what's cooking? part 5: 2017-2027

i made a rotini pasta + tomato and meat sauce. pancetta, italian sausage. onion, red bell pepper, garlic, butter, san marzanos, dried basil, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, shredded cheese blend. fun to make something so good from really basic "dollar store" type groceries.

man that sounds good

we got a subscription to Milk Street magazine and have been making a lot of stuff from it, tonight it was a cool egg/bread/chorizo/kale scramble. I'd prefer to eat less meat but when you cook for an 86 year old Italian dude yr options are limited

Carbonara with broccoli rabe.

making a vegan banana cream pie w a oreo crust. have never done this before but so far all signs point to success. just made the custard to make sure the recipe works. took abt 5 minutes to make. it's got silken tofu, coconut milk, and soy, vanilla, sugar & cornstarch. gonna finish putting pie together tomorrow and make coconut whipped cream for topping for vegan friend coming to town

yum

amasake also works really well for vegan custards

Chicken w Thai green curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, brown sugar, bell peps, snow peas.

This time I let the packaged curry paste be the star and didn't add 100 bits of extra grated ginger, lemongrass, etc etc. I did take out the fat layer from the coconut cream and then reduce it until it separated and then coated the chicken in that oil before adding back the more liquidy coconut milk and other flavors.

It's pretty good tbh. I might pick up some palm sugar for this kind of thing just to have that more complex flavor.

This is my paste brand: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71cLxSxh6bL._SY450_.jpg

Mmmm that looks really good. I love green curry. I kind of feel like I have incompatibility issues with coconut milk/cream though and it's not something I want to test out a lot.

I have/was having those too and it's really sad but one thing I hope will help is buying a brand that doesn't use chemical stabilizers like guar gum and soy lecithin. Weirdly cheapo Goya doesn't use them and all the other, pricier ones do (that I've found).

Oh, I am going to start looking at the labels for them. Next, can you figure out what ingredient in most lipsticks/lip balm I am allergic to?

Idk but this is the only one I use, also for chemical irritation reasons: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NqpJG3U0l6E/T1Z2Gast13I/AAAAAAAANAs/nw6lR4Dr7Ik/s1600/Jordana_LOLLipOutLoudLipGloss_1.jpg

Again, ironically, it's the super-cheap version that is perfect.

Oh god sorry hueg

Ha! Thx. I was about to say the only thing I know I am not allergic to is cheap rose's salve and revlon.

I am making a tofu and broccoli stirfry tonight (brown sauce). I am going to use that link above's recommendation about pouring hot salted water over the tofu first to dry it out.

we made lasagna tonight, it wasn't anything too epic but I found some italian-style sausages at lol marks & spencer near work & since I live in a heavily muslim part of the city I can't find sausages excepts the most basic kinds near home so I snapped them up. although now that I think of it, I think of "italian sausage" from a north-american perspective & don't actually know anything about Italy-italian sausages. I should correct that! we have plenty of "genuine" italian food shops in the city, I just don't frequent them. really all I'm looking for is a spicier sausage than the generic-for-france saucisses de toulouse that I can find in the supermarkets around our apartment.

No bechamel!

ABSOLUTELY NOT

wait what

but merguez is already the best sausage

we eat plenty of merguez! it is readily available in my neighborhood. but for lasagna ?

I just googled to see if there are boudin noir lasagnas. Of course there are. I would try.

if you are taking it out of its casing, you can probably make any sausage into any other type of sausage, approximately

just read some moroccan recipe blogs with lasagna à la merguez, still, I'm not sure

that sounds good

no i mean what is yr problem with bechamel in lasagna

Ha! Bechamel in lasagna on the controversial opinion thread set off the whole cheese discussion that led to the changing of the I Love Cooking Board to The Cheese Board. Bechamel in lasagna is a huge disappointment. Always. Granny jizz.

isn't it the most traditional tho?

Post a controversial opinion

some traditions are not worth saving

I've never encountered this tradition

If your benchmark is granny jizz you are doing it wrong.

Damned autocorrect bechamel

I've never had good bechamel in a lasagna. It's only needed if you can't get cheese.

I like goat cheese in lasagna

I assumed it was added on top or something. bechamel alone seems like it'd be so mild what's the point

kinda hitting me that i don't really like lasagna. or better said, i'll take its component parts in just about any other form.

What form would the lasagna take, though

I guess it is just pasta, so you would like a different noodle

yeah, like i'd rather have a ricotta-filled pasta with some sauce or something like that

I love any sort of baked pasta.

i cant with you ppl

Plain bechamel sounds bland. I make a parmesan cheese sauce with shallots and thickened with egg yolks.

that sounds good. The mixture of egg, goat cheese, and ricotta in the recipe I make is pretty saucy. but there's mozzarella, too.

i dont know any of you

I looked at recipes, and the bechamel is just mixed with the red sauce. there's a bunch of other cheese. that seems fine, and I don't know why it'd be bad if it were made properly.

I've never had good bechamel in a lasagna. It's only needed if you can't get cheese.

― Yerac, Thursday, March 22, 2018 6:46 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this post implied replacement of cheese

mixed with the

what is happening

lol this is what I found https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/classic-italian-lasagna-recipe-1941225

ok idk what giadas on

xpost To clarify, the only way I can fairly imagine it used in lasagna is because other cheese is more expensive sometimes hard to get and it acts as a filler to cream it up. But it's disgusting. I even dislike it in croque monsieur. This is all covered in that other thread though. Growing up, I no one ever put it in lasagna. But I had a lot of asians making it for me.

All the sainsbury, tesco, M&S ready to go ones just look like a white goopey mess. The main grocery stores where I am are only slightly better where they may have it only as one layer. I think in the US most ready to go lasagnas don't have that travesty.

I made a new thread for this Controversial Food Opinions - The Béchamel Test