Onion cheese enchiladas and homemade tamal.
Tamale is plural in Spanish.

Made some bread today. One will be for soaking up buttery sauce on the shrimp tomorrow. The other will be sliced up for roasted tomato bruschetta on Friday when some friends come over for our traditional post-Christmas appetizer party.

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2024 2:27 pm Made some bread today. One will be for soaking up buttery sauce on the shrimp tomorrow. The other will be sliced up for roasted tomato bruschetta on Friday when some friends come over for our traditional post-Christmas appetizer party.

That looks really good.

Not exactly cooking, but my neighbor had some of us by last night and had these Ina Garten cosmopolitans inside a Christmas ornament. It was hilarious.
We poured them into the martini glasses to consume.

Mas Tamale.
An old family and Texas tradition on Christmas Eve.
These were made with pork butt and boiled hogs head.

We never eat meat on Christmas eve, it's traditionally more of a fast before the feast, a simple meal on the lines of loaves and fishes. But with hosting a party on Tibbs Eve this year, discovered I had not a stick of bread in the house, and just too tired to get it together.
Ended up making a sheetpan dinner, fries and a salmon steak.
I put some rye bread on last night and baked it this morning, but this year I really miss the Christmas bread with raisins.
Maybe I'll make some before the season is done.

I've got a big ole cauliflower I'm going to do something with.
Maybe cauliflower steaks seared in butter or oil.

Less is more.
Christmas dinner 2024.

Don't know how but the ham actually tasted like pork not just tasteless meat and salt.
It is the Fricks ham with the bone in it.

Some friends and I celebrated Christmas at their place, Tuesday, because he was off, but on Christmas was going to be "on call", and as he figured, he had to go in on Christmas!

I had made that Keema Masala, to take over to them, and he made a venison sauce, which she made into a lasagna (my favorite thing yesterday) , and another meatball dish, with the venison. She also cooked a lot of those greens I gave them, when I harvested the end of them, with some bacon ends, like down south. We didn't even have any desserts, though I took about 2/3 of the cookies I had left!

And I made a batch of "Asian slaw" - something I cut a bunch of napa, and a little mizuna, with a couple of bell peppers, very thin, washed, and spun it dry. Then julienned a large carrot, and chopped up 2 scallions, 1/4 c cilantro, and mixed it all together with a tb of toasted sesame seeds and a couple tb chopped roasted peanuts.

I actually started the dressing first - minced up about 4 tb shallots, rinsed them and drained, while I juiced 2 limes, getting about 2½ tb juice (I put the skins in the freezer, for zest). I put the drained shallots in a pint mason jar with the lime juice to soak - this takes some of that raw taste off the shallots. Then after the veggies are cut up, I continue with the dressing, by adding a tb of soy sauce and sesame oil, a large clove of garlic minced with 1½ tb ginger, 1 tb palm sugar, ½ tb sweet paprika (original recipe calls for 2 tsp red Thai curry paste, but I was keeping out any heat), and 1/2 c olive oil (the flavor isn't really coming through much, but I just use this), and a scant quarter tsp of xantham gum (optional, but sort of emulsifies the ingredients, so they cling to the vegetables), and shake it up, to blend everything well, then I mixed it with the vegetables. This was very popular, and is even better with the curry paste and jalapeño, that is in the original recipe.
about 6 c of shredded Napa cabbage and some Mizuna, for the slaw. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Finished Asian slaw - I left the hot peppers out, so everyone could eat it. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Today, I had leftovers of most of those things.

I'm making a totally messed up version of Detroit style pizza.
Using a rectangular roasting pan.
No brick cheese.
Not gonna put stripes in top.
Not gonna buy an authentic Detroit pizza pan.
Cheese going on top sauce on first where it belongs.
The only thing Detroit style is there won't be any outer crust because I won't eat it anyway.

Sauce is store bought marinara sauce.
Topping pepperoni mozzarella cheese Baby Bella mushrooms.


Next I totally screwed up my pizza dough recipe.
I for some stupid reason used 500 grams of semolina and 500 grams of bread flour thinking it was two cups but knowing better.
That threw everything else out of whack.
The yeast water and all.
Not to be outdone I just adjusted everything to make a well hydrated dough.
If everything works out okay I'll have enough dough to make lord only knows what.
It's in my mixing bowl in the warm oven with the light on.
The pan I bought is 13X9X2 inches.
That should be just about right for me.

I've been wanting to do this for a very long time, maybe 2 years or more.

Pizza dough first rise.
I punched it down and kneaded it again in the stand mixer which is a first for me.
It's in the refrigerator for long haul second rise and flavor enhancing.
The picture does not justice.
Its a nice old school creamy yellow like the old Case tractors from the semolina.
Black pepper garlic powder salt pinch of sugar and Mexican oregano in the dough as well.

I did a little easy maths for what I ended up with on the hydration rate.
500+500=1,000.
The water I got from water bottles that weigh a little over 500 grams.
I used one full bottle and 100 grams out of the other one.
I simply weighed the bottle that had water left in it and subtracted the weight from 500.
The answer was what I used out of the bottle which was exactly 100 grams.
So easily enough 60 % of 1000 is 600 grams.
So it's a 60 % hydration dough, not quite 70%.
If you have kids this would be a fun way to teach useable maths and how to cook at the same time.
I wish I was around when I was a kid because I hated maths.

Put a thin layer on top of the rested pizza dough.
Then around 10 ounces of mozzarella cheese.
Pepperoni.
Mushrooms.
And then the signature sauce stripes.
Somewhere around 15 minutes at 400F and ab63 minutes up close to the broiler.

Crust too thick for me but it's really good.

Still harvesting filet beans and broccolini. We like these roasted in a hot oven. Sous Vide the pork chop for ~2 hours at 132° then finished searing in a blazing hot cast iron skillet.

Pig Porterhouse.

worth1 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 27, 2024 7:26 pm Pig Porterhouse.

Turned out very tender and overall pretty great. Might work on a pan sauce next time. I melted butter over the cooked chops and stirred that hot melted butter in the hot cast iron skillet a bit then poured it all over the seasoned chops. Felt like I could have enhanced the butter sauce more or added something.

I've used and seen used a raisin sauce made with white raisins.
Any fruit sauce works great on pork chops.
@karstopography

Leftover pizza that was better than the day it was made.
I heated up a couple of slices covered.
While doing this I heated up my cast iron comal on the stove with oil in it.
Took pizza out and turned oven on broil.
Put pizza in the hot oil and put in the broiler for a couple of minutes.
Nice thick semolina bread crust with crispy fried bottom and sides.
You can't do this with a thin crust pizza, I've tried.