So what have you cooked lately? (Year three!)

I have never cooked for more than four people. It seems daunting really.

Didn't cook today (not yet anyway), but I did buy... well, the other week: BBC Good Food. I tried to find a thread on cook books/mags but in vain. Anyone better at finding the thread?

When I'm cooking for loads of people I try to minimise effort on the day. I made pudding yesterday so I just need to sugar and blowtorch the top today. I'm putting the lamb on at lunchtime - I'm stewing it slowly in red wine, stock, rosemary and onions, to minimise work-intensiveness. All I'll need to do when I get in from work is put veggies in the stew and do the starter, which involves steaming mussels and not a lot else (serving bread with first two courses as well so no effort there). I think the most important thing when cooking for loads of people is to have pots big enough for the job. This sounds stupid but if you're short of capacity in pans everything takes longer and is more risky/precarious.

There again, if I had a toddler in the house and another on the way, I dare say I wouldn't be inviting seven people round for dinner!

For cook books/mags, try putting "recipe" in the search function - it brings up some useful stuff.

cas, i'm jealous. bayside is so close to so much amazing shopping/eating.

I made egg noodles on Saturday in order to make beef and noodles with the leftover pot roast from earlier in the week. After watching the Julia Child DVDs (highly recommended!), I tried her technique of bashing the dough out with my rolling pin. MY GOD THAT IS FUN!!! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Now, I want a cleaver.

Roast chicken last night with a big skillet of cornbread.

Another tip for cooking for large groups - make stuff that is forgiving - things that can sit on the stove/in the oven for awhile without suffering.

You're kidding me, right? What is the amazing shopping around here? There are some new restaurants opening up that are much nicer* than what was around before, but...

Really, if there are localish places I need to go to, I want to know!

Take your time answering because I'm about to spend 90 minutes or so travelling to meet up with a friend in the East Village.

I think I will be making pizzas soon.

* By "nicer" I mean "Portlandish", affordable and tasty and pleasant to be in, rather than "fancy/expensive".

i'm obsessed with asian food, especially korean, so that colors my feelings towards the area that you're in. bayside is just a short bus ride from murray hill, which along with the edge of flushing is basically the queens koreatown. then you've got chinatown, the main st/prince st area of flushing, which gradually turns into a strip of indian/pakistani stores and small cafes/sweet shops. but i just remembered something - you're vegetarian, aren't you? that knocks a lot of my recommendations out of the water.

i know this is a cooking thread but until i have time to go buy good seafood, lauren: i need recs for someplace w/ really good ceviche cause i've been thinking about it all day and must go get some soon!

i have a recipe for a shrimp and crab ceviche that i've been putting off since november-ish. must make soon! i've never done it before but i successfully grilled salmon last night so i'm feeling better about my seafood cooking skills.

i like the shrimp ceviche and the mixed ceviche at pio pio riko, which is on manhattan ave at huron (i think) in greenpoint. that's the only place i've had it recently, but i'll try to think of a few more places.

Yeah I was gonna say, Korean food just doesn't fly by me. Although there is a Korean place in PDX that is veggie-friendly (the owner's sister is veggie). I don't remember Indian/Pakistani stores out there though!

you've got patel brothers, subzi mandi, and various other smaller operations. right in the middle of them is buddha bodai, a vegetarian asian restaurant with a very good reputation.

Oooo.

re: ceviche upthread, i like chimu on union right by the bqe (peruvian). i want to try the salvadoran place on grand st, bahia, which is supposedly good.

someone talk to me about soft shell crabs please, how do i cook them?

I made Alba recipe for a curried scrambled eggs with coriander on toast thing at the weekend. It's been so long I forgot how goooooood it is.

Alba's, I mean.

I don't know how soft shell crabs are generally cooked, but they're often used in bouillabaisse? They'd be cooked in stock, and then eaten as part of the stew. One time I had bouillabaisse and they used soft shell crabs to flavour the stock, and then took them out and ate them as a cook's treat. This was a very good idea.

Rogue question mark in first sentence.

Tomato curry with shrimps. Ate it by myself... a dish for four. heh

I need to find an Indian food store around here. Ideally not in Jackson Heights.

can you get to one of the big places (like patel brothers) on main street in flushing? that might be your best bet, and the selection is certainly outstanding.

last night: green tea noodles in broth, boiled pork/leek dumplings, and cucumber kimchee. none of it homemade, but stuff had to be boiled so i'm counting that as cooking.

Oh man I ate an entire eggplant last night. I cut it up into medallions and baked them with some oil. I served them covered in seasoned stewed tomatoes and cheese.

oh godddd how i love cucumber kimchee!

me too. i've been buying it in 3lb bags in flushing.

SS crabs: snip off their faces, dredge them in peppered flour, deep-fry them.

snip off their faces

i bet they don't like that

i need to start going to flushing more often i guess!

i'll let you know next time i go. probably not for a while, though, since we just did a big shop.

Looks like I'll be going to Patel Bros on Monday. Meanwhile I made a little cinnamon swirl breakfast bread thing. Very calm and cinnamony and nice, not quite the visual spectacle I was at first imagining. Well, I don't have my cookbooks with me.

Chocolate ice cream (which I can't try since it has raw egg yolks inside BOO!). I don't know if the custard was done properly, probably not thick enough. How long should it take? Should it be really thick or still a bit runny? :-(

This lunch time: potato puree (mashed potatoes), multi-coloured cauliflower (with curry sauce) and some meat (haven't decided on that yet).

It should be thick enough so that when you lift the wooden spoon out of the pan, you can draw a line on the back with your finger and it stays clearly visible. I always feel like it should be thicker (like packet custard thick) but the spoon/line test always works for me.

as I suspected, probably not thick enough but my husband thought it was ace anyway. hurrah!

Patel Bros was nice. I made some chickpea flour pancakes. Yum.

Pasta with avocado/green asparagus/cheese&cream sauce/basil/garlic/lemon and olive oil.

It was DA YUM

Now that the tomatoes are coming in like crazy, I've made my first blender full of gazpacho (with cukes from my parents' garden). SO GOOD. This was a fairly light-looking batch, with half red and and half yellow tomatoes. If I find a good looking yellow bell pepper, I'll make a batch with only Yellow Brandywines.

I made it using the Gourmet Cookbook recipe, roasting the tomatoes and peppers first. Really intense flavors.

gaby's is great!

oops, i meant to post that to the other thread. tomatoes are great, too.

They certainly are.

Hello all, I've been absent due to movng house, and spent a couple of weeks cooking on a little camping stove in my otherwise empty kitchen. The novelty wore off fairly rapidly. But now I actually have an oven again, so it was christened with a nice roast chicken, and why not? So on the home front I have cooked very little lately, unless you count toast and marmite.

Professionally, however, I was quite pleased with the palta reina I knocked out as a special last week, half an avocado scraped out and mixed with chopped prawns and coriander (quite a rough, big chop to contrast with the avocado smoothing right out), seasoned and then dressed with a smidge of stock from the shells of the prawns, a vague mention in passing of oil and a ferocious amount of lime juice, served piled all back into the shell because as we're a bistro in the north we're still stuck somewhere in the mid-seventies (the new menu has beef stroganoff on, for fuck's sake). Yum.

I recently made *fresh* tomato sauce. I might stick with this and not use tinned tomatos anymore. ;-)

Yesterday evening: quick banana ice cream. A bit of a risk as I mixed cream 'n' half-skimmed milk (with the bananas and sugar). We'll see tonight if it's any good. I can eat it as well as it doesn't contain raw eggs/yolks. Hurrah!

This lunch time: probably pasta/tuna/cheese bake or something. :-D

Also made (for DH and I) courgette/toasted flaked almonds/pasta (with basil/garlic/lemon/cheese and olive oil).

nathalie - non-egg Ice cream recipe I've been using:
2 cups double cream
3/4 cup of caster sugar

whip the sugar gradually into the cream, then add:
1/4 cup single cream
1/4 cup jersey milk

whisk some more.

now mix in some vanilla essence and a sprinkle of milk powder (this increases the fat content without increasing the liquid volume- this gives you a ....chewier ice-cream)

put all this into the ice cream maker and just before it's completely frozen add flavours of yr choice (I've been using a lot of dulce de leche to good effect)

Ooh, I'm definitely gonna try that!

Made a chocolate cake last night.

Yesterday and tonight: Strawberry marmelade. (It's currently *resting*.) This is my first attempt at making a marmelade. I'm a bit paranoid as the writers (of the recipe book) are extremely strict about using non-blemished fruit. That said, I hope this work, cause then up is an apple marmelade. Might try this tonight as well. And later on I will atempt a banana marmelade.

I also made a meatloaf (from a children recipe book) with some carrots in it. As a side dish a veggie sauce and boiled potatos in the skin.

Hmm. I think as long as you cut out the bad bits, you're fine. Surely the point of making jam is (or was in ye olden tymes) that you can use up your about-to-rot glut?

Cauliflower zucchini (?) chick peas curry. Very VERY good. Even if I forgot to add a bit of yoghurt.

gosh, i've been really delinquent again lately. i've boiled dumplings and made salads and the like, but nothing much beyond that. i did some stuff while we were in the country for the 4th of july weekend, but it wasn't very complicated - mainly just grilling fresh vegetables and fish. tonight we're having flat iron steak (also known as top blade steak), which i just threw into a marinade of soy sauce, molasses, key lime juice, garlic, oil, and rice vinegar. i've never tried this cut before, but the butcher (a dead ringer for 50 cent!) sold me on it.

http://therealdjwreck.com/catalog/images/WRECK-REALBEEF-FRONT-72.jpg

HA!

Baked rice (with mushrooms, carrots, onion, spring onion, bell pepper, ham and egg).

It cooled down a bit outside, so roasted a chicken for dinner tonight. I've been really uninspired about cooking lately. I did make a weird but tasty breakfast this morning though of leftover roast pork cut into medium dice and pan-fried until crispy, then added some rough chopped roma tomatoes while I made up two small french omelets. Squeezed a lime over the pork/tomatoes, and topped the omelets with the mixture.

Flat cake (see other thread). :-(

Gah, I am just not cooking these days. Pizza is about it for things that need a hot oven, otherwise it's "let's just chop something up and call it a salad". I am being a cooking enabler though - an officemate needed inspiration for some lamb so I brought her tagine spices and home-preserved lemons and the loan of a Moroccan cookbook.