What's cooking? part 4

I made risotto with orzo pasta instead of rice and, as well as tasting awesome, it only took 15 minutes to cook.

last night i made chicken in my cast iron skillet with a sherry/thyme reduction, roasted brussels sprouts and cauli, and cheese/crackers. it felt like fall food.

i miss summer food already!

What do you do with molasses? It's not really a thing in nz but I bought a jar awhile ago for a recipe and now I don't know what else to use it for.

i think i've only used it for cookies?

molasses is best used in baking. I use it when I bake granola. it shows up in quick breads & some muffin or cookie recipes. pumpkin pie. gingerbread. not very useful in cooking though.

is it similar to treacle?

Down here it's a ubiquitous biscuit-topper, more in play than honey and in some households more than jelly or jam. Mix a little softened butter into some molasses and it's really heavenly stuff.

I only mess with sorghum molasses, never tried blackstrap, which I hear is sulfurous/bitter and kinda nasty tasting.

Funnily enough, I saw this recipe posted on Facebook just this morning: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/alton-browns-molasses-and-coffee-pork-chops-recipe.html
I assume you could marinate tofu or tempeh with it as well.

I like to use it instead of brown sugar sometimes when I'm making barbecue sauce.

I was going to say it's good in marinades. And you can use it in any recipe that calls for black treacle, so tons of baking.

Looks like it is the same as black treacle! In which case I've made this which I loved (was a bit dubious about the bitterness of the treacle but it's good in this cake): http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1462/sticky-stem-ginger-cake-with-lemon-icing

I like to use it instead of brown sugar

food trivia. brown sugar is created by simply combining refined sugar with molasses.

I've got the black strap stuff. Would it mage a suitable-if different- sub for maple syrup in a marinade?

I think I originally bought it for a bbq sauce recipe that came out disappointingly.

I wish I could tell you. I need to find a neighbor who has some and beg a couple of tbsp. so I can find out for myself how much more bitter it is than sorghum.

oh quincie i totally forgot - there's supposed to be a half tsp or so of liquid smoke in that tempeh recipe!!

ah OK, I can grab some of that this afternoon. Do I cut the tempeh crosswise into strips, lengthwise into strips, or do I just chuck the whole rectangle into the skillet? I had somehow expected it to be shaped more like a block of tofu, but instead it is this thinish rectangle.

Just cut it into thin strips, probably about a 1/4" thick, any way you like.

Going to make this tonight
http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/beetroot-carrot-poriyal-recipe/

A friend took me to a south Indian vegetarian restaurant and it was all delicious but the beet poriyal was insane. Alongside all the curries and other dishes, it stood out as being almost meaty, kind of bacon-y.

I like to cut a block of tempeh mildly on the bias to increase the ratio of surface area to volume.

Saturday night I made the berbere chicken and lentils that Stevie made upthread, to rave reviews from housemates. Everybody wants to take the leftovers for lunches. When I saw how much berbere I had to buy (huge container, at least for spices it's huge) I wondered if it was worth it, but now I'm really glad I have it, because I plan on making this or some variation pretty regularly. Also made rum and raisin ice cream - pretty good but I'll stick with store bought unless I ever get an ice cream maker.

Brown rice pasta (or rice/quinoa) is worse than wheat pasta, but it's better than no pasta.

I agree about whole wheat pasta. It just doesn't have the right texture at all and the flavor is certainly no improvement over semolina pasta.

I just finished making about 2 liters of fresh salsa verde. Our CSA recently gave us a ton of tomatillos, some Anaheim peppers, plus some cilantro, garlic and fresh jalapenos. There seemed to be a message in there.

Main course: Ginger/garlic pork with dandelion greens and ponzu
Side dish: Wild rice with marinated tofu

3rd night of crockpot enchilada stew: burrito magic

My doc's office had a bunch of Bon Appetit and I snagged some amazing pasta recipes as well as an awesome griddle cake recipe using cornmeal, buckwheat, and oat flours and is apparently GF too!

Who wants to come over for pasta

i am learning how to make pasta sauce

most of my advances in cooking in the past year or so basically boil down to 'saute some onions or something to start with', funny how far that gets me

onions are critically vital

aliums

think it was edouard de pomiane who said he'd often put the onions on before he'd decided what he was going to cook

Lundberg makes a ~really~ nice brown rice pasta. and a co-op in Oakland (pretty certain) called community grains makes killer whole wheat noodles. both have the best texture and if you ate these blindfolded i'd wager you wouldn't have a easy time telling them from semolina. they're that wonderful.

xxxxpost

I pickled some red onions today.

been ending up with p wicked frankenstein breakfast burritos (for dinner) lately by starting with the onions

also i want all the pickles

pickled red onions would be ace on a breakfast burrito!

I am making a roasted cauliflower soup.

tonight i made pan-roasted salmon with a little improv gremolata, and a side of rapini with roasted garlic and crispy potatoes. prettiest meal i've made in a while if nothing else.

Discovered roasted kabocha squash. Like chestnuts without all the peeling.

The Trader Joe's sales flyer suggested roasted kombucha squash curry so that's definitely going to happen.

i like it roasted, but another way i cook it:

heat a cast iron pan on med-high
toss 1" slices of peel kabocha (we call it buttercup pumpkin in nz) in a little oil
add to pan and brown to really dark
throw in a handful of thinly sliced onion
and a pinch of nutmeg
brown onions
add a generous splash of white wine (i only have sake at the moment so i just use that)
cover and put in a 350F oven for about 30 mins or until pumpkin is tender.

I thought kabocha and buttercup were different: http://heathereatsalmondbutter.com/2010/01/19/kabocha-vs-buttercup/

they taste exactly the same to me - that article says buttercup gets mushy, but that has never been my experience

I didn't have much at home, so I just tried to throw together a dutch oven one-pot. Spinach on bottom, frozen tuna steak, garlic, carrots, broccoli, avocado oil tossed around a bit then harissa, salt and pepper on top.

The recipe I saw for something similar said 450F for 45 minutes - the tuna came out well done and everything else (carrots aside) was mush. My thermometer said the internal temp on the tuna was 175F - I'm thinking I could cut back to 30 minutes next time most likely?

even 30mins at 450F seems pretty long/high? what about putting the tuna in first with the spices and then dumping in the veggies 15 mins before it's done?

Or defrost the tuna before cooking and do 20 or so minutes? The carrots may need more time than that, so maybe microwave them a few minutes first.

yeah having a frozen protein and a bunch of non-frozen vegetables in a very hot oven does not seem like a path to happiness.

i think the biggest problem is all the ingredients with wildly different cooking times. fish only needs to get to 140 so i take it out of the oven when it's ~135 and let carryover cooking take care of the rest. spinach only takes like 90 seconds to wilt

Defrosting would be the norm, I just got home and just had nothing of consequence that was defrosted and edible. Also, three Strongbows.
Looking around, it seems like even 20 mins at 400F probably would have gotten the tuna to a reasonable range.

Sweet instead of savory, not my usual m.o. -- we found out about a family reunion with 2 days' notice, and my mother gave us a sack of apples the same day, so I made a caramel-apple pound cake, which was a moderate hit.

For Canadian Thanksgiving: successful first-time biscuits, made the night before and baked from frozen. Also, a really good plum crumble with almonds in the topping, served with cream.

made my soda bread with extra sugar and chocolate chips, turned out pretty well, little too much sugar probably, tastes kind of overloaded

my recipe has me using milk (and a bit of vinegar) and dry ingredients. it comes out pretty dry, which i haven't minded. what would the simplest way to moisten it up be without throwing things too far off kilter? butter? an egg? oil?

pan fried some seasoned & marinated tuna steak & served with salsa verde on lettuce leaves, best thing I've done in ages. all an excuse to use some himalayan pink salt someone bought me

I had one quart left of the ya-ka-mein stock that I made last month, and it turns out to be a really delicious starting point for potato soup. (With cornbread of course.) Yay fall!