(Part 3) Top products from r/52weeksofcooking

For this week’s theme, I wanted to make a Malaysian feast for some of my law school friends. I started with this chicken curry recipe because I liked the fact that it had a ton of different and interesting ingredients (coconut, curry leaves, lemongrass, etc). This was delicious and intense, but the lemongrass chunks got scattered throughout the dish and made it a little hard to eat. I would definitely tie them into knots (like in the rice dish) next time. To go with that, I had to make nasi lemak, a coconut and lemongrass flavored rice. I found the recipe for this in Cradle of Flavor, an Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean cookbook I borrowed from my parents for Week 34 (Indonesian) inspiration. It was a little undercooked, but it is the closest I have come to successful rice on the stove so far. I liked the coconut and ginger and lemongrass flavors that were subtle but persistent in the dish. From my reading, nasi lemak is usually served with, among other things, fried peanuts and some kind of pickle. I made these fried peanuts because they were simple but delicious looking. They turned out really well, though some got a little over-fried. I also made pickled cucumbers, carrots, fresno chilies and shallots with a turmeric-ginger flavoring (also from Cradle of Flavor). These were delicious and a refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the curry and the rice.

For my MetaTheme, I made this Malaysian Negroni. I’m not normally a huge Negroni fan (a little too bitter for my tastes) but I didn’t have a ton of choices available to me. Malaysia is 80% muslim and buddhist so the cocktail culture is pretty limited. I liked that the recipe incorporated some classic Malaysian ingredients in an interesting way. I infused the chili into the Campari for about 4 hours and the lemongrass into the vermout for 3 days. When I tasted the Campari straight, the spice wasn’t super prominent but it really came through in the final drink. I think the Campari was too bitter for me to taste the spice. The lemongrass added a really interesting herbaceous note to the cocktail that I liked a lot.

Although I am not an avid book reader and don't crack open books as often as I'd like to, I was recently recommended the book Julie & Julia 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and since I had from free time from work I figured I would check it out. I haven't seen the movie (although I do now), but the book was just fantastic. I loved reading about the author's culinary journey, which is similar to trying to commit to cooking specific dishes 52 weeks in the year. ;)

In order to honor this book, I found a French dish to cook. If I was able to get my hands on the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1, which is the book the author tries to go through in her own journey, I would have made a dish from that. Unfortunately I couldn't but I did have another book I was reading through at the time that goes over the fifth taste of Umami, so I found a French dish from this book to cook.

The lamb was delicious and the Merlot sauce they have you make with it was phenomenal; we used that as a dressing for the pasta noodles. The only thing I didn't nail was the coulis; I couldn't get it pureed down enough. I left some of the veggies out of the processor to serve with the coulis to help add some texture to the dish. Overall, 10 out of 10, would try again!

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Julie & Julia 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen

The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami - Colorado Lamb Loin on Ratatouille Coulis, Topped with Green Onions and Merlot Sauce

Basic Recipe from Book (in case you want to cook this):

• 2 Lamb Loins - rub olive oil and fresh crushed thyme over the loins and marinate for at least 6 hours.
  
  
• Dice up eggplant and saute in pan. When soft, remove and then dice up 2 green squash and saute in pan. When that's soft, remove and dice up an onion and saute. When that turns yellow, add in 1 crush garlic, 1 peeled, seeded, and diced tomato, and saute for 5 minutes. Then add everything back in an top with 5-7 leaves of julienned basil and 1 tsp of fresh thyme. Salt and pepper to taste, and then pour in blender and blend until smooth, set aside.
  
  
• Take 4.5 tsp olive oil and warm up. Add 18 green onions, dices 1/4" thin, and saute until just warm. Add 4.5 tsp heavy cream, stir, add salt and pepper to taste, then set aside.
  
  
• Cook lamb on stove to form a nice crust on each side, then take out of pan. Add 1 medium diced onion and 1 diced carrot to the bottom of the pan and saute until starting to get tender. Add lamb back on top and cook in over for 6-8 minutes at 425 degrees. Take out of oven, remove lamb, add 1/4 cup Merlot, and cook until almost dried out. Add in liquid from plate from the resting lambs, and then add 1.5 cups chicken broth and 1.5 tsp cornstarch. Bring to a boil, and then reduce.
  
  
• To serve, place coulis down on plate first. Place veggies from lamb dish off to the side. Place lamb on the coulis, and then top with the green onion compote. Enjoy! (we added some spaghetti to the dish and it was amazing with the lamb-veggies and sauce!)
  

This recipe is from Smoke and Spice by Bill and Cheryl Jamison. This is a tried and true cookbook for me, I have tried many recipes and all of them have been smash hits. This recipe is no different. It is a mix of 1 lb ground pork, 1 lb ground beef, 1/2 c chopped peppers, 1/2 c chopped onions, 1.5 c bread crumb, 1 egg yolk, cumin, salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste. I combined all of the ingredients and put it in a loaf pan. Once in the loaf pan I added cajun seasoning to the top. Once the smoker was ready I smoked it on 250 for 45 minutes. At the end of the 45 minutes I took the loaf out of the pan and set it directly on the rack for 1.5 hours. In the second picture you can see I did have to cook it to finish it in the oven before dinner time for 15 minutes to get it up to temp. I was happy with the final product and even got a nice smoke ring! We are glad we will be having this for dinner a couple of times this week.

Recipe is from The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt and they tasted awesome.

The recipe itself is really simple:
1/2 Cup Buttermilk
1/2 Cup Sour Cream
2 Cups Flour
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 1/2 Teaspoons Kosher Salt
8 Tablespoons Butter
2 More Tablespoons Butter (Melted)

• Preheat Oven to 425 F
  
• Dry ingredients and butter blitzed in a food processor
  
• Combine everything in a bowl with a spatula
  
• Roll it out
  
• Fold it
  
• Roll it out
  
• Add Cheese/Chives
  
• Fold it
  
• Roll it out
  
• Cut it out
  
• Brush with melted butter
  
• Bake 15 minutes
  
  I'd recommend getting the book as it goes into much better detail about not only processes and technique, but the reasons behind them. Great book!

A perfect excuse to use one of the cookbooks I got for Christmas!

Recipe is from Bonnie Stern's HeartSmart: The Best of HeartSmart Cooking. https://www.amazon.com/HeartSmart-Best-Cooking-Bonnie-Stern/dp/0679314121

The stars aligned well for this challenge!

• I recently bought this book for my nephew.
  
• We had a chili cook off at work (hence the paper bowl).
  
• My previous week meta was "Stocks and Broths."
  
  I made the stock in my Instapot using the bone and trimmings from a pork shoulder. The chili also included the cubed shoulder meat, cannellini beans, pinto beans, cilantro, onion, oregano, bay, S&P, and a chile verde I made from roasted tomatillos, onions, pasilla peppers, garlic, and more cilantro and other herbs. Crema, cotija, and cilantro for toppings.
  
  I took second place in the cook off by one vote to a super traditional tomato-based chili made by my director. :-(

The flawless recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance with an extra tsp of cinnamon and a cup of local mcintosh apples grated in.

They're from this book, which has a ton of good stuff. I'll try to take a picture of the pages when I get home.

It should also be noted (by Terry Pratchett fans especially) that Nanny Ogg's Cookbook is a real thing you can buy for $10 digital / $15 paperback. It's got a decent collection of recipes and is actually a very humorous read.

I used Ivan Orkin's recipes from his cookbook, making some modifications - I simplified the dashi recipe to just rely on konbu and bonito, based on a recipe I got from a chef while in Tokyo. I also changed the noodle recipe, using buckwheat and bread flour instead of the prescribed flours. This was quite an undertaking; I think in the future I may try to use a less time-intensive shio tare recipe as well!

On the left is Bear's Paw Tofu from Every Grain of Rice and on the right is Peng's Home-style Bean Curd from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook.

Blog Post Here. Recipe from The Camping Cookbook

Followed the recipe from the Wicked Good keto cookbook, which we just got last week and have been trying different recipes from.

It came out okay - next time, I'll probably cube the chicken before cooking, and cut up the zoodles a little bit. Everything clumped up and we ended up with some chicken and sauce left over and no more zoodles. Also, the sauce was too thick, and then I stirred in the zoodles and it got a little too thin. Not sure what to do about that.

Squeeze of lime at the end was crucial!