Dried Fruit Pork Chops

A little late but I wanted to post this. We've been cooking a bunch lately but mainly just making the rounds through the recipes we already know and love. My recipe repertoire has expanded so much since we started GastroFabulous, it's really amazing!

Anyways, we had a nice Valentine's day with my mom and Oscar (the dog) and we made these pork chops with a nice red (seasonal) sauce of red wine with dried cherries, cranberries, plums, etc. It came out too salty though, I think the result of the chicken stock plus the added salt. Next time I wouldn't add any more. Other than that, it was pretty good, and easy.

Orange Lamb

Chocolate & Zucchini is a food blog I've had on my radar for a long time but never actually made anything from it. Sometimes I feel like a lot of things on there are more complicated than I'm looking for. But the other day I had time, and LZ wanted lamb, and this one looked pretty good. It's basically lamb and oranges, with a buttery citrus sauce with spices like cardamom and cinnamon, and then candied orange peels on top. I was excited about trying the candied orange peels, but in the end they mostly got left on the side of the plate. It was really delicious though, between the fact that lamb is always tasty, and the yummy spices - thumbs up! It took some work but I'd definitely make it again - could be a good one for a dinner party since we even had leftovers. I would say mine did look fairly similar to the photo, but my photos can never compare so I posted hers.

Lamb Shoulder

Valentine's Day! I wanted to make something special for the special guy on the special day, and we had a lamb shoulder in the freezer. There aren't a lot of recipes for lamb shoulders, but there are a lot for legs so I just used one of those. This one included mushroom stuffing. it took a LOT of precooking - chopping, boiling, etc. but the stuffing turned out really good. I had a small crisis with the thawing of the shoulder, but I managed and it was very tasty. The picture does not do it justice as usual. And chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert!

Lamb Stew

My aunt in New Hampshire raises sheep. And eats them. My mom bought a bunch of her lamb meat and left some with us over Thanksgiving. One of the cuts was lamb stew so we figured okay, we should probably make lamb stew. I found this recipe from Emeril which called for a pressure cooker, which I don't have. After some research, I discovered the point of a pressure cooker is to cook things faster but it's not really any different. So instead I used my slow cooker to cook the stew for 4 hours. It came out so good! I'm not normally a soup fan, but I think I do like stew! LZ is so crazy about it he's making it again tomorrow. So, I actually forgot to take a picture when we made it. But then I had it again for lunch today and realized I should take a picture then. I even decided to show you how pathetic I am that I eat lunch at my desk. :-( But, I bet I'm not the only one. So that's the lamb stew story!

Goat Cheese stuffed Chicken

This week Whole Foods had chicken breast on sale so I bought some without knowing what I was buying it for, which is not something I usually do! I was going to just cook it the regular way and have it with stuffing and cranberry sauce, both of which I love. But then I realized I didn't know what the regular way to cook chicken is. So I started looking at recipes and of course got tempted by the fancy ones. Lucky for me I just happened to have goat cheese so I made this: Emeril's Goat Cheese stuffed Chicken! I'd never stuffed chicken with anything before so that part was kind of fun. Although, when it cooks the cheese mixture kind of oozes out the sides, which is fine, but it's not like you bite into it and get a huge pool of cheese in the middle which is what I was imagining. I guess for that you'd have to carve out a hole. Anyways, it was really good and I'm proud of myself!

Pork & Apples

The other day we went apple picking and came back with an insane amount of apples. So I realized I had to find some new apple recipes, before I get around to making the pie. I found this recipe for Pork tenderloin with apples. I had never made pork tenderloin before, but it didn't seem too hard. I used my Penzey's spices and it goes great with the apples. It really wasn't hard either, the hardest part was slicing all the apples. It looked really ugly though and I didn't have a pretty plate for it, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon and using the internet photo. :-)

Turkey Burgers

Cheryl came over the other night and we were trying to think of something relatively healthy to make. We ended up making these turkey burgers with tomato corn salsa and they were pretty good! I dumped a lot of cumin in there with the turkey, possibly too much, but it was still tasty. And it turned out to be quite cheap too! Cheryl took this picture which came out much better than we thought it would. Good work!

Peanut Pork & Strawberry Salad

Another terrible picture but at least I'm posting! This is peanut-rubbed pork loin or something. I had to bake it way longer than they said, as usual. And some of the peanuts burned. But it was not bad. The strawberry salad was really good though! I got it from a book of just salad recipes. I would have probably thought it was too weird but I remembered Sarah doing the strawberry-balsamic thing one time so I figured it was a good idea. And it was! First you make this dressing with strawberries, balsamic vinegar, oil, lemon juice, etc. and blend it all. Then add more strawberry slices. Then put it on the greens and add goat cheese (I had feta). Voila! Awesome strawberiness I will definitely be making again.

Roast!

--->

A couple weeks ago we bought a roasting pan and a couple days ago we christened it by roasting a chicken. It was a great Sunday dinner. I used Giada's recipe for garlic citrus chicken, it has lemons and oranges inside it and a sauce/gravy with orange juice and stuff. It was not easy to figure out when it needed basting and how exactly to do it, but it came out great! I don't know if it's meant to be burnt like that on top or if it's just my special talent, but it didn't seem to mattter. I even made the gravy where you simmer the juices, strain the solids, and skim off the fat. I couldn't quite get all the fat off though, how exactly are you supposed to do that?? The best part was that there was plenty left over for a couple lunches of tasty chicken sandwiches. So, now that I have this great pan, what else can I roast??

Steak & Homefries

This meal was a definite success! So much simpler than I thought. LZ brought home a huge, bright red slab of meat. It was so big we didn't even need the whole thing. I rubbed on my special steak spice (Thanks, Sarah!) and basically just let them sit in the pan for a while. On to the fries. I figured meat and potatoes go together, right? Most homefries recipes say to fry them in a pan but I hate frying so I went with a recipe that said to bake them. 500 degrees for 25 minutes, does that seem too hot or is it necessary? I put some more of the steak spice on them and they came out crispy and great! I was shocked, I did not think they'd be very good. So next time I will experiment with more different kinds of spices. I will definitely be making this stuff again. Yay!

En-chili-das

We had some extra chili left over from dinner on Wednesday, so when we were deciding how to eat it (Nachos!) I flippantly suggested that we make enchiladas. So, John filled the tortillas with our vegetable-and-spice turkey chili, and covered with cheese. Baked for about 10 minutes

Now it has a new name. En-chili-das. John says that "enchilada" means "smothered in chiles." So, our "enchilida" is smothered in chili. And cheese. And guacamole.

Japanese New Years PT 3

These beef wrapped carrots and green beans are a spin on the traditional asparagus wrapped beef. We wrapped the vegetables with thin slices of beef, and then heated the pan with olive oil. After slightly browning one side, i poured in some rice wine to help steam the meat. Then, after flipping the roll, i threw in a little soy sauce until the sauce boiled and browned. After several batches, the sauce became thick and sweet, and we poured the rest on top of the plate.

Panko Chicken

Joanna and Nate came over the other day and made this panko chicken. It turned out to be pretty easy and I like this panko stuff. The best part was they unlocked another little piece of the cooking mystery. Apparently every food has a different smoke point and butter's is pretty low which explains why I always burn it! They also provided some headway in my search for the truth about how people know when meat is done cooking. The answer is you just have to have the feel. But there are clues to how you get the feel. Instead of cutting the meat open you can feel how squishy it is. When it feels as squishy as the skin between your thumb and forefinger, it's done. If you're roasting a whole bird, jiggling the leg may provide insight as well. So basically, I am still clueless but now I can believe that it may not only be magic that helps people cook so well.

Veal Parmesan

I'd never even eaten veal parmesan before but today I made it and it turned out pretty good! I surprised myself this time and it's all thanks to Uma who gave me the idea and the instructions. I was pretty worried for a while there because I didn't know what cut of veal to get. Cutlets? Chops? I stood in front of the meat shelf for a good long while debating it. Finally I went with the cheaper one which had no bones and was called veal flank steak. When I got home I looked it up and read that it's not very common so I figured it must be terrible and that's why no one used it. But lo and behold it turned out just fine! Tasty even! Though the fluorescent orange oil in the picture makes it look kind of gross.

Question: Most of the recipes I looked up online said to first fry it (brown it) in a pan and then bake it. This seems to be standard protocol. Why do you have to do both? What is the point?

Chops

Tonight was my first attempt at pork chops. They came out tasty but I failed at cooking them. I like baking because if you follow the recipe exactly, it almost always works. But frying meat on the stove is the opposite. I do just what the recipe says and it's all wrong. For those of us that don't know how to cook, there is no way to know how high to put the heat or how long to cook the meat. People who cook just seem to magically know. This and the spattering oil that burns me are the most frustrating things about cooking and the main reasons why I have avoided frying things until now. See, I had the chops in the pan on medium heat like the recipe said and after the 5 minutes, they were already burned. I turned down the heat then and after 5 minutes on the other side I had no way to know if they were cooked through. LZ came and cut them all up then declared them too pink. They took a looong time after that but I was totally at a loss and he finished cooking them. Sad.

So: How do you know what heat to fry your meat on before they burn?
And: How can you tell if its cooked through without mangling the meat?