9 posts tagged “cooking”
Wow. This was a slight disaster, wasn't it? My dad came into the kitchen today around 11am and just started making breakfast..... and I was supposed to have the kitchen to myself ALL day today. All day. And I couldn't delegate anything specific to anyone because everything took so long for everyone else to do... I didn't have any cheffy guests over today. So the "What can we do to help?" really just got in the way :-(
My bird was 165 and 168 in 3 places when I took him out, but then he rested for about a half hour and when we cut into him, he was still a bit pink. And apparently, when I left for Lorean's family's dinner, they put my bird back in the over - for another hour and a half. WHAT THE HELL? I'm mad. That was MY bird, and no one even called to ask how long I would recommend for him being in there. NOWHERE NEAR AN HOUR AND A HALF! He was done! He was just JUICY AS HELL because he was wrapped in bacon and had 2lbs of herbed butter all over him!!!
I can't believe they did that. It's like an insult. I'm pretty mad. I won't be eating anymore of that turkey. I even voiced my concern for people not liking the slight pink near the bones at dinner and offered to cook it longer then, so it wouldn't dry out after getting COLD and then being shoved back into the oven. My poor, poor neglected Big Bird. :-(
Because my dad took 2 hours in the kitchen to make breakfast...I was severely lacking space, time, and all of my stuff was in far too close to the "finish line" for my liking. I didn't get to make the brie - the ones I made yesterday exploded...little bastards. I barely got my cranberry sauce made, but it was a HUGE hit. I didn't think anyone would eat it, and there's NONE LEFT! I'm going to have to make more in order to have some for sandwiches!!
My individual pumpkin tarts took quite a bit of time, too. THEY were insanely popular - everyone loved them. So that was pleasing.... everyone also loved the apricot-orange glazed sweet potatoes that I baked, and the stuffing that I made. It had turkey sausage (specifically cranberry turkey sausage from Whole Foods - I'm so happy they opened here!!), apples, and pears in it, and was made with sourdough bread that I made homemade croutons with. Yum yum.
I guess it wasn't a total disaster, but it definitely was not smooth and stress free like it should and could have been. I had it all planned out. I made a schedule for when things needed to be done by (sounds anal, but really, it's a smart thing to do when cooking that many dishes in that small of a kitchen with that many people here), and my dad bursting into my business (it's funny to say it that way, but MY DAMN KITCHEN SPACE, BIOOTCH!) really threw me off. :-(
Lorean and I are also a little iffy right now. We've had a rough week, on top of the fact that he's had a rough week outside of just our relationship. He's been blowing me off for a few weeks and that finally came to a peak at the most inopportune time (when he blew me off, again, but only because our friend was dumped just before the holidays - yeah, I feel bad that I finally broke down about it ON THAT day..ugh.. it'd just been happening so often lately that I just couldn't take it anymore), then my sister ruined my prep-time plans yesterday, and therefore made me late/not ready to go somewhere with Lorean and the recently dumped friend. So out of frustration for everything going on here, the stress of cooking and cleaning and doing everything here, and then our issue the prior day, I just blew up at him. For no reason at all; he showed up, told me what time it was, and I blew up at hime. It was wrong and I shouldn't have done it. Even if some girls out there that're friends would justify it by saying he shouldn't have been blowing me off - that doesn't mean I can blow up at him for nothing at all. NOTHING. :-(
SO! Take that mess and add it to the mess of today's dinner, and let me just say: Unless I have a kitchen that is over double the space of my parents' kitchen, or if I have two days ahead of time without work and without people in my way to prep things out ON MY OWN, I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN! ha!!
Oh well. It was fun cooking and planning out my menu until things started going wrong. I missed the feeling of planning things out like that.
This is specifically a public entry because my good ol' buddy Jon doesn't have a Vox anymore, and therefore needs it to be public to read it.
There ya go, Mr. Boss Man. No pictures yet - I'm going to finish my sparkling wine and hit the sack. I have to be up at 4:45.
Oh well. So far, everyone's loved this, just like the last three or four times I've made it. Joy.
Yesterday was a lot of fun for me. I pretty much cooked all day long. I miss doing that; I used to do that every day for a job and it was really the most fun I've ever had at a job before in my life.
I started with the pumpkin pie, which I've already posted in its own entry by sending pictures from the email on my phone, but just as a recap I'll post it again. This wasn't your everyday, run-of-the-mill pumpkin pie.. I put brandy in it. The end result was a much richer, darker flavored pumpkin pie than what I was used to.
I was skeptical of it, but Lorean swore up and down that he loved it and that it was delicious. I choose to believe him. I mean, it's not that the pumpkin pie was bad, it just had a much richer flavor than any other pumpkin pie I'd ever tasted before. It was really good, but after eating so much food for dinner, I couldn't even stomach a full piece of pie.
Next in line was the turkey. I took that sucker out and let all of the purge drain out of him (what they call the liquid/blood mixture), and then finally ended up shoving two full sticks of butter+herbs down under the skin on top of the breast. Oh boy, did that help.
And in order to prevent dry meat - I hate it when people overcook the turkey and the white meat is dry and flakey - I covered it in bacon. I put the bird in for 30 minutes at 500 degrees, and then after 30 minutes I covered the breast meat & bacon in foil, and lowered the heat to 350.
All in all, the bird took about 2.5 hours to cook. He was ten degrees shy of the right temperature when I took him out at 2 hours, so I left him in for another half hour just to be safe.
While big bird was roasting away, we ended up going to WalMart and getting serving dishes. I couldn't put a friggin' foil pan on the table and serve it that way. I just couldn't. At WalMart, I bought a large, square, glass serving dish and also an oval white dish. I'm happy to have serving platters now! Especially with Christmas and New Year's right around the corner.
When we came home, I pretty much got everything else cooking. The sweet potatoes had been soaking in water/bourbon, and I dumped the whole combination into a large pot and brought them to a rolling boil. The greens waited until the last minute - red chard with sauteed pearl onions and whole chunks of garlic.
Last in line was the cranberry sauce. I have to admit, I messed it up a bit and had to add more alcohol to it to get the darn liquid to light on fire (fresh cranberries, chambord, and some brandy to light it on fire).
Setting up took longer than I wanted because we had to get it all on to our table. We used brand new dishes, a new bottle of wine, and everything turned out wonderfully. Really, it was such a hit with the both of us - the only thing he didn't like was the cranberry sauce, which is fine because he just doesn't like cranberries.
Dessert ended up being pretty impressive, too. We had sparkling cider with dessert.
I've been so busy lately at work, I can't update as much as I'd like to. It sucks; we're at the point where our quarterly statements have gone out for peoples' accounts. Also, at the same exact time, they're sending out letters to clients stating that if their mutual fund investment accounts - or their retirement funds, for that matter - are under a certain balance, they're at risk of being closed due to low activity unless they purchase more money into the account. Add those two mailings to the tax deadline/extensions issues, and you've got a busy couple of weeks - it started last week, really, and it's just going to continue through the month of October.
Isn't this a joyous occasion?! LET'S CELEBRATE! Picture time.
Last night's dinner was pretty friggin' fabulous. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it really was. I was happy with the end result in flavors - especially the sesame noodles because I didn't add any flavors aside from the sesame oil, and the natural flavors of the peas, carrots, celery, and bell peppers - and I'm happy with this picture. Judging by other food blogs that I've been stalking (I love food, what can I say?!), I'm not the best at taking foodie pictures. It's disappointing, but I'll work at it.
Also, last night I was really bored and in need of dessert. With low funds in the bank account, and low desire to actually go out to get ice cream or anything like that, and an even lower desire to even EAT ICE CREAM (I look at ice cream as the devil lately, as I do most sweets; now I can't figure out how the hell Lorean actually got me to enjoy fast food, but that needs to stop, too)... boxed cupcakes were the answer!
There's really nothing special about them. They're just my favorite kind of boxed cake - the birthday kind, or whatever it is, with sprinkles and colored spots in it - with the frosting that goes along with it. One problem I encountered: the amount of sprinkles they give you really isn't enough to cover all of the cupcakes! And I made 6 less than the recipe was supposed to have covered!! So I just poured the sprinkles into the frosting container and mixed it all together.. oh well. It was quick to throw together, and satisfied my sweet tooth. Probably no better than if I'd gone to get ice cream. :-(
Tonight's dinner: Most likely going to be Cajun chicken andouille sausage with roasted potatoes, broccolini, and maybe.. MAYBE some sauteed chard or mustard greens. Mmmm, southern food. Holy cow, it makes me hungry just thinking about it.
Yesterday afternoon when I was on my way home, I decided to stop at Sprouts to pick up some ingredients for dinner. I was only going in there to get some lamb, possibly baby summer squash (which they were out of), and MAYBE a seasonal ale.
I passed up the seasonal alcohol - even though the pumpkin spice ale looked and sounded so good - and decided to just meander around the store. I ended up leaving with asparagus, two lamb shoulder chops, and two large, round hunks of filet mignon. These steaks were pretty massive, especially when you think of the serving you'd normally get in a restaurant for $30 (AKA, tiny hunk of meat, huge pile of starch, and pointless portions of overcooked vegetables). Even if you go to a nicer restaurant and order filet, you still pay upwards of $30 for it, and it's such a small steak.
...This is why I refuse to order filet unless I know the restaurant will cook it right and not rip me off.
Anyway, these two steaks were only $12, so I snagged them up and changed my dinner plans. I went home and immediately chopped up the leftovers of my red potatoes - maybe .75lbs or so - and threw them in a pot to start cooking. On the side I put a happy hunk of butter in its own pot, and about 5 large cloves of fresh minced garlic in there. I let it melt on low heat so that the garlic would slowly cook and get the most flavor out of it.
While those two things were doing their own things - potatoes having a little party in the boiling water, butter and garlic being friendly and mingling together - I poured some balsamic vinegar (as a side note, I have the sweetest vinegar right now - I don't know how I lucked out on this stuff, but it's so delicious. The perfect balance of tart and sweet. I'm Italian, what can I say?! I love my vinegar!) over the steaks and massaged it, literally, into the meat on both sides. I sprinkled it with a bit of garlic, freshly cracked black pepper, salt, and just a smidge of sage. Those puppies sat in the fridge for a while, and I moved on to other things.
In a VERY small pan, I put about 1/4 cup vinegar to 1/4 cup red wine. I bought the wine at a local wine store last night, the name of the wine escapes me right now, but it was awesome wine. Spicy, deep, a bit nutty; altogether very rich in flavor. With some whole black pepper kernels, I boiled that down to a thicker sauce. It was REALLY delicious. While that was going on, I shoved the asparagus in a pan and steamed them with salt, pepper, and garlic.
Last thing was the meat. The pan I had prepared has a drizzle of oil in it and I hated that sucker up on high, then seared the outside of the filets for maybe 3 minutes on each side. These things were so thick, that in NO WAY did this overcook the meat at all. It caramelized on the outside, but the inside was still practically raw - it was heated through and bright red. This is the way I like my expensive cuts of meat...basically seared like you would an ahi tuna steak.
If you haven't noticed, everything was pretty simple. I mashed the potatoes with the garlic, butter, and a bit of sour cream to make them creamy but still thick, and served everything together. The asparagus was light and crisp, and tasted SO good with the sauce. The filet was juicy, soft, and almost buttery in texture. The potatoes had chilled a bit, but regardless of temperature the flavor was RIGHT on. I craved garlic, and that's what I delivered..to..myself. Yes, I'm lame.
My boyfriend liked the meal a lot - I wish he'd given me a better (more vocal?) response since it's not every night we have filet mignon, I mean come on! But I liked it, and that was enough for me.
Now I'm sitting here at work and I smell like chorizo and slightly burnt tortilla. This is because I wanted breakfast this morning, and pulled some chorizo out and just made it for myself. I prefer my tortillas to have a slighty burnt flavor, actually - I like to put them straight onto my burner and flip them over a few times until they get little black spots on them.
This smell pretty much sunk in through my skin and clothes.... le sigh. Oh well. It was a delicious little breakfast, and now I have some AWESOME Gevalia coffee that a coworker brings in daily and doesn't mind sharing with me. :-) what a good way to start the day!
Yesterday I decided to make my birthday cake. I'd been planning to do so, and I should have started early yesterday morning. Instead, I started in the afternoon - I had to go buy different sized cake pans, otherwise I would've had a mess in my oven. I did the crumb coat last night and ended up frosting it this morning. With little time to spare, and the fact that I didn't want any pretty frosting swirlies to smoosh in my cake carrying thingie. So last minute, after frosting it this morning bright and early at 5:30, I toasted some coconut and smoved it on there.
Anyway. It's not the best looking cake in the world. I'm hoping it tastes great; the cake itself (half of one of the three pans cracked, so I didn't use it and got to taste it instead) was AWESOME. The lemon curd for filling was good, but not sweet enough in my opinion - but nice and tart. And the raspberries? I cheated, I just used preserves.
The frosting was a little too stiff for my liking, I shouldn't have used that full amount of powdered sugar.
Aaannnd..the decorating is lazy, but I explained that.
Other than that, I hope it turned out alright. I'll be trying this later today whenever I cut into it for everyone at work. Unfortunately, they cut our lunches in half for the next two days after today, so I've only got a half hour lunch. I hate it when they do that.
Oh, and my body decided to give me a lovely birthday present - I started my period this morning. JOY. :-D
I found a recipe for the PERFECT cake. I'm making my own birthday cake today, and in the process, I tested out a great recipe from a book, and added my own goodness to it.
I will definitely have to write about how it turns out. So far?
Divine.
This entry is just about food. I've got some pictures I uploaded the other night and I've been meaning to post, and I figure I'll go ahead and do it now.
This will also be public as it has nothing personal in it whatsoever, so for anyone that is viewing this and is not currently a friend, just a quick note: Food is my passion. I went to culinary school, I love to cook, and I take pictures of foods that I'm somewhat proud of. I also take pictures of food in restaurants, which sometimes makes people look at me funny.
With that said, on with the food:
What I threw in the pot:
- Mirepoix. I didn't have enough chicken stock and needed to make a little of my own. I sautéed that, removed it, and added...
- Chicken and spices. The spices were heated up together in a separate and small pan; cumin, chili powder, cayenne, and cumin were some of the spices I used. Heating them slowly gives them a smokier flavor. I browned the chicken, added the mirepoix back to the pot, and added...
- One can of chicken stock (low-sodium, mind you) and two can-fulls of water. Of course this calls for more salt and pepper, since adding water to any sort of stock kills the flavor. This also resulted in a little too much broth for my tastes, so later on I poured some of it out and shoved it in the freezer. It's good to freeze stocks of any kind because you can save them for quite some time, and whenever you need extra flavor in stock, beans, or sauces, you just add an ice-cube of the stock.
- I added about a cup of frozen corn and probably ..a tablespoon?.. of minced serrano chili, and lastly 6 cloves of garlic.
- I let this all boil for about 10 minutes before adding red and green bell peppers, and 4 tomatoes - all of which diced. I didn't want these vegetables to overcook and turn to mush, since I like having a slight crunch left from my peppers. At the last minute, I added a half cup of sharp cheddar cheese and stirred it into the soup until it melted and became stringy. This was a GREAT boost for flavor in the last few minutes, but next time I'd much rather use a Mexican cheese.
- When all was said and done, I served the soup with a dallop of chipotle crème (which I just made with a bit of chipotle in adobo, sour cream, and lemon juice), tortilla strips, and some chopped cilantro and green onion.
Other food I've recently enjoyed includes dim sum at a restaurant here in Phoenix located in the Chinese Cultural Center down town, called the Golden Buddha. (Apparently they used to have their own website, but the only good description of the location I could find since the site appears to be down was located there, in the Chinese Cultural Center website).
For me, dim sum became a favorite while I was living in San Francisco for the time I went to culinary school. I was seeing a guy for a short amount of time that was adopted, and half of his family was Asian. Don't ask me specifically what culture they were - I couldn't tell you - but a huge benefit of that rather crumby dating experience was finding AWESOME Asian food spots.
Sadly, in Phoenix there aren't as many culturally different restaurants. There are some, but nowhere near as many as a city like SF (duh).
Breakfast has hopefully taken a more healthy turn, like this Horizens Organic Fat-Free Vanilla Yogurt with Kashi breakfast cereal crumbled in it. All over nectarines and plums that time, but hey, it can change for whatever fruit I decide to buy.
Yum. Food.
