What's cooking? part 4

I'm trying to use up what we have in the house, so it doesn't have to be packed and moved. Last night, a frozen pesto pizza with additional toppings of herbed salami, dollops of homemade pesto, and piles of shredded mystery cheeses.

Tonight, from the depths of the freezer: chicken enchiladas and asparagus risotto (both originally from Trader Joe's, I think). There are 2 bags of some sort of frozen berry in there - maybe I'll make up a crumble for tomorrow's breakfast. Everything else appears to be large hunks of meat (which is what we seem to specialize in). Oh, and 2 largish bags of pork fat for rendering into lard.

I heart Jaq because she makes crumble for breakfast (here it's for puddings only, as far as I'm aware). Are you moving Jaq? I get perverse pleasure from finding inventive ways of using up random ingredients before you move. "Hmm, custard and lamb shoulder, what can I make?"

Porkpie, Nigella's definitely got a kind of wide-eyed vibe about her in this series. Couple that with the weird rictus grin = weird TV.

Tomorrow - Saturday Kitchen with Rick Stein on it (my absolute favourite chef ever). Best excuse for a lazy morning eating poached eggs and watching TV (er, a bit like most Saturdays).

Crumble, it's not just for pudding! Delicious and nutritious! (see also: fruit pies and custard)

We're moving on Monday to a loft space with a great kitchen (that looks like it's never been used). It's very industrial - maple butcher block countertops, diamond plate (like industrial non-skid flooring) bar and cabinets, the cabinets are rolling toolchests, good quality gas stovetop/oven and refrigerator/freezer, well laid out. I'm very very excited about it. I'm giving up a kitchen that is larger, but relatively cumbersome to work in - the refrigerator door can't open far enough to get the produce bins out, the low cabinets aren't good for pots and pans due to weird half-shelves, etc. It does have a lot of counterspace and a big walk-in pantry that will be missed.

I've cooked for Rick Stein. Lovely bloke, liked the food so much he bought me a pint.

(full disclosure, it was only a bowl of chips when he popped into a pub I was KP-ing at as a bairn, nevertheless).

Jaq. I am very envious.

I was thinking about you when we were in there Tuesday, Matt, because the place is set up so it could make a sweet restaurant - you could fit 10 tables for 4 in there easily and have a counter/bar setup too. People would have to walk through the kitchen to get to the toilet though, so that's not so good :)

I know you're busy, but we'll try to stick to this one long enough for you and Mrs. Matt and your little sweetpea to get over here for a visit.

god that sounds like kitchen heaven. i should take a picture of the corner of my living room that is called 'kitchen' but is impossible to cook anything in :(

Cor, that'd be good.

Not just to perv over the kitchen, obviously :)

Perv on this!

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/illiterati/1393983951/"; title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1363/1393983951_56ba566003.jpg"; width="500" height="375" alt="Kitchen" /></a>

Well crap. Damn BBCode.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1363/1393983951_56ba566003.jpg

Here's the whole set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/illiterati/sets/72157602039756246/

nice!
jealous!!

phwoar, look at the worktops on that

do people recommend those rolling butcher block/shelving units? there is really nowhere to prep in my kitchen and now that it looks like i'm staying here a while, i'm thinking of getting one.

we have one. it's great, but it apparently was nightmarish to assemble. that's ikea for you though...

oh - re: food at school, al said that within 5-6 blocks of bc on nostrand are a bunch of west indian joints, and if you want to walk further then the famous difara's pizza is about a 15-20 minute hike.

(difara's is on ave j, btw, in the midst of a bunch of israeli places.)

ooooh interesting. thank you so much! and al, too!
i will pose these ideas to class mates for days where we have a little more time between work and class.

I like my butcher block work table thingy.

Jaq's new kitchen is drooly.

Oh the ironing! In this neighborhood, I may never have to cook again, because there are places to eat EVERYWHERE! So far we've tried out Texas barbecue, 2 sandwich cafes (one that uses Salumi meats nom nom nom), an italian place that also does breakfast, and an indian place last night.

how's the texas bbq in seattle?

not esp. great, but not awful. There's a bunch of smokehouses down past the stadiums, so they get their meat from one of them. They do up the chickens in the restaurant, but they're just rotisserried, not really 'cued. The really great place we've found is Willie's Taste of Soul down on Beacon, but he does Carolina-style (and does all his own smoking).

willie sounds like a man after my own heart.

Willie's a great guy - next time we are there I'll try to take a picture of the shrine he has up to his gramma who is "Baking for the Angels Now". He uses her recipes for the red velvet cake and 7-up cake and the pecan pie they sell. Maybe also for the yams I think, which are sweet and yummy enough to be dessert. He also does custom smoking, so if we ever again have a whole pig, I'll have him smoke up the hocks and one of the hams.

Hallelujah, it's fig time: I bought eight yesterday and if I can resist eating them raw with dollops of mascarpone, I'll make ice-cream this weekend. One of Nigel's books has a Nigella recipe in it (ah, chums) which calls for 125ml of muscat, 125ml of double cream, 125g of caster sugar and eight figs. Now there's a recipe for memorising. Best of all, there's no cooking involved - you just whizz it all up, churn and freeze.

I started a batch of tea pickles last night. Except I am not sure what kind of tea I used. So who knows. Sadly I am out of lapsang souchong, which is what I used last time, many years ago.

I'm churning the fig and muscat ice-cream right now and my god, it tastes like Christmas. I'll be surprised if there's any left this time tomorrow.

That. Sounds. Fantastic.

I have successfully negotiated making my own sausages, and by God it's relatively easy. And they taste so good.

Surprisingly, not that much cheaper than buying them in packs, although I suppose when you start upscaling quantities you can see the savings - I just did a kilo to start with.

A couple more trial attempts with the basic recipe and I'll be ready to start experimenting.

goat cheese/beet salad and pasta with fresh basil pesto and beet greens on saturday night. i'm so into the many varieties of beets available at the greenmarket at the moment. this most recent meal was made with bull's blood beets, which are enormous, more red than purple, and have more flavorful greens than the standard guys.

i was craving slavic comfort food after seeing eastern promises yesterday, so that set the theme for dinner: sliced heirloom tomatoes with sour cream; quick cucumber pickle with red wine vinegar, sugar, and dill; grated beets, garlic, walnuts, and hardboiled egg dressed with sour cream and real mayonnaise; and a warm carrot salad with garlic and cumin that frankly owed more to morocco than kiev. second course: sauteed sauerkraut and mushroom pierogies.

Goddammit I have this new cookbook and its recipes are very short and to the point, which is nice, but it means if you miss ONE word everything can go crazy. Like, say, how they want COOKED beets in the beet and bechamel recipe, even though you bake it for a while after you add the bechamel.

I made the best of it and it was edible, but goddamn. I = idiot.

Deli update for those that are interested: we get our yay or nay from the council on Oct 4th.

somewhat ahead of time, council says yes

off we jolly well go, then

Congratulations!!!!!! Hope it goes great guns from day 1.

Excellent news! Will have to pop in when we bring the nipper up north, when are you hoping to open? Are you going to wait until your little bundle turns up before getting down to serious business?

congratulations, matt.

excellent soup last night: a large bunch of orange and yellow carrots, a huge red bell pepper, a small red chili, a large chunk of ginger, and much garlic and shallot, all simmered with a water/stock mixture then whizzed with my best friend, the immersion blender.

that sounds a tasty soup indeed

Vicky: we're looking to open by mid-Nov now, a few weeks to get the lease sorted and then the shopfitters move in. It's worked out quite handily as baby is due in a week, so I get a few weeks of fatherhood under my belt before I have to throw myself back into running a kitchen.

indonesian-style rice noodles for dinner last night: chopped string beans (sadly, no long beans at the greenmarket yesterday), coarsely grated carrot, giant bird chili, and a shallot/garlic/ginger paste all sauteed together until the veg were softened a bit, then simmered with about a cup of coconut milk, some brown sugar, and a few glugs of extra dark soy. cooked rice noodles and two beaten eggs were added at the very end. next time i'm going to use shrimp paste in the sauce as well. it needed a little bit of funk.

lauren, all your stuff sounds SO GOOD!

I finally cooked something in the new kitchen last night. Mr. Jaq was off for his first piano lesson and it seemed ridic to head out when I knew there was all this pantry stuff in various boxes - I just had to find it. Dug up a bag of bowtie pasta, had a partial jar of sundried tomatoes in olive oil in the fridge, also the stub end of a herb-coated salami. Found some pine nuts in with some of the bathroom stuff (?) and there was a handful of pregrated parmesan in a bag in the freezer for some reason. Boiled, chopped, sliced, dry-roasted, and mixed it all together, and it was lovely. Got a few more piles of things sorted while the pasta was boiling, but it's still not even halfway.

thanks, jaq! it's been really, really good to get back into cooking again. i''ve been trying to do more veg dishes, since lots of weekend grilling this summer meant overconsumption of meat. that's not good healthwise, and i also ended up having a minor crisis of conscience about eating too much unethically-produced stuff.

New Adventures In Sossidges

(but I bet that linking doesn't work, unlike the sossies hoho)

Bluddy knew it. Oh well, they're in this thread:

Not location specific, No rules: Welcome to ILX heaven

Yes, I know it's a long one.

kale and white bean stew w/ a little bit of chorizo. gorgeous kale at the greenmarket now! so robust and just picture-perfect. we got about 3lbs of cleaned greens from a $2 bunch.

Tonight - neck of lamb stew. I like to keep it simple, just slow cooked in some wine, stock, rosemary and served with pasta. Now that the nights are really drawing in, I'm craving warming wintery stuff and this will definitely fit the bill.

Kale is good on this side of the Atlantic too - sunny Yorkshire has a glut of the stuff at the moment. Bought (and ate) a bunch at the weekend that looked like a triffid, yummy iron goodness.

i made ed's mutton stewed in red wine, which was delicious. the last 20 minutes or so i cooked it on very high heat with lid off, so the sauce got thick and a bit syrupy. yay!

(the recipe is on the the autumn drinks thread on ile, by the way.)

stew sounds good,lauren.
I'm just waiting for autumn to actually hit the northeast before i get to start making all the yummy stews and braises.

i know - it was actually way too warm and summery yesterday for that dish, but i really wanted to try it.

Stew season has been delayed but the temp should fall 30 degrees by Wednesday. I cannot wait.

Need a veal stew recipe if anyone has one.

Chestnut time in Yurp -- found some good looking chestnut linguine from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and did them up with a slightly modified Jamie Oliver recipe: olive oil, Italian sausages (just the meat), white wine, lemon juice and zest, parsley, butter and gobs of Parmesan, and some seasonings I will not reveal. It was absolutely fantastic, totally Autumn-y. And worked surprisingly well as breakfast the next morning when I re-heated it in my wok with some scrambled eggs.

in related news i found the best recipes of 2016 featurs by the serious eats authors had some good stuff - get them here: http://www.seriouseats.com/features

i mean part of the reason these are good is that serious eats is so bad at collating and organising its recipes, no worthwhile search, a horrible navigation page etc.

the book is good for that

that potatoe recipe is v similar to the Zuni Cafe cookbook recipe, which changed my potato life forever

protip: if the potatoes are done but you need to hold them, 275 degree oven is yr friend. theywill hold beautifully for ages that way, and get v nice & crispy

yukons forever <3

I should be cooling/eating latkes but instead I am sipping ginger ale. Thanks for the gastroenteritis, 2016!

:(

haven't baked in forever and my mom didn't make any cookies this year so i felt i needed to. i made these https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/01/chocolate-chip-cookies/
if nothing else this is a note to myself that 18 minutes at 300 will only make melty puddles. try 22 minutes at 325. mixing cold butter is a pain in the ass. i'd soften it, make the dough, then refrigerate the dough for a bit. good cookies though.

Ahhh those simmered and then roasted potatoes feel so fidly but I'm sure turn out great as opposed to my simple chunked up russets in a hot oven that always end up cardboard on the outside. Damn it.

This milk-free potatoes au gratin has been my favorite lately, but it needs a hotter cooking temp than indicated--more like 450 than 375. Otherwise they'll never be done.

Err http://www.theroastedroot.net/herbed-coconut-milk-potatoes-au-gratin/ sorry

i'm making carnitas in the crock pot and salsa rice and i realized both of these foods involve rick bayless products or recipes and i made this face 😞

mr veg is adapting his bbq "pit pot roast" to crockpot - smoking the meat first then finishing it in the crock yuuuuuum

Rick Bayless is just so goddamn creepy.

I was gonna cook something tonight but instead we have decided to go out and tackle a 32 oz steak.

steak sounds so good

he is but i love mexican everyday :(
torn

this thread is a decade old. does anyone feel strongly that i should not start a new one?

bring it on i say

I'll be making pad thai this evening. I do not worry whether it is authentic, because there are probably hundreds of minor variations. And at least I have nam plah and ba oelek, so I can kid myself it's just like my mom would make, if she were thai.

9016 messages and counting. A new one might be OK.

here u go what's cooking? part 5: 2017-2027
mod please lock?