As a food-eater, I love eating meat, but as a food-cooker, meat is actually kinda boring. So I decided to try a not-boring meat dish. (Well, other than that other one.) And I figured meatloaf was the meatiest non-boring dish I could think of. So I made that.
There’s a running joke that I’ve wanted to make falafel waffle only because it rhymes with itself and is fun to say. Well, this month, the joke comes to life. I finally learned how to make falafel, and then I made it into a waffle.
Saturday, February 27, 2016 – So when I first started doing ingredient challenges, the rule was that the people who issued the challenges had to eat whatever I cooked for them. (This was to prevent people from choosing the most ridiculous ingredients and make sure they picked things that people would actually eat.) That and, whatever I came up with, I wanted to share with my friends. So naturally, it’s dinner party time!
Today’s menu was
So as we all know, I make good-looking food, but I’m slow in the kitchen. One of my issues is I tend to serialize everything (laymen’s terms: I do everything one at a time). If I really want to work on my kitchen speed, I need to get comfortable multitasking things. And the biggest opportunity for improvement is to have more than 1 thing going on the stove at the same time.
It might be more accurate to call this Cooking For California, since the story starts in Seattle, as I try out a few new recipes and practice a few old ones.
Specifically, one of my friends specifically requested deep-fried stuffed jalapeno for our traditional New Years Eve party. (Which she calls “jalapeno poppers”, and I lovingly misinterpreted as “jalapeno popplers“.
Not only that, but it’s tradition for my to cook dinner for my family every time I visit, a tradition that was broken once only because… well, you know… And between my Chef Watson stuff and my Ingredient Challenges, I had a lot of new material I wanted to try on real people. (I ended up going with some Chef Watson winners for my family dinner.)
Sunday, November 29, 2015 – And now for our last ingredient challenge of the season. My coworker Eric S picked salmon (good protein base), orange juice (I can make a citrus glaze for the salmon), cantaloupe (I guess I could infuse it into the orange juice), artichoke hearts (I can work with that), and… kimchi. Okay, we’ll see what I can do.
Lucky for me, I decided to try mixing the kimchi with the roasted artichoke hearts and mayo and call it a Kimchi and Artichoke Slaw. And you know what, it kinda worked.
Monday, November 16, 2015 – Something a little different this time. My friend Spiro picked rose water, honey, nuts, cinnamon, and chocolate. Now, the rose water, honey, and nuts immediately screams baklava. Which was too obvious, so I didn’t want to do that. In fact, I figured I’d avoid the whole pastry thing altogether. So my next thought was pudding.
The next problem, of course, is that rose water, cinnamon, and chocolate don’t really blend as flavors. So instead of making one pudding, I’d make three. And I’d layer the honey and nuts in between them. And call it a parfait.
Saturday, October 24, 2015 – Another ingredient challenge. My friend Crystal picked beets, parsnips, fennel, chicken stock, and onion. The chicken stock was an interesting one. Now, I could make soup, but that would be too obvious. So instead, I made a sauce, roasted the veggies, and topped them with the sauce.
Saturday, October 17, 2015 – Another week, another ingredient challenge. This time, it’s neither all meat nor all veggie.
My friend Alice picked walnuts, duck, cabbage, ginger, and blood orange. Sadly, it seems blood oranges aren’t in season right now, so I had to make do with regular oranges. The orange and the ginger make a pretty good sauce. The rest? Well, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Sunday, October 11, 2015 – Last week, the challenge was full of meat. It’s only fitting that this week’s challenge is entirely vegetarian.
My friend Fenella chose chard, pumpkin, green beans, parsley,and tomato. And she’s a vegetarian, so the subtext was the dish had to be vegetarian. And a salad was too obvious, so not a salad.