mistake was using a stainless-steel pan. Stainless (I now know) conducts heat more efficiently than non-stick, which I'd used before. The result was a LOT of smoke, and a burn across the bottom of my pan. No sauce to be made there! I'd chosen the stainless pan because I wanted all the little bits that you don't seem to get as much of with a non-stick pan. A cast-iron skillet would possibly have been a better choice, but I don't have one of those yet. So anyway, the steak was well-seared, but still medium-rare on the inside.

OK, so there is no fond for the sauce. Well, there is, but it's all burned, and will likely taste pretty nasty. What to do? I'm still working with this idea of a wine reduction, so I pour about a half-cup of wine into a pan, and start boiling. Note to self: never stick your face directly over a pan of boiling alcohol. Anyway, the wine reduces, and I drop in the mushrooms and some chopped garlic. As I saute, I add a little more wine, because I notice that I'm running really low on liquid. The result was tasty, if not what I expected. The mushrooms absorbed an intense wine flavor. I don't know that I'd want to eat a lot of them by themselves, but they did complement the steak.

Not my best-ever dinner. Fortunately, Scott likes his steak crispy on the outside and medium on the inside, so I got away with it, even if the house did smell like smoke for a day or two.

Garlic Bread

2009-03-12T07:41:00.001-04:00

Last night was a much simpler meal -- just spaghetti and sauce. We had a little leftover bread from Tuesday night's feast, though, so I figured I'd try my hand at garlic bread. It was surprisingly easy. I took a few big spoonfuls of butter, and melted them down in the microwave (25 seconds at 50%). Then I stirred in a heaping tablespoon of chopped garlic. This left me with a bunch of liquid butter -- very tough to manage. So, I got out a second bowl, and half-filled it with ice-water. I set the bowl w/ the garlic butter in the ice water, and stirred until it just started to thicken. Then I let it sit while I squeezed four slices of bread out of the remaining loaf. By the time I had the bread sliced, the garlic mixture was just about perfect -- still spoonable, but not particularly runny. I spooned the butter onto the bread (being careful to keep it away from the edges), and popped the slices into the toaster-oven. The result was pretty good. I want to try a version topped with mozzarella, but I think that will require use of the broiler.

Lemon-Pepper Stir-fried Steak w/ Mushrooms and Spinach

2009-03-12T07:33:00.002-04:00

A week or so ago my wife bought a ton of frozen beef from a door-to-door salesman. There were a wide variety of cuts, and given how much we eat in our house, she probably saved us a good chunk of change. So far, everything has been pretty good.

On Tuesday, I took three of the lemon-pepper steaks from this collection, and cut them into 1/2-inch slices. Then I heated a stir-fry pan, sauteed up a little chopped garlic, and cooked the sliced steak. I removed the steak from the pan, added a little leftover wine that had turned to vinegar, and reduced it just a little bit. Then I dumped in a box of sliced baby-bella mushrooms, tossed them in the sauce for a minute or two, added a little more wine, covered the pan, and let them steam for about two minutes. This all got dumped into a serving bowl. The last stage of the meal was wiping out the pan, adding fresh oil and about a tablespoon-and-a-half of garlic, and sauteing some spinach.

There were no leftovers.

Two things:

Cooking with frozen meat is a real challenge for me, because it means I have to plan my meals a couple of days ahead of time, so the meat has time to thaw. This is not my strong suit. I tend to be more of an "it's-3:00-what-am-I-making-tonight?" type of guy. Oh, well, I guess it's good discipline, and it is easier on the budget in the long run.
This meal represents my first real success at cooking without ever once referring to a recipe. I was particularly pleased with the way the mushrooms came out. Pan-sauces rock!

Eggs Experiment

2009-02-22T12:09:00.001-05:00

I found this in my feeds the other day, and wanted t give it a try. I cut down the amount of onion somewhat, because the red onion I had was pretty big, and had to short the garlic, as well, because the @#$&#$ bulb I bought the other day turned out to be no good!

The result was... ok, but not great. The siracha gave it a nice spicy finish, but it needs something on the front end. Maybe a little pepper?

Ginger-Honey Chicken

2009-02-14T20:51:00.002-05:00

I made all three part of this recipe today, thinking that I'd have lots of leftovers. Of course, some friends showed up. So much for the leftovers.

I burned the chicken just a little bit. Guess medium-high on my stovetop is higher than on the Publix Test Kitchen stovetop. Still, it came out pretty well. Very ginger-y, with just a hint of sweetness, perfect with a class of white wine.

The real winner here is the vanilla rice. This is the first time I've made rice not in the rice cooker, so I approached it with some trepidation. But, I followed the recipe, and covered the pan with aluminum foil for the simmering phase, and it came out just fine.

Catching up...

2009-02-14T20:22:00.003-05:00

OK, I've been slacking on this blog for the last couple of weeks. Not sure why, but let me catch up a little.

_______________________

Tuesday is Heroes Night. The show actually airs on Mondays, but Scott games and I fence on Mondays, so we always watch it on Tuesdays (how we lived before DVR's, I'll never know). Most of the time, our friend Amber comes over to watch, as well. So it's a great excuse to work on some cooking.

Two weeks ago, Amber and I finally came up with a decent chicken stir fry. I started by using thighs, rather than breasts. That was an experience in itself, since I couldn't get boneless, and had to de-bone them myself. I am happy to report that there were no bits of finger mixed in with our chicken.

We ended up soaking the chicken in the leftover sauce from an earlier attempt, and that made the difference. Good Stir-fry!

_______________________

So, my wife says to me on Saturday afternoon that there is ground beef that needs to be cooked up that day, knowing that I had a friend's graduation party to go to that evening. So I decided to brown it with some chopped onion and garlic, and simmer it for a while in some jar spaghetti sauce. It was... ok, but it needed something, so I added a good solid handful of oregano, and that did the trick. We were able to eat off of that for a solid week!

Goulash with Caraway Seeds

2009-02-01T20:31:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid, my mom used to make something called "Hungarian Goulash." It was delicious. This is not that recipe, but it's still pretty good. To me, the interesting thing about this dish is that it's a multiple-technique recipe. You start by browning the meat, and then you add the spices, veggies, and so forth, and stew it all for about an hour and a half. Once again, the new Dutch Oven comes to the rescue!

I decided to make this because this weekend is a little more scheduled than normal, and I wanted something I could make on Saturday, then throw in the fridge and re-heat on Sunday. Also, it's been cold (Florida-cold, not real-cold), and goulash is a great homey cold-weather dish. As luck would have it, tonight was also one of the rare occasions that all four of us were home for dinner. Sometimes, everything just works out perfectly.

Meat Loaf

2009-01-19T20:49:00.004-05:00

This is another recipe from I'm Just Here for the Food. I followed the recipe fairly closely, but put it back in the oven for an extra few minutes, as my new meat thermometer didn't register done yet. My oven seems to be running about 25 degrees hot, at this point.

I'd have to call this one qualified success. The flavor was good, but I may add a little oregano the next time. But the texture... The recipe calls for two sliced of sandwich bread, cubed. I was not very happy with the results of that. The cubes of bread seemed to absorb the fat, and left other parts of the loaf not so much dry, as crumbly. The loaf, as a result, has some serious integrity problems (insert joke about a politician here).

So, next time: use breadcrumbs, instead of bread, and add some oregano to the spice mix.

Yes, I drink wine with meatloaf!

Baked Ziti

2009-01-10T23:05:00.001-05:00

I started with this recipe. I substituted spicy turkey sausage for the ground beef, and added about half a bulb of fresh chopped garlic, on the theory that garlic is never bad. I started mixing everything into the pan, and realized that there was just no way I could mix in a full pound of shredded cheddar cheese, plus top with a mixture of cheddar and Parmesan. So, I mixed in about 3/4 of a pound of cheddar, and topped with straight Parmesan. The result was plenty tasty, but the top layer of cheese never really melted propely, probably because Parmesan is such a dry cheese. Maybe mozzarella would be a better choice?

A couple of equipment notes:

I am in the process of calibrating my oven. I bought an oven thermometer, and set my oven to 320 to start tonight (the recipe called for 350). The temp shot all the way up to 400, so I opened the door for a few minutes, and turned the temp down to 300, figurin it to be about 50 degrees off. Periodically during the baking process. I looked at the thermometer, and adjusted the temp as needed. I figured this would be reasonably safe with this partiucular dish, since the turkey suasage was already thoroughly browned before adding it, and nothing else carried a particularly high risk of contamination. I had no trouble with the ziti not being hot enough (I checked it with a meat thermometer as soon as I pulled it out), but the readings I got during the process kept tracking exactly with the set temperature. So, has anyone ever heard of an oven that heats up to higher than the set temp at first? This would make sense to me, as it would help account for the initial opening of the door, but it seems a little sophistacated for most ovens.
When grating a lot of cheese, a food processor is a must-have. Thanks, Mom and Dad! It took us a long time to get to using it, but I am officially declaring it indispensable.

So, anyone have any good recipes for grated cheddar? I'm thinking nachos...

Flash Chicken Saute with Cider and Garlic-Cauliflower "Mashed Potatoes"

2009-01-04T21:19:00.004-05:00

Both of these recipes are from "How to Eat Supper," one of my Christmas presents.

The chicken recipe is a two-part process. First, sear the chicken (browning each side first, then reducing the heat and cooking for about 4 minutes on each side), then deglaze with cider vinegar and build a pan sauce. This was my first pan sauce (thanks to Ann for letting me watch one "in action" last night - very inspiring!), and it came out well. I did make one mistake, in that I leaned over the pan at one point to separate a couple pieces of garlic, and got a snoot full of reducing vinegar. I'll have to remember that trick the next time I'm all stuffed up!

The chicken turned out to be the hard part. I bought the chicken breasts this afternoon from Publix, and didn't realize until I pulled them out of the fridge to cook them that they were still frozen! I thawed them out as best I could using running water, but it still threw off my cooking time, and they came out juicy, but a little tough. The flavors were quite good, though, so I think if I am a little more careful next time with the state of my chicken, this could be a really great dish.

The side dish involves cutting up a whole head of cauliflower (core, leaves, and all!), and steaming it until it's very soft. Then dump it in a food processor with some spices, and puree. It comes out the basic texture of mashed potatoes. It was good, but needed... something. Maybe a little more pepper, or fresh nutmeg instead of dried. In any case, definitely something worth experimenting with in the future.

Flank Steak

2009-01-02T21:35:00.004-05:00

Christmas was good this year (see picture).

The Alton Brown cookbook ("I'm Just Here for the Food") is just what I need -- a technique book. I read it through while still at my parents' house, and I think I'm going to have to cook my way through it. Brown has a great way of explaining things; not just techniques, but why they work the way they do. He's also very funny. Mom was a little puzzled that I was laughing at a cookbook, but it really was the only reasonable response.

Anyway, tonight's exercise was seared flank steak. The book is divided by cooking technique, with an explanation of how each one works, and why it works the way it does. So, I followed his recipe pretty closely. This also gave me a chance to use the Dutch oven in the picture, as well. Brown insists that a cast iron skillet is superior, and it may be, but I got a pretty good result with my Dutch oven. The steak is seasoned with nothing but kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, an it came out great! The secret seems to be the waiting. You wait for the steak to come a little closer to room temperature, then you season it, and wait a little while for the salt to draw somoe of the steak's juices to the surface. Sear it for 3 minutes per side, then put it on a rack, cover it loosely with some foil, and wait a little bit more before slicing. Patience is not one of my virtues, particularly when I'm hungry, so this represents a significant challenge.

My wife was a big help tonight, making her roasted asparagus for our side. Don't know what I'd do without her. I certainly wouldn't be learning to cook!

By the way, the other book in the picture is "How to Eat Supper," by the women behind our favorite cooking radio show, The Splendid Table (if you have trouble viewing it, disable your adblocking software). Great program, and a wonderful book, as well.

Fotocuisine

2008-12-10T07:04:00.001-05:00

I found this cooking blog that has a terrific approach: recipes documented with photographs at every step. The recipes are sometimes way beyond my skill level (not to mention available time), but it's great to see how things are done. Enjoy!

Cookie Update

2008-12-10T07:01:00.001-05:00

When I made the molasses cookies, I was a little concerned that they would turn to rocks after a day or two. I am pleased to report that they were still pleasantly soft after two days. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to continue the experiment beyond two day, due to an insufficient quantity of test subjects.

Molasses Cookies

2008-12-07T21:17:00.001-05:00

It's the holiday season, and that means cookies!

This evening I tried a molasses cutout cookie recipe that I found in the local paper. Every year our paper runs a feature of reader-submitted holiday cookies, and this year it had a bunch of things that sounded good. This was our house's first foray into cookies for the year, and so far, it promises to be a merry Christmas, indeed!

The cookies are kind of ginger-snappy in their flavor, but with a distinct molasses flavor backing them up. I frosted most of them with a simple vanilla sugar frosting, but my wife insisted that I leave a few of them plain, because she likes them on their own.

One mistake, I crowded my cookie sheet a little, so a few of them a a little rough around the edges where they expanded into one another. Next time, I'll use two sheets.

Teriyaki Pork

2008-12-07T21:07:00.002-05:00

I think my stir-fry woes are not so much with the technique, but with chicken. Last night I took a teriyaki chicken recipe that had not been successful, and took only the parts of the recipe that had to do with the sauce. I cut up some pork loin chops, and marinated them in the sauce. After letting them sit for a bit, I stir-fried the pork, and set it aside. Then I threw some sugar snap peas into my pan, stir fried those for a few minutes, and added some sliced baby-bella mushrooms. I whisked a little bit of cornstarch into what remained of the marinade, added that to the veggies, and let it thicken. Then I added the pork back in, and heated it through. My roommate (who is a dedicated pigivore) declared it delicious.

Next time I do chicken, I'm going to try to think of it enough ahead of time that I can let it soak in the marinade for a while.

Stir-fry efforts

2008-11-12T07:31:00.001-05:00

I've been struggling with this stir-fry thing of late. Seems like I end up with too much flavor or too little. On one end of that spectrum, I made some ginger-garlic beef, from a recipe in the stir-fry book I got a week or so ago. The recipe called for 3/4 of a cup of soy sauce, and was just plain too salty. On the other end, I've made a couple of chicken recipes in the past week, and I can't seem to get much flavor into the chicken itself. Is there something basic that I'm missing? Do I need to marinade the chicken for a longer period of time? I'm stuck.

Garlic Lamb with Mushrooms and Noodles

2008-11-02T19:25:00.001-05:00

So, I got this book on stir frying. It was one of those bargain books that Borders always has on sale just inside the front door. I figured that for eight bucks I couldn't go wrong, and I know how to saute, so stir frying would be playing to my strengths.

Right.

First of all, the measurements are mostly in ounces of weight, not volume. Since I don't have a scale, that leaves me eyeballing things and guessing based on package size.

Second, the book uses a lot of ingredients that I haven't used previously, and doesn't really explain what they are.

Third, the directions tend to compress several steps into one, so it is really easy for the novice to miss something.

All that notwithstanding, the recipe I used tonight came out pretty well, albeit with way too many noodles. I really liked the technique for cooking up teriyaki mushrooms. You stir fry them for a couple of minutes, then add two tablespoons of teriyaki sauce, toss thoroughly, and then cover the lot and let them steam for about 10 seconds, just to force the flavor into the mushrooms. I'm thinking of using this technique to go with some chicken at a later date.

Garlic Chicken

2008-10-29T20:40:00.001-04:00

Now this is some high-testosterone cooking! Once everything is prepped, it all has to be added to the pan in the right order, and cooks up very fast!

The result was good, but a little light on the flavor. That's what I get for making Chinese food from a recipe in a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook! I was thinking of adding a little siracha next time. Any other ideas to add a little zing?

Broiled Cajun-Spiced Chicken

2008-10-29T06:45:00.001-04:00

OK, so this was my first real "What've we got?" meal. My roommate had some boil-in-the-bag rice (not my first choice, but he wanted to contribute, so household politics trumped gormandizing), and there were some frozen veggies -- snow peas, carrots, and cauliflower -- in the freezer.

This left the meat to figure out. I was going to the store anyway to get a gallon of cider, since we're having a very welcome cold snap here, and what could be better than hot cider? So, I picked up a couple of chicken breasts, which I rubbed down with cajun spices and broiled in the oven for about 12 minutes.

The meal came out all right, given the pre-fab ingredients. The chicken was pretty juicy, except for the very thin bits at the ends, which got a bit tough. Next time, I'll break out the rice maker, though!

"Uncle Norman's" (Buckwheat) Pancakes

2008-10-20T07:58:00.002-04:00

I've been making my Dad's pancake recipe for years, with almost no variation. It's the recipe I grew up on, so the sentimental value is pretty high. Recently, though, my wife has been asking me to try the recipe using buckwheat flour. I was a bit unsure of the consequences of this sort of alteration, so I called the source. Dad said that he recalled not having very much success with buckwheat flour, but that I might try using half buckwheat and have all-purpose flour. I followed his sage advice (don't tell him -- he'll have a heart attack), and the pancakes turned out quite well. The buckwheat flour gives them a nice texture, and they seem to soak up a bit more maple syrup, as well.

My one grumble is a technical problem, not a matter of product. The buckwheat flour makes for a browner batter, so it's a little tougher to tell when the pancakes are cooked enough. That's just a matter of practice, though.

My wife suggested that we try letting the better rest for a while next time, so that will most likely be my next experiment.

I also incorporated Mom's suggestion of using powered buttermilk, and that worked pretty well, although next time I'll actually sift it into the rest of the dry ingredients, rather than adding it afterward.

Grilled Lamb Chops

2008-10-12T19:46:00.002-04:00

My wife wanted lamb burgers for dinner, but there was no ground lamb to be had, so we settled for lamb chops. I used the marinade from this recipe, but opted for grilling instead of broiling. I always struggle a little bit with grilling, because I'm afraid of over-cooking the meat. As a result, I typically end up under-cooking it. Tonight, though, it came out ok. I'm not sure I can replicate it, but it was ok tonight.

I noticed that there was an awful lot of flame-up on the grill. Not sure if this was the marinade or the lamb-fat, but it gave the chops some nice blackening, without over-doing the interior meat.

Bread!

2008-10-12T17:54:00.002-04:00

I found this bread recipe in my feeds the other day, and it looked pretty easy, so I thought I'd give it a try. It has to be about the simplest bread recipe possible -- just flour, yeast, salt, and water. Mixing the dough takes about 20 minutes, and then you let it stand for 4 hours.

The only problem I encountered was the difficulty of getting the right temperature in my oven. I bought an oven thermometer, but getting an electric oven to exactly 450 is a challenge, especially the first time you try to figure out just how off the oven's gague is! I think I ended up with an oven that was just a little bit too hot. My bread was good, but a little crusty. We'll see how it goes with dinner tonight.

Shrimp Scampi and Sugar Peas

2008-10-11T20:46:00.003-04:00

Seafood scares me. I don't eat a lot of it (sushi notwithstanding), so I've never been really comfortable around it. So when my wife said that she wanted seafood tonight, I was more than a little nervous. That's my new trick for forcing myself to try new recipes, by the way. I ask her to tell me what she wants for the meat in that day's meal, and then I look for a recipe. I can (and do) eat the same things all time, so I need some way to force me to stretch. My wife is always happy to make me try new things, so this scheme works out well.

Anyway, she wanted shrimp, so I started poking around. I found a shrimp creole recipe in my trusty Better Homes cookbook, but it sounded too much like the jambalaya I made the other night, so I settled on shrimp scampi.

Scampi, I gather, is Italian for "boiled in butter." This recipe calls for six tablespoons of butter! That's a whole lot of oil and dairy solids. I used the real stuff, too. I figure that I can get away with cooking with real butter as long as I don't do it too often. If I was making things with butter every day, I'd probably use spread, but since I don't use it too often, butter it is!

The other thing that I'm working on is learning to eyeball the ingredients. Other than the butter and the shrimp, I didn't actually measure a thing in this recipe. I imagine that this won't work for all recipes, and I know it won't work with baking, but for something like this, I figured it would be safe. As it turned out, I was right. The flavors were strong, but well-balanced, and we were both pleased. My guess is that I over-estimated all my ingredients in the same proportion, so I got away with it. My wife did suggest that I add a touch of Dijon mustard or some black pepper, but that was more in the way of variations. She did think to squeeze some fresh lemon juice over the shrimp after it was plated, and that really tied it all together. She also proposed an un-oaked Chardonnay to go with it, and it was perfect. Her taste in wine really is exquisite.

One thing I really did goof on with this meal was the heat. I had the peas on the back burner, and the shrimp on the front. Naturally, when I needed to turn down the heat under the peas because they were ready before the shrimp, I turned the wrong burner down! Fortunately, I do know what cooked shrimp looks like, having eaten a lot of it, so it came out all right in the end. Hmm. I wonder if the lower heat allowed the flavors of the garlic and onion to mesh with the shrimp a little more? I don't know enough about the chemistry to answer that.

The sugar peas were just steamed, and a little bit of salt sprinkled over them afterward. No big deal, but they went well with the shrimp.

My wife made a spinach salad with apples, bleu cheese, and balsamic vinegar dressing. She's made this a number of times, and I really like it. I much prefer spinach to lettuce.

10/7/08 -- Jambalaya (again)

2008-10-09T22:59:00.004-04:00

I had a good deal of leftover chicken from Sunday's pasta, so I decided to tackle the jambalaya again. My goal was to get the spices a little closer to right this time, and give it some more flavor. I made the full recipe, instead of halving it, and added one of my wife's jalapenos. This particular pepper had been sitting in the fridge for quite some time, which reduces the heat of it, and I copped it up very fine. The result was that I got a good deal of jalapeno flavor, without a lot of the heat the often goes along with it. It was pretty good.

Now for the downside: This is one of those recipes that says "reduce heat" without telling you what to reduce it to. I didn't reduce it enough, apparently, and managed to burn a layer of rice to the bottom of my saute pan. Cleanup wasn't too bad, since I know enough to soak it for a while first, but it meant that, even though I made a full recipe, I didn't get a full recipe's worth of servings out of it. Next time...

10/5/08 -- Pancakes

2008-10-05T14:39:00.003-04:00

Sometimes you just have to try something new.

My dad makes legendary pancakes. They're light, fluffy, and go great with real maple syrup. When my mother's family gathers for the annual Week At the Beach, Dad gets roped into making pancakes at least two mornings. For the past few years, I've been his assistant in this process, and I can pretty well replicate his pancakes.

But, they require buttermilk. And when I'm at home, I don't really think about making pancakes until I get up on a Sunday morning, so it's pretty rare that there is buttermilk in the house at that time. Thus, I either have to plan to make pancakes a day in advance (Hah!), or I have to go to the store before breakfast. This is not something that typically appeals to me. So, this morning, at some risk to my inheritance, I went looking for a non-buttermilk pancake recipes.

I ended up using this recipe from Allrecipes.com, modifying it according to the suggestions in the comment from Esther on January 3, 2006 (I did not chill the batter, but I took her other advice). The best of these ideas was the addition of cinnamon to the batter. This gave the pancakes a nice, light cinnamon flavor that complimented the maple syrup beautifully. The one thing that didn't work was her suggestion to cut the milk down to 3/4 cup from a full cup. The first pair of pancakes were pretty heavy, so I added more milk to the batter, and the rest came out nice and light.

My wife felt that these were pretty good, but needed butter and/or syrup. The pancakes were very porous, so they soaked up a lot of whatever you put on them. My view of pancakes is that they are really just vehicles for syrup, so this wasn't a problem for me. All in all, a pretty good recipe.

Dad's are still better, though.

10/4/08 -- Vodka Sauce

2008-10-04T23:40:00.003-04:00

So, I found this recipe for vodka sauce in the local paper a few weeks ago, and I finally got around to trying it out. It's really very simple: you just chop up an onion very fine, saute it up in olive oil, and dump in a big can of crushed tomatoes. Let that cook down for about 20 minutes, add 1/4 cup of vodka and cook the alcohol out for a few minutes. Then you stir in 3/4 cup of cream, and heat it through. That's it.

One thing I like about the way this recipe is written is that when it said to "reduce heat," it told me what to reduce it to (medium, in this case). That's something that is tough for guys like me, who don't really know what we're doing. I had a recipe a while back that just said "reduce heat." Ooooookaayyy, um, reduce to what? Medium? Simmer? Tears? It's very confusing.

Anyway, the sauce came out great. My wife was impressed, so I guess it's a keeper. Pity that asparagus is so expensive just now. It would go really well with this. Ah, well.

10/4/08 -- Spanish Omelet

2008-10-04T13:17:00.003-04:00

Well, this wasn't quite a disaster, but it didn't quite come out the way I wanted it to, either.

This particular Spanish Omelet was made with red potatoes, bell pepper, onion, jalepeno pepper, and tomatoes. The big problem is that I really need to learn to judge quantities more effectively. Even after deciding to not put in all the potatoes that I had cut up, I still had too many, and that threw off the rest of my quantities of chopped veggies. I chopped up three or four potatoes, and ended up not using all of that, so it looks like two red potatoes provide enough for a two-person omelet. That scales it down to two slices of bell pepper, a quarter of a small yellow onion, and one small tomato. The jalepeno came from my wife's plant, and had been allowed to ripen to the point where it turned red, so it was sweeter. I only used about a third of the pepper, and chopped it up very fine, almost like I would garlic. I should have used a little more of that, I think, because it gave a very nice flavor without being too hot.

Anyway, I ended up having to use six eggs to hold it all together instead of four, so there was a significant leftover portion. This went into the fridge, but I can't imagine that it will reheat very well.

The really cool thing about something like a Spanish omelet is that it lets you use up a bunch of things that are lying about in the kitchen. For example, in this case, we had (and still have -- they're like loaves and fishes) potatoes that need to be made into something, and leftover tomatoes and bell pepper from the other night's jambalaya. But really, I could put just about any sort of non-leafy vegetable into this thing. Come to that, I might even try some chopped spinach. I should try to find some more recipes that do things like this, because we always end up with leftover fixings.

Side note: anyone know the "correct" spelling for something made of various stuff held together with scrambled eggs? My spell-checker likes "omelet," but I've also seen "omelette."

10/1/08 -- Chicken Jambalaya

2008-10-01T20:08:00.005-04:00

I came home from work today really wiped out, the result of a late night fencing and another late night talking with my housemate. I was looking for something to make for dinner, and my other housemate (yes, we have two), told me that there was a chicken breast in the fridge that needed to be cooked up, so I started looking through my trusty old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. On one page, there was a recipe for Chicken Jambalaya labeled "FAST!"

Ha. Maybe I'm too much a creature of the Internet Age, but I don't think of something that takes a good, solid hour to make as "fast."

It was good, though. I halved the recipe, since I had only one chicken breast, and I needed tomatoes. Housemate #2 was going to the store anyway, so she picked up some Campari tomatoes for me. I chopped up a couple, and used them in place of the canned tomatoes the recipe called for.

OK, confession time: I really like cutting and chopping. Even something as pain-in-the-elbow as tomatoes, with a really sharp knife, is just, I don't know -- satisfying -- for some reason.

Here's the question of the day -- should I have washed the rice? It came out all right, so I guess the answer is, "yes," but I have never had real jambalaya before (Zatarain's doesn't count), so I can't really be sure.

A couple of notes on the spicing:

I didn't have any garlic salt, so I used garlic powder and added some salt. Wild guess, but it seemed to work.
My one grumble is that it could have been hotter. Next time, I'm thinking about adding part of one of my wife's homegrown jalapenos.

Oh, and it looked like this:

9/21/08 -- "Party Chicken" and Broccoli w/ Cheese

2008-09-21T19:30:00.003-04:00

Tried out the main dish from this recipe.

Notes:

The recipe says it makes enough for four, but I think it's more like six. It might be four if a couple of people want seconds.
It took a bit longer to cook than the recipe indicated. I'm guessing that this is because our oven isn't terribly accurate. I used the fancy electronic cooking thermometer my wife got for Christmas to determine done-ness. It worked really well, although the display kept switching back and forth between Fahrenheit and Celsius, for some reason.
This recipe is filed under "Homestyle," and it's easy to see why. The sauce is a can of condensed cream-of-chicken soup and a half-cup of light mayonnaise. This gives making the recipe a sort of 1950's feel, at least to me (granted, I'm way too young to remember the 50's, but I know that this was the introduction of using a lot of pre-made ingredients).
One of the ingredients is panko, or Japanese-style breadcrumbs. Something I've never worked with before, but neat stuff. They give the topping a nice crunchy texture, while still keeping things light.
I did make a minor mistake: my butter was frozen to start with. We don't use a lot of butter unless we're baking, so we typically keep it in the freezer. I sliced it up into very thin slices, put them in a bowl, and then set the bowl on top of the oven while I prepped the chicken. It worked to some extent, but I think the topping would have mixed up a little better if the butter were a bit softer. I gave up on mixing the panko in to the butter with a wooden spoon, and just kneaded it all together with my hands. Messy, but fun!
My wife is concerned that that texture will be lost on re-heating. it does seem likely, but the flavors will be retained, so it should still be good. We have four servings left over, so we'll have plenty of opportunity to find out!
The broccoli was pretty simple: I bought fresh broccoli, chopped the brussels off, and steamed them. Then I dumped them in a bowl, sprinkled some shredded cheddar over the top, and covered the bowl with a plate. The whole thing went onto the top of the oven while I waited for the chicken to finish cooking. I thought the cheese (which was also in the topping for the chicken) tied everything together nicely.
The whole process took about an hour, start to finish. I might be able to shave off about fifteen minutes with practice, and if I had a good oven thermometer, so I could heat my oven properly.

9/14/08 -- Beef Stroganoff

2008-09-14T19:10:00.003-04:00

I used this recipe, from Publix. I really like these recipes, in general, because they have very easy-to-follow directions. This is critical for a beginner like me. In fact, having this set of recipes available to me was a factor in my decision to undertake this project. I like having a set of "safety" recipes to start out with. It came out pretty well, although I think a little more pepper, or spice of some sort, is in order. My wife suggests mixing in some vegetables, as well. For our veggie tonight, we just microwaved some frozen broccoli. Not too exciting, but when mixed in with the stroganoff, it did add some color.

Another nice thing about this recipe: it makes enough that we can toss acouple of meals' worth in the fridge, giving us easy heat-up meals for the rest of the week. Given the complexity of our schedules (I work days, and she is a full-time student and works two nights a week), this is useful, to put it mildly.

9/14/08 -- Chicken Broth

2008-09-14T02:40:00.003-04:00

My wife is making broth from the remains of a chicken she cooked last week. These are my notes on the process:

In a stock pot, boil up some water with a few bay leaves in it.
While that is heating up, chop up some vegetables. This time, she used carrots, onion, and bell pepper. Apparently celery would have been included as well, had we had any. A food processor is ideal for this.
Once the water starts to boil, put in the veggies, the chicken carcass, and some herbs. My wife is fond of her home-grown herbs, and this particular broth includes fresh-cut rosemary and basil. When I asked her to remind me what she put in so I could make these notes, she remembered that she had some sage, which soon found itself swimming with the rest of the stock.
The whole concoction is brought to a rolling boil, and then reduced to a simmer (we consulted this page on the matter). I got left to keep an eye on it, while she went upstairs for a shower (this is all happening on Saturday night, after she got home from work).
The simmering continues for a couple of hours or so, and then all the solid bits are either removed or strained out. The broth is cooled by sitting in a bowl nested inside another bowl containing ice water, then boxed up into plastic boxes (Yea, Chinese take-out soup!), and placed in the freezer.
While this last process is going on, my wife cleans the last of the meat off the bones. Tomorrow (later today, technically), this will become her famous chicken soup!

9/13/08 -- Burger and Fries

2008-09-13T21:27:00.002-04:00

I had half a potato leftover from this morning's Spanish Omelette, and my wife tells me we need to use up the bag of onions in our kitchen, so I got some ground beef, and made myself a burger and some fries.

Let me start with the fries. I took my half-potato and sliced it into strips. Then I heated up a little bit of olive oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat (I tried high heat this morning, and got smoke -- lesson learned), and essentially stir-fried the strips of potato. This is still a bit of a wonder to me. I always associate fries with vats of oil and a huge mess, but this was remarkably easy. The fries came out nice and soft on the inside, but could have been a little crispier on the outside. Next time, I'll turn the heat up just a notch, and hope I don't get smoke again. Still, they tasted good.

So, on to the burger. I started with somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of a pound of lean ground beef, and added a few things: half a slice of chopped onion (not much progress on the bag, but it's just me tonight, so I did what I can), a small clove of finely chopped garlic, and some Gorgonzola cheese crumbles that I found in the fridge. The resulting patty got place in my new Foreman grill* at 350 degrees for 7 minutes. This proved to be a bit too much time, as the burger ended up a bit dry. The Gorgonzola flavor remained, though, and was quite good.

No real veggies in this meal, for which I will no doubt be taken to task, but nevertheless, pretty satisfying. I'll definitely try these again, making a few tweaks in the process.

*Story about the grill: Recently both our old grill and our roommate's grill had some issues. We had a big grill, which developed a dead spot on the top cooking plate. He had a small one, on which the top plate died completely. Both were several years old (his much older than ours), and were well-used. They were also a pain in the elbow to clean, because they had to be done by hand, and, of course, couldn't be immersed. Shortly after the little grill died, Target had a sale on the newest generation of Foreman grills. So we donated ours to Goodwill, tossed the roommate's in the trash, and got a new grill. Two advantages: First, we gained a little bit of much-needed shelf-space, and second, the new grill has cooking plates that can be removed and put in the dishwasher!

Getting Started

2008-09-13T21:10:00.000-04:00

I hate half-knowing how to do things.

I don't mind being terrible at something. For instance, I am a notoriously bad dancer, and I have no desire whatsoever to change that. Doesn't bother me.

But if I'm going to be able to do something, I want to be able to do it well. I want depth and breadth of knowledge, I want background, I want a certain level of expertise. I want to be able to have an intelligent conversation on the subject, and I hate being reduced to smiling and nodding because I just don't get it.

So, I'm learning to cook.

I learned a while ago that one of the best ways to really learn something is to experiment, and then to reflect on that experience. This blog is a little bit of that. I'm planning to use this space as a sort of diary of my cooking. Hopefully, the process of writing things down will help me remember what worked, and what didn't. I'm also hoping for a bit of advice from you, the reader. Please feel free to leave comments on any post that strikes your fancy. Be gentle with me, for I am truly a novice in the kitchen, but any and all constructive criticisms are more than welcome.