Beef Chuck Roll Roast

J. made a classic beef roast today from The Science of Good Cooking book.  For the veggies we used purple carrots and orange beets from the farmers' market.  The cut of beef was called chuck roll and was $11/lb at the fancy Bernal Heights butcher shop.  The result was amazing.  Not sure if that was due to the good science, good beef, or the good cook.

Texas Brisket

Last night, inspired by our Passover meal, we made brisket.  We served it with corn on the cob & baked asparagus:

Here's the recipe we used:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/texas-oven-roasted-beef-brisket-recipe.html

It was tasty, and fatty.

Banana Bread

N. came across some mildly overripe bananas in the office kitchen.  We were inspired to save them by way of banana bread baking.

J. found this recipe as a starting point:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/banana-bread-recipe.html

We added a bit of walnuts and chocolate chunks towards the end, to make it more exciting!

Here we are folding the ground cinnamon (gift from M. & C.) into the mushed banana mixture:

And, here's the final product:

It turned out amazingly well and was surprisingly easy.  Now there's no excuse for letting bananas go to waste.

Remade on:

2016-03-13

Bacon Wrapped Dates

N. started wrapping dates in bacon years ago, most likely inspired by a dish in a tapas restaurant.  Now, bacon wrapped dates are a staple of N&J cooking, so it's hard to believe they haven't made it into this blog yet.  They are present at most parties we host and are often made as a festive appetizer to casual home meals.

Here are the basic of how it's done.

Ingredients:

- 3X wooden toothpicks

- 1X bacon strips

- 3X dates, pitted

Fabrication Steps:

1. Soak toothpicks in water.

2. Preheat oven to 410F.

3. Cut bacon strips in even thirds.

4. Wrap dates in bacon, securing with wet toothpick, arranging in a single layer on an ungreased baking dish.

5. Bake for 25 min.

No matter how often we make them, there are never any leftover bacon wrapped dates to tuppie.

Carnitas

J. enjoys roasting large chunks of meat. Today we tried carnitas. We used this recipe from our favorite blogger:

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2011/11/homesick-texan-carnitas/

They turned out a bit dry, but delicious nonetheless:

We assembled them into tacos with TJ salsa and avo, as follows:

Remade on:

2015-02-12 with fancier meet from local butcher and kept moister

Vegetable Juicing

We got a fancy juicer for Christmas this year.  It's exciting.  We're using it to make vegetable juices with just a hint of fruit to have them be nominally healthier.

Today's juice ingredients:

Here's how it looked as the juice & the waste come out of the device:

We've found that the presence of beets totally governs the color of the juice, while a bit of ginger totally dictates the flavor.

Remade on:

2015-01-12 when our 25lb bag of carrots arrived from grubmarket.com

2015-01-17 in honor of 99 cent kale at the corner store

2015-02-28 for N. by N.

Beef/Turkey Chili

Our next adventure in Dutch oven use involved making chili.  We used this recipe from AH^2 as an inspiration:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/simple-turkey-chili/

But, we modified it as follows:

- used 1/2lb of ground beef instead of 1lb ground turkey
- added 3 strips of bacon, chopped
- used mostly Guinness instead of water
- doubled the oregano & added basil
- used smoked paprika instead of regular
- added sliced carrots to the mirepoix
- added kale towards the end of cooking

Here's the result:

The seasoning level was a bit high for N., but J. liked it.  We served it with leftover cornbread.  Overall, it was a success.

Remade on:
2015-01-18 with 1lb ground turkey this time; added extra liquid to make it more soup-like
2015-03-17 with celery in the mirepoix as well