I'm just here for the food

[mellymell]

Last night I made meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Of course, I can't just make it traditionally. Instead of the traditional ketchup based glaze, I made a chipotle porter glaze. Chris grabbed a bottle of his brown porter and I added to that about 3/4 of a cup of brown sugar (maybe a little less). Then chopped up 2-3 chipotles and added their adobo sauce along with black pepper, salt and garlic powder and maybe a couple of tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. I let that simmer down on medium heat into a nice syrupy goo during the hour the meatloaf was cooking. Pulled it out and glazed it and stuck it back in for another 15 minutes to finish.

Instead of plain old mashed potatoes, I made garlic and herb mashed potatoes. I sweat the minced contents of an entire bulb of garlic in olive oil and added that and the cooked potatoes (cubed reds with skins on) to the stand mixer along with some chives and parsley (freshly picked from my AeroGarden), black pepper, a tiny bit of salt (since there was salt in the potato water and in the garlic sweat), a little less than a cup of sour cream and a couple of tablespoons of butter, then stirred with the paddle attachment until smooth-ish. Added a salad to the side to round out the meal with some veggies.




The glaze had an almost whiskey character to it, I guess from the maltiness of the beer and the smokiness of the peppers. The potatoes still seemed to be missing a little something, but oh well, I can't seem to figure out what.


Eariler in the week, or maybe it was late last week, I made some of our stacked goat cheese enchiladas. I think a lot of you who've either eaten at our house or went to that Thanksgiving dinner (in the form of a Southwestern potluck) at jamos_fire's place a few years ago have had this dish. It came from our Border Cookbook that we got in New Mexico while we were out there. It's kind of a favorite cheap, easy but very tasty meal. The sauce is just onions, about 3/4 cup of mild dried ground chiles (I used 1 oz. California chiles and 4 oz. of New Mexico chiles, and yes, I know that's not quite 3/4 of a cup), and enough beef bullion for 4 cups of water (or you could use any kind of stock or broth). Simmer, then puree. I'm lazy, so I tend to skip the step where you fry the corn tortillas in oil. I just slice up some onion really thinly, grate some pepper jack cheese and cut off a hunk of goat cheese to crumble on to certain layers. I usually do 3 layers (4 tortillas), with a sprinkling of onions, drizzle of the sauce and any combination of the cheeses, leaving enough of the jack to sprinkle on the top. Bake until bubbly and serve with some sour cream (or even better, Mexican crema).

From the same cookbook, I made a creamy rice casserole that has roasted poblanos, corn, pepper jack cheese and sour cream and I think that's about it (though I tend to add cilantro when I have it and chile powder). It bakes for about 20-30 minutes.

Comments

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

Can you come cook for me? That all looks so yummy!

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

Heh, you watch Good Eats, right? I'm sure you could do just as well. Though I tend to get some extra inspiration from Bobby Flay occasionally, too.

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I mailed your book on Tuesday - you should have it soon. :-)

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

Awesome, thanks! And sorry again for the mix up. Before, I wasn't able to delete that address from my account for some reason without calling them to do so (maybe because before there was a card or bank account still tied to it, I'm not sure). But now, I can suddenly and it is gone. So, hopefully that won't ever happen again.

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

I got it yesterday, thanks!

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

Can we come moot at your place sometime? *drooools*

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

absolutely!

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

Maybe a nice summer moot sometime, we shall have to discuss it with the group. BTW, are you going to be at Blackstone on Thursday? I'm looking forward to it!

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

Most definitely! We shall be there with green bells on. ;)

Yes, I'll have to wait until things calm down but once I get an idea of when and what, I'd definitely like to offer up to the group. Late April through mid-May is going to be insanely hectic if all our travel plans work out (even if half of them do, it's still going to be hectic). So yes, summer would be a good time if you'd all like to moot here for, hmm, I don't know, we'll have to think of an excuse. Summer solstice perhaps? We've got a community pool just a short walk from the house even. :)

[witchcat07.livejournal.com]

Will see ya there!

Summer Soltice works, and a pool makes it even better.

[buttahcheeks.livejournal.com]

You've been writing a lot about cooking lately. I love coming up with new ways to cook stuff and finding recipes that even my semi-picky husband may enjoy. We, recently, just discovered the greatness of flank steak. Grilled it the first time and then last night I made Korean beef stirfry (flank steak, bean sprouts, spinach, garlic, japs, and soy) mmm...Foodnetwork is the constant channel. It's always on if we don't have a program to watch. A couple weeks ago I made puff pastry cheeseburger (Jamie Dean recipe). pretty tasty too. I also reference allrecipes.com. They have a way to search by what ingredients you have to cook with. This is quite useful if your pantry is low.
anyway, I love reading about the cooking adventures. :)

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

I was feeling like my life was kind of empty for a while. Like all I did was wake up, cook, clean and take care of Jonah. Then I realized, my life was full because of those things. So I decided to start writing about them. To me, cooking is more than a necessity to stay nourished, it's become a hobby. Since I enjoy it so much, I thought I should start including it more in my journal. I just have to remember to take pictures before I devour the results, heh.

I think my favorite things to do are either finding totally new ethnic genres to try and taking old American favorites and twisting them until they're nearly unrecognizable. Korean food is something I'd love to try cooking, since I seemed to love eating it. Your stir fry sounds awesome! Flank steak makes great fajitas, too. About the only things I watch on Food Network are Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill (I don't really care for his other shows) and Good Eats. If you think about it, you should share some of your cooking adventures. They might bore everyone else, but I'd love to read about them. I thought about that when you mentioned all the compliments you got at the gathering a few weeks ago, thinking, "hmm, wonder what she cooked". Luckily we have no picky eaters in this house (at least not yet, who knows how Jonah will grow up) and that definitely makes it easier.

As far as sites, I like recipecottage.com and recipezaar.com. Though admittedly, sometimes, especially in the ethnic sections, you have to dig through a lot of crap to find a decent recipe of a popular dish on recipecottage. I'll have to try allrecipes though, I'd like the ability to search by pantry contents.

[buttahcheeks.livejournal.com]

LOL! I made lasagna. Which to me, it's like boiling a hotdog. I've been making lasagna since my parents would let me in the kitchen. However it evolved into a better combo since I got married.
Then I made a copycat recipe of Olive Garden's salad dressing :).

I'll start sharing my cooking more. I know other ladies on here would like to read about interesting recipes.