What's cooking? part 4

cooking is a wheel. you think you can cook and then you steam an artichoke for the first time and fail miserably.

next week I'm gonna get it right, goddammit.

For tonight's supper I made the Spinach Provencale recipe from the venerable The Vegetarian Epicure cookbook, circa 1977.

You wash up two large bunches of spinach, saute a chopped onion and some garlic, add all spinach long enough to wilt it, then add a mixture of two beaten eggs and grated parmesan, stir well, then turn it into a baking dish and bake at 375 for about 20-25 minutes.

With that I made a cole slaw and some steamed brussels sprouts, and I served it all with french bread from a local bakery and butter.

That sounds a lot like a quiche? And also delicious.

Unlike quiche it has no crust, consists of about 80% spinach, 15% onion and very little egg. As you suspected, it's delicious.

Oh I make crustless quiches pretty often, after Lechera recommended them a few years ago. The egg balance difference is otm though. I'm going to try that as soon as my oven gets fixed!! (The door hinge is broken or stuck and it won't open now.)

The original recipe (iirc) calls for:

2 lbs. fresh spinach, washed, destemmed
1 onion, chopped
garlic
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 eggs, beaten with:
3/4 cup grated parmesan
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. I use a heavy-bottomed 8 qt. stock pot to saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil. When onion is transparent, add spinach. Wilt it for three or four minutes, stirring. Remove from heat. Mix in the egg-parmesan. Turn into a buttered baking dish. Bake for 20 minutes at 375.

Bought all the parts to make my own sous vide oven! Weekend project time :)

whoa! details pls.

This thing: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0088OTON4/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0088OTON4/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and one of these, which I hope will work okay:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I8VE68/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got a medium sized Coleman cooler to modify - drill holes in the lid for the heating element wire and the temperature sensor; install a grill at one end to encompass and stabilize the heater and one at the other to house the pump. Fill with water, turn it on and see how it goes.

And, if that weenie little coil heater doesn't do the job, I've got my eye on this one: http://www.amazon.com/MARSHALLTOWN-Premier-742G-Bucket-Heater/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=38RDX3ZA000BS&coliid=I1IRTZB02SYD9J

whoa

lol @ "designed to continuously heat buckets of water"

About to try fiddleheads for the first time, boiled then sauteed in butter, alongside eggs.

mmmmmm super jeal

I scaled and gutted a fish tonight! It was not planned but when I looked at the fish I'd bought I realised it was going to need preprocessing. A couple of YouTubes later, it wasn't as difficult as I expected. Feel I've acquired a valuable life skill.

nice job!

they'd better have some damn fiddleheads at the store this week

Still finding fish scales all over the kitchen.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/44/Fishscale-Ghostface.jpg/220px-Fishscale-Ghostface.jpg

So I've been eating the carnitas for a couple of days and I fucked it up slightly by taking out too much of the liquid midway through because I was afraid it was going to be inedibly spicy, and now it's bland and flavorless. So I'm willing to try it again. But overall my "barbacoa" beef kills the pork shoulder, I think because of the browning and also because I didn't put any tomatoes or tomato paste in the pork recipe (not called for). Needs more L-glutamate.

have you tried a shitload of salt? i think the stuff served in most restaurants is hella salty -- i just had some last night at our end-of-semester party and was surprised that the dominant flavor was salt. nothing else. just salty meat. it was good because those things are tasty, but the flavor was not distinctively CARNITAS! it was salty pork.

it was actually really good with the asian slaw salad thing i brought!

you could cobble together an asian-style taco, such as served from trucks in LA

that's exactly what we did, only with tostadas!! it was delicious! i brought limes and my squeezer, and some peanuts, and everyone went to town. there was also some strange pink salad with marshmallows in it, bread pudding made by my student's mom, and some other stuff i don't remember.

my salad was
cabbage carrots edamame pea sprouts kale mint cilantro
dressed with
rice vin peanut butter sriracha soy sauce sesame oil + lime

everyone was super into it! i was impressed.

Funny you should mention salt because I kept adding more and more and thinking, how can this still be so bland?? I'll add more (again) when I re-heat.

I'm not saying it's bad--it's good. It's just no beef brisket.

I hardly ever eat beef! Pork 4ever

beef gives me a stomach ache
tbh i still don't know what brisket is in spite of everyone talking about it all the time! maybe i'll look it up. in my mind it's a huge cooked piece of beef with little strings holding it together, maybe some pepper on the outside?

ok, now i know
i have never seen that served/made i don't think?! i always thought of it like pastrami.

Come back and I'll make it for you! But not if it gives you a stomach ache. :(

This is kind of my ideal but I don't go to this much trouble: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/04/better-than-chipotles-beef-barbacoa-tacos.html

it looks tasty!! i just can't really eat more than a couple bites of beef without getting a stomachache. it's just not my meat. sad fact: i can't eat a burger :(

that looks delicious! i can't stand the knowitall tone of that recipe but the advice was good!!

The acids and glutamates are key to the flavor imo! I add a little sundried tomato paste, a handful of canned tomato, some dashes of fish sauce, and a good glug of apple cider vinegar. The pork is improved by more salt and more lime but then it tastes like...salt and lime. Eh.

I'm sorry your life is burger-free. Good thing you like other foods so much more!

Speaking of lime let's hear it for those squeezers, am I right??!? Man those are genius.

my stomach used to be much like that! I can have the occasional burger but not a very large one. I used to get so sick-feeling.

mysteriously I can eat huge steaks, though

wait what are these magical squeezers of which you speak?

show me your squeezers

(god I have wanted to type that for like an hour now)

quincie: http://www.elizabethannedesigns.com/living/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Citrus-Juicer.jpg

mh: You get nothing but side-eye.

I have a metal one like the one on left! Works well.

although I have to admit I somehow had it at a weird angle and it sprayed lime juice directly in my eyes once, at high velocity. could have been a time-traveling lime sent by in orbit from this thread.

meanwhile, i was hoping someone would ask that haha
my students all were familiar with and knew how to operate the squeezer.

also i have sprayed myself in the eye with lime juice so many times that i have a special pair of goggles i wear when i'm doing it at home. last night i just hoped for the best.

THE GOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!

Oh OK, there is one of those (but metal) here at the house we are renting, and it is awesome because it is sized for Mexican limes, which are very small! I lugged my electric citrus juicer down here thinking it would be U&K for margarita-making, but it is pretty useless with the lil Mexican limes.

oh man I want a squeezer now

still giggling at my own comment :/

Somehow I have managed to elevate my breakfast burrito game w broccoli: I steamed a cup or two of frozen TJ's broc until almost-but-not-quite done and stuck it in the fridge and I throw 5 or 7 florets in the pan after I flip the egg.

TO REVIEW:
-melt butter in pan
-add two eggs, sprinkle soy chorizo over the uncooked egg
-flip egg and add broc to pan
-heat a flour tortilla up
-slide egg and broc onto tortilla, top w melted cheese and salsa, fold up
-be the queen of breakfast

The nickn variation:

-heat olive oil in a pan
-add chopped onions and cook until starting to brown, set aside
-add sliced mushrooms and cook until starting to soften
-add diced Pancetta to pan and cook with the mushrooms until most of the fat is melted, set mushrooms & pancetta aside
-cook an egg over easy while heating a middle-Eaatern flatbread in the toaster oven
-when egg is done wrap it and the rest in the flatbread, adding salt, pepper, and hot sauce
-enjoy with coffee