Week 5! Let's Pad Thai One On!

I cut it a bit close last week as far as getting a new recipe done so I thought I'd get a jump on week 5.

Last week I did Indian which I like, but I decided to do Thai this week, which I LOVE.  It's my favorite type of food.  I love Thai curries so much that I almost have to dislike other curries by comparison.  I would drink red curry from a glass.  I would use peanut sauce as a condiment.  I feel like I need to join Tom Kha Gai Anonymous.  I think you get the point.

I long ago learned to make red curry chicken, and make it well (or so I'm told.)  I would make it a lot more often if Kendra liked spicy food more.  But it's the only Thai dish I've made.  I was somewhat shocked to realize that myself,, and decided to fix that problem immediately by making one of my favorite dishes, Pad Thai.

First, of course, was the research.  I remembered that Alton Brown had done Pad Thai so I went there first.  Now, I worship the man; truly I do.  But his recipe had a few too many experimental elements to it and I was looking for a traditional dish to start from.  Next time I might get a bit more tricky.  I quickly found one that looked better for my purposes.  It had a couple problems such as my wanting to make chicken pad thai, not shrimp, and there were a couple of ingredients I wasn't familiar with, but it was a solid base to build on.

I rounded up the family this morning and took them out to dim sum (possibly my second favorite type of food) at the Great Wall Mall, which has a Ranch 99 store.  If you haven't been to one, it's an Asian grocery, and a really good one.  You can get lots of things there that you'd be hard pressed to get even in other Asian groceries.  They have live tanks full of exotic eating fish.  A full produce department with fruits you don't see on this continent much.  I really recommend it.  The only ingredient I had any problem with was the tamarind, and that was just because the only thing they had labeled itself as a "sour soup base."  However it really didn't have anything in it beside tamarind, so I got it, and it ended up working fine.

The recipe was for 2-3 servings.  I knew I'd be serving at least three adults and my daughter, so I decided to double the recipe.  I think the flavors were just fine with that, but cooking twice as much was a bit difficult.

Pad thai is a noodle stir fry, and the one thing you have to do when making a stir fry is get all the ingredients together ahead of time.  It's just too fast to do prep while things are sizzling in a wok on high.  So I was very careful to try to get as much done ahead of time as possible.  I put the noodles in some water, but kept an eye on the time.  I cut up the tofu and the chives and set them aside.  I got the bean sprouts clean and minced the garlic.  Ranch 99 didn't have any shallots, so I gave them a pass and didn't really notice their absence in the final product.  I cut up the chicken and got it ready to go, and got all my sauces out.

I hadn't gotten any peanuts, but we did have a big can of Planter's Deluxe Nuts which contained peanuts, so I improvised and use them.  I chopped them up and threw them into the hot oil as the first step... and promptly burned them.  They cooked VERY fast.  They didn't even seem to brown, just straight to very dark brown.  I scooped them out as best I could, but decided to carry on with the same oil since it seemed to be fine and carried a peanut flavor, but not a burned one.

Since I was using chicken instead of shrimp, I had to modify the recipe a bit.  It would have to be cooked a lot longer than the shrimp, so once I had cleaned out the burned peanuts, I threw it into the pot.  Well, that's what I should have done and what I planned to do.  What I really did was started making the recipe the way it was written down and forgot all about my forethought with the chicken.

I cooked the garlic and the tofu to a nice brown and had just tossed in the noodles when I remembered my brilliant "cook the chicken first" plan.  I briefly considered starting everything over again, but decided, instead, to see what I could do with what I had (especially because I didn't have any more rice noodles.)  So I took the contents of the wok and dumped them into a bowl and proceeded to cook the chicken.  Once it was done, I tossed the noodles, tofu, and garlic back into the wok.  It seemed to work just fine, probably because the noodles hadn't really cooked the first time.

This is where the problem with a double batch cropped up, though.  That many noodles are not only hard to stir, but incredibly difficult to mix with other ingredients.  My spatula was useless, so I switched to a spaghetti ladle with all those nice prongs around the edge to pull the noodles apart. That made things much easier.

I added the tamarind, sugar, and fish sauce.  I left the chili pepper out in deference to my wife and hadn't found any preserved turnip at the store, although I hadn't looked very hard.  I have no experience with it as an ingredient and wasn't sure what it would add.

I mixed it and then moved the mass to the side for the eggs.  Eggs in a wok are difficult.  They stick a lot, but I managed to keep them going pretty well with constant stirring until they were mostly cooked and then mixed them in.

I added the sprouts and chives and cooked it a bit more to soften them, and then it was done.  It looked perfect to me.  I've never used Chinese chives before, and was a bit concerned about them, but they looked perfect in the dish.

The results: very good!  I am very very pleased with how it all turned out.  After using so many new ingredients, I was prepared for a disaster, but instead I got pad thai!  It tasted right and had all the right textures.  My noodles came out perfect!  The sprouts still had just enough crunch, and the chicken melted in my mouth.

There were a couple of negatives.  First, it was a little bit oily.  Not much, but I noticed it.  I blame that on my mistake with the chicken, though.  I had to toss in a bit more oil to cook it.  Second, the flavors were a bit mild.  I don't know if the tamarind was weak or what, but I know I'll use more next time.  It needs a bit more of that vinegar-y flavor.

Overall, though, a rousing success even though I left out a number of the ingredients.  But, then again, that's what cooking is all about; experimenting to make it taste the way you want.  I'll definitely be cooking this again and maybe next time I'll try the shallot and the turnip!

Hakuna Matata... wait, no... Tikka Masala

For this week's experiment, Joely-Poly, we've got a little temptress we like to call "Chicken Tikka Masala." (If you got that reference, +10 geek points.)

I've been thinking hard about what to make next.  So hard that the weekend passed me by and I found myself in a very busy work week.  I normally get home from work after 6pm which doesn't leave a lot of time for me to whip something up, especially when I'm famished.  So I tossed around a lot of ideas like starting some home made sauerkraut, or repeating the steel cut oats experiment.  Then a friend of mine posted a link to a recipe he'd found for a slow cooker version of Chicken Tikka Masala and suddenly I had a plan!

There's a lot of Indian food that I love and a lot of it I don't.  I would hip check an old lady out of the way to get the last bits of butter chicken and naan at a buffet (Note: this is hyperbole and no old ladies were harmed in the writing of this blog.)  I'm very partial to the yellow creamy vegetable stuff, deep fried vegetables, and a few other dishes.  After that things tend to go rapidly downhill into tolerable-land.  I find most Indian curries to be ok, and I can see why others love them, but they aren't my thing.  Chicken tikka masala falls into that middle ground for me.  The creamier it is and the more like butter chicken the better I like it.  I figured that it would be a really good idea to try to make it for myself and see how much I liked it then.  Plus, since it was a slow cooker version, I could whip it up in the morning, go to work, and it would be done when I got home!

The first step was a trip to World Spice Market at the Pike Place Market.  This is a different store from Market Spice where I went to get all the ingredients for Corned Beef (which just keeps getting more delicious as time passes.)  I needed a specific spice mix called garam masala and Market Spice didn't list it, but World Spice Market did.  They also carried everything else I needed, including a mortar and pestle.  I love getting fresh spices.  It's a couple days later now and my car still smells wonderful just from having them in there for a day.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and grabbed the rest of the things I needed.  Do you know how tough it is to find full fat plain yogurt?  There were several different kinds of low fat or no fat plain yogurts, and a bunch of different full fat flavors other than plain.  Eventually I settled on plain greek yogurt even though I had to buy a big tub of it.

When I got home I went to work on the first part of the recipe, the chicken marinade.  I don't have a huge crock pot so I was making a half recipe which can be a bit annoying when you're dealing with things like "one inch ginger" but I muddled through.  Grating the ginger and garlic made the best smell!  I coated the chicken and put the whole thing in the fridge overnight.

The next morning I started in on the second half.  Blanching the tomatoes was easy and a technique I'll remember.  Because I knew I'd be serving this to my wife who is not fond of anything that has the word "pepper" attached to it, I decided not to use the chilies the recipe called for. The chili powder and black pepper would be plenty for any light-weights.  I also cut out the almonds since they were optional and I thought there was already enough going on in this dish.

The onions I used were particularly pungent and my eyes teared up immediately.  That happened over and over, even after all the other ingredients were mixed together.  I was a bit worried that it might end up dominating the flavor, but it didn't.

I threw it all into the food processor and let it go for 10 minutes or so, checking and scraping as I went.  It didn't change much over the last couple minutes so I called it good, added the tomatoes for a few pulses and tossed the whole shebang into the crock pot along with the marinated chicken.  The marinade was so thick that not adding it wasn't really an option as it was firmly coating the pieces.  Besides I wanted all the creaminess the yogurt could add.  I gave it all a good stir, turned it on high, and left for work.

Fast forward to the evening.  I got home and the house smelled great!  The tikka masala had separated a bit after bubbling all day but a quick stir recombined it.  Our roommate had made some nice dry rice to serve it over and we were ready to go.

I liked it.  I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it.  It wasn't as creamy as I wanted it and there was a bit more of the kind of flavors Indian curry has than I wanted, but overall it was quite tasty.  It smells intoxicating from all teh wonderful spices in it.  The flavors were very complex and layered, which I really did enjoy.  I'd get bits of all the different spice flavors at different points while eating each bite.  It had just enough bite to notice without being "hot," as well.

The others seemed to enjoy it, even my 2 year old who I'd figured would not eat in on appearance alone, but I think the smells got to her.  I think that anyone who really likes strong Indian flavors and especially Indian curries would really love this dish.

This dish does require a bit of time and work to make.  Blanching the tomatoes, chopping onions, peeling and grating ginger and garlic, marinating overnight.  Nothing's really hard, but it is intensive.

As for me, though, next time I try cooking Indian food, it's going to be BUTTER CHICKEN!

11 days later: Corned Beef

I was busy last night so I let it sit in the brine for an extra day.  When I got home from work today I pulled it out and started the last step; the boiling!

I dumped the brine and rinsed the beef off thoroughly in cold water.  Then I tossed it in a large pot, added an onion, carrot, and celery and filled it with water to one inch above the top of the meat.  I set it on high until it boiled, and then reduced the heat to low and let it simmer for three hours.

After three hours I checked the temperature of the meat (plenty,) then fished it out and put it on a cooling rack.

Not the best picture I know, but actually looks pretty correct.  The meat is kind of grey on the outside, which is hardly surprising after eleven days in a bag of brine and boiling for three hours.  The real surprise was inside.

It's kind of a pretty light pink!  My research on saltpeter had mentioned that this is one of the reasons to use it, but I used so little of it I didn't expect much.  I'm very pleasantly surprised.  It also appears to be reddening more as it cools.

Of course the big question is "how did it turn out?"  I've very pleased to say that the experiment was a success!  The meat came out very tender and has a very good flavor.  The flavor isn't fully uniform.  The edge piece are more delicately flavored than the interior, but that's to be expected in such a large piece of meat that has had so much done to it.  The only negative I would put out there is that it is a bit greasy.  I'll give some thought about how to fix that next time.  Maybe a closer trim of the fat?  It will be perfect for sandwiches, though.  I'm sure there is a delicious Reuben in my future soon!

Was it worth it?  Yes.  It wasn't really that hard to make overall.  The worst part was losing access to my deli drawer for 11 days.  It also required a lot of spices I don't normally have sitting around and am not sure what else to do with except make it again!  Then again, with this blog, I'm sure I can come up with something else as well.

Week 3: Paul Peterson prepares a pack of pickled pepper poppers!

I love jalapeño poppers.  Seriously.  I would live on them and buffalo wings if I could.  But I've never made them, so here we go!

First, I did my research.  I browsed some of the 98237987 recipes for them on the internet, grabbing tips and tricks and general guidelines, but in the end I made up my own recipe based on all I read.  It's actually two recipes since I decided to experiment a bit.

9-10 whole jalapeño peppers (see below)
8 oz. cream cheese
1 cup finely grated cheddar cheese
1.2 cup flour
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups breadcrumbs
hot oil

The experimental part has to do with the jalapeños.  Most of the recipes I found were pretty straightforward regarding the peppers.  There were variations based on whether you cut them in half before stuffing them, but they agreed about getting them fresh and de-seeding them.  A couple advised blanching them to soften them a bit.  However, one recipe I ran across suggested that instead of using fresh peppers you should use pickled peppers because they're already soft and have a lot of flavor.

I decided to try both!  I bought four fresh jalapenos and a can of pickled whole ones.

I prepped the fresh peppers first.  I cut the tops off, then cut them in half and pulled out all the seeds and membranes.  I know the power of peppers so I wore gloves the entire time I was handling the peppers to make sure I didn't get any juice on my hands and transfer it anyplace else.  The pickled peppers Paul Peterson prepared are on the left.  The fresh are on the right.

I blanched the fresh ones in boiling water for a couple minutes to soften them up, which seemed to work very well for the final product.

The next step was the cheese.  I read a lot of fancy recipes for spices and such to mix into it, but for my first try I just went with cream cheese and finely grated cheddar.  (Side note, this stuff is delicious on Triskets as well, as my lack of leftover cheese shows.)

It doesn't look like a lot, but it stuffed 18 half peppers with some left over for crackers, so unless you're making a ton, this will do.

I spooned the mixture into the half peppers.  Well, really I wrapped the half peppers around a cylinder of cheese.  The cheese should be a mound above the edge of the shells.

I even went back and put more in some of them until they all looked properly full.

The next step is the coating.  I started by rolling each of the peppers in flour to give the coating something to hang onto.  Then it was into the buttermilk followed by breadcrumbs.  Once each of them had a coat on it, I put the plate into the fridge for 5-10 minutes.  This lets the buttermilk absorb into the breadcrumbs and form more of a paste than just wet crumbs.  It will help it all stick together.  The fridge just helps the cheese stay more solid.  After the wait, I put them all through the buttermilk and crumbs again before another stint in the cooler.

I heated my oil to 350 degrees and that seemed to work perfectly.  I dropped them in two or three at a time depending on how big they were.  I cooked the fresh peppers first since I had the most hope for them and wanted to try them immediately.  Then I cooked the pickled peppers.  I let the fryer climb back up to 350 between each batch as well.

I cooked them for about 2 minutes on one side then flipped them over and cooked them for about another 2 minutes or until they changed color to a darker brown.  I put them on a paper towel to dry and cool and then tried them!

Let's start with the fresh pepper as I did.  The first bite was delicious, but surprisingly mild.  I got a lot of cream cheese and cheddar flavors with a pepper flavor that reminded me more of green peppers than jalapeños.  The coating wasn't too greasy and had a some flavor.  As I finished it, though, my elation faded and I realized that it was actually kind of bland and could have done with some salt at the very least.  It also had almost no kick to it, which was quite disappointing.  I could definitely recommend them, though, as a good party food for anyone who doesn't like a lot of kick (assuming adding salt.)

The pickled peppers were an entirely different story.  They had plenty of kick!  The cream cheese and cheddar still came through, but there was definitely the strong taste and heat you get from jalapeños on nachos, for example.  It could still use some salt, but it was otherwise pretty much what I was hoping for from the beginning.  If anything it was a bit hot, but only because it overwhelmed the other flavors. When I make them for myself, this is definitely the way I'm going to go.

Overall, I'd rate this a huge success.  I'm incredibly pleased with the way both peppers came out as it gives me options for making them for myself and others.  Next time I'll add some salt to the breadcrumbs, and I may start experimenting with adding stuff to the cheese (maybe bacon!)  I might use a bit less than half a pickled pepper or use more cheese next time to help balance the flavors a bit better.  I love these just the way they are, but my roommate suggested making dipping sauce, so I could work on that as well.

Small Update: Corned Beef

Day 6 and the corned beef is fine.  It looks a little different in the bag, but it's hard to explain how so, and pictures don't pick it up very well.  The meat looks like it's cooking, I guess.  In any case, only 4 days to go!

Oh, and the bag leaks.  Bleah.

Update:  The leak was worse than I thought.  I cleaned it when I got home and then checked again before bed to see that a noticeable amount of liquid again.  So I got out a new bag and transferred the whole thing.  I hope I didn't screw up some delicate balance thing in there.

Quick Sauce: Update on Current Projects

The corned beef is coming along nicely, which is to say it's been sitting quietly in it's bag of brine for two days now.  It's appearance looks normal to me, so not much to say except I don't seem to have screwed anything up too badly yet.  The bag has a very small leak somewhere (probably in the top) as I keep finding liquid in the tray with it.  At the rate it's leaking, though, it's in no danger of anything major happening before the beef is done.

The jerky is both good and bad.  Good in that it tastes awesome!  Totally yummy!  Bad however in that I made a rookie mistake with it.  I was in a hurry when I cut it and forgot to turn it against the grain.  This wouldn't be a huge problem with the roasts I generally use for jerky, but with a brisket it makes it incredibly tough to chew.  It's on the edge of inedible for most people, I would imagine, but I don't mind a little exercise as I eat.  I just can't eat much of it at a time.  Ah, well, lesson learned.  Next brisket jerky will be cut properly.

Extra Credit: Jerky

I'm going to call these kinds of post "Extra Credit" because they don't push my goal of cooking new things, but they are cooking projects that are more advanced than "empty packet into bowl and microwave."

I decided to make the extra brisket into jerky.  There are two ways that I make jerky at the moment.  The first is with a very quick, intense marinade and the second is with a longer soak.  Since we were going to be gone for the day yesterday I did a long soak.  The marinade is pretty easy:

2/3 cup soy sauce
2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 TBS Garlic Powder
1 TBS Onion Powder
1 tsp liquid smoke

I like jerky so much that a few years ago I bought a meat slicer.  So I used that to slice the brisket into roughly 1/8th inch thick slices.  Then I tossed it all into a ziploc and put it into the fridge.

We were gone longer than I thought we would be, so it got an extra long soak.  I hope it doesn't turn out too salty, but it probably wont bother me too much if it is.  I am a fan of salt.

It's still spinning in the dehydrator for the rest of the day, so I'll let you all know how it turns out and update the condition of the corned beef later today.

A Brisket, a Tasket: Corned Beef

As with all new resolutions I want to start strong and so I decided to tackle something that I've wanted to do for a long time; I'm going to make corned beef from scratch!  It's not terribly difficult, really.  Meat + brine + time + slow cooking = corned beef.  But it takes a lot of ingredients and a lot of patience, so I'm not too surprised more people don't do it, or that I haven't done it yet.

Side note:  I'm not really sure how to count this in my "recipe a week" total since I'm starting it this week, but it's not going to be done for 10 days or so.  I guess I'll count it for this week just in case I don't get something else done. :)

My first step was research!  I have seen the Good Eats episode where Alton makes corned beef, so I figured I'd start with his recipe.  As you can see there are quite a few ingredients that you probably don't just keep on your shelf.  That's another reason more of this tasty dish doesn't get made, I'm sure.  Luckily I not only live near Seattle, but walk right by the Pike Place market every day on the way from my bus to my office.  There are not one, but two very good spice stores in the vicinity. (I'm getting the hang of these blogging tricks!)

The one ingredient I wasn't sure about was saltpeter, and sure enough, neither place listed it on their website, so I tried to track some down.  You can order it over the internet, but I did some more research and learned exactly what it does, which is basically makes the meat stay pink.  It guards against bacteria as well, but in this day and age it's not nearly as important.  Still, I like pink corned beef so I eventually settled on a bit of a compromise.  There is a substance called Prague Powder #1 that is used extensively in curing meats, especially for "fast" cures like corned beef.  It contains a low dosage of sodium nitrite mixed with salt.  I picked some of that up to replace the saltpeter.  It is stuff that you should be very careful cooking with, though, so I looked up a lot of recipes that use it for corned beef and adjusted mine to use it (and erred on the side of caution, even then.)

The biggest hassle in the whole production was getting a 2 gallon ziploc bag.  Most grocery stores only carry up to the 1 gallon size.  I was thinking that I might have to either order them online or visit a real restaurant supply store to pick them up, but luckily some research turned up a possible alternative; hardware stores.  Many such stores carry canning and curing supplies which include large plastic bags.  A few calls quickly found them at my local store.  Yay!

The first step was purchasing the meat.  There's a nice butcher shop in Pike Place where they were happy to sell me a nice brisket, and trim it for me as a bonus.

Yummy!

Right next door to the butcher shop is Market Spice, so I chose them for all my spice needs and got everything I needed (as well as some vanilla beans and some new tea!)

As small as they are, this represents enough spices to make a dozen corned beefs.  I'm doubtful of that happening soon.

The brine was very simple.  I heated water with brown sugar, salt, and prague powder until it all was incorporated.  Then I took it off the heat and added the spices.  The recipe says differently but I'm following what Alton did on the show.

I let it stew there for about 20 minutes while the the liquid cooled (stirring occassionally.)  Then I added in the 2 pounds of ice.  When I first saw the recipe I thought it called for 2 bags of ice, so that's what I bought.  They are 7 pounds each and so 12 pounds of ice is now sitting in my camping cooler.  Maybe I'll make ice cream...

I stirred until the ice melted and checked that the water had cooled down to below room temperature.  Then I  put the brisket in one of my giant ziplocs and used a teacup to scoop the brine in on top of it before pouring the last of it in.  I squeezed out all of the air that I could (pretty much all of it, actually) and now the whole thing is taking up my entire deli drawer in the refrigerator. 

It's a little hard to see in the pictures, but there's a nice thin layer of brine over the top of the meat.  None of it is pressed up against the bag, so it's all brining.

Well, that's about it for now.  I will be turning the brisket over every night for the next 10 nights.  I'll either cook it on the 10th or 11th night (since it will be a Monday or a Tuesday.)  I'll post occasional updates till then and one for the actual cooking so you know how the story ends.

Audience Participation:  The brisket I got was actually about 6.5 pounds and was too long to fit into the bag.  I cut it down to size and considered stuffing the whole thing in the bag, but the recipe calls for 4 to 5 pounds and I prefer to not mess with that on my first try, so now I've got about 2 pounds of brisket sitting in my fridge.  My default choice would be to make jerky out of it since I love jerky.  I've done it many times before.

Any other suggestions on what to do with it?

A Tale of Two Oats - My Attempts at Steel Cut Oats

Last night I tried to make Steel Cut Oats.  For those who are unfamiliar, a quick overview: standard oatmeal is made by rolling and flattening the oats.  This makes it cook very fast but also robs it of some of it's flavor.  Steel cut oats are just chopped up oats.  They take longer to cook, but still have all the good stuff in them.

I've been intrigued by them since watching the Good Eats episode that featured them as an overnight recipe.  Toss them in a crock pot overnight and have delicious oatmeal for breakfast!  So that's what I tried.

Alton's recipe is fairly simple:

1 cup Steel Cut Oats
1 cup dried Cranberries
1 cup dried Figs
4 cups Water
1/2 cup Half and Half

I had everything ready to go last night except the figs.  I  haven't really had much of a taste for figs since I read about the "wasp situation" I warn you now that reading it might swear you off Newtons.

I put it all together in the crock pot before I went to sleep and turned it on Low.  Simple, right?

Well, I woke up in the middle of the night.  I decided to go and stir the oats to help it a bit with even cooking, and to take a taste.  Actually it was pretty good, but VERY cranberry-y.  In fact it was a little TOO much cranberry flavor.  I think it might have been better with some fig flavor to add complexity, so my bad for letting my fears override the recipe!

In any case, it was pretty clear that 3 1/2 hours of cooking on low was more than enough to cook the oats completely and infuse them with the flavor of the cranberries.

I turned off the crock pot and emptied the oats into another bowl and put them into the fridge for the morning.  Then I had another idea.  Kendra hadn't been all that wild about the cranberry idea.  She prefers maple and brown sugar on her oatmeal.  So, I decided that since I still had half the night to cook, I'd try a plain batch that could be flavored in the morning.  I put all the ingredients into the crock pot and went back to bed.

The more astute of you will immediately see the problem with cooking in the middle of the night.  I did NOT just say "I put all the ingredients into the crock pot, turned it on, and went back to bed."  Sigh.

I got up this morning, threw out the stuff in the crock pot and spooned up a big bowl of cranberry steel cut oats.  It was ok, but still much too much cranberry flavor.  The texture was nice and there was a good nutty undertone.  Kendra tried some but retained her dislike of fruit in her oatmeal and declined to eat a bowl.  My daughter took a test bite and decided that pancakes were more to her taste, so I ended up making them.  Our roommate did eat a bowl, though, and pronounced it ok, which I agree with.

Well, I did meet my goal.  I cooked something I've never cooked before.  The result wasn't fantastic, but that was more the fault of the cranberries than the oats.  I tend to agree with Kendra that it might work out with maple and brown sugar.  I plan to try again sometime soon.

Quick Start

I'll be posting something slightly more ambitious tomorrow, but I did, in fact, make something today that I've never made before: Egg Salad.

The primary reason I've never made egg salad before is that I used to hate it.  Well, to be clear I should say that I hated every egg salad sandwich I'd ever eaten for the majority of my life.  But as I've gotten older my tastes have changed and although I would hardly call egg salad a "favorite" of mine, it can be quite tasty.

The reason I made it today, though, was both in regards to my goal of trying to make new things, and a matter of convenience.  You see, in the process of making one of her fabulous lunches for our daughter (you can read all about it at http://bitingmyhand.blogspot.com/) my wife made some hard boiled eggs, and there were a couple of extras.  So, I decided to try my hand at egg salad.  I first checked to see what Alton Brown had to say on the subject.

Side Note:  You will hear a lot about Alton Brown on this blog over the course of the next year.  He is a hero of mine, a great chef and food scientist.  Many of the recipes I will be trying will be ripped directly from Good Eats or any of his books.  I'm currently reading Good Eats: the Early Years, so expect some of my first efforts to come from there!

Alton does not appear to have an egg salad recipe, which is just as well, since he'd assuredly want some spices I don't have handy to make it perfect.  So I googled "Simple Egg Salad" and up popped a very simple recipe:

6  hard boiled eggs
3 TBS Mayo
1 TBS Mustard
1 TBS Relish
Salt to taste

Well, I only had two eggs but some quick math reduced the ingredients nicely and I whipped up a batch.  It was pretty darn yummy.

OK, so it's about one step more complex than making popcorn in the microwave, but that's not the point, really.  I'd never made it before, now I have, and I liked the result.  A++.  Would make again.

If you want to be dazzled, stick around.  I do have some big plans this year.

Also, it's kind of a freebie, because my actual planned food to make this week for the first time is steel cut oats.  I'm about to put them to cook overnight as we speak. Stay tuned!

Welcome to another blog by me!

Why another blog?  Well, I really love to try new things and I love to cook, and so I decided to join those two loves in the new year and I set myself a challenge.  I'm going to cook something I've never cooked before every single week for a whole year.  The blog is really just a helpful tool to record how I'm doing and make myself accountable by putting my progress out in front of people.  Also, this way my friends can offer up suggestions for recipes for me to try.

I'm definitely going to be trying to cook all those things I love to get at restaurants and stores but have never actually made myself.  Jalapeño poppers, Pad Thai, peanut brittle, corned beef, etc. etc. etc.

By the end I hope to have added a bunch of new recipes for food I love to my skill set which I can make for my family and friends.  So really, we'll all be winners!