I think the organization of the book is conducive to our project here.
First, Chef Sanchez has a recipe for a basic ingredient, like "Garlic-Chipotle Love." You can find this recipe online. The recipe yields 1 cup of sauce that should keep for up to 2 weeks in a tightly sealed container in the fridge or up to 1 month in the freezer.
Then, Chez Sanchez provides recipes that use the basic ingredient, like "Chipolte-Garlic Mashed Potatoes." You can also find this recipe online. The mashed potato recipe uses only 1/4 cup of Garlic-Chipotle Love, which means you would still have 3/4 cup of Garlic-Chipotle Love to use in a different recipe.
It makes sense for us all to make the basic recipe. Then we each can pick at least 2 recipes that require this basic ingredient. It'll be interesting to see what appeals to everyone. It will also be interesting to see if hearing about someone's experience with a recipe that didn't originally seem appetizing changes our minds about whether or not we want to make it.
We can share our successes (and failures) in how we actually cook the recipes. For instance, I can tell you right now that I would definitely make the mashed potato recipe. I may not make it exactly as written. I will probably use non-fat milk instead of whole. And because potatoes are cheap and generally well-liked, I might try it more than once, using a different potato (like yukon golds), and/or using a different cooking technique.
I made mashed potatoes in my crock pot for Christmas. I needed to limit what had to be cooked on the stove top and also what was prepared last minute. I cooked cut potatoes in the crock pot, mashed in a standing mixer, and placed the mashed potatoes back into the crock pot for buffet service. Very successful experiment overall. The potatoes were not as creamy as I would have prefered, but I think that was not because of the crock pot, but because of the amount of fat and liquid I added when I mashed them.
We can also share our meal ideas. And what did you do with the leftovers? These are the things that I think will be helpful for incorporating new recipes into our cooking repertoire.
There appear to be 15 basic recipes. Even so, I think we can focus on one basic recipe with two sub-recipes a month. This should be a slow, achievable pace. I imagine that it will keep the fun in the project and alleviate any pressure that would make this culinary adventure into a chore. It's also a reasonable enough minimum goal that allows us to cook something we didn't plan to cook because of someone's influence here.
So what do you think? Good plan?
Simple Food, Big Flavor really appeals to me. Are we going to start with the very first recipe in the book: Garlic-Chipotle Love? I have all the ingredients for that recipe in my pantry, surprisingly! After reading the recipe, I know that I will tweak the oil; I’d prefer to use some of my extraordinary olive oil in the recipe than the canola. So that will be my only tweak.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I will admit that I’m going to be challenged in the recipe department because I simply don’t like either mussels or oysters. Do you think that I could substitute shrimp for those ingredients and still try the recipe(s) for their flavor? What do you think? I’d be willing to do that and report back. Or, do you think that some other type of fish would be good, either tilapia or some other white fish? Since I’ve seen recipes for beer-battered shrimp, I think that I’ll substitute and do Shrimp with Beer and Garlic-Chipotle Love and substitute and do Pomegranate and Roasted Pepper Salsa for Tilapia.
Agreed?
Since I still don't have the book...this is kind of funny to say...BUT,
ReplyDeleteI definitely think we should start with the first recipe in the book: Garlic-Chipotle Love.
For those of us that don't yet have access to the book, we can see the first 6 pages of the book through the LOOK INSIDE! option on amazon.com. This includes the introduction and the first recipe. I know that the mashed potato recipe that uses the Love recipe is also online, through a different blog. Since we are already one week into the first month, we should run with the recipe that we all can have access to immediately.
As for substituting shrimp for mussels or oysters, or some other type of fish, I think that is what this culinary venture is all about! This is the idea...run the experiment with substituting ingredients that you would normally eat, purchase, or simply have available, and share how it turned out. Only you can tell us if the substitute was overpowered by the sauce OR the substitute overpowered the sauce. Thumbs up or down? Sharing will only help us all be more successful with substituting, which will help the recipes, or the ideas of the recipes, more easily become part of our cooking repertoire.