Category: Miscellaneous

Recipes, Products, Mary

supperking app to host and find local events / or, how i played chef for a night

SupperKing is a freshly minted app out on the marketplace that hopes to bring friends, neighborhoods and strangers alike together to share in a very important thing that happens every day: eating!

Whether you want to split and share expenses with friends, or simply play chef for a night and sell seats at your table for your home cooking, SupperKing hopes to fill a niche by allowing people to easily find events near them or to host events of their own.

The idea for the app came from various ideas and experiences: visiting a foreign country and seeing large groups of outdoor gathering, and wishing there was a way to easily experience the culture by joining in to try new foods and meet new people; a single person living in an apartment building and eating alone and wishing for a platform that would enable him to seek out and meet neighborhoods to share a meal; cooks who love to throw dinner parties but want/need to share the expenses with friends.

Now, I’m not really into the “dining with strangers” thing, but I am totally into throwing dinner parties and playing chef! I was recently invited to try the free app (current only available for iOS but coming soon to Android and the web) to host a dinner of my own and to take the app out for a test spin.

Here are my thoughts.

THE GOOD

– It’s super easy to use. You can easily set up a new event – it’s almost like just setting up something in your calendar but with additional options (like photos, location, and picking out what kind of menu you’ll be having at your event).
– The lowest price to set for an event is $1 and you control the costs of the event. All payments are currently through Paypal – in the works is the ability to use credit or debit cards without a Paypal account.
– Can easily search for events nearby that you may want to attend. Easily find other home cooks in your area and possibly share a meal.
– Great for starting weekly food clubs or dinners, holding events for pop-up chefs/restaurants, holding charity events or just trying to make a little extra money with home cooked meals and for making new friends.

supperking-hosting-screen

[my pretend puppy bowl party]

THE NOT AS GOOD

Since it’s a new app, there are some flaws with it that SupperKing hopes to address in the future:

– Currently, hosts cannot edit their events so I wasn’t able to add to my description or change anything about my event. But, I was assured this would be changing soon.
– One of my guests registered for my event, but then was removed. I never received her payment and she wasn’t notified that her payment didn’t go through. Definitely needs some kind of notification system so guests can be informed.
– No way to easily contact your guests (or host) from the app if there’s a change or update to the event.
– Currently no way to easily promote on social media if you’re a host, but there is an in-the-works feature that will allow hosts to do this.
– Additional tools would be nice to see, such as photo galleries, voting, and comments – currently no way to communicate with the host/guest to ask questions, or to inform about dietary restrictions or allergies.
– I also felt myself wishing it would automatically add the event to my calendar.

supperking-event

[how the event looks in my “past events”]

SupperKing still has some work ahead of them to create a really robust and great app – but the starting point and idea is a great one! I hope to see the app build up and gain some more events, hosts and followers and that improvements will make this very easy for everyone to use. I could see myself using the app to host future events and play chef again (and hopefully share costs), or to maybe have a charity dinner to raise money for our annual bake sale (who knows!). I probably still won’t want to invite strangers over for dinner, but maybe that’s just me and my anti-social ways…

Now… let’s check out my dinner! I set my price point fairly low ($1) since I was just taking this thing out for a test drive.

dining-table-scape

I did my best to make this look like a restaurant with the table runners, low lights and candles glowing. If I was going to play “chef” for a night, I was going to do it right.

menu-tablescape

I even made menus, yo. I’m so hardcore.

homemade-bread-loaves

[course one: loaves of homemade bread]

When coming up with the menu for this dinner, I wanted to make foods that I loved. One of the things I love, love, love is bread. Seemed like a prime opportunity to break out and use my recipe for No Knead Bread again. This bread is so easy to make and it’s really delicious – all win win! You just gotta prep in advance.

sliced-homemade-bread

[all sliced up]

I baked this bread off that morning and when my guests arrived that evening, I popped the bread in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes to crisp it back up. I put a little water on top for “extra crispness”. I forgot to take photos of the accompaniments for the bread, namely a white bean dip made with cannellini beans, onions, garlic, and spices plus little saucers of blood orange olive oil and balsamic glaze.

One of my goals for this year? Bake more of my own homemade bread! I’ll branch eventually (maybe).

crispy-polenta-with-mushrooms

[course two: crispy polenta squares with a three mushroom medley]

Course two involved mushrooms (with thick sliced bacon!) since mushrooms are one of my most favorite things ever.

The mushrooms joining the party were baby bellas, oyster mushrooms and simple little white button mushrooms. They were cooked in butter and more of that blood orange olive oil (new favorite thing!!) along with some bacon, garlic, red pepper flakes, and a touch of fresh rosemary and oregano then topped off with freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese.

polenta-sans-mushrooms

[crispy polenta squares, sans mushrooms]

For the non-mushroom lovers (pfft), they got simple squares of polenta. The polenta was prepped earlier that morning and is simply a concoction of garlic, red pepper flakes, rosemary, salt and pepper, homemade chicken stock, half & half, and milk with yellow cornmeal. And of course, more Parmesan Reggiano. God, I love that stuff.

This course had a bit of heat that snuck up on you as you ate it. The first few bites didn’t seem spicy at all, but as you went along… bam! Spices!

mini-bao-sandwiches

[course three: bao buns, two ways]

I went all “Asian” for the third course! These were originally supposed to just be pork belly bao buns… but they didn’t have any pork belly at Whole Foods when Jake and I went! I had to compromise and decided we’d do it two ways: one with some really lovely skirt steak we got at Whole Foods and another way with some of the marinated pork belly from H Mart. Continue reading “supperking app to host and find local events / or, how i played chef for a night”

Mary, Recipes, Cheap Eats, Products

pork belly sliders on steamed buns

This is really kind of the “lazy girl’s” method to do pork belly sliders with steamed buns since I didn’t actually make any of the ingredients – I just cooked them! The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes to do, if that. I’ve been playing around with ideas for a dinner for this Saturday and one item I wanted to make was something akin to the bao sandwiches we had in Vegas last summer.

pork-belly-bao

This is the easy, cheap way to make these little sandwiches. Read on!

I was going to head down to 99 Ranch in search of the buns until I remembered – hey, we have H Mart!

steamed-buns-package-1

At H Mart they had two different sized buns and I had no idea which would be better for my needs. There was this larger variety with 6 buns for about $2.29. There were also whole wheat version and an oat version of these buns. No instructions on this package.

steamed-rolls-package

There is also this smaller steamed “rolls” version. It has 15 rolls and sells for $1.99. There are instructions on the back of this package!

bread-in-steamer

You barely need instructions, but it was still nice to have since I’ve never used these before. I steamed one larger bun and three of the smaller rolls. I like how the rolls have a little pattern on them – so cute! I steamed these for about 15 minutes. The package for the smaller buns says to steam them for 15-20 minutes – probably on the longer side if they’re straight out of the freezer.

marinated-pork-belly

This turned out to the be perfect opportunity to finally try some of the marinated meats they have in the back corner of H Mart. There’s a young lady who sort of hangs around by the price labeling machine to help assist you with your meats. Some people just go right by and bypass her to get their own meat, while other people (like me!) who wait and just have her do it. She looked kind of sad that other people were forsaking her. They have marinated beef, chicken and pork all ranging in different prices and cuts. I choose the marinated pork belly. This was 3 slices of pork belly. Continue reading “pork belly sliders on steamed buns”

Mary, Recipes, Products

purple sweet potato pie

Purple sweet potatoes. I’ve never seen these in the store before or really even knew of their existence until I got a bag full of them from Frieda’s Produce. With Thanksgiving on my horizon, I figured I’d try a twist on the classic sweet potato pie – replacing the normally orange colored sweet potatoes for the vibrant purple variety instead. Take my hand and let’s go on a pie-making journey!

You can see a hint of their purple color in the skins alone, but the purple color becomes a bit more pronounced once you cut and peel the sweet potatoes. It seems to be almost jewel-toned in color. These were treated the same as any other potato – wash, peel, and cover with water and set to boil.

I felt like I was a witch with a cauldron full a of bubbling boiling potion after seeing my pot of water turn purple! The whole sweet potatoes simmer and boil away for about 45 minutes, until the potatoes are soft and you can easily stick a fork through them.

Drain the freakishly festive purple water to reveal your bright purple sweet potatoes. Mash them with a masher, fork, or other implement of your choice until the sweet potatoes are nice and smooth. You’ll still see a few strings sticking up, but it should smooth out further as you weave the mixture into a magical pie filling.

Add the beautiful things – like butter, sugar, milk, vanilla and spices – to your sweet potatoes in the mixer and churn away. Let it whirl and be amazed by the color yet again.

In a partially baked pie crust, pour in your Barney-like filling and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until the edges are a golden brown. There seems to be a lot of cooking time going around here for this one, but you’ll love the end result!

Eat a slice and hope that you don’t start singing Barney songs. Share with family and friends as they ooh and ahh over the color then pat yourself on the back for such a brilliant idea. Continue reading “purple sweet potato pie”

Products, Mary, Recipes

deep fried turkey and corn fritters for thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is coming up real fast – faster than I would like – and we’re getting heading into “you better decide what you’re doing now” territory for Thanksgivings planning. Until now our only turkey making options have been the bake-in-the-oven variety, but I recently got the opportunity to try out Masterbuilt’s Butterball Indoor Turkey Fryer to try frying a turkey for this Thanksgiving.

I did a test run of the turkey fryer this weekend to try it out before we cook a whole bird. I made fried turkey breast, undocumented french fries and corn fritters. Let’s go on a little adventure and see how this sucker works!

[Dad figuring out the plug with the turkey fryer set up on the stove]

This deep fryer is an electric turkey fryer and can be used indoors, creating a safer and easier option for turkey frying. No crazy outdoors setup with a propane tank with the risk of tipping it over and catching on fire!

[Masterbuilt Butterball Indoor Turkey Fryer]

This sucker is pretty big and can safely hold up to a 14lb. turkey. You use 2 gallons of oil for one turkey and it gets fully enclosed with a drop in basket and a lid to shut the fryer while the turkey is cooking. A thermostat on the front easily let you control the temperature and lets you know when the oil is ready. The timer counts down for you and beeps when ready. The instruction manual that comes with the fryer also has some handy preparation tips, suggestions and other recipes for this fryer (which can also be used as a steamer).

[Filling up the fryer with peanut oil]

Since I was only cooking a turkey breast for my first try, I didn’t need to fill it up to the max line. I went about halfway to max. I used peanut oil since it’s got a high smoking point and imparts a nice flavor to whatever you’re frying. The house totally smelled like peanuts while the oil was heating up!

It can take up to a half hour for a full 2 gallons to get up to temperature – since I used a little less, it took about 20 minutes to heat up the oil to 375 degrees.

[Turkey breast preparation for the fryer dry run]

When preparing your turkey, you must ensure that your turkey is completely defrosted. Ice and water will definitely not mix with your hot oil! I prepped my turkey breast by patting it completely dry and adding salt and pepper all over the outside.

When cooking your bird, you may want to brine it first before doing a deep-fry – and if this is the route you go, make extra sure your turkey is patted dry and free of any brining liquid.

You can also inject the turkey will extra seasonings but I was kind of a lazy pants and just did a plain old breast!

[This turkey breast is getting ready for a hot oil bath]

My 2 and 1/2 pound breast was placed into the fryer basket. There’s a little lip on the side where the basket is held up above the oil. It comes with a lifter to help you ease the basket in and out of the fryer. I recommend trying to lift the basket in and out before you even get to this step just to see how it works. I found that I had to move the basket forward for it to slide easily down and had to practice a few times catching the handle. Nothing too hard, but it’s good to practice before there’s hot oil bubbling angrily in your face.

[bubbles!]

I carefully lowered my turkey breast and watched the bubbling begin! Then I shut the lid and began the short wait until my turkey would be done.

[Turkey fryer’s control panel]

The green light comes on when the oil has reached the proper temperature and is ready to deep fry your treats to a golden brown.

The instruction manual recommended that for turkey breast only, the temperature be dropped to 325 while it’s cooking. This isn’t something you do with a full turkey though – just the breast! I set the timer and cooked the turkey breast for about 17 minutes (about 7 minutes a pound). A normal, full sized turkey will take about 4 minutes a pound to cook and the temperature stays at 375 degrees.

[Freshly fried turkey breast]

The turkey cooked up pretty quickly and when I lifted the basket up, this is what my eyes feasted on – golden, brown deliciousness!

I let the turkey breast rest for about 10 minutes while I also cooked up some french fries (mmm, french fries cooked in peanut oil!).

The first time I did this, I undercooked the turkey slightly (I cooked it for 14 minutes then added an extra 3 minutes of cooking time). I loved the golden, crispy outside skin on this sucker but I really wished I had brined, injected or seasoned the breast a bit more liberally. Salt and pepper alone didn’t quite do this thing justice and since I do prefer dark meat, it wasn’t my favorite turkey… but it was still pretty good. If they just sold dark turkey meat for frying this would have probably been more perfect, but I didn’t see any of that on the shelves. We’ll still be trying out frying a whole turkey for the big day and this dry run helped us to learn what else we needed to do for a flavorful turkey!

[John McLemore’s cookbook]

In addition to the turkey test, I also used the fryer to create a recipe from John McLemore and his cookbook, “Dadgum! That’s Good, Too!“. The cookbook is pretty much created to pair with the turkey fryer, providing a whole section of “fried foods”. A lot of the recipes have stories and photos of John and his family with them, sharing a story behind the recipes.

Flipping through the book for ideas, the corn fritters called to me and demand that I create them. They seemed like an easy side dish to create for a little BBQ we had over the weekend with Jake and his family.

[Corn fritter batter]

The corn fritter batter came together very easily. I kind of wished I had tried this with creamed corn … we’ll save that idea for next time!

[Floating corn batter]

Spoonfuls of corn fritter batter were dropped into the hot oil. At first I put them in the basket and lowered them, but it seemed more efficient to just drop them by the spoonful.

[Starting to get golden brown]

After a few minutes, the fritters need to be flipped over if they don’t flip on their own. I got Jake to do this part for me since I had to stand on my tiptoes just to peer down into this thing.

Curse my short height.

[Pulling the fritters out of the fryer]

It only takes about 6 minutes to get these lovelies to a golden brown. I fished them out with a slotted strainer while I finished up the batch.

[Corn fritters ready for hungry mouths]

A little extra dash of salt and these babies were ready to go! They had a nice, slight sweetness to them and puffed up really nicely.

I think a little extra seasonings would be a fun variation – maybe a little paprika, garlic salt, or cayenne for a spicy mix. Everyone really enjoyed the fritters as-is though, proving it to be a winner!

I also liked how easy and fast it was to fry them – though I don’t think I’d break out this big old fryer for only cooking fritters!

The turkey fryer has a drain valve to easily remove the used cooking oil once your done with all of your frying. Many of the elements of the fryer are also dishwasher safe (your manual will tell you which parts can go in the dishwasher) for easier cleanup.

The one downside I see to the fryer though is that this thing is HUGE. It’s not something we’ll keep on the counter and will probably need to store it in the garage once we’re done with it.

I did like that this unit can be used for more than just deep frying – there were recipes for a low country boil and steaming chicken and veggies – a nice option for large dinners and get togethers that don’t involve frying making it a multi-purpose product.

The Masterbuild Turkey Fryer is available at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Amazon and several other local retailers if you’re thinking of picking one up for your Thanksgiving dinner!

Recipe below for the Corn Fritters!
Continue reading “deep fried turkey and corn fritters for thanksgiving”