Category: Cookery

Aftermath of the Bacon Pickle Fries.

The bacon pickle fries were not a disaster, but they were a disappointment.

The bacon did not wrap properly around the pickles; I am unsure as to whether this is due to the bacon not being tight enough, or because the pickles were too small, or both.  The bacon also did not crisp as much as I’d prefer, either; I suspect that this is due to the nitrate-free thing.  Still: the bacon cooked, the pickles did not burn, and the two flavors worked well together.  My wife was surprised at how much she liked the dish, because she was frankly skeptical about the whole affair.

Tomorrow is the Day of Bacon Pickle Fries.

Tomorrow is going to be a day of wonders.  And artery clogs. But mostly wonders.

Also: I actually need some feedback; my wife is not really supposed to have nitrates, and even the organic, ‘nitrate-free’ bacon still has some of that stuff in it thanks to celery salt or something.  Is there a way to have a pork product that lacks nitrates, but can still be realistically referred to as ‘bacon?’  Because I’d like to be able to cook it more often.  …Not that maybe I should, given that it’s really not all that great for me. Continue reading Tomorrow is the Day of Bacon Pickle Fries.

Bacon Pickle Fries. Bacon Goram Pickle Fries.

This is it.  This is the choice for the Destructor.  It’s just… complete.  I don’t see how you can top Bacon Pickle Fries for sheer audacious, artery-clogging wonderment.

Of course I’m bloody making these.  I just need to get some bacon, only the stores are all closed*.

*If there’s bacon in the house, the bacon gets cooked and eaten.  That is simply the way of it. So I leave bacon in the store, until I need to buy, cook, and eat it.

A Chicken and Dumplings Day.

Honestly, it was a slow day. The most interesting thing? Chicken and dumplings. We were figuring out what to do with dinner. I had tossed in some fresh corn to boil because we accidentally had forgotten about the last batch of corn until it was kind of terrifying, and we had some leftover chicken. My wife mused about that for a moment, murmured “Chicken and corn. Chicken and dumplings? Do we have chicken broth?”

Of course we have chicken broth. There’s always several different kinds of broth in the pantry, because I mostly do the shopping at this point (which is why there’s also always one-use Emergency Pork and Beans) and if you have broth you are halfway to recycling your leftovers. As it was in this case. Came out good, too. I do not know how to dumpling well, alas, but my wife does, so I left it to her and it came out nice, with a good heavy gravy. It could have only been better if we were eating it in November, but the weather’s been nice, so… eh?

And that was my day. Chicken. And dumplings. Not very exciting, but tasty.

Need to figure out how to pickle these watermelon rinds.

I’ve heard of it, and I just chopped up a watermelon, so I’ve got the rind.  Alas, the recipes online are contradictory, if not actually argumentative with each other.  However, I have a bunch of readers who cook, so feel free to suggest recipes for pickled watermelon rind. I’m not afraid of a little work, but I don’t want to spend eight hours fiddling with all the bits, either.

Adventures in Cooking: Pineapple-Coconut Chicken.

Took some chicken breast strips, some coconut milk, a small can of pineapple chunks in milk, a little soy sauce and a spoonful or two of sugar, sesame, combined them, and am now cooking them for a half hour at 350 degrees.  How will it turn out? I have no idea.  It smells OK at the moment, but we’ll see when the timer goes off how well it went. Or whether it went, at all.

Moe Lane

PS: Probably going to put it over lettuce, actually.  My wife’s been looking for something light and salad-like this week.  But you could put it over rice, sure.

Unhappy with today’s Chicken Parmigiana.

The sauce was fine, the cheese was perfect, my wife’s chicken was OK, I take one bite of my chicken and it’s practically rubber.  I mean, seriously, I was at first unsure if it had cooked at all.  It was the bigger piece, and I suspect that I should have had it in the oven at 350 degrees for forty minutes, not fifty — but the other chicken breast was fine.

I dunno what happened, in other words. Thoughts?  Because the cheese was perfect.

So I have a can of diced tomatoes and mild chilies.

It’s going to get incorporated with this slow-roasted, shredded pork somehow, but I don’t know exactly in what fashion.  I don’t know if I want to just dump it in and let it heat up for the next hour or so, though.  Suggestions?

Moe Lane

PS: This pork’s ultimate destiny is to be put into soft taco shells and eaten in a vaguely Mexican fashion.  So there’s that.

[UPDATE: My wife has arrived, and has gently but inexorably scuppered my plans to dump in a can of black beans and the aforementioned tomatoes/chilies. To be fair, this is because apparently the pork tastes fine on its own. But there’s a lot of it, so we’re deferring this cookery problem for tomorrow, not abandoning it.]

So the orange chicken wasn’t EXACTLY a disaster.

But it went weird.  I dredged the chicken in flour, dipped it in egg, then dipped it in panko (as per the recipe).  And once I had the chicken in the oil, the covering promptly fell off the chicken and – well, actually, it browned up amazingly well and I was able to salvage the situation by constant stirring to keep the breading from burning while the chicken itself fried up.  The whole thing ended up being tossed in the orange/sugar/chicken broth goop that I was making to coat the chicken, and it all tasted great when I put it over rice, but: the breading was still supposed to stay on the chicken.

What did I do wrong?  Did I not grind the chicken into the panko? I probably should have ground the chicken into the panko.