Cooking With Richard

01/04/2025

Faced with going over a week without cooking, a thought occurred to me before heading home for the holidays. Since I cook mainly using meal kits (it cuts out the shopping process, which I hate all parts of, though at the cost of surely increased prices and definitely increased packaging), I came up with the idea of having a meal kit delivered to my childhood home on Vancouver Island. I was initially worried that I wouldn't be there to pick up the delivery, but it turned out that they only delivered to my hometown on Mondays, and I'd be there for that. It arrived in a giant Budget truck, and I had sworn I had ordered 2x of only one meal, and 1x of the other meal. I had gotten 2x of both, and that would be fine, if probably more food than I could eat along with my brother and father while he had a full fridge and we wouldn't eat exclusively at that home during my visit.

That night, I made cheesy chipotle beef enchiladas. It would be the first time in many years that I cooked in my parents' kitchen, so I didn't necessarily know where everything was. I couldn't hang up the cardboard on a magnetic clip like I do at home here in Toronto. I break up meet with a wooden spoon, and my dad only had small ones, so I used a plastic spoon, which he said would be OK. And I'd have to use an oven for the first time in over a year, having switched full time to an air fryer myself (I use my oven for storage now since I would only use it for roasting and never baking). I did like that he had quite the large cutting board, that's something I'll probably invest in myself, since mine now feel a bit small.

I baked the enchiladas with the casserole dish I bought with my mother for $10 at HomeSense, which she brought back with her in her suitcase. (She liked mine so much that she wanted one, too.) She's been gone for over 3 years now, so that was a nice connection to the times we cooked together, some of my favourite memories of her.

My dad said the enchiladas were delicious, and I thanked him humbly for that. I wasn't sure that was their thing, since I don't hear him and my brother talking about Mexican food a lot.

The changed schedule would cause a little bit of chaos back at my Toronto apartment, since I changed the schedule to "Saturday" thinking I had actually postponed it until the following week since I'd be back on the Monday after that. So a package of food, which at least had an ice pack to keep it cold for a little while, sat in front of my door for two full days. I asked around in my building if I could have somebody put it in the amenities room fridge, but a volunteer said they'd do it only if the building management approved, and to this day (over a week later), they haven't gotten back to me.

Lots of lessons learned from this. I would cook the other meal, an Amalfi-inspired fish chowder, a couple of days before I left, and had at least half of it. My dad did ultimately have a bowl of it as well, and it sounds like he liked it. Finding the time to both make and consume the second meal was doable as well, so I'll know that for the next time. I cooked it myself, so maybe the next time I do it, it will be with my dad. Or maybe even my brother. Wouldn't that be something?

05/13/2024

Everything went wrong with this photo of the bánh mì I made today. Was it even really a bánh mì? Maybe not, but it had savory pork chops, cucumber, and pickled carrots, and it was yummy.

05/05/2023

I celebrated Cinco de Mayo by making taquitos, a meal that’s fun to make and eat and say the name of. I put them in the air fryer, and the last batch–these two–came out the best. Some unfolded in the air fryer, so for these ones I pressed down a little bit, and they came out great! After taking the photos, I dolloped sour cream to add even more flavour. Yum!

03/06/2023

I will try this the next time the side in a recipe is potatoes.

I HAVE THE LAST AIR FRYER FRENCH FRY RECIPE YOU WILL EVER NEED.

I am a big-ass nerd. You know this, right?

So when I was at a restaurant a few years back with a friend and they had the crunchiest fries with the fluffiest interior, I asked staff about how they got such great texture. The secret was vinegar and salt in the water when soaking to remove starch.

And one time I made potato chips where it called to soak them for 10 minutes in boiling water. Crunchiest ever.

I decided to combine the two methods.

If you don’t know, soaking potatoes before roasting or frying is how you get the starch out, because starch kills the crunchy. (But they gotta be dry after so if you’re boiling or steaming before roasting or frying, let them cool completely so the steam evaporates for a fluffier potato.)

Also, older russet potatoes are better than fresh ones, because they have less moisture so the inside gets fluffier.

ANYHOO.

Cut your potatoes like French fries. I do about 1/4” thick slices or so.

Rinse with cold water TWICE. Drain well. Put 1.5 litres of water in a kettle and bring to a boil.

Add into the potato bowl: a handful of salt and 1/4 cup of white vinegar and ONLY white vinegar. None of that other stuff.

Toss the potatoes. Pour the boiling water over them. Stir. Soak for 10 minutes. Drain. Rinse with cold water. Drain.

Spread on a tea towel and let dry, or dry it.

Preheat the air fryer to 360°.

Put the potatoes in a dry clean bowl and toss with 1-2 tablespoons of your chosen fat. I used guanciale — rendered pork jowl fat leftover from carbonara last night.

You could use duck fat, chicken fat, bacon, olive oil, avocado oil — anything works. Personally I think bacon and chicken are too heavy and I would stick to guanciale, olive, duck, and other rich oils that won’t overtake the flavour profile.

Toss with salt. Add to air fryer. Cook for 20-25 minutes at 360° shaking basket often.

Coming up to 20 minutes, taste a smaller fry to see how it’s seasoned. Salt won’t stick once you take it out, so if it needs more salt, spritz lightly with some oil and sprinkle generous salt on. A lot of it will shake off, remember! Finish cooking. Serve! Enjoy!

I had mine with mayo that I added lemon zest and garlic to.

Check out the video in the comments for how loud the crunch is. Turn the sound on!

03/06/2023

This may be the most colourful meal I’ve made: Cuban-style black beans and rice with air fried sweet potatoes and peppers, topped with guacamole, sour cream, and cheese.

03/02/2023

Salt can help many foods taste good, but when you sprinkle it on can affect both flavor and texture. Use these tips to navigate this culinary balancing act.

02/08/2023

Until moving to Toronto, I had taken it for granted that I didn’t have an influence on my mother. We didn’t have a lot in common, so there had been stretches where I believe we found it hard to relate. That changed after starting to live here, mainly because I started taking cooking seriously, and that would be something we’d do together at least once on each of her visits, and talk about each time on our weekly call during the pandemic.

Two small things stand out about that: When we cooked together, she noticed my habit of taking the trash can out from underneath the sink. I had found it annoying to open the cupboard door every time I had to throw something in it, so for the duration of making a meal, I just have it out. From what I recall, she started doing that after that.

The other small influence I had on her was the casserole dish. I bought mine at HomeSense for $10, a price so good that the woman at the till had remarked about it. On one of her visits, my mom bought one, too, and safely brought it back all the way across the country. It’s the perfect size for someone who lives alone, but also great for when cooking for two. This week I’ve used it twice this week, once for beef pasta and spinach and another time for cheesy beef tortillas.

Since her passing, I think about her every time I bring out the trash can (which is almost every time I cook) and every time I cook I with the casserole dish. (I resent, a bit, how much energy costs for the oven to heat up and how long it takes to cool down, just for 5-10 minutes of actual baking. That‘s a reason I don’t bake often.) Those are two small things where I can definitively say I had an influence on her, and it brings back good memories each time.

01/21/2023

Cleaning counts as food prep, sigh, I guess.

01/17/2023

I made chicken chow mein again, so I have lunch and dinner and then lunch and dinner again. It definitely needs to be cooked in waves, as I call it, that is, do food prep at one phase of the evening, then do the cooking in another phase, or maybe the next day. I don't know if I need to marinate the chicken much longer than the 20 minutes I go with. It sounds like that is the way with boneless chicken, anyway.

I went with the RecipeTin recipe again, though no shallots or bean sprouts, just for simplicity, but I did add mushrooms and, of course, I replaced lettuce with the last of my bok choy. (It was about to go bad. That was the impetus for making it tonight.) The sauce is really good. It's probably one reason why I like this recipe so much. I usually double everything just to have more to eat over the course of the week, and so far that's worked out well.

This real Chicken Chow Mein recipe really is restaurant quality. It all comes down to the sauce! This is faster than ordering take out - and much healthier!

01/03/2023

I'm going on a short trip, and one of my worries about it is the food currently in the fridge. I just made Carribbean-style beef & veggie bowls, and a lot of it, and, in addition to the large amount of bok choy chicken chow mein I'm about to make, it's going to be way too much to eat before Thursday evening. So only now, after 7 years of using containers to refrigerate leftovers, does it occur to me to look at the rating they have for freeing.

-20° C. Perfect! I'm going to try using my freezer a little more effectively than I have in the past, which is to say, keep track of what's in there and plan ahead to thaw it the day before. And, gulp, throw out stuff that probably isn't any good anymore. The two reasons I like meal kits so much is that everything in the kit gets cooked. That said, I have been branching out into making things I know I like (such as the aforementioned chicken chow mein and chicken curry noodle, both hard to come by in the way I like it, even though I live right next to Toronto's Chinatown), which means a commitment to having leftover ingredients and to freezing more.

01/02/2023

Adding my voice to the list of people for whom an Instant Pot has become a glorified rice cooker. I've made a lot of rice with it in the past year, a lot of different ways (with and without spices, with and without washing it first, with and without butter), but always with the Instant Pot, since it's predictable, and I don't have to watch over a boiling pot. I aim to make more non-rice dishes with it in 2023, especially now that there's a new butcher in the neighbourhood which … replaced a butcher.

12/12/2022

Slightly burnt crunchy shallots on top of creamy broccoli pasta.