Watch Good Eats – S1E12 – Power To The Pilaf in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

First and foremost, we would like to apologize for this post.  We were in a big hurry, for no reason, and forgot to start taking pictures until about half-way done.  Secondly, because of this, we messed up a few other steps and almost ruined the entire dinner. Whoops.

A posed picture taken way after the fact.  These are some of the ingredients used in the rice pilaf.

Not pictured include: Saffron, green onions, chicken broth, butter, and bay leaves.

Extra ingredients in the picture that were not in dish: Garlic and fennel.

This is what everything looked like in the pan right before it went into the oven.

Let me catch you up on what you missed…..

First, place the saffron in hot water to steep.

Melt the butter in a 3-quart skillet over medium heat and stir in the onion, bell pepper and 2 pinches of salt ( NOTE: we forgot the salt )

Add the rice. Cook, stirring frequently, until you smell nuts – another 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the saffron and its water, the chicken broth, orange zest, bay leaves and the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. (Again, forgot the salt). Increase the heat and bring to a boil.

Thoroughly wet a clean towel, then place the towel across the top of the skillet. Top with the lid, then fold the towel corners up over the lid.

Transfer the skillet (towel and all) to the oven and bake 15 minutes.

NOTE 1: We did not turn the oven on and the rice sat cold for at least 5 minutes while we waited for the oven to heat up.  Crap.

NOTE 2: We did not wet the towel enough and it caught on fire.  Jill noticed the burning smell and declared “I think something is burning”.  Peter, knowing that the food was not even close to done, ignored her, at first.

We then attended to the oven to see what was wrong and noticed the towel.  See the slightly singed edges above.

You see, when AB said in the show, “a barely moist dish towel”, we perhaps took  him a bit too literally on the “barely” part.  The above pictures illustrates our attempt to rectify that misunderstanding.

We put it back in the oven for the remaining cook time.  We hoped.

Its out of the oven and looking edible….we’ll see.

Fish out the orange zest and bay leaves. Turn the pilaf out onto a platter, fluff with a large fork and garnish with the raisins.

We served this with a chicken and fennel recipe that we found on FoodNetwork.com.

The rice came out pretty tasty.  We discussed it and agreed that it lacked only for the mistakes that we knew we made during cooking. The actual star of the dinner was the chicken recipe. Here are a couple of cooking pictures from that dish.

Thanks and see ya next time.

Keep Cooking!

(Note: Jill wrote this one while she was a little tipsy.  Let’s see if I can’t flesh it out – Peter)

Watch Good Eats – S1E10 – Hook Line And Dinner in Educational & How-To |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I swear the fish was “this big”…

Ok, seriously, check out our 6 lb Red Snapper.  Cool Huh?

So, being the badass she is, Jill gutted the fish by herself.  Ok, not really, it came that way from the store, but we did stuff it with good smellin’ stuff.  Like oranges.  And …. Parsley….

He is ready for surgery Dr.

The caption says it all folks.  (put your cursor on the picture)….DUH.

Boring note:  Side side dish of veggies includes zucchini, broccoli, and asparagus.  If you want an extreme close up, please email us at JillandPeterEatGood@gmail.com

Cracking the hard shell of kosher salt is way harder than it looks.  Really wish we had taken a video clip for you.

Oh my.  The skin is gone!

This is all we get after all that hard work? (Yes, of course it is, dear – Peter)

The taste was amazing.  The texture was firm and every bite had the flavors of citrus and herbs.  The extra-virgin olive oil drizzled on top is the perfect dressing.

If you do this dish on your own, take a tip from the restaurant chefs and do as we do – heat up your serving plates in the oven (or microwave) – especially for family-style service like this.  The last thing you want is to spend all this time and money preparing a beautiful fish and then serve it lukewarm or even cold at the table.

See you next time and keep cooking!

Watch Good Eats – S1E9 – A Bowl Of Onion in Educational & How-To |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Slicing the onions did induce a few tears, but we soldiered on.   (Ed Note: Jill actually retired to the couch for half of the onion cutting). Since we only wanted four portions, we cut AB’s recipe in half.

We didn’t already own bowls or crocks suitable for the task of French Onion Soup making, so a trip was made earlier in the week to pick up these soufflé ramekins from Sur La Table.

This lovely half sheet pan is new as well.  Here’s our punched-out croutons ready for the broiler to get nice and toasty (one side only!)

Jill dutifully salts the onions between adding handfuls to the skillet.  We don’t own an electric skillet, so our 12″ non-stick would have to do the trick.  Around medium heat seemed to work on our stovetop.

The onions as they looked about 2/3rds through the total cooking time.  Did we also mention that the skillet is new?  Williams-Sonoma has a current exclusive on All Clad’s newest d5 line of pots and pans. A store representative told us it was the first change to All Clad’s stainless steel line in 40 years.

Here’s the soup in ladled into the ramekins.  At this point we realized a mistake we had made – we halved the recipe without adjusting any cooking times.  We believe that after the addition of the stock, cider, and consomme that we let the mixture reduce too much, resulting in not as much soup as we expected.

A few minutes later the soups emerge from the oven, their generous layer of Gruyere cheese nicely baked to a golden brown.

The soup was, in a word, delicious. It was, however, also a bit too thick and rich per the aforementioned over-reducing of the stock.  We look forward to making this again and correcting that error.  Furthermore, a comment made by Jill in reflection, “I think I’d want to use some mozzarella cheese also.  I kind of miss the stringy-ness.”  Ok Jill, next time we’ll add mozz.

See you next time and keep cooking!

Watch Good Eats – S1E11 – Pantry Raid I – Use Your Noodle in Educational & How-To |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

We had decided to make our pasta with portobello caps, asparagus, tomatoes, and shallots. Here Jill practices her knife skills on preparing the veggies.

We opted for whole grain wheat pasta for the health benefits and the earthy flavor.

We did a quick sauté of the mushrooms, asparagus, and shallots in olive oil. Ingredients that were nearly cooked were moved the outside of the pan as to no over-do them while new ingredients were added.

The tomatoes were just barely heated through in a skillet before joining the medley.  Over cooking tomatoes turns them into mushy goo.

The naked pasta sits, waiting in the wings for us to plate it up.

After ladeling big spoonfuls of the toppings on our pasta, we finished it quickly with a little squeeze of lemon and…

Grated parmesan cheese!  This dish turned out very flavorful! When we went back for seconds, we put the lemon and parmesan directly onto the noodles as well as onto the toppings which made it even better.

See you next time and keep cooking!

Part one up top, part two here.

What could be more simple than browning a pound of breakfast sausage?

We did our best to let this cook down to render out as much of the fat and produce lots of good yummy bits on the bottom of the pan.  Even then, we had to add some bacon fat to have enough in the pan for the roux.

A little 2%, off the heat, and whisk continuously!

Hey, this is really starting to look like gravy!

Keeping with the “breakfast for dinner” theme, we made some over-easy eggs and added some tomatoes for their acidity, and for a little pop of color.  Because, let’s be honest, without them this is a plate of brown food.

The gravy came out a tad thick – so definitely heed AB’s tip well – a sauce will always thicken on it’s way to the table.

Oh, in case you haven’t connected the dots, hidden under those goopy piles of gravy are the biscuits we made from The Dough Also Rises.

See you next time and keep cooking!

This is part one, go here for part two.

Here’s everything for the “dry team”. The flour was measured by weight but everything else was added by measure

Same story here.  Weighed the buttermilk, butter, and shortening.  And yes, the buttermilk is lowfat – if this choice was detectable in the end-product we’d be surprised – they were fantastic.

When Peter first started cutting in the fat, he wasn’t sure if he was doing it right, but sure enough that cornmeal-like texture came together after a few minutes.  P.S. this stuff becomes super sticky once you add the buttermilk.

The dough rolled out ready for cutting.  Wait, what did you say Jill?  We don’t have a biscuit cutter? Oh for crying out loud, we knew we were doing the biscuit Good Eats, why didn’t we buy a biscuit cutter?  Well crap. Now what?

Ahhh, improvisation.  I think AB would approve of our use of this can-previously-known-as-green-giant-corn-niblets.

Zoë thumbs dimples into the center of each biscuit.  The recipe says it will make 12, but we ended up with eight. Errr, seven and three-fourths.  We attribute this difference to our non-standard-sized “biscuit cutter.”

Golden-brown and delicious! These were quite easy to make and most certainly tasted better than anything coming from a can w/that fat little dough boy on the label.

Stay-tuned for how we plated these in the next post!

See you next time and keep cooking!

!!! WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG READING !!!

!!! TO BRING YOU THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE !!!

We discussed this at great length, but ultimately decided not to do this episode, at least not right away.  The idea of making ice-cream in the middle of winter just didn’t appeal that much, especially since both of us are trying to be at least somewhat mindful of our caloric intake this year.

Also, the notion of buying an ice-cream machine just to do this show felt, well, exorbitant.

So look for us to come back to this episode.  Perhaps we’ll make the granita when the weather warms up.

If you still want to watch this episode in the mean time, here are parts one and two.

See you next time and keep cooking!

This is Part 1 of the epiosode “A bird in the Pan”.  Alton only makes one recipe in this episode so make sure to watch part two also for the full lesson.

As AB always encourages, here is the full mise en place for the herb stuffing that will go under the skin: Lemon Zest, 4 cloves of garlic, peppercorns, salt, thyme, and olive oil.

Jill butchering the chicken (purchased from our local butcher) – first bit to go is backbone. In the foreground you can see some leftover potatoes from This Spud’s For You, which we would mash later.

Filling in the space between skin and meat with the stuffing mixture

After-shot.  We placed the chicken in a roasting pan with celery, carrots, and onions and put it all under the broiler on high for 12 minutes skin-side up, and 15 minutes skin-side down. Since it still was not quite done, we turned the oven to “bake” and put it back in until the breast meat was at 165°.

The final product was served with the aforementioned mashed potatoes and seared/braised leeks. We also made the jus from the episode, but did not take any pictures of that. Sorry

See you next time and keep cooking!

The above is part two, make sure to catch part one also!

Heeding AB’s advice well, we made sure to prepare our own croutons.  It even helped us save money because we bought day-old bread from the discount rack at the grocery store.

We really wish we could put the smell of these golden bread cubes of awesome here on the internet, but sadly we cannot.  Maybe web 4.0.

We know that AB prepares this with just the smaller, whole leaves from the heart of the head, but we opted to be more economical and used more of the lettuce.

Jill bought Peter this gorgeous pepper mill for his birthday last year.  It has been pressed into good use nearly every day since

After adding the juice of a lemon and three shots of Lea & Perrins, we threw caution to the wind and proceeded with the coddled eggs (boiled for a minute and then shocked in ice water) and we’re glad we did – the end result was amazing.

Note: Traditional caesar salad does not actually feature anchovies, a popular misconception, because Worchestershire contains anchovies.

Since this was our dinner, we added some seared and roasted chicken, which itself was liberally coated with the garlic that was strained from the oil during the making of the croutons.

Now is the time for brutal honesty, kids.  We think this is one of the best caesar salads we’ve ever had, second only to table-side prepared caesars at fancy-pants restaurants.  And the kicker?  It’s easy. Get in your kitchen and make one of these this week!

See you next time and keep cooking!

We actually did this episode and the next one (Salad Daze) on the same night.  And yes, we were good little boys and girls and ate our dinner first, but this episode comes first in the chronology of the show so deal.

The above is part two, make sure to catch part one as well.

Mis en place! (Yes, that’s a whole stick of butter)

Jill’s superb zesting of this lemon is second only to her zest for Peter (Ed Note: Peter wrote this line)

Twelve-plus minutes of stirring is taxing on anybody but the seasoned chef, or perhaps an octopus. We basically worked on the WWF “tag-team” style of taking turns, taking three or so minutes each at a time.

The last of butter melts in as the curd takes on a glossy sheen.

While preparing to take this picture, Jill discovered that our camera has a “cuisine” setting which she promptly employed.  I think it came out pretty well – what do you think?

Oh, did I forget to mention how it tasted? I’d say it was a perfect balance of lemon tartness and buttery smoothness.  The best part is that, according to AB, it will last a month in the fridge so we don’t have to feel guilty about not eating it all in just a couple days!