Week 4 - 24 Hours

There are some themes for the 52 week cooking challenge where I have absolutely no idea what I want to do, like Week 4's theme - 24 hours. The themes are open to interpretation, but all I could think of was a complicated recipe that would take 24 hours to make, in which case, no, thank you, I'll skip this week because no one with a toddler has time for that. Thankfully, other people on Reddit were also in need of guidance, and someone suggested a recipe that has to chill overnight, so one that would technically take 24 hours, but not necessarily 24 hours of cooking. That worked for me, and after a little bit of thought and remembering that mayo-based salads like cole slaw often turn out better when made the night before, I decided to try my hand at the quintessential New York deli-style potato salad, something I've always wondered how to make.

Ingredients:

I decided to follow a recipe I found on Food.com for this type of potato salad, knowing that we were going to have to make one significant ingredient change that could make the salad taste completely different. A central ingredient in deli potato salad is mayonnaise, and with B's egg allergy, that was just not an option. I had been wanting to try out vegan mayo for a while because of his allergy, figuring it could be a good replacement in tuna salad and the like, and this was a good excuse to pick one up.

Who knew that it would be so hard to find vegan mayo? Apparently, Trader Joe's discontinued theirs about six months ago, which I didn't know when I went to the very crowded store before the snow trying to find it. I ended up finding one at Fairway, but after looking at every shelf in the condiments aisle, they had exactly one brand of vegan mayonnaise, Avonaise, so Avonaise it would be.

The ingredients for our modified potato salad were:

- 3 lbs Dutch yellow baby potatoes ($5.58)
- 1 cup Avonaise ($5.47)
- 3 tbsp white vinegar ($0.15)
- 2 tbsp sugar ($0.20)
- salt, freshly ground black pepper, and garlic powder to taste ($0.10)
- 1/2 sweet onion, finely minced ($0.40)

Even though potato salad is a side, this recipe was not cheap. It came out to approximately $11.90, in part because of the Avonaise, since regular mayo would have been maybe 60% of the price. Once I started making it and realized just how many potatoes made up three pounds of potatoes, and how there would only be three of us eating and we didn't even know if B was going to like the potato salad, I realized I should have halved the recipe. It would have been much more manageable since potato salad wasn't our entire dinner. This potato salad was enough for a potluck. Oh well, lesson learned.

Steps:


To make the potato salad, I pretty much followed the instructions in the recipe, except that I decided to refrigerate it overnight at a minimum. The steps were:

1. Bring pot with water and potatoes to a boil and cook until potatoes are fork tender. Drain and cool potatoes.

2. While potatoes are cooking, mince the onion, and combine with all the non-potato ingredients to make the dressing. Mix well.


3. Once potatoes have cooled a little bit, rub the skins off and then slice. Add potatoes to the dressing and mix in well. Season to taste.

4. Refrigerate overnight so that it's ready to eat 24 hours later (since that's the challenge theme!).

Assessment:


How did this potato salad end up comparing to the NY deli-style potato salad I grew up with and really like? Well, texturally, it was right. I wasn't sure when I put it in the fridge if it would be, but when I tested it a few hours later (I checked it throughout the day to see how the flavors changed), it absolutely reminded me of deli potato salad in texture.

As far as the taste, there was something missing, but I don't think that's the recipe. Every time I tried it throughout the day, even as I tasted the flavors improving the longer it sat in the fridge, I kept thinking something was missing. NY delis use mayonnaise, actual mayonnaise with eggs, and I think that's a big difference in the flavor. Vegan avocado-based mayonnaise just can't replicate the same flavor that you get with eggs. The ingredients are just different, and I think part of what gives deli potato salad that distinct flavor is the eggs and the mayonnaise. Also, a lot of the mayo brands I usually buy seem to include some form of mustard in their mayo combinations as well, and I think this might have been improved with a little bit of mustard (which, again, wouldn't have been an issue if we used regular mayo - although I do note that Duke's doesn't seem to have mustard but is a delicious outlier). Lastly, I think if I made this again, I would probably include the entire sweet onion instead of half. I did half because I wasn't sure how strong the raw onion would be for B, but it was pretty sweet and the whole onion would have been fine and also added some more flavor.


Potato salad alongside some rotisserie chicken and grape tomatoes. Kind of like a picnic...
So, would I make it again? I don't know. It was a lot of work (not hard, just time-consuming with the potatoes), and to do all of that again with those modifications and to still feel like it was missing something would be a little disappointing. If B outgrows his egg allergy, maybe someday I'll try this with real mayo, and if he doesn't, maybe I'll try it again with these tweaks, but there are so many other things I'd rather try first. Just to be clear, there was nothing wrong with the potato salad, I was happy to eat it, I'm glad I made it, and it was not tossed on the floor in its entirety by the toddler, but there was just that missing taste that will continue to bug me.

As far as the challenge, in the interests of full disclosure, the time from the start of the potato salad making to the time we ate it wasn't 24 hours. I had every intention of having the potato salad ready to go 24 hours prior to the next night's dinner, even planning to make it on MLK Day because we would both be home for the holiday, but I woke up really late from a nap and then had to make it at the same time as rushing through that night's dinner, so everything got delayed. But I think it still counts for the 24 hours challenge because I intended for it to be a 24 hour thing, it still was in the fridge overnight for us to eat the next day (even if not a strict 24 hours), and the only reason it was less was because I was tired and moving slowly. I'm not officially participating anyway, but that's why it counts for me.

Week 3 - Russian

Week 3 of the 52 week cooking challenge brought something new into our kitchen - Russian cuisine! While we've had Russian food before at places like Teremok (sadly now closed) and Onegin (which I think is also closed) here in the city, we've never made it at home, so this was something completely new. After reading through lots of recipes for Russian dishes, the one that seemed to make the most sense for a challenge family dinner was a recipe for turkey stroganoff that I found on Simply Recipes. Although we had definitely heard of stroganoff before (mostly beef stroganoff), A and I weren't actually sure we'd ever eaten it before, so that made this one a little hard to judge in terms of whether my finished product came close to what a stroganoff should be.

According to Wikipedia, stroganoff as it has evolved today in many parts of the world consists of meat (usually beef), mushrooms, onions, and a sour cream sauce over pasta or rice. This recipe certainly seemed to classify as a stroganoff based on that description. In our adapted version, we used the following ingredients:

- 1 package of white mushrooms, sliced ($3.99)
- 1 onion, chopped ($0.35)
- 2 tbsp butter ($0.20)
- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.35)
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg ($0.10)
- 1 tbsp dried thyme ($0.20)
- 1/2 cup sour cream ($0.50)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 1 package of pasta (brown rice fusilli) ($1.99)

While stroganoff is often accompanied by egg noodles, we obviously couldn't do that here for allergy reasons, so we just went with some brown rice fusilli since it would also be able to hold the sauce decently well. The original recipe was also targeted at Thanksgiving leftovers, using turkey and gravy, but since it was January, we opted for ground turkey. The estimated cost for the entire recipe was $11.73. It would have been under $10 if we got the mushrooms from Trader Joe's instead of our local Superfresh since the package there is slightly smaller and cheaper, but for dinner for three plus a little left over for lunch, that's really not a bad price.

After two very long cooking challenges that took more time than we anticipated, I am happy to say that this recipe took less than an hour from start to finish. (Finally!) The steps for making the stroganoff were:

1. Dry saute the mushrooms until they release water (about 5 min).

2. Add the butter and onions, and cook until onions are done.

3. Make pasta at some point while everything else is cooking.

4. Add ground turkey, nutmeg, black pepper, and thyme, and cook turkey, breaking it up as it cooks, until done.

5. Remove from heat and add sour cream. Mix well.

Pretty simple to execute, and probably could have been done faster if the turkey had completely finished thawing before we started cooking. It was nice to finally make something for a challenge meal that didn't take two hours.

So, how was the stroganoff? I liked it, but not as much as some other pasta dishes we've made before. It seemed relatively basic in flavor, and you couldn't really taste the thyme or the nutmeg, just the sour cream, turkey, and black pepper. A found it a little bit bland. B didn't seem to be a huge fan of it for dinner either, but he had had cheese and Cheerios for a snack not that much earlier, so that may have also played a role. He was willing to eat it for lunch another day, but nowhere near as enthusiastically as the fajita pasta bake we made another night (which was a bigger hit with the whole family). Also, we have no idea whether or not it was really representative of what stroganoff should be, since we don't think we have anything to compare it to, or how "Russian" it really tasted, given that that was the challenge. Conclusion - good dinner, glad we tried it, but don't think it'll make it into our regular rotation.

Philly Cheesesteak Bao Buns

One of the more interesting-sounding things to arrive in the Trader Joe's freezer case last fall (and still available today) was a box of Philly cheesesteak bao buns ($3.49 for 4 buns). They looked just like the bao you'd get at dim sum, but they were filled with shredded beef, American cheese, onions, and bell peppers in an attempt to replicate the flavors you'd get if you were eating a cheesesteak.

We were excited to try these, and following the microwave instructions (they also provide steamer instructions), they were done in a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, cutting open the bao, it didn't look anything like the one in the photo. Instead of shredded meat and vegetables, it was kind of just some sort of meat mush. As far as flavor, it tasted like beef and peppers, but without the words on the box, neither of us would have ever thought "cheesesteak" when describing it. The taste was okay, but nothing special.

Buy again? Probably not. Glad they're taking a chance on some more unique items, but this one didn't work for us.

Week 2 - Miso

When I hear miso, my first thought is soup (which amuses me, since the majority of the miso mentions on this blog have nothing to do with soup), and since it's January and it's cold, soup sounded really appealing. I didn't want to make a plain miso soup, so I looked around online until I found a recipe for ginger chicken meatballs in miso broth on No Spoon Necessary. I've been wanting to make homemade meatballs for B ever since we found out about his egg allergy, so this seemed like the perfect time.

The ingredients for our adapted recipe were:

For the meatballs:
- 1 lb ground chicken ($4.99)
- 1 cup panko breadcrumbs ($0.40)
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.30)
- 1 tbsp soy sauce ($0.20)
- 2 tsp ginger paste ($0.40)
- 5 scallions, greens only (use the whites for the broth) ($0.50)
- 1 tbsp fish sauce ($0.10)
- 1 tsp lemongrass, minced ($1.29)
- 1/2 batch of cilantro, leaves finely chopped (several tbsp) ($0.50)
- 2 tbsp broth (from the broth below)
- olive oil to coat pan ($0.20)

For the broth:
- 6 cups water (although I added 2 more later because we had too many vegetables)
- 2 spoonfuls chicken bouillon ($1)
- 3 cloves of garlic, sliced ($0.30)
- 1 medium shallot, sliced ($0.33)
- 1 tbsp ginger paste ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp fish sauce ($0.10)
- 4 scallions, whites and greens sliced, plus the whites from the meatball scallions ($0.49)
- 2 tbsp white miso ($1)
- baby corn ($2.50)
- napa cabbage ($2.89)

That came out to about $17.69 ($8.88 for the meatballs and $8.81 for the broth) for soup for three for dinner with about a bowl left over for lunch. On the more expensive side for the home cooking/challenge meals we've done, but it made a lot of food and the meatballs had so many ingredients in them that they definitely didn't taste like ordinary meatballs.

The original recipe called for baby bok choy, but apparently in everyone's "it's the new year and it's time to eat healthy" madness, bok choy and baby bok choy were nowhere to be found. (Either that or there was a supply issue somewhere that we didn't know about when planning this.) We tried two different stores, and there was a single package of bok choy that we were planning to use for something else, so we went with napa cabbage here and some baby corn. I think there are a lot of vegetables that would be complementary here, so we went with what we could find. Tastewise, it was fine, but the giant napa cabbage was a little harder to manage than bok choy would have been, and I only ended up using a third of it, max (and that was with adding more to the broth after we all had our first bowls and had made some space in the pot).


Another ingredient note, this was my first time using actual lemongrass. I watched a few YouTube videos to prepare, and I thought I was ready. Remove the fibrous outside layers, mince the inner tender part finely, and you're good to go. But instead, it was like the bamboo root adventure all over again. I kept removing the outer layers because they felt fibrous, and ended up with very little lemongrass. I don't know if I tossed too much and should have used more, and I tried to follow one YouTuber's method of sticking your thumbnail in to see if there's an indentation, but very little of it seemed tender. Will need to investigate further. (Comments and advice welcome!)

The steps for the recipe were:

1. Prep. [Here I should note that the recipe total time was given as 40 minutes, with 20 minutes of cook time (not that inaccurate) and 20 minutes of prep time. Yes, I'm a little slow on prep on a good day, and yes, I'm a little rusty, but even when I wasn't, I don't think 20 minutes would have been nearly enough to do all of this. 20 minutes in, I had gotten through the garlic, the lemongrass, and the shallots, and that's it. The prep probably took at least an hour, and even if you subtract all the time I had to take to wash my burning eyes out (thanks, delicious scallions and shallots), it still wouldn't be anywhere close to 20 minutes. I feel like to do that you would need a giant counter with room to lay everything out for prep, very quick knife skills, and someone to wash all the vegetables for you. Washing vegetables thoroughly takes so long!]

Anyway, this first step of prep was for the garlic, shallots, scallions, cilantro, lemongrass, and the soup vegetables. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but time just vanished, and that was with using shortcut ginger!


2. Start the broth. I added the water and bouillon to the pot along with the garlic, shallot, ginger paste, fish sauce, and scallions.

3. Once the broth had come to a boil, I lowered the temperature and then made the miso mixture by combining the miso with 2 tbsp of the broth. After stirring to combine it into a nice paste, I added it to the pot and stirred it in. [Note that the original recipe removed the solids from the pot, but considering they were just vegetables we'd normally eat anyway and not the fibrous lemongrass or something like that, I just left them in.]

4. Add all the meatball ingredients to a large bowl and mix together. Form small meatballs and place on parchment paper-lined surface. [I can't tell you what size they were, because I have no idea. Maybe a tablespoon size or a little bigger. I tried to be consistent but didn't measure.]

5. Add the vegetables to the broth (as long as it's been simmering for at least 15 minutes) and simmer until vegetables are tender and while the meatballs cook.


6. Add olive oil to a pan over medium heat, and add the meatballs in batches to cook until golden brown. [I think they were mostly cooked by the time I was done with them, but they were going to finish in the soup anyway.]

7. Add finished meatballs to the broth and cook for another 5-10 minutes until done.

Thankfully, after A and I took turns working in the kitchen for almost 2 hours (he did some of the vegetable washing and chopping, which I really appreciated), the soup tasted really, really good. It would have been so disappointing to put in so much time and not love what we made, but the soup turned out really well, especially the meatballs. They also seemed to be a hit with baby B, and I'm glad we were able to introduce him to some new flavors we haven't given him at home before, like lemongrass and miso. I could eat a giant bowl full of those meatballs, I liked them so much.


What would I do differently next time? Start cooking earlier, and set my expectations accordingly for how much time prep will take. Watch more videos about lemongrass preparation. Choose another vegetable for the broth that wouldn't take as much time as the corn and cabbage to prepare. Figure out a way for A and I to both work in the kitchen at the same time, because having two extra hands would have made things go much more smoothly (and is how I'm still used to operating, since I haven't cooked a lot of prep-intensive things since B's arrival). Wear contacts so I don't have to keep running to the bathroom to wash out my eyes.

All that said, the recipe itself was delicious, and I would make this again. I think with better planning, quicker ingredients, and less rusty kitchen skills, things might go a little faster next time. (Hopefully!)

Week 1 - Hindsight 2020

I unofficially took part in Reddit's 52 week cooking challenge beginning in 2014, and I stopped partway through 2017 because I just wasn't finding it fun anymore, especially with how crazy life had gotten. (More in this post.) After that, I checked in on the challenges every so often, but never really felt the inclination to go back until recently. I just found myself in a rut, lacking inspiration, relying on the same dishes over and over, and I also thought that my cooking skills had gotten a little rusty, especially the improvisation ones. Everything in me yearned to go back to trying new things, and I wanted to introduce baby B to new foods and textures and tastes, real home-cooked food and not as much processed food. So here we are, back again, hopefully refreshed and inspired. I'll do whatever challenges I can, and there will be no guilt if I choose to skip a theme. After all, this is just for self-improvement and fun.

Of course, the first theme was something that required a bit more thought than a simple ingredient challenge: hindsight 2020. Looking back at the past year, what would I want to do differently? Was there a recipe I wanted to attempt again? I didn't really make much last year, very few new or experimental dishes, so what would I even do for the challenge? When the thought finally hit me, I knew this had to be the challenge because it was perfect: redoing the vegan chickpea omelettes I made back in October.

Can't rely on easy scrambles anymore...

Learning that B had an egg allergy was challenging when it came to things to make. Meatballs often use egg as a binder. Scrambles and frittatas are great foods for babies and so easy to make, but can't do them. I had never realized just how much we relied on eggs for filling up the meal plan. I don't remember how I stumbled on it, but while I was thinking about this, I found a recipe for vegan chickpea omelettes on Fork and Beans, and I knew I had to make it so that B could get a little bit of the egg experience without actual eggs.

The recipe looked so easy on the site. I figured it would be simple to do. The steps themselves weren't hard, but then they came out looking like this:

Mistakes in execution (especially that first, super dry one), too much turmeric, and I was just disappointed in how they turned out. Not the fault of the recipe, but I think I expected it to behave like an omelette in terms of how to make it, and tried to fold it and move it and flip it like eggs, which was also probably an error on my part.

For my "hindsight redo," I used the following ingredients:

- 1.5 cups garbanzo bean flour ($1.13)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda ($0.05)
- turmeric ($0.10)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- onion salt ($0.05)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- oregano ($0.05)
- thyme ($0.08)
- 1.5 cups whole milk ($0.45)
- 5 tsp apple cider vinegar ($0.10)
- 1/2 bag frozen spinach ($1)
- 1 can fire-roasted diced tomatoes ($1)
- 4 small handfuls of shredded Colby jack cheese ($0.50)
- olive oil ($0.25)
- 2 avocados ($2.33)


Total for dinner was around $7.19, which for three people, is a great price. Almost a third of that is the avocados alone, so this was a really affordable family meal.

The first time I made it, I didn't use so many spices, but this time, I wanted more flavors than just turmeric. I also added tomatoes so we'd have more vegetables, and avocado to eat on the side. We had a big carton of whole milk now that baby B has moved on to that, so I used that instead of the soy milk I used the first time, since we didn't need it to be vegan, just egg-free.

I thought those changes would make for a better omelette than the first time and that I would get it right this time if I just followed the steps carefully. I should have known it would be more difficult than that once I forgot which pan I preferred the first time after trial and error and had to oil a second pan once I remembered. I clearly didn't write any actual notes down after the first attempt. Anyway, the steps I followed this time around were:


- Mix the batter (everything in the ingredient list from the garbanzo bean flour down to the apple cider vinegar).
- Saute the spinach and tomatoes until all the water is released and then remove from heat.
- Add olive oil to pan and then add a portion of the batter (didn't measure and forgot that last time they worked better with thicker layers of batter, so I made the same mistake - again).
- Add vegetables and cheese to one side of the batter.
- After a couple of minutes, fold over the non-vegetable side, and then cover and steam for about 5 minutes.

I couldn't remember what heat to put it on, so I started on low, raised it to medium once it wasn't setting very quickly, and then forgot it was on medium, so it got a little... overdone (but still edible). That one was clearly going to be mine and not the baby's.


I ended up making four omelettes this time (pictures 2 and 3 in the collage below are the same one). The second time, I watched the temperature better, raising it in the beginning so it would cook faster but making sure it steamed on low. By the third time, I was starting to get frustrated with how long the whole thing was taking, so I started steaming it twice, once before folding it and once after, trying to get it to cook faster. I had thought this was a quick recipe, forgetting that it's one omelette at a time with 5+ minutes per omelette, and it was getting really late for dinner (a usual 52 week challenge problem that really can't happen anymore with a baby!).


For the last one, I kept the temperature low the whole time, didn't steam it at all, but let it go for a very long time since I was busy cutting up baby B's omelette for dinner. This one turned out the best for us and was the least dry. The steaming was supposed to cut some of the earthy flavor, but they all kind of tasted the same to us and we don't really mind that flavor.

So, what did I learn in hindsight from my redo experience? I still think this recipe is a good idea, but maybe it's just not for me (sort of like the baked mozzarella sticks). Maybe I should make a chickpea frittata instead. There isn't really any way to speed up the process of making the omelettes, so this is probably also not ideal for a super quick dinner (and maybe another vote in the frittata direction if it's going to take just as long). Lastly, I'm a little out of practice with trying new things, so I really want to do as many challenges as possible this year.


But this experiment also made me remember that, when it comes to cooking, how it looks on the plate and perfection aren't always everything. B probably ate almost as much as I did, finishing almost his entire omelette, so no matter how much it didn't look like the original, no matter how much I wanted it to turn out better, it must have still tasted fine (or good enough if he was just that hungry). Very little ended up on the floor until he was getting full so at least he seemed to enjoy it, which is probably the only reason I'd try it again!