cooking – The Writing Life of a Tadpole

Not everything we cook is awesome (cooking attempt #2017-04)

January 21 2017

This past week, I had a feed from a site that advertises recipe collections where you can assemble all the ingredients for, say, 10 meals at once, and gives you a consolidated ingredient list plus the ten separate recipes. There are a few of these sites around, all geared towards the “busy mom” who can stock pile meals in the freezer and take them out when needed. My wife has had a freezer party or two with her Epicure business, and I think the idea is really solid. In some ways, it is simply assembly line principles applied to dinner prep so that if you’re chopping up meats or veggies, or getting out spices, you do it once instead of 10 separate times with each meal.

For the Epicure meals, it’s more tailored to the individual preparer, so you know what you’re getting. For the sites, usually of the 10 recipes, there are only a few I even like the sounds of, let alone trying them out with a full preparation. I took the list though, or several lists from the site, and narrowed it down to a few crockpot recipes that sounded both interesting and simple. I confess that I’m looking for some that could be added to the rotation once or twice a month and are worth the effort.

The first one we tried this week was called “Crockpot Honey Mustard Pork Chops and Potatoes”. I said it was simple, and it was — pork chops, onion soup mix, mustard, honey, black pepper, butter and potatoes. Simple to assemble and even simpler for me to say since I did the grocery shopping but Andrea did the assembly in the crockpot in the morning.

The recipe turned out okay, nothing wrong with it, and it looked pretty good.

But it was incredibly bland. And honestly, it was a bit weird with all the butter. It adds a half a stick of butter. That is a LOT of butter. And left a near-oil slick on top of the “broth”. The pork chops were edible, certainly, but the recipe is not worth sharing and not worth repeating. It isn’t even worth starting with as a base to play with other ingredients or adjust elements to make it more interesting.

There are just too many other good recipes out there to waste time on this one again. Guess our cooking attempts can’t all be home runs.

Cooking attempt #2017-03 – English Muffin Pizza

January 7 2017

I was definitely of two minds for deciding whether to post this recipe at all and to blog about it (English Muffin Pizza (REC0007)). On the one hand, sure, it’s a light recipe, I like having it in the collection, it’s kind of fun, etc. On the other hand, it isn’t a “new” recipe, we’ve made it several times, and as far as recipes go, it’s not much more detailed than how to make a sandwich.

But the more I thought about it, and ignoring my OCD urge to put all the recipes I ever think are good on the site and to blog about making them, I realized I could adapt / expand the recipe to show other variations. So I created three “parts” to the assembly process.

First and foremost, there is your base — what type of English muffin are you going to choose? I can’t imagine ever going with cinnamon raisin, but hey, whatever floats your boat on your sea of taste buds.

Second, there is the foundation layer — the cheese and sauce. I like to put the cheese on last, but most pizza places put it on top of the sauce. And there are variations for doing tomato paste, pizza sauce, simple tomato sauce, or even salsa — again, it depends on your own personal palate.

Finally, there are the toppings. The original recipe came from a ground beef cookbook, but it isn’t really limited to that of course. We often do Hawaiian, but I added an option for heavy on the meat (close to original), a veggie option (although if you went with a lot of toppings, might be too much) and something approximating the Super Supreme at Pizza Hut (this one has a LOT of toppings).

Separate from the fact that it is a different texture than real pizza, it is also fun and highly personalized. Jacob can choose whichever toppings he wants:

And help assemble all of them:

We did this for his sixth birthday party with a bunch of kids, and it worked well:

Part of the reason it works so well is the sizes and portions are totally scalable (just make an extra one or two if they want more) and totally controllable for size of mess / space needed to prepare compared with doing full pizzas. And they all liked the personalization factor.

They go in easy:

They come out easy:

I’d show you a pic on my plate too, but apparently they get eaten pretty easily too. You can assemble and then freeze too for up to 3 months if you want to create a larger batch at a time, but the cook-from-frozen basically doubles the cooking time to the same as a regular frozen pizza.

Cooking attempt #2017-02 – Cowboy Beef Dip

January 6 2017

I’ve been looking for a light chili recipe that wasn’t too heavy on beans, or a stew that wasn’t completely tomato-based or heavy, or a dip that was tasty without being overwhelming. Hence trying this Cowboy Beef Dip (REC0006).

We adapted it from a recipe in a ground beef recipe book, which might sound a bit silly in and of itself — who needs recipes for using ground beef? The thing is that Andrea has these great Epicure silicone steamers that you can cook the ground beef in pretty fast and drain easily, without having to use a skillet (which I kind of hate). I do better with a dutch oven, with the high sides, but in a skillet, I frequently spill stuff over the sides trying to flip or stir. However, since this recipe had other ingredients to merge with the beef, we did it all in the skillet for this round anyway.

The base ingredients were easy — onions, peppers, ground beef of course, salsa and some spices. It also called for olives, chilies and jalapeno peppers, but we ditched those as I wanted to keep it light (I’ve listed them as a variation in the recipe for those who want some kick).

The only real wrinkle in the recipe is that it called for a 10 oz can of condensed nacho cheese soup. I don’t even know where you would find that in Canada. As it turns out, Andrea had an Epicure nacho cheese dip mix / powder, so we used some of that and she mixed it with a cup of sour cream (which was originally just for a topping).

This made the sauce much creamier of course and it was AWESOME. When we had the sweet curry chicken, it took a bit to grow on me, maybe 8 or 9 bites. This one was tasty from the word go.

And the prep and cooking were relatively easy, no big challenges. It went so fast, and we were sitting down eating it, I forgot to even take any pictures. But definitely another “keeper”. Pretty simple, and quite tasty. I was doubtful Jacob would like it that much, but I should have known with the tortilla chips, he would be all over it.

I thought initially about pouring it over the tortilla chips like nachos, but it was great as a dip. It would be easy to increase the quantities as it is enough for three people (or 2.5 if one is a little guy!), but not much left over.

Cooking attempt #2017-01 – Sweet Chicken Curry

January 5 2017

As part of my goals for the year, I made a list of a bunch of different recipes that I want to try out. From that list, I prioritized a few (a precursor to my Level 1 settings in my goals), and Jacob made the first selection to try — a Sweet Chicken Curry in the Crock Pot / slow cooker (Sweet Chicken Curry (in a slow cooker) (REC0005)) from a diet cookbook. We gave it a go on New Years Day.

It is a relatively easy recipe. Only four ingredients to prep (chicken, a bell pepper, an onion and a tomato), throw them all into a crockpot. Combine four more in a bowl and pour on top. The big ingredient (besides chicken and curry) is in this step — mango chutney!

I confess I couldn’t even find it in the grocery store. I looked in with the pickles and things (condiments generally), nope. Tried breakfast spreads, nope. Somewhere near baking aisle I found some other fruity things, nope. Finally asked. Of course, I’m adding it to a curry recipe like a glaze, so it was where it should be — with the Asian groceries.

Anyway, all combined, it looks like this:

We cooked it 4.5 hours (it suggested 3.5 to 4.5), and then it looked like this:

I figured the result would be at least edible — how far wrong can you go with 8 ingredients, including three veggies and some chicken? But it was the “sweet” mango chutney that made this amazing. I immediately started wondering what else I could put it on…maybe some pork like a glaze for baking. It really is awesome. And listed at just over 300 calories per serving.

Thumbs up from me, Jacob and Andrea…can’t ask for more than that in trying out new recipes.

Scarpetta’s Winter Table by Patricia Cornwell (PWBR00087)

December 30 2016

Plot or Premise

A cookbook disguised as a novel.

What I Liked

Nothing.

What I Didn’t Like

It was ADVERTISED as a combination of a cookbook with stories about Dr. Kay Scarpetta, and in that light, it fails on all counts. There IS no story, and nothing happening in the non-story — and worse still, none of the characters act like they do in the novels. The recipes are interesting, but basically this book was issued for one reason and one reason only — to milk some money out of the fans and to give them almost nothing in return.

The Bottom Line

Worthless.

My Rating

🐸⚪️⚪️⚪️⚪️ – 1/5 Finished (October 10, 1999)

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