What's cooking? part 4

Omg want/need

sup

Chorizo + eggs is so good, adding avocado is pretty nice as well. I'm a Cholula man, personally.

In the last week I've suddenly felt sort of invigorated by cooking again, which is nice as over the last dozen plus years it often just becomes something that I have to do every day and don't think about too much. Maybe it's because the farmer's market is starting to really kick in.

Things I've made in the past seven days:

- butterflied leg of lamb, spread with yogurt/garlic/ginger/Indian spices and roasted on the grill, with mint and tamarind chutneys, chickpea and potato chaat, and the Cook's Illustrated naan recipe from a couple months ago that is A+

- chicken wings cooked super crispy and tossed in sriracha / lime / garlic / fish sauce / cilantro, with a thin sliced cabbage salad with peanuts / mint / garlic / lime / chile and sticky rice

- sauteed cod over roast fingerling potatoes and asparagus with some lemon basil puree

- white bean, parsley, and tuna salad (using really good canned tuna in oil) with garlic and lemon, along with roasted kale

- seared tuna, cut in cubes with avocado, tossed with indonesian soy sauce, sriracha, green onion, cilantro, and lime, eaten with the terribly greasy and awesome local tortilla chips

- beef chuck cooked in frozen leftover mole from sometime last winter, with refried black beans, avocado, tortillas, and arugula salad

I could probably go the rest of my life eating just stuff based on Indian, Mexican, Vietnamese, and Italian food.

that all sounds delish!

In the last week I've suddenly felt sort of invigorated by cooking again

i'm the feeling the total opposite of this. the heat makes my day job 10x more exhausting, my commute has lengthened and become more exhausting in the last month, and i'm so fucking tired when i get home, i can't stand the thought of cooking.

i think i'm getting closer and closer to purchasing a big freezer, so i can have a good backstock of home-cooked meals and not feel bad about refusing to cook for a week (or two).

My job hours get easier in the summer and the farmer's markets make it easier to make simple things which is helping to make cooking feel more fun lately.

And a big freezer is a great thing - not just for ready made meals or leftovers, but for giving you lots of room to keep stuff like cooked legumes, complicated sauces, caramelized onions, stock, and other shortcuts around.

I *have* a decent sized freezer now (one of those upside down fridge dealies) and I never think to precook things like just lentils, or rice, or sauces and then freeze them, let alone full meals. I'm always making all my meals from scratch every night and wondering why I never get anything else done and the kitchen is always chaos and I'm tired.

– just made my first batch of yogurt by placing 180° F milk and live yogurt cultures outside in a saran-wrapped glass bowl for eight hours. came out really, really tasty but thin - like kefir. I'm going to use this batch as starter for another batch tomorrow, and stir in a little agar agar to thicken when I bring it in from the heat.

– awesome smoothie today: half cup of my homemade yogurt, one mango pureed, couple of inches of microplaned ginger, a scoop of protein powder, and a little tap water.

- speaking of which, I just made ginger ale: dechlorinated water, yeast, cup of caster sugar, juice of one lemon, two tablespoons fresh grated ginger. lots of fizz so far. anybody have any luck at this?

The yogurt recipes I've seen say to bring the milk up to 180, but then cool it back down to, uh, 115 or so? before adding the cultures.

yeah when we've made yogurt we've followed this: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/yogurt_making/yogurt2000.htm

what was your starter culture, remy?

my dream is to get a yogurt starter from northern china - there's this amazing yogurt they have everywhere in the city, so good. the one we made from dannon was very middling, tbh.

I know v little abt yogurt but I've been put under the impression that it's usually v thin if you don't either strain it or add thickeners

well, i tried making yogurt twice.

attempt #1: i brought half a gallon of milk to 185° and then lowered it to 115° and stirred in half a cup of fage plain yogurt innoculated w/ 1/2 c of the warm milk and 1/2 c of nonfat dried milk powder. i poured this into the slow cooker, which i kept on warm for about 14 hours, since it didn't thicken. sometime between 13 and 14 hours, it turned brown and kind of rancid and the surface turned to milk plastic

attempt #2: i brought a quart of milk to 185° and then lowered it to 115° and stirred in about half a cup of fage plain yogurt (live, active cultures) and 1/2 cup of nonfat milk powder. i used an immersion blender to break up the yogurt, then poured the whole sloppy kit-&-caboodle into a tupperware floating in a cooler filled with warm water. i put the cooler in the sun, put the cover on it, and checked back in eight hours. yogurt tasted amazing, but was only kefir-y in texture.

our yogurt came out pretty thick!

we spooned it into jars, then submerged the jars in water at w/e temp that's good for inoculation , kept the whole thing in a big picnic thermos

I only heat the milk up to around 120 F, mix in the yogurt (greek gods) and do the dayo treatment to keep it warm. I do use whole milk, don't know if that makes it thicker or not.

what to cook when your kitchen is a thousand degrees? i hate grocery shopping when the weather is like this, i'm a hardy winter meals sorta guy.

Look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18mini.html?_r=1&ref=theminimalist

i eat a lot of stovetop grilled vegetables and cheese and bread
also things that stir fry quickly like greens and peppers and zucchini and whatnot
also anything that can be baked quickly in the toaster oven (fish with some mint chutney on it -- yes, mint chutney from a jar)
stuff like that is what i'm eating
and salads + bread

when all else fails, cheese + crackers + spinach salad because i always have those things hanging around

What to Eat when It's so Hot out you can't think straight?

Cold asparagus dipped in peanut sauce
vietnamese summer rolls
beer popsicles

i made tortilla soup today – leftover grilled chicken, corn, pepper, onion, and canned tomato in turkey stock. i love spicy food when it's sweltering, and hot soup.

This thread insipred me to make shrimp and grits! awwwwwwwwwwww yeah

maybe it was some other food thread where the grits talked happened but awwwwwwwwww yeah

http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/1291131680_two-thumbs-up.jpg

now all my grits got shrimp in it

damn this is the best food
god bless usa

Do grits microwave ok? I made too much for one lady.

Cold asparagus dipped in peanut sauce
vietnamese summer rolls
beer popsicles

a little poem

Yes! One of my favorite breakfasts is some reheated grits with a couple of fried eggs laid on top.

-cracked open a coconut, water smelled and tasted really rancid, so did the coconut. (nb this was not a young coconut, but rather a mature one w/ husk)

Just took a pound cake out of the oven - first cake I've baked in ages, smells delicious

Grits is basically polenta, yeah? I think Ive asked that before.

Pretty much, yeah. A lot of southern kids grow up eating them with butter and sugar, same as oatmeal or Cream of Wheat.

i tried that shakshuka recipe, too, and i wasn't super into it. good, but with all the garlic, chilies, spices, and the FETA i imagined a lot more flavors leaping out at me but the tomatoes kinda overpowered everything.

^^ yeah kinda how I felt. I will up the chiles and maybe amount and a half the spices? hmm

i used 5 anaheims and added a little tumeric bcz why not and idk it was just all tomatoes to me

I wuld think cumin and a lot of salt and garlic would be the key to such a dish?

yeah which is why i'm kinda not sure what happened

**V IMPT SHAKSHUKA UPDATE**

I just tried this recipe from Bon Appétit that adds chickpeas and feta and subs a 28oz can of hand-crushed whole peeled tomatoes instead of 8 diced romas. It took it from really good to WHOA OMG SO AMAZING. Also fuck putting it in the oven to cook the eggs, just put the lid on and cook for like 6-7 min

This makes me want to open up a restaurant so I can have a brunch menu so I can serve shakshuka to ppl

xp that's exactly how i made it minus the chickpeas. idk, hmmm. ah well.

don't know what's got me making soup all summer but doing an indian lentil/veggie thing w/ coconut milk, moghul garam masala, saffron. will attempt to make my own ghee!

Oh ooops recipe is at
http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/quick-recipes/2011/12/poached-eggs-in-tomato-sauce-with-chickpeas-and-feta

I reaaaally want to try this but I know myself and how skeeved I get about some textures and I'm pretty sure that I would cook this thing and be so excited and then either freeze up before I even take a mouthful or eat some and never touch it again.

I wish I wasn't such a baby. I want to clone myself to find out!

ghee attempt #1 = failure
disposing of failure ghee = failure
mopping
ghee attempt # 2

also flipped bowl of ground spices onto the floor, this is one of those nights

I sympathize. I hate those nights.

was going to ask "what went wrong with the ghee?" then I noticed step 3 and can probably guess

what went wrong was a burned it. ~then~ what went wrong was there was a big hole in the garbage bag i poured it into.

cooking utilities i thought i had, i don't have, must have belonged to gf's old roommates? idk?
spilled saffron threads i was soaking all over everything in the fridge. how? not certain.

universe punishing me today

WILL FINISH COOKING

it turned everything yeeellow

my quest for the perfect vegan pate has finally ended!!!

i got the real food daily recipe for their in-house pate and made it tonight - french lentils, walnuts, basil, thyme, miso and umeboshi paste are the main ingredients. it has a really great meaty taste and the same texture as good pate.

i'm so happy!!!

Oh nice! Did you ever try out that mushroom pate I posted ages back? I should give it a try myself. Dating another vegan now (heh!) so need to get back into the cooking experiments :)