The Cooking Thread
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Alright. So the recipe I used allegedly yielded 3 dozen mini biscuits.
I got 5 the size of pint glasses (I guess my mother's cutting rings have been disposed of at some point in the past). They are baking now.
I'm just cooking a pot of sausage dirty rice to go with.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
dirty rice
There's something I have not made for a while now. Thanks for the reminder. Good stuff. @xaade's people can make some good dishes when they want to.
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For those who haven't heard of it, Cincinnati chili is one of those oddities that come when two vaguely similar dishes from different source collide head-on. Despite the name, the primary source isn't chili con carne, but a Greek dish call saltsa kima, which consists of a spiced ground mutton (or ground beef, depending) sauce/stew served over pasta. The chili itself was first devised by immigrants from Macedonia who moved to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and adapted the older saltsa kima recipes to use the ingredients available here, which came to include chili peppers, cinnamon (which is sometimes used in saltsa kima, but not to the extent is is in Cincinnati chili), tomato, and in a few cases, cacao powder or baker's chocolate. Over time it began to resemble chili con carne more and more, especially when a parallel development, Coney Island Hot Dog Chili (which has a similar history), began to appear across the US as well.
In Cincinnati, it is still used to top either spaghetti or 'coneys' (frankfurters), and it is served with a variety of additions ('ways') such as onions, shredded cheddar cheese, or kidney beans. Some recipes call for mutton, either mixed with the beef or instead of it, but beef is the most common meat in it.
I am using this recipe, though I did have to skimp and improvise on some of the spices. It came out great; very much a mixture of the spices, with the chilis being a strong but not overwhelming part. Definitely very different from chili con carne, much more subtle and complex.
TL;DR: 4/5, would cook again.
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Verdict: A bit floury (that's likely to be my fault), but yeah. I would say that was a biscuit.
Almost precisely like what mom used to make. Which weren't very good.
This has potential.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
Almost precisely like what mom used to make. Which weren't very good.
Look up Alton Browns biscuit recipe. It works really well. Also, if you have a food processor you can use that for cutting in the fat. Makes it super easy.
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Got the ancho chiles I've spent the past several weekends trying to find, so I (finally) made "Shredded Pork in Ancho-Orange Sauce (Chilorio)":
Came out pretty well (although for reasons it took more than twice as long as it was supposed to), but felt like it was missing something. Tried some Mexican crema on it, which seemed only almost right. Might just need an appropriate side. My grandfather said he'll have some on rice tomorrow, and that sounds like it might be perfect.
Also made fajitas last week, after having some at a local Mexican restaurant and realizing "Hey, this should be really easy". They were delicious, and the first thing I cooked in my new cast iron skillet.
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
my new cast iron skillet.
I love cast iron cookware. It is like magic. And nothing else comes close when you need something with a lot of heat retention.
It is the only cookware you can buy that your kids will inherit. I have 4-5 skillets, 3 dutch ovens, 2 griddles, a 13x9 casserole dish and some other stuff I am probably forgetting. I have had some of it for a decade and it cooks better than it did when new. Good stuff.
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@Polygeekery The perverse part of my brain insisted that I adulterate Paula "This butter needs more butter to be palatable" Deen's recipe.
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@Polygeekery I still use some of mom's old teflon stuff!
And dad's cast iron skillets.
I've been meaning to replace all the nonstick stuff with new (Ceramic?) but can't really be arsed.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
Almost precisely like what mom used to make. Which weren't very good.
Look up Alton Browns biscuit recipe. It works really well. Also, if you have a food processor you can use that for cutting in the fat. Makes it super easy.
Last time I made biscuits, I used this recipe, but with butter instead of shortening. I followed the advice in the comments and grated frozen butter directly into the flour.
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@Weng cast iron is nonstick if it's seasoned properly. The layer of polymerized oil is slicker'n snot, and much more durable than teflon, since you can easily refresh it when needed -- unlike teflon, which, once it gets scratched, is ready for the trash.
My cast iron skillet is getting kind of crudded up, but even still it's pretty slick. I've been planning on putting it through an oven cleaning cycle to burn the coating off completely and then re-season it from scratch, now that I have an oven that has a cleaning cycle, but it still does pretty well and I haven't gotten around to it yet.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
I've been meaning to replace all the nonstick stuff with new (Ceramic?) but can't really be arsed.
Go to a restaurant supply house, or a warehouse store like Costco or Sam's. Costco has Tramontina ProLine nonstick cookware and it is pro quality and works really well. Also, it is cheaper than the "pretty" stuff you can buy elsewhere.
If you don't have a Costco or Sam's around, look up a restaurant supply store. Restaurants buy good quality stuff, and it is cheaper there than anywhere else. Thick aluminum, good quality Teflon, etc. They even have metal handles with removable silicone sleeves so you can use them under a broiler or in the oven.
Much better than the cheaply built, expensive shit you can buy anywhere else. It lasts a lot longer also. I have had my 12" Tramontina ProLine for over a year and it does not show any wear yet.
I have cast iron, stainless steel and nonstick. The right tool for the job and all of that.
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@anotherusername One of the keys to cast iron is cleaning it properly. You can use soap if you need to. Just make sure to not use anything abrasive on it. I bought a piece of what is basically chain mail and use that with hot water and a little bit of soap to clean cast iron. Works a treat, and the "chain mail" seems to burnish on the seasoning and smooth it out without scratching it.
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@Dreikin You seem to like Mexican cuisine, I have made Chef John's Carnitas recipe a few times and it is pretty damned amazing.
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@Polygeekery Hilariously, one of the bigger Software Development employers in our area is a restaurant supply with an extensive web presence.
My biggest problem cookware-wise is that I rarely actually have the correct tool for a job. It's all mixed as various pieces have been destroyed over the ages, and there are no duplications between form factors.
Also, when my parents remodeled the kitchen 20 years ago, the storage space provisions they made were... Rather poor. Lots of it, but it's all sized awkwardly. I don't have the space to actually put away everything I do have, so I have a hobo-pile of cookware stacked up on the back burners of the stove all the time.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
I've been meaning to replace all the nonstick stuff with new (Ceramic?) but can't really be arsed.
Also, America's Test Kitchen were not really impressed with any of the ceramic nonstick that they tested. They still preferred the good ol' Teflon.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
My biggest problem cookware-wise is that I rarely actually have the correct tool for a job. It's all mixed as various pieces have been destroyed over the ages, and there are no duplications between form factors.
That's why I prefer to buy piece meal, rather than purchasing a set. If you destroy a piece, you just go get another and you don't worry about things matching.
@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
Also, when my parents remodeled the kitchen 20 years ago, the storage space provisions they made were... Rather poor. Lots of it, but it's all sized awkwardly. I don't have the space to actually put away everything I do have, so I have a hobo-pile of cookware stacked up on the back burners of the stove all the time.
When we moved in here, it was much the same. I would love to gut the kitchen and redo it, but it is good enough. What I did was to do away with all cabinet doors below counter level. I cut face frames and built drawers. Below counter level, all drawers. Above, all conventional shelves.
My workshop is the same way. Drawers below, doors above.
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@Polygeekery TBH, I rarely if ever clean it. You don't need to. I generally don't cook stuff that leaves a sticky residue in it, though. I have other frying pans for that.
If it really needs cleaning, I'll get it medium-hot and wipe it with salt using a paper towel, then rinse, wipe most of the water off with another paper towel, then stick it over a burner to finish drying it quickly.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@Dreikin You seem to like Mexican cuisine,
I do, but the recent proliferation of Mexican/Tex-Mex cooking on my part is somewhat coincidental. I generally like spicy foods/cuisines - both in the 'hot' sense and the 'full of spice' sense. I also love chile peppers. Mexican is great for all of that, but I also like Indian for the same reasons.
I've actually been thinking about what regional cuisine to try next. All the ones that look most interesting (Thai, Korean, Ethiopean off the top of my head) are ones I haven't tried before, however :/ Fortunately(-ish), recent circumstances mean that I'm eating at a restaurant every Wednesday for the next few months, so plenty of opportunity to explore.
@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
I have made Chef John's Carnitas recipe a few times and it is pretty damned amazing.
Hm, that looks interesting. Similar to what I made tonight, but with a different flavor set. Thanks!
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
I do, but the recent proliferation of Mexican/Tex-Mex cooking on my part is somewhat coincidental. I generally like spicy foods/cuisines - both in the 'hot' sense and the 'full of spice' sense. I also love chile peppers. Mexican is great for all of that, but I also like Indian for the same reasons.
Actually, there's another reason for the recent spate of Mexican dishes: I like the idea of cooking with predominantly New World foods. Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, common beans, chile peppers - tasty, delicious, useful, and incredibly versatile, none of these existed outside the Americas until relatively recently. And now they're everywhere - for good reason.
So that idea - specializing a bit in New World foods - had somewhat of an effect on my recent choices too.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
dirty rice
There's something I have not made for a while now. Thanks for the reminder. Good stuff. @xaade's people can make some good dishes when they want to.
What do you mean.... @xaade's people?
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
All the ones that look most interesting (Thai, Korean, Ethiopean off the top of my head) are ones I haven't tried before
You've not tried Thai or Korean before? Those can be really delicious. I've got a really good Korean place near work, and a good Thai place not too far from home, and it's too long since I went to either of them. (Don't know Ethiopian, but I bet it's tasty too.)
Thai can be very strong; pay attention if the menu marks something as hot. Korean's mostly not too strong except for the kimchi.
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@dkf said in The Cooking Thread:
Don't know Ethiopian, but I bet it's tasty too
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
I do, but the recent proliferation of Mexican/Tex-Mex cooking on my part is somewhat coincidental. I generally like spicy foods/cuisines - both in the 'hot' sense and the 'full of spice' sense. I also love chile peppers. Mexican is great for all of that, but I also like Indian for the same reasons.
Then you would likely also love North African cuisine. Lots of strong flavors and spiciness. Good stuff.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
North African cuisine
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
Also, America's Test Kitchen were not really impressed with any of the ceramic nonstick that they tested. They still preferred the good ol' Teflon.
There are also Teflon coatings that contain some (ceramic?) powder that hardens the coating. I can definitely recommend them.
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@Luhmann There's a Congolese recipe that we've got for a chicken and peanut stew that's wonderful. It's also got lots of other delicious brown spices and chillies in. The recipe itself had a… circuitous route on route to us, so it probably isn't authentic at all, and I've only got it written down on a piece of paper at home on file. (Actually, I've got three large binders full of vaguely categorised recipes, where the categorisation is by major ingredient. This one is probably filed under “chicken pieces; bones-left-in”.)
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@Luhmann said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
African cuisine
I've grown to like Moambe and Sakasaka
Also, North African dishes are fun to say.
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@dkf said in The Cooking Thread:
a chicken and peanut stew
Might be the same: chicken, peanuts, and palm oil are the main ingredients.
Variations can be found in the entire Central African region. I also had something that was called differently but tasted similar in Gabon.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
NorthCentral African
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@Luhmann said in The Cooking Thread:
palm oil
No idea what sort of oil is involved in the original. We just use ordinary cooking oil (so canola).
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@dkf said in The Cooking Thread:
We just use ordinary cooking oil
you need palm oil and palm nut pulp in this one
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@Luhmann said in The Cooking Thread:
you need palm oil and palm nut pulp in this one
OK, so it's not the same though it might be related…
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@dkf Ethiopian can be really, really good. It is mostly based around using a large sheet of unleavened bread instead of a dish, and you either eat the other food off of it with your hands or tear part of the bread off with the food folded up in it. It is mostly beans, lentils, rice, and different spices and sauces. There was a great restaurant in Berkeley called Blue Nile (not sure if it is there anymore, it looked like it was closed up the last time I was there in 2008) that I went to a number of times, though they were quite expensive.
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@ScholRLEA said in The Cooking Thread:
with your hands
That's common on the entire African continent.
I have been to Senegalese festivities where we poor westerns could request a spoon and a chair.
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@ScholRLEA said in The Cooking Thread:
@dkf Ethiopian can be really, really good. It is mostly based around using a large sheet of unleavened bread instead of a dish, and you either eat the other food off of it with your hands or tear part of the bread off with the food folded up in it.
Injera. Super easy to make. Chances are your local bulk store has teff (grass flour) in stock.
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@Lorne-Kates said in The Cooking Thread:
Chances are your local bulk store has teff (grass flour) in stock.
Not that I've noticed. They have lots of gram flour (chickpea) instead, with 10kg sacks being not uncommon…
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A while back we picked up a cookbook at a book sale. "Revolutionary Pizza"
https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Pizza-Bold-Change-Dinner/dp/1624140505
So this week I decided to make 'BBQ Porkabella" pizza. Basically, BBQ sauce instead of pizza sauce, pulled pork, sautéed mushrooms, onions, mozzarella and cheddar cheeses and then topped with fried wontons.
New favorite pizza. Technically it only called for braised pork shoulder, but I had pulled pork in the freezer. One of the best pizzas I have ever made. In addition to the change of using pulled pork, I made it on a "cracker crust". No idea what the official name is, but basically you flatten out your dough to pizza shape, brush it with olive oil, dock it, then pre-bake it for 4-5 minutes then pull it and finish the rest of the process. Makes for a really crunchy, crispy crust.
Good stuff.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
A while back we picked up a cookbook at a book sale. "Revolutionary Pizza"
Oh, and next up in the pizza rotation is another recipe from there. 'Bloody Mary Pizza" The sauce is made bloody mary style. Sounds interesting.
Also on the cooking front, I have recently been making spatchcocked chicken roughly once a week. Makes for a good dinner, then the leftover chicken gets incorporated in to salads or soups. This week's leftovers are getting vacuum packed and frozen as we leave for a short vacation tomorrow. (Kid's daycare is Jewish, and it is Rosh Hashanah, so we might as well take a long weekend since we will not have childcare)
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I had some cooked rice in the fridge, and got some pork loin on sale, so I chopped the pork into smallish cubes, peeled and cut a small potato into similar-sized cubes, tossed them in a bowl with an egg, some flour, a bit of cornstarch (that's corn flour to you overpondians), and a dash salt and pepper. I gave it all a good mix to coat the pieces, then put it into a pan with a bit of vegetable oil, breaking up the individual cubes as it cooked. After it had a light brown and the potato was cooked most of the way through, I then added rice, soy sauce, garlic, onion powder, Chinese 5 spice, and a few drops of fish sauce. Near the end of cooking, I scrambled another egg with a dash salt and pepper and added it.
It turned out really good, and not too salty -- the soy sauce wasn't overpowering it. I gave mine a sprinkle of crushed red pepper flakes.
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@anotherusername said in The Cooking Thread:
It turned out really good, and not too salty -- the soy sauce wasn't overpowering it.
Sounds tasty. And that is when you know you are learning to cook, when you can look at what you have and come up with something tasty from it.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
The sauce is made bloody mary style. Sounds interesting.
I just made the sauce to take with us. It makes extra so you can have Bloody Marys while cooking. I like this cookbook
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
brush it with olive oil
In my experience, there should always be a thin layer of oil under the sauce. Improves the taste and makes sure that the dough doesn't get soggy. All good (thin-crust) pizza places I know do that. Of course, you should be a bit more careful with the cheese if you use olive oil, otherwise the pizza might become too greasy.
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
Got the ancho chiles I've spent the past several weekends trying to find, so I (finally) made "Shredded Pork in Ancho-Orange Sauce (Chilorio)":
Made 3x the amount of this last night. Took a while, because the blender and dutch oven were too small for most of it (at the end it just filled up the dutch oven pictured). Now I've got several quarts of it, so I can freeze and give away a good portion of it.
Tonight I try making bread, which I've not (successfully*) done before.
*: The only other time was the avocado naan I posted above, but that was still passable, and it was messed up mostly/entirely because I was trying to do too many other new things at the same time.
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
it was messed up mostly/entirely because I was trying to do too many other new things at the same time
That's a fair point: the more new things you do at once, the bigger the potential for catastrophe. It's always
hardermore difficult the first time.
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So I was using the InterGooglez and autocomplete suggested something absolutely ridiculous:
Let's see how good it is:
I'd bone down for this:
http://cookingtogetlaid.ca/salmon-sushi/I would need to try this:
http://cookingtogetlaid.ca/grilled-coconut-kale/This is just stew:
http://cookingtogetlaid.ca/healthy-beef-slow-stew/Step 1) Put figs, proscuitto, mozzarella cubes on plate.
Step 2) Get laid?
http://cookingtogetlaid.ca/fig-and-prosciutto-salad-with-balsamic-reduction-2/Is this supposed to be Thai or Indian curry? I can't even tell.
http://cookingtogetlaid.ca/real-chicken-curry/RICE! RICE WILL GET YOU LAID!
http://cookingtogetlaid.ca/perfect-basmati-rice/
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This week in the Offensive Disaster Assault Kitchen:
Salmon + <Something else, probably a fruit? Pineapple? Potato?> Indian Curry.
Because I'm sick of looking at this damned salmon in this damned freezer, but I only have like 10oz's of it.
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