what's cooking? part 5: 2017-2027

not because it really needs to go to 2027 because we'll all be under the ocean by then but because part 4 started in 2007

i made some pretty great tomato soup yesterday

san marzano toms + butter in pressure cooker w salt and baking soda
veggie stock + drained liquid from toms + a few bags of lapsang souchong
puree toms w stick blender, drain through sieve, combine with liquid ingredients
maple syrup + fish sauce to taste

how do you get to the point in life where you're putting heterodox ingredients like tea, maple syrup and fish sauce in tomato soup? is this entirely your own invention or are you following some unknown and wild tradition?

its the food of my people

bored single men who spend a lot of time on food blogs

well I am impressed, it sounds delicious (though not sure about the tea). how long did you cook it for?

toms were in the pressure cooker for 20mins, which is the bulk of the cooking time

in the context of bold tomato flavor and stock, the tea adds primarily smokiness and some sweetness. it's worth trying, i think!

Were these canned whole toms? Why pressure cooker? Why baking soda???

whole canned toms

pressure cooker reaches higher temperatures, which, in combination with the increased pH you get with baking soda, leads to caramelization that would be impossible otherwise

i actually made a batch earlier in the week that i forgot to add baking soda to and the difference is pretty noticeable --- w/o it the soup is much brighter and more acidic/tomato-y (which might be what you want!)

i have a bream in the oven, stuffed it with lemon, garlic and parsley, threw a few slices of potato around it and i've got cabbage braising in some stock on the hob. been roasting fish a lot in the last few months, feels like one of the nicest things to eat without much effort.

Making a lamb shoulder tonight with broccoli and the serious eats roasted potatoes that I believe somebody posted on the other thread and have been intriguing me since.

how do you get to the point in life where you're putting heterodox ingredients like tea, maple syrup and fish sauce in tomato soup?

otm

its the food of my people

bored single men who spend a lot of time on food blogs

loltm

What are these blogs? Are they instant pot propagandists?

hey gbx do you do a natural release or quick release on the p.c. with this method?

mine's electric so i just do a slow release

should I get an instant pot? it seems like more like an appliance of convenience rather than one of, like, some crazy new benefit (like sous vide)

rfi: what is yr favorite way to prepare fennel?
preferably side dish but i'll take all comers

one place i worked at useda make a potato, fennel and leek gratin that was nice. other ideas: superthin sliced and put in a salad is great, too. or "melted", cooked slowly in olive oil with onions and garlic to get it really soft and borderline carmelised could be a nice side?

fennel is nice roasted

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/02/vegan-ramen-miso-creamy-vegan-vegetarian-food-lab-recipe.html

going to cook this at the weekend

I like fennel raw in salads, sautéed with leeks & green beans, roasted & carved up with a piece of meat or fish

Jim: it's good. Double and freeze, for all the effort.

thanks everyone! pretty new to fennel. i tried braising it in stock & vermouth last night & it turned out delicious, keen to try some of these recommendations

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/02/vegan-ramen-miso-creamy-vegan-vegetarian-food-lab-recipe.html

going to cook this at the weekend

― Islamic State of Mind (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, January 10, 2017 5:28 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh man i've been wanting to try that but its daunting --- soda, you've done it? how long did it take?

i like fennel here are some things

fen risotto, maybe w/ salami
fen & chickpea broth w/ lemon zest and chilli
fen & potato soup
baked fen in like a puttanesca sauce w/ orange zest and feta
roast pork w fen (add fen seeds to pork herb rub too)
any bit of wite fish w/ fen, thyme, rosemary, lemon zest, capers etc

pernod good to have around just for fen

also if u ever want to parboil fen for anything do it in milk, or mostly milk, and keep for mash potato or gratin later

I don't like fennel because it is anise-y. I feel like I need to broaden my horizons tho w/r/t winter vegetables, I can't only eat potatoes all year, and I love kale but let's be honest it's not in season in February.

A friend is coming over on Sat bc she wants advice on cooking large hunks of meat. Considering a pot roast alongside a rolled stuffed pork loin -- one easy, one complicated.

try parsnips! one of our favorite winter things is just roasted winter veggies (beets, onions, carrots, garlic, parsnips, turnips, potatoes) mixed up with some olive oil, rosemary, and a bit of sausage, cover and bake.

best way to enjoy fennel is to throw it in the damn garbage bcz it tastes like licorice and it is GROSS

I made a great pork dish with star anise the other night and the first time I made it I used like one star anise (recipe says 5) because I hate licorice but actually it's so subtle it's really good so I always use 5 now

THANK U STEVIE YOU <---> ME = SAME TEAM

anise and fennel are wonderful flavors

that said i have bought fennel bulbs in the past and they have rotted in my fridge bc i couldn't decide what to do with them fast enough :/

tbh I wish I didnt' loathe anise/fennel bcz it wd make things a lot easier but welp here we are, what can ya do

parsnips are the devil fyi

hmph

parsnips are fine, they're sweet and a lil weird but they're fine

quickest way to ruin a soup imo

THE DEVIL

parsnips are good caramelized together with other vegetables as the base for a winter soup stock, they contribute a lot of complexity and are similar to carrots w/ their sweetness. im not a fan of plain parsnips though

for burly winter root vegetables i prefer celeriac

I stand with VG.

Honey roast parsnips are my secret ingredient in a veggie soup

monsters, all of u

mushroom pizza that has a bunch of rehydrated porcinis sauteed with a load of criminis and garlic, on top of fontina, carmelized onions with rosemary playing the role of sauce on some bland-o plain white dough i made

haven't had farinata in years, might attempt this recipe for saturday lunch http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/05/how-to-make-farinata-italian-chickpea-pancake.html

we had my brother and his family over for dinner the other night. they love cooking indian and so do we, so we made a huge feast. i haven't cooked this much food in a while:

masoor dal
benghali green beans and potatoes
tomato sambal
summer squash w/ mustard seeds
saag tofu

All the way at the other end of the vegetarian-omnivore spectrum, I'm making beef stock today.

I agree with VG that parsnips would not work well in any soup I know about, but they roast well and were quite acceptable in a beef and peanut stew recipe my wife made just a few days ago.

I really like roasted parsnips but they are such a damn awkward shape--the top fat part and the itty bitty skinny end make it diffcult to get evenly-roasting pieces.

i got one as a prize for doing a good job at work (there were like 10 choices and most of them sucked) and it's ok. i have a tiny kitchen though so most of the time i forget it's in the basement and i just roast things anyway. it's so big!

They are too big. We were given one for free and use it for frozen fried foods for breakfast or the kids.

i still don’t know what an air fryer is

it is just a plastic convection oven

Going to controversially say that air fryers are good (I do not own one but would if more counter space)

the air fryer is too big and spaceship like to be kept on the counter. Got to store it under the stairs or in a shed until breakfast potato time.

Found out our oven is completely unreliable wrt temperature in early November. I immediately started getting hit with ads for the Anova Precision Oven (I own the Anova sous vide thing). It's a convection oven with very close temp control and steam. Proofs dough, does bagless sous vide, is an air fryer. Slightly larger than our microwave and I was able to squeeze a 15 lb turkey in there (which turned out better than ever imagined a turkey could). Haven't air fried anything yet, but all other functions are great. Fortunately I was able to make counter space for it, and will probably get rid of the toaster oven.

can you bake in it?

Oh yeah, baking works great, also roasting and all the usual oven-y things. I'm still working out how much faster it roasts with the convection going, it's a work in progress.

one thing you may want to try is adjusting temperature, not time. i usually go 25 degrees cooler with convection and plan for roughly the same time suggested.

Oh that sounds like a great approach, will do that tonight.

my regular oven has a convection setting but i've literally never used it and don't know what it's for lol

it also has random other stuff like '3D convection' 'pizza' etc. i use none of them.

Convection will allow you to cook at lower temp but will dry out food surfaces that aren't covered.

pizza setting makes everything pizza iirc, go nuts with that one

holy shit

My understanding of air fryers is that you can make your oven or toaster oven do the same thing by elevating the food off a tray and onto a rack so the air can move around it?? My oven is old, not convection, and the heat goes off and on so I haven’t used it for years. Our toaster oven has a “turbo” setting, no idea if that means convection though.

It might be like the turbo button computers used to have that either did nothing or made them go slower!

If there is no actual fan moving the air around inside the oven, the only convection currents will be near the walls unfortunately and the food will still rely on conduction and radiant to heat.

Duh why didn’t I think of that? I’m almost positive there’s no fan in there

Why is tomato paste in a tube suddenly so hard to find? I've gone to half a dozen supermarkets this past week and even the ones that used to carry it don't anymore.

because they want you to suffer through scooping out the contents of dumb tiny cans & freezing the lumps or just forgeting the half used can in the back of the fridge bc god forbid we ever have convenient packaging

aren't the tubes generally more concentrated than the canned stuff?

i dont think so?

usually the tubes are sold as "double concentrated" but what does that really mean tbh

i always use the same amt lol

Double concentrated tomato paste in a tube is meant to be used in small amounts, when cooking or substituting for canned paste. Cento Double Concentrated Tomato Paste in a Tube has a more robust flavorful taste than our other canned tomato pastes. When substituting for a recipe that calls for traditional canned paste, follow a 1:1 or equal parts substitution. Double concentrated tomato paste provides a more robust flavor than that of traditional tomato paste.

lol it's all contradictions

used "in small amounts," i.e. the same amount

it all tastes the same imo
its not like ppl spread it on toast lol

yeah it's pretty meaningless afaict. the tube is just easier to store.

i enjoy opening a fresh tube with the pokey thing on the cap

yes!

it all tastes the same imo
its not like ppl spread it on toast lol

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, April 22, 2022 8:01 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My swedish friend does this with what looks like tomato paste tubes with added reindeer meat. And the toast is more like a seed covered cracker.

listen

and the cracker is more like a steak, but

sounds good to me tbh

i enjoy opening a fresh tube with the pokey thing on the cap

― towards fungal computer (harbl), Friday, April 22, 2022 11:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

things you were shockingly old when you learned

you weren't "today years old" were you ;_;

No, but I was probably in my 40s!

and the cracker is more like a steak, but

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, April 23, 2022 2:07 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"toast" leaves room for interpretation. Could be covered in cinnamon and milk in a bowl. Melba toasts have cracker DNA. But I understand my post was a tangent.I am going to refocus, double concentrate. Much less of that from me now -- only the exact same amount as before.

be that as it may i’m sensing a noticeably more robust tone in your posts sufjan

i've been making large pots of turkey white bean chili to subsist on for the past few weeks.

my issue with turkey white bean chili is that it always somehow comes out a little bland no matter how much of the usual "make it flavorful" stuff i add into it.

so i literally googled "how do you make turkey white bean chili not bland" and someone suggested soy sauce or worcestershire sauce.

not having any of those, i opted for fish sauce, in the neighborhood of 1 tbsp maybe a little more. i hesitated before i did this.

folks, it is delicious. everything that was blurred and blanded together is now in perfect alignment. worth doing if you're making chili and you need umami.

Bold move, map

I’ve been making this vegan bowl regularly. My husb was ordering a ridiculously priced salad from a bougie health and wellness restaurant so I decided to try copying it:

Wild rice mix (I just use the frozen bags from Trader Joe’s)
Roasted shredded cabbage
Sauerkraut (since it already has cabbage, some other kind of fermented or pickled veg would be better)
Diced avocado
Pan fried tofu (Hodo brand is the absolute best)
Crushed honey roasted peanuts (some kind of sweet roasted cashews would be better)
Chimichurri sauce from Trader Joe’s
Lil splash of balsamic vinaigrette

ooh sounds good i might try that out

seconding Hodo being godheadlike. i like the bowl idea, too

I find that impossible meat substitute is pretty good. Now that my kids are vegetarian I’ve been wanting to try it in some of my older recipes. If only there was an impossible turkey

So I made this bean salad to go along side roasted Japanese sweet potatoes, quinoa and pan fried tofu and apart from the beans it was delicious (I don’t really like beans unless they’re in Mexican food):

2 cans black beans
Zest and juice of one lime
1 grated clove of garlic
1tsp ground ginger powder
4 tsp maple syrup
2 tbsp soy sauce
Half a cup of minced parsley and basil (original recipe used cilantro instead)
5 tsp toasted sesame oil
1-2 diced avocados

Original recipe used twice as much garlic and also chili oil (I don’t enjoy chili).

Since I didn’t like the beans I’m trying to figure what else I could use the rest of the recipe with.

Forgot to add: mix and then salt to your liking

That looks amazing

Justine, are you trying to keep it vegetarian/vegan? In which case, a non-bean protein source like lentils or mushrooms? And I think maybe some eggplant could work too.

Yeah trying to keep it vegan.

It might be too wet for this but I’m thinking of using it like a salsa over taco lentils in a tortilla with some romaine.

add some more soy sauce