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WanderingMinstrel I posted:Well its not like you're not going to have to buy more milk etc anyways, and all the dry ingredients are still there. Any cheese you got is prob fine. The loss of the chili is sad, but I'm sure you can salvage this, albeit with maybe some cheaper protiens and modified recipes. Yeah, you're right. I figure the heartier vegetables are still fine as well so I'll give it a go again and just figure out a new menu. I know for sure I can make pancakes and gnocchi with what I have so I'll start there tomorrow.
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Aug 5, 2014 08:05
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 04:36 |
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Alright time to post what I made today. Swedish pancakes. Boy these were way harder to make than I thought they would be. I must have scrapped 5 pancakes that I screwed up by not letting cook enough on one side before trying to flip it or not having enough oil in the pan or any other number of reasons. Served with a pad of butter and some real maple syrup. Not that much of a difference when it comes to flavor compared to a regular pancake but the texture is lighter and thinner. Interesting but not worth the hassle. Tasted great but way too much work for what should be an easy breakfast food but I probably just suck because I cant remember if I have ever made pancakes in my life before. I'm more of an eggs and potatoes breakfast person and tend not to order/make sweet breakfast foods. And the Gnocchi.  I ended up using the techniques from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDRhJDbVv4 and the recipe from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/gnocchi-i/. I just baked the 2 russets in the oven when I made my pancakes in the afternoon and took them out later when they were cool to scoop and mash and add the egg and flour. I didn't get the mash as smooth as it should have been and it made it slightly harder to roll after kneading and cutting. I was afraid it would adversely effect the texture of the end prodcut as there was bits of small potato in the dough instead of being homogenous but after boiling them the texture was perfect. I then sauteed them for a little color and texture and poured in my tomato sauce and melted a little mozzarella and topped with some of the cheap Parmesan. Unfortunately I didn't have any of the good stuff on hand. This tasted good and was easy to make as far as pasta goes considering I never had to put it through a pasta machine or do any complicated shapes or fillings. Great way to use leftover potatoes too. Loanarn fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 11:06
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I'm glad to see you're not giving up. Dealing with setbacks is a big part of cooking, and the pancakes look really good. On the subject of what's ok, all the veggies are fine (ffs they're veggies), not just the hearty ones, the cheese is fine, hell, the butter is probably fine. Just don't eat the meats.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:54
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WanderingMinstrel I posted:Just don't eat the meats. Have you never heard of "high meat"?
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Aug 7, 2014 08:20
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Alrighty. So today I was going to make two recipes. The theme was going to be bar food and I decided on wings and a hamburger with fries. Instead of shopping on my lunch break for my missing ingredients for today's food I ended up shopping after work and didn't get home until 10pm as I ran other errands as well. After some procrastinating I ended up making my own hot sauce using a franks red hot knock off recipe from this very ugly website http://www.budget101.com/copycat-clone-recipes/make-your-own-franks-red-hot-sauce-3871.html. I went to three stores and none had any fresh cayenne peppers. I ended up buying what Fred Meyer's calls "Long Red Chilis" which looked like a wider but not longer cayenne pepper. I tasted the flesh of the pepper and it tasted like your typical sweet red pepper. I then tasted the seeds and boy did they have some kick. I ended up just removing the stems and cooking them whole with 3 whole cloves of garlic in the vinegar. Blended it as smooth as I could get it with the immersion mixer and then ghetto strained out the thicker parts and the seeds with a splatter guard from the dollar tree. The hot sauce ended up tasting great without any adjustments. Somewhat similar to franks but with a deeper flavor profile while slightly sweeter and thicker.  Next up I have to make my blue cheese dressing. I ended up using this recipe http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/blue-cheese-dressing-recipe.html but of course it calls for mayo. So first I ended up whipping up a batch of mayo by hand. Boy I had forgotten how much of a workout for your forearm that is. Followed this recipe for mayo http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/mayonnaise-recipe.html and ended up with a soupy mess. Went too fast with the oil at first. Not to worry just beat another egg yolk up in another bowl and added the soupy mess in very slowly. Found it to be a little too thick so I ended up mixing in a little whole milk to thin it to the proper consistency. The I just combined the ingredients in the blue cheese dressing and there you go.  I then just chopped up some celery and fried up the wings in a sauce pot on my induction burner and tossed with the sauce. The induction burner had a setting for the temperature and I set it to 390 after testing that it was slightly under that with my thermometer.  I ended up devouring these at 2:30 AM and I barely had the patience to take a few pictures of this before I ate it. You can see the steam coming off the wings in the picture if you look close. The wings were perfectly crispy on the outside and moist and tender on the inside. Too bad faffed around so long today it was the only thing I ate but drat if they weren't some of the best wings I've had.
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Aug 7, 2014 11:13
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So today I made the burger I resolved to yesterday. I already had the mayo so I just mixed in a little ground chipotle to give it some kick. I'm using Heinz because I don't think there is a ketchup in this world let alone one I could make that can taste better to me than Heinz 57. So all that is left is the burger and the bun. So the bun I ended up modifying the recipe here: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/40-minute-hamburger-buns based on the suggestions in the reviews to make fewer buns and use a Tablespoon of sugar instead 1/4 cup and let them rest for 20 minutes instead of 10. Super easy and quick to make and turned out very nice. They are almost a cross between a burger bun and a dinner roll. I guess there really isn't much difference. Next time I might score them and top with sesame seeds to make them feel more like burger buns. I ended up making them all different sizes just in case they ended up being too small or large for the intended burger.  So as far as the burger went I chose a 20% fat grind from new seasons as I cant be bothered to grind my own hamburger meat and I think the meat is about twice as good tasting as the butcher shop at my regular grocery store. Too bad its about 3-4x the price. I chose the cooking method found here: http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/10/the-burger-lab-the-fake-shack-how-to-make-shake-shack-burger.html. Which is making a smaller but regular thickness burger and cooking it a hot lightly oiled pan and mash it down as thin as it can get when you put in the pan so it develops a nice sear on as much of the meat as possible. It cooks super fast and isn't dried out without being too undercooked in the middle for ground beef. I am not much of a American cheese buff so I ended up using Tillamook mild cheddar. Cooked up two thin patties, topped it and called it a burger.  Of course you have to have fries with your burger and I like a waffle fry. I'm not sure if the potatoes being fresh instead of frozen contributed to them browning in the center prematurely as I had took cook them longer than I wanted color wise to get a decent crispness from them. I am used to cooking frozen potatoes for fries. I think it was probably because the oil was too hot an da lower setting I could have gotten them to cook longer without browning too quickly. I need some sort of basket I can put in on top of the fried food to prevent it from floating to the top and browning unevenly.  Finally I made lemon bars using the recipe found here: http://www.woodlandbakeryblog.com/lemon-bars/ video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue0Pvby9BT4&feature=youtu.be. Very straight forward and easy to make except for juicing all the lemons. I might think about spending a few dollars and getting a manual glass citrus juicer. These were quite good. I can't remember the last time I had a lemon bars and these were nice and balanced between tart and sweet with a good texture.
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Aug 8, 2014 11:05
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I am having to post this from a crappy laptop from storage because my internet has died and I have to tether to my phone to post from a computer as I didn't want a second day without an update of what is happening. Yesterday I actually had to work during the day so I only had the time between work and leaving for D&D to make food for myself so I ended up eating leftovers and making the pizza dough for today so I could rise in the fridge overnight. I used the crust recipe from http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/10/new-york-style-pizza.html and the sauce recipe from http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/10/new-york-style-pizza-sauce.html . The sauce was much more appropriate for a pizza compared to my last one.  I ended up using dry whole milk mozzarella and a higher quality pepperoni and olive than the first pizza. The crust ended up tasting great but following their instructions they seemed to have the crust at the edge much higher than the rest. They say to have the edges a full inch higher than the center and then stretch it out using your knuckles which worked for getting the center the perfect thinness but the edges were way out of proportion. The crust was not soggy and had the right structure and was the perfect level of chewiness. I have two more pizza dough balls in the fridge and next time I will not make the edges so high and I would roll it out with a pin to get a nice even and thin crust. The pizza was good but not great but I think I could get there in the next pizza or two. By far the best pizza I have made from scratch. I finally feel good about making pizza at home instead of frustrated after hours of work. I tried to get shots of the bottom of the pizza but the focus was razor thin and only a narrow band of the pictures were in focus. Next time I will try to get father away after propping it up.  I can't wait to cook my next pizza. Tomorrow I am heading over to a friends house for the whole day and eating his home made gumbo so I may or may not post tomorrow depending if I end up making something to eat late at night. Although since this is the third post in a row from myself with updates it makes me think interest in the thread is waning as it nears the end date. Anyone have any tips of frying french fries for a more uniform and lighter color cook?
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Aug 10, 2014 08:26
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When you stretch out pizza dough, you don't have to make any extra effort to keep the edges thicker, it kind of happens naturally. Also you don't really want the edges to be too big or too thick. Put the sauce and cheese all the way to the edge without going over, and a crust will form naturally when the pizza cooks.
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Aug 10, 2014 08:40
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Wroughtirony posted:When you stretch out pizza dough, you don't have to make any extra effort to keep the edges thicker, it kind of happens naturally. Also you don't really want the edges to be too big or too thick. Put the sauce and cheese all the way to the edge without going over, and a crust will form naturally when the pizza cooks. I tried to follow this advice as best as I could and I got a much better result. I still didn't end up getting the pizza as thin as I wanted it. I could have tossed it a bit more. I have one more dough left and I think the third will be the best for sure. Here are the results:  As I got thinner I find I need to use less toppings. Next time I will try to cut back a bit more.  The pizza I had for lunch and for dinner I went to my parents for family night at my mothers cooking so I did not prepare a second meal today. Tomorrow I will go back to two meals again.
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Aug 12, 2014 11:49
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So I still had another package of wings and they were a few days past their sell by date so I figured I should cook them sooner rather than later. I had to thin out the sauce I made with vinegar and then added a bit of hot sauce I had laying around as I didn't have enough sauce for all the wings. Got an even better cook on these. Still had enough blue cheese for the wings although I should have thinned it out a bit. I had the wings for lunch and ended up not being hungry until much later so I decided to make something sweet instead of a regular dinner. I decided on making some vanilla ice cream and it turned out very nice. It has been such a long time since I have had home made ice cream and it really does taste quite different. The vanilla extract from penzy's was very powerful and it had a great vanilla flavor and a more sugary sweetness than store bought ice cream.  It ended up making a very nice root beer float.  The turkey breast I bought should be defrosted now and I'll be cooking that up tomorrow.
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Aug 13, 2014 11:21
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Alright so I bought a boneless turkey breast roast and cooked it. I tried to first judge it by the timing on the package and then use my thermometer to get a better reading so it wouldn't dry out. Nearing the end of the recommended cooking time I plunged it in and it was still only at 109 degrees. I thought I was getting the sensor deep enough so I double checked and made an ice bath for the thermometer and it read the proper temperature. I left it to cook another 30 mins and took another reading this time getting 140 and then kept plunging it deeper until the thermometer was in at least 4 inches and I finally got a correct reading and it was over 165 already so I pulled it out immediately. It ended up being over cooked but not terribly. Next time I will know to go much deeper with the thermometer.  I let it rest for 20 minutes and made gravy from the drippings, then carved the turkey and finished my mash and sauteed the asparagus. I ended up adding a little too much cream and ended up making the color of the gravy lighter than I like. Of course even turkey that is a little too dry is still good with a nice gravy smothered all over it. The mash and veg and gravy were spot on. I now have so many leftovers from various dishes that after I make some tofu curry tomorrow I will no longer update this thread as I will just be consuming leftovers.
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Aug 14, 2014 10:37
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Buy yourself a theramapen. It sounds like there's something wrong with your thermometer. There's no way that a roughly spherical chunk of meat is going to be hotter in the center than towards the edge.
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Aug 14, 2014 14:49
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Wroughtirony posted:Buy yourself a theramapen. It sounds like there's something wrong with your thermometer. There's no way that a roughly spherical chunk of meat is going to be hotter in the center than towards the edge. I thought the same thing. The thing is its a Thermoworks Thermopop thermometer. Its supposed to be just as accurate as a thermapen but take twice as long to get a reading. I made sure to give it time to generate the reading but perhaps you are right.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:34
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 04:36 |
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Loanarn posted:I tried to follow this advice as best as I could and I got a much better result. I still didn't end up getting the pizza as thin as I wanted it. I could have tossed it a bit more. I have one more dough left and I think the third will be the best for sure.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:58
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