BrowserMetrics

Sitting in my freezer for weeks on end are a bunch of frozen stuff. There's frozen fruit for smoothies, frozen chicken breast, a frozen pork belly, frozen soup stock, and some frozen salmon. One of these days I'll use all of them. Today it's the salmon.

I made salmon in a bag for dinner. It's a simple recipe so I just threw it together real quick with whatever I had in the cupboard.

In a parchment paper, I sliced up a fingerling potato and some carrots and onions. I layered them in the paper with some olive oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Overtop went one salmon fillet. Then some more olive oil, pepper, and salt. I closed up the paper into a bag and cooked in an oven pre-heated to 375F for 20 minutes.

Voila! Easy-peasy dinner.

Was it delicious? Somewhat. It needs some herbs the next time. O, there will be a next time because there is still some frozen salmon in the freezer.

Labels: cooking, mmm

Ramen. I can go for some now. I wish America embraced it like we've embraced sushi, but I know some people who don't believe soup is a meal. Ask Jerry Seinfeld.

Anyhow, don't watch all these videos or you will be craving some ramen. But if you do so happen to watch and then crave some ramen, hit me up and we'll go looking for some around town. If we don't find any, let's go to Japan.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ramenwalker/videos

Labels: lotd, mmm, Nogizaka46, you'll need babelfish

I bought a 3 lb. bag of onions a couple weeks ago for my chicken stock. I only used a couple, then I was left with a sack of onions that may be going bad in my root cellar AKA the bottom drawer of my kitchen cabinet. So I needed to use all the onions fast. The only recipe I could think of was French Onion Soup.

I've never made it but if its a soup its got to be easy: onions, broth, bread, and cheese. Now how to you put it all together? I took my inspiration from the Pioneer Woman's recipe for French Onion Soup, Serious Eats' recipe for the Best French Onion Soup, and Good Dinner Mom's French Onion Soup.

Caramelizing the onions is the key to this soup. I followed the Pioneer Woman's suggestion and roasted it in my dutch oven in the oven. Serious Eats is correct when they say that enameled cast iron doesn't brown the onions. I was lucky that the sack onions was yellow onions as Good Dinner Mom recommends. So I started the onions on the stove top with a mixture of EVOO and butter.

I sliced them in my hand mandolin, threw them in the pot with some pinches of salt, and let cook for about 30 minutes. I wanted them to start going translucent while I heated the oven to 400F.

Once at that temperature I put the whole pot into the oven for a cooking time of about an hour. Half-way through I stirred the onions because they were starting to get burnt in spots.

At the end of the hour, I finished it off on the stove. I would spend another 10 minutes getting the onions to be brown. I turned off the stove and added a cup of cooking sherry to deglaze the bits and pieces stuck on the bottom of the pot. I would reduce this mixture and I added 3 gloves of minced garlic and some fresh ground black pepper. This would take another 10 minutes to reduce.

Actually, while all this was going I was heating up whatever chicken stock I had in my house. There was stock I had made a few weeks ago and I had some other in the cupboard. It was only 5 cups, so I finished it off with three extra cups of water to make it 8 cups or 2 quarts of broth. As I heated it up I added some ground pepper.

When the onions looked ready, I added the broth into the pot. I used it to deglaze the pot again so that all the good bits and pieces were in the pot. I added a few twigs of fresh thyme and a bay leaf and let it simmer for 30 minutes. I also added the secret ingredient of few dashes of fish sauce.

Grated gruyere and well toasted sourdough bread finished off the soup.

I must say the time it takes to make this soup -- about 3 hours -- is worth it. Hopefully, it tastes good at lunch tomorrow.

Labels: cooking, mmm

Ice cream on a cold winter day courtesy of Poulet.

Labels: mmm

I had some Sun Noodle ramen in the freezer so I made some ramen this evening. It was some kind of shoyu ramen with chicken. I threw in a soft boiled egg. It was a cooking adventure!

Cooking. Me cooking. I am a mess, because I am an amateur. There's a lot to juggle to make dinner especially if you are hungry. You have to get everything to cook within minutes.

It was the first time I had 3 burners on the stove going. And I also had the pressure cooker going.

Let's start with the pressure cooking an egg. I usually steam my eggs after I found out how easy it is to get to the proper cooked state. Hard boiled is just about 6 minutes. Soft boiled? I put it in for 4 minutes, but I think it should be slightly longer. When I peeled it, it came apart. It wasn't a perfect egg, but it was perfectly soft boiled.

Next the chicken. I fried it. But I suck because I used a regular frying pan. I don't think I got the oil hot enough. After breading it, I dropped the chicken into the pan cooking it on each side about 5 minutes. When I took it out and sliced it, the chicken wasn't done. In it went again. I over cooked it. But it's okay. It's fried!

The noodles. These are great noodles. I bought the "kaedema" style which is just a smaller package of ramen. I think. The way to cook the noodles is to just get a pot of water boiling, drop the noodles in, and cook for about 5 minutes. Maybe more or maybe less. I got it done enough that I pulled it out of the water early and let sit for a bit in a strainer waiting to go into the broth.

The broth. It's a combination of store bought chicken broth and my very own mushroom vegetable broth. I made it in my pressure cooker! I just combined both in a pot and brought it to a boil. I added 1 tablespoon of shoyu (soy sauce), a dash of mirin, and a teaspoon of chili garlic sauce. Pepper to taste.

A word about the chili garlic sauce. Scrumptious! It's my favorite flavor to add to a soup, because it always seems to make the broth so better.

Mmm. Mmmm. Good.

I'm going to keep cooking ramen especially. I just need to use those fresh noodles from Sun Noodles. They are the best.

Labels: cooking, mmm

I was thinking about cooking hot dogs for dinner tonight. That was before I heard on the radio on the ride home that it was National Hot Dog Day.

YAY!

Four Nathan's franks boiled on the stove with mustard and onions.

YAY!

As ol' Brent Steinberger said, "I never met a hot dog I didn't like."

Labels: cooking, mmm, picture

Today's the century's pi day! The next one will be 100 years from now, so celebrate this very special one by eating some pie today. I'm gonna choose Banoffee. Yumm.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/jun/26/how-to-make-perfect-banoffee-pie

Labels: geeked, lotd, mmm

Here's some cooking I did for the Big Game: Tater Tot Nachos!

It's tater tots covered with chili, cheese, and corn-black bean salsa. It's a Big Game fiesta all its own.

Labels: cooking, get off your butt, mmm

All that flying out to Wisconsin this summer and back made me hungry for cheese. Pick up a block of it now and then. Truck it home. Make grilled cheese. It's all tasty but sometimes you need something more. Something like cheddar cheese popcorn. Not the white cheddar you find around here, but the bright orange stuff. The stuff of your childhood. The good stuff.


It's easy to get if you fly out through Chicago's O'hare. There are a few kiosks that sell the stuff. I picked up a few bags. This one time, as I transferred through O'hare, I decided to pick up a bag. I only found Garrett's, but I knew there was a Nuts On Clark there, so I searched around for it. It was around the corner. These two brands joined the other bag of popcorn I had brought back from Wisconsin. Right then and there I decided on a taste test.


First up is Seguin's cheddar cheese popcorn. This one was at a disadvantage as the bag had been opened for a couple of days, so it wasn't as fresh as the following two. This one also wasn't popped fresh that day. It was probably packaged a few weeks before I bought it. Of the three, it had the sharpest cheddar taste. It also had the most normal looking of popcorn with a brilliant orange color.


Garrett's cheddar cheese popcorn is a great contender. The popcorn are fluffy and more rounded. The cheese taste is smooth. It's color is a a mellower yellow-tinged orange.


Nuts on Clark's cheddar cheese popcorn is the best of the three. I recommend getting this on your trips through Chicago. It has the same mellow cheese taste as Garrett's, but the popped kernels are slightly bigger and fluffier. I saw that they use Monster Mushroom Popcorn to achieve that awesome size and shape. I'm not sure if Garrett's uses the same, but theirs is a smaller size.

You can't go wrong with any of these. If you can get Seguin's, then get it. If you want Garrett's then want it. I recommend Nuts On Clark's cheddar popcorn.

You should also try the Chicago mix -- cheddar and caramel corn. It's just as good.

Labels: mmm, NewsRadio quote

Link of the Day [9.26.2014]

On my trips out to Wisconsin, I bring home a block of cheese or two. The first time was two years ago. I bought the cheese at the airport in Milwaukee. This year on the trips up I bought cheese at this store. At the airport in Green Bay, they shake me down thinking this cheese is a block of C4. In reality, this cheese is the bomb. Pardon me while I go make a grilled cheese sandwich with 7 year old sharp cheddar.

http://www.seguinscheese.com

Labels: commerce, mmm, NewsRadio quote

I swore off eating ramen after coming home from the Philippine escapade earlier this year. Now that it's summer time, I feel like some. Ramen! I haven't tried the ramen shop that just opened up in Baltimore. I heard that it was only okay. I haven't cooked any cup noodle or made my own from the dehydrated noodle square. I would like to try the noodles from today's link. It would be easy to. They only service some of the hippest ramen shops in the US. I guess I should mosey on over to one of those and get a nice bowl of shoyu ramen.

http://sunnoodle.com/

Labels: lotd, mmm

Tried my hand again on Arroz Caldo, chicken rice porridge. I used the chicken stock recipe as the basis for the soup. Although I extended it by using one more clove of garlic, a couple of dashes of patis, some pepper corn, and small pinch of dried red pepper flakes. It came out slightly more garlicky than I wanted, but other than that its pretty rich.

I simmered it overnight in my slow cooker. I couldn't get 3 quarts into my small slow cooker, but I ended up with close to 2 full quarts of stock. I used 1 quart in the Arroz Caldo before adding in another 2-3 cups of water into the mix. Let the Arroz Caldo cook for about an hour before serving with a garnish of fried garlic and patis.

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/11/perfect-uncluttered-chicken-stock/

Labels: cooking, lotd, mmm

I was browsing the bookstore the other day when I decided to slow foot it to work and came across the Ivan Ramen recipe book. I bought it immediately. Then I read it. It was 2 books in one: an autobiography of the eponymous Ivan and how he came to be a ramen chef in Japan, and a recipe for his ramen, the one he serves in his ramen-ya. There are some other recipes in the book, but there is only one ramen recipe in it! It takes up a better part of the book, but there is only one recipe for ramen -- Ivan Ramen!

Ivan breaks his ramen down into the parts, and he gives a recipe for making that one ingredient. He also gives you a recipe for the ramen noodles! If you make his ramen completely, damn, your hardcore!

http://ivanramen.com/

Labels: lotd, mmm

So I had chili for lunch. Was it any good? Yes, it's edible, but it's not great chili by any means. It's good and I like it, but there's somethings missing.

First off, I realized that the tomato paste I used was the one with Italian seasoning. So it almost (almost) tastes like spaghetti meat sauce. Almost because of the spices. Except that there may not have been enough spices to give it that true chili flavor.

Cooking it in a slow cooker was no different than on a stove. I wanted to leave it over night but the slow cooker boiled it even on low. I woke up at 5 in the morning to see that the chili was reduced down. Maybe I should've thrown in the can of diced tomatoes. They may have put more liquid in the pot and the boiling would not have been reduced as much.

Back to the flavor. It doesn't have the bite of chili that I favor. It's not that it's missing salt. It's just that the heat isn't there when eating it. The green chiles I added and the roasted jalapeño was not enough. There's some heat (my head sweated) just not enough off it.

One thing about this chile it tasted well with tortilla chips. This one is good on nachos or even hot dogs.

If I had to tinker, I would put more liquid and hotter chiles to get more kick.

Labels: mmm

If I had more real twitter followers, perhaps there would be more tweeting about or re-tweeting #paellaonth4th hash tag. The same can be said about followers of my blog, as well. Maybe more readers would be happy to talk about this yummy event. I know I want to.

Anyhow, this is our fourth try at paella. I think last year's was better. When you're pouring more water in because not all the rice is cooking, you have to know that there may be something wrong with the recipe. In this iteration, there was too much rice -- 9 lbs of it! Also, there may have been too much chicken as well because there was not enough room for the rice. Perhaps for the next iteration we can cut out 1/3 of the rice and 1/3 of the chicken. Maybe we should add some vegetables to the mix; it's sorely lacking something as you eat it. Still it's enjoyable but missing something.

The batch I brought home is savory the day after. It needs more though because of the lack of vegetables. Maybe I should eat it with some canned sardines or break out the Spam and an egg or two...

Labels: mmm

Looking good and making me hungry.

Labels: mmm, tis the season

When I went to Wisconsin late in August, we flew in and out through Chicago's O'Hare. I bought some cheese popcorn from the Nuts On Clark kiosk. It was not the white cheddar, but the orange cheddar, and it was pretty good cheese popcorn. Smooth cheesy flavor. Big fluffy puffed popped corn. Delicious. I just paid a mint for a gallon.

Now I can't get enough cheese popcorn. It must be from the delicious Karamel Korn kiosk in Security Square as I was growing up. I love it better than carmel corn. Don't get me started on kettle corn. But anyway, I love cheese popcorn. The orange the better. The white isn't so bad, but it's boring. Give me orange cheddar.

So I need to find more orange cheddar cheese popcorn. Perhaps the holidays and their gift tins of popcorn maybe good or maybe they maybe mediocre. Usually they are nothing to write home about. Perhaps I'll find some in some nut store around here. There's one in the Greenspring Station if it's still open. Perhaps, I'll send away via internet for some: fischer's? or some other boardwalk popcorn place.

I just need some cheese.

Labels: mmm

I love the stuff, but no one makes it anymore.

Eat some stuffing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/dining/stuffing-deserves-more-days-on-the-table.html?smid=pl-share

Labels: lotd, mmm

Cooking to commence soon. For now, though, I'm just gonna think about all kinds of noodle soups. Ramen. Soba. Udon. Phô. It's all there and chicken noodle as well.

Perhaps now I will buy that damn creuset cookware.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emofly/22-bowls-of-warm-and-cozy-noodle-soup

Labels: cooking, lotd, mmm

Wish I knew when I had planned to post this. Most likely it was sometime in April as the date from the post implies. I'm not even sure why I would've chosen this as a "Link of the Day," but it must be because I want to eat some ice cream.

Anywho, this is an unfinished draft and all it was was really just the link.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2012/04/classic-ice-cream-sandwiches/

Labels: cooking, mmm, unfinished drafts