What's cooking? part 4

Here is soup! where I just posted my new favorite easy hearty Thai coconut pumpkin soup.

Yay lentils! I made my lamb ragout recipe with stew beef because lamb was expensive and harder to come by. It's good, but it's missing some kind of...oomph? I browned the heck out of the meat AND bought a beef soup bone and browned IT, and threw it into the slow cooker to break down over 4 hours.

I don't understand. It will be delic, no problem, but it could be so much more.

Thinking of also hitting the curry-and-coconut-lentil-soup train and socking it away for the week.

lamb is pretty game-y, maybe that was what the original recipe relied on...?

Oh, I know, but this has the mirepoix, red wine, tomato, rosemary, it should be bursting with richness. I'm going to shred the meat and see if getting more sauce throughout helps.

usually letting it sit for a day helps ime
at first taste stews don't really taste as rich as they do the following day
(i don't really make that many meaty stews though)

Lamb has all kinds of gelatin which really adds to the sauce. A beef knuckle bone instead of a soup bone maybe would have done it, or adding some demiglace.

A knuckle bone! Who knew?? I'll ask for that next time, but, it being Sunday, there were no butchers working today. And I'll be eating this sauce for like 4 days, so Amanda's suggestion is also sure to be true.

One of these days I hope to reach Jaq-like levels of making gallons of stock and reducing it to jelly in my own home. One day....

Making those lentils after all. Cooking is giving me an excuse not to clean my room.

laurel, you're my type of gal

I'm so glad it's fall - stock simmering, lard rendering, apple butter making weather :)

I know! I gotta stay home more to have time to do that stuff.

i want to make a ratatouille-style thing - i have zucchini, tomatoes, red and green peppers but no eggplant - to serve with pasta. any ideas?

Keller's confit biyaldi (from the movie Ratatouille!) is very easy to modify to accommodate things you don't like, don't have, don't want to bother with, etc - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/dining/131rrex.html I make it over and over again in the summer (without bothering with the vinaigrette).

Really the important part of the recipe is: slice everything very thin, layer and overlap it like gratin dauphinois, cook it slowly. You have the peppers, so could do the piperade, but if it sounds too fussy, a little extra tomato on the bottom will serve the same purpose of providing a little moisture. Easy enough to toss with pasta once it's done.

ha! i actually have that recipe bookmarked already, but the time on it seemed a bit excessive (bc i am lazy, have been sick for 3 days, and wanted to make it tonight before my veggies go off).

why the slow cooking time, anyway?

Today was orange vegetable day. I wanted to try out my astoundingly good method for home fries on sweet potatoes, which turned out a mixed bag. (Higher water content, lower starch content and necessity of peeling made them harder to handle; higher sugar content made them want to burn. Results were tasty anyway, but too much work.) And tonight, since a nice cold front came through, I made carrot-ginger soup to honor the chilly weather.

The slow cooking cooks a lot of the moisture out of it - it ends up like 1/4 of the original volume, depending on what mix of vegetables you use (I usually have a ton of summer squash and tomatoes from my mother's garden) - so you get a more intense, concentrated flavor (and texture - it'll cling to pasta, or make a substantial sandwich, in a way that it wouldn't if it were just sauteed). It's a long time, but it's hands-off - the slicing is the only time consuming thing, and even that's not too bad.

hmm you make valid points! maybe i will try it - although i'm supposed to be on a dry-cracker-or-toast diet, i need some goddamn veggies and carbs.

also: do i *really* need to peel and seed the tomato for the piperade?

Nah - seeds have a lot of flavor anyway. I mean, it won't look restaurant-pretty, but that's no big deal.

would it be gross to put mushrooms in this? i only have 1 zucchini (largish) and 3 tomatoes, plus a dozen or so shiitake mushrooms that need to be used up.

Oh hey Tep I meant to comment on the blogpost you made with the pic of that AMAZING CHEESE that Cait got, with the sumac/labna filling... omg! WANT.

shiitakes are pretty pungent and flavorful, no?

is that good or bad in this dish

i do this all the time w/out eggplant!

saute onion/garlic
throw in zucchini, chickpeas, green beans (if you want) and saute; season with s&p, rosemary/herbs de provence
add tomatoes and simmer for a while
serve over rice/quinoa/bulgar/couscous

Mushrooms are probably fine! I dunno, I've never cooked them that long except when making stock. Flavorwise it sounds fine.

Oh yeah, the za'atar burrata was awesome. We lucked out, they usually sell out of all their burrata long before she gets to their stand at the farmers market.

I have to try and find such a magical item.

i made it the keller way, leaving out the eggplant - i didn't add the mushroom bc y'all took too long to reply (lol) and i ended up having more than enough veg to fill the dish anyways. it is about 50mins from being ready!

shiitake are better in certain cuisines, imo

also my video game account name has the word "shiitake" in it

this was pretty good BUT i didn't have a skillet to cook it in, just a glass pie dish thingy, so when i took it out after the full 2.5 hrs it still had a lot of water in the bottom and i couldn't cook it off on the stove.

Ha, I realized as I was responding that it was probably too late for input. Sorry! It's NaNoWriMo.

I had that liquid problem one of the times I made it this summer - I think part of the issue is that water content can vary so much from tomato to tomato, and squash to squash. I wound up leaving it in the oven longer, uncovered, but it was a pain in the ass.

I can't quit thinking about these cute Scotch quail eggs. I haven't made them but they are haunting my consciousness.

i need some advice: i've made this vegan korma a couple times and there is something lacking - some kind of richness that i've tasted in better kormas. any ideas? is it a dairy thing? maybe something i can simulate?

coconut cream would be my guess? I mean thats vegan, yeh?

Wait nm there is coconut milk in the recipe haha. Dur.

It looks like plenty of vege curries ive made so I cant work out what'd be missing, apart maybe from ghee but surely that doesnt make THAT much difference.

today i am going to make:
an omelette
bittman mashped potatoes with dandelion greens
smita chandra chicken curry i have made like 20 times in the past 2 months

-what can I do with canned oysters?

Last night I smoked some lamb shanks for dinner. Instead of chucking the bones and scraps I figured what the hell and made a small pot of lamb stock (onion, carrot, celery chucked in to simmer).

Today I sauteed some onions and chucked in a can of whole peeled tomatoes to simmer for a bit while I cooked rice in the lamb broth. Pureed the he hell out of the tomato/onion and stirred it in with the rice. Some fresh rosemary and a squeeze of lemon--tomato rice soup, which the lamb stock took in a totally different (and delicious) direction!

I ate three bowls.

dayo i think you can make tomato sauce or something

Tonight I'm making rice with gravy from a packet and pre-shredded colby jack (aka cojack) cheese. It's like the meal equivalent of wearing hole-filled sweatpants.

i am sure i would like that better than risotto

i made a "pesto" from raw spinach, walnuts, garlic (too much probably), lemon zest, and olive oil. i am waiting for the bow ties to cook!

yeah harbl I think I'll throw the can into some tomato sauce. but I already bought a can of clams for that same purpose. I wonder if they'll taste differently?

I was also thinking, maybe you want like a 'white' sauce for oysters and/or clams. maybe for clams. but what is an italian 'white sauce'? like... vinegar? lemon juice? hmmm

i don't think different in a bad way. i don't like any kind of white or cream sauce so i don't know but i made red clam sauce all from scratch a while ago and it was great!

also my spinach pesto has parmesan in it i forgot

white wine, butter, garlic, herbs

red clam sauce hmm I think I will make a bold clam sauce tomorrow

oh yeah i would def eat something made of white wine and butter, i guess that does count as sauce