A weekend of cooking

It was a long week. Every day I felt tired. I was tired. Friday night though, I went to sleep at 9.45pm and slept about eleven hours. I woke up feeling pretty refreshed. We skipped going to the farmers market, which is both bad and good. Bad because we are missing out on good local produce but good because I really wanted to sleep.

So in exchange for getting to sleep in, I decided to do some major cooking on Sunday, which I like to do all the shopping for on Saturday.

I had never been to Restaurant Depot before but was so excited when Gena said she would bring me in. I didn't really get to roam around as much as I would have liked -- and you know I could have spent hours wandering around there -- but I did end up picking up this 15 lb package of angus sirloin flaps. I was originally looking at getting either flank steak or hanger steak but the flanks were choice grade and the hangers were just select. So when Gena said the sirloin flaps were awesome, I decided to get those instead.

Gena said it would be a pretty good amount of work to clean the sirloin flaps, but I didn't think it was too bad. Maybe it took me an hour or a little more to get through them all. Once I cleaned them up and portioned them out, I had 15 packages for the freezer.

Besides cleaning the sirloin flaps, I also cleaned a branzino for dinner and then made a salsa verde. I also bought six lamb leg steaks (since last time when I bought three, it wasn't enough, even though these are pretty damn big). So since I had time, I also boned those so they would be faster to prepare during the week. I also peeled all the fava beans. It's getting less of a pain to peel favas. Either I really enjoy them or it's really just not that much trouble.

With the branzino, I served roasted zucchini and roaster cauliflower based on how Tim made them at the lake. His was better. I surprisingly didn't use enough salt.

I've finally given up on Scott Peacock's biscuit recipe. It always turns out so floury. So I decided this time to go with Shirley Corriher's Touch of Grace biscuits. But when I was pulling out the ingredients, I realized that the recipe called for self-rising flour and all I have is regular. So I pulled out the Lee Bros. cookbook and made their bird's head biscuits instead.

The dough initially turned out a little too dry, I think, so I added a little extra buttermilk since one of the recipes I read said that all-purpose flour would need a little more buttermilk if it wasn't White Lily. (I am not sure what kind of flour I have anymore since White Lily moved to midwest sourcing.) Anyway, the biscuits call for folding the dough over a few times in order to generate layers.

They rolled out pretty easily and then I mashed together the leftovers to make more biscuits. They looked pretty decent on the tray.

But you can see how they turned out afterwards. Certainly, they don't look consistent, but you can see that they did flake their layers pretty well. As for taste, they were decent. I'll keep working on this recipe.

I also made a sausage gravy to go with the biscuits. Overall, it was okay, but not the best I've ever made.

I put together a double batch of bolognese ragu. Right now, it's simmering on the stove. I'll freeze most of it for easy dinners and maybe keep some for a dinner this week.

For tonight, I bought a ribeye at DFM and we have leftover salsa verde from yesterday. I've heard they go together and I hope so. I want to grill broccoli, so I'll be doing it on the egg. And maybe potatoes. Mmmm, that sounds delicious.