Week 40 - A Recipe You've Been Wanting to Try

I did a lot of virtual cooking classes during the pandemic before things started opening up again after vaccines, and even though I attended multiple classes on dumplings, potstickers, and wontons, I was never able to make them. Why? Because every single wrapper I could find either had egg or was made on the same equipment as egg, and it wasn't worth the risk with B's allergy. I knew that there was one wrapper that was completely vegan, made by Nasoya, but it wasn't until this fall that we were finally able to get it. I had a hard time initially trying to figure out what to make for the Week 40 challenge - a recipe you've been wanting to try - because there are so many, but this seemed to fit, since I've been waiting to make wontons/dumplings for so long.

I decided to make pork wontons, but the only instructions I could find at the time from the classes were for shrimp wontons, so I loosely followed a recipe from Bon Appetit instead, with the intention of trying to fold them the same way they did in the class. As is probably obvious, I was terrible at folding the wontons. I tried all different shapes, but most of them came out looking horrible. The folded-over triangle was probably the best one, and the wontons just looked so empty, but that was the most I could stuff them without them breaking. I wasn't great at making them the last time I tried either. This is why I pay for them at restaurants, although I'll keep trying again here and there.

I made some green beans with onions in the air fryer alongside the wontons, based on a recipe from Allrecipes. They were pretty good, although they looked more like Chinese dry-fried green beans than they tasted. We haven't experimented much with making vegetables in the air fryer yet, but since these turned out well, maybe we'll do it more.

Overall, the dumplings were fine, but not great. The sesame sauce from the Bon Appetit recipe was delicious though, and it was good on both the dumplings and the green beans. It'll probably be some time before I attempt dumplings again, but hopefully next time will be better.

Week 41 - German

I love learning about dishes from all over the world (no surprise, given our Around the World Cooking Challenge), and when I was watching one of Beryl Shereshewsky's videos about sandwiches a while back (love the whole series - video link), I heard of something called toast Hawaii for the first time. Apparently it's ham, cheese, and pineapple on toast (sometimes with a maraschino cherry on top), and it was made popular in West Germany in the 1950s by a TV chef there. It sounds a lot like our (very controversial) Hawaiian pizza, but based on German commenters, it still seems decently popular now (although it seems most skip the cherry, which was fine by me, since I did not plan on buying maraschino cherries just for this). I marked it down on my list for the German part of the AtWCC, and with the Week 41 challenge being German, it sounded like a great brunch!

Although the dish seemed straightforward enough to make without a recipe, I used the one at Daring Gourmet as a guide for oven temperature and cook time. Basically, toast the slices of bread (I did 6, two for each of us), melt the butter, and then to each slice, add a layer of butter, a slice of ham, a pineapple ring, and a slice of Swiss cheese. I baked it at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, and the cheese was melted, so this was pretty quick and easy.

The one complication I did have was that we had no cans of pineapple rings, and when we went grocery shopping the day before, they had no cans of pineapple rings. I'm actually not sure if Whole Foods even sells pineapple rings. So I took the pineapple chunks we did have, halved them, and made my own rings, and it worked out just fine.

The toast was really tasty and a great breakfast! If I made this again, I think I would use a little extra butter (did 1/2 tbsp for each slice of bread) and add garlic powder and some pepper to the melted butter before spreading it. I also think that, if I use the same ham that I did this time, I would use two slices instead of one for some extra ham flavor, as this one was sliced fairly thin. This toast is similar to some I've made in the past, but with pineapple added, and although I'm not a huge sweet-savory person, I do think it was good with the pineapple. Then again, we also like Hawaiian pizza, so it's no surprise this worked for us.

Week 42 - One Pot

There are many dishes that can be made in just one pot, but the easiest, in my opinion, are soups and chili, which are also perfect for the cold weather. I did this challenge back at the end of October, so I decided on chili, and then upgraded it to pumpkin chili since it was Halloween week. Also, I'm not Texan, so this chili had lots and lots of beans.

The final ingredient list for the chili was beefless beef (from Trader Joe's), onion, peppers, garlic, kidney beans, white beans, black beans, tomatoes, pumpkin puree, corn, vegetable broth, and taco seasoning. We ate it alongside a pumpkin bagel, and it was a great fall dinner!

Week 43 - Single Use Gadgets

It's been a while (again). I thought it had only been a few weeks, but apparently the last post was in September. This year is really flying by. I hope I manage to post about the whole challenge before the year is over, even if they're just super short posts to remind me that, yes, I did do that challenge week!

Week 43's theme was single use gadgets. We generally try to avoid single use gadgets because we have such limited kitchen storage space, but I was reminded of one that we definitely use for cooking - our waffle iron! Before that, I was just going to post a photo of the Oxo grape cutter, a single use gadget (although not entirely, because it works for grape tomatoes too) that has changed our lives for the better over the past few months. How did we not know this existed before I saw it on Instagram?

For the challenge, I decided on the bacon cheese scallion waffle from Serious Eats, taking advantage of one of B's sick days to make something new for brunch. I stuck fairly close to the original recipe, but with substitutions of flax eggs and vegan DIY buttermilk. My proportions of the bacon and scallions were probably a little off, but I wanted to use up our scallions (and get more veggies in the dish) and I didn't feel like searching the freezer for where we put the rest of our frozen bacon.

The waffles were delicious! Definitely needed more bacon though. They were also a little too salty, so next time I think I would use much less salt, especially if adding in more bacon. Maybe more cheese, more scallions too, but I think we just like extra fillings. The whole thing came out to about $6 for the same number of very large waffles, so even if the cost got pushed up from using more bacon, it would still be a very affordable brunch for three. I would make this again.