Kitchen Experimentation

Chicken and mushroom cream soup

2009-02-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

Felt like some comfort food. Also pretty easy. Dice and sautee some bacon, onions and garlic. Give those a head start, then add some diced chicken breast and sliced mushrooms. Since the soup is going to simmer, you can undercook the chicken and let it catch up later. This will keep it from drying out. Once everything's cooked add some flour to make a roux. Once that's done, add some chicken stock and milk. Start with the chicken stock so that the milk doesn't curdle. Keep stirring until it thickens. Pour it into a bowl and top with green onions.

Avocado Bruschetta

2009-02-26T16:44:00.000-08:00

I'm not a fan of avocados (I think it's a texture thing), but I decided to try them again. This time, with bacon. Everything's better with bacon. Even avocados.

Really easy too: fry the bacon crisp, dice the avocado, dice some green onions and a tomato. Toss it all together with some olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar an serve on taosted bread.

Sorry for the crappy picture...had to use my webcam.

Pork Tenderloin with Apples and Tarragon

2009-02-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

Made the second pork tenderloin today and it came out much better than I thought it would. The apples were diced and tossed with olive oil, apple cider vinegar and tarragon. The pork was filleted, seasoned with salt, pepper and tarragon and sauteed to medium-well. I made a quick pan sauce by deglazing it with water then adding walnuts, a bit of honey and some apple cider vinegar. Finally, I made some plain roasted potatoes.

The sweet sauce with the tangy apples and vinegar made for a great dinner.

Green beans with Thai Vinaigrette

2009-02-24T15:36:00.000-08:00

I didn't feel like putting much work into anything tonight, so I steamed some green beans and dressed them with a Thai vinaigrette.

The dressing was olive oil, rice wine vinegar, ginger, lime juice and chili flakes. It came out good, but would have been better if the green beans were cold....too hungry! Gotta blanch them next time.

About my blog

2009-02-23T17:05:00.001-08:00

Well this is my first blog. With any luck other people might even read it. What am I blogging about? Cooking. I've recently discovered cooking as an art form and posted a few pictures on a forum I frequent, so I decied to centralize them all here.

I was inspred by chef Todd Mohr who stars in an excellent video blog called Cooking Coarse. This got me interested in cooking without recipes - so called "freestyle" cooking. This was well and dandy, but my creativity was lacking. Until I found a book called the Flavor Bible. It's essentially a massive list of flavors that taste good together, but no recipes. I think of it as a colour wheel for the kitchen: you can find complementary items, but the art still needs to be created.

Hopefully you'll find something you like here. If you have any comments about my cooking please post them!

Braised Pork Tenderloin with Greek Inspired Latkes

2009-02-23T16:56:00.000-08:00

Today's experiment was one of texture, rather than flavour. Traditional Greek food is crispy meat and soft potatoes, so I did the opposite: crispy Greek inspired Latkes (Jewish potato pancake) and tender braised pork tenderloin. With traditional tzatziki sauce, of course. Don't fuck with that.

I started with the tzatziki: diced cucumber, garlic, dill, lemon juice, salt and pepper. If you find the yogurt too sour add more salt.

The pork was braised in chicken broth and dill. The slower it is braised the softer the pork will be, so keep it LOW. A meat thermometer is key to getting the pork just right.

The latkes were straight forward as well: shredded potato, lots of oregano, lemon juice and some olive oil. The trick with these (and hash browns, incidentally) is to dry the potatoes out by putting them in a towel and wringing the towel.

Cooking these is a little tricky because the batter(?) isn't as sticky as traditional latkes. I found it easiest to make a thinnish pancake in my hand, press it into a hot pan and squish it even thinner with a spatula.