Today I Made:

[ArgonV]

Pumpkin soup with lemper

For the pumpkin soup:
1/2 a pumpkin (~600 grams)
1 large carrot (called winterwortel in Dutch)
1 red chilli pepper
1 bouillon cube (for 500 ml of bouillon)
Ground coriander (both seed and leaves)
(Turkish) yoghurt

Dice the carrot, peel and dice the pumpkin, chop the chilli. Fry all of them in butter/oil for ~10 minutes. Add the bouillon cube, add the coriander, add 500 ml of water. Let it boil for a while. Puree with an immersion blender, serve with the yoghurt.

For the lemper:
500 gr of ketan (=sticky rice)
1 liter (canned) coconut milk
1 kilo of drumsticks (with skin and bone)
3 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
30 gr palm sugar

Boil the drumsticks in water for 20 minutes. Soak the rice in cold water for at least 15 minutes. After draining the rice, boil it in 750 ml of the cocomilk for 15 minutes. Chop the onion and garlic, put in a blender with the cumin, coriander, turmeric and palm sugar. Blend. Put some oil in a pan, fry the onion/garlic/spice mixture for 3 minutes. Add the chicken, after you've removed the skin and peeled the meat of the bones, and the rest of the coconut milk. Let this boil until there is virtually no fluid left. Take some rice, deposit it on some aluminium foil/plastic wrap and press to a square. Deposit a line of the chicken/spice mixture in the middle and use the foil to roll the rice into a cylinder of about 3-4 cm across, with the filling in the middle. Rinse and repeat until you're out of ingredients.
It's a lot of work, but I made this today and it's an instant favorite over here. The turmeric is mostly for colour, so you can skip that, if you want to.

[Bakemaster]

Turmeric does have a strong flavor if you use enough of it; kind of bitter and astringent, very quickly becomes "too much" if you're not careful, probably an acquired taste. It's also supposed to be enormously healthy and have antimicrobial properties (though that could probably be said of just about any spice traditionally used to flavor low-quality meat and fish).

I grilled some chicken thighs with a rub of oil, salt, pepper and turmeric a week or two ago.

Let's see, what else... Made branana bread muffins again, though this time I ground up some pecans and walnuts in place of the 1/4 cup flax seed meal in the recipe. They came out spectacularly, best I've ever made, even as a double recipe. I have tweaked this recipe to hell and back and it is so good.

[roband]

It's been a while since I was discussing Frank's hot sauce in this thread, and I recently had a little bit of a baader meinhof experience.
I found a restaurant (chain place, I think it was TGIF's) where they did chicken 'bits' in the sauce. I tried it - it tasted good but was way too spicy for me. Disappointed, I decided not to order that 3 litre jug I mentioned before.
The next day, I found a normal bottle in my local co-op (mini supermarket, for non-Brits) and it was a decent price too. I bought some and tested it - turns out the chicken I had must have been cooked and then put in the sauce, as it tasted exactly the same.

The point of this post is to ask - will the heat disappear a little, if the sauce is cooked?
I ask, because I really liked the taste, but the heat was just a little too much. Thanks!

edit: I also made a chicken chili in the slowcooker a few days ago.
Chicken thighs, tomatoes, verylazychilli, chilli and jalapeno relish and some spices and stuff - it was awesome. Gonna have some leftovers for lunch and see how it kept.

[PAstrychef]

The heat will, if anything, become fiercer as the sauce is concentrated. The thing to do is use only a few drops at a time, until you know how much you like.

[roband]

Ok thanks. The chicken which was just coated in the sauce was crazy.

Hopefully I can use it in a recipe soon

[poxic]

TIM: Better soup.

I've been oven-roasting veggies, then blenderizing them into soup and adding that to cooked-up spices and herbs. Not bad, but boring after a week or two of playing with this idea. (It's hard to get me to eat veggies at home. )

So, new thought: make tasty broth first. This wasn't as easy as I thought, going without a recipe and not wanting to strain/throw out all the onions/garlic/mushrooms and such as. So... blenderize ALL the broth. Adjust with seasoning (probably a bit too much salt this time but ok).

Now go chop ALL the add-in veggies and put them in plastic containers in the fridge. When soup is desired, add veggies to bowl, then add broth to bowl, then nuke for a minute and eat it. EAT IT ALL.

Nose-runningly good stuff. (And the add-in veggies don't go all army green and squishy.)

[cerbie]

It's been a while since I was discussing Frank's hot sauce in this thread, and I recently had a little bit of a baader meinhof experience.
I found a restaurant (chain place, I think it was TGIF's) where they did chicken 'bits' in the sauce. I tried it - it tasted good but was way too spicy for me. Disappointed, I decided not to order that 3 litre jug I mentioned before.
The next day, I found a normal bottle in my local co-op (mini supermarket, for non-Brits) and it was a decent price too. I bought some and tested it - turns out the chicken I had must have been cooked and then put in the sauce, as it tasted exactly the same.

Chain restaurants always either load up on citric acid, vinegar, or hot sauce, for reasons I have never been able to fathom. The result is always bad. Interesting to know they commit the same sin across the pond.

The point of this post is to ask - will the heat disappear a little, if the sauce is cooked?
I ask, because I really liked the taste, but the heat was just a little too much. Thanks!

No. The answer is to start a sauce with butter, and mix the hot sauce into the melted butter. If you want a bit more bite, but not more heat, once the heat is just right, add white wine vinegar to taste.

Here in the U.S., variations on the buffalo wing are quite common at locally-owned non-themed restaurants, including sandwiches, rice or noodle dishes, and pizzas. Well, chains, too, but the local ones actually tend to be good.

Ah-ha! Found a Youtube video that does them right!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7seLrMzL2VA

The important thing is that the chicken cuts you prepare need to be dry on the outside, and not too oily, so that it will stick to and absorb some of the sauce.

[philsov]

Black Bean Brownies

6 eggs
6 tbsp flour (I used finely ground oats)
2 tbsp olive oil
6 tsbp peanut butter
30 oz black beans (aka, 1 cup / half pound of dry beans)
1 cup chocolate whey powder (3 scoops)
1 cup sugar

Blend the black beans into a paste (use some eggs as liquid to keep it flowing) and mix it all together. Peanut butter was microwaved a bit to soften it up prior. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes in a 9x13 pan. Tasty as hell, 25% Protein by caloric content, and a good dose of fiber to boot.

[cerbie]

That is weird, and I have almost all the ingredients (no chocolate whey powder). I may have to try those.

Nothing special today, just bacon and eggs.

[Giant Speck]

When I finally get my apartment, I may have to try those brownies.

[roband]

We made homemade jammy dodgers today. That might just be a british thing. Basically, two biscuits sandwiched together, the top one is a ring. Inside, there is jam. We also added buttercream, to make them 'posh' jammy dodgers!

[Giant Speck]

Jammie Dodgers, as they appear on the Wikipedia page, remind me of Knotts Berry Farm shortbread cookies.

[roband]

I left just after making them. Just got a facebook message telling me how delicious they are

I knocked up a quick pork chow mein earlier (using a sachet of sauce, unfortunately I haven't gotten around to the basics of chinese food yet [but then, I bet chow mein isn't even actually chinese, it's just what they created for us westerners, right?]) and it was tasty.

And currently in the slow cooker, a turkey drumstick (it's bloody massive - I had to break the bone near the 'ankle'[?] to fit it in the damn slow cooker) along with chicken stock, potatoes, a tin of chopped tomatoes, 2 fresh tomatoes - quartered, a sachet of 'hot seasoning', some sriracha sauce, some hot chilli and jalapeno relish, onions, garlic paste and tomato paste.
Hoping it'll turn into some sauce of spicy stew. It's going to cook on low for about 21 hours.

[podbaydoor]

I knocked up a quick pork chow mein earlier (using a sachet of sauce, unfortunately I haven't gotten around to the basics of chinese food yet [but then, I bet chow mein isn't even actually chinese, it's just what they created for us westerners, right?]) and it was tasty.

That's chop suey.

Chow mein just translates to "sauté/stir-fry noodles." As far as I can tell, you just put whatever you want in it, vegetable or meat. To make it more "Asian", I guess, you use the wide-flat noodles sold in Asian supermarkets and throw in some sesame oil or fish sauce or something.

[roband]

There were flat noodles too. I thought that was assumed by me calling it chow mein

It was distinctly lacking in veg though. Probably because I wasn't planning on having it as a meal! Pork, noodles, sauce. It was a bit too plain.

[podbaydoor]

So spice it up with whatever. Vegetables would be good, though - my mother liked to make sure that all meals had a variety of colors. To this day I feel uneasy if all the food in my dinner winds up being the same color.

[roband]

Haha. Cool, I'll change it up a bit next time.

My turkey drumstick was delicious. Took it out of the sauce, shredded it, put most of it back and put what I'd kept in some of the liquid from the sauce. Served with brown rice.

Added lentils (and a little bit of leftover rice) to the sauce, and put it back on to cook - some sort of spicy soup, I guess.

[studyinserendipity]

Oooh, I just made the best batch of baked doughnuts I have ever made! The original recipe from my gluten-free cookbook calls for thawed apple juice concentrate, apple pie spices, and molasses. To make a 'lighter' tasting doughnut, I instead used coconut milk, ginger, cinnamon, extra vanilla extract, and light corn syrup (I wanted to use honey but we're out and I didn't want to go grocery shopping in the middle of baking.) They are so delightful!!

Last weekend I tried my hand at making jam. I used blackberries and strawberries and it came out nice, although I need to fine-tune my set-taking technique. The hot water bath worked well too, and it was sealed with no complications! Now I can't wait for summer in New England so I can actually use fresh fruits. So much canning will take place!

Those jammy dodgers talked about earlier sound delicious. Do you use a sugar cookie for the sandwich halves?

[roband]

Those jammy dodgers talked about earlier sound delicious. Do you use a sugar cookie for the sandwich halves?

My girlfriend was in charge of making them, I just mixed what I was told to mix and made the buttercream.
I think the ingredients were flour and sugar, mixed with egg yolks and a dash of milk (I think that was because it was a touch dry). If that makes sugar cookies, then yes

[semicharmed]

Successful varenykyy dough, after yesterday's disaster. I've been substituting a half milk/half sour cream mixture when I didn't have soured milk, and yesterday I tried to use some soured milk that I had froze to keep it from turning in curds since the milk went sour at an inopportune time for varenykyy-making.

It was... terrible. Which I should have anticipated, since instead of being smooth and slightly thicker than milk as is normal, the thawed stuff separated - watery top, chunky bottom. This time went much better, and I'm about to dig into a plate of (homegrown) potato+onion varenykyy with fresh/homemade smetana (bad name but a delicious sour cream-like dairy product) and khrin, from beets I grew and horseradish grown/dug by a Ukrainian grandmother.

Food here - especially dairy, and vegetables and meat - especially when turned into Ukrainian dishes, has totally spoiled me. I'm looking forward to being back in NYC for ease of access to delicious Thai/Indian/Nepalese/Lebanese/Japanese/Mexican/Dominican/etc food, but I am going to miss how amazing the staples are here.

[roband]

Ok, so I just made possibly the tastiest meal I have ever cooked for myself.

Spicy pork chops, with salsa, and a baked potato.

Looked like this - http://www.imgur.com/iNcie.jpg - it's now gone!

Pork was grilled after marinading in the following sauce for an hour or so:

Half a bottle of Franks Hot Sauce
1/8th of a pint of brown sugar (American recipes do everything in cups and I converted)
1/8th of a pint of lime juice
A massive splurge of garlic paste.

I basted the chops as they were cooking, with extra sauce. IT WAS SO GOOD.

Oh, and the salsa was just two tomatoes, a few spring onions, a couple of nice spicy chillies, lemon juice and olive oil. It was good - maybe even the best part of the meal.

[Bakemaster]

Yesterday I finally made food from my lovely French-Cambodian cookbook! Spring rolls, tuk trey dipping sauce, and k'tieu noodle soup using the chicken stock I made and froze last weekend. Why have I not made stock before? I guess I'm just not used to roasting whole birds frequently enough to have the necessary bits on hand. Anyhow, delicious, delicious foods. Took way longer than it should have. Next time I will try making emerald soup (somlah marakot).

[PAstrychef]

A simple roasted chicken and potatoes cooked in the roasting pan and broccoli. One of my favorite meals, and just about the first dinner I've been able to cook for myself since I got home. Tomorrow the crock pot comes out of hibernation, for a dish of pork, coconut milk, sweet potatoes, jalapenos and pineapple.
Oh and some chocolate mousse for my mom who sprained her knee.

[cerbie]

Anti-authentic goulash. Smoked pork for meat, and the bone of it for broth; reconstituted and ground ancho chilis, instead of paprika; and onion, celery, carrot, cabbage, potato, and garlic for vegetables.

P.S. I love my garlic press

[Bakemaster]

Was gonna say, I see those all the time at thrift stores but they just seem spectacularly unhelpful, and then I clicked your link and saw what you did there.

[poxic]

Cauliflower red lentil soup!

I was disappointed that the cafeteria at work was going to have this tomorrow, when I'm on a strict no-lunch-buying budget. But then I thought hey, I can make some too! Eightish servings for the price of two or three of theirs... I even _mostly followed a recipe.

My only regret is that I have to wait until I'm a bit hungry again before I can have more.

[PAstrychef]

Was gonna say, I see those all the time at thrift stores but they just seem spectacularly unhelpful, and then I clicked your link and saw what you did there.

A well made squeezy style garlic press can be a good thing. And not much bother to clean, either. I use mine on chunks of ginger which really reduces the thready mess.

[cerbie]

Was gonna say, I see those all the time at thrift stores but they just seem spectacularly unhelpful, and then I clicked your link and saw what you did there.

A well-made steel one can be nice (an expensive aluminum one will eventually warp, lose coating, etc., at least IME), but it is still a unitasker eating up drawer space, while the knife is already at the ready. I've also found that for dishes where it isn't cooked to mush, the crushed cloves are superior to a paste, because of the tasty bite-sized pieces of garlic.

I lost mine after a year or two of using knives for the job. Most of the time, I don't miss it, but I must admit that when adding garlic to warm olive oil or butter, nothing beats the exposed surface area, and released oils, of crushing the cloves through a screen.

[poxic]

TIM: Hot chocolate. Plain soy milk, some pieces of dark chocolate, a dash of vanilla and some cinnamon and allspice. Me gusta el chocolate caliente sin exceso de azúcar.

[Bakemaster]

I have been on a bit of a soup kick. This evening I threw one together with seafood stock, shrimp, dried lily blossom, wakame, bean thread noodles... little bit of chopped dry shiitake, soy sauce, fish sauce, and ginger. I think that's it. Anyway, damn soup tastes good. I want to learn how to replicate good pho.

I lost mine after a year or two of using knives for the job. Most of the time, I don't miss it, but I must admit that when adding garlic to warm olive oil or butter, nothing beats the exposed surface area, and released oils, of crushing the cloves through a screen.

I think the good old smash-and-chop does an effectively identical job but I haven't done any sort of rigorous comparison.

[roband]

Chinese New Year = my first real attempt at cooking chinese food from scratch.
Although it ended up really quite Westernised.

Egg-fried rice with bacon.
Chop bacon into bits, fry in oil. Add leftover brown rice from a previous meal and coat in the oil. Crack an egg and keep it moving until the egg cooks and is visibly white on the rice.

Stir-fried Veg
Baby sweetcorn, green beans (would not use again, for the record) and beansprouts, stir fried in oil.

Beef in home-made sauce
Lean been strips, quick fried with a sauce made from the following ingredients (using my now copyrighted 412-SOY method - which I'll be using again):
- 4 tbsp Soy sauce (dark)
- 1 tbsp Oil (Sesame)
- 2tbsp oYster sauce
- 1 chopped red chilli pepper
- a drizzle of sriracha sauce

The beef was delicious, the veg was a bit crappy and the rice with egg and bacon tasted weirdly like a risotto dish my mother used to make when I was a kid. I could consider making the rice again, by itself, as a quick meal.

Rather impressed with my sauce - it was so good. I will definitely be cooking more chinese food.

edit: It looked like this: www.imgur.com/xHOaf.jpg

[Nath]

Stir-fried Veg
Baby sweetcorn, green beans (would not use again, for the record) and beansprouts, stir fried in oil.

My favorite Chinese green bean dish:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/01/sichuan-dry-fried-green-beans-recipe.html

I haven't tried it at home, but I've had it at a couple of Sichuan restaurants. Astonishingly good stuff. Probably needs a good wok and stove, though.

[roband]

That looks delicious. I meant to mention, I used tinned green beans - I know, why?!?, but cooking for one with fresh ingredients when I'm never sure if I'm going to be home or not the next day can be difficult.

So, I would not use tinned green beans again.

Also, I thought that green beans was part of my 'Westernisation' - do the chinese actually cook with them?

[Nath]

They use a slightly different kind of bean, but yes. Green beans of various kinds are common in Indian cuisine as well.

I have the same problem as you with fresh ingredients, but frozen vegetables tend to beat tinned when fresh aren't an option. I wouldn't attempt dry-fried frozen beans, though.

[cerbie]

edit: It looked like this: http://www.imgur.com/xHOaf.jpg

Note on the rice: I've only been able to get fried rice browned well with cast iron (I have no induction or gas, to get quick heat), a bit past butter-burning temps. Aluminum, and straight-gauge steel, just lose heat too quickly when the cold rice hits the pan, leading to more of a light saute.

Stir-fried Veg
Baby sweetcorn, green beans (would not use again, for the record) and beansprouts, stir fried in oil.

My favorite Chinese green bean dish:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/01/sichuan-dry-fried-green-beans-recipe.html

I'm going to try that, or as close as I can manage, if I can come across fresh long beans. That looks pretty much just like what a local buffet makes, that is simply awesome (not the food in general, just their stir-fried long beans and mustard chicken).

Chicken broth.
Ginger tea (ginger crushed and boiled for ~15 min) mixed with Ceylon tea (Sri Lankan just doesn't roll off the tongue right, so I'm going to keep calling tea from there Ceylon).

P.S. Bean and macaroni soup, with the broth already mentioned, gently simmered until the beans and pasta got || close to becoming mush.

[Sandry]

Cauliflower red lentil soup!

I was disappointed that the cafeteria at work was going to have this tomorrow, when I'm on a strict no-lunch-buying budget. But then I thought hey, I can make some too! Eightish servings for the price of two or three of theirs... I even _mostly followed a recipe.

My only regret is that I have to wait until I'm a bit hungry again before I can have more.

Ooooh, can has recipe? I love both red lentil soups and cauliflower quite a lot.

My most recent making was two kinds of vegetarian chili - one a tex mex style, the other a Cincinnati style, both five bean (though the former's fifth bean was chickpeas as opposed to cannelini in the latter), and with Quorn in as the sort of fake meaty bit. (I ordinarily wouldn't put fake meat in my chili, which is the tex mex style, but my housemate does the Cincinnati style and thinks it needs it, so since I was making hers, I bought some, and figured I couldn't put all of it in just one of them...)

Anyhow. Came out decently, but found out after the fact that they were not vegan, because Quorn has egg white in. Who knew? So I subsequently decided the best course of action was to pour a bunch of cheddar and sour cream over it, since it was already a lost cause. OM NOM NOM.

[PAstrychef]

Found an interesting product, of corn (maize) groats in a boil-in-the-bag package. This is a a very coarse cornmeal, and the box has instructions to boil it for 25 minutes in the bag. This produced a rather gloppy dish, so I steamed a bag in the rice cooker for about an hour, and that came out very nicely. What I didn't eat from the bowl with a bit of butter I made into pancakes with buttermilk, an egg, flour seasoned with cumin, sage, ancho powder salt and pepper, sautéed ham and chopped mushrooms and scallions. Fried them up in a bit of olive oil, melted on some shreddy Parma cheese. If I ran them under the broiler to make the cheese crusty and crispy they would be close to perfect.

[poxic]

Cauliflower red lentil soup:

http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetari ... r-soup.php

(I used a sweet potato instead of white potato, no celery, added a couple of veggie bouillon cubes, and used separate curry-compatible spices rather than "curry powder". Came out dandy. )

[eSOANEM]

Today I made bologneise.

Not very interesting or comment worthy you might say, and you'd be right were it not for the fact that I was trying a tip from one of Heston Blumenthal's tv shows about cooking mince. Now, having done everything else the same as I usually would, searing the mince until it's well browned before getting started on the sauce really improves the bologneise a lot, it provides a richer, meatier taste to the sauce as well as preventing the beef from becoming soggy and blurring into the sauce.

[Webzter]

Marinated, seared, then roasted a couple pork tenderloins. Deglazed the roasting pan with some white wine then added some onion. Sautéd those until they were tender and then added spinach (fresh from the garden) just enough to wilt it and get it sopping with the sauce.

Steamed some carrots (fresh from the garden) and made some brown rice for the sides. Served pork medallions on the spinach.

All in all, was very much worth the cold hands. There's just nothing like winter greens and winter carrots.