Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11
#11
  Re: (...)
(I've been waiting patiently for him to post....so, here goes. )

What a great selection of dishes, Labs. These werre fun recipes and I can see making them (with variations) for a long time.

Mango & Bell Pepper Salad, 1/21/11, 1/23 & 1/27.
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Mango salad with curried chix
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I can’t remember Roy ever enjoying a salad more than he did this one, I liked it very much also, but he cleaned the bowl each of the three times I made it. I started out buying 3 mangoes and then realized how much it would make, so we’ve been having this every other night! The last night (Thursday), I added some of the curried chicken thighs I had cooked up. Really good together.

Prepping chicken dish – in 6” skillet
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Grape Pickers’ Skillet with Chicken
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We both liked this dish very much – I made 1/2 the recipe in my 6” cast iron skillet and this made just a perfect amount for us to have for dinner (although I cut back on the last 30 minutes to 20 minutes and everything was tender) and then with an egg on top for Friday’s breakfast!

I will make this again and I’m thinking of all the variations I can do with it.
Retired and having fun writing cookbooks, tasting wine and sharing recipes with all my friends.
www.achefsjourney.com
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#12
  Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by cjs ((I've been waiting p...)
Let me preface this review with a couple of facts:

-I've been sick
-I had to go to a workshop all day on a pretty day in a room with no windows on a SATURDAY!
-I didn't think I was going to get to review this meal at all.
-I was not in possession of the brain that afternoon. (That's Theresa's fault.)

Now for the review. Even though I bought everything to do the skillet dish AND the salad, I forgot the salad. (See note about the lack of a brain above.) Since I have the stuff, I will probably make that tonight. I think it will go nicely with some Basamati rice and the Plum Chicken dish Trixxee shared a few days ago. I'll try to post a review of that later.

Now for the Grape Picker's Skillet Dinner.

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Aside from the fiasco with the cheese, I pretty much made the dish as written. My only other problem with the dish was the size of my pan. My husband will tell you that I have no measurement sense, so I let him pick the skillet at the farm closest to 10 inches. I think it was closer to 12 or 14. This caused problems with getting too done on the bottom, but the slightly crunchy bottom was not really a BAD thing to me. But to be fair, I'll make it again as written.

Then, as Jean said, I'll play with other cheeses and adding other goodies to this dish. We liked it a lot and it wasn't really that difficult to put together...other than slicing the potatoes...still not that big of a deal that it would deter me from making it again.
Daphne
Keep your mind wide open.
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#13
  Re: Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by Gourmet_Mom (Let me preface this ...)
So, where do you think the b'day boy is????
Retired and having fun writing cookbooks, tasting wine and sharing recipes with all my friends.
www.achefsjourney.com
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#14
  Re: Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by cjs (So, where do you thi...)
I dunno....maybe he hasn't been on yet today. I thought he usually checked in from time to time throughout the day, but I guess I was wrong. LABS!!!! (Wonder what a whistle looks like in text speak?)
Daphne
Keep your mind wide open.
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#15
  Re: Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by Gourmet_Mom (Let me preface this ...)
We made both the salad and the "skillet".

First of we've made the salad twice. First time I made just a third for Bob and I. OMG!! We loved it so much. Then when we went to Jennifer's for her Jamaician dinner I made it again - with a couple changes. There were several people who didn't like cilantro so I used mint, I used a huge jalapeno instead of the green bell pepper, and we added "Cara Cara" orange segments. WOW - everyone loved it so much.

We all agreed that cucumber would be good - and for those of us who are fans, avocado. That salad was a huge hit.

Now for the Grape Pickers' Skillet. I screwed up and used homemade bacon - too thickly sliced, and therefore greasy. We wished there had been more flavor, it was a tad bland so we'll play with that. Our friend Francois liked it too.

Jean I like the idea of the egg on it for breakfast!!!

The salad was a definite 15 on a scale of one to ten, the skillet a seven. We'll try it all again though.
You only live once . . . but if you do it right once should be enough!
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#16
  Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by cjs ((I've been waiting p...)
Well, here's mine.

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I used a 9" pan, I think, didn't use all the potatoes. Used a mandolin for cutting the potatoes, really made that job fast and easy. This reminded me of good old diner, comfort food. I didn't have that much bacon grease to drain off. It was good, my son loved it. I think this would be a great brunch dish, love the egg idea. I had no problem flipping it out of the pan, and I didn't worry too much about my bacon lining up. Didn't use a whole pound of that, either, maybe 3/4. (Bacon, even store brand, is $4 a pound right now.)

I'd probably make this again as a brunch item. With eggs.
PJ
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#17
  Re: Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by pjcooks (Well, here's mine.[b...)
Sorry for getting here late, today. Just been busy and out of the house most of the day.

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Okay. So, how did my birthday dinner go? I chose the Mango and Bell Pepper Salad, the Grape Pickers' Skillet with Chicken and the Churros with Hot Chocolate and my ratings for them would be two nines and a seven. Here's a review of each one.

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Mango and Bell Pepper Salad:
This was very tasty and I enjoyed it very much. With the natures of the flavours of the different bell peppers, I think the green was almost too much, and that red, orange and yellow would have been a better balance. Then, again, I also wonder how it would be with the original selection of peppers, but with all of them roasted. Yes, I would make it again, but I would probably experiment with a few adjustments, as you can tell.

Grape Pickers' Skillet with Chicken:
In the earlier recipe thread, I already detailed the VOLUME of food this made. Yes, all of my measurements were the amounts specified in the recipe as it was posted. In addition, I acknowledge that the posted recipe DID say an eight-inch, cast-iron skillet, but the only way I could imagine that those two pounds of thinly sliced potatoes ever could have fit into that eight-inch skillet is if there is THAT big of a difference in density between the Yukon gold potatoes listed in the recipe and the white potatoes we have here. In other words, the Yukon gold potatoes would have had to have taken up a lot less space for their weight in order for an eight-inch pan to have worked. It will be interesting to hear everyone else's experiences with this, but I will say that my Lodge, 11-3/4-inch grill pan was JUST the right size, and worked beautifully. Also, as has already been mentioned before, the cooking time specified in the recipe was exactly right and everything was perfectly done at the end of the second half-hour period.

So, how did it taste? WONDERFULLY! Absolutely the only reason I gave this a nine instead of a ten is that I went ahead with the specified amount of cheese and, considering how much more spread out this was, versus how an eight-inch pan would have been, the amount of cheese probably should have been doubled. In fact, in the picture, you'll see the extra cheese I melted on top of that leftover slice. One other change: a full pound of bacon JUST managed to cover the bottom of the pan and the top of the preparation completely, when the respective ends were carefully moved into place and that is something else that, otherwise, would have been fine in the eight-inch skillet

There's no doubt that I shall make this again - with twice the cheese and a full pound of bacon.

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Churros with Hot Chocolate:
Since I can go only about a mile from me and get freshly made, real Latin-American churros, these didn't impress me that much, but I wouldn't consider them a total failure by any stretch. The dough was actually the perfect consistency, but it just wasn't quite as sweet as what they would sell here - not a BIG difference, but very noticeable. The other problem was that the sugar mixture just would not stick to the churros, even if I put them into the mixture immediately out of the fryer.

A separate problem - though not the fault of the recipe - had to do with the piping. I had a brand-new, never-used Ateco 16-inch polyurethane decorating bag, model 3316, and when I started to roll it up in order to move the dough toward the tip, the lettering of the brand and model number on the front of the bag just flaked off in my hands like so much old house paint. Then, when I finally had it ready for the frying, the entire seam split and the metal tip fell into the frying oil. Thus, in order to finish making the churros, I had to transfer the dough to a zipper bag, snip the corner and pipe the dough into the oil that way. That did work very well, but the lack of the star tip made for ridge-less churros and THAT may have contributed to the problems with the sugar mixture (although it just wasn't sticking, at all, so I doubt it would have been THAT much of a difference).

Since I couldn't afford the brandy for the hot chocolate and also still had some of my own cocoa powder from the cacao seeds that I had dried and roasted for myself, I just made some of that chocolate, instead.

So, thank you, everyone, for allowing me to select a meal to review. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.

Quote:

We all agreed that cucumber would be good - and for those of us who are fans, avocado. That salad was a huge hit.

Now for the Grape Pickers' Skillet....

Jean I like the idea of the egg on it for breakfast!!!



Although I would not like cucumber in that salad, I could understand it. Also, although I WOULD like avocado with it, I would probably consider some papaya, instead.

I though about putting an egg onto a slice of the "skillet," too, but had to keep careful count of the eggs I was using, since some had already been allotted to other things (e.g. eight of them for the cheesecake I just made for some friends). The next time I make the "skillet" (and there WILL be a next time), I'll certainly use some eggs on some of it.
If blueberry muffins have blueberries in them, what do vegan muffins have?
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#18
  Re: Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by labradors (Sorry for getting he...)
Hmmm, sounds like everyone use a heck of a lot more bacon than I did - I just used 6 pieces of the thin stuff for a half recipe, so quite a bit less, I'm thinking.
Retired and having fun writing cookbooks, tasting wine and sharing recipes with all my friends.
www.achefsjourney.com
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#19
  Re: Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by cjs (Hmmm, sounds like ev...)
Geez, I'm slacking! I used a whole pound of bacon, also. I had forgotten that I would definitely use twice the cheese next time, for sure!
Daphne
Keep your mind wide open.
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#20
  Re: Re: Lab's Birthday Dinner Review, 1/31/11 by Gourmet_Mom (Geez, I'm slacking! ...)
I made the Skillet. The salad was on my "to-cook" list, but February got here too soon. But all these delicious pictures and reviews of it is certainly making me regret it.

What I did: I used a 9 inch skillet. I just realized I don't know how much bacon I used. I originally read it as 10 slices, so I used 11 or 12. I definitely used extra cheese. How much extra? I dunno. A lot. D asked how much cheese I needed from the store. I over-quoted. He then rounded-up from my over-quote. I used it all. I also used extra leeks. But not all the potatoes.

Results: Crunchy, cheesy, layered YUM. I let it brown longer than called for. We liked how crispy the bacon got. The chicken was pretty good but would like to play around with the protein layer. And some peppers definitely would not have been unwelcomed.

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Jean, I like you left the skins on the potatoes. I think I'll do the same next time. Everybody's food looks so good! This birthday thing is brilliant!
Allison aka Younger Bay
"The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude." - Julia Child
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