What's cooking? part 4

maillard without browning, wonders never cease

i have a 1 lb piece of lamb leg steak - how do i cook this?? i haven't cooked meat at home in about 4 years!

nb i like lamb to be really simple - acceptable additions are rosemary, mint, garlic
my oven isn't super reliable right now, so stovetop method would be appreciated

you could cook it in a big heavy pot on low heat, with liquid of some kind in the bottom, for several hours

Would a crockpot work!

yes!

lol

I made a Reuben quesadilla on naan for lunch.
#immigrant & ethnic food cultures, white ppl & appropriation, foodies

muligatawny! so much flavor goin' on in this pot with just a few humble ingredients imho

made phở the other night. never actually eaten it before but had an idea of what a nice vegetarian broth could be like. simmered a couple star anise,piece of a cinnamon stick, a couple cloves, some peppercorns with some garlic, onion, and a piece of a apple. after a half hour strained it and added some veg. base just to make a light base. it was /really/ good! trader joe's fresh rice noodles are garbage btw but the other ingredients - sauteed tofu, bean sprouts, sauteed shiitakes, cilantro, basil, mint -- made it a pretty satisfying, light meal

nice! i've had such little success cooking basically any southeast asian cuisine at home. any east asian cuisine really. i like my fried rice better than most places but that's really about it.

i made posole with green pumpkin seed mole last night, it was outstanding tbh

what hominy product did you use? i have found the world of buying hominy to be confusing.

definitely

i have cooked it from scratch once, meaning starting w/ nixtamalized (corn treated with an alkaline, usually lime or wood ash) whole corn kernels once. it cooks for hours before it is soft enough to use in a recipe. i want to do it again, even starting w/ untreated corn and doing the whole nixtamalized process, but i haven't yet. my sister-in-law runs a small farm in OH and she grew the corn and showed me how to do the whole process.

USUALLY i buy canned hominy. the various brands i've bought from whole foods are all pretty good ime -- they tend not to be overcooked and the corn has a nice texture. goya also sells canned hominy which i've used, both white corn and yellow corn. they were both okay (i love yellow corn in general so that was cool) but definitely on the mushy side.

sorry that first paragraph was confusing. i have:

1) cooked nixtamalized dried corn once.
2) never done the whole nixtamalization process myself but i want to.

canned hominy is good to go, you can cook w/ it right away

okay if i understand it correctly this is what you can do to get hominy:

1) get whole untreated corn kernels. nixtamalize the corn, then cook it, then you have hominy corn. most people don't do this. my sister-in-law did this because she was curious.
2) buy dried, nixtamalized corn. this is dried hominy. it comes either as whole kernels or cracked. you still have to cook it, which takes time. this is what i did when i got the nixtamalized corn from my sister-in-law.
3) buy canned pre-cooked hominy (i do this all the time).
4) buy frozen pre-cooked hominy (i have never done this but i know it is available).

I wonder what cultural thingy led my mom to serve canned hominy regularly when I was a kid. I think her parents had it, too, so maybe there was some old timey "hominy is good stuff" campaign selling it to rural midwesterners

I've mentioned it to a friend and they're usually "wtf canned hominy is gross"

the two brands i use are la preferida and juanita's, both are mexican style hominy

I should try some and see if there's a difference between that and boring non-mexican style

ha maybe there isn't and i was just duped

i think plain hominy from a can would definitely be boring and gross by itself

oh yeah you gotta salt and pepper it and maybe cook it with bacon

okay if i understand it correctly this is what you can do to get hominy:

1) get whole untreated corn kernels. nixtamalize the corn, then cook it, then you have hominy corn. most people don't do this. my sister-in-law did this because she was curious.
2) buy dried, nixtamalized corn. this is dried hominy. it comes either as whole kernels or cracked. you still have to cook it, which takes time. this is what i did when i got the nixtamalized corn from my sister-in-law.
3) buy canned pre-cooked hominy (i do this all the time).
4) buy frozen pre-cooked hominy (i have never done this but i know it is available).

― marcos, Monday, May 9, 2016 5:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, this is really helpful. i ended up with some weird product that may have been a version of 1 or 2 but did not behave as expected and burned the bottom of my big le creuset. now i have a bag of goya "giant white corn" that i may mess with at some point.

I want to get some of that, but to create homemade corn nuts. Because that is my convenience store vice.

i made posole with green pumpkin seed mole last night, it was outstanding tbh

― marcos,

o hell yeah! have a mole recipe you'd care to share? all this talk has made me posole curious, too. if you have a link handy to a recipe you like that'd be appreciated as well, marcos. i worked at a place a long time ago and have vague recollections of making posole once in awhile there, but for some reason i didn't care for it. but that was ~20+ years ago. iirc i just didn't know what to make of hominy, had never seen anything like it before (except the aforementioned corn nuts, i guess).. . .

sure! both the mole and the pozole verde recipe are from the art of mexican cooking from diane kennedy (i cooked a very similar recipe from deborah madison's vegetarian cooking for everyone that is itself based on diane kennedy's).

this page's recipe is kennedy's: http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/pozole-verde

the "3 to 3-1/2 cups cooked corn" in that website should be hominy corn

man, both of those recipes look/sound wonderful. hanx! wonder how accessible sorrel is or if a latin market might have lengua de vaca. i cld imagine using fresh spinach with a dash of lemon juice in an "emergency" i guess

i see sorrel in a lot of supermarkets, usually w/ alongside fresh herbs

d. madison uses romaine leaves + cilantro and that combination comes out great too

Sorrel is common in Latino and Caribbean stores, but it might be called "jamaica" in the former and "sorrel" in the latter?

i think green sorrel leaves and jamaica are different things?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roselle_(plant)

Just ordered some Prague Powder #1 (what the hell is the origin of that name?) to roll my own corned beef and to try an experiment: corned pork loin. Because beef brisket is expensive and pork loin is cheap.

originates in prague iirc

v esoteric question, i know, but can anyone recommend great/favorite recipes combining chocolate, peanut butter, and banana? there are approximately several billion recipes out there that do this but v rarely do they balance everything just right

make a sandwich

sandwich wherein chocolate = nutella

gold

v rude answers

I have a good smoothie recipe with those ingredients, you want it?

oh yes please

1 cup chocolate milk (only whole milk around here, fuck that low fat milk bullshit) + 1 or 2 tablespoons peanut butter + 1 frozen banana, blend until smooth

it has a good balance imo

put some chocolate chunks, a spoon of peanut butter, and a large bite of banana in your mouth and chew vigorously

I made Ruhlman's pan-fried chicken thighs last night and they were UHHHHHMAZING, they tasted kinda like McNuggets but obv much better. The insane amount of black pep in the flour really makes it. Next time I'm gonna add some finely chopped fresh rosemary too

http://blog.ruhlman.com/2014/03/pan-fried-chicken-thighs/

i have a new favorite method for small new potatoes. first, do the salt-boiling thing in the first step here:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/11/crispy-salty-herb-roasted-new-potatoes-recipe.html

but instead of putting them in the oven, heat up some fat (duck fat is my preference) in a cast-iron skillet. when hot, drop in the potatoes and gently press each one with a heavy, flat surface (like the top of one of those meat tenderizer mallet things or a bacon press or something) until the potato bursts and flattens a little bit. cook on each side until crispy and finish with whatever other seasonings you like.

crispy exterior, fluffy interior, incredibly rich--basically every good potato in one. best part is you're going to be happy with about five of them as a side portion.

in the nigel slater tender book there is a recipe for warm potato salad w/ mustard vinegar dressing. would probably be good on potatoes done that way.

yeah right on

i'm about to make it. it's new potato season.

anyone used coconut flour in baking? i want to make a type of breakfast cookie using coconut flour. i tried making some oat breakfast muffins but the texture was gross and there was tons of banana which i wasn't fond of. so now i want to convert the traditional ANZAC cookie recipe into a healthier breakfast thing. the recipe is 1 c each flour, sugar, rolled oats, coconut + butter, golden syrup, vanilla and baking soda. i'm gonna switch out the sugar for lakanto and coconut flour for the regular flour, add nuts and dried berries. i'm wondering if i need to add a ton of eggs?? i read that 1/4 c (or maybe is was 1/2 c) of cocnut flour requires 6 eggs bc it's so absorbent. i guess that's fine and would up the protein content.

eggs might make the consistency of the anzacs more cakey though I would think?

i'd try upping the golden syrup/water/baking soda first, eggs as a last resort.

good luck!