The on-going chronicle of all things related to the George and Laura Roediger House (c. 1905) in the historic Holly Avenue Neighborhood of downtown Winston-Salem, NC. More info and pictures can be found at RoedigerHouse.com. [Mobile users: CLICK TO SEARCH the blog.]
Classic chocolate meringe pie has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and I finally got around to making it for the Thursday May 19th dessert. It was awesome if a bit unsightly, because it is hard as heck to cut and serve those neatly!
"Chocolate Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.
As I have been noting recently, this is a slow time for me where work is concerned and so I am enjoying an abundance of home time. That leads to quite a bit more cooking, both of daily meals but also of desserts, plus the other tidbits that I like to document in the blog. All that's to say: here is another friendly reminder that I'm in an oversupply of posts mode, which is why this one describes the meal I made back on Thursday May 19th. That night, it was the messy, involved, rare offering of the absolutely spot-on and amazing sweet and sour chicken.
The batter is perfect, leaving one with crispy and flavorful morsels of fried chicken; the sweet-and-sour sauce is made from scratch and is also pretty much perfect. I served it over white rice and could not have been more pleased.
Inspired by the example set by local favorite Chang Thai, I also had some fresh pineapple on my plate...and by fresh, I mean I bought a whole pineapple and carved it up myself. (That may have been a first for me?) It also made for good snacking.
The following day—Friday—was unseasonably hot for us to barely be past the middle of May: we hit 97°F here in Winston-Salem.
"Sweet-and-Sour Chicken," by Diane Unger. In Cook's Country, June/July 2016, p. 19.
So, I made my own hoagie rolls back on May 17th, and they were pretty awesome. I'm not especially skilled at shaping them so that they fulfill the aesthetic goals one might have for such an endeavor, but they were pretty close to perfect for a first attempt otherwise.
Of course, I'm thinking this was my first effort at working with a slack dough, where the goal of kneading and rising is different from the usual elastic, pliable, shapable result.
And what better use for those hoagie rolls than to serve as the landing spot for smoked provolone, which was the base for a terrific topping made of diced beef tenderloin (scraps from trimmings when I prepped and stored filets from a whole tenderloin), plus sliced onion and sweet bell pepper, in a tasty well-seasoned caramelized state? Oh, and did I mention my homemade cheese sauce to top it all off? Well, there was that as well. This was one super supper.
Philly Cheesesteaks based on a combination of ideas from:
"The Best Soft and Chewy Hoagie Bread Rolls," by Lori Monte, the Kitchen Whisperer.
The urge to be bad overtook me again back on May 16th, after a simple oatmeal dinner. The presence of a pot of mostly clean vegetable oil made it too tempting to throw together an easy batter that slipped nicely into a piping bag, and with the oil heated up on my Paragon induction plate, I fried funnel cakes, to be topped with plain powdered sugar alone or with powdered sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate dipping sauce.
"Classic Funnel Cakes," from Chris Elizondo on JustAPinch.com.
After making custard doughnuts in the early half of May, I had a nice pot of mostly clean cooking oil ready for some other use. One of my fried dough recipes that had been set aside for trial was churros, and out of the several recipes I'd grabbed and saved, I chose the wrong one to try. I mean, they were tasty especially when dipped into the chocolate sauce...but the dough was entirely too goopy and sticky to maintain any churro-like shape, or ease of frying.
That was the dessert following Meal No. 3100 Sunday a week ago, and none remained once they were served up. Admittedly, some pieces had an undercooked interior but those that were fully cooked: yum. Unshapely, but that's appropriate, given their effect on my own body shape.
"Churros," from John Kanell of The Preppy Kitchen blog. [Published 04 November 2020]
For the 3,100th meal that I've made in the kitchen addition that was completed in early 2009, it was worthy of something mildly celebratory. I trimmed and portioned an on-sale beef tenderloin and saved out two sizeable steaks for grilling back on May 15th. I still had some baby creamer potatoes that were sliced, olive oiled, and spiced; another pan was set up for Brussels sprouts. All those roasted vegetables went exceedingly well with the nicely grilled filets on that most pleasant Sunday afternoon.
We hit a multi-day rainy dreariness weekend before last and for that Saturday supper I was drawn to something comforting but with a touch of heat. The perfect recipe seemed to be arroz con pollo, along with an easy but awesome white cheese dip. It did the three of us right that night. After dinner, those rains returned with a vengeance, but Mooks and I were safe inside around the pool table for a continuation of our friendly rivalry.
"Mexican Chicken & Rice," in Cuisine at Home, Issue No. 115 (January/February 2016), p. 10-11.
"The Best Mexican White Cheese Dip," from eatingonadime.com.
A bit of time has passed since I made salmon croquettes, and that made it all the better for them to return to the dinner table back on Friday the 13th. The chili-lime-garlic aïoli was terrific as always, well-punched up with a more than reasonable quantity of garlic, of course. Roasted asparagus cuts, that were also well-garlicked, helped complete the plate.
Recipe sent to me by my sister Allison, and adapted from "Salmon Burgers" (p. 396) and "Herb Sauce" (p. 395), from Denise Austin, Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, Rodale Books (2003).
"Chili-Lime Aïoli," from David Wald of Princeton, NJ, May 2009.
The compulsion to try interesting yeasted constructions continues, and the week before last, I made my first attempt at custard-filled doughnuts.
It began Wednesday with making a batch of vanilla custard, and then a batch of chocolate custard. Then, on Thursday, I hand-kneaded from start to finish the dough for the doughnuts. By the time the dough had risen and rested, I divided them up and they puffed up a bit more, albeit a bit more spherical than one might want.
Then I fried 'em up and rolled half in powdered sugar and the other half in a cocoa-sugar mix. I filled a few to start with, just to see how they'd be, and got to sample one of each.
Given how oozy they were, I decided that the remaining ones would be just as good if I'd split them and use the custard as toppings. It was all going to the same place anyway, right?
From "Custard Cream Donuts (Vanilla & Chocolate)," from HidaMari's YouTube channel. [Posted 18 June 2021]
Among the May dessert endeavors has been a fresh trial of dessert pizza, which left me with a partial box of cake mix...and the perfect solution for a partial box of cake mix is to incorporate it into a batch of cake batter ice cream, no? I'd not made this particular flavor of ice cream since the fall of 2018 so perhaps its resurrection was long overdue. It is sweet and that distinctive flavor of batter really comes through. It's pretty easy to throw together as well, and sometimes that's okay with me.
"Cake Batter Ice Cream," by smstemp on food.com.
Back on May 11th, with trimmings from a recently-purchased beef tenderloin proving an ideal central ingredient, I depended on a recipe from my sister and her husband to make terrific teriyaki beef skewers for the Wednesday evening meal. I still had some leftover roasted Brussels sprouts and just let the beef pile drive the supper ship that night.
"Teriyaki Steak Fingers," courtesy of Tom and Allison Holden [Rossville, IN].
I might have been in a bit of a giddy mood in early May, when I spotted a nice special on beef tenderloins, and went ahead and took advantage of it even though the freezer is currently too well stocked. When I broke open the package to trim and portion it and prep it for the Food Saver vacuum bags to store away, I made sure to save out plenty of fresh morsels to then toss into marinade and stirfry in the wok for steaming bowls of glorious beef and mushrooms, along with onion and asparagus and some additional wok sauce I made. Man, oh, man: for a basic Tuesday meal just over a week ago, it was high caliber.
"Glorious Beef with Mushrooms," in Wok Fast by Hugh Carpenter and Teri Sandison. Ten Speed Press, 2002, p. 87 (recipe) and p. 26-27 (marinade and sauce).
Back on May 9th, with organic power greens chilling in the fridge from a great BOGO special, a salad supper was called for. The house favorite of homemade creamy Caesar dressing, with an extra punch of fresh smashed garlic paste, was prepped in the afternoon and then I went out on a quest for fresh salmon fillets. I overbought in hopes of turning the leftovers into salmon croquettes a couple of days later. I was starving a bit before the salmon was done roasting and picked away about half of my salad greens, so you can see it looks a bit diminished in this picture:
Based on "Easy Lemon Caesar Salad Dressing," by Kim of lowcarbmaven.com.
It's taken a while to get back to the freezer overstock drawing jar, but that's what drove the dinner menu on Mother's Day at the Roediger House. Into the sous vide immersion circulator went prepped blackened vacuum-sealed frozen chops to gently simmer at 140°F for just over two hours. In the meantime, I prepped a mix of baby creamer potatoes with spices and olive oil for roasting, plus a batch of amazing Brussels sprouts. It was all too much but we know I'm weak.
A spectacular dessert treat was brought out of the archives (last made in 2017) Saturday before last: gingered pear brioche cobbler. It was inspired by a version of peach cobbler I encountered working down in the southern central Piedmont, when on occasion our meals would be locally catered. It borrows from bread pudding and derives its compelling deliciousness from ample amounts of butter and sugar, of course. I was pretty pleased with how it came out!
Adapted from "Brioche Stone Fruit Cobbler," a recipe I worked out as an adaptation of "Stone Fruit Cobbler," by Ann of the defunct RedactedRecipes.com. [Published 08 August 2008]
It had been about three weeks since I last made beef chili but the rainy stormy skies and cooler temps Saturday a week ago had me of a mind to bring it back for supper. Mid-day prep and early afternoon cooking brought it all together for a supper for three of us, complete with cheese for all and sour cream for some.
"Simple Beef Chili with Kidney Beans," from Cook's Illustrated, Number Sixty-One [March-April 2003], p. 10-11.
Hunger struck at lunchtime on the first Friday of May, and I rose to the challenge by making a quick somewhat thin crust for a maiden voyage of Cheeseburger pizza, using the leftover grilled burger from a couple of meals before.
I'd been hankering to try some pizza variety and this one was a solid choice.
But the other thing I've been jonesing for a bit is another trial run for Pizza Inn-style chocolate dessert pizza, which Pizza Inn called "Pizzert." I made a fresh pizza crust, trying to achieve an even thinner version with a slight bit of honey-infused sweetness. Everything else was a short-cut, though: both chocolate and white chocolate instant puddings were the top topping above the parbaked crust with the parbaked butter-soaked cake batter.
It wasn't stupendous and not sufficiently reminiscent of the long-time local favorite when I was growing up. But I'm glad I notched another attempt.
Based on "Cheeseburger Pizza," by Shawn Syphus of IWashYouDry.com.
"Pizzert Dessert Pizza," an in-process adaptation from 2 Crochet Hooks (Millie & Kristina of Raleigh/Durham, NC).
After seeing it as a much-loved treat on dear friend Amy's Cooking the Books blog, I decided I'd better follow her lead and try out that recipe for carrot cake pancakes with a cream cheese topping. And it did not disappoint: as a nice variation on a normal pancake theme, these were hearty and nicely-spiced and the sweet topping pulled it all together. My plate shows only three but I indulged deeply in four of those rascals.
"Carrot Cake Pancakes," from Deb Perelman of the Smitten Kitchen blog. [Published 19 March 2012]
It's not unusual for me to have one idea when I'm grocery shopping, which I then have to convert into some other idea once the reality of daily pursuits brings me to a supper-preparation moment. That's why I defaulted back on May 4th to burgers on the grill for dinner instead of some other more sensational use for a pound of ground beef. But it was a lovely breezy warm spring late afternoon, and I'd put in some good yard time (mostly on weeding), and the meal was well-suited to the evening.
Adapted from "Juicy Burgers," originally from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine, July 2003, p. 52-53. Pillsbury was purchased in 2001 by General Mills, home of Betty Crocker (founded in 1921, mind you!), after which it basically ceased to exist as a company and lives on just as a brand. Perhaps that explains why a Pillsbury cookbook recipe from 2003 is now only found on the Betty Crocker website.
With an oversupply of apples after a few lucky grocery trips where they were on a good sale, I noticed a couple that needed to be eaten or used soon...which led me to pull out a recently-found recipe for French apple cake. Moistly dense and easy to consume quickly, enhanced with scoops of more of the recent batch of butterscotch ice cream, this was a lighter treat on the first Monday of May when I'd spent my day working down in Montgomery County, NC. Perhaps the dark rum flavor was a bit too strong, but overall, I was glad to have tried it out.
"French Apple Cake," from Jenn Segal of the Once Upon a Chef blog.
Although there are fancier versions one can make, I keep coming back to this very basic and rather easy approach for preparing a chocolate eclair cake, which most recently occurred in connection with the sweet pork sheet pan nachos birthday celebration dinner on the final night of April. It came out particularly well-layered and easier to serve...given that on occasion it can be just a tad soupy. From time to time I like to note that I was first introduced to this delectable dessert probably in 1988, if not 1989, by Anita Jordan. She brought it to the office when I was working in Winston-Salem at my first job out of college, down on Reynolds Park Road.
"Chocolate Éclair Cake," a common and popular recipe.
A gathering of the Roediger House regulars took place Saturday a week ago, as part of a birthday celebration, and the menu was all command performance. Top of the list: Cafe Rio sweet pork to go on loaded sheet pan nachos, and they were especially scrumptious this time around. Perhaps the extras of Mexican white cheese dip and some fresh garlicky lime crema were partially to blame.
I did make a fresh batch of Mexican restaurant white dipping sauce for the crew to amuse themselves with before supper, although I snapped no pictures of it this time. I did snag this photo of Sumner up under the kitchen table, happy to be surrounded by so many people he loves...and who love him.
"Mexican Restaurant White Dipping Sauce," a recipe worked out by me, sampled by Spring Street, and approved of by all.
Shredded Pork based on "Cafe Rio Sweet Pork," from Holly of Life in the Lofthouse. [Published 30 October 2014] See also "Sweet Pork Nachos," from Holly as well. [Published 01 August 2017]
Sheet Pan Nachos based on "Loaded Sweet Pork Sheet Pan Nachos," from Elyse of Six Sisters Stuff. [Published 14 March 2018]
"The Best Mexican White Cheese Dip," from EatingonaDime.com.
"Easy Lime Crema," from Lisa Bryan of DownShiftology.com. [Published 22 April 2020]
Back in early November, I came across a recipe for liège waffles, a yeasted brioche-style version of the more common Belgian waffles, that has the added feature of pearl sugar to make them extra interesting. With a pantry-refreshing order from King Arthur Baking in preparation for the December holidays, I splurged on their pearl sugar offering to help me get one step closer to trying this out, which finally occurred on the final Friday night of April. A compelling variation but only to a certain degree: while I'm glad I tried them out and I did manage to overeat from what was on my plate, I doubt these will be preferred to my traditional Belgian waffles (made with club soda!) or the buttermilk version from Serious Eats.
"Liège Waffles," from Nicole Rufus of TheKitchn.com. [Published 10 November 2021]
After making that stupendous vanilla birthday cake in late April, I had a collection of egg yolks reserved for a batch of ice cream. That next week I reached for a recipe that I don't think I'd made before, for butterscotch ice cream, and brought it out for a sweet evening treat on the final Thursday night of April. I'm a little too fond of ice cream and, while I'd love to get just a nudge more punch of butterscotch flavor, this was still an un-boozy frozen dairy triumph.
"Butterscotch Ice Cream," from Deb Perelman of SmittenKitchen.com. [Published 14 March 2008]
After a six-month boycott of my long-time Harris Teeter on Cloverdale, and a number of conversations with corporate management about the decline there since a new manager was installed, I agreed Thursday a week ago to return to the store to see if their intervention efforts were bearing observable fruit. While I was glad to see some of the long-time associates, it was not an inspiring or encouraging shopping trip. I came home with the only piece of salmon that looked viable, wrapped up by the same gruff and off-putting Fisherman's Market staffer who was the reason I abandoned the store in November. The salmon was spiced up and roasted, along with broccoli florets, so that at least that night I could indulge in a favorite meal that has been somewhat missing from the dinner scene lately.
Back on April 26th, I embarked on a little adventure, taking me down two new recipe paths: chicken tinga soft tacos and homemade corn tortillas. Diced red onion and tomato were the standard additions, of course, but I also rather enjoyed the avocado jalapeño crema plus a fresh batch of my own Mexican restaurant white dipping sauce. I did find the chicken portion to be adequate but not sensational, making the added components the avenue to supper salvation.
My novel experiments with various breads and bread-like creations continues: with authentic masa harina corn flour, water, and a bit of salt, plus a brand-new tortilla press, I made tortillas to go with it. I didn't achieve the customary brown-spotting but the results were still pretty darned good.
Based on "Crockpot Crispy Chicken Tinga Tacos with Avocado Jalapeño Crema," from Tieghan Gerard of the Half-Baked Harvest blog. [Published 01 March 2022]
"Homemade Corn Tortillas," from Jenn Segal of OnceUponaChef.com. [Published 24 June 2020]
"Mexican Restaurant White Dipping Sauce," a recipe worked out by me, sampled by Spring Street, and approved of by all.
A spice adventure overtook me Monday a week ago, when I peeled the tamper-shield off a saved jar of piri-piri spice to try for the first time: on bone-in chicken thighs that I was tossing into the sous vide immersion circulator, to then turn into a big batch of chicken salad for sandwiches that evening. Red onion, diced cosmic crisp apple, and walnut pieces were the bonus additions and it was delicious and filling...and a little mouth-searing when you got hold of certain morsels.
Loosely based on "Chicken Salad Melt," a Roediger House original recipe.
Friday night a week ago was an inexplicably short sleep and I confess to an extended Saturday mid-day nap...and that threw a wrench into my initial dinner plans. So I went with a back-up: crispy skillet chicken thighs, with a good skin-cookin' sear in the cast iron Lodge before finishing them in the oven at 425°F.
That Saturday dinner was helped along mightily by the generous gift of fresh vegetables from the long-time neighbors across the street, including yellow summer squash and green beans. I diced onion and approximated a near-caramelized stage with them before adding in the sliced squash, and it was particularly excellent.
Prior to that indulgent nap, though, as Sumner and I started our day with some driveway time, we were primely positioned to witness two robin chicks getting booted from the nest up in the corner of the porch. Although his curiosity got the better of him initially, Sumner was mindful of my commands to back off and leave 'em alone. The parent robins were as much fun to watch as the little ones.
"Crispy Cast Iron Skillet Chicken Thighs," from Amy Nash of HouseofNashEats.com. [Published 12 January 2018 / Modified 13 April 2022]
