Archive for the ‘Cooking’ Category

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Prime Rib & Potato pizza

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

Today I wanted to make pizza, but at the same time get rid of some of the leftovers we have accumulated from Christmas celebrations. I used both ham, chicken, and prime rib. The most notable pizza was made with the prime rib, hence the picture above. I thinly sliced a thick piece of prime rib and put them on a regular homemade crust with pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese (recipe found elsewhere on the site). On top of that went some roasted red potato wedges. Yum! When it came out of the oven I topped it with some thin slices of asiago cheese.

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Risengrød – Danish warm rice pudding

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

It’s Christmas season, so I’ve got a hankering for traditional danish comfort foods. One of them is warm rice pudding. My mom used to make this on the 23rd of December, so we would have leftovers for traditional Danish Ris-ala-mande. I’ll use these leftovers for rice pudding pancakes tomorrow instead.

It is dead simple to make it. I used a recipe from a book my mother gave me a while back called Ingeborg Suhr – Mad.

  • 1 cup water
  • 180 grams Arborio Rice
  • 5 cups of milk (I used skim)
  • salt to taste

Bring the cup of water to a boil and add the rice while stirring. Turn heat down to low and simmer for 10 minutes with a lid on your pot.  Add the milk and bring to a simmer, and cook for 40-50 minutes with a lid on your pot. Check after 40 minutes to check the consistency and make sure the pudding isn’t burning at the bottom of the pot. My mom would usually cook a huge batch and leave the pot wrapped in a large down comforter for hours. Serve with a teaspon of butter and cinnamon sugar made from 1 tsp cinnamon and 2 tbsp sugar.

This was pretty tasty and even Nicholas scarfed it down. It was not quite as creamy as I remember from my childhood, so I would replace the water and skim milk with whole milk and not bother with the first 10 minute step.

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Cream of Asparagus soup

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

A week or so ago I made a pretty tasty asparagus soup. I’m posting it now because I really liked the recipe, but also because I wanted to recommend the stick blender I have. It’s the Cuisinart Stick Blender and it is very inexpensive. I’m constantly surprised how well it blends despite the low price tag. The following recipe was made with ingredients on hand, so not really fancy or anything.

  • 4 cups chicken stock
  • 2 lbs of asparagus
  • 2 medium sized russet potatoes diced
  • salt / pepper to taste
  • 2 ounces of pancetta
  • 1 smoked bratwurst
  • 2 fluid ounces of cream

Trim the asparagus and cut the heads off and reserve. Chop the asparagus roughly. Bring the chicken stock to a boil and add the chopped asparagus along with the potatoes. Cook for 30 minutes with a lid on until breaking apart. Blend with the stick blender. Add rendered pancetta and tops of asparagus back to the pot and bring everything to a low simmer. S

Did I remember to say how much I love the stick blender? This soup was very smooth.

If I had other ingredients on hand I would have cooked some shallots and garlic until translucent in a little olive oil, then added the asparagus, potatoes, and stock. I would also leave out the bratwurst and pancetta as the taste of the pancetta was quite strong. Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

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Gyoza with bean sprouts

Friday, December 11th, 2009

The idea to use bean sprouts came from my last trip to Wagamama, in South Colonnade London, where the the gyozas tasted quite a bit like bean sprouts and had the fresh bean sprout crunch. The fresh crunch of the sprouts did not come through in these dumplings though, but may have been because I chopped them too finely.  If you don’t like bean sprouts you can use pretty much any vegetable that you have on hand that is fresh.

I usually just buy pre-made wrappers at the grocery store as they are quite a bit of work to make. The filling is quite easy to make though.

  • 1 lb ground pork
  • 2 finely chopped shallots
  • 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic
  • 6 chopped scallions
  • 1 large handful of chopped bean sprouts
  • 1 large piece of ginger grated
  • A few squirts of Shaoxing rice wine
  • A few squirts of Chinkiang black vinegar
  • 1 tbsp of Sesame oil
  • Kosher Salt + Pepper

Mix everything together until you have a good bind. Place a spoonful of the filling on each of the dumpling wrappers and seal them shut. Once you have assembled enough for a full pan put a little oil in your pan and heat it up. Once the oil is hot put the dumplings in and let them fry for 2-3 minutes to get a good caramelization on the bottom. Then pour in enough water to cover the dumplings about half an inch up. Put a lid on the pan and let the dumplings steam for 5 minutes under the lid. Remove cover and let the water eveporate. Serve piping hot.

For the most authentic taste you need an authentic style dipping sauce like the one you can get at Din Tai Fung in Beijing – one of their many locations in Asia. The following

  • 2 parts Chinkiang black vinegar
  • 1 part Soy sauce
  • Chili/garlic sauce to taste
  • Thinly julliened ginger

Mix up and use as dipping sauce for your fresh-made dumplings.

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Frittata

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Yesterday I got up early, still jet-lagged from my trip to China, and decided to go to the grocery store at 6am to stock up the fridge a bit. I decided that I was going to make a frittata so I picked up some shredded potatoes, some tomatoes, cooked turkey, and some eggs.

When I got home I put together the following ingredients in a 12 inch oven-safe skillet:

  • 1 lb shredded potatoes
  • 3 diced roma tomatoes
  • 6 oz diced cooked turkey
  • 2 medium shallots sliced thinly
  • 1 cup of thinly shredded mozarella cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste

Layer all the ingredients evenly and pour over 10 eggs that you mixed together. Cook at 350F in the skillet for 35 minutes or until the eggs are just set.

If you didn’t have a (now) picky 4 year old, you could add some diced green/red pepper to the mix along with some scallions.

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Sour Cream & Onion dip

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

This weekend I remembered a recipe that an old friend of mine used to make a lot. It is a basic sour cream and onion dip and it’s mighty tasty!

  • 2 cups sour cream
  • 1 medium onion
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • salt to taste

Peel the onion and then grate it on a microplane grater. Mix in the sour cream, paprika, and lemon juice. Adjust the seasoning with salt and refrigerate for a few hours before use. Great dip for chips!

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Taylor Waterproof Digital Thermometer 9847FDA

Friday, August 14th, 2009

I took a trip to the local restaurant supply store, Hockenbergs this week and I picked up a digital thermometer. It’s has a very slim tip to be able to take the temperature of meat while it is cooking. I expect that it will help me not getting chicken and pork to dry completely out while cooking.
The reviews aren’t great on amazon, but the complaints mostly seem to be centered around the thermometer not being completely waterproof. I used it two days ago when I was making the custard for a batch of Guinness Milk-Chocolate ice cream from Perfect Scoop.

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Honey-Mustard Potato Salad

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

I made this a few weeks back, it turned out quite tasty. I had been reading a few blogs and it sounded like it was easy to make a tasty warm potato salad without having to use a mayo-based dressing. I cooked up 1 1/2 lb small red potatoes with the skin on like normal and made sure not to overcook them. While the potatoes were cooking I whisked together this quick dressing for the potatoes to suck up.

  • 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp mustard
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • salt + pepper to taste

I dumped the potatoes into the dressing and flipped them a few times, then foiled the bowl and let them sit while I grilled up some pork chops to go with the potato salad. The pork chops were marinated in garlic, salt, pepper, and oregano for an hour before going on a very hot charcoal grill. Overall the meal turned out pretty good!

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Pickled Jalapenos

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

When I read the Ruhlman post about Michael Symon’s Pickled chilis back in March I knew I had to try and make them. Not until this week did I actually get as far as buying a pound of fresh Jalapenos at the grocery store, and I couldn’t remember enough of the recipe so I assumed I had everything I needed. Not so. I had to make at least a few substitutions such as rice vinegar instead of sherry vinegar. It’s easy enough to click the link to get the original recipe, so I’ll only put down what I actually used here.

  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup rice vinegar
  • dash of french thyme
  • 1 tsp aleppo pepper
  • 1/2 tsp oregano
  • 2 tbsp white pepper
  • 1 1/3 tbsp salt
  • 1 1/3 tbsp cane sugar
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 2 tbsp of  coriander
  • 2 bay leaves
  • ~ 1 lb of fresh jalapenos

The peppers fit snug into a quart mason jar with just cutting the tops off. The remaining ingredients were put in a sauce pan and simmered on the stove for 10 minutes. Let cool just a little bit and poured over the peppers. They go in the fridge as soon as the jar is cool enough. I’ll see if I can keep my hands off of them for a week or so before sampling the first time. Hopefully my substitutions wont have made it horrible.

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Fresh Basil Pesto and Pasta Salad

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

It was pretty good weather out yesterday so Nicholas and I were heading to the farmers market in St. Paul to get some chocolate milk from Crystal Ball Farm Diary out of Osceola, WI. I noticed that quite a few vendors had some good looking fresh sweet basil, so I decided that we should do some fresh basil pesto and use it to make a pasta salad for a Mead Day event later that day. After buying some pine nuts at the grocery store on the way home we made a pesto from the following ingredients:

  • 2 heaping cups of fresh sweet basil
  • heaping pile of grated romano/parmesan (using micro-plane grater medium ribbon)
  • 2 chopped cloves of garlic
  • 1/3 cup fresh toasted pine nuts
  • salt + pepper to taste
  • 1/4 cup olive oil

First the pine nuts went into the food processor with the garlic. After pulsing a few times I added all of the basil along with the cheese. After pulsing for a minute or two I slowly added the olive oil until the consistency was just right, pretty well blended and very small pieces. Then I seasoned with salt and pepper to taste. With the amount of cheese the pesto turned out on the salty side, so I would be a little more cautious with the salt next time.

For the pasta salad I cooked a pound of whole wheat penne. I pulled them off while they were still “al dente”.  I cooled it immediately under running cold water and let it drain in a strainer for 10 minutes. While it was draining I diced 4 oz of pepperoni from Cossettas and added it to the bowl where I was going to make the salad in. I added the drained pasta and about 2/3rds of pesto from the recipe above, which was about right for the amount of pasta.

Today I used some of the remaining pesto in a few chicken and lettuce sandwiches which also turned out pretty good!

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