What's cooking? part 4

I need to investigate more uses for hominy--the flavor and texture is great (imo), but I've never experience it outside of grits and posole. Maybe some sort of cheesy hominy casserole with carmelized onions and some good ole Tabasco, with aged cheddar? Or shimp and grits with whole hominy instead of grits? Or some sort of corned beef hash with hominy instead of potatoes? I wonder what the texture would be like were it pureed into a black bean soup type of thing. . . so much corn, so little time.

quincie do you have a recipe for your smoked pork stew/posole? i'd like to try it!

If I don't have cream of tartar for a baking recipe and it also calls for baking soda and I do have that, does it need another rising agent or something? Can I skip the CoT?

i'd go ahead and skip it -- what's the worst that could happen, flat cookies? who cares. they'll still taste good.

I'm going to make sweet potato, brocolli and chick pea curry. Hurricanes being out the domestic in me. I'd love to make cookies or brownies but I don't have any supplies. Maybe if the shops are open tomorrow.

No real recipe. Step 1 is to smoke a shitton of pork shoulder with a good dry rub on it, then freeze it in quart size freezer bags until the urge for stew hits.

I just sauteed some onion, hot pepper (in this case some sort of longish green hot pepper I got from the indian grocer, but jalapeno, serrano, all those work), garlic. Tossed in some ancho chili powder and let it warm up and bloom for a sec. Then some canned whole tomato with a glug of the juice (say 1/2 a 28 oz can of whole peeled tomato). I had a little bit of tomatillo salsa in the fridge, so I chucked that in to. Plop in the pork and a can of rinsed hominy and/or rinsed canned black beans, add some h20 or and/or stock to get it to whatever degree of soupiness you like, simmer for a bit and S&P to taste. Sometimes it isn't spicy enough for me, so I'll chuck in a minced chipotle canned in adobo.

When ready to serve, chuck in some chopped cilantro and a lot of fresh squeezed lime juice.

thanks quincie!

quincie do you cook homemade corned beef hash?? Do you use a brisket?

If I don't have cream of tartar for a baking recipe and it also calls for baking soda and I do have that, does it need another rising agent or something? Can I skip the CoT?

― purveyor of generations (in orbit), Monday, October 29, 2012 11:51 AM

Add some other mild acid. Cream of tartar is tartaric acid - it would mix with the baking soda to create CO2 bubbles to provide the leavening.

So corned beef takes at least a week to cure in a brine! Has anyone tried this?

Jaq, I looked it up and decided to sub lemon juice because I would quite like the cookies to be lemony actually...but the substitution says 1-1/2 tsp of lemon juice for every HALF TEASPOON of CoT--in my case, that's 6 tsp of juice! Is that a lot?

pretty sure if you do 6 tsps your oven will http://i.imgur.com/uPSTw.jpg

That's a lot of lemon juice! And seems wrong. But if you want lemony cookies, it might be just the thing.

(also maybe grate in some lemon rind)

i think zest might add a better lemony flavor than juice (because of all of the liquid) but that's just my guess

I already zested and added it to the cinnamon-sugar mix that you roll them in. :) 6tsp turned out to be roughly the juice of one lemon, btw.

I saw a substitution that said 1/4 tsp lemon juice for every 1/8 of tartar. Does that sound better?

seeking navy bean advice: I am a dried bean novice.

the soup I made yesterday called for 8oz of dried navy beans and 6 cups of water. bring to a boil, simmer for 2 minutes, and then stand for 1 hour. drain, make mirepoix etc add the beans back into the pot with stock etc and simmer for 1 and 1/2 hours.

by the end of the cooking time the beans were falling apart, but they were still kinda toothsome? like, not super hard but just not at all soft like I expected. I was running out of time so I just buzzed it with the immersion blender anyway. this happened the last time I made cannellini bean soup too, they just didn't ever soften the way I expected?

do u guys soak your beans overnight, or do a hard boil method...there's all kinds of back and forth on the websites i've looked at, some ppl say no never soak overnight u don't need to and some say OMG YES ALWAYS and I'm SO confused.

I just need a good bean approach so I'm not kinda sad about my bean soups.

or do white beans just not get soft. they didn't even really seem to swell up or get much bigger either, which I kind of thought they would?

Sometimes the rapid soak method works for me, sometimes not. One method I've used is to boil them hard for a half hour, add seasonings, then put them in a low/medium oven all day. Overnight soak never has never failed me yet. I think I read once that acid halts bean softening, so never put tomatoes or other acidic things in beans until after they're tender...

yeah I read that about salt too, it toughens the skins - stupid soup called for early salt grr

think I will attempt a different soup and do the overnight soak next time

Re salt, I've heard that the tough-skin thing is a bit of a myth, but I haven't done a Cooks-Illus. style test with multiple trials.

why bcz we have LIVES, cook's illustrated, LIVES

My no-fail method for great northerns is soak overnight, drain, bring to a boil and simmer low 1 hour with salt/pepper/bay leaves, then add whatever else and simmer low until done. They're generally tender enough to eat after that 1st hour + 20 minutes or so and then it's just a matter of how broken-down and starchy do you want the cooking water.

xpost to Jacob--our first brisket attempt (it was a team effort, thus the "we") was kind of a failure; we thought that ~300-350 for 9 hours or so was sufficiently "low and slow" on the smoker; we were wrong.

Second attempt was much more successful: 250 tops for ~12 hours.

You are in TX so you will not have trouble getting a good fatty brisket (a good fat cap is U&K); a lot of the brisket you see around here is what I refer to as Jewish brisket, which is no good for smoking (sorry Jews, u know I love u otherwise). It's been trimmed within an inch of its life, which may be OK for corned beef, but no good on the smoker.

If I had been smart enough to lay in some potatoes prior to this hurricane, I would do a smoked pork hash; because I failed on the potatoes, I am thinking of doing a hash-type thing that involves hominy instead of potatoes and pulled pork shoulder instead of corned beef. But I do love corned beef, and you can get great corned beef in Baltimore. Have never corned it myself, but it is on my list of things to try!

xpost to VG: I have found dried beans to be tempermental. Like, I can get them to where I want them tenderness-wise, but it may take +/- five hours or so. In my limited experience, a pressure cooker yields more consistent results.

Veg, salt is not the same as acid, I think it's okay to salt them! Just don't add any tomato or vinegar or anything until they're soft.

You guys and your meat projects amaze me! I was telling Laurel that I need to up my meat game this winter. I used to make a lot more meaty dishes than I do now. I think meat kinda stresses me out?

The basics of meat are so easy--so much easier than baking imo!

mr veg cooks almost all of our meat - mostly on the bbq. I reap the delicious rewards.

no you can't salt beans until they're cooked! salt slows them down too.

Oh, okay. I never use dried beans, only canned, and they don't seem to have any prob w salt but maybe I just haven't noticed.

yeah I think the salt thing only applies to dried beans. canned beans = totally cool

I haven't cooked meat in years but I have a huge leg of boneless aussie lamb for me and a friend - what should I do with it?? I just want it simple - garlic and rosemary,.roasted, but I've totally forgotten how to cook any kind of neat

#meat

I make chicken and steaks and stuff, little portions, but large pieces of meat just ... I don't even know how to handle them or what they are. The only large piece of meat I can handle is a pork roast --> nc style bbq (but not on a smoker or anything)

I think part of it is that I just don't really enjoy eating meat all THAT much, so putting a lot of effort into cooking large amounts of it is just kinda...not a good use of my time. But I want to improve, so I guess I have to dedicate myself or something.

This was my tofu kale beet thing from earlier btw. It was really tasty!
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8195/8135646895_5c20b8d4df_n.jpg

Boneless leg o' lamb: marinate in garlic, rosemary, lemon juice, and good olive oil; grill on charcoal grill or grill pan; pull it at like 115-120 F max interior temp--rest and it will get up to 120-125 or so which is perfection imo.

hey justin3, if you're doing the oven I've used this Jamie Oliver before and it turned out p great - good simple beginner-y method. (Except I put it in a roasting tray instead of straight onto the oven rack, hate cleaning the oven as it is, lol)

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/lamb-recipes/best-roast-leg-of-lamb

(sorry I'm kind of a recipe person vs a wing-it person)

that looks great LL!

now I want some BEETS.

Thanks! I got a new phone so now the camera is a lot better and doesn't make everything look like greasy slop.

yeah that is a v appetizing photo

Yeah I can't grill it, gotta go with the oven method. Lamb is my fav meat, so excited!

love lamb so much

Me too! My favorite meat, or maybe that is pork? But lamb and pork tops!

yeah, definitely nature's beasts

Lamb is my favourite too! Slow-cooked is amazing.
I like putting bits of leftover roast lamb with couscous and either roasted veg, bit of red wine and spices, or halloumi, olives, red onion, pine nuts/almonds and probably other stuff I can't remember. Leftover roast lamb always looks dry and horrible but then softens back up immediately when you heat it ime.

Lamb and pork are my favorite meats to cook, for some reason I hardly ever cook beef. I'd like to cook a beef roast for stew or even beef tips and rice, but when ever I look at the beef at the grocery store, I end up just getting flustered and walking over to the pork.