My initial reaction to the Week 17 theme, from scratch, was, "But if we're doing a real home-cooked meal, it's all from scratch!" While true, the focus of the challenge was "finding a product that you'd normally buy pre-made, and going that extra step to make the thing from scratch," quoting from the weekly introduction thread on Reddit.
Although they had some suggestions there like ketchup, cream cheese, and udon, there was only one thing I wanted to make for this challenge: bread. We've been wanting to make bread from scratch for a while, and B loves bread, so homemade bread seemed like the perfect answer to a "from scratch" challenge. I even found a recipe for a focaccia that sounded delicious.
But we're in the middle of a pandemic, and everyone is baking bread.
And we don't have any yeast at home.
And the stores don't have any yeast (thanks to the nationwide shortage), outside of very expensive one-pound packages of yeast, and we do not need that much yeast unless we're going to start baking bread on a regular basis. We've never even made bread before. Who knows if we'll be any good at it? A one-pound bag of yeast just seems like a waste for a cooking project of unknown success.
So this post is more of a placeholder, a part I to acknowledge the existence of this challenge and note that we had a plan for it, and we'll have to wait to execute this plan until we get some yeast. One day, when yeast is back in the store, hopefully we'll be able to do part II of this challenge post. This, unfortunately, isn't going to be the only challenge with a placeholder on our list, but we're really going to try to get back to finishing them once the situation allows.
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Friday, April 17, 2020
Week 16 - South African
Skipping ahead to the current challenge and will fill in the posts for the other challenges later...
I was really excited that the Week 16 challenge was South African. During our WorldEats and other general restaurant exploration, we had tried quite a few South African dishes that we liked, and I thought maybe I could make something like bobotie or bunny chow for the challenge. The only real issue with that is the current pandemic. Grocery shopping is one of my favorite activities, but grocery shopping during the pandemic is not fun at all. Lines are long. With the virus everywhere, the best course of action is to pick one store, go in with a big list, get as much as you can, and get out, not visit multiple stores picking up all sorts of specialty ingredients. Also, you never know what will be sold out on any given day.
If you want to make a specific recipe these days, it's just challenging, because you don't know if you're actually going to get what you need or if there will be any good substitutions for the things you're missing, so it's better to pick something flexible or one where you already have most of what you need. Bobotie, especially since we would already need to make changes to make the bobotie egg-free, just seemed like too difficult of a task right now. Instead, I decided to try Durban chicken curry, representative of South Africa's Indian cuisine, based on a recipe I found on The Spruce Eats.
Ingredients:
The ingredients for our modified version of Durban chicken curry were:
- 2 tbsp butter ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.10)
- 1 tbsp curry powder ($0.35)
- 1 tbsp ground coriander ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp ground cumin ($0.20)
- 2 cinnamon sticks ($0.25)
- 1 onion, chopped ($0.79)
- 1 tsp ginger paste ($0.10)
- 8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped ($0.25)
- 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 1.5 lbs) ($7.05)
- 1 can diced tomatoes (undrained) ($0.99)
- 4 medium gold potatoes, diced ($1.15)
- 1.25 cups chicken stock ($0.30)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 4 scallions, chopped ($0.60)
- 1 tbsp chopped cilantro ($0.80)
- 2 cups (uncooked) brown rice ($1)
The recipe also called for whole cumin, which I skipped because we tossed our very old cumin seeds in our spice cabinet clean-out a few weeks ago, cayenne pepper, which I skipped so it wouldn't be too spicy for baby B, curry leaves, which I skipped because they don't sell them at Trader Joe's (our store of choice for our most recent stock-up), and a small rutabaga, which I skipped because they don't sell them at Trader Joe's and I forgot I needed to put a substitution on the shopping list, like parsnips. Despite not having all of these ingredients included, I think the finished product ended up true to the spirit of the curry recipe and didn't suffer without them. It ended up coming out to about $14.38 for dinner for the three of us with a little bit of rice and maybe a bowl of curry left over, which isn't too bad considering that half of that cost was the chicken by itself.
Steps:
The steps for the curry, adapted from the original recipe, were:
1. Melt butter in grapeseed oil over medium heat. Add spices and stir until fragrant, about a minute.
2. Add onions, garlic, and ginger. Cook for a few minutes until onions have softened.
3. Add chicken and brown over high heat, coating the chicken in onions and spices.
4. Add the tomatoes, stir, and cook for a few minutes.
5. Add potatoes and chicken stock. Check seasoning, and add black pepper if needed (we added a little).
6. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for about 30 minutes (making sure all the potatoes are covered by broth). Add scallions about 25 minutes in.
7. Test to make sure potatoes are fork tender, remove from heat, and add cilantro. Stir well and serve over rice.
Conclusion:
We really liked this curry, and it made our kitchen (and whole apartment, really) smell so good! I was a little concerned partway through when I was checking for taste that it would be bland and not live up to the fragrant aromas wafting around from step one of cooking, but while the flavors weren't super strong, they were really good and well-balanced. The potatoes especially picked up the cinnamon, thanks to the cinnamon sticks floating around in the broth, and added to the cozy comfort food feel of the dish. It took a little bit of time to make, somewhere between one to two hours, but that's not surprising considering the 30 minute simmer time at the end. All three of us seemed to like this, and it felt good to make something new. Even though we've been cooking almost every day (in a complete 180 from last year at this time, we've ordered delivery/takeout once for dinner since the lockdown started), I haven't actually made a new planned-out recipe in some time, and I'm glad that this was a success!
I was really excited that the Week 16 challenge was South African. During our WorldEats and other general restaurant exploration, we had tried quite a few South African dishes that we liked, and I thought maybe I could make something like bobotie or bunny chow for the challenge. The only real issue with that is the current pandemic. Grocery shopping is one of my favorite activities, but grocery shopping during the pandemic is not fun at all. Lines are long. With the virus everywhere, the best course of action is to pick one store, go in with a big list, get as much as you can, and get out, not visit multiple stores picking up all sorts of specialty ingredients. Also, you never know what will be sold out on any given day.
If you want to make a specific recipe these days, it's just challenging, because you don't know if you're actually going to get what you need or if there will be any good substitutions for the things you're missing, so it's better to pick something flexible or one where you already have most of what you need. Bobotie, especially since we would already need to make changes to make the bobotie egg-free, just seemed like too difficult of a task right now. Instead, I decided to try Durban chicken curry, representative of South Africa's Indian cuisine, based on a recipe I found on The Spruce Eats.
Ingredients:
The ingredients for our modified version of Durban chicken curry were:
- 2 tbsp butter ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.10)
- 1 tbsp curry powder ($0.35)
- 1 tbsp ground coriander ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp ground cumin ($0.20)
- 2 cinnamon sticks ($0.25)
- 1 onion, chopped ($0.79)
- 1 tsp ginger paste ($0.10)
- 8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped ($0.25)
- 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 1.5 lbs) ($7.05)
- 1 can diced tomatoes (undrained) ($0.99)
- 4 medium gold potatoes, diced ($1.15)
- 1.25 cups chicken stock ($0.30)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 4 scallions, chopped ($0.60)
- 1 tbsp chopped cilantro ($0.80)
- 2 cups (uncooked) brown rice ($1)
The recipe also called for whole cumin, which I skipped because we tossed our very old cumin seeds in our spice cabinet clean-out a few weeks ago, cayenne pepper, which I skipped so it wouldn't be too spicy for baby B, curry leaves, which I skipped because they don't sell them at Trader Joe's (our store of choice for our most recent stock-up), and a small rutabaga, which I skipped because they don't sell them at Trader Joe's and I forgot I needed to put a substitution on the shopping list, like parsnips. Despite not having all of these ingredients included, I think the finished product ended up true to the spirit of the curry recipe and didn't suffer without them. It ended up coming out to about $14.38 for dinner for the three of us with a little bit of rice and maybe a bowl of curry left over, which isn't too bad considering that half of that cost was the chicken by itself.
Steps:
The steps for the curry, adapted from the original recipe, were:
1. Melt butter in grapeseed oil over medium heat. Add spices and stir until fragrant, about a minute.
2. Add onions, garlic, and ginger. Cook for a few minutes until onions have softened.
3. Add chicken and brown over high heat, coating the chicken in onions and spices.
4. Add the tomatoes, stir, and cook for a few minutes.
5. Add potatoes and chicken stock. Check seasoning, and add black pepper if needed (we added a little).
6. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for about 30 minutes (making sure all the potatoes are covered by broth). Add scallions about 25 minutes in.
7. Test to make sure potatoes are fork tender, remove from heat, and add cilantro. Stir well and serve over rice.
Conclusion:
We really liked this curry, and it made our kitchen (and whole apartment, really) smell so good! I was a little concerned partway through when I was checking for taste that it would be bland and not live up to the fragrant aromas wafting around from step one of cooking, but while the flavors weren't super strong, they were really good and well-balanced. The potatoes especially picked up the cinnamon, thanks to the cinnamon sticks floating around in the broth, and added to the cozy comfort food feel of the dish. It took a little bit of time to make, somewhere between one to two hours, but that's not surprising considering the 30 minute simmer time at the end. All three of us seemed to like this, and it felt good to make something new. Even though we've been cooking almost every day (in a complete 180 from last year at this time, we've ordered delivery/takeout once for dinner since the lockdown started), I haven't actually made a new planned-out recipe in some time, and I'm glad that this was a success!
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Week 7 - Braising
The Week 7 challenge came up as braising, and while I knew it was a repeat of a challenge I'd done in a previous year, I wasn't unhappy about that because I remembered that experimenting with braising recipes was something I had enjoyed. Of course, that's probably because I was thinking about the beer and onion braised chicken carbonnade I made in 2014, which was actually for the Belgian challenge. That was the first time I had really intentionally braised anything, and it became the first of many, as I discovered I really liked how the dishes came out. For the actual braising challenge, I had done a Korean braised tofu that was part of our regular rotation, so not really an experiment but still a great dish.
For this challenge, I looked around for a while for something that would work for our family of three, and once I stumbled upon three cup chicken (san bei ji), I knew that had to be it. I've always been intrigued by three cup chicken, named for its focus on three main flavors - sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine, and although I've still never been able to try three cup chicken from any Taiwanese restaurant, I hoped that whatever came out of our kitchen would be a good approximation of it. The recipe I found on The Woks of Life looked amazing, so I figured that would be a good starting place.
Ingredients:
I followed the recipe for the most part, and I actually measured things here to try to get the proportions right. Of course, we made some adaptations, most notably substituting chicken thighs for chicken wings since that worked better for our little one, and omitting the red chili in the aromatics so it wasn't too spicy for baby B.
- 1 tbsp sesame oil ($0.30)
- 2 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.30)
- about 1 tbsp ginger paste ($0.20)
- 6 cloves of garlic, chopped ($0.33)
- about 1.5 lb boneless chicken thighs ($7.60)
- 1/4 cup warm water ($0)
- 1/4 cup shaoxing wine ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce ($0.15)
- 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce ($0.20)
- 2 tsp sugar ($0.10)
- 1 small batch of scallions, chopped ($0.99) *
* We intended to use both Thai basil and scallions, but neither Wegmans nor Whole Foods carried Thai basil when we visited. I probably should have known that since Whole Foods through Amazon didn't have Thai basil as an option to buy, but I thought I had remembered seeing it at Wegmans before. Alas, I was wrong, and we ended up with no Thai basil, which we think would have been great in the dish.
The chicken portion of dinner cost approximately $10.37, and when combined with our second dish (bok choy with garlic) and rice, the total was about $13.38. We didn't have any leftovers, but still not a bad price for dinner for three. The chicken thighs were the bulk of that price, but if we made this again with chicken, I'd probably just defrost some boneless skinless chicken breasts, which would drop the price by a few dollars. The original used wings, and I thought the boneless flavor equivalent would probably be chicken thighs, but prepping those fatty chicken thighs was no fun and I don't really want to do it next time when chicken breasts would work just fine.
Since the time we made this for the challenge, we've used the same recipe but made it with tofu instead and some of our modifications, adding an extra tbsp of sesame oil with the soy sauce and wine, adding a bell pepper and an onion, and using basil (regular basil, not Thai basil since we still haven't gotten a hold of that, but the internet was right and regular basil worked just fine). The total for the three cup tofu was a little over $8. It was so delicious that this may be the way we do it more often in the future!
Steps:
I generally stuck to the recipe for the steps as well to try to make this as accurate as possible, since I couldn't use any memories of the dish or its flavors as my guide. The steps were:
1. Heat wok over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tbsp grapeseed oil, ginger, and garlic. Stir the ginger and garlic in the oil for a few minutes until fragrant.
2. Add chicken and stir-fry until mostly cooked. [Note that the recipe raised the heat to high here, but our medium seemed to be pretty high, so we just left it where it was. Next time, would probably use a slightly lower heat on the aromatics and then raise it.]
3. Add 1/4 cup warm water, 1/4 cup shaoxing wine, 1 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce, and 2 tsp sugar. Stir so that all the chicken is well-coated and covered with the sauce. [Note: I would add another tbsp of sesame oil here, since that flavor was mostly overpowered at the end without it.]
4. Cover the wok and reduce heat to medium low, letting it simmer for about 20 minutes.
5. Remove cover and add scallions. Mix well. Turn the heat up to reduce the sauce, stirring the chicken the whole time so it doesn't burn. [Our sauce was almost completely reduced already, so this step did not take very long.] Add chopped up basil and remove from heat.
The actual cooking didn't take that long here, and the steps were simple to follow. As alluded to earlier, the thing that took the longest was the chicken thighs prep, cutting off the fat and slicing the meat into chunks. Not sure how it took the better part of an hour to do, other than the fact that I don't do it very often, plus these were really, really fatty chicken thighs.
Conclusion:
Three cup tofu going into the family cookbook...
We really liked the way this turned out. Is it like the three cup chicken you'd find in a Taiwanese restaurant or home kitchen? No idea, but it tasted good to us. The strongest flavor in the end was the soy sauce, which made the dish a little on the salty side, but we knew it could be worse in the sodium department considering this was the day after our falafel mix experiment. Even with all the soy sauce, it still didn't taste as salty as the falafel. The clean and light-tasting bok choy sautéed with garlic on the side was the perfect thing to offset any saltiness, and together it all worked really well. As mentioned before, we made this again with a couple of tweaks (substituting tofu, adding a little extra sesame oil, basil, bell peppers and onions), and are so happy to have another dish to add to the repertoire!
Three cup chicken and bok choy
For this challenge, I looked around for a while for something that would work for our family of three, and once I stumbled upon three cup chicken (san bei ji), I knew that had to be it. I've always been intrigued by three cup chicken, named for its focus on three main flavors - sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine, and although I've still never been able to try three cup chicken from any Taiwanese restaurant, I hoped that whatever came out of our kitchen would be a good approximation of it. The recipe I found on The Woks of Life looked amazing, so I figured that would be a good starting place.
Ingredients:
I followed the recipe for the most part, and I actually measured things here to try to get the proportions right. Of course, we made some adaptations, most notably substituting chicken thighs for chicken wings since that worked better for our little one, and omitting the red chili in the aromatics so it wasn't too spicy for baby B.
- 1 tbsp sesame oil ($0.30)
- 2 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.30)
- about 1 tbsp ginger paste ($0.20)
- 6 cloves of garlic, chopped ($0.33)
- about 1.5 lb boneless chicken thighs ($7.60)
- 1/4 cup warm water ($0)
- 1/4 cup shaoxing wine ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce ($0.15)
- 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce ($0.20)
- 2 tsp sugar ($0.10)
- 1 small batch of scallions, chopped ($0.99) *
* We intended to use both Thai basil and scallions, but neither Wegmans nor Whole Foods carried Thai basil when we visited. I probably should have known that since Whole Foods through Amazon didn't have Thai basil as an option to buy, but I thought I had remembered seeing it at Wegmans before. Alas, I was wrong, and we ended up with no Thai basil, which we think would have been great in the dish.
The chicken portion of dinner cost approximately $10.37, and when combined with our second dish (bok choy with garlic) and rice, the total was about $13.38. We didn't have any leftovers, but still not a bad price for dinner for three. The chicken thighs were the bulk of that price, but if we made this again with chicken, I'd probably just defrost some boneless skinless chicken breasts, which would drop the price by a few dollars. The original used wings, and I thought the boneless flavor equivalent would probably be chicken thighs, but prepping those fatty chicken thighs was no fun and I don't really want to do it next time when chicken breasts would work just fine.
Three cup tofu experiment
Since the time we made this for the challenge, we've used the same recipe but made it with tofu instead and some of our modifications, adding an extra tbsp of sesame oil with the soy sauce and wine, adding a bell pepper and an onion, and using basil (regular basil, not Thai basil since we still haven't gotten a hold of that, but the internet was right and regular basil worked just fine). The total for the three cup tofu was a little over $8. It was so delicious that this may be the way we do it more often in the future!
Steps:
I generally stuck to the recipe for the steps as well to try to make this as accurate as possible, since I couldn't use any memories of the dish or its flavors as my guide. The steps were:
1. Heat wok over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tbsp grapeseed oil, ginger, and garlic. Stir the ginger and garlic in the oil for a few minutes until fragrant.
2. Add chicken and stir-fry until mostly cooked. [Note that the recipe raised the heat to high here, but our medium seemed to be pretty high, so we just left it where it was. Next time, would probably use a slightly lower heat on the aromatics and then raise it.]
3. Add 1/4 cup warm water, 1/4 cup shaoxing wine, 1 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce, and 2 tsp sugar. Stir so that all the chicken is well-coated and covered with the sauce. [Note: I would add another tbsp of sesame oil here, since that flavor was mostly overpowered at the end without it.]
4. Cover the wok and reduce heat to medium low, letting it simmer for about 20 minutes.
5. Remove cover and add scallions. Mix well. Turn the heat up to reduce the sauce, stirring the chicken the whole time so it doesn't burn. [Our sauce was almost completely reduced already, so this step did not take very long.] Add chopped up basil and remove from heat.
The actual cooking didn't take that long here, and the steps were simple to follow. As alluded to earlier, the thing that took the longest was the chicken thighs prep, cutting off the fat and slicing the meat into chunks. Not sure how it took the better part of an hour to do, other than the fact that I don't do it very often, plus these were really, really fatty chicken thighs.
Conclusion:
We really liked the way this turned out. Is it like the three cup chicken you'd find in a Taiwanese restaurant or home kitchen? No idea, but it tasted good to us. The strongest flavor in the end was the soy sauce, which made the dish a little on the salty side, but we knew it could be worse in the sodium department considering this was the day after our falafel mix experiment. Even with all the soy sauce, it still didn't taste as salty as the falafel. The clean and light-tasting bok choy sautéed with garlic on the side was the perfect thing to offset any saltiness, and together it all worked really well. As mentioned before, we made this again with a couple of tweaks (substituting tofu, adding a little extra sesame oil, basil, bell peppers and onions), and are so happy to have another dish to add to the repertoire!
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Week 6 - Jamaican
The last time the 52 week cooking challenge came up with the Jamaican theme was back in 2014, the first year I participated. I was so excited for it and made jerk chicken with rice and peas. We still went out for Jamaican food a fair amount at that time, and our conclusion was that, while we were glad we tried to make it ourselves, it was easier and tastier to just continue to go out for professionally-made jerk chicken. Since I didn't want to repeat that experiment or make jerk anything again for this challenge, I decided to try something different and make a black eyed pea curry based on a recipe I found on The Curious Chickpea.
The ingredients for our adapted recipe were:
- 1 yellow onion, chopped ($0.40)
- 6 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.33)
- 1 lb of mini yellow potatoes, peeled and chopped ($3.49)
- 2 cans of black eyed peas, drained and rinsed ($2.78)
- grapeseed oil for sautéing ($0.25)
- a couple tsp of dried thyme ($0.20)
- 2.5 tbsp of mild Jamaican curry powder ($1.70)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste ($0.05)
- 1 can of coconut milk ($1.50)
The recipe called for 1 cup of coconut milk, but I used the entire can, (a) figuring that would dull the heat a little more for B, (b) because I never know what to do with the remaining coconut milk and it always ends up in the trash, and (c) because this current coconut milk we have doesn't mix in the can no matter how much you try to shake it or stir it, so you almost have to use the whole thing. The recipe also included 1/4 cup of lime juice at the end, which I had been expecting to do (it's even in the ingredients photo!), but by the time the food was ready, everyone was so hungry and I was in such a rush that I just forgot. Oops.
Anyway, we made plain brown rice alongside this, as well as some garlic zucchini, so the total for the recipe was $15.70 ($10.70 for the curry, $2 for the rice, and $3 for the zucchini, all approximate amounts). Considering the meal was vegan, I was expecting the final cost to be less than this, instead of more than the rice challenge we did for week 5 that included chicken sausage and cheese. It did make a lot of food though, and we had enough curry left over for other meals, but I still thought it would be far less.
The steps for making the curry were:
- prepare rice so that it's done when curry is finished
- prep (onions, garlic, potatoes)
- add oil to pot over medium heat, and add onion and garlic, cooking until soft
- add thyme, curry powder, salt, and pepper, and stir to coat, cook until fragrant (not long)
- add potatoes and cook for another minute or so (ours got a little dry here so I added a little bit more oil. Even though I don't really like doing that in the middle of the cooking process, I didn't want everything to burn)
- add black eyed peas and 2 cups of water
- partially cover, bring to simmer and cook until potatoes are tender
- remove cover and add coconut milk
- cook with lid off until liquid reduces
- remove from heat and add lime juice and salt to taste (forgot to do this...)
Overall, we thought the curry was okay. The curry powder we got had a decent amount of heat in it considering that cayenne was the last ingredient, but despite all the spices listed, didn't have as much flavor as I was expecting, even before the coconut milk. (Another strange thing was that, even though the curry flavors themselves seemed a little dulled after the coconut milk, the underlying heat still persisted a little bit, which was not what we wanted for B.) The final product, other than that mild underlying heat, turned out a little bit bland, maybe from using the whole can of coconut milk, but even if we had used less, I still don't know how much we would have liked it. It still wouldn't have been as good as any of the curry we've gotten out at restaurants, which may be part of our problem, the fact that we've had excellent Jamaican food over the years and that's our basis for comparison. No matter the recipe, I'm not sure anything coming out of our kitchen is going to compare to some of that deliciousness. We probably wouldn't make this again, but we're going to have to figure out something else to do with that curry powder in the future, since it wasn't cheap!
The ingredients for our adapted recipe were:
- 1 yellow onion, chopped ($0.40)
- 6 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.33)
- 1 lb of mini yellow potatoes, peeled and chopped ($3.49)
- 2 cans of black eyed peas, drained and rinsed ($2.78)
- grapeseed oil for sautéing ($0.25)
- a couple tsp of dried thyme ($0.20)
- 2.5 tbsp of mild Jamaican curry powder ($1.70)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste ($0.05)
- 1 can of coconut milk ($1.50)
The recipe called for 1 cup of coconut milk, but I used the entire can, (a) figuring that would dull the heat a little more for B, (b) because I never know what to do with the remaining coconut milk and it always ends up in the trash, and (c) because this current coconut milk we have doesn't mix in the can no matter how much you try to shake it or stir it, so you almost have to use the whole thing. The recipe also included 1/4 cup of lime juice at the end, which I had been expecting to do (it's even in the ingredients photo!), but by the time the food was ready, everyone was so hungry and I was in such a rush that I just forgot. Oops.
Anyway, we made plain brown rice alongside this, as well as some garlic zucchini, so the total for the recipe was $15.70 ($10.70 for the curry, $2 for the rice, and $3 for the zucchini, all approximate amounts). Considering the meal was vegan, I was expecting the final cost to be less than this, instead of more than the rice challenge we did for week 5 that included chicken sausage and cheese. It did make a lot of food though, and we had enough curry left over for other meals, but I still thought it would be far less.
The steps for making the curry were:
- prepare rice so that it's done when curry is finished
- prep (onions, garlic, potatoes)
- add oil to pot over medium heat, and add onion and garlic, cooking until soft
- add thyme, curry powder, salt, and pepper, and stir to coat, cook until fragrant (not long)
- add potatoes and cook for another minute or so (ours got a little dry here so I added a little bit more oil. Even though I don't really like doing that in the middle of the cooking process, I didn't want everything to burn)
- add black eyed peas and 2 cups of water
- partially cover, bring to simmer and cook until potatoes are tender
- remove cover and add coconut milk
- cook with lid off until liquid reduces
- remove from heat and add lime juice and salt to taste (forgot to do this...)
Overall, we thought the curry was okay. The curry powder we got had a decent amount of heat in it considering that cayenne was the last ingredient, but despite all the spices listed, didn't have as much flavor as I was expecting, even before the coconut milk. (Another strange thing was that, even though the curry flavors themselves seemed a little dulled after the coconut milk, the underlying heat still persisted a little bit, which was not what we wanted for B.) The final product, other than that mild underlying heat, turned out a little bit bland, maybe from using the whole can of coconut milk, but even if we had used less, I still don't know how much we would have liked it. It still wouldn't have been as good as any of the curry we've gotten out at restaurants, which may be part of our problem, the fact that we've had excellent Jamaican food over the years and that's our basis for comparison. No matter the recipe, I'm not sure anything coming out of our kitchen is going to compare to some of that deliciousness. We probably wouldn't make this again, but we're going to have to figure out something else to do with that curry powder in the future, since it wasn't cheap!
Monday, February 17, 2020
Falafel Mix
We made a falafel mix from Trader Joe's recently, one that was sitting in our pantry for over a year, mostly because it didn't expire until March 2020 and we had so much else to eat in the meantime. We had been putting together a lot of pantry meals this month since we had some long stretches without grocery shopping, and the falafel mix sounded like the perfect thing to try out for a Mediterranean dinner, paired with some other TJ's sides that'll be in another post at some point - the dolmas and the giant white beans.
I hadn't really paid much attention to the nutritional content of the falafel mix when we bought it, and since then, only checked the ingredients to make sure there was no egg (there isn't any; it's vegan) and we could give it to B. We figured that we would make the whole box, and if there were any falafel left over, it would be good for lunch. I started mixing, and since I had nothing else to do, started reading the nutritional facts. My jaw dropped when I got to the sodium number. That couldn't possibly be right, could it?
(Disclaimer: Nothing in this post is intended to be health or nutrition advice, but just our take on what was provided on the package.)
One serving size according to the box was 180 calories and 810 milligrams of sodium. 810 milligrams of sodium?! That's a lot in my book, especially considering a serving size is 1/3 cup of mix. The box has 9 servings (3 cups of mix), which meant that the entire box was 1620 calories and 7290 milligrams of sodium. 1620 calories isn't nothing either, but if you divide that by 3 (two adults, one toddler, and maybe some leftovers), that's 540 calories each, so not that terrible. But even if you divide that sodium number into thirds, that's 2430 milligrams of sodium and much, much more than any person should really be eating in a day (not my judgment; it surpasses the American Heart Association's recommended daily max) and far more than any toddler should be ingesting. Sometimes things with high sodium counts on the package don't taste that salty though, so I hoped for the best. I don't think I realized when I picked up the box at the store that the sodium content could be this high. I am so glad the new FDA labels this year recommend giving the numbers for the entire package and can't wait to start seeing those become more common.
Putting together the falafel mix was easy. One cup of mix, 3/4 cup of water, mix well, let it sit for about 45 minutes, shape the falafel into balls or patties, bake for 25 minutes, done. Far easier than making falafel on your own from scratch. They smelled so good as they baked in the oven, and when I pulled them out after about 25 minutes, they had puffed up nicely and texturally were dense but soft. (We weren't going for crispy and opted not to fry them.)
Then we tried them, and they were more salty-tasting than we thought they would be, even knowing the sodium content. All we could taste was salt. So much salt. All those delicious spices we could smell when they were baking? Gone and overpowered by salt. We had an entire tray full of baked falafel patties, and after having a few each, couldn't bear to eat any more. We put on some hummus to try to kill the salt, but it didn't work. We unfortunately didn't have any yogurt or tzatziki to see if that would work better. The entire time we ate the falafel, we tried to figure out what we could possibly eat it with that would counteract the insane amount of saltiness, and all we came up with were lightly dressed salads and plain yogurt. They were just unbearably salty, and if I hadn't bought them so long ago, I would have considered bringing them back for a refund. They were that inedible for us.
The other thing I did while eating the salty, salty, salty falafel was read every review of the falafel mix I could find on the internet to see if there was a general agreement that they were salty. I know I probably cook with less salt than the average American, and even more so now, cooking for a toddler, but I was still surprised how in the minority we were on our opinion. Most people never even mentioned the salt, the majority of people raved and loved the mix overall, and I think I found maybe three people who thought they were salty. In almost every case, other people responded that they did not find them salty at all, or that maybe there were just abnormally salty packages, something I find unlikely considering that the package was actually intended to have over 7000 milligrams of sodium. I don't even know the last time we didn't finish a meal and tossed it, because we just don't do that and we operate under the general principle that most things are salvageable, but we just couldn't finish these. We couldn't even eat 2/3 of them.
Buy again? A very sad but enthusiastic no. We wanted to like these so much, since a simple falafel bake would make for such an easy weeknight dinner. But unless the nutritional facts have changed since we bought them (which would account for all the raves if true, and I'll update this post if that's the case), I can't see us getting these again.
I hadn't really paid much attention to the nutritional content of the falafel mix when we bought it, and since then, only checked the ingredients to make sure there was no egg (there isn't any; it's vegan) and we could give it to B. We figured that we would make the whole box, and if there were any falafel left over, it would be good for lunch. I started mixing, and since I had nothing else to do, started reading the nutritional facts. My jaw dropped when I got to the sodium number. That couldn't possibly be right, could it?
(Disclaimer: Nothing in this post is intended to be health or nutrition advice, but just our take on what was provided on the package.)
One serving size according to the box was 180 calories and 810 milligrams of sodium. 810 milligrams of sodium?! That's a lot in my book, especially considering a serving size is 1/3 cup of mix. The box has 9 servings (3 cups of mix), which meant that the entire box was 1620 calories and 7290 milligrams of sodium. 1620 calories isn't nothing either, but if you divide that by 3 (two adults, one toddler, and maybe some leftovers), that's 540 calories each, so not that terrible. But even if you divide that sodium number into thirds, that's 2430 milligrams of sodium and much, much more than any person should really be eating in a day (not my judgment; it surpasses the American Heart Association's recommended daily max) and far more than any toddler should be ingesting. Sometimes things with high sodium counts on the package don't taste that salty though, so I hoped for the best. I don't think I realized when I picked up the box at the store that the sodium content could be this high. I am so glad the new FDA labels this year recommend giving the numbers for the entire package and can't wait to start seeing those become more common.
Putting together the falafel mix was easy. One cup of mix, 3/4 cup of water, mix well, let it sit for about 45 minutes, shape the falafel into balls or patties, bake for 25 minutes, done. Far easier than making falafel on your own from scratch. They smelled so good as they baked in the oven, and when I pulled them out after about 25 minutes, they had puffed up nicely and texturally were dense but soft. (We weren't going for crispy and opted not to fry them.)
Then we tried them, and they were more salty-tasting than we thought they would be, even knowing the sodium content. All we could taste was salt. So much salt. All those delicious spices we could smell when they were baking? Gone and overpowered by salt. We had an entire tray full of baked falafel patties, and after having a few each, couldn't bear to eat any more. We put on some hummus to try to kill the salt, but it didn't work. We unfortunately didn't have any yogurt or tzatziki to see if that would work better. The entire time we ate the falafel, we tried to figure out what we could possibly eat it with that would counteract the insane amount of saltiness, and all we came up with were lightly dressed salads and plain yogurt. They were just unbearably salty, and if I hadn't bought them so long ago, I would have considered bringing them back for a refund. They were that inedible for us.
The other thing I did while eating the salty, salty, salty falafel was read every review of the falafel mix I could find on the internet to see if there was a general agreement that they were salty. I know I probably cook with less salt than the average American, and even more so now, cooking for a toddler, but I was still surprised how in the minority we were on our opinion. Most people never even mentioned the salt, the majority of people raved and loved the mix overall, and I think I found maybe three people who thought they were salty. In almost every case, other people responded that they did not find them salty at all, or that maybe there were just abnormally salty packages, something I find unlikely considering that the package was actually intended to have over 7000 milligrams of sodium. I don't even know the last time we didn't finish a meal and tossed it, because we just don't do that and we operate under the general principle that most things are salvageable, but we just couldn't finish these. We couldn't even eat 2/3 of them.
Buy again? A very sad but enthusiastic no. We wanted to like these so much, since a simple falafel bake would make for such an easy weeknight dinner. But unless the nutritional facts have changed since we bought them (which would account for all the raves if true, and I'll update this post if that's the case), I can't see us getting these again.
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Week 5 - Rice
The week 5 challenge theme, rice, was actually one of the more difficult ones for me as far as choosing a recipe to try. We eat a fair amount of rice at home, but how could I make rice the central ingredient instead of just an accompaniment? Risotto was the first thing that came to mind, but considering I'm currently in physical therapy so that I can figure out how to stand longer without pain, something where I needed to be standing at the stove for an extended period of time was just not a great option. I looked and looked until I found a recipe that sounded delicious and where rice seemed to be a main part of the dish instead of the side, and I ended up deciding on cheesy Italian rice with sausage from Delish. It wasn't an especially complicated dish, but it sounded like it would work for us.
The ingredients for the rice dish, as adapted from the Delish original, were:
- 2 cups brown rice (measured before cooking) ($2)
- olive oil for sautéing and drizzling ($0.20)
- 1 yellow onion ($0.79)
- 2 spoonfuls of minced garlic ($0.25)
- 14 oz mild Italian chicken sausage ($5.99)
- 2 zucchini ($1.47)
- a few handfuls of cremini mushrooms ($2.19)
- 1/3 batch of parsley ($0.50)
- shredded parmesan cheese ($2)
- lemon juice to taste ($0.15)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
We made some modifications from the original, like opting for zucchini and mushrooms instead of spinach since those were easier for B to eat, choosing parmesan over mozzarella and cheddar because it was better for my lactose intolerance issues, using more sausage, and adding parsley. The total cost of our recipe was $15.59. Not cheap, but not bad at all for dinner for three hungry people with enough leftovers for one lunch.
The steps for making the rice were:
1. Make the rice in the rice cooker. [Note: We made two cups of rice in our rice cooker, but didn't end up using 100% of it. We kept a little bit on the side in case B didn't like this and wanted some plain rice, but at the end of the meal, it was still in the rice cooker so we just finished it. We could have added all of it though, so I'm counting it all.]
2. Heat olive oil in large pot. Add onion and garlic, and cook until soft.
3. Add sausage, crumble while cooking it, and cook until fully cooked through.
4. Add zucchini and mushrooms, and cook until both are soft enough to eat.
5. Add cooked rice into the pot along with the cheese. Stir well. Add parsley, stir, and remove from heat.
6. Season with olive oil, lemon juice, and black pepper to taste.
Overall, we really liked this one. It was our first time using the 365 brand mild Italian chicken sausage, and despite the fact that it contained over 3000 milligrams of sodium according to the package, the dish was somehow not incredibly salty. I didn't add any extra salt because of the sausage's sodium content, but it wasn't really that salty at all. It was also probably a little less cheesy than the original, since we used parmesan instead of super-melty cheddar and mozzarella, but we were okay with that.
As far as the challenge, the rice was definitely the center of attention, mostly because there was so much rice. This probably could be made with less rice to let the other ingredients shine more, but considering we were hungry that night, it was probably good that we used as much as we did. Making the dish was fairly simple and easy, and if you already had cooked rice (and didn't have to wait two hours for it to be ready in the rice cooker), it could be a good, quick work night meal. We would make this again.
The ingredients for the rice dish, as adapted from the Delish original, were:
- 2 cups brown rice (measured before cooking) ($2)
- olive oil for sautéing and drizzling ($0.20)
- 1 yellow onion ($0.79)
- 2 spoonfuls of minced garlic ($0.25)
- 14 oz mild Italian chicken sausage ($5.99)
- 2 zucchini ($1.47)
- a few handfuls of cremini mushrooms ($2.19)
- 1/3 batch of parsley ($0.50)
- shredded parmesan cheese ($2)
- lemon juice to taste ($0.15)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
We made some modifications from the original, like opting for zucchini and mushrooms instead of spinach since those were easier for B to eat, choosing parmesan over mozzarella and cheddar because it was better for my lactose intolerance issues, using more sausage, and adding parsley. The total cost of our recipe was $15.59. Not cheap, but not bad at all for dinner for three hungry people with enough leftovers for one lunch.
The steps for making the rice were:
1. Make the rice in the rice cooker. [Note: We made two cups of rice in our rice cooker, but didn't end up using 100% of it. We kept a little bit on the side in case B didn't like this and wanted some plain rice, but at the end of the meal, it was still in the rice cooker so we just finished it. We could have added all of it though, so I'm counting it all.]
2. Heat olive oil in large pot. Add onion and garlic, and cook until soft.
3. Add sausage, crumble while cooking it, and cook until fully cooked through.
4. Add zucchini and mushrooms, and cook until both are soft enough to eat.
5. Add cooked rice into the pot along with the cheese. Stir well. Add parsley, stir, and remove from heat.
6. Season with olive oil, lemon juice, and black pepper to taste.
Overall, we really liked this one. It was our first time using the 365 brand mild Italian chicken sausage, and despite the fact that it contained over 3000 milligrams of sodium according to the package, the dish was somehow not incredibly salty. I didn't add any extra salt because of the sausage's sodium content, but it wasn't really that salty at all. It was also probably a little less cheesy than the original, since we used parmesan instead of super-melty cheddar and mozzarella, but we were okay with that.
As far as the challenge, the rice was definitely the center of attention, mostly because there was so much rice. This probably could be made with less rice to let the other ingredients shine more, but considering we were hungry that night, it was probably good that we used as much as we did. Making the dish was fairly simple and easy, and if you already had cooked rice (and didn't have to wait two hours for it to be ready in the rice cooker), it could be a good, quick work night meal. We would make this again.
Friday, January 31, 2020
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.
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.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
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.
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.
Sunday, January 19, 2020
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.
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.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
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!)
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!)
Sunday, January 5, 2020
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.
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!
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!
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Our Year in Food: 2019
Where has 2019 gone?! Despite our best intentions to post more this year, we can count the number of posts on two hands. Hopefully next year we'll be better at repaying our sleep deficit, managing our time, and sharing our thoughts and stories here, because a lot of time has gone by since we've been consistent about this, and just speaking for myself, I really need to get back into the habit of writing regularly for my brain's sake!
2019 was an interesting year in the food department, introducing baby B to solid food for the first time and learning to navigate our food exploration journey as a family of three. The first half of the year had a pretty high delivery bill, but by the end of the year, we were back to meal planning. I'm even considering going back to (a selective version of) the 52 week cooking challenge next year. Anyway, here's our year in review, since it was largely undocumented on this blog.
The first restaurant meal we ate in 2019: We didn't go out to restaurants that much until the spring since baby B was so small and it was still flu season, but the first restaurant meal out was at Blaze Pizza in mid-January. First delivery was a delicious Turkish dinner from Istanbul Bay with lots of dips, spreads, and adana.
The first home-cooked meal we ate in 2019: Technically, the first thing we cooked was an egg and salsa scramble with some Trader Joe's hash browns, but that's not a very exciting answer. As I wrote in an end of February post about a new gnocchi recipe, we hadn't done much beyond basic cooking or familiar recipes until that dish. We largely prioritized convenience until the late summer and fall, which coincided with when we started to cook dinners for all three of us, which are hopefully more nutritious and less processed. It also takes a little more thought now not just about nutrition, but because we can't rely on easy egg-based dinners.
The last restaurant meal we ate in 2019: Family lunch at Qdoba. They have a quesadilla kids meal that is perfect for baby B, and we got our usual bowls, piled high with rice, chicken, veggies, and guacamole. Last takeout/delivery of the year was a sandwich and lunch bowl from the Family Store in Bay Ridge, one of our favorite spots.
The last home-cooked meal we ate in 2019: Chinese home cooking! A made his family's scallion pancakes along with some homestyle chicken with peppers and onions. We haven't been able to explore much Chinese food with baby B (more on allergies below), but he loved his dinner, so it looks like we'll be doing more Chinese home cooking in the new year!
# of different restaurants we tried in 2019 (together and separate): 107 spots in-person, 45 takeout and delivery places.
Places explored (outside the NYC metro area): Philadelphia, PA. We mostly stayed local this year.
Tofu salad from Rangoon in Philadelphia
Most frequented restaurant of 2019 (together): The most times we ate at any given restaurant this year was three, and that was four different places - two Chinese restaurants for family dinners (Affable Eatery and Mang Tang Hung), Qdoba, and Tairyo Japanese Fusion. As far as takeout and delivery go, two spots local to us - Pier 69 Market and Grand Sichuan House - led the pack.
Salmon teriyaki lunch special from Tairyo
Progress on WorldEats challenge: We didn't write any more posts for WorldEats this year, but continued to explore when we could. So the count is still 58/196, but we've been to more. Next year, hopefully, will bring at least some new posts on this front.
Favorite overall meal of 2019: Our first visit to Saravanaa Bhavan in Murray Hill with baby B in the fall. We were just going out for dinner and planning to give him some cereal and puffs, but while there, we thought that maybe we'd try giving him some uthappam since it's fairly soft, even though the one we ordered was covered in tons of onions and peas. He absolutely loved it and kept wanting more, so we've been back several times since then, each time amazed by his love for all the new foods (and also his tolerance for spice at such a young age). It helped that it's a restaurant that doesn't have any eggs in the kitchen, since baby B is allergic. It's hard dining out, especially at small spots, when you have no idea how a kitchen is set up, whether anyone really understands how to handle food allergies (we've learned from many family dinners out at Chinese restaurants that there really are some significant barriers with that), and how much of a risk cross-contamination is. We're thankful that we've been able to find places to go that let us still explore as a family but also keep B safe.
Uthappam
As A put it when we were discussing our favorite meal of the year for this year, "We've had so many amazing eating experiences, and everything is new for him. For him, everything is brand new, and seeing that excitement and that joy for him makes this all worth it, because we've done most of these things already on our own. Food is such an important part of our lives before him. For him to love and appreciate it as much as we do, it's a beautiful thing." That's definitely what we found as we dined out at Saravanaa that first time and every time after, and that's what made this meal so special for us as a family.
Can't believe it's the eve of a new decade. Hoping 2020 brings everyone health, happiness, and delicious food!
2019 was an interesting year in the food department, introducing baby B to solid food for the first time and learning to navigate our food exploration journey as a family of three. The first half of the year had a pretty high delivery bill, but by the end of the year, we were back to meal planning. I'm even considering going back to (a selective version of) the 52 week cooking challenge next year. Anyway, here's our year in review, since it was largely undocumented on this blog.
The first restaurant meal we ate in 2019: We didn't go out to restaurants that much until the spring since baby B was so small and it was still flu season, but the first restaurant meal out was at Blaze Pizza in mid-January. First delivery was a delicious Turkish dinner from Istanbul Bay with lots of dips, spreads, and adana.
The first home-cooked meal we ate in 2019: Technically, the first thing we cooked was an egg and salsa scramble with some Trader Joe's hash browns, but that's not a very exciting answer. As I wrote in an end of February post about a new gnocchi recipe, we hadn't done much beyond basic cooking or familiar recipes until that dish. We largely prioritized convenience until the late summer and fall, which coincided with when we started to cook dinners for all three of us, which are hopefully more nutritious and less processed. It also takes a little more thought now not just about nutrition, but because we can't rely on easy egg-based dinners.
The last restaurant meal we ate in 2019: Family lunch at Qdoba. They have a quesadilla kids meal that is perfect for baby B, and we got our usual bowls, piled high with rice, chicken, veggies, and guacamole. Last takeout/delivery of the year was a sandwich and lunch bowl from the Family Store in Bay Ridge, one of our favorite spots.
The last home-cooked meal we ate in 2019: Chinese home cooking! A made his family's scallion pancakes along with some homestyle chicken with peppers and onions. We haven't been able to explore much Chinese food with baby B (more on allergies below), but he loved his dinner, so it looks like we'll be doing more Chinese home cooking in the new year!
# of different restaurants we tried in 2019 (together and separate): 107 spots in-person, 45 takeout and delivery places.
Places explored (outside the NYC metro area): Philadelphia, PA. We mostly stayed local this year.
Tofu salad from Rangoon in Philadelphia
Most frequented restaurant of 2019 (together): The most times we ate at any given restaurant this year was three, and that was four different places - two Chinese restaurants for family dinners (Affable Eatery and Mang Tang Hung), Qdoba, and Tairyo Japanese Fusion. As far as takeout and delivery go, two spots local to us - Pier 69 Market and Grand Sichuan House - led the pack.
Salmon teriyaki lunch special from Tairyo
Progress on WorldEats challenge: We didn't write any more posts for WorldEats this year, but continued to explore when we could. So the count is still 58/196, but we've been to more. Next year, hopefully, will bring at least some new posts on this front.
Favorite overall meal of 2019: Our first visit to Saravanaa Bhavan in Murray Hill with baby B in the fall. We were just going out for dinner and planning to give him some cereal and puffs, but while there, we thought that maybe we'd try giving him some uthappam since it's fairly soft, even though the one we ordered was covered in tons of onions and peas. He absolutely loved it and kept wanting more, so we've been back several times since then, each time amazed by his love for all the new foods (and also his tolerance for spice at such a young age). It helped that it's a restaurant that doesn't have any eggs in the kitchen, since baby B is allergic. It's hard dining out, especially at small spots, when you have no idea how a kitchen is set up, whether anyone really understands how to handle food allergies (we've learned from many family dinners out at Chinese restaurants that there really are some significant barriers with that), and how much of a risk cross-contamination is. We're thankful that we've been able to find places to go that let us still explore as a family but also keep B safe.
Uthappam
As A put it when we were discussing our favorite meal of the year for this year, "We've had so many amazing eating experiences, and everything is new for him. For him, everything is brand new, and seeing that excitement and that joy for him makes this all worth it, because we've done most of these things already on our own. Food is such an important part of our lives before him. For him to love and appreciate it as much as we do, it's a beautiful thing." That's definitely what we found as we dined out at Saravanaa that first time and every time after, and that's what made this meal so special for us as a family.
Can't believe it's the eve of a new decade. Hoping 2020 brings everyone health, happiness, and delicious food!
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