Hopefully April is better - but I don't think I'll be doing much cooking.
Mustard Gratineed ham
buttermilk mashed potatoes and corn
Yeah - I'm officially sick of root vegetables when I turn to the frozen food aisle. Usually the frozen food is better than the fresh vegetables when out of season, but some just don't freeze that well. I stick to corn, peas, lima beans and spinach. Frozen brussell sprouts are horrible.
When are the bitter greens going to get going - I keep going to the Grand Army greenmarket hoping for something to show up, but nothing yet.
Sausages
Thuringer, Hot Links, Foie de porc
These sausages turned out terrible. I forgot to soak the casings overnight, so stuffing was a complete pain. I under kneaded the mixture so the emulsification wasn't tight enough, when I smoked them they all leaked fat, and turned out dry.....complete failure.
The hot link (beef/pork) recipe tasted great fresh - so I'll probably come back to that one; but kind of BS that I ruined it in the smoker.
The liver sausage was from the Grigson - equal parts pork shoulder, pork liver and back fat - add in some port and that's it. Basically a pate stuffed in a casing. Now I made pates before, but this just wasn't coming out smooth and was too thick to shove through the chinois. When I poached it the emulsification broke too.....so big failures all across the board.
I was going to give away a lot of this, but I wouldn't wish these on anyone - so now I have to find uses for all of this shitty sausage.
Egg and Cheese sandwich
on a Hot link Stuffed Corn Muffin
So here it starts, the parade of stupid sausage dishes - made corn muffins with the sausage inside - cut them in half and put a fried egg and cheddar in there. Big surprise - they were kind of heavy.
- Onion Jam -
Cooked down a ton of onions extra virgin olive oil, chicken stock and a little sherry vinegar. This tasted really good; but not a surprise there.
- Herb/Sausage/Cheese Bread -
Continuing to try to use this sausage in things - this was a savory quick bread with sauteed onions, thuringer, cheese, and dried herbs (margoram, thyme, rosemary)....Gretchen liked it.
- Lentil Soup -
duck stock, green lentils, sausage, rye berries
Gretchen asked for this to be made; so I did. It tasted okay I guess - maybe a little slick feeling. The duck stock tasted pretty good.
- Saison Yeast Rolls -
I was anticipating needing rolls for these sausages - but since the sausage's suck.....At least we got to use one for leftover pulled pork from Rack and Soul - who I'm pretty sure gave Gretchen a whole shoulder with her order.
The rolls turned out well - really light and kind of sweet; like the kind of roll you get with barbecue. Made two hamburger rolls for the pulled pork, and a few hot dog rolls. It basically a lean bread dough - but with the addition of a lot amount of honey (helps with rise), milk powder and fat (oil) which both help with a soft/regular crumb.
Parsnip Latkes
Rye Berry salad (Black Bean and sweet potato) w/ bacon sherry vinegrette
At the end of the winter I'm always looking for new techniques to cook root vegetables - latkes officially became the next technique I can't do right.....some have been crispy and tasty - others have been kind of soggy.
Frying has always been a problem for me; it's really harder than I give it credit for.
Foie de Porc Sausage
over port braised kale and quatre spice roast potatoes
This was how I decided to use the shitty liver sausage - it tasted livery and rich. But not a pleasant texture.
Foie de Porc sandwich
with beer mustard and sauerkraut
Finished the liver sausage here - that's the best I can say about this.
Braised Chicken and Pinto Bean Tacos
Watermelon Radish Slaw, Corn and Roasted Sweet Potato salad
I'm starting to wonder why I cook when crap like this comes out of the kitchen....it just didn't look or taste that good; but fine I guess.
Roasted the sweet potato with cinnamon, chili powder and mexican oregano - that's pretty typical for me - so that's boring.
Carrot Cake Muffin
Saw a recipe that called for orange zest - I didn't taste the orange before adding it to the muffin batter. Turned out it was kind of bitter, and overwhelmed the taste of everything else.
Marjoram and Fennel spiced Meatballs -
Oat and Spelt Risotto, roasted carrot and beets, arugula Pesto
Considering I've tried to make all sorts of things nobody in their right mind makes at home, it's kind of surprising I've never made meatballs, and only recently started making pasta; but here's where we are.
These meatballs were fine - maybe a little loose textured; I was afraid they would fall apart, but they stayed together. Overall this was pretty good.
Hot Link w/ cheddar
beet and lima bean slaw, Rutabega chips
Had these on a roll - the best thing about this dinner was the roll....maybe the rutabega chips; but even those started to taste too salty to me.
Rutabega latkes,
Bulgar pilaf with thuringer and lima beans.
Sauce Dijonaisse.
More latkes - more sausage.
Yeah - beschemel with mustard really is called dijonaisse. It's not mayostard though.
Brownies
Quickly through these together out of the ad hoc cookbook. They were fine - we need better chocolate chips and cocoa powder in the house though.
Baked Sweet Potato/Beet and Sauerkraut open faced sandwich
Onion Jam, Sausage Bread
Lunch could be worse.
- Whole Wheat soda bread -
I know there's a whole debate about additions to soda bread; I added raisins, really just because I've been trying to get rid of them. It tasted pretty good.
- Corned beef -
over mashed rutabega, peas and creamy onion gravy
In keeping with the St. Patrick's Day theme. The corned beer was okay - I almost could have used it to taste more cured. The rutabega was cooking in the poaching liquid with the meat, and tasted a little too spicy so the overall dish was one note - pepper.
- Onion and Caraway whole wheat bread -
Well I didn't prepare very well for this weekend, because I was out of rye flour. A lot of bad rye breads only taste like caraway anyway - so I figured if I got those onion and caraway flavors in there I'd be okay for the pastrami sandwich.
Pastrami sandwich (mustard, onion jam on caraway bread)
beet latke and buttermilk dressing
Pastrami is really just smoked corned beef with a crust; so figured I'd take half of my pickled brisket and make pastrami. It turned out okay, I had a problem getting the pepper/coriander curst to stick but some did and it was sufficiently smokey. When I steamed it for our sandwiches it never really got tender. It sat just under 180 in the steam for a while so maybe it never really started to break down the connective tissue (you really need to get over 180) - so I just tried to cut it really thin.
These kind of sucked, I almost burnt the second side; I held them a little too long in the oven while assembling our sandwiches.
Parpardalle with pork ragu
Sweet Potato Doughnuts
This was a case where I didn't read a recipe too closely until I started cooking; a huge mistake when cooking by a recipe.
Was expecting a quick bread/muffin type batter - and the recipe called for a creaming butter like a cake. The batter was really wet so rolling them out was a problem and it took longer than I thought.
My frying problems are well documented.....the oil got hotter then I wanted and the edges started to taste a little burned.
Gingerbread steamed pudding
These cakes were okay - but too much ginger/spice....common theme here - it's all leading up to me over seasoning everything.
Soy/Lime Udon Noodles
with roast sweet potato, black beans, crispy pork jowl
This is where my over seasoning issue began. I had high hopes and the first two or three bites tasted good, but then it just built and built..
The jowl tasted good.
Hot link on Saison Bun
Baked Beans, Corn Salad
Veg wrap (grilled onion, lettuce, red onion) with fried chickpeas crumbs,
Saison Yeast Flatbread buttermilk dill dressing, lima bean salad
These started as falafel, but the falafel fell apart when I fried them - I used a strainer to recover some of the chickpeas as a crunchy topping, but overall the sandwich was missing a component and pissed me off.
Corn molasses pancakes
Ham, egg and cheese on corn biscuit
Sage Bourbon Onion Confit
Bags of onions were buy one get one free at the supermarket - so I took one and cooked it down into this confit. It didn't taste as good as the one I made two weeks ago. Kind of tasted like wood at the time, but tastes better now.
- Bacon, leek and cheddar Fritatta -
Sauce Dijonaisse
- White Bread Kolsch Yeast -
Don't know why I'm so into white bread lately, maybe because these are the only breads that are coming out the way I expect. Doughs with a high hydration have been a problem for me.
Grilled Ham and Cheese sandwich
Sage Onion Jam, Porkslap mustard
See what I'm talking about - everything is looking the same.....ham, cheddar, bacon, onion jam, mustard.
- NY style Pizza (sourdough) -
Made a sweet cooked tomato sauce and topped with mozzarella.....had a problem transferring this to the stone, the dough was too cold when it went in the oven.
So the bottom line - this pizza was ugly, didn't rise, didn't cook fully and made a mess.
Awesome, what a waste of time.
Sausage stuffed Sopa
Refried pinto beans and slaw
I cooked some onions for the refried beans in some of the cooking water from the beans - and it was way salty. I knew it and still didn't do much to fix it.
The sopa was okay I guess - kind of like fritos on the outside - which makes sense fritos are basically fried masa dough that hasn't been cooked at all. Really it was hard to taste anything after that salt blow out.
Another in a string of real failures - I'm getting kind of discouraged here.
Roast butternut squash, chard, cheese sage pizza (Saison Yeast)
I was so annoyed by the last pizza I made another a few days later. This was much better from a crust stand point. I still had problems with the transfer. But the crust really puffy. The toppings were good, but got a little messy when I transferred it - but it was an improvement.
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