Peter's Cooking Diary #24

Well I took a week off from writing on here because I made stuff that wasn't really anything new for me. This week I was feeling a bit more adventurous, I made something that I have never made before, and I actually didn't have a recipe, I just tried something out from my own brain and it really worked. My inspiration this week was Chipotle, I wanted to try to make the ingredients that I get in a burrito bowl. We will start from the bottom up.

This was the first thing that I made, 1 lb of pinto beans, 2 cups of chicken stock for flavor, and 3 cups of water. I added some bay leaves, oregano, cumin, coriander, and some mexican chili powder. The beans  cooked for 5 hours in the crock pot.

This was the finished pot of beans, I drained most of the liquid from them and put them in my container and placed them in the fridge.

The next item I was making was some slow cooked carnitas using this smallish pork roast.

I pretty much used the same spices for the pork as I did for the beans, plus I added some salt to this spice mix as well. I stirred everything to combine in the bowl.

I coated all of the sides of the roast liberally with the spice mixture.

I added the roast to the crock pot dry, to keep the spices from all getting washed off right away.

I poured about 2 cups of chicken stock to the side of the roast as a cooking liquid and also added a few more bay leaves to the pot for more seasoning. The roast cooked for 10 hours on low, or just overnight while I slept.

This is what the roast looked like when it was done cooking. I removed it from the pot and let if cook for about an hour. I let the juices stay in the pan and cool off as well. I removed any chunks of fat that were floating in the juices.

I hand pulled the pork into bite size pieces, and removed any pieces of fat that I found. I also poured the remaining juices over the pork to keep it nice and juicy.

So the final thing I made was some corn salsa, I have always wanted to make some corn salsa, and figured it would go well with the things I was making. So this is 5 ears of corn with husks and silk removed, on a foil lined baking sheet that is coated in cooking spray. I placed them under the broiler for about 10 minutes and rotated them and put them back in for another 10.

This is the final roasted corn, I guess my oven is a little bit uneven as some of the corn got way more roasted than the other ears.

I took a knife and removed all of the kernels from the cob, I also ran the back of the knife down the cob to get as much of the corn out cob as I could.

The next step was to roast the pepper that I was cooking with, I used the broiler to roast the peppers using a method I saw online, removing the stems and seeds from the peppers and flattening them out. If I had gas burners I would have used them to roast the peppers, but I had to use what I have.

I roasted the peppers for about 10 minutes, in retrospect I would have probably cooked them for a few more minutes and gotten them really charred.

While the peppers were still hot, I tossed them in a bowl and popped the lid on to steam from their own heat, this would help to loosen the charred skin from the peppers.

I let the peppers steam for a while in the bowl before removing the skins from all of them. When I said I would have cooked them a bit longer, it was because some of the skins were really hard to get off, a little more cooking would have made that a lot easier.

This is the pile of roasted peppers.

I took them one by one and chopped them very finely, cutting them in strips vertically and then chopping finely across. This might have actually been some of my best knife work and it was at like 11pm at night as well. I wish I would have taken better pictures to illustrate what I did.

This is the corn along with all of the chopped peppers. I also forgot to mention, I used 2 red bell peppers, 2 jalapeno peppers and 2 anaheim peppers. I really wanted to get some poblanos, but the only poblanos that were left on the shelf were super wrinkly and did not feel or look fresh at all.

To finish the salsa, I added some cilantro and some minced red onion, as well as the juice of one line and a little bit of salt for seasoning. This salsa could not have turned out better. I really like it and will definitely be trying to do things similar to this in the future, especially when local sweet corn is available.

I eat the bowls with beans, pork, and the corn salsa, as well as some guacamole and the bowls I have made have been very delicious.

Peter's Cooking Diary #22

So this was was a great week of cooking, I actually made 3 different things, A pizza, some mexican style brown rice, and some pinto beans. I think that these dished could easily be made vegetarian and are also great for someone on a budget. Beans and rice are both extremely cheap, and some of the things can be easily substituted to make the recipes even cheaper.

The cooking started with 2 onions and 2 heads of garlic. I decided it would be easier to just chop up the onions and mince the garlic all at once to save myself some prep time.

Chopped onion and garlic one I had finished with them.

This recipe called for coating the interior of the crock pot with cooking spray, which is easier said than done. I actually found it easier to do by lifting the insert out and holding it on its side and spraying the can inside.

After I was satisfied with the spraying, this is what it looked like.

On top of the spraying, this recipe called for adding some butter in to the crock pot to add some flavor and a little bit more fat.

Into the pot with the butter I added, 2 cups of brown rice, some Mexican style chile powder, and some salt to the pot.

The recipe called for bringing 3 cups of water to a boil, then whisking in 3 cloves of garlic and 3 tablespoons of tomato paste. Once the tomato paste was distributed in the water, I added the mixture to the crock pot and stirred to combine everything.

After cooking for 2 hours on high, the rice was perfectly cooked. I stirred in some lime juice and some cilantro. This was a great recipe and I plan to make it more in the future.

After cleaning out the crock pot it was time to start the second recipe and the food that would go along with the finished rice. To start I added one pound of pinto beans, a few bay leaves, and some ham hocks to the cooker. I actually added no salt to the beans, the hocks on their own will add plenty of salt to the dish on their own.

Once the beans are cooked through I turned the cooker off, and removed the ham hocks from the crock pot to cool. Once they were cooked I removed the meat from them.

I chopped the meat up into small pieces and set it aside.

I sauteed some onions and garlic in bacon grease, because why not add a little more pork fat to this dish right?

After the onions and garlic had some time to cook I added a large can of fire roasted mild green chiles, I love using these whenever I can because they add great flavor to anything. The recipe actually called for a bell pepper but I decided to use the canned peppers instead.

I added some oregano and cumin to the pan and let the veggies cook together a bit to kind of marry the flavors.

This is the onion, pepper, and garlic as well as a few scoops of the beans from the crock pot.

The combination was then mashed together to help the flavors all meld together.

Combined the rest of the beans, the meat, and the previous mixture together along with some cilantro and lime juice and stirred them together. By mashing the stuff up in the previous picture the final combination has a consistency of refried beans which kind of holds is all together instead of it being loose beans.

The final thing I made was a tuna pizza, but it start with more onion and garlic betting cooked down on bacon grease.

I cooked the onion and garlic down until they were soft and translucent.

I drained and flaked out a large can of tuna, once the onion and garlic was done cooking I added that combination to the tuna and mixed it all together.

I stretched out some store bought whole wheat crust on a pan that I had sprayed with some cooking spray. I then topped with with plain tomato sauce.

On top of the sauce I added some dried oregano and some fresh basil I really love the flavor of fresh basil in pizza, I think it is one of my favorite flavors in the world.

I topped the pizza with the tuna onion and garlic mixture, and added some parmesan cheese, and some shredded cheese to the top.

The finished cooked pizza, it was amazing! There was probably a little bit too much  onion on the pizza, but its hard to complain, I really liked it.

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.