Peter's Cooking Diary #16

Well it was another good week of cooking. I made 2 different things this week, the first was a semi-homemade item, and the second was a recipe that I have made before, but being me I made some new adjustments to the recipe and added more things than I had in the past.

So this is one of the few semi-homemade pizzas that I make. I usually tend to start of with a decent quality frozen pizza, this was some type of new diggiorno pizza that was on sale, it was definitely pretty well seasoned to begin with. I have used garlic bread pizzas for this recipe as well, but those can be a little bit salty for people who much not be able to handle that.

I always get weird looks when I talk about liking tuna pizza, but thats what this is going to be a tuna pizza. I used on big can of tuna, drained and flaked over the pizza. This is something that I first tried when my family lived in Austria, but my dad would make it for me even when we had moved back, so now this is my own version of it. 

I sprinkled the tuna pizza with oregano, sliced kalamata olives, and some minced garlic, plus a little sprinkle of red pepper flake for just a little bit of heat.

As I tend to do with frozen pizzas, I added some shredded cheese, and also a little bit of Parmesan cheese for some added flavor as well.

This is the finished product, the pizza is so nice and crispy, I love the briny olives with the tuna and the garlic. This is one of my favorite pizzas to make for a reason.

The next recipe is the chicken enchilada tamale bake from my slow cooker cookbook, the recipe needs 4 cups of cooked and shredded chicken breast, so I used the recipe in the book for making that chicken. Salt and pepper on both sides and then cooking over high heat for 5-7 minutes on each side. After the first side is nicely browned, flip the chicken, add a cup of water and cover. The chicken will get less brown on the second side but will cook through nicely in the pan and stay nice and moist as well.

This is the finished chicken, I always let it rest before cutting into it. I then took the chicken and shredded it with 2 forks, it will increase in volume after shredding and 2 lbs of chicken can go a long way when shredded.

This is the beginning of the base of the recipe, my normal onion and garlic combination, sweating down with a little salt, some cumin, Mexican chili powder, oregano, and some paprika.

Stirred all of the seasonings in and cooked more, also added 2 small cans of mild fire-roasted green chiles with the liquid from the cans as well. I love the flavor that gets added from the peppers they are a much in anything Mexican that I make.

This is my slow cooker with the veggies and spices, corn, creamed corn, black beans, and enchilada sauce. I will probably try this same recipe with some green enchilada sauce at some point in the future. Because I am who I am I had to expand the recipe a little bit so I had to add more sauce, when I wanted more corn and more black beans.

Added the chicken and stirred it all to combine and let it cook away while I prepared the topping for this dish. I wanted to see if I could get the mixture to cook down a little before I added the topping.

This is instant polenta and it is incredibly hard to find for my cooking. The only place that I know of in the area that carries it is Wal-Mart and I like to avoid shopping there as much as I can, but this recipe is so good and I was craving it so I had to bite the bullet and go in to buy it.

Added water and salt to the polenta, and then microwaved it while covered. The polenta isn't quite instant but it does cook up really quickly.

Once the polenta had cooked long enough to thicken, then I added butter and cheese to complete the polenta topping.

Added the polenta topping to the top of the mixture and I covered for 4 hours. The final product didn't look pretty enough for a picture, but to be honest, I don't care what something looks like as long as it tastes good.

It was a little soupier because of my tampering with the levels of everything in the pot, but it tasted amazing.

In the next edition I will be cooking my first recipe out of The Joy of Cooking, and it is also a recipe that I have been wanting to make for a long time.

Food Adventures: S.A.L.T. in De Pere Brunch Edition

Well I wrote about my previous trip to S.A.L.T. here, but my friend discovered but they also have a brunch menu, so we decided to go back and try the brunch menu as well.

This time I was able to get a pretty good picture of the menu that if you click on will get larger and is pretty readable. We decided to order a few different things and to share. I will say that I enjoyed that there are 2 dishes that are references from The Lord of the Rings in them, and there was also poutine, but I somehow didn't get poutine, this time.

This was the truffle fries on the menu. I have had some things with truffles in the past that, so I wasn't too eager to try them, but my friend wanted to get them, and its hard to not want to at least try fries of any kind. I liked them quite a bit although I made sure not to fill up on them. The fries were nice and crispy and were more of shoestring fries, which probably helped get that level of crispy. There was a little Parmesan cheese, parsley, truffle oil, and a poached egg on top. The truffle oil was not overpowering, it was more just the essence of truffle. The best fries were the one that got some of the yolk on them.

This was my main dish, chilaquiles. It is a dish that I have seen on all sorts of different shows on tv and always looks so good, but it was something I had never seen on a menu before. I know a low of what I had seen on tv was done with a green chile pork, but this dish was cheese grits on the bottom, seasoned tortilla chips that had a little kick to them, slow roasted pork, queso sauce, minced onion, cilantro, and a poached egg. I didn't mention the tomatoes because I am not a big fan.

This is a shot after removing the tomatoes, and popping the yolk on my egg that made all of the other elements of the dish even more enjoyable. I actually said during the meal something along the lines of "Egg yolk is the best sauce."

A shot that has a bit of the grits in it, they added such a nice creamy element to the dish along with the spice, the slight sweetness, and the richness of the egg. I really enjoyed all of this dish, as I have pretty much everything at S.A.L.T.

Evidence of how much I enjoyed the dish, I have definitely made a habit of doing that at this restaurant.

The other dish we shared was the pastrami hash, the eggs on top are actually duck eggs, I actually didn't notice any flavor difference while eating, but looking at them now, they are bigger, with really big yolks in them. I think I have definitely broken the record for uses of the word yolk in a blog post here. The salad was good, it was mixed greens with a little bit of beet in it too, the salad was good as was the hash. The potatoes had a good crunch on them, and the pastrami was in good sized chunks also with a good crisp on them. It was another. great trip to S.A.L.T.

Peter's Cooking Diary #15

Well its another week, and of course I did some more cooking. It was the week of the Super Bowl, but I didn't do all that much cooking. It wasn't much of an event for me this year, and it was a surprisingly boring game.

Cooking started like it does most weeks with onions and garlic cooking in bacon grease, this same base was actually used in 3 different things over 2 days of cooking. I like to plan ahead and do any precooking that I can to help reduce cooking and prep time later on.

I set some of the cooked onions and garlic mixture aside and then continued with the remaining 2/3 of the mixture.

To the remaining onions and garlic I added some mushrooms similar to what I have shown in the past on here, I did use some baby bella mushrooms instead of the button mushrooms I have used in the past, but there isn't much of a difference.

The next thing I was going to add to the pan was some chopped ham. I usually choose a smoked or pit ham for the things that I use it in because it provides the most flavor, but in this situation I used some off the bone ham that was on sale, although in retrospect I should have gone with the pit ham.

Tossing the ham into the pan with the cooked onions, garlic and mushrooms, the ham is fully cooked so it doesn't need all that long in the pan, just long enough to heat up and for the flavors to marry.

The final part of this stage of cooking for the onions, garlic, mushrooms and ham. This mixture was halved and used in 2 different recipes.

I believe I have made a similar pizza before, I used store bought fresh crust from Festival Foods. This was the wheat crust. I have used it before and I know that I really liked it.

Just the normal pizza making process adding a good amount of sauce to the crust, add whatever amount of sauce you want to your pizza.

I added a lot of cheese, including some Parmesan, some oregano and some red pepper flake which are my seasonings of choice on my pizza. I couldn't find any decent fresh basil so I just didn't get any, but if there is any good fresh basil I would slice it up and use it, or you can just tear the leaves.

To the top of the pizza I added some of the onion, garlic, mushrooms, and ham mixture after I had let it cool. I also put a little more Parmesan cheese on top.

The pizza once it was taken out of the oven, it was really good, not quite as good as some other pizzas I have made, but it was still quite good.

Heated up the remaining onion, garlic, mushroom and ham mixture to go with my eggs for breakfast.

I took the onions and garlic that I had set aside the night before, and mashed them up with a potato masher. This is the one element that I have changed in the following recipe from what my father taught to me. He uses onion and garlic powder, although I am sure he has used fresh onion at some point. The recipe can actually be used as hamburgers, meatballs, or meatloaf.

To the onions and garlic I added ground beef, soy sauce because I didn't have any Worcestershire sauce, parsley flake, Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, and some eggs.

The only way to mix all of this up is by hand, its the best way to ensure proper distribution of all of the ingredients.

I rolled out the meat into balls by hand, they are inconsistent in size a little bit, but I still loved the result that I got.

My arrangement in the pan, I had used some lean beef so I put some oil in the bottom to make sure they wouldn't stick to the pan.

I cooked the meatballs for about 2 minutes on each side. The larger ones got a little bit longer on each side.

I had a mix of some tomato sauce and bbq sauce in my slow cooking warming that I bathed the meatballs in. These can really go with anything from marinara to gravy.

The final shot of my slow cooker with all of the meatballs in the slow cooker.

Peter's Cooking Diary #14

Well I haven't written about cooking the past few weeks, not because I didn't do any cooking, but because I was underwhelmed by what I made. Sometimes I get ideas of things to cook and they just don't work out too well, the last 2 weeks I have been working with lentils a lot and neither dish worked that well for me, but I have kept on pushing and added some meat back into the situation. I also just don't like putting things out there that I didn't enjoy, although it would be interesting to see where I messed up. I know in one of the recipes I used bagged precut broccoli that had turned or something, it was a little sour. I never buy precut veggies, but for some reason I did for that recipe and it came back to bite me.

The first thing to mention is that I finally bought my own copy of The Joy of Cooking, I didn't have a specific need for another cookbook, but I just thought it was the time

The usual for me of starting the day with making some bacon, the bacon got used as well as some of the grease in my other items which is my MO after all.

Just the finished bacon cooling, I can almost taste it from the picture. I had to let it cool down before I could eat it.

Onions, leeks and garlic cooking in some bacon grease. Cooking veggies in bacon grease always smells so good!

After the veggies had been cooking for a little bit and got a little bit of color to them.

I added some sliced mushrooms to the mixture and cooked it all together, I also added a little red pepper flake and some soy sauce for seasoning.

After everything had a chance to cook together for long enough this is what it looks like.

Some of the vegetables heated with a little bit of butter, with some of the cooked bacon on top and some scrambled eggs on it.

This is the final product of my scramble, it was really good and the flavor really got distributed through the eggs and the mixture.

Today's recipe starts with some ground beef which I cooked through in the pan and drained as much of the grease as I could, but my issue with cooking beef into things is that they always seem too greasy, as much as I work to drain the beef it still leaves a large amount of fat in stuff.

Cooked beef in the crock pot with some crushed tomatoes, bay leaves and some soy sauce.

Onions, garlic, leeks, and celery cooking down in some bacon grease to start the base of my soup to o along with the beef and tomatoes already in the pot.

Paprika, oregano, red pepper flake, and some Italian seasoning were the spices of choice for this recipe.

I added some carrots to the vegetables that were softening some. I was giving them a good sweat to get a lot of the flavor going.

I added the seasoning to the veggies and cooked them a big more to get the flavors going.

Stirred everything together in the crock pot, and added some stock to the pot to loosen everything up. I cooked it all together on high for about 4 hours. I added a few teaspoons of instant tapioca to help everything tighten up in the crock pot.

The finished soup I added a few drained cans of corn and cup of thawed peas. The soup worked out really well, I have never made a veggie beef soup, and I had actually come up with this one on my own, I liked the flavors I was able to create, I should really start using leeks more in my cooking.

2013 Movie Wrapup

I thought this was a great year for movies, I saw a total of 13 movies in theaters that were released in 2013, and 2 more movies at home that I didn't have a chance to see in theaters here in Green Bay. As you will see from my list at the end of this post, there are actually dozens more movies that were released this year that I would love to see at some point, and yes I spend a lot of time reading about movies on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB.

I want to say that these are rankings according to my taste in movies and my taste alone, and not everyone will feel the same way that I do. I tend to value humor in a movie even if the movie is not a true comedy. If the movie is a flat out drama with little humor, I probably won't enjoy it quite as much. I tend to lose a little bit of interest if I don't laugh once in a while at a movie, and it isn't at all difficult to make me laugh a bit.

Unranked movies I saw that came out this year:
Kings of Summer- I really liked this movie, It is available through Red Box, and possibly on demand through certain services, but at this moment it is not available on Netflix Instant. The movie is about how a small group of young high schoolers spend their summer, I don't want to give too much away, but it is a bit of a coming of age tale, while also bringing in elements of dealing with family, and friendship. I really enjoyed the movie, but I had a hard time writing about it, possibly because I have been making myself write a bit more than I have in the past by seeing more movies in the last week. I especially enjoyed the performance by Moises Arias in this movie, he is funny and a bit off beat. There are a lot of known actors that people would recognize in smaller roles in this movie, and some good performances by lesser known younger actors. If you want something that is a bit different than the mainstream selections take a chance on this movie, I think you will enjoy it.

Blackfish-This was the only new documentary that I saw this year, and it was really eye opening. I have never been to a Seaworld, at least I don't remember going to one at any point in my life, and after watching this movie, I highly doubt I will ever go to one. This movie documents the history of a whale named Tilikum, and all sorts of incidents that have taken place involving Orcas at Seaworld, showing from the actions taken to capture orca calves in the wild, to the breeding of them in captivity. If you don't feel like you can handle this subject or don't want to know about it, I understand. I found this movie eye opening, and I had a visceral reaction to certain parts of it, I really had no idea of all of the incidents, if you love animals, I would say that this is a must see to just show you the kind of things that have happened at Seaworld. I watched this movie when it was played on CNN, I have no idea if it is streaming anywhere, but there is a lot of interesting information that I had no idea about that is given out in this movie, I highly recommend it.

And Now the List of Movies I Saw in 2013:


13. Pain & Gain-I saw this movie, I paid to see this movie, why oh why did I pay to see this movie? I don't know of any other examples in recent history where I regretted not walking out of a movie. I wan't to say that I will never see another Michael Bay movie in my life, but I will probably see him ruin Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before I am ballsy enough to really make that vow.

12. Thor: The Dark World-I was really bored during this movie, I can't pinpoint the reason. It may have just been the fact that the movie didn't do a good enough job of trying to get my to care. Loki was entertaining, but he wasn't in enough of the movie. I wouldn't be surprised if I don't see this movie again, there are numerous other Marvel movies I would rather be watching.

11. World War Z-This wasn't a great movie by any means, and it definitely wasn't a very good adaptation of the book, it is entertaining in parts, it was a good popcorn movie, and not much more. I don't know how excited I am about the upcoming sequels, they seem like a complete moneygrab, but that seems to be what a lot of the movie industry is doing right now anyway.

10. Pacific Rim-I thought this movie was so much fun, I think the idea is really cool and creative. Some elements of the plot somehow seem to be set up for convenience and there are some pretty bad fake accents in this movie as well, but it is still entertaining, and the monster battles are really well done. I tend to like the work of Guillermo Del Toro, he does monsters especially well. He was originally in line to direct the Hobbit back when it was still being planned out.

9. Anchorman 2-This was a funny movie, but it didn't really stand out in any other way than humor. I am not sure I expected much more than humor, I don't think there were quite as many quotable lines in this one as there were in the first, which might make it have less cultural staying power than the first.

8. Iron Man 3-I thought this movie was a great return for form, while also creating a new and enjoyable feel to the character that already had 2 previous movies. I like what director Shane Black added to the tone of the movie, I really liked the introspective take on Tony Stark in this movie. It would normally rank much higher, but I really liked many other movies this year.

7. Hunger Games: Catching Fire-I thought this was quite a bit better than the first installment, and I loved what they did with the arena especially, it looked just like it did in my mind, well except with better computer animation. I am cautiosly optimistic for the remaining movies, although turning one book into 2 movies always bothers movie, just another money grab.

6. Frozen-This, for me at least, felt like a return to the Disney movies I grew up with, it was a great movie to attend with my family. The vocal performances in this are great, and even though its not that similar to the original story, I thought they did a great job of getting some humor into the film, I especially liked Josh Gad's role in the movie.

5. Star Trek Into Darkness-I have to admit that I am not the biggest Star Trek fan, I haven't seen as much of the original series of the movies to be able to claim that about myself.  I know that this movie takes a lot of different stories from previous Star Trek iterations and changes them in ways to reflect the alternate universe. I do think that there could be a little bit of creativity put into writing any of the additional Star Trek movies, if there are going to be any.

4. This Is the End-I loved the sense of humor in this movie, and how all of the main actors were making fun of themselves in some way, I also really liked the wide variety of people they got to appear in this movie, there were very few of the extended group that they didn't get for the movie. I thought it was generally a fun idea, and the movie was hilarious. I am interested to see the movies that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg write and direct in the future.

3. The World's End-I really liked this movie, it was the frontrunner for my favorite movie for a few months there. I think this movie is just so well directed and edited, some of the best transitions and fades I have seen in a long time. It was not my favorite movie made by the core team of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and director Edgar Wright. Edgar Wright has directed 4 movies that I love so I am excited to see what he can do with Ant-Man and join the Marvel universe. I would imagine it will have quite a bit of humor along with lots of well shot action scenes. If there is one thing I can say it is that Edgar Wright is the anti Michael Bay. Michael Bay edits so that his action is too fast, whereas Edgar Wright goes with longer shots and fewer cuts, not forcing the eye to adjust so much throughout a sequence, sorry I didn't plan on ranting about Michael Bay outside of Pain & Gain.

2.Gravity-This movie is probably the most technically and visually amazing film I have seen in a long time. It used CGI but it didn't feel like CGI at all. I think that Cuaron is likely going to win the best director Oscar this year for the simple fact that he was able to do so much with  just actors in a room by themselves. I think that Sandra Bullock proved that her Oscar was not a fluke with her performance in this movie. I don't think watching it at home will do it nearly enough justice, this movie was made to be watched on a big screen and in 3D and I loved it in that situation.

1.Her-I was excited heading into this movie, and the movie was still able to exceed my expectations. I loved everything about this movie, from the idea, the performances, and the execution of those ideas. It is almost a bit of a fable for the cyber age that we are in. I think the main things that set this movie above Gravity are my belief that Her will be much more rewatchable than Gravity, and the sense of humor in Her. I stated before that I really value a sense of humor in a movie, and this movie really hit me in the perfect way on so many different levels.

Well I forced myself to power through all of that writing, now it is a new year, and I will have to start a new list from scratch, time for a fresh slate.

If I had felt like taking a lot of extra time I would have linked all of the movies below this to their IMDB pages. I may still go back and add the links in at a later time. But below is a pretty extensive list.

Movies I didn't see but probably will at some point in the future:
12 Years a Slave
Short Term 12
Fruitvale Station
The Spectacular Now
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Way Way Back
Blue Jasmine
The Wolf of Wall Street
American Hustle
Kick-Ass 2
Captain Phillips
In a World
Don Jon
Nebraska
Hell Baby
Bad Milo
We're The Millers
Elysium
The Wolverine
Man of Steel
The Heat
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Monsters University
Despicable Me 2
The To Do List
Ass Backwards
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Sound City
Muscle Shoals
Drinking Buddies
Enough Said