The lockdown cookbook

Making some bullshit Thai shrimp soup. Red curry paste, shrimp stock, coconut milk, shrimp. I forgot noodles on my kamikaze store run this morning.

Oh, I also don't have tamarind, so I am using lime zest to bitter it.

i made a little pizza from leftover naan and leftover regular pizza ingredients

leftover curry over cheap previously frozen fries that we hate

made some bullshit butternut squash soup with miso and dashi, threw in a lot of rice and a block of tofu, which lasted me the weekend at least

Made a very large batch of ghormeh sabzi (Persian herb stew) to freeze after a 2am trip to the grocery store.

In the food processor:
-3 large leeks (green part only)
-2 bunches of parsley
-1 bunch dill
-1 bunch cilantro
-About 7oz fresh spinach (too much will ruin it)
-A small handful of dried fenugreek leaves ("methi" from an Indian grocer)

In a large non-stick pot: sautee an onion in a generous amount of grapeseed oil with a pinch each of turmeric and black pepper until translucent. Add herb mixture and sautee over fairly high heat for 10-15 mins, stirring constantly (burning the herbs will ruin it). The herbs will turn a darker color, then slowly add water until it has the consistency of mud, bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Add 4x limoo omani (dried lemons or limes) and 3/4lb of dried red kidney beans, and 1tbsp salt or to taste. You should poke holes in the limoo omani with a fork before adding them. (Adding more lemon juice, as some recipes call for, will ruin it IMO)
Cover and simmer for 2-3 hours.

You eat it with basmati rice.

That sounds delicious.

Made soup base with heads and bones of a big sea bass and a little dover sole and a load of prawn heads/shells with white miso and some bits of veg and dried seaweed, then strained it and poached some cabbage and a couple of skate wings in it, served over cold flat noodles tossed in crispy chilli oil. Same again for lunch tomorrow.

Local market had $0.99/lb pork shoulder so I picked up a 8.5lb shoulder and roasted it cuban style. Feel like I have a main dish for the week.

much deliciousness in these posts. made the six seasons cauliflower ragu. It is the kind of thing kids and adults can enjoy. But also tricked 2 and 4 year old into eating a quarter head of cauliflower in one meal. Will probably replace all other iterations of mac and cheese with this.

That’s a big shoulder and a delicious way to cook it. I hope you have associated Cuban sandwich fixings.

to go with the pasta I sauteed some turnips in butter, then tossed with bread crumbs and romano cheese; I feel like my two modes during all of this are no appetite at all or compulsion to prepare vegetables in the least healthy way possible

Pulled elk sausages out of the freezer this morning. I think I will poach them in beer and serve with boiled potatoes and sautéed frozen kale.

Anyone got any recommendations for salt beef, beyond bagels, reubens etc? Am considering incorporating into some kind of Portuguese-style wet rice thing but other suggestions gratefully received (I have a lot of salt beef)

I assume you have thought of corned beef and cabbage

What's a good, ethical (ie their workers are not currently striking for paid sick leave) place to mail-order food things? I'm looking for flavors I can't get in this small town--curry paste, sambal olek, dried guajillo, pasilla, arboles chilies, also I can't find a single lentil in the whole county so if I could order some that would be great. There's no grocery deliver, it would be straight mail order.

Also I don't need anything from there but browsing the Food 52 site is extremely soothing.

By the by

The most delicious and surprising way of eating a lot of vegetables for dinner is to make pinakbet, Filipino vegetable stew. Every time I make it, I am constantly surprised at how delicious it is, and how healthy it is, which is completely out-of-step with the majority of Filipino cuisine.

I'll type out the recipe here-- I can't find as good a one online as the one I use from my cookbook. (I omit chicharron/lechon that the recipe recommends as garnish, because I don't like that shit.)

Pinakbet

serves 4

3 cloves garlic
1 onion
4 tomatoes
6 long beans
1 bitter melon (or several mini ones, if you can find them) do not omit the bitter melon even if you don't like it, trust me, it is amazing in this dish and I don't generally like bitter melon
3 winged beans (pretty niche, not necessary)
8 okra
half a small eggplant
half a butternut squash
1/4 c oil (I use peanut)
3 Tbsp fish paste (if you can't get the real thing, I use mashed-up anchovies with commonly available fish sauce, or combine that IKEA-available Kalles shit with fish sauce)
A handful of cherry tomatoes

1. Put a litre of water on the boil, as salty as the sea. Set up your rice cooker to make rice.
2. Mince the garlic. Chop the onion. Wedge the tomatoes. Cut the long beans into 2" pieces. Halve the bitter melon, remove the seeds and slice. Cut the winged beans into 1" pieces. Remove stems from the okra. Cube the eggplant. Cube the squash.
3. Boil the squash for five minutes in the water. Remove with a wire skimmer; keep the water boiling.
4. Boil the other vegetables (except garlic, onion, cherry tomatoes) for 1 minute. Remove from heat and drain in a colander.
5. Get a big sauce pan and heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, saute until nearly translucent. Add the garlic, let cook for a minute.
6. Add the tomatoes and fish paste. Let simmer a couple minutes.
7. Add the other vegetables. Mix for about a minute or so over the heat, then remove from heat.
8. Garnish with cherry tomatoes and fish sauce

So, like, your veg are boiled a minute, fried a minute, served over rice, and honestly I can't really communicate how surprisingly delicious this mass of undercooked vegetables ends up being. I hope somebody reads this and makes it!

https://www.foxyfolksy.com/pinakbet/

Here's an online recipe-- ground pork is often added (I'd cook the onions/garlic less, then throw it in for ten minutes until it starts to foam). Parboiling the veg (as above) is REALLY effective, unlike this recipe and others would suggest. Look at how delicious this dish is, though!

Not sure how I came across this, could definitely have been ilx

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/braised-chicken-thighs-cabbage-bacon-recipe.html

Cannot recommend highly enough. Anything that doesn't start with frying garlic is uncharted territory for me but it turned out really well.

io I've heard good things about https://oaktownspiceshop.com/

I made toum with some garlic that wasn't the best and past it's best and it's too astringent. mellowed it with some yoghurt and it tasted ok drizzled on a roasted whole head of cauliflower and as a dipping sauce for rotisserie chicken (my gf had the latter)

What's a good, ethical (ie their workers are not currently striking for paid sick leave) place to mail-order food things? I'm looking for flavors I can't get in this small town--curry paste, sambal olek, dried guajillo, pasilla, arboles chilies, also I can't find a single lentil in the whole county so if I could order some that would be great. There's no grocery deliver, it would be straight mail order.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Thursday, April 2, 2020 9:33 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

loz, if it's chiles you want i can probably sort this out

Thanks, dude! Actually C brought home some arboles and pasillas from Queens the other day so I'm good there but I'm still missing the Asian stuff. Might just wait it out.

There could be a modified posole in the cards though.

IO, I get chile products from here — http://thechileshop.com/ — every year or so. Everything's been really good so far.

had some zucchini about to turn so I made pesto with it (not the greatest I've had but pesto is very substitutable), then took a hunk of goat cheese and made pasta sauce; if I ever have children I really suspect I'm going to become that mom who hides vegetables in everything

made amazing asparagus risotto last night. one of the best things i’ve made for ages. absolutely ballsed up a chicken pilaf earlier in the week - whole grain rice was all that was available and cos i never cook with it i forgot it takes twice as long to cook. result totally inedible. had to make it all again and drank a lot of beer and danced round my kitchen in the process. the end result was v 5/10.

waterzooi - belgian fish soup - tonight.

I have so much arborio rice, I really need to commit to some risottos. Chx soup on my schedule for tomorrow though, with the intent of freezing it for later.

I don't like zucchini or eggplant or any squashes so it's been basically kale and broccoli and fresh salad veg (as long as they'll keep) for us--feels like I need to branch out a bit but I'm not that creative with veg!

we have been murdering the fennel risotti recently. lattermost one also had a large leek in it which pushed things even further. great lockdown food, would endorse

courgette and aubergine were both very apt ingredients in the giant daal tt made last night. they stew really well and soak up any flavour

my big question for tonight is how to deal with kohlrabi. the current feeling is a soup but that's almost a waste of its texture maybe?

great for high-heat roasting

or shaved raw in some sort of salad context

the former sounds eminently plausible!

went with the soup, accompanied by the leaves turned into crisps a la kale

it is superlative

https://www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/hellas-creamy-kohlrabi-soup

fake larb (i.e. with textured vegetable protein instead of meat because it's shelf-stable), which didn't turn out half bad actually

arroz con pollo with some drumsticks that have been in the freezer for some years. they were vacuum sealed and look good as new, though.

there's a loquat tree on hoa property behind our home. going to harvest some for jam this year. i say that every year, and i've never actually done it, though.

had some saffron in my pantry for a truly unreasonable amount of time, but finally used it today to marinate some chicken, alongside a roasted radish salad, which is probably one of the best things I've made in years

saffron so expensive. must use it up. someday I'll get a proper tahdig on saffron rice. Today, i harvested the 8 cups loquats. We watched paddington 2 and made 2 jars of marmalade.

yeah, it's like that thing when you're playing a video game and you're reluctant to use up the best potion item in the game because then it's gone. except with ingredients

Even though I made a massive shopping run yesterday, from which we shall be eating for most of the next 3 weeks (!) I now confine myself to one store only rather than the three I usually shop at, and there is no menu prepared in advance from which to make my list and no guarantee what I seek shall be findable. So, there are a great many dishes we could make, but it's a bit like Tetris, in that it is easy to have gaps among necessary ingredients, and if one dish is chosen, it may preclude four other dishes by virtue of using all of one ingredient that then won't be replenished for quite a while. It is a daily game of optimization, constantly restarted with a shorter list of fresh ingredients. Fun at times, frustrating other times.

saffron so expensive. must use it up. someday I'll get a proper tahdig on saffron rice. Today, i harvested the 8 cups loquats. We watched paddington 2 and made 2 jars of marmalade.

xp the recipe optimisation game is very relatable. I am quite fatigued by it this week. My indecision is bad at the best of times, but when it necessitates sacrifice too then it's hard to make any decision at all! Especially because everything is now organised by what is going to go off first rather than what I want to make. I miss impulse.

But anyway, the proliferation of pesto and houmous varietals continues to favourably rule many dishes. So cheap and easy to make!

I am making my own wide rice noodles again now that I have a proper steamer basket. Getting prettay good.

made this, was phenomenal (with substitutions -- couldn't find ground lamb so substituted turkey and upped the spices, used pistachios in place of pine nuts because I hate pine nuts, I'm sure someone on twitter is screencapping this and getting 100,000 likes on what a horrible person with horrible taste I am) https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/spiced-lamb-and-dill-yogurt-pasta

https://scontent.fphl1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p720x720/96774332_10158106960244000_5216103069342760960_o.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=C9OOwr2UY0sAX-QG52j&_nc_ht=scontent.fphl1-1.fna&_nc_tp=6&oh=b7487e8a32dd271550c5a55dfae01fc1&oe=5EDB8215

A homemade chocolate custard--not as photogenic as my sister's loaves of bread, but definitely delicious. Tomorrow once it's set, we'll see if it's better than pudding from a mix.

Anybody with an Aeropress can make amazing cold drip coffee at home really easily. Here is the recipe. OK this looks long but I swear it's easy. Serve black over ice. Do not water down! It's like the whiskey of coffees.

1. Set the plunger aside, you won't be using it.
2. Get a small plastic water bottle
3. Cut the bottom off of it with some scissors
4. Take the cap off, poke a very small hole in it, and screw the cap back on
5. Turn it upside down and pour water in what used to be the bottom. You should get about 1 drop per second coming out of the hole in the cap. If it's going too fast, put a piece of sellotape over the hole and play with it a little until you get the right flow. Nice.
6. Set everything up the normal way, i.e. a jar or coffee cup underneath everything, and put enough coffee in your Aeropress for about 3 cups of coffee. i.e. 3 scoops. This is going to be strong!
7. Put another one of your paper filters OVER the coffee grounds, down in the Aeropress. This is going to ensure that the water distributes evenly through the coffee.
8. You may want to put the funnel on top to hold the upside-down water bottle steady.
9. Turn your water bottle upside down, fill about 3/4 full of cold water, and put into the top of the Aeropress.
10. Voila - you should be seeing cold water drip slowly through the grounds, and eventually drip down into your jar. It'll take an hour or so.

Whoa, mini-Toddy, nice

David Rudnick's three-hour pomodoro sauce. I got orange tomatoes, so it ended up being the color of SF's sky.

https://pastebin.com/1RbdnctG

I'm sure there are other good cooking threads but this is the first in my bookmarks... Anyway, do I need/want a OnePot (or variant thereof)? I keep reading about them and have a bit of Christmas cash from my old dear and am hovering over the buy button.

is that like an instant pot? i like them