What's cooking? part 4

I made the ricotta spread. It tasted fine, more sweet than savory but quite nice. I packed it with ice packs and cold packs and bundled it into an insulated bag and then went to do some stuff on my way to the dinner.

5 hours later, the spread was still completely cold but the lemon juice (at least I assume that's the culprit) had turned the cheese curds completely to liquid, useless for eating with my crackers. So I carried the damn stuff all over Brooklyn for nothing. Will probably flush it away tonight.

Otoh I made my fool-proof chix & bean & tomato soup on Sat and it is predictably yum.

I started using pre-peeled garlic because the quality of the unpeeled at my grocery store was so terrible for a while - you can see the peeled stuff, so I figured if it turned out to be not so great, at least I knew it wasn't dried out and/or moldy like the unpeeled - and I've pretty much kept using it since. It's probably not practical if you're going to keep it around for a long time, but I'll keep buying it at least until the spring garlic is available here.

Maybe there's a little bit of flavor loss, but supermarket varieties of garlic tend to be so mild anyway. It's definitely not the level of loss you get from pre-chopped onion or that kind of thing.

yeah that's the other thing - the quality of unpeeled is pretty terrible, lots of times i'll discover green shoots in the cloves which then have to be cut out. i wonder how well it freezes?? they sell pint containers of peeled stuff where i shop, but i don't know how fast i'd use that much.

hmmm... i've steered away from buying it, but the last 2 heads of garlic i bought either sprouted within 2 days or were dried/moldy and i am getting frustrated. although cheap, i still don't like throwing my money away.

You can always roast the excess. I assume garlic freezes fine, though - I know ramp bulbs do.

The pint containers are the ones I've been buying - it seems like a lot, but I also find myself using one or two cloves of garlic in a lot of things where I might not bother if I had to peel them.

^^ EXACTLY - sometimes i find myself cheating and just using garlic powder bc the effort of peeling it is too much.

roasting the excess is a brilliant idea.

it takes about 15 seconds max to peel a clove of garlic? I normally take my time cooking, w/ music &c., but I'm not too fussed about not being able to get this space age pre-peeled shit. plus popping garlic open is p good fun as prep goes. yr going to have to do the gentle-lean-onto-the-side-of-the-knife & chop/grind anyway.

to conclude, pre-peeled garlic seems gratuitous from a prep stand point

i don't mind peeling garlic at all, i just mind it going bad on me (or being bad when i buy it because i'm unable to tell through the skin/husk/whatever that is).

i never used to mind it, but when the cloves are so small that i have to use 8-10 every time, it gets to be annoying.

Prepeeled garlic is a gift from providence that you should never be ashamed to use

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/8marta.jpg

When I'm buying garlic I look for heads with big ol' developed cloves, like 38DD garlic.

I've thought about getting one of these, but I'm sort of like Alton Brown about gadgets that only have one function. But it does look like a time saver.

I've always sneered @ pre-peeled garlic but I've had terrible luck buying whole cloves lately too, even the good-looking ones will open up brown & funky or break down into 100 tiny impossible-to-slice pieces.

whole heads/tiny cloves I mean

try cruching them first it is heaps easier

that's right brodie! I've had some outstanding cloves lately guys, a real pleasure to worth with.

ATTN: LA LECHERA

hey lady, i know you're a beets fan from way back, thought you might like this recipe: http://guiltykitchen.com/2010/03/17/dijon-rosemary-chicken-and-roasted-beet-salad-with-horseradish-cream/

a veganized version is currently cooking; will report back on its success or failure

it was totally delish!!

Damn! That sounds good! I don't like cream much -- what did you sub? Could I leave it out?

i used a vegan sour cream - but that dressing makes TONS so you could heasily halve it and it would make plenty for two ppl. i didn't use buttermilk either - i used soymilk and curdled it with apple cider and lemon juice.

maybe use more yoghurt instead?

oh, i also made a veganized version of the chicken on that same page and it was just... goddamn. so good.

Oh you know what? I'll just make the beet part -- I don't really like chicken or cream that much anyway. I might steal the idea of using a dijon dressing, the heat from the beets to melt the goat cheese, and then using that as a quasi-sauce. I bet that would taste good with a side of whitefish seasoned with paprika/lemon. I'm not very keen on creamy foods, but slightly melted goat cheese is a-ok with me for some reason. Feta, even. (*not* on top of the fish, haha)

Does anyone have a feta preference? My grocery has French, Bulgarian double cream, Greek, and domestic. I usually buy what's on sale, but I love the French because it's so smooth and not as one-note salty as the domestic.

the dressing is essentially an eggless mayonnaise, so it is super creamy. this was my first time roasting beets! so good! they got super caramelised and were just so much better than i anticipated. great with the avocado too.

Roasted beets are godly.

i have frequently done roasted beets + goat cheese + balsamic-dijon dressing drizzled over on top of mixed greens. yummm.

i actually made this lemon-feta-herb fish dish once that was pretty tasty (re fish + feta)
xpost

i remember i drastically cut down the amt of mayo because i hate mayo. i really just used it as a binding agent.

I was always sort of indifferent to beets but my wife loves them so I've come around. I usually end up roasting beets and mixing them with warm lentils, goat cheese, bacon, mustard vinaigrette, and some combination of roasted carrots and/or brussels sprouts.

i haven't cooked in so long :(

i maade dutch picelets it was so good

i know it was mentioned somewhere on this thread before but how do i successfully roast these peeled garlic cloves? i was thinking about just wrapping them in foil and roasting @ 400 F for maybe 30mins, but i really have no idea.

Made quinoa for first time ever today! Wouldn't say it's a masterpiece of anything but it's tasty and mixed with many many vegetables...

I'm going to be healthy this summer if it kills me.

i know it was mentioned somewhere on this thread before but how do i successfully roast these peeled garlic cloves? i was thinking about just wrapping them in foil and roasting @ 400 F for maybe 30mins, but i really have no idea.

Yep, that'll do it. Cooking time may vary depending on how roasted you like them, and a little oil helps make sure they cook evenly, but you've got it. And if you want to cook them at the same time as something else, you can roast them at just about any temperature, it'll just affect how long they take.

I bought a kiwano today on the reasoning that if a fruit terrifies you, it is worthy of purchase.

I am thinking of cutting it up with some strawberries & using it in a Pimm's cup.

thanks, bill!

was gonna make mashed potato with roasted garlic and roasted asparagus, but i sat in the sun and ate way too much homemade hummus and pesto and bread, followed by an it's-it, so i don't think i need a heavy dinner now.

Is phở too much of a bother to make at home? Anyone done it before?
I just discovered I am about two miles away from a giant supermarket sized Asian grocery and now I am feeling a head rush of power! Real Thai eggplants for me!

Most of the work with pho is making the stock, and shortcuts like canned/boxed American beef stock will definitely show. (I have some canned Vietnamese pho stock, I've just never gotten round to using it. That giant Asian grocery might have it, though - when I picked it up, I thought "you know, even if this isn't as good as pho made from scratch, it's probably a lot better than no pho at all," and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than making the stock from scratch. So that logic may work for you too.) I think a lot of people skimp on the stock because if we make stock at all, we think of it as something practical, utilitarian, economical - but making pho stock if you don't have access to a real butcher or a really comprehensive meat counter probably means spending $4-9 per pound on the cuts you need. Oxtail or shank, things like that - marrow might be cheaper but has too much fat and not enough collagen, and collagen-heavy cuts are hard to find in most stores now. Your Asian grocery might solve that problem too, though.

Anyway - because the stock is so important, I'll add what I would add for any talk about beef stock, which is that you really want to let it simmer (or not-quite-simmer, even) for a long, long time. At least all day. All weekend wouldn't kill you. Just the meat - any other flavorings can go in in the last hour or two for vegetables, maybe ~30 minutes for spices. You just want to convert as much of that collagen to gelatin as you can. If you pull the meat out of your stock and it still tastes like meat instead of papier-mache (don't eat papier-mache), you didn't do all you could.

eGullet is generally shit these days, but there's some decent pho talk in the archives.

I think a lot of people skimp on the stock because if we make stock at all, we think of it as something practical, utilitarian, economical - but making pho stock if you don't have access to a real butcher or a really comprehensive meat counter probably means spending $4-9 per pound on the cuts you need

I didn't explain this well - I mean that because stock-making is so often taught as something practical and penny-pinching (don't let your carrot peels go to waste, save them and make soup), we may shy away from instances of stock-making that are per-serving fairly expensive.

this recipe looks like the real deal:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vietnamese-Pho-Rice-Noodle-Soup-with-Beef-232434
but it also looks borderline "a bother" on a few levels.

Yeah even if the cuts used to make stock are $4-5 lb – it's probably not going to cost more per serving to make it at home as it would be to buy the equivalent quantity of the soup at a restaurant (or if it is I am paying for the adventure/braggin' rights of making that shits in mi casa). So that's ok. I get excited any time I get to use oxtails.

I guess "a bother" was a silly phrase to use – I am willing to go p far to make a flavorful liquid to suspend shit in. It's not like the flavorful liquid needs you to watch it the whole time.

Do you need meat, really, or can you just ask a meat cutter for bones?

I mean CUTS of meat. You just need bones with some meat still attached to them, is what I should have said.

Yeah, you need bones with a little meat and lots of cartilage. Your options for getting those bones vary a lot with where you live and how badly the state of butchering has deteriorated. (Pretty pretty badly, in NH, for instance. "Butchers" here are "stores that buy already-cut-up pieces of meat and marinate them for you.")

I am willing to go p far to make a flavorful liquid to suspend shit in. It's not like the flavorful liquid needs you to watch it the whole time.

That's how I feel about this stuff. I don't do a whole lot of things that are difficult, except maybe conceptually once in a while, but I do a lot of things that are time-consuming, because the time is usually spent with me around the corner working in the office, with an eye on the kitchen to make sure it isn't on fire.

I make stock twice a year with beef neckbones, $1.99/lb at the supermarket in Tupelo with the best meat dept. Lots of collagen, plenty of meat -- perfect for stock. Per Bourdain, I roast them for several hours, then add them to a vat of cold water (making sure to get all the scrapings off the sheet pans).

I miss neckbones!

That's the other thing about stock, though, yeah - if you have the freezer space and large enough pots, you can make a lot of it and freeze it for later. Or concentrate it down into new-school demiglace and it's virtually immortal in the refrigerator. It's not harder to make 8 gallons of stock than it is to make 1 gallon, so what labor there is can be spread out more.

Butchers up there don't offer neckbones? They were the stock bone of choice for me out in Calif. as well.

I'm not kidding, butchers here simply aren't butchers. They sell boneless skinless chicken breasts and steak tips, in various marinades. The first time I walked into one, I wanted to yell at them. It's a totally different approach than anything I've seen before. The meat counters at the supermarket, they vary - none of them seem to handle whole sides anymore, some of them don't even grind their own ground beef. But yeah, neck bones aren't a cut I've seen here at all. Braising cuts in general aren't terribly popular - pork picnic and chuck roasts, that's about it. Even oxtail isn't at my local store, I have to go to the other side of town for it.

I was so spoiled in Indiana - a butcher that gave me 3/4 of a headless goat, Mennonites selling their beef at the farmers market, local deer and buffalo ranches, Jungle Jims a few hours away in Cincinnati.