Back in the Kitchen! 6/17-6/18 2009

In case any of you care, I did have a very good school year. So, back to cooking!

This year, I (Kevin) have unfortunately lost my good partner George in the line of cooking. He actually has a pretty good spot just off campus. Now, my new partner is Leland, the kid who lived across the hall last year and is around this summer for an internship. We drew together into Mirrielees, so we have the same accomodations as I did last year, with a few more tools, a few less tools, a little more experience, and a little less caution to cook with.

My first indication of difference was when we went shopping. Last year, shopping with George usually meant a lot of different veggies, a little meat, and a lot of attention to getting away as cheap as possible. With Leland, I'm forced to realize that that's not the only way to shop; he's more conscious of "the issues" and gets more organic stuff and looks to make sure everything is of high quality.

So our first meal was going to be some combination of chicken and pasta. Unfortunately, we don't have the rice cooker, so I now have to find new bases for my meals. For our inaugural meal, we went with a Cheddar Chicken Spaghetti recipe. We didn't have the pimientos or cream of chicken noodle soup, but we did have other veggies and campbell's chicken noodle soup, so we called it even. To add more to the meal, we sauteed some mushrooms and onions, though in retrospect, we probably should've used our red bell pepper instead as it's much closer to the pimiento. Because it's a baked recipe, it took awhile to make. Not until we started to cook did we realize that we didn't actually have a good oven container to put it into. I tore several sheets of aluminum foil and molded something similar to a bowl for it:

With mixed results. When we ate it, it wasn't bad, but it also wasn't particularly tasty. There were 2 major missteps here, in my opinion:

1) Not adding more flavors. Running down the list, there's nothing strong in the recipe. Chicken, chicken soup, milk, cheddar cheese, onions, mushrooms, salt, pepper. All good stuff, nothing to make the dish special

2) Not actually have cream of chicken soup. And we only have skim milk. When we pulled it out, the liquid was still at the bottom, so instead of baking the pasta into something more like a casserole, it just ended up being pasta on top of a little soup.

At least it was still edible.

So take 2. Thursday evening, I get back starving. Given our supply of meat, we could either go for porkchops or meatless. Since we had a couple pieces, we threw half in the freezer and cooked half. Having whipped it up on the spot, we didn't have much time to marinade, but I put together a mock barbecue sauce with soy sauce and ketchup (anyone seeing the mistake coming?). Add a little pepper and garlic powder, and let it soak while cutting up the veggies.

We again sautee onions and mushrooms, throwing the red bell pepper this time. That turns out alright, so I take those off the pan and throw the porkchops on. After cooking for a second, it starts to give off a bitter odor. It's not necessarily bad, but only vaguely what I was expecting. After cooking it through, which took very little time because the pieces were cut so thinly, I throw the veggies back in, put the rest of the sauce over, and serve.

So the bitter smell definitely existed, and it definitely came across in the flavor as well. After thinking for a second, I realized it was probably the sugar in the ketchup. Thinking back, usually bbq sauce is put on the ribs/steak just before coming off the grill; the cold bbq sauce with the hot meat.

But it actually came out alright anyways. The taste was definitely beyond tangy, but the "bite" was still good. It definitely wasn't bbq sauce, but still good.

So we'll see what we come up with in days to come. Without rice or another Chinese guy as a sidekick, I'll be doing a lot less stirfry. Apparently, Leland has some good Italian cooking influence from his mom, so maybe we'll see some of that?