What's for dinner 11/23/09

Tonight's menu:

Wisconsin Walleye Au Gratin
Parmesan roasted Broccoli
Long Grain and Wild Rice Rice-a-Roni

2 easy recipes + 1 new recipe. I've never made walleye, let alone au gratin walleye....

Easy or hard? Scale 1 (easy)-10 (hard): 3.
I've never poached fish before. Lacking a scoop strainer, I used a large pot and a run of the mill colander. I heated the water, dropped in the colander, put the fish in there. After the 3-4 minutes per recipe of poaching, I simply lifted the strainer out. It worked perfectly!

Taste evaluation: Scale 1-10: 6. Good flavor where sauce collected. Thicker areas of just fish were on the bland side. But I'd definitely make it again. I've had walleye in restaurants and never really cared for it, but this made me ok with eating walleye.

I think the contrast of the fish + the Rice a Roni (v. little flavor) + the very flavorful broccoli was balanced. It was nice to see a plate with a variety of color on it!

What's for dinner? 11/16

I think tonight I'm trying out twice baked potatoes. I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com and I have the ingredients. First time I've ever made these, but the reviews are favorable....

Also trying out a breaded pork chop recipe from allrecipes.com.

Thoughts while cooking:
Impressions of twice baked potato recipe: I only did 2 baked potatoes so halving the ingredients should have worked, but i think the potato to creamy ratio may be off as a result.

Impressions of breaded pork chops: super easy-fast recipe. I need more fast recipes like this, especially when I go back to working.

Results:

Twice baked potatoes: I accidentally added the amount of salt for the full recipe. That coupled with the bacon bits I used instead of real bacon meant that they're a bit too salty. But after baking them for the 15 minutes, they turned out FABULOUS! I will definitely be making these again!!!! Not too salty, although next time i will try reducing the salt.

Pork Chops: Also quite good! Another winner for recipes!

Adventures in cooking

I haven't been posting, obviously. Been cooking. Just not posting. But today I would like to start this blog up again.

Since the last post, a lot has changed.

I have a house with a real kitchen and quality appliances. It's been so long since I've used a nice smooth top stove and an oven that's not 25 degrees or more off!

I am no longer employed. This has been the biggest life change thus far. For the first time I'm not earning my keep and it sucks. It does allow me to cook more often though! Coming up with what to make though is still a daily battle.

I recently discovered The BareFoot Contessa shows on Food Network. I usually don't watch cooking shows because I never remember the recipes anyway, but one day I stumbled on it. I found a couple gems so far that have been added to my recipes.

I'm still working on good recipes for fish.

I'm still trying to figure out how to eat healthily and not eat out of the home so much.

Things I love to cook:
Roasted Broccoli Parmesan: from the Barefoot Contessa
Oven roasted chicken (my own recipe)
Arrabiata pasta sauce
homemade pizza
Wild Rice and Chicken soup
Potato wedges

Goals for this blog: write about the good and bad recipes I try, the things I learn as I develop my cooking skills. So until the next entreé.... oopps I mean entry!... eat well!

New beginnings, aka. My salmon is on fire!

Ok, so it's been a little while. I finally have a new job, new schedule and I just may do some more cooking.

The other night I made salmon and discovered a valuable lesson: Don't overspray non-stick cooking spray and have it pool on one side of your cookie sheet AND then put it under the broiler. It WILL most likely catch on fire. That was exciting in a not so good way. Good news though, the salmon was NOT burned in the process, just the pool of oil. Guess I should have paid attention to the note on the can that says "FLAMMABLE!!!"... Whoops.

I made a lemon pepper salmon with marjoram butter. I had no tarragon, but all research listed marjoram as a good substitute. The marjoram lemon butter was a flavorable addition to the otherwise boring salmon. I'm still learning the intricacies of cooking fish so it was probably a bit overcooked.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/1589


I recovered some dignity in the kitchen tonight by making a recipe that I found on the Lakewinds co-op website. The recipe was for an arrabiata angel hair pasta. I ended up altering the recipe a little bit as I had no zucchini or eggplant (I now wish I had them) and I also added chicken that I had marinated in Italian dressing for an hour.


http://www.lakewinds.com/store/Arrabiata-Angel-Hair-W594C7711.aspx

The sauce definitely ended up spicy (I think I may have overdone the crushed red pepper a little bit, though), but it made more than enough to save a jar and a half in the freezer for a later date.

I will add pictures tomorrow of the pasta.

Apple Pork Chops with glazed carrots

The prepared apples

After cookingOn the plate
Dinner!

PORK CHOPS WITH APPLES

2 tsp. butter 1 c. sliced apples 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon 2 center cut pork chops, 1/2" thick, well trimmed 1/4 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper Melt butter in a large nonstick frying pan; saute apples until tender but not mushy. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Push apples to one side or remove to serving plate. Fry pork chops in liquid from apples until almost cooked, turning to brown both sides. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook until chops are done. Don't overcook as chops will become rubbery. Arrange a chop on each plate and serve apples over chops. Makes 2 servings. One serving: 1 chop plus 1/3 cup apples - calories 236. Low sodium diet: Omit salt.

Some things for this recipe:

• After removing the apples, there wasn't a lot of liquid left to brown the meat, so I added a bit of apple juice and cinnamon and browned the pork in that.
  
• It wasn't very specific about "cook until chops are done". I transferred the browned pork chops to a casserole dish, and cooked them covered for 10 minutes @ 400 degrees, and 10 minutes uncovered. Then I put the apples over the top of them and let them cook for 5 minutes more.

Source: Pork Chops with Apples

August Schell Brewery Tour

August Schell brewery is located in New Ulm, MN about 1.75 hrs SW of the Twin Cities. It's the 2nd oldest family owned brewery in the U.S. For 2$/person you get about an hour long tour + 6 beer tastings + 1 glass of the beer or root beer of your choice.

When you get the the brewery, it's about 1/2 mile walk from your parking place but they also offer a shuttle. I'd recommend either walking there or walking back especially during the fall. It's a tree lined slightly uphill walk and very pretty. (see picture). The tour does not go into the actual brewery but is a very informative historical tour.


Other pictures from our tour:
An old boiler:
Antique bottling machine:
The Schells Old Time Band instruments:
Copper Stein:
Unfortunately my pictures of the beer wagon did not turn out and my batteries died (I had yet to put the good batteries in my camera and was just using standard AA batteries) so I don't have more pictures of the grounds, the resident peacocks and deer either. :(

This is the Schell mansion (built for $5000 back in the 1800's):

And this is the "copper kettle" also installed around the same time as the mansion was built, this though cost $25,000 in the 1800's!



My favorites of the ones we tried were the Caramel Bock and the Octoberfest. Maybe it's not that I don't like beer that much, it's that I don't like ales very much? I've also discovered I really really like Sam Adams Octoberfest beer and if ever in Vegas again, their Sin City Amber.

NEW CAMERA!

YAY I finally picked out my new camera! Now I just need to learn to use it. This means I'll be taking a lot more pictures and most of them may be of food! As soon as I learn how to use it, I'll be posting food pics more regularly!