I saw a reference to this recipe on Twitter and thought that I would take one for the team.
From the description:
It is one of the seven recipes in a little chapter I call, The Shit I Eat When I’m By Myself
I had a bag of frozen Chinese dumplings that Mrs J had found to be not worth their stuffing so I figured I would go for it.
Verdict: Meh. You definitely want to make these in the privacy of your own home.
This one spent the night over peach wood smoke and came out fairly well. I left it in for nearly 24 hours at 200 degrees because I feared it was still half frozen despite thawing in the fridge for 2 days. It was still only 165 degrees inside so it went into a 350 oven for an hour to finish.
After a short cool down it was pulled apart and chopped. I used this time to adjust seasonings. I’m loathe to over salt the shoulder going into the smoke because the juices suffer from that.
Sammich Pr0n! I went with a little slaw and a nice habanero flavored sauce, reserving the option to add hot giardiniera as required. I required all of it before it was over.
At least the air roasting is true for the carrots, sprouts, and broccoli. The potatoes were boiled, smashed and then roasted on a tray below the basket with the other veggies. Everything was tossed with oil and kosher salt.
I set the temp at 350 to start and then bumped it to 375. They took about 13-14 minutes after it came to temp but I put everything in before it was fully pre-heated. I’m still feeling my way around cooking times, not ready yet to set and forget until the timer chimes.
Modern in the sense that I used sodium citrate dissolved in milk to aid in the making of the cheese sauce. (I did it in a little water so I could see it dissolve.) Much like the modern mac and cheese recipe I used a while back I used it to melt mozzarella and parmesan in the sauce. It was similar to a bechamel and it worked very well.
Not much to look at, the first portion dug out of the pan while it was still warm. The taste was great, though. I worried that the lack of flour might affect the “set” of the lasagna. It might have, but it’s difficult to tell. A reheated portion the next day was OK.
Two people can’t eat all of that so I froze individual portions for later.
I’ll be bummed when I run out of those candied jalapenos. The slaw is from a copycat KFC recipe. It’s a favorite of Mrs J. I’m torn between it and one using shredded cabbage and fresh peppers in a sweet and sour dressing. I think the vinegar slaw works better as a topping on fish or pulled pork. YMMV
This was just OK, it’s not going into the regular rotation. The lean ground beef really shines in these kinds of recipes, there is never any extra fat to get rid of.
Homer was sniffing the catmint the other day, I took a snap but it’s not very good.
The new toaster oven is just a tad bigger than the last one – enough so that my 12″ cast iron skillet will fit inside with the door closed. I celebrated by making a bigger batch of baked beans.
Since the new toaster is also an air fryer we are having French fries more often. The leftover fried chicken comes out very well,too.
The roasted chicken was done beer can style in the big oven, the fries were done in the air fryer. I tried to cook too many at one time because I didn’t want just a few frozen leftovers in the bag, A longer cooking time might have served this batch better but a few were starting to get rather toasty at the ends.
We dropped Gabe off at the groomer and had a few hours to kill. I was stymied in my search for the box mix wild rice I prefer so went a few towns over and found some. Lunch was at a Chinese buffet over there that we found with a web search. It’s located in a dead shopping mall, when we walked in from the parking lot we were dismayed to see just a few patrons. We thought it was because the food sucked but it wasn’t that bad. It’s just that it is suffering because of the mall woes. 
I made coq au vin yesterday. It’s pretty easy but it does take a while. I broke down a whole chicken so I had the breasts in there, too. Usually I go with just chicken thighs but we were out of those. That’s a big ol’ breast atop the garlic mashed potatoes.
Today I’m making chili with canned hominy instead of beans. I was tired of looking at that can in the pantry. There is nothing you can throw together in the kitchen that someone, somewhere, has not already done.
Not sure if the upward stare is wistful or wishful. On the far left is the stump feeding station.
