What's cooking? part 4

Never cookin u dinner.

My friend's current facebook status (posted long after my comment on this thread):

Seriously beans! You've been in the crockpot for 15+ hours and you're still hard and crunchy. What the hell! Cook damnit. I will now console my crockpot failure with Chinese takeout.

I AM VINDICATED

if you were a LADY who cooked ME dinner, it'd be the rare occasion I wasn't the one cooking anyway

btw I eat about anything

I wish a guy would cook me dinner tbh ;_;

(btw I was only railing against the frozen pizza, i dont think takeaway is an admission of fail!)

Gotta know when to quit imo

I've been making all kinds of things, nothing different or really worth noting

memorable highlights

-- vegetable gallette with goat chz (for a potluck, came together nicely with very little effort)
-- garbanzo-tomato soup with tons of kale
-- spinach salad with grapefruit, fennel, and parmesan (I eat this a lot)
-- chicken tacos (and chicken taco salad, and about 17 tons of black beans eaten alone, with eggs, with rice, etc)
-- other stuff i kinda forget because it was boring, various pastas with vegetables and nuts
-- oh yeah, french toast dusted lightly with garam masala and topped with candied walnuts w/ cayenne
-- is it normal fruit season yet because i am REALLY TIRED OF BANANASAPPLESCITRUS

I've been eating horrible crap, including thrown-together sandwiches and too much fast food, for the last couple of weeks because of heavy workload and the fact that my wife hates cooking. I'm finally at the end of that push, so I'm thawing chicken and soaking black beans tonight for a real meal tomorrow.

I have always had a fantasy of finding a Le Crueset at a thrift store & it happened today at the Value Village. Little round 2 qt guy, just perfect for solo cooking. Eight bucks!

how do i make a peanut sauce for dipping fresh spring rolls? i made them last night for the first time ever, they were awesome, but the dipping sauce recipe i had was lime/soy/garlic/sugar and it was too light-weight for the already light-weight rolls.

Peanut butter + rice vin + soy + sriracha is how I do

what's a rough estimate of your ratios? i've never made it before, so i am completely clueless. i googled for recipes and came across a bunch that are all completely different (apart from containing pb) so i'm overwhelmed!

I usually just add, stir, taste, check for consistency, adjust. You're prob just making a small amt, so if it tastes weird just add more of sthg complimentary until it seems good. Also if you want it a little thicker you could add hoisin if you have it.

Couple spoonfuls of pb, then go from there?

spring rolls... like vietnamese summer rolls?

ok good advice. i'm psyched about these rolls! idk why but i've had an exciting cooking week.

xp yes!

i was at a thai restaurant the other week, eating prawn summer rolls, thinking about how much i love them, when i realised that i could probably make my own. i made them with teriyaki baked tofu but i think i might use some fake shrimp next time. or fake chicken.

i need to get the wrapping technique down, though, bc my rolls were more like... tote bags.

pro tip: use two sheets for better durability

my dirty secret: I like hoisin sauce with crushed up peanuts for summer rolls. ;_;

Use the burrito roll!

Hoisin and crushed peanuts with hot sauce -- no shame in that!!

yeah i gotta count how many papers i got left, but i was thinking about doubling them up.

while i was looking for the peanut sauce recipes, i came across a bunch of different ideas for fillings. psyched to make these a bunch!

Thats the sauce they sell with the ricepaper rolls at my local sushi joint! (hoisin and crushed nuts.)

i'm attempting my first lasagne today using this as a guide. will not be making own noodles. i know smitten kitchen chick has a small kitchen but there is NO way this could happen in mine!

I'm making lasagne tonight too :)

so here is a question that's long plagued me: how does one brown meat that is fatty? i'm using half lean and half chuck but it seems like there's too much fat for the meat to actually brown... also i don't have a dutch oven so it's in a stainless pan w/ lid that i use for... almost everything.

Making my weekly batch oif pinto beans w/green chile today. It turns out all I want to eat is beans and blood oranges and beer.

lasagna is the easiest thing. Hint: you don't need to boil the noodles first. They'll cook I'm the sauce.

pour fat out of the pan?

I'm = in the sauce

i didn't have much luck with the peanut sauce - the pb/soy/rice vinegar combo was really not to my liking at all. i think next time i'll try a coconut milk-based recipe.

last night i made a couple of recipes from mark bittman's blog - chickpea, red onion, arugula, cumin salad + north african cauliflower salad w/lemon cumin coriander. both turned out way way way better than i anticipated.

yeah i got the noodles that don't need to be precooked :)

Bittman's my favotire guy for veg & salad ideas ––– have you ever read how to cook everything vegetarian, just1ne? essential imo

I have that on my iphone!

I have thought on & off for years about making the jump to veg status and I think I'm going to do it once I've worked through all the meaty BS in my fridge.

no, but i always look out for it in used book stores!

Are you talking about browning ground beef in straight ground beef form - not as burgers or meatballs or some other format? It's probably crowding the pan and steaming instead of having that liquid evaporate so everything can brown - you end up with all sorts of liquid in the pan. If you do it in batches it'll probably work better.

Peanut sauce with coconut milk is way better but I always feel vaguely dirty making it this way since coconut milk is so fatty. My usual formula is to fry a spoon of chili garlic paste in a little oil, then add peanut butter, soy, some brown sugar, and water with some lime juice at the end.

yeah but it's only a dipping sauce - there was a whole can of coconut milk in the thai curry i made the other night!

perhaps my problem is that while technically it's a dipping sauce but I could basically eat a bowl of it at any time

yeah i think the pan definitely is crowded... but the recipe said to put it in and brown all together... don't really know how this is possible, even if it was being done in a dutch oven. i think you need the liquids for the sauce... at any rate, i found that if i just left it there for a while it sort of browned but mostly just created browning on the bottom of the pan which was taken care of when i got to the 'add 2 cups of wine' part.

I realized this morning that I haven't cracked a cookbook in a long time. I've just been str8 winging it for months, which (I now realize) has led to me making the same things/using the same methods with different ingredients over and over and over because I don't feel like making decisions, doing specialty shopping, etc.

They're usually good things, but I feel like I haven't grown at all in a while. I wonder what I should try this spring?!

When I'm browning ground beef, I definitely drain off the fat/water after the meat browns. It dirties up my big strainer and a big bowl, but the result is so much better and less oily.

Per the lasagne sheets, do they not sell "fresh" pasta readymade in the US? Here you can buy stuff like pasta sheets (and fettcine etc) thats soft, fresh-style stuff, in refridgerated boxes.

And with ragu/bolognese, my italian ex's mama told me, that you brown all the meat and the secret is that when the water/fat wells up, you keep on simmering it til thats all gone - this takes some time! - then add the wine, and again wait til most of the liquids gone - then add the other liquids (tomatoes etc). Overall its sposed to take 2-3 hours.

Fresh pasta is pretty common, but usually long noodles and filled pastas like ravioli and tortelloni; not big sheets for lasagna.

that's basically what i did... but i think this came out too rich for my liking. if i make it again i'd probably use all lean meat and drain some of the fat off.
xpost

my mom gets fresh lasagna sheets from an italian import store somewhere

i also do not understand how smittenkitchen does all that in a tiny kitchen. mine is small and cluttered and i get so frustrated sometimes and everything i do appears to make a much bigger mess in a small space.

there is never enough kitchen space. when we moved into our current place, i was psyched for the slightly bigger kitchen, but it's still nowhere near enough. so i found one of those butcher block things, with pull-outs and there's STILL not enough space - in between the microwave, toaster, food processor, knife block, fruit bowl, there's not much room left for actual preparation of food!