What's cooking? part 4

recs for a good meat thermometer i can get from amazon?

i believe thermapen is the gold standard--angling to get one as a self-xmas gift soon

daaaaang 90$ is a little more than i want to spend - i really only want it to cook roast lamb for xmas! it might get used twice a year afterwards, since this is a vegan household for the most part.

hahaha ok yeah that might be overkill then.

I have one similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/Component-Design-1751000-ProAccurate-Thermometer/dp/B00064BCPM/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1355273803&sr=8-28&keywords=cooking+thermometer

You don't need a specific one for meat, just one with a nice broad range. I use mine for everything - candy, cheese making, meat, hapless attempts at deep frying, and to check the temp in the fridge and freezers.

hm maybe, I will try it next time and see if I notice a diff. But also it seems you might also be able to just cook it on the stove w/o a lid too maybe?

fwiw this is how I made my improvised, glanced at a recipe & then ran with it shakshuka. Turned out delicious. Spooned a bit of sauce occasionally on top of the eggs to aid in cooking thoroughly.

recs for a good meat thermometer i can get from amazon?

Heh, don't know if I can convince him to give it up but my vegetarian friend has got one for Christmas two years in a row now from his *parents,* so weird.

Oh I could buy one, but it's more fun to ask for really boring presents that even the poorest member of my family could afford if they needed an idea. I also routinely ask for warm socks.

Pro-tip from someone who has been through MANY: go for the Taylor 1470N with a couple of replacement probes, because they do go bad. But these things do it all, esp. grill/roast/smoke

Clarification: the probes go bad after heavy use, but they don't cost much and the basic unit just needs new batteries every 5 years or whatevs.

Chickpea and shrimp curry with orange pepper and spinach wilted under it. Ohhh yes.

I will rep for thermapen - we've had ours for years, it's great

but Mr Veg does a lot bbqing so it kinda pays for itself now

http://www.amazon.com/CDN-DTQ450X-ProAccurate-Quick-Read-Thermometer/dp/B0021AEAG2/

^^I just did mad research on large-range instant thermometers the other day and this seems to be the unanimous "best thermomemter"

ha that's the one i already decided to buy! i checked out the one quincie recommended, but almost half of the 300 or so reviews were 1-star.

Yellow curry with chicken and leeks. Smells really good!

got this recipe for cauliflower poppers (likely copied it from vegan with a vengeance) - cauli, dijon, garlic, nutritional yeast, tarragon, splash lemon juice, tossed w/ oil and roasted - i am down!

Ha! I think I posted that recipe ages ago

They are really good btw

i only know a couple dishes that call for nutritional yeast but i really like all that it brings - flavorwise and nutritionally speaking. haven't seen it for 20 years but i remember using smoked nutritional yeast to replace bacon in a spinach salad dressing at one of my (too many to remember) past cooking jobs

made curry soup by sauteeing ginger, garlic, and red onion in coconut oil then pouring in chicken broth, coconut milk, water, and a few tablespoons of red curry paste and cooking some chicken in it, then adding chopped cabbage when the chicken was cooked. and cut up the chicken and put it back in. plus lime juice and cilantro at the end.

So curries...they're all just onions, garlic, ginger, curry, coconut milk, protein...right? I mean it seems like I make basically the same curry every time with minor adjustments.

I know you can get into the roasting and grinding of individual spices, I'm almost definitely never going to reach that level of seriousness but I'm aware it exists. But other than that?

i think it just means cooked in spice combination, could be dry without an coconut milk or dairy, might not use onion, garlic, or ginger. there are so many different kinds in the world!

i'm pretty impressed by this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry
in the new year i promise to make more contributions to curry chronicles

Yes, thanks, I know what "curry" means. Effectively the ones I make and many of the ones that ppl describe here seem to come out the same much of the time. Maybe I just really really like coconut milk.

Korma vs bhuna vs karahi vs thai pumpkin curry vs green curry vs panang curry vs katsu curry etc? NB I don't tend to make all of those but the ones I do are fairly distinctive? But sometimes involve jars

Is there anything not necessarily vegan I could replace the nutritional yeast with in those cauliflower poppers? e.g. could I do the opposite of outdoor_miner's previous substitution and throw in some bacon lardons?

Just asking so as not to buy something I have no other uses for. Of course maybe I should just buy it and find some other uses.

Curries make me sad because a well-done curry (or even a supermarket curry or a not particularly good Indian takeaway) is a thing of beauty, but when I make them they all come out interchangeable and the sauce always tastes too much of one of the ingredients to the exclusion of everything else. Usually turmeric or onion - I have a terrible habit of burning the onions and ruining any sauce which starts w/ frying onions - or something else not particularly enjoyable to eat a whole plateful of. If anyone has any really idiot-proof curry recipes please let me know!

parmesan, maybe cheddar will give you the mouthfeel and umami effect of the nut. yeast.

as for burning onions - turn the heat down (!) and stir

Thanks!

I've been better at onions recently because I've been making a conscious effort to use one of the smaller hobs and keep the heat on the lowest setting, so I was really excited for the last curry I cooked, but alas, still no luck.

(It was a veg curry, and instead of the delicious and creamy sauce I hoped for it turned out as a bunch of chopped vegetables of varying degrees of under- and over-cookedness sitting in some muddy brown onion-and-spice water/yoghurt mix. Oh well.)

just curious - are you using tried and true recipes? what type of curry are you going for? yoghurt seems a little odd choice for a curry - it really shouldn't be cooked for more than a few seconds, ime. as for cooking times - you want ingredients to be similar sized for aesthetics *and* cooking time reasons; but also carrots for example are gonna take longer than broccoli or peppers. yeah?

La Lechera is going to take me Asian and Indian food shopping in Chicago in a few days, maybe I'll have more exciting curry chronicles to report after that.

xxpost yogurt usually needs to be tempered to avoid it curdling/separating in a sauce. it can make for a creamy sauce but it's always worked best for me when you add it gradually, and stir it a lot each time.

good point but it doesn't make sense to me to boil it

you don't really have to boil it though. medium-low, but you have to stir it a lot to incorporate it into the sauce. it'll curdle if you don't stir, even on low heat. yogurt lives to separate :)

:D

so excited! i'm so glad you will see me in my natural habitat.

in orbit in chicago? is that cooking I smell, or... trouble?

I think this was the recipe? I was looking at it in a book and not online but it's from the right magazine. Though I was improvising a bit too (didn't have cardamom or almonds, had so much fresh veg that I didn't bother with the peas)

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1089641/creamy-veggie-korma

I part-steamed the veg a bit first and made sure the carrots got longer than everything else but still misjudged how much longer they'd need. Maybe I just used the wrong veg as I had a load of broccoli and green beans which needed using. Or maybe it just isn't that good, cz those books are full of stuff which is easy and usually pleasant but generally not very exciting.

pre-steaming might be part of the problem. they'll release a lot more water added into the sauce that way, which may account for the wateryness. sauteeing them a little first and then adding the sauce per the directions, with enough simmer time should be enough to cook them through.

it's weird how they have the directions for cooking in two pans --- it'd be a lot simpler to just add directions for variations below than the whole if 1 then this, if 2 then this, but if 1 keep doing what you're doing

that method of adding the yogurt at the very end off the heat should work okay. so it might just have been your method with the pre-steaming that added more liquid maybe

trial and error! but it's def a bummer to make dinner and have it not turn out right, I usually get kinda bummed out when that happens.

(xp) That's good to know for next time, thanks. Also I think I turned the heat off before adding the yoghurt but I did let it sit in the pan for a minute or two before serving, so next time I add yoghurt to anything I'll make sure it doesn't sit for too long.

That webpage has some comments saying it's bland and watery too but they don't print those in the book edition, ha.

lol yeah typical huh

am making the craziest, most heart-attack inducing mac & cheese for potluck tomorrow

5 cheeses plus velveeta plus eggs plus half and half

kind of excited tbh

oh and the recipe is from Patti LaBelle! how can it not be awesome, right?

oh man I am so supportive of this recipe! PATTI LABELLE!

i know right? i had to watch a youtube vid of her making it to get all the ingredients and omg she is fab and gorgeous

hmm. well it TASTES good. but all the 'sauce' kinda collected in the bottom and curdled so it's not quite so appealing in the looks department. googling suggests that i overcooked the macaroni - apparently it has to be super-al dente to absorb the sauce etc. And I may need extra milk.

someone said cube all the cheese (cheeses are shredded) but that seems like a desperation move to me...i think the cheese distributes better shredded.

I'm planning on making it for christmas so I'm glad I got a chance to try it out on some other 'victims', lol

part 2 of my "this is really bad for you" menu this year: raspberry cream icebox pie.

oreo crust. raspberries, raspberry yogurt, vanilla pudding mix and whipped cream.

mainly I am doing this to pander to my 15 yo niece who never eats christmas or thanksgiving dessert bcz she hates "grownup" pies. But she loves oreos so...we'll see.