A Sunday in the Kitchen

We had some extra time at home today, so I decided to try cooking some new kinds of foods.  Most of our weeknight meals are thrown together quickly, so when I have time on the weekends I want to attempt new recipes.  That way, when I'm busy raising kids later on and I don't have time to consult a cookbook or the internet, I can refer to a wider range of recipes under my belt.  Experimenting is fun, but it doesn't always turn out as expected!

I've had gazpacho at restaurants but never tried making it.  I read up on it in my America's Test Kitchen book, but decided to improvise with what I had on hand.  We had a can of tomato soup lying around (the original recipe called for tomato juice), so I thinned it with equal parts water.  Simmered it slightly, then set it over a bowl of ice to cool down.  In the meantime, I cored/deseeded a couple of cucumbers and chopped them up.  I had some leftover bruschetta from TJs so that was my chunky tomato contribution.  Mixed all 3 items together and stuck it in the fridge to cool down along with some cilantro.  Verdict: light, refreshing, and tasty!  If I had tomatoes lying around the house I'd make this again, but it's nice to know that leftover bruschetta can also work in a pinch.

I'd read about shrimp toast on food blogs but never had it myself.  So I thought hmm, we just stocked up on tons of shrimp, so why not?  I poked around the internet for a bit and then decided to improvise again.  First I defrosted some sandwich bread.  (We always have loaves of bread in the freezer for quick meals)  Peeled and deveined the shrimps, and threw them in the food processor with some ginger, cilantro, cornstarch, and an egg.  Pulsed until I got a nice thick paste.  I spread the paste on the bread (I didn't bother cutting the crusts) and threw it in a pan with some oil, and then I finished it in the toaster oven.  Verdict: I should have left the egg out or used more shrimp!  I guess the egg didn't incorporate very well into the shrimp paste so when I cooked it, it was basically like eating a scrambled egg with a layer of shrimp.  Oops.  Most blogs also tell you to deep fry it, but I didn't feel like it.  Maybe if I deep fried it the egg wouldn't have been so eggy?  I don't know...

 

Last night, after dinner with my folks, we headed to our favorite market and picked up 3 crabs totaling ~5lbs.  

They were still alive the next morning!  After Jerry boiled them for 20 minutes he spent another 2 hours with some seafood scissors, bare hands, his McDonalds apron, and tired feet.  Yielded: ~1.5 lbs of sweet and fresh crab meat.  Delicious!!  We froze half of it and saved the rest for dinner.

After lunch, I attempted to make ciabatta bread using the recipe from America's Test Kitchen (I did the version without the sponge).  I must have been out of it, because I glazed over some details.  1.  I used cold water instead of warm tepid water.  2. I completely forgot the salt.  3. I forgot that my oven is pretty strong, so baking these at 500 degrees was a bad idea...4. I was sposed to let these sit for 2 hours before eating, but the rise time/frequencies caused me to finish baking these right at dinner time.  Verdict: At least it rose and my yeast wasn't dead?  The bread was burnt almost all over (but Jerry likes it that way too), and while the insides were soft and chewy, it tasted weird.  As in, there was so taste.  Because I forgot the salt!!! Sigh.  So texture wise, all my mishaps didn't really affect the bread that much, but flavor-wise, what a difference!  No matter.  The bread was a good vessel for moping up clam chowder. 

Clam chowder.  Now, this is something that I cook every few months.  It's not quick but it's quite easy if you have most of the ingredients on hand.  It also doesn't taste all that authentic to what I've had in Boston or SF, but oh well close enough.  My basic technique: cook some bacon to your desired texture in a good quality pot (I used my dutch oven). take out the bacon and some of the grease (leave behind what you feel comfortable with) and set aside. add chopped up onion to the hot bacon grease, and cook until the onion gets wrinkly. add other veggies such as celery if you would like, and cook for few minutes. then add cubed potatoes along with a bottle of clam juice. if you are making a big pot, add another bottle of clam juice or water until the potatoes are mostly covered. lower the heat, and simmer until potatoes are to your almost desired tenderness. in the meantime, mix milk and heavy cream (or half and hour, whatever you have) with some flour. when your potatoes are almost done, add your clams/crab/other seafood along with the dairy/flour mixture. let simmer until just heated through (you don't want to overcook the clam meat), add some s&p to taste. optional: top with the bacon from earlier.  Tonight I didn't use bacon because we did a meal with bacon earlier this week, so I just used the reserved bacon grease.  

Next time when I don't need my dutch oven, I'm going to try Mark Bittman's no-knead bread from the NYT.  


That was this past weekend!  Next wknd I'm going to try my hand at hainan chicken and rice.  I would attempt it sooner, but I think poaching the chix takes a while, and we're so hungry when we get home from work!