In September I made two new recipes. One was the Lamb and Grilled Onion burger from Weber’s Big Book of Burgers. I also tried a hot and fast recipe for pulled pork from Raichlen’s Project Fire. The taste was good, but the biggest hit was the recipe he had for a mustard sauce.
As food stocks started to normalize towards the middle of COVID summer, I started to take advantage and try out more new dishes. It also helped that we were FINALLY able to find yeast again!
Chicago-style pepperoni pan pizza
hoisin-glazed baby back ribs
oatmeal-rasin bread
Grilled brined zucchini with cilantro-yogurt sauce
succotash
vanilla icebox cookies
The Chicago-style pepperoni pan pizza was one of the first recipes I wrote down to make. However, I never seemed to have both time and pepperoni at the same time. So I finally made it. I think America’s Test Kitchen’s decision to have me precook the pepperoni to render some of the fat helped both mellow the pepperoni taste (my kids were able to eat it) and keep this from being a greasy mess.
May was Cuban food month. I’d received a new cookbook of recipes from the Miami diaspora and back in Cuba. So I tried my hand at a few new recipes. Technically, I’d done the breaded steak (usually called Chicken Fried Steak in the USA) and pork shoulder Cuban style before, but this was the first time doing it with these recipes. I was very happy with all the results, although I learned a few things along the way for the next time I make these dishes.
When it came to new dishes, April was all about bread. First, I made a no-knead bread with America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe.
Almost No-Knead Bread
It came out OK. I actually tried it again the following day to try and get a darker crust. The funny thing is that this is one of the easiest breads to make and yet it’s the one I’ve had the worst results with. The crumb wasn’t as open as it was supposed to be and for all the time it took to proof it was pretty meh.
While I did a lot of cooking in March, I only made one new dish - Brown Sugar cookies. I’d had regular sugar cookies my entire life. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I had sugar cookies made with brown sugar instead. The brown sugar definitely took these cookies to a whole other taste realm where the molasses in the sugar added another dimension to the taste. I’m not saying it’s supplanted [white] sugar cookies in my heart, but that there’s a place for each of them. If the kids ate more cookies or if I didn’t care about my heart health (most cookies have a LOT of butter) I’d make these a lot more often.
Very low number of new dishes. Mostly because I was obsessed with programming and Gwent.
Both recipes were from America’s Test Kitchen. The pizza recipe was a challenge to be able to make a pizza that would be ready in an hour and not suffer too much from not having the pizza ferment for a few days. I thought it was alright. Despite liberally dusting the pizza peel, had a hard time getting the pizza off.
Without a doubt, the biggest story to tell about my cooking in 2019 is learning how to make, and no longer be intimidated by, breads. I made 15 different new breads and biscuits this year, including new family favorites like the Amish Friendship Bread and Brown Butter-Cardemom Banana bread. Also, there were the harder breads like the braided cinnamon bread and hot cross buns.
cinnamon swirl bread
After spending years wanting to make my own bacon, I finally did!
December had a relatively low number of new dishes. I made a pasta bolognese from a new cookbook that I found rich and delicious. I had an OK attempt at flat bread. I needed to roll out the bread a bit thinner because it didn’t really fulfill the “flat” part of flat bread. The Spanish garlic soup was pretty good, except they didn’t mention how much Sherry vinegar to use and I guessed a little too high. The coffee cake was pretty good, and the first time I’d made one.
Lots of Mexican food and a some other neat, ambitious dishes in August. The by this point the chicken chilaquiles were one of the oldest chicken dishes on my To-Make list. I just never happened to have the ingredients around and I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a hit or a flop. Finally, I decided to do it! I went overly ambitious and made my own corn tortillas, which I then toasted in the oven to create chips which I then put into the chilaquilas. It was quite delicious. On the other hand I was not a fan of “Dave’s Fish Tacos” from the Weber Charcoal Grilling book. But, redemption came in the form of Easy Weeknight Chicken Tacos, one of the newest additions to my To-Make list from America’s Test Kitchen’s Cook it in your Dutch Oven. It had a good blend of citrus and Mexican flavors. I’d definitely like to make it again.
I finally made bacon from scratch for the first time, so that deserves its own gallery:
One of the things that had been stopping me was the fact that Costco only sold pork bellies already sliced for Korean dishes. Then, the weekend I was going to ask them if I could buy a full pork belly, they had one there. They said customers had been asking for it so they were going to start selling some whole. It was a pretty neat experience making my own bacon. I can see why it’s so expensive - it involves a lot of waiting and a lot of labor.
