She & Him, Cooking

Street Tacos

2011-08-23T03:10:00.000-07:00

About once a month, we have a dinner party with some friends of ours, usually employing a creative theme when selecting the menu, and always cooking together as a group. This past Sunday we had 2 couples over for a Mexican food themed dinner, featuring street tacos with home made tortillas. Other dishes included pico de gallo, guacamole, tortilla chips, black beans, Mexican-style rice, corn on the cob, bacon wrapped chorizo stuffed dates, flan, orange cake, and plantos fritos - all made from scratch. To drink we had a variety of Mexican sodas, home made horchata, and even some margaritas. A highlight was the al pastor our friends had marinated ahead of time, which although initially intimidating ended up having the perfect amount of heat.

There was, as usual lots of food leftover, so tonight Melissa heated up most of what was left, made some fresh tortillas, and we enjoyed some of the best leftovers I've ever had. We even ate some of the empanadas that Melissa had made in advance and we decided not to cook up on Sunday because everyone was fast entering a food coma and there were still a few courses to go.

My horchata experiments have been successful so far, and I think I will be making it more often now that I realized how simple it is to do.

Horchata Recipe

1 cup long grain white rice
3 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Pour rice and water into a pitcher and add cinnamon sticks
Leave in the refrigerator overnight
Pour pitcher into a bar blender and blend until smooth
Strain through 4 layers of cheesecloth to remove solids, squeeze solids thoroughly
Add coconut milk, sugar and half of the ground cinnamon (more or less of any of these ingredients may be used based on personal preference)
Serve over ice with a sprinkling of ground cinnamon

The result was very refreshing and tasty - I was quite pleased.

Tangled Gingerbread House

2010-12-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

I recently took our 3 year old daughter to see Tangled, and she was so excited about it that we decided to make a gingerbread house that looks just like Rapunzel's tower. Melissa did all the baking, I built the molds and applied the icing. Our daughters were overjoyed!

Kitchen Renovation

2010-10-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since we've posted to our cooking blog. Mostly this is due to the craziness that occurs when you move. We now live in downtown San Francisco in a two bedroom loft, down from a four bedroom house, so it took us quite some time to get things scaled down and organized well enough to have some free time and energy. A big selling point on the new place was the kitchen, which is very open, features granite counter-tops, and new appliances. Since our last post, I have gotten a little better at cooking some of our family staples such as Alfredo sauce and quiche, while Melissa has been mastering bread making including baguettes and biscuits.

Yes we have finally settled in the move was a way to get more of Trevor's time. Eating at 7:30 or 8:00 was not really what I would call functional, so this move has greatly improved our schedule around here and I gotta say having a nicer kitchen doesn't hurt either. My goal with attempting bread was to find and master a handful of go-to bread recipes that would serve as a replacement for store bought bread. Yes I probably am a bit extreme but have you read whats in store bought bread its amazing that stuff EVER molds. Also Trevor never stops talking about the bread in europe and how wonderful it is and how he wishes that they had that kind in the U.S. We have had many conversations where he tries to describe exactly the kind of roll thing that he wishes he could have... but enough about bread thats another post.

Over the last couple of months we've been working towards getting organized, and just last weekend acquired a used IKEA shelving unit which has finally provided us with enough storage space in our kitchen that we are no longer keeping kitchen appliances in their original boxes tucked away in storage areas. Now that everything is within reach and subsequently plain sight, it's likely we will start being more aware of how little we use some appliances while also making more use of others. So far I'm observing that the slow-cooker seems to be collecting the most dust while the waffle-iron rarely cools all the way down.

It goes in phases mainly depending on how lazy i'm feeling. The crock pot is awesome for make-ahead meals and chicken broth. However the crock pot is also very large and I'm not very fond of cleaning it. Wait 'till Trevor tells the story about our first year of marriage and the growth I refused to take care of in the crock pot. I have since gotten much better and never let things get that bad.

At the time when we started this blog, I was busy filling in some of the basic gaps in our kitchen. At that time, Melissa and I both decided we wanted to do a lot of research before making any large investments such as cookware and knives. Nearly a year later, our careful research and the selling of my soda making equipment has culminated in the purchase of a little over half of the All-Clad cookware we intend to acquire. Our initial buys have included a three quart saute, a three quart saucier, and an eight quart stock pot. We also grabbed a Lodge cast-iron reversible griddle that can straddle two of the burners on our cook-top, and a couple of grill presses. Future purchases will include something to the tune of a butter warmer, three quart sauce pan, three quart double-boiler insert and a three quart steamer insert. Aside from a wok, and including the twelve inch cast-iron skillet we already had, once complete our assortment of cookware should provide us with the ability to do pretty much anything on the cook-top we need. Oh yeah, and we got six new commercial-grade aluminum bun pans - which I love!

You know its funny that he loves the bun pans because I do all the baking and all he ever uses them for is bacon. Next time you are so cleaning your own bacon pan. I think that we need something more like a small sauce pan or saucier about one quart a really big stock pot and a ladle. Yes somehow in all of this acquiring that has managed to slip through the cracks and I still don't have a ladle! I usually use a measuring cup to ladle soup and other things into bowls its a bit ridiculous. I suppose at some point as I'm walking through Sur La Table I'll be like, "Oh yes! A ladle, I totally need this!" and it will cost me like $10 and I will love and give it a name. Someday!

Trevor made some crackers....

2010-10-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

So as many of you may have heard Trevor is OBSESSED with Blue cheese specifically French roquefort. He has little cheesy daydreams about eating it or finding new ways to eat it. Similar to his obsession with bacon. Well after watching the cracker episode of Good Eats he had to have some homemade crackers for his blue cheese.

They were very easy to make, especially with my new French pin roller! Some of them came out a bit overcooked, but generally speaking these were some the best crackers I'd ever had - thanks not to my amazing cracker skills, but rather to the fact that they were fresh. It's quite amazing how stale all other crackers taste in comparison.

Melissa has Bread Skills

2010-09-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

The more time I spend in Europe, the more I crave "good" bread. The bread you find in America is mostly too fluffy, sugary, and tender - what I crave is a good baguette. So Melissa started making bread on a regular basis, refining her skills, and before long she was cranking out some amazingly tasty loafs of fresh baked goodness. I'm totally spoiled, I know.

Sea Scallops with Mango Salsa and Coconut Rice

2010-01-24T12:55:00.000-08:00

When I go to a restaurant, there are certain foods I will always go for. There's the exotic foods that I don't get at home, such as sea scallops or Kobe beef, but then there are foods I have such an affinity for it doesn't matter how much I get of them at home, I just want more - like blue cheese and bacon. I've been meaning to bring scallops into that latter category, but for whatever reason Melissa and I have always been intimidated by them.

So today, I finally got a chance to prepare some scallops, and to make the most of them, I used them as a substitution for tilapia in Melissa's amazing panko-crusted tilapia with mango salsa and coconut rice recipe. It took two trips to the store and lots of trading off cooking and holding children, but at about 9:30pm, our dinner was ready. I was so hungry, I totally forgot to take a picture... Sorry, maybe next time.

I used Alton Brown's scallop recipe which is very simple, involving oil and butter in a very hot pan where the salted and peppered scallops become seared in just a minute and a half per side. The butter was in my view the most critical part of this process, as it lends itself so nicely to browning while providing a creamy salty addition to the scallops.

Stuffed Burgers and Near Death Experiences

2010-01-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

When people let me use their kitchens, I really feel honored. I try my best to respect their things and their space, and I always clean up after myself. But yesterday I failed pretty badly while attempting to make some french fries to go along with what turned out to be quite delicious stuffed burgers.

He is very good at cleaning up after himself even if he is a little slow at it. LOL. After the stuffed burger incident though I think all of are friends will think twice before letting him use their kitchens again.

But anyways - these burgers are totally awesome! We got the recipe from a friend of ours after we had them at her house.

2 1/4 pounds ground sirloin
3/4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 cups chopped parsley plus 2 Tablespoons
1/4 cups crumbled blue cheese plus 2 Tablespoon
1 1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 garlic cloves minced
1/4 tsp. salt
3 teaspoons grainy Dijon mustard
3 teaspoons olive oil

You take the ground beef and form patties around the stuffing.

Not everyone has a patty press - so to improvise take 2 stackable tupperware bowls of the same shape and size and put the hamburger inside one and use the other to press the meat.

I seared them and finished them in the oven much like you would with a steak, as the thickness of the patties tends to inhibit complete cooking without drying out.

As the burgers finished in the oven, I thought, "french fries would be a fitting side dish". So I put some canola oil in a pan and turned the heat to medium-high, which on my apparently wimpy gas stove brings the oil to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit in a couple minutes. I started in on cleaning and Julianne cutting the potatoes and noticed the oil was smoking, which would indicate it had heated up to at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit already, so I turned the heat down. Unfortunately this stove was an electric one, so even though the heat setting had been reduced, the coil was still radiating heat at a higher level than appropriate. Within about 30 seconds of this adjustment the pot went up in flames. Thankfully my wife suggested choking the fire with a cookie sheet, which put it out instantly, but the smoke was still a problem so my friend removed the pot from the kitchen, taking it to the backyard where it reportedly exploded upon being dropped on the ground, but was successfully contained by covering the pot with dirt.

Yeah so a lot of this was Trevor screaming "aaaaahhhhh fire, fire" and running around the kitchen saying "what do I do what do I do." I smelled the smoke and heard him screaming and ran into the room at the same time as our friend who was about to dump water on the oil fire when I screamed "Nooo! Just smother it! Get a lid or something." I've set a few oil/ grease fires in my lifetime so I've learned from experience how to put them out. Remember how I wasn't allowed to cook when I lived with my parents? Yeah thats why. I burned everything - but we also had an electric stove, so I will just blame it on that.

So, note to self, when working with oil, especially on stove-tops I'm unaccustomed to, always use a thermometer, and be conservative on the heat. I'm a bit gun-shy now, but that's probably a good thing. I luckily managed not to burn down my friend's house, so it certainly could have ended much worse, but he did end up with some first degree burns from the hellatious ball of fire that resulted in him allowing oxygen to once again be consumed by the molten oil.

You know, I'm not sure if it really was him allowing the fire to have oxygen or if it was the moisture in the air/ coldness of the air that restarted it. But either way he did have a pink hand and was minus a few arm hairs.

The burgers were very delicious, which softened the blow, but the lingering smell of melted Teflon kept my face red with embarrassment for the rest of the evening. Thankfully they are very forgiving people, and might allow me to come over again - but I doubt they'll be offering their kitchen to me anytime soon..

Don't worry babe I told them next time we come over we'll bring a fire extinguisher with us...

Deep Dish Pizza

2010-01-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

In 2006 my wife traveled to Chicago for a week with me on a business trip. While there we experienced, for the first time, a pizza very different from the variety that is so common in California. A couple of days ago I came home from work, excited to see and taste what my wife had described over the phone as Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. I was impressed with how authentic it looked, and delighted with how delicious it was.

Previous to traveling to Chicago the only deep dish pizza I had ever had was from Uno's Bar and Grill which I enjoyed (hope I didn't just offend pizza snobs everywhere, lol) but after traveling to Chicago and trying the real thing I realized it was not the same. My mother-in-law recently bought a magazine for Trevor and I called Cook's Illustrated inside were several recipes but also the process through which they came up with them. I knew at once I had to try it out.

Melissa had made two of these pizzas, each of which served about 2 people with healthy appetites. So I called a friend of mine who lives nearby and asked if he was a fan of delicious flavor. He and his wife just had a baby, so we figured they might enjoy having a night without having to cook. My friend later told me the pizza was amazing. This is the thing I think I love most about cooking, sharing it with others, whether it be my family or friends.

Pomelo Extract

2010-01-13T23:52:00.000-08:00

My soda gear has arrived, and I'm very excited about making my first soda. I still need to get my CO2 tank filled and am waiting on one more shipment to arrive containing a counter-pressure bottle filler, but I'm already getting started with making my first soda.

I have always been a big fan of fruit based sodas like those made by IZZE and Clearly Canadian, so naturally my first soda experiment would be something along those lines. I'm also very fond of grapefruit but realize that many people are put off by it's bitter qualities. So I decided on pomelo, a citrus fruit with a sweeter and more mild flavor than it's close relative the grapefruit.

To make an extract from a pomelo, I skinned one with a potato peeler, which left way too much pith on the peels which I then spent a half hour shaving off with a serrated chef's knife. Meanwhile, melissa walked by and said "why aren't you using the Microplane grater for that?"

So for the second pomelo I used the Microplane grater, which was not only much easier to use on the fruit than a potato peeler, but it also took only the very thin brightly colored skin right off, leaving behind the bitter white pith. Another win for this method in this case was that the resulting peel was already finely shredded, as opposed to the peels I removed with the potato peeler which needed further processing to get shredded and chopped down small enough to not only fit through the bottle neck but also maximize the surface area of the skin, enhancing the ability of the alcahol to extract flavor from it.

I filled an empty 750ml glass bottle with the now shredded and minced peels and vodka, and then stored it in a cabinet to prevent light exposure. In about a week, I will see how strong of a solution I have, and start experimenting with making some syrups with it.

Cinnamon Buns

2010-01-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

What's the secret to cinnamon buns that are so good they don't even need frosting? Use high-protein bread flour, have lots of patience while the dough rises, and roll the dough thin enough to create 5 to 7 layers in a 3 to 4 inch roll. Well, at least that's my opinion.

I would agree. I shamelessly ate about 3 or 4 in one night. I say "about" because I shared at least one with our 2 year old. However there was a little bit more to it than just bread flour and rolling it really thin.

I didn't get involved until the rolling phase, but then I got to use my new French pin roller! It worked wonderfully, especially getting the corners to stretch out so the blob of dough turned into a rectangle. Once flat and rectangular, Melissa whipped up some filling, and we rolled it all up tightly. Just as I was about to reach for something sharp to cut the roll into small sections, Melissa tells me to get the dental floss.

I love how he says its "his french pin roller", too cute lol. I do have to admit that I love the french rolling pin as well for basically the same reasons. In my opinion the secret to these cinnamon buns was the filling. Typically when you make filling for cinnamon rolls you melt butter and brush it on then sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. For these babies I mixed a cube of softened salted butter with 2 cups of brown sugar and spread half of the mixture on one of the rolled out rectangles. Then I sprinkled cinnamon over the top of the butter and sugar mixture. The dental floss idea came from a friend of mine but it should have been a no-brainer because in ceramics they use nylon string wrapped around a dowel to cut clay.

We let the now sectioned rolls rise for about 30 minutes before baking. The house started to smell really good at this point, and by the time the first batch came out, I had become so hungry that I ate 2 of them in about a minute. I thought to myself, "Oh, what about frosting?" But then I realized, these really do not need any.

I also considered frosting these but after more than a few bites laziness won out.

Bar Keeper's Friend & Soda Making Gear

2010-01-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

At this point in my life I proceed with cautious optimism on every purchase I make. And even with ample research and analysis leading me to believe this purchase was going to be a satisfactory one, nothing could quite prepare me for the amazing results that Bar Keeper's Friend had on our pots and pans. Even more amazing, it cost less than $3. I've spent hours making and using home-made cleaners and tarnish removers on our copper bottomed stainless steel pots and pans, but the effort needed was great and the results were hardly impressive. But then I tried this stuff, and I must say, it's amazing. End of testimonial (and no, they did not pay me to say this).

I've been very excited about some equipment I have coming next week. I've ordered all the equipment I need to mix, siphon, carbonate and bottle my own soda, including a set of 144 cobalt blue 12 fluid ounce glass bottles. I look forward to using a bench capping machine I inherited from my grandfather. Soon I will be making my own root beer, cream soda, and ginger ale. But perhaps what I am most excited about is being able to make less common sodas based on fruits like tamarind, pomelo, and babaco. I'm also excited about experimenting with using stevia extract as a sweetener, much how Zevia has done, resulting in a zero calorie soda without using synthetic sweeteners.

Chocolate Covered Bacon

2010-01-06T15:03:00.000-08:00

Last night I was looking through the fridge and decided to cook up the rest of the bacon in the meat drawer while it was still a tasty color. I covered 2 half-size bun pan racks with bacon strips and baked them in the oven at about 475 degrees until golden brown and delicious. But while cooking bacon in the oven on a rack removes the vast majority of fat, it doesn't really result in the kind of pan-fried crispiness I was after. So I finished them off in a frying pan on high, dumping the grease off into a container after each pan-full for later use - after all, rendered bacon fat is good stuff. After letting the now crispy but mostly still flat bacon strips rest for a bit, I set up the double-boiler with about a quarter pound of dark chocolate, and then dipped the bacon strips into it, laying them out on parchment paper to cool overnight.

The results... Well I only have a photo of one of the strips because this stuff didn't last very long at the office. There were some reluctant partakers though, but all were instantly converted after experiencing the medley of flavors this simple snack provides. Sweet and bitter chocolate over savory salty bacon.

Carmel Apple Ice Cream

2009-12-29T16:19:00.001-08:00

Normally when I go to the grocery store to buy something specific, I end up collecting lots of additional items on my way through the store which were not on my original list. Today, on a quick run for some diapers, I noticed that the items I was collecting were different than usual; heavy cream, whole milk, food coloring, and dry mustard. I found myself inventorying our kitchen as I walked though the isles, and spent a good couple minutes looking at various cleaning and polishing products for copper and stainless steel. The other day my wife and I were in the car, both sitting there quietly pondering as we often do. Melissa asked me, "What are you thinking about?" I replied "Cooking". She sort of laughed at her expectations being met. But what can I say? I just get very focused on hobbies.

Anyways, now that I'd restocked my kitchen a bit, I couldn't help but start looking through my wife's preserve stash for something interesting to make ice cream with. Ah ha! Apple butter. I quickly threw this together and popped it in the fridge for later churning.

Carmel Apple Ice Cream
1hr cook time, 1qt. yield

Mixture:
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple butter (ideally home made)
1oz lemon juice (fresh squeezed and strained of pulp)
1/4 tsp sea salt
food coloring as desired (i used about 45 drops of neon green)

Mix-ins:
1 tbsp minced granny smith apple
2 tbsp 1/4" x 1/4" super-thin slices of granny smith apple with skin on the end
1 tbsp freshly pressed granny smith apple juice
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine and heat mixture to 170 degrees, bring to room temp, refrigerate, churn, add mix-ins, freeze, eat.

Initial taste tests indicate that my attempts to capture fresh green apple flavors during the mix-in stage were successful. We shall see how the texture comes out after a full day in the freezer.

Yeah so after half a day in the freezer secondary taste testing revealed little to no fresh apple taste in my opinion. To me it was more of an apple pie or roasted apple flavor. In a secondary note don't use green food coloring for something that tastes like apple pie it sends conflicting signals to the brain. It's like picking up your glass of orange juice and realizing it was actually milk.

Indeed, the flavor and color didn't turn out to match up all that well, but it's very fun looking!

Strawberry Ice Cream

2009-12-29T16:17:00.000-08:00

I've tried to make ice cream a few times in the past month. I made apricot, chocolate fudge, and now strawberry.

On a side note this strawberry ice cream is the best ice cream he has made yet. Although the apricot was also very good. Not to say that I didn't like the chocolate but it was very strong and you could not eat very much of it in one sitting.

So yeah, the first two ice creams I made were too syrupy, so this time I used the same Alton Brown Serious Vanilla recipe, only I backed off the cream a bit and used more milk - 2:1 ratio of whole milk to heavy cream to be exact. I also discovered recently how poorly calibrated our refrigerator and freezers were - all units were about 15 degrees too warm. With the now cooler temperatures, the ice cream really seemed to setup better. There was more air throughout and the texture was spot-on.

Strawberry Ice Cream
1hr cook time, 1qt. yield

Mixture:
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup strawberries preserves

Mix-ins:
1 diced fresh strawberries

Combine and heat mixture to 170 degrees, bring to room temp, refrigerate, churn, add mix-ins, freeze, eat.

The chunks of strawberries I chose to mix-in at the end of the churning process however did not turn out. Besides the chunks being too large, they were mostly water so they froze up like ice cubes. Next time I will slice them very thin and dry them as much as possible before adding them in. Also, the berries I got at my local supermarket in December taste very bland anyways - I need to try this again in the summer.

Trevor decides he likes cooking...

2009-12-27T23:21:00.000-08:00

When I married my wife Melissa, I completely accepted her lack of cooking skills.

When Trevor and I got married I was glad he accepted my lack of cooking skills. I was a pot scrubber/prep cook ONLY! No one at my parents house would dare to eat anything that I had cooked, and was scared that some type of fire might break out simply by me being in the kitchen.

Up until this point, I had basically been surviving on items from the Jack in the Box dollar menu, canned tuna and black olives, and the occasional night out to sushi. I suppose you could say it was a bit unbalanced, eating the cheapest foods possible most of the time, and the most expensive foods possible the rest of the time. Aside from eating sushi, which thankfully I was introduced to when I was 18 by a friend with "rich" parents, I treated food similar to sleeping - a necessary waste of time. It was an expensive annoyance, which if I could, I would have just skipped.

I had a pretty good idea what kind of diet he had before we actually did tie the knot. I was ok with eating it myself until I started working at a vitamin store and reading all the books they had in their lending library. I started to get scared as I realized what we were actually eating. As I started reading labels and looking up most of the terms on them I realized we were pickling ourselves and would soon start to look like Twinkies - you know amorphous blobs that are so well preserved they could survive a nuclear explosion.

Soon, Melissa was cooking meals that were basically the best home cooking I'd ever had. My passion for food really grew, and my standards for what I was willing to put in my body were improving as well. Things were great - but after we had a couple of kids, it became clear that Melissa needed some help in the kitchen - a place I still found quite foreign and mysterious. After a bit of helping out here-and-there, and a bit of Food Network television watching (we love you Alton!), I sort of caught the cooking bug.

When Trevor says his "passion for food really grew" what he really means is all of a sudden eating became enjoyable and not just a bodily function. We both started to love the Food Network and especially enjoyed watching Good Eats, mostly because Alton explained the chemistry behind the cooking. Being a computer programmer that is just how he thinks.

I started out with making foods I really love, like ice cream, gratin, beef, lamb, chicken, and duck - all with varied degrees of success, but nonetheless all satisfying experiences. As with any hobby/obsession of mine, I quickly began upgrading equipment. I had no idea how lousy the vast majority of the essential tools in our kitchen were, and how many were not even present. We seemed to have every cooking appliance known to man, but when it came to knives, pots, pans, baking sheets, etc. our drawers and cabinets looked more like a Good Will store than a proper kitchen.

That's because most of our pots and pans are hand-me-downs dear. He didn't realize how bad it was because I just made do with what we had and still managed to make his favorite foods. Also when he says he started to "upgrade the kitchen" he bought everything he could find that he thought we needed in under 2 weeks. Just kidding - but not really. He did some serious damage to the credit card, which is now sitting in the freezer cooling off because he darn near melted the poor thing. But who's complaining I don't have to pay it off (he he). Anyways during his adventures in kitchen land I have been tutoring him along the way and trying not to pull my hair out in frustration while watching him cook.

Indeed it takes a certain, and special, talent to embrace my enthusiasm while tempering my energy level - a talent Melissa thankfully has. I tend to cook a lot like those people on Iron Chef - only with much less impressive results. My tendency to pour ample, often excessive, amounts energy and improvisation into the things I do is my biggest challenge in the kitchen. My primary focus seems to be on taking things slowly, and sticking to the recipe. And in my own defense, I took careful inventory of the entire kitchen in a spreadsheet and performed hours of research before purchasing anything for the kitchen - and the credit card isn't melting, it's just a bit warm...

Ha! Warm... Anyways his Iron Chef approach is quite different from my approach which lately has become prep, walk away, prep some more, walk away again, and finally assemble and cook while children are distracted or sleeping.

Eh hem - I'm a big fan of "Mise en place". I just tend to do it all sort of - quickly.

Uh huh - sure... We're still working on that. He gets distracted pretty easily by cookies, bacon, chocolate, etc.

So anyways, we decided to blog about our adventures together in the kitchen - our successes and failures, as well as our recipe refinements and inventions.