Peter's Cooking Diary #11

So last week I made my chili, but as usual I adjusted the recipe, I am always adjusted things each time I make it and based on what is on sale too. This time around I tried to use lots of spices out of my spice cabinet instead of a seasoning packet. There were no measurements for this at all, just put them all together and mixed them together.

I am going to try to remember all of the ingredients in this bowl I know there was curry powder, garam masala, ancho chile powder, sweet paprika, oregano, some kosher salt, and cocoa powder which I have seen used in many chili recipes, I think I need to add more of it next time as I couldn't taste it at all in the chili. I liked what the chili tasted like, I will keep trying to make my own spice mixture as it seems like the type of thing I would enjoy doing, I might even try to mix up a big container of it so I don't have to try every time.

The cooked down onion and garlic mixture that I usually use, 3 green bell peppers, and a pack that contained one red, one yellow, and one orange bell pepper that I got at Aldi. I normally check all the produce thoroughly at Aldi as not everything is great, but the bell peppers were firm and smooth which is what I look for in a bell pepper.

I added the spices from the bowl to the veggies and stirred them up and let them heat together in the crock pot on high for 10-15 minutes, to just get the flavors mixing together. I usually use fire roasted canned chiles but I forgot to buy them. This is also the step I would add in tomato paste into the mix if I were including it.

I added a large can of crushed tomatoes and a large container of stock to the pot and mixed to combine everything together. I put just a little bit of soy sauce into it as well, I love the depth of flavor of soy sauce, even though it seems a bit out of place with these ingredients. I seasoned some chicken breasts and cooked them on high on each side for 7-8 minutes to get a nice golden brown color in the pan, let them sit for a few minutes, and then nestled them into the crock pot with the mixture.

After cooking for about 6 hours on low, I remove the chicken breasts from the crock pot, and let them cool, once they cooled I shredded them up and added them back to the pot, along with 3 drained cans of sweet corn.

I stirred the corn in and added 3 rinsed cans worth of black beans, some people don't rinse their beans out of the can, but I cant stand the starchy water that comes with the beans in the can. I drain them thoroughly. I turn the the chili off before adding the corn and beans, I let them sit mixed in for about 20 minutes just enough to heat everything through.

Here is a shot at the finished pot of chili, my chili is very chunky, and doesn't actually have that much meat it in, I am sure you could take the chicken out and it wouldn't be all that much worse, you would just want to take out the chicken stock and substitute veggie stock and then cook veggies in oil instead of bacon fat and it would be vegan if you wanted it to be.

I wanted to fry up some potatoes to put on top of my chili for a little bit of crispiness. When I pan fry potatoes I will always pat them dry to try to get some of the moisture out of them, it causes less splatter in the hot oil.

I added some salt to the potatoes in the hot oil, they are just starting to brown a little bit in this picture.

I don't turn the potatoes too quickly or they don't brown up as well, let them be for a few minutes before doing anything at all to them. Cooking them like this only takes maybe 10 minutes before they are brown and crispy. I like using Yukon Gold potatoes for this purpose.

I drained the potatoes after frying them, and salted them a little more.

A bowl of my chili covered with cheese and topped with my fried potatoes, it was delicious, the chili with my own seasonings was good too. I will continue to adapt the seasonings, and will probably never have a set recipe.

One last thing I wanted to add was this item I found at Aldi, which chocolate peanut butter, it seemed like an amazing idea, they also had a dark chocolate version. I tried it, and well I was a little bit disappointed by it, its just a bit too sweet for me when it comes to peanut butter, I might have to get some of the dark chocolate, which I bet goes better with peanut butter.

Peter's Cooking Diary #9

Wow so it has been a little while since I have written about my cooking, but this time around I do have a ton of pictures to share.

We will start with something that I did a few weeks ago, it wasn't as much cooking as it was using up my leftover chili.

 First I am just reheating my leftover chicken chili on the stove.

 Next I added some cubed up Velveeta, which is really difficult to work with, its like putty, and sticks to a knife like nothing else!

 This is the final product, cheesy, creamy, chili cheese dip, I dipped all sorts of things in it, mostly veggies, I baked some frozen waffle fries, and I also just had to dip my finger in. It was delicious and is definitely something I would make for a party with others.

Then we get to what I did today, it was a big day with lots of cooking, I decided I would do all of the chopping and prep work before I started cooking, so the first steps would be to separate all of the things for the different items I was making.

 First I have the mushrooms, onion, and garlic that I was cooking in bacon grease that I would reheat with bacon and mix in with my eggs for breakfast every morning. I also found another use for it lower in the post.

 Next we have the onion, garlic, and red bell pepper which were going to be cooked with some seasonings as the flavor base for my meatloaf.

 Finally I set aside some garlic to go with my roasted broccoli, which would be the side dish to my meat loaf for my lunch during the week.

 Another technique learned from the cook book, creating a sling in the crock pot with foil, to help remove the meatloaf when it is done cooking. There is also what is referred to as a collar underneath that help to even out the heat inside so the meatloaf doesn't burn on the side next to the heating element.

Most of my days cooking start with the cooking of bacon, this is done to provide me with some fresh bacon grease for the other cooking I will be doing. It also just makes my apartment smell amazing and bacony, and the bacon will be used for my breakfast with eggs during the week.

 Its quite steamy in the picture, its the mushrooms, onion, and garlic cooking through in bacon fat, it also helped to clean up the little bits left in the pan by the bacon, I added a little red pepper flake for just a little bit of heat. These got so nicely cooked down, and smelled delicious.

 This is the end result of the mushrooms, onion, and garlic, they really did smell amazing, and were delicious, I added just a splash of soy sauce to the pan for that added depth of flavor.

 From my favorite cook book, this is a technique used as a binder and thickener in things, bread mashed in milk, white bread seems to be the only bread that works for this though, I have actually been buying the soft burger buns from the bakery at the local grocery store, they are quite delicious, and mash up quite well.

 I made some delicious blueberry corn cakes.....I am only kidding about that this is actually the bread and milk mixture, along with a can of black beans that I rinsed, and mashed all together. It was what the recipe told me to do, I guess it just added to the binding ability of the ingredients.

 This is one of my favorite ingredients, I put them in my chili every time, they add some fruity and smoky pepper flavor to everything, so even though they weren't in the recipe, I wanted to add them to the meatloaf I was making.

 This is the cooked down bowl of onion, garlic, and red bell pepper, along with the first roasted chiles, dark chile powder, oregano, and a drained can of corn.

 Added the bean, bread and milk mixture, to the veggies from above. I added the 2 eggs and meat and started mixing to combine it all together.

 The only way to mix meatloaf is my hand, this is my meatloaf hand!

 The meatloaf nestled into the slow cooker.

 Topped the meat loaf with bbq sauce per the recipe, I love bbq sauce on everything, so you can see why i chose this recipe.

 This is the meatloaf when it was finished in the slow cooker, the sauce was nice and caramelized.

I used the sling for its intended purpose, to easily remove the meatloaf and put it on a baking sheet to cool off and set up.

So much broccoli!

 I actually had to do a total of 3 sheets worth of broccoli for roasting, I would normally do something with cauliflower, but it was expensive this week and the heads were very small, so I just did a bunch of broccoli. I drizzled some oil on them, some salt, and some garlic before baking them off.

 This is what the finished product looks like, a little browned and softened, not too soft, but not too hard.

 I put the broccoli in a container and sprinkled with some grated Parmesan cheese over them.

 The final thing I cooked today was pizza. The grocery store I usually shop at, Festival foods, had their sale on different pizza fixins, so I decided that I would make some, and I really loved the results. This is their whole grain pizza dough that I believe they mix in house, I spread it on a greased baking sheet. I have done this before, and I had stretched it to the corners, but the corners were a bit too toasty for my liking, I left it like this and it turned out very well.

I spooned sauce over the dough and left it intentionally uneven on the crust, I think it makes bites of pizza a little big different, you just have to beware of the exploding pizza sauce.

I sprinkled all of the remaining Parmesan on top of the sauce, it added a nice salty base for the pizza.

 I sprinkled a variety of other cheeses on top, I like my pizza quite cheesy.

 The last things that I added were some deli smoked ham, and some of the onion, mushroom, garlic mixture I cooked in bacon fat before. I sprinkled a little red pepper flake and oregano over the top for a finishing touch to the pizza.

The last picture I have for the post is the finished pizza that was amazing, some of the best pizza I have had. I loved the nuttiness of the whole wheat crust, I love the smokiness of the ham, and the sweetness from the onions and mushrooms. The oregano added a wonderful smell to the pizza too, the red pepper added just the right level of heat, and the pizza cost about 5 bucks to make.

I had a great day of cooking, which is something I really love doing. I need to write on here more often about cooking and other food related items, they are things that I truly do have a passion for.