The Cooking Thread
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Used the rest of the to make moussaka (I don't remember if someone here mentioned it, or if it just turned up on Google and sounded good).
The filling (ground beef & tomato sauce layered with the sliced eggplant) turned out good. The bechamel sauce on top was okay, but I think I'd like the filling better in a pot pie. Or shepherd's pie. Or maybe even as sloppy joes. (Probably with the eggplant minced instead of slices.)
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Tonight for dinner I went super easy and light. The nachos yesterday were pretty heavy, so I needed something semi-healthy. Went and picked two big tomatoes from the garden. Large dice, in to bowls for me and the wife and then sprinkle with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. A couple of big spoons of cottage cheese over the top and then more black pepper.
Super easy, super tasty, overall pretty healthy for you depending on your choice of cottage cheese.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
I also prepped the baked potatoes by putting them in a bowl, drizzling with olive oil and seasoning generously with kosher salt, black pepper and Chinese Five Spice and giving it a toss.
I gave the Chinese Five Spice a try on some fried potatoes and onions, and wasn't too fond of it. Too licorice-like for my taste unfortunately, but it was still passable so I suppose if you like or don't mind that taste, it ought to taste pretty good.
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
Too licorice-like for my taste unfortunately
That'll be the star anise.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
And before anyone goes thinking that it is all high-class meals at the @Polygeekery compound, tonight we had pulled pork nachos for dinner.
My suggestions on nachos: Thin-sliced radishes work amazingly well with nachosDude, your first and third sentences contradict themselves.
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I feel it is important that kids learn, at least vaguely, where their food comes from. Yesterday, the oldest keeps arguing with me that pickles are not cucumbers, so tonight we made pickles.
A local farm stand had pickling cucumbers for cheap, so we broke out the food processor, made up some brine, and canned a whole bunch of pickles.
By the end of it, he believed me that pickles are made from cucumbers and hopefully he has a greater appreciation for where his food comes from. :)
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
And before anyone goes thinking that it is all high-class meals at the @Polygeekery compound, tonight we had pulled pork nachos for dinner.
My suggestions on nachos: Thin-sliced radishes work amazingly well with nachosDude, your first and third sentences contradict themselves.
If you mean radishes on nachos, I grew up on a farm that perpetually had a bowl of water with radishes floating in it on the kitchen table, because old German farmers eat radishes like we eat potato chips
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
old German farmers eat radishes like we eat potato chips
TIL I'm a farmer.
*eats radish*
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@asdf I do need to get some more radishes at the market too, thanks for reminding me XD. German "farmers" unite!
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I grabbed this gyro-to-go thing for lunch the other day. Hooray for false advertising:
That said, it was pretty good. The sauce was tangy and lent some flavor to the savory but underspiced meat. Next time I'll chop up some red onion and tomato and add it to the packaged kit, like the package says.
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@Yamikuronue said in The Cooking Thread:
That said, it was pretty good.
I find that very hard to believe…
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@Yamikuronue said in The Cooking Thread:
I grabbed this gyro-to-go thing for lunch the other day. Hooray for false advertising:
That said, it was pretty good. The sauce was tangy and lent some flavor to the savory but underspiced meat. Next time I'll chop up some red onion and tomato and add it to the packaged kit, like the package says.
That isn't cooking. That looks like cruel and unusual punishment.
Also, I snigger at the brand name. "Grecian Delight"
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Does anyone here drink iced coffee? My wife drinks a fair amount of iced coffee and over the past several years I have come close to perfecting the recipe and process of cold brew iced coffee, if anyone cares to hear about it.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
Does anyone here drink iced coffee? My wife drinks a fair amount of iced coffee and over the past several years I have come close to perfecting the recipe and process of cold brew iced coffee, if anyone cares to hear about it.
I tend to shy away from coffee in favor of expresso... But I would be interested to hear more.
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@Polygeekery My standard wake-up beverage at Gencon is a Starbucks iced coffee spiked with some manner of liquor.
You know, if that counts as coffee.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery My standard wake-up beverage at Gencon is a Starbucks iced coffee spiked with some manner of liquor.
You know, if that counts as coffee.
Shirley the only liquor that goes well with coffee is baileys?
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@dangeRuss Moonshine works well. I call it a Southern Coffee.
As does Vodka. Russian Coffee.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
@dangeRuss Moonshine works well. I call it a Southern Coffee.
I'd've called it Appalachian Coffee, given the history.
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@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
@dangeRuss Moonshine works well. I call it a Southern Coffee.
I'd've called it Appalachian Coffee, given the history.
I was kind of drunk when I named it. At 9AM.
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@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
@Dreikin said in The Cooking Thread:
@Weng said in The Cooking Thread:
@dangeRuss Moonshine works well. I call it a Southern Coffee.
I'd've called it Appalachian Coffee, given the history.
I was kind of drunk when I named it. At 9AM.
[...] this here Appaloosi-- Appaloo-- Appachalian-- SOUTHERN coffee is [...]
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Irish coffee as well. (whiskey and cream)
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@Zecc And infinitely nicer than Baileys. (Bushmills or Jameson? Hmm…)
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
Does anyone here drink iced coffee?
I've tried a couple of times, basically just espresso or filter coffee poured over ice. I'd be interested in some tips
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
I have come close to perfecting the recipe and process of cold brew iced coffee, if anyone cares to hear about it.
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@Zecc said in The Cooking Thread:
Irish coffee
Pour coffee on eggnog (the real stuff alcoholic yellow stuff) ...
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@dkf said in The Cooking Thread:
@Zecc And infinitely nicer than Baileys. (Bushmills or Jameson? Hmm…)
Isn't Bailey's just whiskey and cream?
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So, on to the iced coffee procedure.
The wife used to stop daily at Starbucks for iced coffee. This is not only expensive, but time consuming, and they tend to add way more dairy and sweetener than she wants, even if you tell them to go light.
So, the first iteration was to brew hot coffee and chill it. This was OK. Better than Starbucks, but still had a real overwhelming bitterness to it that was not pleasant.
Next iteration was to brew really strong hot coffee and pour it over ice to get the dilution correct. I was literally filling the coffee filter with coffee and then weighing the ice in the pitcher to work it all out. This was a big improvement, but there was still room for improvement.
Next up, cold-brewing. Mix ground coffee we had on hand with water and put in the refrigerator for 24 hours based upon what I read from nitwits on the internet. Unpleasant bitterness was gone, but so was the coffee flavor. It tasted thin, and it basically made sludge that was hard to separate from the coffee we wanted and it was all a huge hassle.
Next iteration, the wife bought some Grady's iced coffee bags that you submerge in water and leave in the fridge. Better, but the bags frequently ripped and it was almost as expensive as Starbucks on a per serving basis.
There was some other experimentation, but here is where we are now:
Coffee mix is a 4:1 ratio of coarse ground (the coarser the better for easier separation at the end) mixed with ground roasted chicory, then mix that with 9 parts of water by weight. (In case that is confusing, I use 8oz of coffee, 2 oz of chicory and mix with 90oz of water) This all gets mixed with cold tap water in a gallon Rubbermaid pitcher and left on the counter at room temperature overnight and occasionally stirred.
I have not experimented to see just how much exposure time is necessary. I believe it to be only a few hours to get maximum flavor, but I just leave it overnight and have never noticed any bad results from overextraction. I do not think it is possible at these temperatures.
The next morning I give it a final stir and put a fine sieve on top of another Rubbermaid pitcher and pour it all over. The sieve catches all of the grounds, but you will have some fines to deal with, and there is a bit of a haze on the surface. So once the grounds have drained well, rinse the first pitcher and move the sieve, grounds and all, to the first pitcher and pour everything back through the grounds slowly at the top of the heap. The grounds themselves work as a filter, and remove 90% of the sludge. Discard the grounds and let it sit and settle for 15-20 minutes.
After it has settled, I slowly pour it in to a glass serving pitcher, decanting off the clear liquid from the small amount of fines that remain. Then pour it in to a pitcher for serving. We use Luminarc pitchers for this and other things. Glass, they look nice and they are easy to clean and don't stain.
Final result is a nice strong coffee flavor that does not taste like burnt Starbucks iced coffee or like stale hot coffee that has went cold. There is enough flavor that you could probably use that as a concentrate and dilute it if you find it too strong, but we like the strong flavor and use it as-is.
@Weng may be amused that I thought of the concept of using the grounds as a filter due to my homebrewing. It is similar to the sparging done in full-grain brewing. :)
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@Polygeekery You can get reusable filter bags for that purpose. Should stand up a lot better than the single-use ones I think you tried.
Note: the products linked are not things I have tried or have any particular knowledge of - they were just the first results of a search for a type of thing I knew existed.
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@Dreikin Meh, the way I use works. I also imagine it gets better extraction because any filter bag is going to reduce the exposure of water to grounds. (That statement is basically false if one wants to get pendantic, but take me for what I mean and not what I say)
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@asdf said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
take me for what I mean and not what I say
YMBNH
No. But I should have known better. :)
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@dangeRuss said in The Cooking Thread:
@dkf said in The Cooking Thread:
@Zecc And infinitely nicer than Baileys. (Bushmills or Jameson? Hmm…)
Isn't Bailey's just whiskey and cream?
Got me there.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
This was a big improvement, but there was still room for improvement.
One of the big variables with coffee is the blending. You can just get stuff pre-blended of course, but it often helps if you get more specific than that. A good coffee merchant is invaluable for this sort of thing, and they can also do things like controlling the grind size and maybe the exact amount of roasting too. The unit cost isn't too awful as you're not getting anything pre-packaged, but it's still more expensive than a pre-blended mix just picked up off the shelf at a normal grocery store.
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@dkf I suppose I should have said that we used to get the bulk coffee from the grocery and used their grinder to process it on the coarsest setting available. Pre-ground coffee will not work. At all.
Now we buy beans from Costco and I grind them as I need them with an Oxo burr grinder. We have one that you can set to grind a specific weight and it will do so and shut off when done. I can't do 8oz at a time as the receiving container will not hold that much. So I just do it in a couple rounds.
I have no doubt that we could get better results from a boutique specialty roaster, but this works well enough for our purposes.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
I have no doubt that we could get better results from a boutique specialty roaster, but this works well enough for our purposes.
The best coffee place I know is really superb. Alas, they also know it full well and charge accordingly…
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@Zecc said in The Cooking Thread:
@dangeRuss said in The Cooking Thread:
@dkf said in The Cooking Thread:
@Zecc And infinitely nicer than Baileys. (Bushmills or Jameson? Hmm…)
Isn't Bailey's just whiskey and cream?
Got me there.
It's not just whiskey and cream. It also has a pretty large hit of sugar.
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@ScholRLEA said in The Cooking Thread:
I don't have kids, but I do have ADD,
Maybe you have kids but you just forgot.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
Does anyone here drink iced coffee?
Yeah, but it tends to be iced with ice cubes. Not sure about cold brew. Seems like both more and less work than it should be. =)
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@anotherusername said in The Cooking Thread:
It's not just whiskey and cream. It also has a pretty large hit of sugar.
And stabilizers and thickeners. :|
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
they tend to add way more dairy and sweetener than she wants, even if you tell them to go light.
Since we're talking coffee, to this point:
I make lattes and such at home. I've got an espresso maker with a frother. Nearly any bean will do when prepared right, but I do splurge on really nice beans from a local roaster.
The season being what it is, we're on to pumpkin spice lattes. If you've tried the Starbucks one, you know it's equal parts burnt shit and processed bitter pumpkin flavoring substance. Yuck.
I looked at the nutritional information. It contains ~50g of sugar. One teaspoon is 4g of sugar. So that's just over FOUR TABLESPOONS of sugar-- or a quarter cup of sugar.
This is because they're using syrup. They start with sugar and add water. Then they add shitty flavoring, which is bitter. So they add sugar. Then they add lots of salt and preservatives to keep it shelf stable. This makes it taste salty so they mask that with, you guessed it, sugar. So just to compensate for low quality ingredients, and required preservatives for shelf-stability, there's a ton of sugar in there.
I knew I could do better. So I whipped up a batch of pumpkin spice (which I'll need for pies anyways). A quarter-to-half teaspoon of this goes into a sieve. The hot coffee and hot milk is poured over that. Instant extraction. A half teaspoon of sugar is the most I've ever had to add to balance out anything bitter. So max 2g of sugar, vs. 50g.
Plus it's also about a 1/10th of the cost, if not less. =)
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@Lorne-Kates said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
Does anyone here drink iced coffee?
Yeah, but it tends to be iced with ice cubes. Not sure about cold brew. Seems like both more and less work than it should be. =)
I find that cold brew gives a much smoother flavor. To each their own though.
It really isn't much work. I use a digital scale with a tare function. Weigh out 8oz coffee, zero out, 2oz chicory, zero out, 5lbs 10oz water, stir.
Stir very occasionally, as you walk past the pitcher.
Next morning, pour through sieve in to second pitcher, drain. Rinse pitcher, move sieve, pour through grounds.
At that point it is done. In 5 minutes or so of active time, you have over a week's worth of iced coffee.
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Cooking Status:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oB0PzlJF9UHopefully I haven't developed a shellfish allergy in the last 15 years. Otherwise and are getting spoiled.
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@Yamikuronue Those sausages look like they might fall through the grate any second.
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@asdf My senpai :D We live together.
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@Lorne-Kates said in The Cooking Thread:
I knew I could do better. So I whipped up a batch of pumpkin spice (which I'll need for pies anyways). A quarter-to-half teaspoon of this goes into a sieve. The hot coffee and hot milk is poured over that. Instant extraction. A half teaspoon of sugar is the most I've ever had to add to balance out anything bitter. So max 2g of sugar, vs. 50g.
What do you mean whipped up a bunch of pumpkin spice?
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
In 5 minutes or so of active time, you have over a week's worth of iced coffee.
I'll give it a try.
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@dangeRuss said in The Cooking Thread:
What do you mean whipped up a bunch of pumpkin spice?
8 tablespoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoon ground ginger
2 tablespoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoon ground allspiceFresh ground is best for all of the above. Adjust rations to suit your taste.
After everything is ground, put it in a mason jar (I use a 250ml for the above), shake. You now have pumpkin spice.