Tag Archive: cooking

The fading cook

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Sat. June 19, 2010

Aaaaaaaargh! I miss cooking!

After visiting my parents and helping them to get their computer and televisions set up I went shopping for random stuff. I stopped by Quiznos and got a sandwich and chili. As I was eating the chili I kept on thinking about how my chili was pretty good as well. Really, a lot of stuff I make is good. Question is, when was the last time I really put in a lot of effort and made a proper meal? If I look back, it seems like the last big thing that I made was shepherd’s pie, and that was almost a month ago. No, boiling pasta and adding sauce doesn’t count. Steaming peas in the microwave doesn’t count. Man, cooking a big meal once a month is just unacceptable. Back when I moved here I was cooking daily. Where did that fire go? It seems like the fire has been relegated to the back-burner.

I guess if I think about it there are several factors at play here. First of all, my schedule has just been busy. With improv and running, I arrive home past 9 p.m. four days of the week. I suppose that only means that I have to make a conscious effort to do something on those other days. Secondly, monitoring my caloric intake has played a big role in changing my habits. I tend to blow all of my calories during the daylight hours leaving very little wiggle room in the evening. On a particularly off-balance day it wouldn’t be surprising for me to just eat a piece of fruit to round out my day. There’s no way chili or meatloaf would fit in, normally. To address this thing I have to do two things. I need to be more conscious about eating less during the day hours. Little snacks here and there pile up. As well, if I need to reduce the number of times I eat out for lunch. This could be addressed if I actually cooked more, I guess. Lastly, I need to work on simply burning more calories. Surely, marathon training will play its part.

For something that I really enjoy doing, it’s surprising that I’ve let my skills fade like this. Life doesn’t simply wait. If I want to bring it back into my routine, I have to make the effort. Right here I’m acknowledging there’s an issue. I’m going to address it.

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Inspired shepherd’s pie

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Sat. May 22, 2010

One of the side effects of watching Food Network is that I often find myself with urges to take on various cooking challenges mimicking what I see on TV. Heck, they make it seem so easy, right? I have a small bit of skill with cooking. I can do it! When I’m flipping channels one of the shows that airs on Food Network that I will actively stop for is Eat, Shrink & Be Merry. Why that show? Well, they spend one show focusing on a single dish, which is always a healthier version of some restaurant counterpart. The stuff that they make always seems to put up a good fight against the counterpart in a side-by-side taste test. More often than not I’ll come out from watching that show thinking, “hey, I want to try that, too.” You may recall that a while back I successfully made their Shockolate Cheesecake. Low fat cheesecake that tastes rich? How can you lose? Anyway, this week the network aired the episode where they made shepherd’s pie. Well, the recipe seemed simple. It wasn’t that hard of a decision to try it out on my own.

I ventured out to Wal-Mart to gather the ingredients. I wanted to use the Yukon golds like they did, but ultimately I opted for convenience by buying pre-cut cubed potatoes that just needed to be put in the microwave then mashed. I wasn’t keen on peeling a proper butternut squash so I hoped to find something in the freezer aisle, but I came up empty. So, in the end my topping consisted only of potato. Maybe next time, right? For the meat and sauce, they used chili sauce. I decided to use sriracha because that’s what I had on hand. Besides that, sriracha is so flavourful. A little goes a long way. When everything was assembled, they sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on top to get some melted and bubbling action going. For mine I decided to mix in some panko bread crumbs with the Parmesan. I figured that it would make the top even crispier and delicious. Well, how did the end result turn out? Have a look.

I totally made a good call with the panko. The contrast in textures was just amazing. The taste was very balanced and delicious. I’m totally happy with the results. And to think, I didn’t use a single bit of butter or cream for this. Crazy. I swear, the next thing I’m going to tackle from them is their Better Butter Chicken recipe. It’s a bit more involved than this shepherd’s pie, but I want to see how well their spice blend in the recipe works out.

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The cook’s confidence

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Sun. April 4, 2010

So, if you’ve been following along, you know that I’m pretty proud of my cooking abilities. It’s not uncommon for me to post pictures of food that I’ve cooked or baked on this blog. Sure, it doesn’t come easily. For every picturesque meal there’s been something untasty, burned, or unpresentable. Despite that, I still keep at it just because cooking is an awesome activity. The synthesis of a comprehensive whole from a bunch of elements and raw ingredients is amazing, you know? I think one thing though that allows me to try new things and work on my technique is the fact that I’m only cooking for myself. I figure that if I had to cook for another person I’d be much less likely to try something new, just because I don’t want to subject that person to something unexpected. What if I churn out a failure? Then two people end up screwed, eh?

Whenever I have to cook for other people I try to do things that I know are great. For example, whipping out a great oven roast is just awesome. Besides vegetarians and such, who doesn’t like a big slab of nicely done meat? In the end, doing something safe is kind of a good confidence booster. God knows, I kind of need it. Maybe it’s a reflection of how I function in other spheres of life, but I kind of feel like I lack true confidence in my abilities. For example, like I said last night, I was put in charge of Easter dinner. I ended up making a prime rib roast, baked spaghetti and meatballs, roasted baby potatoes, and a butterscotch apple cake. Each of these turned out OK, but I could have picked out one or two things that I could have done to make each one better. As much as the roast was well seasoned, I could have used some salt. The pasta was good, but more sauce would have made it awesome. The potatoes were great, but I could have cut down on the olive oil. The cake was decent, but not entirely all that pretty. As we ate as a family, my parents were telling me everything was good. In the back of my mind, I was wondering if they could pick out the flaws. Even if they could, they didn’t tell me; they were just appreciative that I went to all the trouble.

And therein came the realization.

If I’m cooking for other people, it doesn’t matter if something isn’t completely perfect; as long as I’m doing it from the heart, that alone outweighs any small deficiencies. And the fact that I’m looking to improve and churn out better things just makes it all even more worthwhile.

So yeah, I need to stow away any confidence issues when I cook. As long as I’m willing to make the effort and do the best I can, no one will hate me for it.

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Still have it in the kitchen

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Tue. March 16, 2010

Honestly, I haven’t really been cooking meals for myself in the past while. Very frequently I’ve come home just feeling exhausted and not hungry. And when I’ve been hungry I’ve just been opting for quick out-of-the-box stuff. Yeah, kind of embarrassing, eh? One of my coping mechanisms has been to just eat enough while I’m at work such that there’s no need to eat any more by the time I get home, except for, perhaps, a small snack. Anyway, this afternoon I decided that I needed to break the cycle. I wanted to make an effort and cook a proper dinner this evening.

I knew that I had a prime rib roast in the freezer that I could defrost pretty quickly. I usually end up doing a pot roast, but this time I wanted to make it an oven roast. And, of course, I knew that a good pairing for the roast would be a Yorkshire pudding. I started working out my plan of attack at work. The cooking method for the roast looked simple enough. The recipe for the Yorkshire pudding was dead easy as well–I just dumped it all into a blender and let it do its thing. So, after defrosting the roast, I put a spice rub onto the fatty part of the meat and stood it up vertically. I put the roast in a 450°F oven for 15 minutes to sear the meat. After that I turned it down to 350°F and cooked it for the remainder of the time. After I took out the meat, I poured the batter into the pan with all of the meat drippings. I stuck it back into a 400°F oven for about half an hour. When all was said and done everything looked absolutely awesome. I’m quite proud of the results. It was all so tasty. It shows me that I still know what I’m doing in the kitchen.

Of course, I took pictures of everything that I made. Naturally! Here:

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Nutella and condensed milk crepes

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Wed. February 24, 2010

Over the past few days, with time off I’ve been taking the time to cook some interesting breakfasts. I hadn’t gone grocery shopping in a really long while so I was starting to run out of supplies. When I looked in the cupboard I found that I still had a box of pancake mix. I wasn’t in the mood to do pancakes so I decided to mod the ratios to makes some crepes. I upped the milk and eggs to make for a thinner and runnier batter. I was trying to figure out what I wanted for some filler. I checked the fridge and found that I had a few teaspoons blackberry jam left over in a jar. I decided to dump that in a pan, add some water, and reduce it a little bit to make a syrup of sorts. So, I cooked up the crepes, spread some blackberry syrup in top and folded them twice. The result was very tasty. At that point I decided to redo it for the next morning.

Today, I made the batter even runnier and added a little bit of vegetable oil. When I looked in the cupboard, I saw a jar of nutella and a can of condensed milk. I warmed the nutella in the microwave, and opened up the condensed milk. I cooked up the crepes, spread a little nutella and condensed milk inside, and folded them once. After cooking three, I plated them nicely, then drizzled the nutella and condensed milk on top. This was the result:

Yes, they were certainly tasty. Perhaps the only quibble is that they were a little bit on the sweet side. Someone on Twitter suggested that I use semi-sweet chocolate instead. That would have been ideal, right? However, warming up some nutella was just convenient. I’m really proud of piecing this one together. I have some leftover condensed milk crepes in the fridge. I plan on eating them in a few days. Two days of crepes in a row is slightly excessive; three is just decadent.

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Jason’s 2009

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Thu. December 31, 2009

Just like I stated last year, at this time of year I have a tendency to avoid doing these run down type posts. I tend to do these on my birthday, and usually it’s enough. Thing is, I think for a year like this a little bit of navel-gazing is necessary. There’s a lot of talk about this year being a tough one. By and large, yes, it was tough. With all of the doom and gloom, it can be easy for me to sink into a dark place. There are, however, enough reasons for me to look up and forward. That’s why it’s important for me to see what I’ve gone through.

This is one heck of an entry, so I’m placing it after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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Roast pork loin

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Wed. December 23, 2009

I really need to get back into putting a lot of effort into cooking. Back when I first moved into this place I really cooked every night using fresh stuff. Just as a matter of necessity, lately I’ve been relying on boxed meats and bagged veggies. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s just that it’s not as satisfying as making something from scratch. So, last time I went grocery shopping I purchased a sizable boneless pork loin roast. It’s a lot for one person, but of course I was planning on saving it after cooking and eating it over multiple meals. It was just a matter of time before I got to it. Today, two weeks later, I was in a bit of a funk so I decided to bring it out to make myself something awesome for dinner.

So, a while back I saw someone on Food Network preparing pulled pork. I decided to use that as the basis for tonight’s meal. I always wanted to try out making pulled pork, but after having a look at the recipe I knew that I didn’t have 6 hrs to spend cooking the thing. Instead, I decided to just use the dry rub as a basis. I started following the recipe, but soon that fell apart. I started adding and modifying things to make it my own. I didn’t have dry mustard, so I just used the horseradish mustard I had in the fridge. It wasn’t in the list, but I added a lot of honey, chili flakes for heat, and a little thyme. Using the paste, I just covered the meat, and then set it all aside in the fridge while I went out for my run. When I got back, I heated the oven up and just put it in. The results were just plain awesome.

I now have no reason to not brown bag it to work tomorrow. The taste of the spice rub is there, but it doesn’t hit you over the head to announce its presence. I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I know that it’s a recipe I can do easily. What do you think?

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Learning from culinary failure

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Sat. December 5, 2009

Maybe, due to all of the food posts I have on this blog, or on my Twitter account, it might seem like I have this whole thing down pat. Well, it should be obvious that this all takes hard work. I’m still very prone to making some big mistakes when baking or cooking. Each time I kind of get down on myself about it, telling myself things like “I should have known better!” Then it settles in that I have to end up eating the darn lot, which sometimes just compounds the whole thing. No matter the case, each time this happens it’s a learning experience and I end up becoming a stronger cook.

I often tell myself that I need to learn how to make more Filipino style home cooking. Sure, I can visit my parents whenever I’m in the mood for it, but I still want to learn it for myself. Years from now it’ll be up to me to carry these things forward, right? A little while ago I wanted to make some chicken and pork adobo. I cut up all of my meat, added all of the ingredients and stuck it all in a plastic container to marinate overnight. Knowing this, I added some extra liquid thinking that it would help soften things. It was going to be awesome! The next evening I dumped it all into a pot and started simmering the heck out of it. The liquid was taking forever to reduce. Thirty minutes became ninety. As time passed, I noticed that the chicken was starting to fall apart. At first I kind of laughed, but over time it got worse. By the time all of the liquid ran dry all of the chicken was pretty much shredded and the pork was starting to go too. Well, that was a failure. I was really disappointed at it all. I called my mom about it and told her that I was letting it simmer for almost two hours. She told me that it really should have been cooked for only 30 minutes. Next time I should use less liquid. Well, duh, right? If it all fell apart, of course it meant that I boiled it way too long. Maybe I should have used bigger cuts of chicken too. Oh well. Next time I know what to do, and it’ll be awesome.

A week or two ago I made some cranberry pecan orange shortbread cookies. They turned out extremely well. I feel kind of bad that I didn’t take pictures of them. They were truly awesome, and everyone that I gave them too seemed to enjoy them. I even had one person tell me that it was simply the best cookie she had ever tasted. I was floored and told her “those are some pretty big words.” She insisted though, so who am I to argue? Those shortbread cookies require me to chill the dough for a while, roll it out and use a cookie cutter. Anyway, tonight, I’m not sure what came over me but I had an urge to bake cookies. I didn’t want to do the shortbread cookies again, but I had the right things for that chocolate chip cookie recipe I posted on this blog. I also had left over pecans from the last cookie recipe, so I settled on making chocolate chip pecan cookies. Since the shortbread method worked so well, I decided to do the same for this recipe. I made the dough and chilled it. Hours later I rolled it out, cut out circles and put them in the oven. The first batch surprised me. After 8 or 9 minutes I was about to take them out but I noticed that they were still shiny. As such I left them in the oven for another minute or two. After 10 or 11 minutes they were still shiny. At 13 minutes I just took them out. The resulting cookies were flat, crispy, and brown. I wasn’t happy with them. With the second batch, I cut the time down to 11 minutes. I figured that the warmth of the oven might be better now after having done one batch. Well, the results were also flat and crispy, just not as brown. For the third batch, I cut it down to 9 minutes. The results were flat and crispy, but pale. What the hell was going on?

Last time I made these cookies, the results were awesome; these were just embarrassing. I knew that the big difference was cooking method. So, while the third batch was in, I took all of the cookies I had precut and balled them back up. I put them on the pan and flattened them a little bit. The resulting cookies looked better, but still not exactly what I wanted. I was planning on taking pictures of these cookies, but I’m passing this time around. When I balled up the dough, it worked out a little bit better, but I think the act of rolling out the dough changed the character. I don’t think chilling made too much of a difference. It looks like chocolate chip cookie dough is more suited to a drop style of baking. Shortbread uses more butter and flour and seems to need chilling and rolling. Next time I do these cookies I’m just going to ball the dough right away and bake them without chilling. Now I’ve got 30 or so cookies that I need to get through over the next while. I’m going to have to figure out ways to fit these into the diet. Hah.

So yeah, I’m still learning. Cooking and baking are great skills to have, and I think I’m lucky to have the mind and patience for both. I’m only going to get better with time. Hopefully that will mean less spectacular failures and more successes to share with everyone.

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