Dateline: May 13, 2020. In honor of Jack, an exploration of soup, Lentil Hodgepodge

So Jack, a twice removed cousin of my husband, Bill, stayed with us for 2 months last fall.  It was lovely having him and truth be told, sorry to see him move into his own apartment.  Currently he is hunkered down with his parents, sister, and soon to be brother-in-law in Rehoboth, Delaware.  He asked if I would write something about soup.  I did.  I was inspired to follow it up by making soup/stew for dinner tonight.

Ingredients

2 carrots, peeled and sliced into spoon-sized chunks

3 stalks of celery, cut into spoon-sized chunks

1 large onion, cut into spoon-sized chunks

1 leek, cleaned and cut into pieces

1 fennel bulb, cored, cut into spoon-sized chunks

4 andouille sausages, cut into rounds

1 T garlic flavored oil

1 T olive oil

1 bunch kale, stripped and chopped into spoon-sized pieces

1 bunch parsley with stems, chopped up

6 small zucchini, cut into spoon-sized chunks

10 small steamed potatoes

1 c brown lentils, rinsed

1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

600 ml dry white wine

1 qt chicken stock, preferably homemade

1/2 packet Goya Sazon

1 T nutritional yeast

Method

Aromatics into the pool

In a large dutch oven or soup pot put the oil.  When it is hot, add the first 6 ingredients and cook until the onions are softened and the sausage gives up some of its fat.  Salt and Pepper the aromatics gently.  

lentils ready for a swim

Add in the lentils and mix well

Add in the tomatoes, and mix

secret ingredient

Add the yeast in, and mix well to blend in.

bubble, bubble

Umami bombs away

Now add in the stock, mix well and bring to a slow simmer














Add in your greens and stir

Use any inexpensive light wine you have on han

Cover and simmer until lentils are almost tender, about 30-35 minutes.  Then add in your zucchini and potatoes.  Cover and simmer until ready.

All together now

And to finish things out, a lovely cucumber, onion, tomato, beet, and feta salad

Dateline: May 12, 2020. Grilled Chicken and other musings.

I cleaned my other grill and will test run it today with a chicken.  We had turkey saltimbocca last night and there are enough left overs for Bill for brekkies and lunch tomorrow!  So a new dinner is in order.  I have a ton of broccoli and I think that I will use it tonight and recycle the roasted potatoes from last night.

Last week, I cleaned out the grill, the Akorn King Griller and set a blazing fire in it and scraped the grates and inside down.  So perhaps tonight I will, if the wind dies down, set up a moderate fire and spatchcock a plain chicken and enjoy a simple grilled chicken, no smoke, no fancy flavors, nothing except salt, pepper, some oil and maybe a squeeze of lemon.

I had power washed the deck last week as well, and am spot checking it along with hitting the sides of the boards so when I oil it, it will be a single coat.  I am so digging this power washer.  Bill made fun of me for many years about buying it, now he sees that it does a really good job.

After researching on the web, if I ipe oil the deck, the color will be very dark brown with the possibility, distinct possibility, that the sun will bake it black.  That will be unable to be repaired unless I sand the deck to take off that top sun-burnt oil layer off.  So, I am not going to oil the deck since I would need to power wash it at least 2x times a year with the oil, I'll go with no coating and power wash once a year.

So the chicken and cauliflower steaks got thrown onto the grill.

We ate a mixed green salad with this.  The chicken was quite smoky, which I am chalking up to using damp lump charcoal.  An entire bag was soaked in water throughout the winter.  Oh well, I'm too cheap to throw it away.  Perhaps, I will spread a plastic drop cloth on the deck and dry it out that way!

Dateliine: May 9, 2020 So much time, I'll make kimchi

I had some cute tiny bok choy, some broccoli, and some regular cabbage. Kimchi can handle them all.

I have a favorite kimchi recipe.  Luckily, I have almost all ingredients on hand, so making kimchi is not an issue.  I did have to improvise some, I didn't have daikon, used regular globe radishes, didn't have asian pear, used granny smith apple, carrots, onions, and scallions all good to go.

schmearing mixture

salted greens waiting to be schmeared

The schmearing mixture smelled great!  So I tasted a little radish moon.  Yummy, but quite a kick.

The greens have been salted and are waiting for their 2 hours to be up before the paste gets schmeared all over and in between the leaves and all around the little broccoli heads.  I've got about 45 minutes to wait.

now just wait 4 - 7 days

Dateline: May 9, 2020 MAPO TOFU! Oh, yeah baby, it's on!

Mapo Tofu is my Chinese restaurant test dish.  If they make a good one, then nothing else will be horrid.  If they make a bad one, then the place gets scratched off my list and I move on to another one in the future.  Cold?  You bet, but I can't waste time with bad Chinese food.

I'm going to try a new recipe for a trusted source.  Mapo Tofu this recipe is straight forward, no fancy ingredients, well, doubanjiang and sichuan peppercorns are necessities and aren't easily subbed for.  Shaoxing can be subbed with dry sherry or a light dry vermouth.  My strong suggestion is to order some from Amazon.  I really like Pixian doubanjiang because it has the right amount of zip and salt without too much of each.  I bought one of the big jars, and then refill it with the bagged versions.  Pixian has the 3 diamonds on its label.

This is the pork, wine, ginger and soy  

tofu and scallions,  chopped and ready

wine, soy, doubanjiang,  and chili oil

Here is the almost finished product.  It just has to cook for a bit so that the tofu soaks up all that spicy goodness.  Final garnish of toasted sichuan pepper corns and scallion greens.  Delicious

Note:  This was a very different version than I usually make, I really liked it.  It has no garlic in it!  Shock of shocks!  I am going a day without garlic?

Dateline: May 8, 2020 What to do with Fish Cubes?

I had ordered fish cubes, shrimp, and scallops from Fresh Direct.  Not really having an idea of how I was going to use them!  The assortment was salmon, tuna, and some kind of flaky white fish, probably snapper.  All nice looking pieces, nothing gnarly looking, all skinless.

I was craving good Indian food, sadly, take-out from the few Indian restaurants around here that are doing take-out, leaves me feeling unsatisfied and a bit duped.  Out came the Indian cookbooks, and the NYT Cooking app, and I was ready to research.

I settled on Meen Gassi.  It was worth the pounding and grinding in the mortar and pestle to get the ingredients into a smooth paste.  Once I got the hang of how to do it, it became easier to grind the chilis and seeds against the wall, rather than pounding at the bottom.

midway thru grinding process

with tamarind added

Scarily enough, I actually followed this recipe, the only substitution I made was chicken stock instead of water (as I had lots and lots of stock made).

Here are the fish cubes, sprinkled with tumeric and salt

Onion, garlic, jalapeno, and ginger sautee-ing

paste added along with chicken stoc

fish into the pool

         

finished product

To go with this, I was craving beans, much to Bill's annoyance, but I also had ordered some fresh spinach so I decided on chana saag.  

I cooked up 1 cup of green chickpeas instead of using the cans.  Green chickpeas are young beans.  They are a deep green color and take a long time to get soft.  Thank goodness for the instant pot.  I cooked on high pressure for 30 minutes.  Tested a bean, still had a starchy core and was not very tender.  Did another 20 minutes and the tester was still a tiny bit starchy, but was tender.  I drained and held aside while I made the spinach sauce.  

After the cooking time in the instant pot for the sauce, I got out the stick blender and blended everything into a dark green semi-soupy mess.  Threw in the chickpeas and tasted.  It needed a bit of salt and as I was really hungry and couldn't spend the time searching for the amchur powder, I threw in the juice of 1/2 a lemon.  All was right with the world.  

Finished sauce

chick peas in and some garnish!

We ate the meal with some naan.  I was so happy!

Note:  the fish was quite spicy and the chana saag quite bland in comparison.  I didn't want two things that might blow your head off on the spice scale.  So I was happy with the spice level in both.  The sauce for the fish was dynamite.  It would be great on any protein!  I think next time I would like it to be thicker so that I coated each piece of fish nicely.  But, it's a keeper!

Dateline: May 6, 2020 Lasagna!!!

I had ordered some ricotta cheese that was to be used to make lasagna, today was as good a day as any. 

I love the instant pot recipe for sausage lasagna by Ivy Manning.  I thought about making marinara sauce and then rooted thru the freezer and found some puttanesca sauce in there.  Perfect. 

pan removed

I used an 8 qt instant pot, so I had to increase the ingredients to fit a 8 inch spring form pan.  I used 3 eggs to be sure that it would set up as well as 2 cups of ricotta.  I also had to hack the pasta part because I ran out of no boil pasta sheets after 2 layers and used shells for the top layer.  They worked, but for appearances I would use them in the middle in the future.  I pressure cooked on high for 32 minutes, and when I peeked into it, the shells where a bit crunchy and starchy still.  Back into the instant pot for another 8 minutes, with natural release.

Topped it with more mozzarella and used the broil setting with the duo crisp for 10 minutes.  Perfect!
After taking it out of the instant pot, I let the lasagna cool a bit so that it would (hopefully) firm up and not run all over the plate when I removed the pan. 

The spring form pan came off easily and the lasagna was perfect!

dinner is served

rounded out with a nice salad

A lovely bottle of red

Dateline: May 3, 2020 Salads and fridge clean out

We had drinks with our neighbors on the deck and after 2 negronis I no longer had the burning urge to cook dinner.  So I raided the fridge.  There were 2 left over stuffed artichokes.  I made a shepherd's salad and a beet salad to go with the artichokes.

I have parsley growing in the garden and it was beginning to bolt, so I gave it a shearing and with the handfuls of parsley I made a salad of 3 mini cukes, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, red onion, chives, and a white wine vinegar and olive oil dressing.  Salt and pepper were added at table side.

The beet salad was a little more time involved, but just as easy.  I steamed the beets in the instant pot on high for 28 minutes.  3 large beets on a trivet with about 1 cup or 1.5 cups of water in the inner pot.  Let the pressure drop naturally.  Remove the beets and wearing gloves, cut off top and bottom and the skin will slide off easily.  Each beet was cut into a 1/2 inch dice and mixed with 1/2 a vidalia onion cut into similar sized dice and 2 small mini cukes cut into quarter moons.

This is the stuffed artichoke that was made in the instant pot.  I was never a huge fan of stuffed artichokes, but boy, oh, boy, these were good and sitting in the fridge for a few days did not dampen their appeal.

Over all this was a quick and pretty satisfying meal.  Not bad for a total left turn from what I had been considering up until 5:30 pm!

Dateline: May 2, 2020 Testing, Testing

I am testing how the grill does a spatchcocked chicken and a whole head of cauliflower.  Why those 2 things?  I had them on hand and the chicken had to be cooked, got 3 in a delivery on Wednesday and no where in the freezer to store them.  So it's chicken, chicken, chicken for the next couple of days.

Chicken Ingredients

1 spatchcocked chicken, (fancy way of saying take out the backbone, flip over and push on the front                  to have it lie flat).  

I got these on a whim from Wegmans

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1/4 t pepper

1 T olive oil

Paste

1.5 t  garlic cloves, crushed to a paste

1 t harissa paste

1 t pesto paste

1 t sun dried tomato paste

salt and pepper

Mix together all of the paste ingredients before adding salt and pepper, taste, and if necessary, add salt and pepper

Loosen the skin on the breast and thighs of the chicken, put 1/2 of the paste under both sides of the breast skin, split the remaining paste between the thighs and drumsticks.

Smooth out the skin to cover the meat.  In a small bowl mix the baking soda, salt, pepper, and oil. Rub this onto the top of the skin.  The baking soda changes the pH of the skin and should make it very crisp.  

Cauliflower

1 large head of cauliflower, trimmed of leaves and cored, keeping head intact

1/2 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1/2 t garlic powder

1/2 t onion powder

1/2 t sweet paprika, not smoked

cooking spray

Spray the cauliflower all over with the cooking spray.

Mix the spices together in a small bowl and sprinkle all over the cauliflower.

Heat grill to 300°F and put both things onto the grates.  If you would like, put a thermometer into the thigh of the chicken away from the bone and close the lid.  

Check on it and it should be done when the temp in the thigh is 175 - 180° F and the breast registers 165°F.

Note:  The skin never crisped up.  Not sure why, perhaps I needed to have some high heat action at some point.  So I used a blow torch to brown the skin up nicely.

the cauliflower was not cooked all the way either.  The pellet grill needs some work in terms of me understanding how to utilize it best.

Dateline: May 1, 2020 Wanted a stir fry, but had salmon...

Friday started with a delivery from Fresh Direct, a very rare occasion indeed!  I have been unable to get a slot for delivery for weeks, and suddenly, one popped up on Tuesday!  I love the salmon that I get from FD.  I know, I hear the voices in your head, 'fish bought online, you can't see it'.  Yes, I thought that way too, at first, then I tried them for fish.  Oh, baby, oh!  Their fish is excellent, I have never gotten a piece of fish, or a whole fish, that I was unhappy with, period.

So, my dilemma, I had these beautiful salmon fillets, and was planning to cook them.  The weather cleared, and I was itching to get to the grill.  But, my problem was what to have with them.  Did I want to grill veggies along with the fish?  No, I wanted a stir fry. 

First problem, was the smoker/grill going to work right?  This process was started before the 45 minutes.  Actually, it began once the weather cleared.   I removed the drip pan and cleaned off the gunk that had accumulated, pulled out the heat shield and decided that I needed to get all of the saw dust out of the bottom of the grill.  I got the hand vac and went at it.  I think that I will get a second one just for the grill.  The dump slide was working properly, the auger was working, no excuse not to fire it up.  In about 10 minutes I had tons of smoke, and as I checked the the temperature gauge it was where it should be.  My hypothesis of old pellets was correct.  With the fresh pellets, it was working great.  I shut it down and went into the house to chop up veggies for the stir fry and sat down to read as it was way to early to start cooking.

We had a deadline of 6:30 for a dinner zoom with Katie, so I had to work two cookings into the 45 minutes that I had to cook.  Fired up the grill again, and ran back into the house to get the glass noodles boiled and ready to be added to the stir fry.  Noodles done, dump water, dry wok, hit it with some oil and start with the aromatics, then dump in all the rest of the veggies.  Add in the sauce ingredients, stir, add in a cube of frozen chicken stock and some tangerine peels, and noodles.  Voila!  Stir fry done, lidded, and off the heat.  Now to the salmon.

Got grill up to temp, put the salmon on a grill mat and closed the lid.  I only used salt and pepper on the fish as the stir fry was hot and spicy.  The fish skin stuck to the mat and I couldn't turn the fish.  Close the lid and go get a thermometer.  I like my salmon cooked to about 122° - 125° because it keeps the flesh very silky and moist.  Above 125°, the fats and proteins start to ooze out of the fish and coagulate into white blobs, ick!

Noodles

2+ servings of glass noodles, boiled according to package directions and drained

Vegetable Ingredients

3 cloves of garlic, thickly sliced

1 inch of ginger, julienned

1 bunch of asparagus, snapped, and if thick stemmed, peel the bottom half

about 8 mini sweet peppers, seeded and cut into quarters

1/4 head of cabbage cut into 1 in chunks

1 head of broccoli, florets cut off, stem trimmed and cut into rounds

a couple of swiss chard leaves, striped and cut into thick ribbons

1 leek, white and light green part only, quartered, then sliced into 1/2 inch chunks

2 nice size pieces of dried tangerine peel, broken up into small bits

handful of chopped cilantro

use whatever vegetables you have in your fridge cut into stir fry sized pieces.  

Sauce Ingredients

2 T Shaoxing rice wine, or dry sherry or dry vermouth

1 T chili oil

2 t light soy sauce, not less salt one with green cap, asian light soy

1 t dark soy sauce

1 t rice wine vinegar

1 T pixian chili paste

2 oz cube of frozen chicken stock

Heat up the wok and add in 2 T of oil that can take the heat.  I used safflower, but you can use anything except olive oil.  Once oil is hot, add the garlic and ginger and push around in the oil for a bit.  Don't let it brown.  Add in the rest of the veggies and tangerine peel and toss them in the hot oil for a bit until the broccoli gets that beautiful dark green color.

Add the shaoxing wine, chili oil, soy sauces, vinegar and chicken stock cube.  Stir around a bit and make a well at the bottom of the wok and add the pixian chili paste, incorporating it into the saucy stuff on the bottom.  Mix well and coat all the veggies with the sauce.  Add the drained noodles and mix well into the cooking vegetables.  The noodles may stay together with each other, but using tongs work them around the pan to ensure each bite will have noodles and veggies.

Lid, and pull off burner.

Fish

2 salmon center cut fillets

salt and pepper

Heat grill too 350-375°.  Salt and pepper the fish to your liking and place on grill mat, skin side down.  I am not going to turn the fish.  The skin will stick to the mat.  When up to temp, place mat on grill.  Close the lid.  Wait about 5 min and check on the fish.  It should start to look a little opaque on the sides and be bubbling around the skin.   Thickest part of the fish should still be too raw looking.

Close the lid.  Another 3-4 minutes, check fish again, the center should be a bit more opaque and check the temp with a thermometer.  When the fish hits your favored temp, remove fish from the mat leaving the skin behind.

The lighting doesn't do the fish any favors, but this is perfectly cooked to my liking, 125° internal temp.  The flesh flakes and is moist and delicious.

Dateline: April 30, 2020 BREAD

I feed my sourdough starter on Tuesday evening, I know bad timing.  Fed it again on Wednesday, mid morning.  By Wednesday at 8 pm, the starter was fed, passed the float test and was aching to be made into bread.

The timing was bad because it means that I need to nurse the bulk rise and the proofing into the wee hours of the morning.  Second issue that pointed to bad timing was that I just got an order of a ton of food and the fridge was packed, where the hell am I going to rest 4 2-litre containers of sourdough?  Outside of course!  At about 3 am, the proofing was done, so the dough went outside in 4 lidded containers.  I went to bed!

At about 1 pm, after returning from a dr appt, I got the oven up to temp and was getting the dough from outside, when I noticed that it was not sitting up as straight as I thought I recalled from 3 am.  I took all 4 buckets inside.  When I popped the lid off of the first one, it belched out a big puff of air.  The temperature outside was not enough to stall fermentation.  Each bucket of dough had risen to the tippy-top of the bucket.  This could have been a potential problem.  Was all the yeast used up and there would be no rise in the oven?  I'd have to see.  Given that this is the end of 90% of my flour on hand, I would not be happy at having an epic fail on my hands.

So, from this flat circle of slashed dough .....

before hitting the dutch oven 

I got this crusty beauty.  

To answer my question above, indeed, not all the yeast been consumed and output of the carbon dioxide had not been exhausted in the 10 hours of ferment.

These loaves are some of the best tasting bread that I have ever made.  I think the resting at a higher temperature helped produce that.  I think that resting the dough in the refrigerator is too cold for a next day bake, I will need to bake them after 2 days.