posts - page 4 of 5
London Broil
To celebrate my recent promotion my roommate and I decided to have steak. Whole Foods was having a deal on London Broil and I remember this being in the top 3 things I enjoyed off the grill as a kid (the others being burgers and salmon), so I went ahead and got a 1.5lb piece. The key to a good London Broil is marinading it, and I only had about 3 hours so I did a quick search on the internet and found a soy sauce and garlic marinade that looked good and said for anywhere between 30mins to 24hrs. So I went ahead and mixed that up:
Pulled Buffalo Chicken Pizza
A local pizza place does a great buffalo chicken pizza so I decided to try my hand at it. I decided to go with pulled chicken because this was a saturday and I had plenty of time for slow cooking. The plan was to make two pizzas and have one with a tomato sauce and the other with more of a ranch sauce. So after swimming in the morning I started the 4 chicken breasts in the slow cooker with buffalo sauce, some garlic, butter and a package of dry ranch dressing:
Stuffed Burgers
So my roommate and I have done stuffed burgers quite a bit, but this is the first time I got around to photographing them. We always use some kind of cheese, this time it was mozzarella, but we’ve had success with cheddar and monterey jack and a few others. The thing with the stuffed burgers is they are pretty large, about 1/2lb of beef each, so be prepared. To start we mix the meat (this time we used a 3/4lb beef and 3/4lb buffalo mixture) with some minced garlic, salt, pepper, onion, breadcrumb and an egg, oh and a bit of worcestershire sauce. The measurements came from a recipe at one time, but I have long since forgotten and go by feel now. Usually with 1.5lb of meat a half onion is good, just 1 egg, a tablespoon or so of worcestershire sauce, a tablespoon of minced garlic, and add breadcrumbs little by little until everything sticks together nicely.
Mexican Pizza
So the idea here is to use soft tortillas as a base for a “pizza” that is more like an open faced taco. I used corn tortillas which fell apart pretty easily and tasted kind of weird, I think I should have stuck with flour tortillas. Anyway, the first layer I used was some chopped onion and ground beef mixed with taco seasoning.
Guacamole
Guacamole is one of those things I never tried for the longest time because it was made of all vegetables and how could that be good? Well I was wrong, guacamole is delicious. It’s also quite simple to make, you just have to make sure you get the portions right. The first time I made it (for 3 people), I used 6 avocados because I wanted some extra… well I got some extra. Like 3 whole meals worth of extra. Still delicious, but you have to eat it pretty quickly. As I said, not much to it, here is everything I used:
Cedar Plank Salmon
So after making burgers on the grill almost every week for quite a while my roommate and I decided to try cedar plank salmon after I saw it while browsing some recipes online. The idea is the cedar will impart some smoky cedary flavor to the salmon while cooking. So I head out to Home Depot to pick up some cedar planks, originally searching the lumber section, and eyeing some power tools to cut up the wood. Realizing I could easily spend over $400 on wood and power tools I probably don’t need (but might someday), I sadly head over to the grilling section and find some pre-made cedar planks for grilling. At only $8 for 2 planks it was a close thing – had they been over $10 I might have opted for the 8ft planks of cedar and a sawzall. Anyway, after the trip to home depot I headed over to whole foods to get some salmon, where they were actually selling some on cedar planks. After picking up the salmon sans planks at whole foods, I soaked the home depot planks for a couple hours (along with some corn, which is beneath them)
Pulled Pork
Pulled pork is great. I’ve wanted to make it for a while, but it is a little daunting when a recipe calls for over 8 hours of cooking, even using the slow cooker. But I planned ahead and started at 8am to let my 4lb pork shoulder cook until it was nice and tender, that was the plan at least. So here is the pork before:
Pan Pizza
s much as I love thin crust NY style pizza, I saw a “fool proof” pan pizza recipe over at serious eats and wanted to try it out. Turns out, I’m a better fool than the recipe planned for. I prepared the dough a day before, and let it sit out overnight to rise, and when I checked in the morning I still had the same size, moist, ball of something that resembled dough. Something smelled off about it, so I decided to trash it and try again with a more tried and true recipe for bread dough that I’ve used before. I’m not going to share the bread recipe because it didn’t come out tasting very good for a pizza crust, but the basic ingredients included flour, yeast, salt, sugar. After mixing them all and kneading (thank you stand mixer) I let the dough rise.
Scrambled Eggs
I recently came across Gordon Ramsey video of scarmbled eggs so I thought I would try them out his way. Start off with your eggs, and a tablespoon or 2 of butter in a pot:
Steak - Ribeye
Steak is pretty great. Of course it depends enitrely on the cut of meat and quality thereof. The cut used in this recipe was a ribeye from whole foods and cost about $26. Totally worth it for 1.5lbs of amazing steak. I suggest whole foods or some kind of butcher for your meat (I’m looking forward to kangaroo from a local butcher… but that’ll be another post). Anyway, I learned to pan sear/oven cook it from an Alton Brown video on youtube where he cooks it for about 5mins total. Basically this method involves searing it and then putting it in the oven to actually cook the inside. I have a cast iron pan that I’ve used a few times for this method and it works brilliantly. First you have to preheat the oven to 500F, and put the cast iron in there to heat up as well. My oven takes about 30-45mins to get to this temp (and even then I’m not sure it really is 500F). While this all is going on, salt and pepper your steak and add some oil to it. Don’t be shy with the salt.
Mashed Potatoes
While my stand mixer gets regular use with other things, I think I’ve used it the most to make mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes are a great side dish for many people, but I make a meal around or out of just the potatoes. For this dinner I had just a large bowl of them, and it was delicious. Anyway, start with potatoes, wash them, and slice them into about 1.5 inch cubes.
Pasta and Tomato Sauce
I eat so much pasta that my cupboard looks like I’m preparing for the apocalypse. But really I go through a pound or two a week so it only makes sense to keep 20-30lbs around. The most typical pasta meal is with tomato sauce, which I’ve recently upgraded from the straight up canned sauce thanks to my cooking class. Here are the ingredients: