Tell us what you have cooked lately (that's interesting)

[malkav11]

Pasta with Chicken, Leeks and Wine

from How to Cook Everything Fast

This is a variant of the pasta with chicken, mushrooms and wine I am pretty sure I posted earlier in the thread. You get some pasta water going. Then you cook some chopped chicken in olive oil and butter and move it to a plate. Trim and slice the leeks and cook in olive oil and butter w/ salt and pepper and garlic until soft. I also added some air-dried shallots from Penzey’s, on a whim. Once they’re soft, add white wine and the chicken and reduce the wine by about half, then turn as low as it’ll go until the pasta (which you add whenever the water gets to a boil, not neglecting the salt) is ready. Once the pasta is done, you drain it, turn the heat back up on the sauce, add the pasta, some parmesan and fresh thyme, mix and serve. Big differences from the mushrooms version are the leeks instead of mushrooms, obviously, white wine instead of red, and thyme instead of parsley. It’s super yummy.

This is the first time I’ve ever done anything with leeks and they are not what I thought they were at all. Basically they’re a supersized scallion. I thought they were a root vegetable or something. Now I know!

[Courteous_D]

Man, I love leeks, but they don’t love me. The other alliums I’m fine with, but leeks invariably give the trots. Why couldn’t it have been shallots?

I roasted a chicken today for my neighborhood Sunday evening Masterpiece get-together. Not exactly interesting, but tasty, and it always give a small sense of accomplishment.

[rshetts]

If anyone is interested in jumping on the Sous Vide train, amazon has the highly regarded Anova on sale. The standard 800 watt version is $95 and the bluetooth/wifi 900 watt version is $112

https://smile.amazon.com/Anova-Culinary-Precision-Bluetooth-Circulator/dp/B01HHWSV1S?ref=bit_aa_dotd_cta_two_buttons&tag=amz-mkt-chr-us-20&ascsubtag=1ba00-01000-a0050-win81-other-smile-us000-gatwy-feature-DOTDC&th=1

[Skipper]

Appreciate the link to Amazingribs, and the mention from @timex on a basic rub recipe. I’ll be putting one together for sure.

I don’t have much time before my smoked turkey on Thursday so I got two sessions in over the weekend, and probably one more this evening. I was about to say smoking sessions there, which sounds like a different kind of weekend, but hey, at least I would have had great food.

First was a batch of wings. Brined for 3 hours in a simple water/salt/sugar solution and added just a tiny amount of flavor to the brine. I then rubbed them with salt/pepper and Za’atar seasoning. I put these in for 2 hours at 225F, that wasn’t long enough, so they were finished in the oven in about 15 minutes. I applied a mop prior to the oven of just a small amount of melted butter and some hot sauce. These were great but dried out just a tiny amount in the oven.

Next up was two chicken breasts. These were brined the same way, and rubbed with the same Za’atar spice blend, salt and pepper. Trying to guage that I needed a little more time, I put these in for 2.5 hours at 225F. Still not quite there on temp, they came out low at about 140, and I finished in the oven to 160F internal temp, which was about 20 extra minutes… I mopped them just with a little butter and garlic.

I used the exact same amount of hickory chips on both. Both were under temp, so I’ll adjust my time calculations this evening for the next set of wings.

Strangely though, the chicken breasts have a wonderful smoked flavor, the wings, not as much. I can’t tell if it was just the 30 minute difference in time or if for some reason the lean breast meat just took the smoke flavor better than wing meat (fattier for sure.)

The electric smoker though is a win. I love how convenient it is and how quickly it is up to temp.

EDIT: I should mention the chicken breasts are going to be a frequent repeat. They were so good that my GF and I literally just sat at the kitchen counter repeatedly cutting off more and more slices, ruining the rest of diner but really, who cares. It was excellent.

[Timex]

Something small like wings can be harder to do than a big thing like a pork shoulder.

The beauty of the pork shoulder is that you really can’t screw it up.

[Skipper]

Noted. It might be a week or so but pork shoulder and some kind of ribs are on the to-do list. One thing is for sure though, who needs to buy expensive smoked deli meat anymore? This shit is fantastic.

[RichVR]

Marginally belongs here. I’ve noticed that I’ve cut back on sous vide lately. OTOH I’m using my vacuum sealer all the time. It’s really a big difference from ziplock bags and wrapping in plastic and foil for freezing. No more dried out frozen food. Even if you don’t sous vide, a vacuum sealer is worth the purchase.

[Skipper]

I’ve noticed that I’ve cut back on sous vide lately.

I have too, but I go through phases with my different appliances, mostly to keep things from getting stale. That being said, now I have a smoker, and I plan to do a few combos between the two devices. Low and slow sous vide cook, finished with time enough on a smoker to get flavor and bark.

What has replaced me doing as much sous vide lately is using my Instant Pot, though, trying more pressure cooking fine tuning.

[RichVR]

Yeah, new toys and all that. :) The sous vide/smoker combo sounds wonderful.

Edit:

Baked pasta w/meat sauce.

Made a bit more than I thought, so two dishes. Gonna have to give some away.

[Skipper]

Dude. I should not look at this thread while hungry. Hamburger in the meat sauce or meatballs?

[Timex]

Naan update:
So that recipe is pretty awesome. I chopped the original dough up into a bunch of pieces, and put them into individual containers in the fridge and freezer. (I then put all the frozen dough balls into one bag in the freezer)

For the ones in the fridge though, the dough seems to hold up fine for days. The past few days, I’ve just taken a container out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter while I heated up the oven and baking steel. Stretch out the dough, throw it onto the steel, cooks up in about 2 minutes, and then I have fresh naan.

It’s pretty slick.

I’ll be interested to see how well the frozen dough thaws out.

[Skipper]

Timex, when you say baking steel, you have a link to something like that? And how hot on the oven?

[ShivaX]

I assume something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N205G22/ref=asc_df_B00N205G225278173/?tag=hyprod-20&creative=395033&creativeASIN=B00N205G22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198091107028&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15346031631701897969&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9018111&hvtargid=pla-320475135025

[nKoan]

Baking steels are nice. Better heat retention than stone. I don’t know about naan but for pizza you generally preheat the snot out of them. Like 500 (or as high as your oven goes) for 1 hour.

[stusser]

Better heat retention, yes, but the primary advantage is they’ll never shatter inside your oven or on your grill.

[ArmandoPenblade]

Thanksgiving Pt 1

Clockwise from the top, spiraling in, we’ve got scalloped corn (corn baked into a cream-and-egg-based casserole, topped with tons of white cheddar and crumbled Ritz crackers), mashed potatoes (with sooooo much butter), roasted turkey breast (rubbed with a sage-rosemary-thyme butter and stuffed with lemon, onion, garlic, and more herbs), green beans (pretty basic, but finished in butter and olive oil), from-the-freezer dinner rolls, and spicy roasted brussels sprouts with bacon.

Pumpkin pie with maple-bourbon whipped cream forthcoming. . .

[ChristienMurawski]

Tonight I try cheesecake yet again. I’ve whiffed on it twice now. Maybe three times? But I’m determined to try to get it right.

I’m so scared. I feel like Calvin and his bicycle.

-xtien

[ArmandoPenblade]

Pumpkin pie and a healthy dollop of aforementioned maple-bourbon whipped cream :-D

@ChristienMurawski despite about half a dozen tries over a dozen years, I’ve never made a perfect/pretty cheesecake. I have, however, made a couple of very tasty cheesecakes, and that’s all anyone at dinner seemed to care about :)

[ChristienMurawski]

@ArmandoPenblade: I don’t need perfect/pretty. I just want to make something that doesn’t come out like sweet cheese soup. It’s okay if it has cracks, I just want to be able to slice it, instead of spooning it into bowls.

-xtien

[claybob]

Thanksgiving comes in parts?!