Oyster Mushrooms

So the oyster mushrooms.  They were a total impulse buy.  They looked super interesting and happened to be in season.  I decided to cook with Bryan because Brooks hates mushrooms. We ended up making an oyster cream sauce with chicken and pasta.  Bryan had already taken the chicken breasts out, so we just decided to use it. The chicken we simply sprayed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. We baked the chicken at 350 degrees until the thermometer showed 165 internal temperature at the thickest part of the breasts.  The chicken we then sliced into strips, as you can see to the right.  The sauce was a bit more complicated.

I had only bought about half the mushrooms that we needed for the recipe, so I ran to the store and bought an additional thing of shiitake mushrooms.  When I say a "thing" of mushrooms, I mean the pre-packed, saran wrapped mushrooms that come in the blue boxes. Also, when I say recipe, I mean I totally made it up. I looked up about 10 different recipes and just got the general ingredients, then used my own estimations.  Here are the ingredients we used:

2 TBSP olive oil
5 Shallots, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
About 16 oz mushrooms, 8 oz oyster, 8 oz shiitake
2 cups white cooking wine
16 oz can low sodium chicken stock
2 cups heavy cream
1 lb pasta

Start by boiling the water and cooking the pasta to however you want.  I had some leftover gluten free pasta that I rejuvenated by microwaving it with a few tablespoons of water.  Gluten free pasta gets very hard and brittle when left over, so adding the water put some moisture back into it.  When your pasta is done, set it aside.  We kept ours in the microwave to keep it semi warm.  Start the sauce by heating the olive oil in a pot.  We used a pot big enough to hold the pasta and all the liquids.  When the oil is heated, add the shallots and garlic.  Cook until just tender.  We cooked them about 5 minutes over medium-high heat.  Add the mushrooms and cook until about halfway done.  (The doneness here is all dependent on how soft you want your mushrooms.  We cooked them 5 minutes and they were just barely softened. They will cook the rest of the way when the liquids are added.)  After your mushrooms are to your liking, add the white cooking wine.  Let this boil until it is almost completely evaporated.  We had about a tablespoon of liquid left in the bottom of the pot.  Make sure to stir the mushrooms and wine frequently so they don't start to stick to the bottom.  After the wine is evaporated, pour in the chicken stock.  We let this reduce by half.  That took almost 10 minutes.  After it was reduced, we added in the cream and let it boil until the desired thickness was reached.  The recipes we read said it would be thick enough when the back of the spoon was coated.  The finished sauce is pictured above and to the left.  It had a nice wine taste, without the alcohol content.  The mushrooms also made it super hearty and meaty feeling.  I could have easily eaten this as a meatless dish!

Bryan also had leftover sourdough bread that was getting stale.  He made it into garlic bread.  He melted 1.5 sticks of butter with 4 cloves of smashed garlic.  I made him add some parsley flakes for color.  He cut the bread in half and poured the butter over.  After sprinkling on parmesan cheese, the bread was baked for 7 minutes at 350 degrees, until the cheese was brown and delicious looking. The baked bread is pictured to the right! I ended up eating some of this bread, causing major joint and stomach pain the next day.

Bryan and I ended up plating our pasta over a bed of spinach.  This added some color as well as some nutritional values.  We put the spinach on the plate, put the pasta on top, added the chicken, and poured the sauce on top.  The chicken ended up being a bit over salted, while the sauce was under seasoned.  They balanced each other out well.  The raw spinach wilted just a bit, which created a great texture contrast.  We also added too much liquid, and ended up reducing it further to boil out some of the liquid.  I would recommend only adding 12 oz chicken stock and 1.5 cups of cream.  Overall, this was a fun experiment we did, and we essentially created our own recipes.  So cool!

Family

This weekend my brother and sister came to Maryland. It was the first time I saw them in months. I was so happy the entire weekend.  The morning they left, we met my aunt, uncle, and cousins at Union Market in DC.  It is a very upscale farmers marker in the middle of a run down town.  There are two parts: an outside market that changes weekly, and the indoor, more permanent part of the market.  We did a lap around the market before deciding on breakfast.  My sister, Mollye, and my aunt and cousin (let's call her R) went and got bagels and more Jewish-esque sandwiches.  My brother, Louis, my uncle, my cousin (we'll call him E), and I went to an Italian sandwich joint.  Mollye, Uncle and I also got some really good coffee.  They even put a design in my milk (shown right).  Anyway, sandwiches.  Mollye got a bagel with the most amazing smoked salmon I've ever had.  Aunt got a white fish sandwich that was super creamy but had the right amount of texture to make it not just mush.  R got plain cream cheese on a plain bagel, just as any normal 11 year old would do.  At the Italian place, Red Apron Butchery, I got a muffaletta sandwich.  It ended up being a panini, so I just took the bread off and ate the meat and olive giardiniera. E got an Italian beef sandwich. It was ok, but nothing compares to the Italian beef in Chicago.  Uncle got a meatloaf sandwich which was surprisingly good.  I took a few forks of the meatloaf.  Louis ended up getting porkstrami.  If you are curious, the description is here.

After we ate a ridiculous amount of food, we walked around more.  I ended up buying two Italian Sausages from Red Apron.  I also bought cilantro and some oyster mushrooms. I am holding one of the mushrooms in the photo to the left.  Louis bought some chamomile tea, and Mollye got a cupcake. The last thing I got was gelato.  I got chocolate and salted caramel. My mother should be so proud.

There were some really cool stands around the indoor market.  The cheese stand we saw was amazing looking.  We wanted to buy some, but when the cheapest cheese is $28 a pound, you pass it up.  There was also a really cool knife shop we spent some time in, as well as a spice stand.  The spice stand was cool, but could never compare to The Spice House, in Evanston.  I had a ton of fun walking around the market and seeing my family. I can't wait for my mom to visit in three weeks!

Random Dinner

First things first. I feel like a real adult. My friend Bryan and I bought a Costco membership yesterday. It makes me feel all grown up. It also makes me feel broke because it should be scientifically proven that at any trip to Costco, one must spend upwards of $100, which I did.  I bought sausages, mini tacos (corn tortillas make them GF), all of the cereal, and some random odds and ends that quickly added up.

After a week of meals being provided for you through band, cooking for yourself seems daunting all over again. I couldn't even think of any food to begin to make, so I stood looking in my fridge and started picking odds and ends. I had ground beef, rice, a little grated cheddar cheese, and some spinach. I browned the beef in a big skillet and seasoned it with Old Bay (look Ma! I'm a Real Marylander!).  I cooked the rice and just threw in about half a tablespoon of butter and a sprinkle of salt, just to give it some flavor. I put the spinach on the plate and topped it with the grated cheese, then put the rice and meat on top. Because I timed this so the rice and meat were still hot when going onto the spinach and cheese, the spinach wilted around the edges and the cheese melted.  It was perfection. The only thing I would do next time is add a bit more Old Bay. I was a bit light handed because it has so much salt, but I could barely taste it.