Butchering a chicken, part two (as in not really)

I never got around to butchering the chicken, and it's currently resting in its entirety in the freezer.  I will definitely try to record the process - although it may be too embarrassing to want to share.

I was recently gifted an iPhone as a belated birthday/Christmas gift, and let me tell you - I am pretty amazed at the photo quality/video.  That being said, I did record a video of a sitting potato au gratin.  Listen to the beautiful soundtrack of steaks sizzling!

p.s. did you know Le Creuset calls this casserole dish an Oval Au Gratin?  So fancy.  Thanks, Marshall's!

Samosas are very time consuming.

Samosas are not worth my time, or yours, during the work week. Letting the dough sit, prepping, cooking and cooling down the vegetables, rolling the dough out, cutting, stuffing and baking (or frying) = too much time, especially when you have to make the rest of the meal and have to do laundry.

I used a recipe from the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook, which is probably my favorite and most used cookbook, and omitted the peas because I hate them (that texture? bursting in my mouth? gross). They also suggest cutting the dough into squares, which I did and will not do again. They turn out looking like dumplings, as they did the last time I made them, and it leaves you confused as to why you are eating samosas shaped like dumplings when they should be like big, fluffy clouds.

For the main dish, I made a curried lentil soup and was able to christen my most beloved 2010 Christmas present: the 14-cup Cuisinart food processor. I had to double the recipe and did not use a large enough pot, so it was filled to the brim, which makes it difficult to stir and adjust with more water when needed.

Aside from being inaccurately shaped and a bit too spicy, the samosas and soup were delicious. Brown and ugly, but nutritious and hearty.

Also, Meredith and I made dinner tonight! A pretty simple stir-fry with tofu, onions, kale and white button mushrooms and brown basmati rice on the side. I made a sauce with gochuchang, a Korean hot pepper paste, sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic and ginger. I've used a similar sauce for a pork dish, and it came out more flavorful - maybe next time we will let some of the flavors marinate more, but still a proud accomplishment for a joint dinner venture.

Hi & Thanksgiving Part two

Hi, I'm Jennifer, and Meredith made me do this. I like to cook and bake, and I like to follow recipes. I tend to make something once and never again, because what is the point when there is so much food to go around?

On Thanksgiving, my boyfriend Adam and I were gifted a free twenty two pound turkey, along with an eight pound turkey breast. We have always done our own Thanksgiving, in addition to the one with his family, but since the turkey was so big this year, it became a bit of a production. I usually keep it pretty simple when roasting anything - just salt, pepper and butter, sometimes lemon - but again, since the turkey was so big, I turned to Martha Stewart and her recipe for Perfect Roast Turkey this past Saturday. It is definitely a rich recipe, calling for a cup and a half of butter, and time consuming, having to baste every half hour for four hours.

You will never have a more moist or beautiful looking turkey in your life. Ever.

I served this with pan gravy, buttermilk garlic mashed yukon gold potatoes, wheat/white bread stuffing with sage, caramelized corn with mint, pomegranate cranberry relish, a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, and roasted Brussels sprouts with mushrooms and cream (I wasn't kidding about loving recipes).

The key to serving a feast of any kind is obviously to do as much prep work before dooms day. I made vegetable stock for the stuffing a week and a half ago and froze it. I toasted the breadcrumbs a week ago and bagged it. I seeded and juiced the pomegranate and made the relish three days prior, so on and so forth. Do you know a good tip for mashed potatoes? Make them the night before and let them warm up the day of in a slow cooker. Thanks, internet!

Tomorrow I'm going to use some of the leftover turkey for enchiladas, but I will be cheating and using canned enchilada sauce. We can't all be Martha Stewart.

Work Potluck 1

At work there are 3 of us every Thursday. We decided it would be nice for us to all bring in a dish from now on if we're all here. We invited the CSO's to join us as well, but theyre all lazy assholes.

Originally I was going to do fried stuffed risotto balls but there was no way I was waking up early enough to do that in one day so I made chipotle, cheddar and chive mashed sweet potatoes. I tried to make them a little less spicy than normal but who am I kidding. Those bitches gotta be hot. This pushed Jess out of potato territory and into salad and cookie land. Loretta made a Hungarian chicken dish I cannot for the life of me spell or pronounce.
Below: plated up!

Below: the containers


All in all successful. We are doing another this week where I WILL wake up in time for risotto.

Lamb

Weeknight dinner collaboration. Lamb, mashed sweet potatoes, and steamed asparagus. Comes with excellent gravy.

Fish N' Chips

Kyle and I were hungry the other night but didn't know what to make. We did know that we needed to go grocery shopping. We ran out to the store and realized we wanted fish. To our delight there was some delicious cod on sale and we knew we had a shitload of potatoes back home about to go bad. We took that cod home and got it ready. Above is some potatoes and a tool. Yes. Tools. We have evolved. This one is for fries. Below you can see what we did to those potatoes with that tool. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. That's a lot of fuckin' potatoes.
As you can see below its a good thing we had so many. Those bastards turned out golden awesome. Just look at those chips. Golden fuckin' goodness. Makes you jealous, don't it? Sea salt on those bitches too.
Here's the fish all prepped. We let it slip into something a bit more comfortable. Flour, then egg, then flour, then egg, then bread crumbs. The egg, as per house rule, was mixed with paprika.
And here they are golden delicious. Much like the chips, a source of envy. Perfectly juicy and flaky on the inside.
We finished cooking with just enough time for me to pack a lunchbox for work. I squeezed out some tartar sauce and ketchup in there cuz I wasn't sure what we had at work. Wonderful. Excellent lunchbox dinner. You should be so lucky.