What's cooking? part 4

Chinese-buffet-style -- blanch them for 4 minutes or so, drain them, stir-fry with plenty of garlic, soy sauce, a little sliced onion, a dab of sesame oil.

or, blanched with a drizzle of vinaigrette, feta crumbles, dried cranberries, and little chopped nuts.

i eat them plain and raw mostly!

i like them steamed w/ some lemon juice on top. boring but good.

yes. but i usually add garlic w/ the lemon. classic combo.

I make blistered beans - get a skillet hot, add oil of your choice, toss in beans (dried off as much as possible to minimize spattering) and 1 dash of crushed red pepper flakes, stir fry quickly until beans are bright green with a few charred looking spots. A sprinkle of toasted sesame oil is nice to add as dressing.

oh i forgot diced red onion is v v key in the feta/vinaigrette/cranberry one.

oh god i thought that said fetal vinaigrette

eeeeeeew

sorry :(

Oh sorry when tza said dried garlic, I assumed she meant garlic granules in a jar as opposed to garlic cloves! My bad - kneejerK "lol americans eat freezedried processed crap" thing I should rly stop thinking :(

I've never had fresh garlic if by that it means "straight out of the soil, not hung and dried", no.

Also I am thinking what I might do is make a kind of confit from cloves poached slowly in olive oil, and see how that turns out.

yeah that's what i meant. raw/fresh, not dried. i don't know what garlic granules are? is that garlic powder? or is it some kind of garlic crystal???

made the zucchini-chickpea flour pancake and it is GOOOOD

I've always wanted to try besan flour in something! Theres an indian store in my local shops, they'd have some, I should try it.

Granules - kind of like, you know, freezedried instant coffee... only garlic instead. Never used it myself. I've seen dried garlic like that and completely powdered. I'd never use it; whats wrong with regular cloves!?

ok so i work in a restaurant and we roast garlic for a few things - a chive dip, a couple sauces, hummus - but like last thursday or something we started saving the oil from the pan and roasting the next batch of garlic in it! and now we have this fucking super garlicked oil that we've been using for our caprese salads holy shit.

as an added bonus any vampire we come into contact with bursts into flames immediately

also, mosquitoes will evaporate within 10 ft of you

Hm, besan... Socca/farinata? Pakoras! Pseudo falafels? Besan barfee?
Does besan go rancid? I think I have a bag somewhere in the back of the cupboard, but it is probably pretty ancient by now.

I sauteed my green beens with olive oil (didn't have canola) and sesame oil. And then dressed with a touch of soy sauce. I wanted to sprinkle with roasted sesame seeds but I was too lazy to stop at the store to get those. They were good but a little too slippery--not sure if I should have dried them off after I washed them--or if it was too much sauce.

I bought bok choy for the time--how do I make this. Can it be combined with a yellow squash (I think that's the only other vegetable I have at home right now.)?

oh i use olive oil for sauteeing i meant stir-frying--too hot for extra virgin olive oil (and would explain your burning problem)
bok choy is cooked like any other cabbage-like green. maybe saute with some garlic and ginger?

have this fucking super garlicked oil

otm

Nicka - yeah thats what I was getting at with my garlic confit idea! I'll poach a bunch of peeled cloves in EVOO for ... however long, and then store the lot in a jar. The oil! Oh my god, the oil will be nectar from gods teat on a salad.

And bokchoy I find cooks very quickly - the thick stems take longer than the leaves so sometimes I'll sautee them for a while first then throw the leaves in at the last 30 sec. I've always been vaguely disappointed with the stringiness of bokchoy stems, though.

Should I make a meatloaf with pickles embedded in it?

http://www.mom-mom.com/rouladen_meatloaf1.htm

favorite bok choy is with soy, ginger, and a tiny bit of something sweet (i've been using a tamarind simple syrup i made but you could use honey or brown sugar very sparingly).

My roommate bequeathed me some kale. Should I add it to the bok choy or cook it on its own? And how?

If you add kale to bok choy I'd start cooking that first as it takes a bit longer. On it's own I really like it sauteed enough to wilt it or braised with some liquid. I've read about chopping it and roasting it at high temps with oil and salt and want to try this because basically any vegetable tastes good this way.

As for bok choy I really love adding a squirt of hoisin at the end.

Roasting kale makes it like kale chips. Really tasty, but you get a bit tired of it after a while, a bunch of kale makes a lot.
I sprinkled it with some spicy ground chili powder, pretty good.

Warning to anyone making garlic oil: Don't store it at room temperature unless you love botulism.

http://cecalaveras.ucdavis.edu/garlic.htm

raspberry pavlova I made last week:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3509/3934920020_0acf0ecacd.jpg

such a perfect summer dessert

it was good :)

i'm thinking baout soup today. it just seems soupy.

It's very soup today. Or stew. I'm thinking about baking bread, have mixed up a biga. Also might try a batch of the red herrings from that doodad/knick knack poll thread...

aw pavlova!! makes me feel nostalgic for home

NB i don't even like pavlova, except for the cream/fruit

that seems like something i would fail at. i can never beat eggs properly.

i made cabbage/potato curry yesterday though!

mmm that sounds good.

maybe i should curry green beans tonight. i need to do something not so time consuming bc it will be lateish. maybe spend the night making soup for tomorrow. or maybe lentils. i don't know.

rosemary garlic "fries" (baked)
green salad w/ chickpeas + tomatoes + cumin, parsley, vinegar, olive oil

Saw a recipe for chicken liver mousse in the NYT this week and suddenly NEEDED to make it. Last night it was that, toasted bread, farinata/socca, goat cheese, prosciutto, arugula with lemon and olive oil, and some green beans I pickled earlier in the week.

mmmmm

Lindsey thanks for that garlic/oil link - I had no idea :(

Making a red curry with lots of veg and tofu.

I bought shiso leaf because it is one of favorite things when I eat sushi in a Japanese restaurant. Anything special I should add it to? I don't make sushi at home.

ooooh do u have a link to ur recipe, tehresa?

for curry?
i made it up.
it became yellow curry!

I made boy choy for the first time. It was really good, but I cooked the leafy part for way too long, as anticipated upthread. Do you use the whole stalk or just part of it? I cut the stalk into small strips.

So I'm doing wild rabbit with onion sauce. The first part of which recipe runs thus -

Put the rabbit into a pan. Cover it with cold water. Put in a bouquet of herbs, and pepper and salt.; Bring to the boil and simmer until done - this will not take long, if the rabbit is a young one.

I'm suspecting this just means until it's tender, but just to be sure I'm having a look around on the net and some seem to suggest as little as half an hour (which would make a mockery of the instruction to put whole onions in the water 'after half an hour', and others up to an hour.

Any suggestions?

Typically, "done" is when the joints move freely - is this a stew, or do you take the meat out and use the broth to create the sauce?

The latter - you put whole onions in to simmer with the rabbit. Then take them out after a bit, chop them up and fry gently in butter before adding some cream. The recipe doesn't actually specify to add any of the broth, but I'm going to anyway, as you would say for boiled beef and carrots.

Actually, I got the butcher to joint it, which I shouldn't have done really, I just wan't sure at that stage which recipe I was going to do. So, ah, they're moving pretty freely already.

If you don't have a meat thermometer, you could test for doneness by piercing the meat in a thickish section with a knife and looking for pinkness, starting at the 30 minute mark and checking every 5-10 minutes. If you've got a meat thermometer, just cook until it registers 180F (82C), again in the thickest part of the meat and not against a bone.

oh man i forgot i was supposed to learn how to cook rabbit this summer!