Pages

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Kitchenventory

Yup, I made up a new word: kitchenventory. This is my list of stuff to keep in the kitchen or at least keep tabs on (for example, we don't need to always have beer brats in the fridge, but I use them pretty often, so I need to know whether we have some in the fridge or if I need to pick some up).

I've broken the list down into where things go in the kitchen: cabinet, fridge, freezer, counter top, and spice rack. There's also the miscellaneous list (for non-food items like foil and paper towels) and the non-kitchen list (for things like cat food and cat litter and toilet paper).

Cabinet
dry pasta, rice, flour, sugar, brown sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, bouillon (chicken, beef, and vegetable), tortillas, hot sauce, vanilla, vinegar, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, bbq sauce, onion soup mix, brown gravy mix, syrup, Pam, sriracha, Bisquick, canned pineapple

Refrigerator
Always: butter, Parmesan, wonton wrappers, wine (white and red)
Sometimes: chicken breasts, ground beef, stew meat, pork tenderloins, bacon, sour cream, bell peppers, carrots, raw spinach, green onions, cheese, zucchini, beer brats, milk, eggs, mushrooms, cucumbers

Freezer
peas, edamame, spinach, corn

Countertop
potatoes, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, avocado, apples, vegetable oil, olive oil, sesame oil

Spice Rack
garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, cumin, salt & pepper, cayenne, basil, oregano, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes

Miscellaneous
aluminum foil, slow cooker liners, dish soap, dishwasher detergent, paper towels, Ziploc (quart and sandwich sizes)

Non-kitchen
cat food, cat litter, toilet paper, naproxen, Tylenol, cleaning products, toothpaste (and toothbrushes), laundry detergent

I'm sure that changes will be made (additions, removals, replacements) but this looks pretty solid to me so far. If I had enough of these ingredients in the kitchen, I could feed us for at least a month and not get bored with food.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

French Onion Soup


French Onion Soup

Ingredients
3 large yellow onions (slice 'em up)
4 Tbsp butter
1 cup white wine (I used pinot grigio)
42 oz beef broth
Salt and pepper
bread
shredded cheese (I used Gouda)

Equipment
slow-cooker, skillet, stove

Instructions
Melt the butter in the skillet. Add onions and saute until they're soft and a little bit browned. Add the wine. Pour it into the slow-cooker with the beef broth, and a dash of salt and pepper. Cook on low for 4-5 hours. Toast the bread lightly. Serve in bowls with bread on top, cheese on top of that, and add a little more soup on top of the cheese to melt it all together.

Yields
4-6 bowls of soup

Total time
4.5 hours: About 15 minutes of prep, 4 hours in the slow-cooker, 10 minutes to finish off

Cleanup rating 4/5
Slow-cooker recipes always have higher cleanup ratings. We didn't like this enough to keep the leftovers, so I strained the liquid out of it with a colander into the sink, and threw out the remaining onion pieces. Plus you have more dishes than you normally get from a slow-cooker recipe: skillet, knife and cutting board, and the five billion tears from cutting up so much onion at once.

Difficulty rating 3/10
There are many steps, but none of them are particularly difficult. You do need to try to get the onion slices approximately the same size for even cooking, but that's probably the trickiest part.

Flavor rating 4/10
Meh. I don't really know what went wrong with it, but it just wasn't very good. The wine flavor was pretty strong, which is not what I want out of a French onion soup. I think that was the biggest problem. I would cut down on the wine.

Adjustability: low
There isn't much to French onion soup. There's onions, liquid, then bread and cheese. It's rare for "peasant food" to not be very adjustable, but this one doesn't have much of anywhere to go. Different onions, different wine, different broth, different bread, different cheese, but they're all the same basic ingredients. For what it's worth, the gouda worked really well, even though the original recipe suggested Swiss.

Make it with...
I made it with beer mushrooms, sauteed beer brats with garlic, and potatoes. It could be its own meal, or go with all sorts of things.

Beer Mushrooms

You know what's awesome? Beer. You know what else is awesome? Mushrooms. But guess what wasn't double-awesome? These beer mushrooms. They were okay.

Beer + mushrooms = beer mushrooms

That's them, on the right, with beer brats and potatoes.

Ingredients
8 oz mushrooms
2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup beer
salt and pepper

Equipment
skillet, stove

Instructions
Melt butter in a skillet. Add mushrooms. Add beer. Cook for about 30 minutes, letting the mushrooms absorb all the beer. Salt and pepper to taste.

Yields
3-4 servings

Total Time
about 30 minutes

Cleanup rating 2/5
The thing about making something with a lot of butter and leaving it in the pan while you eat dinner is that it gets that fatty stuff all over the pan. I think it's kind of gross, but it's easy to clean up.

Difficulty rating 2/10
Patience factors into difficulty, which is the only reason this isn't a 1/10.

Flavor rating 3/10
Meh. I like mushrooms. I like beer. (At least, I like the beer I used for this.) I didn't really like this.

Adjustability: low
Use a different beer (the original recipe recommended a stout, maybe that was part of my problem) or use different mushrooms, maybe add some other herbs/seasonings, but that's about all you can do.

Make it with...
I made this to go along with French onion soup, sauteed beer brats with garlic, and potatoes (they were sliced this time to make them cook a little faster). You could make them with just about anything... chicken, pork, beef, vegetarian meals, whatever.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Caesar Salad

You may be saying, "Alex, you haven't posted in a couple weeks, and here you bring us a salad? That's not cooking." To that, I say: I can't hear you, and calm your face, because this salad was delicious.


Birk picked up Ken's Steakhouse creamy caesar dressing a while back, and it's now my favorite Caesar dressing in a bottle. (The best Caesar anywhere is the one at The Melting Pot, but I don't dare try to copy it... I just eat it once a year and love it.) It's a pretty big bottle, so you might see Caesar show up again sometime on here.

Caesar Salad

Ingredients
romaine lettuce
croutons (ours are Parmesan Caesar)
bacon
chicken (got a rotisserie chicken, rosemary & garlic)
Parmesan cheese
Caesar dressing

Equipment
colander or salad spinner, cutting board and knife, microwave if your bacon isn't cooked, bowls

Instructions
You've made a salad before, right? Wash and pat dry your lettuce (I hate a watery Caesar, and it can make your croutons soggy, which is just the worst) and divide it into bowls. Cut up your chicken into bite-size pieces. Microwave your bacon according to package instructions. Assemble salads. Smile.

Yields
Depends on how much of each ingredient you use, of course.

Total time
10 minutes

Cleanup rating 1/5
You aren't even cooking. Absolute maximum of dishes to clean is your colander or salad spinner, cutting board, knife, maybe a plate you cooked bacon on, and your bowls/forks.

Difficulty rating 1/10
Even with the required skill of knowing how to efficiently dissect a rotisserie chicken (which I left up to Birk while I did the other prep), it doesn't get much easier than this.

Flavor rating 7/10
It's a classic dish. Chicken Caesar salad. Can't go wrong.

Adjustability: high
Use steak, shrimp, turkey, tofu, or nothing instead of chicken and bacon. Use a different type of lettuce. Instead of croutons, use nuts or Parmesan crisps or some other crunchy little thing. Try different dressings (although then I guess it's not so much a Caesar...)

Make it with...
Everything. With the chicken in it, it's a fine entree on its own. If it hadn't been so quick and I hadn't been so hungry, I would have roasted some potatoes and onions with it, or sauteed chicken breasts to go alongside it instead of cutting up rotisserie chicken to put on top of it. Go nuts.