dinner – Page 3 – My Urban Pantry

Kind of Good Stuff

March 6, 20143 Comments

This was one of the worst dinners I’ve made in a while. Worst technically. I don’t really know if it was the cookbook or if it was just me but OH boy. Halfway through cooking and half burned I was ready to chuck it and order a pizza. I have had pretty good luck with Spike Mendelsohn’s Good Stuff cookbook in the past, whipping up burgers and a wedge salad or two. I have noticed an error or two in the writing, notably the cheese sauce measurements and the lack of sauce for the mac & cheese but they were fairly easy catches for me as a home-cook. I’m not sure everyone would be so happy when they tried the cheese sauce and it’s way over population of flour. I can usually spot errors quickly and compensate. I don’t know if this recipe just got me on a bad night or what. Fried Chicken sandwiches and honey mustard sauce. Seems relatively easy right? RIGHT?!

Ok, the honey mustard, I halved because I couldn’t imagine needing two cups of honey mustard …Ever. But, I reduced as stated and ended up with a thick mass of ginger and mustard flavored honey. I used about 2 Tablespoons and dumped a cup down the drain after dinner. That was kind of a messy waste. I made the patties and chilled them, as stated, before dredging in flour, egg and breadcrumbs. Those breadcrumbs burned before the chicken was anywhere close to being done. I ended up throwing the whole thing in the oven to bake so that we could actually eat the way underdone chicken. Not my best effort. While I like a few of the burgers in this book, particularly the ‘Prez Obama‘ the whole thing is a bit overwrought I think. If you are in DC it would probably be better just to go to the restaurant. What’s the worst thing you ever made?

Not exactly our anniversary

March 2, 2014Leave a comment

We celebrated our anniversary on Friday night – February 28th. Technically we don’t have one this year because it isn’t leap year. We still managed to get out for an amazing dinner at our favorite, Cask & Larder: A Southern Public House. Each bite is so good. I know every time I blog about it I feel like you’ve already heard it but if you are in Orlando, you should eat there. We started out with brisket hand pies and a new flavor-sorghum. Sorghum is derived from grasses and has a whole lot of agricultural uses. We ended up having sorghum molasses in two of the dishes last night, as a dipping sauce for the hand pies and as a sauce with Arbol chile on fried brussels sprouts. Wow. Carmelly and deeply flavorful and something else i can’t identify. It was amazing in both preparations, with the bbq (maybe just smoked?) brisket and with the fatty heat of the arbol and fried sprouts. Southern food can be so vast and exciting and complicated when you take a deep look at it. I feel like we haven’t even scratched the surface. Z had a hanger steak with blistered tomatoes and this ridiculously sweet corn pudding. I can’t even imagine how to make that pudding. It was like cornmeal with a crunchy top and pieces of corn and all baked in a small cast iron dish. I had the Nashville Hot Chicken, which is significantly different from the brunch hot chicken I’ve had here before. This was I think a grilled and roasted/basted half a bone in chicken rather than a fried chicken breast that they have for brunch with eggs or waffles. It was spicy with a side of creamy and mustardy Alabama white BBQ sauce and some mellow flavorful macaroni & cheese on the side. I had a fun cocktail that was really nice for cutting through the flavors, a Jealous Monk, which included Anchor junipero gin, green chartreuse, lime juice, celery bitters and champagne vinegar-what?! so good. It was like the freshest limeade you ever had. Z finished off with his version of a cocktail, a malted milkshake. I ate the rich clearly housemade cherry on top. Cheers!

all pasta isn’t created equal

February 22, 2014Leave a comment

If you do any reading of food blog or magazines or watch more than one show on the Food Network you get some of the same mantras over and over ad infinitum. They include but are not limited to:

don’t cook garlic on too high a heat. It will burn and be bitter.
when zesting a lime or lemon only take off the thinnest colored part of the skin. The white pith is bitter.
use the best ingredients you can afford. I never know what that means. I think for me it is use the best I am willing to pay for.
Always think in a high pitched almost mock Italian when thinking about prosciutto, parmigiano or spagitti. (You know I know how to spell spaghetti.)

Giada De Laurentiis is a force. Food Network loves her and over the years she has kind of come into her own and become more like …herself. I don’t like to watch her so much as I feel like her falsetto Italian words are grating the edges of my soul. I do have one of her books however and we’ve made good work out of several recipes inside so I suppose I can’t complain about her too much. Maybe I’m just jealous. Z requested this recipe from everyday italian last week when he was sick with a sinus infection. His happy place in comfort food is noodles. Buttered noodles, ramen noodles, macaroni & cheese, Alfredo, etc. We had a package of Prosciutto in the freezer along with a bag of orechiette in the pantry from our last Trader Joe’s run in Sarasota. Combined with fresh wedge of parmesan we were off to the races. This book is nicely Italian in that it isn’t ingredient heavy. This is basically pasta, olive oil, bread crumbs, prosciutto & parm. All things we regularly have around even if nothing is waiting for their use. It’s a half hour type recipe. The ‘sauce’ for the pasta comes together while the water comes up to a boil and the pasta cooks. I threw in some steamed broccoli and a bottle of Lambrusco (also from TJ’s) to round it out. A side note about the TJ’s orrechiette-it isn’t my favorite. It’s a bit too cupped and even is a huge pot of salted water they tend to stick together into little stacks of hats which I don’t love. Sometimes you get what you pay for. The cookbook though, is an easy reader and the recipes come from that happy Italian place where they sit around the table every night to something luscious and comforting. Dinner is served.

Brunswick Stew

February 18, 20141 Comment

Well, here is some advice for you. Read the recipe. All of it. Including how many servings it makes. If you are not feeding a bunk house full of ranch hands you may want to hold back on this. I didn’t think about what I was doing before I made this recipe. I blindly bought ingredients. Blindly. Scroll it back a second. Four Rivers is a local smokehouse here in Orlando with a massive cultish following. People. Love. That. Place. It has brisket. It has smoked jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. It has my favorite coconut cake. In fact, I want it right now. I bought the cookbook when it went on sale a few months ago after flipping though it and realizing it was most of the menu in writing. This is all developed by a regular guy who loves to eat things, particularly things topped with an onion ring. John Rivers is a good guy who sells good food and is doing well for it. His book is easy to read and follow…you just have to do it. Note to self.

He’s even opening a new chicken joint soon that I am more than excited about. So, in this quest to try new things and open my books I made a Brunswick stew recipe out of the book. I probably could have put thirty seconds of thought into it and realized that it would feed a small army (which we are not.) It is a BBQ sauced soup that is full of brisket, chicken (it called for smoked, I used rotisserie) and sausage alongside those cowboy staples corn, diced potato and baby lima beans. It made about 2 gallons. I’ve eaten it three times, Z twice and our lunchmates (X3) ate it today too. That’s eight servings and I estimate 6 or 8 left in the fridge. It is pretty dang good though, on cornbread (so I heard today at lunch) or with buttered yeasty rolls (my personal favorite.) The picture here is rather soupy. Only the first two bowls were soupy like that. The rest is fairly just spoonfuls of meat and vegetables in the savory sauce. I happily had a bottle of 4R hot on hand when I was cooking. The rest of the book beckons… I may just have to buy a smoker.

totchos

February 17, 2014Leave a comment

I know this is the second post from Pinterest in a row and I’ve actually legitimately made other things that I actually think were more…..worthy but here they are. Totchos. I saw them on Pinterest in a sponsored thing by Ore-Ida or someplace. Totchos = Nachos with tator tots instead of chips. I planned to have them as a side for dinner with steaks and salad. Z was sick and he was hardly eating and so, we just had totchos for dinner. Nothing real here. All faux food. They weren’t bad but we’ve done and will do better. I took the low easy road. There’s not even a recipe involved. Cook some tots per the package (and a few minutes extra to get them crispier. Meanwhile, fry some bacon lardons (matchsticks) to crispy. Meanwhile, heat some Fritos jalapeno cheddar in the microwave (Yeah, I said that) Pour cheese over tots, sprinkle on bacon and a dollop of sour cream. Green onions would be nice but I didn’t have any. Enjoy!