Tag Archive: dinner

Making space in the freezer

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Sat. June 11, 2011

Going into this weekend I made a mental note to use some of the meat I had in my freezer. I have a couple of packs of meat in there that have sat around for a long while. I’ve just been waiting for a moment where I feel inspired. It finally came when I visited the grocery store earlier today. I got a fair number of fresh items and that kind of prompted me to cook just so that my fridge and freezer wouldn’t be so cramped. I decided to cook pork chops. I didn’t really decide on what to do to spice them, so I started out with salt and pepper. I then followed with onion and garlic powder. Smoked paprika was next. I think I would have left it at that, but I wanted to add more. In the end I went for brown sugar and coarse mustard. I figured the sweetness and sharpness would work well together and brown the meat nicely upon pan-frying. I was going off instinct. In the end, I was right. The meat turned out really well.

Very tasty. I cooked the whole pack so there were three pieces. Saving one for later. If I’m being honest, it’s probably not likely that I’ll get into a nightly habit and cook so that I’ll bring in food for the next day, but if I do it’ll be worth it. Just need to keep rocking it.

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Offer of dinner

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Wed. May 4, 2011

Earlier this evening I called my mother just to say hello. At some point the conversation turned to what I ate for dinner. I admitted to eating a quick frozen dinner. As much as I like cooking, making meals for one person has been tough. Whenever I spend time cooking something I usually end up with enough leftovers to last a few days. If I’m lucky I end up eating it all. Often, I end up with leftovers in the fridge that sit around way past the point where the food’s still good. Maybe it’s just a symptom of bad planning. I don’t know.

Upon hearing it, my mother told me that I should come over to their place after work on occasion to have dinner with the two of them. Well, who am I to reject an offer like that, right? No, I don’t plan on going there every night, because would an independent guy do such a thing? That being said I think sharing dinner with my parents wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would save me a bit of trouble. I’d be less likely to eat cereal for dinner.

Such is life when you’ve got all sorts of activities going, I guess.

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Vow to keep cooking

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Mon. March 7, 2011

Today I made a vow to myself to ensure that most of the meals that I eat come from home. At least, that’s the goal for at least the next month. I really have been eating out far too much. It’s kind of ridiculous. There’s no reason for me to be spending so much outside, especially when I’ve got decent cooking skills. All it takes is a lot of patience and good planning skills, right? It’s been a really long time since I’ve spent time making a good dinner. It’s not the first time I’ve complained about this. However, nothing much has changed, so it looks like I actually need to have some strong resolve to get back into the habit of things.

Today I decided that my first meal would be homemade chili. It’s something I’m fairly adept at. I went out to get some missing ingredients knowing that I already had ground beef in the freezer. When it came time to defrost the meat, I pulled it out and saw that the packaging date on the thing was mid-October. Holy shit, eh? I looked at it and it didn’t look horribly frost bitten. I smelled it and it wasn’t bad. I went ahead with plans. When the meat was cooked I noticed that the texture wasn’t quite the same as fresher meat. And the smell wasn’t as fresh either. Don’t get me wrong, it was still tasty, but I knew that it couldn’t be as good as it could be. So that’s when I knew I had to use other strong flavours to not let the meat overpower things. I used a fair amount of garlic, cumin, smoked paprika, and onion powder. I added a few squirts of sriracha for more heat. In the cupboard I spotted some 90% cocoa dark chocolate that I had sitting around. It was far too bitter for me which is why I hadn’t already downed it. I decided to chop it up and toss it in. It gave the chili a different character, but it wasn’t bad at all. It was really rich and dark. The end result was totally awesome. I guess you could say I ended up with a chocolate chili.

So yeah, I’ve got plans for what to cook and when. Just need to be careful not to get carried away and overeat. When I moved into my place I got into a habit of cooking a lot. Unfortunately my weight also ballooned. This time I’m planning on keeping it all in check. I need to keep honing the culinary skills.

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Jason’s 2010

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Fri. December 31, 2010

I actually started writing this post out a few days before tonight. There’s a lot to cover in a year and I wanted to make sure that I spent more than a bit of time getting my thoughts together. Yeah, without thinking about it too much, my first response is to call 2010 a banner year. Yes, there were hardships along the way, and a lot of hard work was needed just to continue moving forward. All the same, I wouldn’t take any of it back. There’s so much that I wouldn’t have even dreamt of in 2009. It was that kind of year.

This is a big post, so the remainder will come after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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Food from the dinner party

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Sun. August 29, 2010

So, like I said last night, I am deeming my dinner party to be a success. I chose to go the tougher route and cook/acquire most of the food on my own instead of relying on my guests. I am so happy that I took that route. Sure, some items could have used some improvement, but I don’t think I embarrassed myself at all.

For snacks prior to dinner, I set out three things. The first was just chips and salsa. I put out two types of chips with salsa to give a bit of interest. I liked the square angle dishes I used for it with the contrasting colours. The second was toasted pita chip triangles with hummus. I toasted them myself with olive oil and salt and pepper. To be honest, I don’t think this one was all that great. The pitas I used were sort of thick and didn’t lend themselves well to this application. I was hoping to serve this one freshly toasted, but I prepared it a bit too early. I ended up putting it in the warming drawer while waiting. I think that made them a bit tougher instead of crispy. Next time I can improve that one for sure. The third thing is the fruit platter. I figured that I needed something fresher to go with the starchy things.

In terms of main courses, there were two items. The first was a vegetable lasagna. I don’t think it was that bad, but it could have been a lot greater if I timed it better such that it came out of the oven closer to meal time. Plus, I think I could have put more cheese on top. The second item was prime rib pot roast. Now, this turned out better than I thought. I braised the meat in broth, onion soup mix, red wine, and some frozen Mediterranean veggie mix. I let it stew for about 3 hours. The resulting roast was really soft. I was totally pleased with the result. I really need to do this again on Saturday. It’s too bad that the only picture I got of it was blurry.

For dessert, I used a caramel crème brûlée recipe. Really, this is the type of thing that should be prepared the night before. Unfortunately, I only got it started at noon. It didn’t provide enough time for the custard to really cool down significantly. Also, without a blowtorch I had to use my oven’s broiler to get the caramelized top. That probably contributed to the custard being warmer than I wanted. Next time, I need to get this dessert started early, and I need to acquire a torch. In terms of taste, I thought it was great. Just needs some tweaks to kick this thing up to the next level.

All in all, I did a passable job. Combining all of this with salad, garlic bread, cookies, and 1.5 bottles of red wine (for me) and I ended up really stuffed. And that’s why I didn’t run this morning. Yes, I’m comfortable with that decision. Anyway, next time I’ll work even harder. Got to hone the skills!

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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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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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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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