What's cooking? part 4

harbl, you could braise the kale; saute in a bit of oil w onion & garlic, add enough water to cover & simmer for 20 min

add some rice noodles and some kind of sauce/dressing,
save the leftovers for tomorrow's lunch, eat cold or room temp or warm, as you please,
maybe with cubed tofu or some of those crunchy breaded not-chicken strips cut into pieces so they seem more fancy/less formerly frozen.
that's what i plan to do with some been-in-there-for-a-while kale this very evening (with tofu because that's getting old too)

autumnal weather and quiet evening in = schleswig christmas cabbage, pickled herring, baked potato. a glass of gin.

I just eat vegetables raw when I'm lazy

which is like all the time

Enough for dinner + lunch or dinner tomorrow (or let's face it, the next day)
Took about 10 min to make
sesame seeds for crunch recommended
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8334/8084249831_58b018d454_n.jpg

i'm just making some plain old salad with this. it's gonna be plenty of mussels w/ baguettes anyway.

Smoked 30 lbs of bone-in pork shoulder overnight. Dying of pork here.

Here let me help u w that

ysi

I would if I could, believe me! I love good pork sooooo much, but I told husband that I was at risk of pork poisioning with all this smoked pork in the house. Fortunately, a prior experiment confirmed that it freezes well, plus we have local friends who are delighted to come over for pork in exchange for wine :)

oh yeah it freezes great.

protip: if you have a foodsaver or some kind of vacuum-sealing bag, you can pop the frozen pork in a pot of water, bring it to the boil, let it go for another 5 -10 minutes after that, and voila reheated.

tastes a lot better to heat up ribs/pulled pork that way vs most other reheating methods, esp microwaving

I have: 4lbs of short ribs. I do not have: bottles of wine or 6 cups of beef broth. Must I go shopping??

yup

mussels was awesome. it's this recipe http://www.sassyradish.com/2011/06/coconut-green-curry-mussels/ which was good in that it uses pre-made curry paste but the addition of lemongrass (which i was surprised was cheap at wf, will buy again) makes it taste like not pre-made.

i'm making chicken adobo for dinner and making applesauce and something with canned pumpkin. and kale.

I used to read a ton of food blogs, but haven't done that for a couple of years now. . . what blogs are people liking these days? (I just added sassyradish)

Whoah. Reading back in saddyradish I just fell over this astonishing (to me) instruction: " “Pasta sauces may cook slowly or rapidly, they make take 4 minutes or 4 hours, but the always cook by evaporation, which concentrates and clearly defines their flavor. Never cook a sauce in a covered pan, or it will emerge with a bland, steamed, weakly formulated taste.”

WHAT?? Holy cow I've been doing it wrong forever.

Also a revelation: you can ROAST radishes?? This is the solution to the two bunches in my fridge, particularly the ones that are getting kind of old and I didn't know what to do with.

^^^roasted radishes are p good! They mellow out but are still kinda toothy.

sassyradish OTM about pasta sauces, what the heck you been doing girl?

Well covering, obviously.

My mother has made bolognese sauce (referred to just as "spaghetti") in a crock pot or covered on the stove my entire life! It never occurred to me to question.

sassyradish OTM about pasta sauces, what the heck you been doing girl?
i say with a goodnatured lol that this was my reaction exactly -- how else would the water evaporate to create a sauce instead of "stuff suspended in water"?
good thing my mom never cooked, i guess

my parents cover; I think this is a midwestern thing

I guess I escaped my midwestern cooking destiny on this one (see also: mushy vegetables)

I never even thought about it. Part of the cooking would of course always be with the lid off but during long simmering I thought the purpose was to uh meld flavors and/or cook things, not nec evaporation, so I put the lid on to KEEP it from drying out! Now that I think it through.

i guess i always figured it's the same concept as any reduction -- simmer off excess moisture and leave concentrated flavor

if you have a can of whole peeled tomoatoes, half an onion, and a half a stick of butter, throw that shit in a saucepan--NO LID--and in an hour or so you will have the most delcious simple marinara a la Marcella Hazan. Pasta optional--I can just sit down with a spoon and eat it straight from the pan and be in heaven.

I made a mental note of that recipe, that's where the NO LID comment came from, and I will CERTAINLY ATTEND to it just as soon as I make these beef short ribs that are thawing on my counter....

Thinking this recipe?

yeah I usually do lid off -- the only time I'll put the lid on is if I need to hold it over once it's done reducing.

in other news I've made kale chips twice now and I think that I don't like the taste that much? even tho I loooooooooove kale. the concentrated flavor of the baked chips is really, disturbingly close to broccoli. like super-veg flavor... kind of a deal breaker for this broccoli hater :(

I found myself eating them with apple pieces to accompany, just so I could get the taste out of my mouth. but I'll power through this batch and see if I can't turn a corner.

I don't like the earthy sweetness of cooked kale so I usually kill it with other, sharper flavors so mostly what I get from kale is the bitterness, which I like. Lemon juice, cayenne, lots of salt...no? More heat, maybe? Otoh maybe you just won't like kale. :)

i like raw kale salad...and I love braised kale...maybe it is bitterness that's my problem. (lol). I added lemon juice to some this time...also tried nutritional yeast, and a fair whack of sea salt. they're cooling now so we shall see how I go this round.

I did hear of salt & vinegar kale chips. which intrigues me.

maybe I should try a batch of those next weekend as my last gasp

there is a good marinara recipe from new york times i have used, and i also often use a mario batali recipe that uses shredded carrots and thyme

shredded carrots in marinara is v good

i just realized this says 2 cans of tomatoes and i have always been doing 1 oops http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2007/10/mario-batali-recipe-for-marinara-sauce.html

i think this is the other one http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/health/nutrition/13recipehealth.html

i just this minute realized that i learned to make pasta sauces from waiting tables and checking out what the cooks were doing during slow periods

ie none of the tables were mine

working on coffee ice cream - consistently have the exact same problem each time!

the instructions call for bringing the cream, milk, coffee and sugar to a "gentle boil"

seems like whenever i turn my back on the damn thing - even when set at low heat - instead of coming to a gentle boil, it starts forming huge bubbles and threatens to foam over the top like a chemistry experiment!

after that there is a faint taste / smell of popcorn associated with the cream, and although i think that pretty much goes away when i actually make the ice cream i can't help but feel like i'm doing something wrong here, or that it couldn't be improved by actually bringing the damn stuff to a gentle boil instead of a volcanic eruption

what am i doing wrong here?

homemade ice cream might be one of the most damn difficult things i've ever worked on, though i've never tried pastries and baking, i'm sure that's tougher

a) dont turn your back EVER
b) when bubbles start forming around the edge, turn it down a scooch - it doesnt respond as quickly as water to temp changes, so you have to anticipate
c) if you have to, take pot off heat to calm the boil before it swells

is it ruined as soon as it swells?

i made some coffee ice cream in my day, and yes, that is good advice -- don't turn your back, monitor the boil closely
also i have had to lift the pot off of the flame lotsa times, it's not a failure

coffee ice cream is so fucking GOOD

i don't think so, but i also don't have the world's most refined/selective palate
if it tastes like coffee ice cream at the end, i will eat it

also how is it that it knows EXACTLY when to swell - i turned my back for less than 15 seconds this time!

come to think of it, maybe it's *my* timing that's perfect, not the cream's

IME the forming of a skin and heavy steaming indicates it is just on the verge of gentle boil, at which point I pull it off! I don't think boil is strictly necessary? You're doing a custard-based ice cream, I assume? With eggs? Getting to the skin stage should be plenty hot enough for the requisite thickening.

the skin is a delicacy in some places! you can make postre de natas! http://www.unacolombianaencalifornia.com/postre-de-natas

there is an "artisan" ice cream maker nearby who gets his milk and cream from the family dairy farm, he's in his 60s or 70s (i think) and has been doing ice-cream-making professionally for like 50 years now, he make his with just milk, cream, sugar and one or two additions and he told me (in his opinion)

1) if you add egg you're making iced custard and not iced cream (sorry old dude, i add egg!)

2) it's very hard to do ice cream on a small / home scale

3) it's one of those foods that we're really spoiled on because we're used to the commercial stuff which is generally full of additives and/or subjected to processes you can't do in your kitchen

all that stuff sounds like it makes sense, still, i'm gonna get it right!!

I made coffee icecream once many years ago - it didnt involve infusing the coffe in boiled milk but did have some kind of custard base (milk and eggs or something) and oh man it was the most divine creamy thing I ever did eat.

he said a lot of his success comes down to using a big huge industrial beater to get the frothiness of the milk/cream mixture right and also getting the milk straight from the farm so that it has a different kind of fat globule than the milk you get from the store? i dunno, he's kind of vague about it (for obvious reasons)

i should see if he needs an apprentice

it's not nec *ruined* when it swells but that can scald the milk which would account for that diff taste you mentioned

never. turn. your. back.