What's cooking? part 4

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7480/15972237589_91511b99ae_b.jpg

NYE feast (lunch edition)

Bf wanted all Ottolenghi all the time so it's herb pie, cauliflower salad with walnuts, root slaw with labneh, cod cakes with tomato sauce and mint, burnt eggplant salad. Chilling out with black veldts atm. Dinner edition coming soon.

*velvets, not veldts (mental note for a future drink name tho)

btw these were all first-time attempts for me and everything turned out grand-slammer and was super cheap on the grocery end of things, highly recommend this dude

looks great!

I second marcos on Diana Kennedy.

If you like Ottolenghi, you should check out Sally Butcher, who runs my local middle eastern foodstuffs emporium. Veggiestan and Snackistan are awesome and her writing style is funny and cool. Haven't read Salmagundi, her newish salads book, yet but it's pretty much guaranteed to be reliable imo.

In other news, tomorrow I'll be making the trad Scottish NYD meal of steak pie for the first time. I always bought my pies when I lived in Glasgow but here in London all the pies seem to have shortcrust pastry on top and that is just rong.

Cooking a Joel Robuchon recipe for beef cheek stew...should be ready before midnight! I hope.

wow yum

probably some roasted roots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMabBGydC0

oh sweet jesus no

i am making little tofu pockets full of (1) mashed sweet potato + spinach, (2) cucumber + avocado and maybe some miso soup. it's going to be -1 outside, no way i am going out again unless there is a medical emergency in my home.

Smoked a big pork shoulder on the 31st for yesterday's prosperity meal. Every time I do one of these huge hunks of meat I think I'll portion it out, vacuum seal and freeze at least half of it, but it's so versatile we wind up eating the whole thing without getting tired of it. Barbecue sandwiches, smoky pork with noodles, omelette filling, tonight's pork tacos (with mushrooms and garlic-sauteed spinach). About the time we get tired of it, it's gone.

i am not deliberately being clueless just too lazy to google - what is a prosperity dinner plz?

I think it's just a New Year's Day dinner that is supposed to set the tone for the coming year. I usually cook salmon, as that (to me) is a sophisticated main course. This year I made a pizza.

https://scontent-a-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10891874_10204900270480314_8292578345244461771_n.jpg?oh=7a600f19559ab542271146f9477670c9&oe=5523692C

For me and for my parents--all of us spent time in the deep south of the U.S., "prosperity dinner" was a New Years meal that involved 1) hoppin' john, a black-eyed-pea and rice dish (with pork, natch) and 2) slow cooked greens (collards, etc. With pork, natch). Greens represented U.S. cash, I guess? And hoppin' john I think was also supposed to be symbolic of cash in some way (coins, maybe)? Anyhow I like both of these dishes so no probs for me to eat them on any and all New Years.

Pork and cabbage is another traditional New Years dish, but I don't know if it ties in with the "prosperity" theme in some specific way. Many years ago I was in the habit of ordering mu shu pork on New Years--easy way to get my pork and cabbage.

That's a tasty looking pizza.

My parents always eat black eyed peas and collards on New Year's. I hate black eyed peas, though, so this year I did a slow cooker eastern NC-style pork barbecue, barbecue slaw, and corn bread. It came out really good. Like wmc, my plan was to save leftover meat for whatever but instead we just ate the rest of it for dinner tonight. So good you guys.

Speaking of the slow cooker, the Rick Bayless chicken and tomatillo thing was.... pretty bland! LL was OTM about needing to up the amount of flavor in that sucker.

My wife and I ate some black-eyed peas, so we got that part of the equation correctly, but the greens we ate were kale and chard -- and nothing else on the menu yesterday matched the correct items according to quincie. And yet, I still expect a certain amount of prosperity for the coming year, regardless. I am an optimist.

I feel like tasty pulled pork, slaw, and corn bread is definitely a meal that heralds prosperity, so I'm quite comfortable with my life choices.

Quincie and Carl covered it. Leafy greens or cabbage to represent f-oldin' money to come to you in the next year, peas to represent coins, hominy=gold. Pork of some sort to represent, I dunno, "we may be poor, but at least we can afford to eat pork on New Years." We had barbecue, braised cabbage, purple hull peas and cornbread. Aimless, as I was taught the tradition, kale and chard totally count. I would prefer mustard greens, but I already had a head of cabbage in the house.

xp -- carl otm

As I was cooking yesterday I was thinking yesterday how southern home cooking is this weird blend of poverty cuisine and a cuisine of enormous bounty, esp regarding summer vegetables.

i had no idea there was a culinary tradition for new years day - fascinating!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-eyed_pea#Lucky_New_Year_food

We spiced up our black-eyed peas with some homemade salsa verde that I made and stashed in the freezer last September. According to that Wikipedia article adding hot sauce is traditional, so hurrah! we scored again!

I made up our hominy yesterday into posole that was especially good.

I just baked a GF cake for my partners son's bday (he's not celiac but his brother is, so its fair). I decided to try the marbling thing, which seemed simple enough:split the batter, add coco to half, blob, swirl and bake. And actually it seems to have come out ok!

As to how a GF cake mix tastes, i have no idea and dont wish to ugh. the kids involved know no better which is a bit sad.

I love the bit at the top of the thread about living & eating in France, because that is what I do! We were feeling lazy the other night & just wanted burgers (a little bit of home as we are americans) & asked at the butcher for steak haché ; the butcher just took some steaks & ground them up for us ; & they were fantastic ! a little pricier than we'd normally have paid in the usa e.g. but so much better.

we eat very simply here much of the time, e.g. last night we had our standby of lentils and lardons, with olive oil and a bit of red wine vinegar. lentils are one of the perfect foods, and french green lentils / lentilles du Puy are fab.

omg love puy lentils.

they're great in part because they hold up so well to being cooked. we eat brown & red lentils (e.g. in variations on megadarra) and they break down into mush ; which, granted, is part of the appeal! but sometimes it's nice to have lentils that maintain their individuality.

They are excellent for salad for that reason, I'llcook and chill them, toss them with oil/lemon, then have em for lunch over some greens and antipasto.

I resolved to make steak and kidney pudding this weekend, so the filling is going on once I've had my lunch for the pudding tomorrow.

i made ropa vieja for dinner

:D

hey i want to make tamales! they are one of my favorite foods and i've wanted to make them for years but never have. have any of you folks made them?

nope bc i've heard they are the sort of thing you have to make a ton of and then freeze, and my freezer doesn't have that much room for tamales in it
i like them though
if you can eat it, you can wrap some corn masa around it, wrap it up in a leaf and call it a tamal

I've made them a couple of times, but last time was probably 20 years ago. A good bit of work, easy to oversteam -- I decided to leave it to the pros.

i was at the indian store yesterday looking for zaatar (the guy said "no zaatar! it's finished!") and got bulgarian sheep's milk cheese just because. turns out to be feta-like but not feta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirene. i saw this stuff at whole foods, where it is labeled as bulgarian sheep's milk feta, i think. but costs 2x more! would buy again.

very acidic and salty though!

interesting! the feta i always buy is bulgarian feta. maybe it's the same thing? much much creamier and more flavorful than most other fetas, and it doesn't have that super-chalky texture. it's really amazing. on all my salad's i just crumble some of that with some olive oil and it has the perfect amount of acidity, i don't need any dressing with it.

probably the same. definitely a fattier kind of texture. i guess the acidity varies.

i impulsively bought a bag of spelt a while back, so tonight i mashed up a couple of recipe ideas and combined it with roasted parsnip, yam, and red onion pieces, plus brown butter and a tiny bit of soy/mustard/honey glaze. not bad as a side to pan-roasted salmon.

I GOT "HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING" FOR XMAS!!!!

This book is so BIG!!! How do I do this book??? Do I just sit and read it? Do I just kind of gradually absorb it over the course of many many years?

I randomly opened it to a page and there was ~BEER GLAZED BLACK BEANS~ on the page so I made them and they were gooooooood

Exciting! I think you put it under your pillow at night and hope your neck doesn't snap at that angle.

I made lamb plov at bf's house using his cookware and seasonings and it is not good. I mean it's not BAD because it's savory rice and lamb and cumin, but everything is cooked the wrong amount, the paprika is too strong, we couldn't find coriander anywhere. I'm making it at my house next time.

Just checking: there are plentiful carrots in this plov, yes?

Oh tons! The recipes all called for browning the lamb before the simmer, though, and the lamb ended up tough in the end. I'm wondering if it's worth browning oxtails or s/thing to get the fond on the pan without pre-cooking lamb before the rice and water go in.

yeah that could work. I will learn from you and then try my own - it's twenty yeeeears or so since I made it...

Also I need to fig out what cuts of lamb? We could only find whole frozen legs and I had to hack off the meat and then trim the tendons out, which took way too long.

Shoulder or ribs?

it is freezing here in boston so i was really craving fatty fried foods, so i made beer-battered onion rings at home in my cast iron skillet. they were really amazing but i ate waaaayyy to many and felt pretty gross. it satisfied the craving though. i had this really malty winter ale which was nice with the rings.

(this was last night, i didn't make onion rings and drink beer at 10am this morning)

Pity.