With winter weather basically upon us, its time to start getting into soup & stew mode. So while cooking for a wedding rehearsal dinner last year with JRR & Nook, one of the items that we made was a cream of carrot soup recipe that I found in an old issue of Food & Wine magazine. At first glance the recipe appears to be super easy to make (with only 8 main ingredients), and it also appears that it would be a good base recipe for any kind of cream of vegetable soup, such as broccoli or cauliflower soup. So lets dig in. Continue reading
Month: January 2011
Shepherd’s Pie – v4 – Janurary 2011
I never had shepherd’s pie as a kid of dinner, so I really had no concept of what should go into a “true” Shepherd’s Pie. So starting with a base recipe off of Food Network. Here is the heavily modified recipe that I came up with. Since if I’m going to rework a recipe, I might as well add stuff that I would want to eat. Continue reading
Christmas presents 2010
I really received some great Christmas gifts from my sister and her husband this year. But hands down the two best items were a Frieling 8-cup stainless steel French Press, and a copy of Momofuku.
You’ve probably already read about some of my trials and tribulations, with regard to all the glass French Presses that I’ve owned and broken. So getting a stainless steel French Press is a HUGE upgrade in the “coffee making department.”
And you also know that I think that the Momofuku cookbook is total awesome for co-opting ideas. So it’s nice to finally own a copy of this book, instead of having to borrow it from the library all the time.
Christmas Eve 2010 – Baked rainbow trout with lemon & green onions
I needed a quick and easy recipe to bake a fish for Christmas Eve, so I ended up finding a recipe on the Food Network website, and modified the hell out of it as usual.
My original inspiration for making this dish, was seeing Jacques Pépin a long time ago on either Fast Food My Way, or Cooking with Julia, but I just can’t remember which one off hand. But what I do remember from Jacques, was him using a parchment paper pouch to cook the fish in the oven.
So with my basic recipe in hand, and a vague memory from Jacques, I was off and running.
Ingredients (serves 2-3):
- One farm raised rainbow trout, head-on, approximately 3/4 lb in total weight
- One whole lemon, sliced
- Herbs (most recipe use thyme or rosemary, but I had some green onions on hand that I wanted to use)
- Kosher Salt and Finely ground black pepper
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Technique:
Pre-heat the oven to 375F. Wash the fish inside and out, then season with salt and pepper on all sides. Lay the fish on a sheet of parchment paper, and place the lemon and herbs inside the fishes belly. Fold the fish back together, drizzle with olive oil, and fold the pouch to seal tightly. Place the parchment pouch on a rimmed baking sheet, and pop it into the oven to bake for 20-25 mins. Once done baking serve immediately.
Side Notes:
1) If the fish is about 3/4 lb, go with 20 mins, but if closer to 1 lb go with 25 mins. For the 3/4 lb fish that I cooked, I went with 25 minutes, and the fish ended up being slightly on the dry side. So don’t overcook that poor fish.
2) Like I mentioned with the herbs, I used green onions, only because I had of bunch of them on hand. So feel free to experiment with fresh or dried herbs.
3) Don’t go overboard on the black pepper. For some reason, a little goes a long ways in the recipe. Also use a finer grind, since a courser grind added a unnecessary “heat/spice” element to the flavor of the fish.
4) For an off the cuff recipe, this fish turned out pretty good. So I’ll have to remember this recipe, if I ever need a quick fish dish.
Blog upgrade news – Jan 6, 2010
Well I’m about half way through this blogs software upgrades. I’ve got all the hosting stuff taken care of, but now I’m running into issues with upgrading the WordPress software that powers this blog.
It turns out that WordPress 3.0.4 (which is the latest version) is too cutting edge of a release for all the plug-ins/widgets and theme that I use on this blog. I’ve already had to reinstall WordPress at least nine times, since it keeps on crashing on me because of the plugins I use. So hopefully this weekend, I’ll be able to get WordPress running at 100% uptime.