Cooking

Something that you can work through slowly to upgrade cooking skills, if that makes sense.

Preferably for Indian food…

A rather standard veg fajita mix served with oven fries coated in an excessive amount of homemade taco seasoning. At the last prep minute I decided to slice up a smoked sausage and crisp it up before adding the veggies to cook. A little queso fresca on top.

We are adding this to the permanent menu.

Cost per person: $2.20 Can you order this anywhere? No place serves oven fries but there are Mexican places that have French fries they could dust with some seasoning before topping with fajita veg.

What do you do when you have basil that needs trimming every day and you have already dried enough to last the next year? You bake some bread and make Panzanella.

Cost per person: $3 because red and yellow bell peppers are expensive.

Too mustardy but still very delicious.

I finally got around to jamming and canning the black raspberries that grow near me.

Enough for 3 breakfasts in the photo.

I just ate the 4th.

Add a fried or boiled egg and coffee to complete.

Sorta followed this recipe: https://youtu.be/JYnyCuJV9UQ

Store bought ramen, shin black beef bone broth. Marinaded the ramen eggs over night! It's easier than I feared!

Tuesday Night Special:

• Korean Style Beef Short Ribs, Grilled over Charcoal
• Kimchi (store bought)
• Oven Roasted Cauliflower
• Cucumber in Seasoned Rice Vinegar
• White Rice (Not pictured)

Pan-fried 1kg turkey breast chunks, set aside. In the same pan, cooked shallots, garlic, fresh ginger, fresh turmeric, lemongrass, galangal, coriander seeds, lime leaves. Stirred in 50g panang curry paste and 500ml coconut milk.

Simmered 10 min, then added turkey back in with some carrot matchsticks. Turned off the heat, finished with chopped red chilli, coriander leaves, spring onions.

Served with jasmine rice.

Is it a taco? fajita? or quesadilla? You decide.

This is another forgiving non-recipe recipe, make it how you like it. I’ve made it before with beef and fish (tilapia) and it’s been in my family’s meal rotation for a few years now. Yum! Serves 2 kids or 1 adult.

Sometimes I end up with the weirdest one offs of meat like pre cooked burger patties for free. Fried rice is the perfect way to use them up and clear out any veg scraps too.

This is the time added fresh ginger. I planted some and now have a supply of fresh ginger to use without paying a fortune.

Eggs free from the yard.

Cost per person: maybe $1

Recently got an immersion heater and vacuum packer and I've been experimenting with lots of sous-vide cooking. This 'roast' beef (gently cooked for 24 hours then finished on a hot griddle) was great, so smooth and rare with still a lovely browned crust.

…with carrots, mushrooms and onions and marinated in sake before cooking. Served over plain rice. Delicious even though the mushrooms got stuck under the skin.

Apples were perfect. Pork chops lacked grill marks. Need to figure out how to get grill marks without drying out the meat.

The packet of sesame/pumpkin seeds and craisins was free. Local food bank has a grab what you can kale salad mix and this packet was in each one. We wanted a day to see what wasn't taken and then distributed them to local animal people.

Pork chops were marinated in a mix of homemade Emeril BAM, olive oil, cider vinegar and salt.

Was it tasty? Definitely. Cost per person: $4.25

It's nice living near wild black raspberry bushes! I foraged these wild black raspberries from my yard and made pancakes from scratch, delicious.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.myserv.one/post/19433619

ATK’s recipe calls for 8 bone-in chicken thighs, I used drumsticks because that’s what I had. I used 2 bay leaves instead of 4 because the ones I have were big (LAXMI brand from India). Instead of using 3/4 cup cider vinegar, I used fresh squeezed calamansi and 1/2 of a lemon to make 3/4 cup.

Traditionally, Filipino chicken adobo requires Datu Puti® vinegar and Silver Swan® soy sauce. At least that’s what my grandmother used to tell us. I used Kikkoman because of its lighter and slightly sweet flavor. Also, that’s what I grew up with.

Depending on what region you explore in the Philippines and which families you meet, there’s always a variation of that Filipino chicken adobo. My aunt makes it with chicken feet for the collagen and my uncle adds muscovado sugar when he makes adobong baboy.

Unlike my grandmother, ATK’s recipe is very forgiving. Does your family have a special way of making the national dish of the Philippines?

Recipe Source: America’s Test Kitchen 20th Anniversary TV Show Cookbook, page 130

Home grown eggs and bell pepper. Cost per person: $1.80

Recipe. Photo just before the bread drank in all the yummy broth. Mines not vegan because I use regular parmesan.

Provolone and cheddar.

Potatoes were half price. Squash from garden. Rye bread was free.

Cost per person: $1.50 Cost of you paid retail for ingredients: $3

Usually when I make this recipe, I use 1/2 dried cranberries and 1/2 dried currants. Buuuut I'm all out of currants. ☹️ So 1/2 cranberries, 1/2 shredded coconut it is!

Bake 30 minutes, rotate left to right, front to back. Bake 20 minutes. Top with more shredded coconut. Bake 10 minutes.

Still cooling so I haven't sliced it yet.

Base recipe: Blackcurrant banana bread:

INGREDIENTS:

3 ripe bananas

60g melted butter (1/4 cup or 1/2 a stick)

150g sugar (2/3 cup)

200g unbleached flour (1 1/4 cups)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon baking soda

150g of fresh or frozen blackcurrants (without defreezing before use) (1 1/2 cups)

PREPARATION:

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C)

Mash the bananas in a bowl

Add the egg and butter

Put all the dry ingredients together into a fine mesh sieve or sifter and sift into the bowl

Mix well with a wooden spoon

Bake in a buttered loaf pan until a toothpick stuck into the bread comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes.

Slice and serve.

"Welcome to LW Cooking, a community for discussing all things related to food and cooking!"

That's the first sentence of the side bar. "all things food related" means more than just cooking.

Cooked a meal? Post it.
Ate a meal? Post it.
Question about a cooking process? Post it. Put some meats and cheese on a tray and didn't apply any heat? Post it.
Heated up somethig and put it in a bowl? Post it. But be prepared to be roasted.
Got a favorite set of plates no one cares about? Post it.
Made a new bowl on a lathe that you intend to eat out of? Post it.
Looking for sugar free honey replacements that are all natural, organic, fair trade, harvested by Michelin rated chefs and are SNAP or WIC eligible? Post it.

Reporting posts that are on topic for being off topic will result in no moderation.

Cowbell was an amazing hidden gem in New Orleans that closed temporarily after COVID then re-opened for a brief time before closing permanently after Hurricane Ida.

I never had the beef burgers, but the veggie burger was hands down the best veggie burger I've ever had. Even the pickiest vegetarians I've ever known agreed it was incredible. This is the only image I could find online, and it really doesn't do it justice: Cowbell's Harvest Burger

I've attempted to replicate it on my own several times over the last few years, and this is probably the closest I've gotten so far. Still not anywhere near the original but it was pretty amazing.

Cowbell's original ingredients I'm aware of: Red beans, brown rice, sweet potato, bell peppers, other seasonal vegetables, sweet soy sauce, and panko bread crumbs

This attempt:

• Batch of red beans cooked in 2 tbsp Better than bullion vegetable stock

• 1 cup Quinoa

• 2 sweet potatoes chopped and roasted

• 1 red onion chopped and sauteed

• Vegetables I had on hand (bell peppers, beets, artichoke hearts) sauteed with the onion

• Inch of fresh ginger chopped and sauteed with onion and vegetables ~5 mins

•Flaxseed egg substitute (1 tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 tbsp water)

•Stir everything together and cool/refrigerate for at least 30 mins

•Once cooled, briefly pulse in food processor

•Spoon mixture onto sheet of parchment paper and use panko breadcrumbs to form patties

•Cook on parchment paper at 375°F for 10 minutes. Flip and continue cooking for additional 5-10 minutes

Top with whatever you like but avocado is always a great choice

A small glass of tea made with fluid gels. An interesting effect of gels is that when you shear them into small pieces they want to hold back into a gel structure but at the same time they take on a delicate fluid like state. This recipe takes advantage of this effect by pushing this effect to its limit: when it is at rest the two gels are independent and held up against each other with no barrier in the glass. They are strong enough that lifting the glass will not ruin the effect. However, tilting the glass will and they will flow like a liquid.

Additionally this is a vegan recipe as the gel is based on gellan, a gelling agent derived from sphingomonas elodea, a bacteria derived from lily pond water.

One side dyed in the picture to show the effect but here is another picture of another preparation:

This is 2 gels in the same glass held against each other. Think of the

The layers in that stay separated. This follows the same concept. But in the tea glass instead of using colors to differentiate the layers the layers are differentiated by temperature.

This results in a small glass of tea where you have both hot tea and iced tea. When you drink it both sensations hit your tongue and mouth at the same time. It’s quite confusing and very interesting

This recipe was created by chris young, who was working for Heston blumenthal at the fat duck.

It is labor intensive and takes some effort but if you want to surprise your guests this 100% will do it.

Hot and iced tea:
Tea infusion: 1.8kg low calcium water: the water should have between 100-400 ppm calcium. Too much and the gel will be lumpy. Too little and it will not set. I use Evian, which is about 80ppm, and add 36mg calcium chloride. You will use calcium chloride later so this isn’t a waste. You don’t need to measure super precisely because this just brings you up to the lower limit of 100ppm for the 1.8kg (however you may want to make much less)
40g tea
Cold infuse the tea in the water - this part is easy. Put the tea leaves in the water and wait. Infuse for at least one hour but not too long. Taste and make sure bitter notes aren’t infusing. 1 hour is often enough.
Strain the mixture. - strain it through a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter. You want it super clear.

Now comes the more difficult part

Hot tea
Part A:
860g tea infusion
80g ultrafine sugar (caster, superfine, bakers sugar) 0.6g gellan F 0.6g sodium citrate

Part b:
0.25g calcium chloride
1g malic acid
5g tea infusion

Prepare ice bath

Bring tea infusion to a simmer. Dry blend part A. Whisk in until dissolved. Mix part B. Once part A is simmering remove from heat, add part b, whisk in, place over ice bath, continue whisking as long as you can, ideally until cool. If you have an automated stirrer that’s the best.

Refrigerate 24 hours then pass through a very fine sieve (I use a 250um lab sieve) then bottle in a squirt bottle (like a condiment bottle).

Cold tea:
Part A:
860g tea infusion
80g ultrafine sugar (caster, superfine, bakers sugar) 0.6g gellan F 0.6g sodium citrate

Part b:
0.25g calcium chloride
3.5g malic acid
5g tea infusion

Prepare ice bath

Do the same exact preparation.

To serve:

Prepare the hot tea: you can either put it in a water bath if you have a sous vide at 162F, or you can microwave it until it’s hot enough, or you can put it in simmering water, etc. the first is the easiest but obviously you need the equipment. The microwave works in a pinch, just shake it up, taste test, go in small increments to make sure you’re not serving lava.

For the glass you need a divider. I use aluminum foil formed to the glass. This doesn’t give the cleanest line as shown in the dyed preparation. In the hot/cold one it doesn’t really matter. In chris youngs video where he does this with coffee he does reveal that he simply made a divider with more gellan to fit the glass. Simple. He doesn’t reveal the recipe though, nor the adaptations to make it work with coffee (there’s also a mulled wine version they served at least once at the fat duck). Youtubers always assume their audience is dumb or maybe he needs hestons permission to release the recipe, I dunno.

Once you have the hot heated up and the divider you’re ready to go. There’s a technique to this but it’s not terribly hard. Basically pour each side evenly then pull the divider out smoothly and as straight up as possible. Try to make the divider as thin as possible. From here serve as quickly as possible because the hot and cold sides will cool and heat each other. Even a few minutes will have you just serving a weird thick glass of tea.

But if you get it right you serve a glass of tea that look almost entirely normal. There is a slight difference in each side, one is slightly darker, but it is very subtle. I specifically use a glass with a handle because if you grab the glass it totally gives it away.