What's cooking? part 4

Also, soda bread needs more salt.

Would mess up your blade if you sliced it in the pot.

Abbott, yr bean additions sound delicious.

SOMEONE needs to go eat in Europe if someone cares so much.

I cooked up all the veg in the bacon grease before adding them top the beans (my dad used to praise his father's cooking of food in bacon grease, but refused to do it for us bcz his dad died of a heart attack – I'm sure its fine if you only do it a few times a year). I doubt the beans'll be gross, but I just hope I don't eat them & think "man, I wish these were as flavorless as my mom's."

Those are the perfect ingreds for beans, Abbott! You can't go wrong. Will you be eating these with stove top-scorched flour tortillas, perchance?

Probably gonna make some cornbread & serve 'em over that.

I go outside every morning to my Anaheim chile plants and say "come on, come ONNNN".

Near as I can tell, Anaheims are close to Hatch chilies, if not the same thing.

Anaheims are not as spicy as some Hatch chiles (which come in a variety of spiciness but around here you can pretty much only get the spicy ones). My old anatomy & physiology prof constantly associated them with death and murder: "...if you want to poison someone, you know, feed them the chile from Hatch." The Hatch chile, I swear, makes me kind of high in a weird way! The Hatch chile fest, otoh, is kind of a disappointment.

Anaheims are tasty, too, though. I have given up pretty much on using green bell peppers, & I always use Anaheims when they're called for. They have such a tasty flavor!

They really do. I buy a few pounds fresh every now and then and char them under the broiler for a batch of green. Last time I did them on the grill, but I didn't preheat it long enough, and it took so long for the chilies to get charred, they were nearly dried out. The juices are too important to lose!

Around here in the fall, they have people outside every grocery store who will roast them for you in this big rotisserie grill.

laurel i'm surprised he objected to the slicing and not to the POT you added! har har

he's awfully objecty for someone who is having food cooked just for him. maybe that's why you added the pot?

dudes, i just made macarons! lemon macarons with raspberry white chocolate ganache! they look pretty cute! but i don't have a camera so you will just have to believe me on this one.

Were they a pain to make?

much less of a pain than I expected - this video made it all seem quite... doable, so i found the relevant proportions from some blog or other and did what the woman in the video had done. (it helped that i have a handheld electric whisk thing: i would not have wanted to whip the meringue by hand)

for the filling all i did was mash and sieve some raspberries and then fold the puree into a bar's worth of melted white chocolate. and add red food colouring because it was an offputting lilac colour. and then put it in the fridge and feel sure it would never set and would taste disgusting (tbh i do think the white-chocolateness of it is kind of cloying/muddy).

Tonight: lamb burgers with curry and scallions, layered on a roll with cucumber ribbons and feta sauce with parsley. Served with orzo and wilted spinach dressed with lemon juice and crumbled feta. Greek night!

Last night I attempted something I do often: to replicate a dish I've had out somewhere that I really liked. A lunch place by my work does this amazing pasta: linguine with tuna, fried breadcrumbs, capers, garlic and lemon. It was so vibrant with the taste of garlic and lemon and saltiness.

I made my own last night, sans the crumbs. And it was majorly disappointing :/ I'm not sure what I did wrong, though I think I didn't add anywhere near enough grated lemon rind for one thing. It just tasted so flat!

Hate it when that happens.

What is a recipe that uses a LOT of lettuce? We have lettuce coming out our ears from our garden, and getting a little tired of green salads. Anybody tried stir-fried lettuce or lettuce soup?

Lettuce soup works.

butter, onion, garlic, 250g lettuce leaves + stalk, a tablespoon of plain flour, litre chicken stock/water, double cream, egg yolk, chervil/parsley (this is going to be pretty similar to the cress one upthread btw)

cook the onion and garlic, stir in the slice up lettuce, mix round for a minute, add the flour. cook for another minute, add stock/water. simmer for five mins. Puree soup, whisk egg yolk n cream together, add to soup, stir heat, eat.

i bought a huge amount of lettuce for $1 today. and way way too much basil and a couple eggplants. i think i'm gonna make this: http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/9078

I want that.

Instead baked potato, sausages and beans. Hmm. Actually I want that as well. But that stir fry looks good.

Made a nice haricot bean and tarragon soup the other day, had with some left over pork and anchovy meatballs and a mint, basil, lettuce salad with dressing just lemon juice, s + p, and olive oil. It was great.

the eggplant thing was really good but if you follow the instructions the eggplants and onions won't cook through (or maybe my "bite size" is larger than average). i had to turn the heat down and let everything steam for a few minutes before adding the vinegar and soy sauce. and i used rice vinegar.

i mean turn the heat down and cover the pot

i wanna make some roasted red potatoes with rosemary but it's 90º out

toaster oven?

I think I'm gonna try that eggplant recipe why because it looks delicious

I made the Cooks' Illus potato salad again today, first time this summer, and I can't stop stealing spoonsful out of the bowl.

my friend came over, sliced up a bunch of rhubarb real thin, then fried it in butter, then added maple syrup, then poured the whole thing over some vanilla ice cream.

that, my friends, is "what's cooking."

stewed rhubarb was one of my favourite foods as a kid - on ice cream, on cereal, or just on its own.

today made green papaya salad w/ mint, thai basil, pea shoots and also pad thai
then
pea and pancetta risotto for dinner

also:
brownies

i made some kind of terrible concoction of vegetables w/ mirin, hoisin, garlic, sesame seeds, soy sauce and seitan. it was bad. i even screwed up boiling the damn pasta.

so now i'm having crumpets instead.

Nothing worse than a meal totally going rougue on one, I hate that!

it happens to me quite a bit :/

U should try that sausage and red lentil soup thingy I posted on FB, it was quite nice.

I just just made some thai style stir fried water spinach and it's pretty good although it tastes a little chinese-ish because I used chinese fermented soybean paste instead of thai salted soybean paste. think I'm gonna go down to the thai market today or tomorrow and try to find some thai soybean paste.

stir fried water spinach?

also known as morning glory

http://www.realthairecipes.com/recipes/stir-fried-water-spinach/

that looks delicious!

it is! I think I like it better than real spinach because the taste is a bit lighter but more importantly the stalks have better mouthfeel - they kind of 'crunch' in your mouth without being too tough

man that's why i have been LOVING pea shoots lately
i put them in everything -- noodles, soup, salads

I really don't like cooked spinach but I love the shit out of random stir-fried asian greens.

moving to a kitchen with a GAS STOVE soon! so psyched!!

i am going to attempt some kind of sesame kale salad today. blanch/quickly steam the kale to soften a little... maybe soy, sesame oil, chili flakes, dried seaweed flakes?

bought some locally grown long beans, made a stir fry roughly following this recipe:

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1618,151176-240200,00.html

(didn't use pork, subbed sriracha for chiles.) very very good but I think I cooked the beans for too long, luckily I have half a bag left with which to refine my technique

Last night - chicken cooked in white wine, garlic and rosemary. + french beans and for dessert a fantastic orange and almond cake that I'd made earlier in the day.

dry fried beans are one of my fav things ever at chinese restaurants

made some awesome black beans with sauteed onion, roasted garlic, roasted jalapeno, cumin, chili powder, simmered w/ a touch of water for a few min.

and a few squirts of lime juice for pep

Pea soup, then roast chicken in an Italian way - put two whole lemons in a chicken, that you've salted and peppered, then close it up with some cocktail sticks or a skewer or whatever, truss the feet lightly together - and it expands like a balloon in the oven and you get an incredible flavour.

Wanted to use Sicilian lemons, which are not tart in the slightest (tho you might purse your lips slightly as you pay for them thru clenched fist. Anyway, there weren't any, so I got the normal ones.

Raspberry and almond tart for pudding.