It seemed like a pretty relaxed weekend for cooking, even though I made sausage.
That usually becomes a big production, but it seemed to go pretty well. It's all about working in steps; I try to find time before work or after dinner to season or grind/emulsify the meat mixture; not having to do everything all at once is the key to making it not seem like so much work.
Overall, the whole thing ran pretty efficiently; dinners weren't outstanding but okay. How's that for a compelling read....6 out of 10....boring.
Fried Eggs and Grilled Bok Choy
w/ white wine braised onions and soy vinegrette
Positive - If you read last week, you know my obsession with grilling bitter greens - this week we got bok choy from the CSA. Gretchen doesn't like many greens, I think I can get away with spinach, kale, chard, but not mustard, bok choy or arugula. Usually this means I'm eating these in salads or for breakfast; I guess it just means more for me.
Negative - I can't think of how this was that bad. When I just throw some stuff together my expectations are kind of low so I guess I really don't tear it apart.
Creamy Potato Soup
w/ sauteed mustard greens
Positive - Was looking to put something quick for lunch - so I just tried to put something quick.
Negative - I was also trying to use up a bottle of white wine - and ended up using way too much..this is all I could taste when we ate it. Really distracting.
Pie Crust
Positive - The final crust was flaky so it was ok I guess.
Negative - I really followed the Cook's Illustrated recipe very strictly instead of my normal procedure and it was really wet; the lard really balled up; there were very few streaks of butter.
I thought it was going to be terrible so I cooked one of the crusts right then, since I need one this weekend and wasn't feeling confident.
This was the first time I used the Farmer Ground AP flour; it's somewhere between whole wheat and AP; not sure I like it for this application. I like flexibility for pie crusts; if I knew I was using it for something that whole wheat might work for, it would be ok.
I think I under-seasoned the crust - final product was a little wooden. Will add some salt when I roll the next one out.
Pig in a Blanket
Roasted Sunchoke Puree, Sherry Glazed Brussel Sprouts
Thyme/White Wine mustard
Positive - It was 60 degrees out on Saturday, so Gretchen and I went out in the afternoon and when we got back I just wanted to make something quick.
When I make hot dogs, I usually give them to friends, but haven't had the chance to share them, so we've been eating a lot of them and I look for different ways to use them- pigs in a blanket, corn dogs, Jersey style bacon wrapped deep fried dogs (rippers), I've tried all of those.
Since I have a bunch of puff pastry that made the move from our last apartment, I went with pigs in a blanket since they're really easy. I just wrapped some of the puff around a couple of the beef hot dogs put them in the oven while the sunchokes roasted.
Roasted some sunchokes they had at the greenmarket - normally I won't buy from Rogowski farm, their stuff is all really weak looking and costs too much (thanks organic certification). They are the only vendor at the two farmer's markets I go to that ever have sunchokes, but they're expensive. I pureed them with some cream and butter to maybe stretch them a little bit. They tasted pretty good, but were better just roasted- they had a really good crust on them.
Negative - I've been under cooking brussel sprouts this year; at least for Gretchen's tastes. They're browned, but have a little crunch (which I like).
I made this mustard earlier this week, and it's still pretty harsh; hopefully it mellows out; I'd like to use it next week - it's a game time decision.
Apple Tart
Positive - This didn't take much time and was a decent use of the apples we had on hand as well as a test for the pie dough.
Final product was pretty decent for not really planning on doing it, and working on it as I was cooking dinner.
Negative - I used thyme and bourbon in the filling when I cooked it. I didn't really taste either.
I didn't add sugar to the crust, since I'm using it for a savory application next week, it might not have been sweet enough, but really I think the problem was a lack of salt in the crust.
I've never made a pie filling, so I was just kind of winging it - I didn't realize I hadn't added a thickener to the fruit until the very end, so I threw some corn starch in there at the very end. The filling was tasting good at that point, but I had to cook it for just a bit longer and the some of the apples fell apart a little bit too much.
Smoked Kielbasa
Positive - I started being unsure if I wanted to follow a recipe here, so I kind of tweaked the previous recipe I used for kielbasa and added some of the technique from the jagdwurst that's in Charcuterie (Ruhlman/Polcyn book). I'm planning on serving this room temperature and for the most part I liked the texture of the jagdwurst at room temp, so I thought that it would work.
The one change is that I added more fat; I just thought it needed a little more. So basically, I used a kielbasa spicing from the sausage class I took with Matthew Weingarten in the jagdwurst recipe from Charcuterie; all this really meant was the addition of some milk powder to bind the sausage a little more.
The final product looks really good, and the texture is where I want it to be. I made sure to let the stuffed sausages dry out a lot before and after smoking. I also made sure to chill down the sausage right out of the smoker in a water bath; this seems to help a lot for the texture and casing.
Everything went really smoothly in terms of grinding and stuffing; I actually think I'm fairly comfortable with this process; it only took a year. Now I have to understand smoking better.
Negative - Really the only negative thing here is that I constantly forget the lessons I learn when I'm smoking anything. In my oven, with my bullshit hotel pan rig, I have to start the wood chips on the stove and then move it to the oven (set to about 225). I have to put the pan DIRECTLY on the floor of the oven so when the flame kicks it gets the smoke going again - I keep putting the damn smoker on the baking stone on the floor of the oven and it just works as an insulator. I realized this last time; and for some reason I did it exactly the same way.
So bottom line - sausage probably doesn't taste as smoky as it could be; although it did smell smoked.
Smoked Rye Breadcrumbs, Smoked Tomato
Positive - The smoked tomato has a really strong smoked flavor
Negative - I'm not sure that the breadcrumbs have as much of a smoked flavor as last time - really disappointing.
Scallion/Spinach Pancake
Sauteed Bok Choy, Baked Sweet Potato, Smoked Tomato
Positive - Again we were out on Sunday, so this was quick. I adjusted the batter recipe from the last time I made this and it was more crepe like; it probably should be somewhere in between.
Again - dinner was fine; nothing great but no incredible failure here; pretty average cooking.
Negative - I didn't prep enough scallions; so I added some spinach. I wish it was all scallions. I could have browned the first side more.
I didn't heat up the tomato, so it made my sweet potato kind of cold. The bok choy was decent, but not as good as grilled.
Overall - I need to work on seasoning, I'm falling into an under-seasoning rut again.
CSA
Arugula
Baby Bok Choy
Spinach
Keuka Gold Potatoes
Red Boston Lettuce
Cabbage
Broccoli
Apples
No comments:
Post a Comment