The gyro loaf earned a permanent spot in the rotation after testing it in ramen, salad, and on its own; a big cooking weekend also produced the best gochujang wings yet, a 99%-match copycat salsa, and breakfast sausage patties, while a farmers-market lentil stew got reverse-engineered from its ingredient list.
Undated. The original notes called this “Post summer, pre fall.”
There is this place between Summer and Fall that deserves its own food. Late summer produce is waning and fall gourds and other goodness are starting to appear. Days are sometimes colder, sometimes not, and we usually celebrate the last days of summer.
Food Goals
- Ranch water?!
- Chicken gyros from DDD (hand made, non-cased) → Gyro base
- Chef John (spices: rosemary, oregano, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, paprika )
- My take worked out pretty well, except I used a steam pan (though I intended to use a ¼ sheet pan)
BC style salad rolls
We had some leftover miso glazed salmon and sticky rice from dinner yesterday and I wanted sushi. I was out of nori, so I used rice paper to make salmon salad rolls:
- Miso/sesame glazed salmon (cooked)
- Salmon skin, cooked + fried and sliced (with more glaze)
- Sticky rice
- Julienned carrots
- Thin sliced green onion (white parts)
Some lettuce or bean sprouts would have made these better, but they were already pretty great.
Boerenkool stamppot
We made our classic green potatoes this week for just the two of us. It’s about $1 per portion, and includes a strong balance of veg and tubers, and sticks to your ribs. And even though the recipe is pretty simple, I added it to our book for future generations to remember one of our favourite foods.
I especially love this recipe as you can make it in a single pot in under an hour, and it heats up nicely (and provides lunches/dinner for most meals in a week).
Stir fry sauces, lazy take
We made stir fry again the next night, and tonight’s sauce was improvised:
- 1 tbsp soy
- 1 ½ tbsp hoisin
- 2 tbsp gochujang
- 1 ½ tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp cider vinegar (as I was out of seasoned rice wine vinegar)
- 2-3 tbsp rice wine (to deglaze)
- 1 tsp MSG
- 1-2 tsp garlic powder
- 1-2 tsp white pepper
- 2 tsp chili flakes (as it wasn’t spicy enough, korean chili powder would have been better)
This sauce worked really well, and was somewhere in between a sweet and sour and yesterday’s cheap Tso’s style sauce.
Stir fry sauces
We’re thinking of making stir fry tonight. Two simple sauces:
General Tso’s (lazy version)
- 1 tbsp soy
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp rice wine
- 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- Pinch of white pepper
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1-2 cloves of garlic finely dized
- 3-4 chilies dried
- Cornstarch slurry
- Water or stock
S&S sauce:
- salt,
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar (or rice wine)
- 3 tbsp ketchup
- 3 tbsp sugar
- ½ cup chicken stock
- 1 tbsp cornstarch slurry
Gyros and gyro salad
We tested the gyro loaf a few times this week:
- Gyros (needed something to balance)
- Ramen (worked pretty well)
- No-noodle miso ramen (also worked pretty well) 💩
- Gyro salad (added feta)
It worked pretty well in all applications. Definitely something for the rotation.
Weekend success
After a week with a cold I had an itch to do some food research and cookery. This weekend I made:
- Gina’s copycat fresh salsa (99% match, no roasting) → Gina’s tomato salsa
- Gochujang garlic chicken wings → Gochujang wing sauce
- Gyros
- Breakfast sausage patties (a touch salty, as the package was smaller than the recipe) → Breakfast sausage
Overall some great success. Wings were the best we’ve had in a bit.
The salsa is getting good enough that we’ll stop buying the Fresh Is Best stuff, which is about $
Chef John’s Gyros
Chef John’s gyros made me think about pan sausage. Casing sausage is a bit of work (and I don’t have the equipment. Sometimes I make rolled sausage, but that takes up a bit of space and effort. Making a pan of sausage feels like something I could do up a batch once a month and have tasty add-ins for soups, pastas, and sandwiches any time I wanted!
Here’s a working recipe that I’ll test this weekend.
Adjusting to a smaller household
It’s a bit weird to be back to just the two of us here. I suspect most of the changes to the kitchen will have to do with what I eat for lunch, and less dairy.
Lentil stew
We made a lentil stew we bought at a farmers market a while back (Jamaican Me Hungry). As it uses a mix of lentils, the colours and flavours are improved.
The ingredients from the packaging:
- Lentils (green, black and red),
- Veggie flakes (sulphites),
- Onion flakes,
- Jamaican spice mix (likely poultry mix, allspice, chillies)
- plant based stock,
- brown sugar
I added:
- 1 whole onion diced,
- ½ cup wine
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced,
- 2 sticks of celery, diced,
- 1 can of coconut milk (solids and liquids)
- 1 cup of rice (after pressure cooking)
- Additional spices (and salt/sugar)
- Top with cilantro
I’m going to try to recreate this style of recipe from scratch, to get the flavours (and these notes should help me remember what I did).
I cooked the mix in my pressure cooker:
- Saute the extra (real) veg as you would for any stew or soup (until translucent).
- Deglaze, add water, add mix, bring to boil. Add pressure lid, pressurize, and cool for 15-20 minutes on the low (2) setting.
- Depressurize naturally (10-15 minutes), and add coconut milk and rice.
- Spice to taste (the base mix was pretty bland and lacked depth).
- Cook until rice softens. This will also thicken it up a bit (which was perfect for our uses).