What's cooking? part 4

I made a clear beef soup last night with two browned soup bones and the usual garni, excluding rosemary (which I would have used but was told it didn't belong in a "European" recipe). Added barley (for me) and egg noodles (for dining partner) at the end.

Result was an almost-clear soup thanks to my repeated surface skimming, plus another whole pot of leftover beef broth to freeze!

Love rosemary, to hell with the purists, I say. V nice sounding that, Laurel.

Thx! I threw out the carrots, onions, garlic, and parsley that were boiled with the stock because they were all depleted and mush, and replaced them with fresh diced carrot & parsley for the re-heat.

When I make stock (or more properly, broth) is one of the few times I wonder if I really should have cheesecloth in my arsenal. Seems like the quickest way to clear out all those mystery solids without standing over the steaming pot for 30 mins with a large spoon.

Cheesecloth + egg white clarification gets my vote for quick, perfectly clear broth.

Another thing we were missing was some parsnip? You boil it with the broth and then throw it out, apparently you Do Not Eat It. Previous to cooking with a peanut gallery, I'd never purchased or used a parsnip in my life; what's their effect on soup?

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I got muslin for that sort of thing. It's cheap enough, and great for making consomees or stocks of any sort really. Thoroughly recommend, if you're going to freeze, not initially straining it (though obviously sieve/colander the main bits out), but freezing it as it is, then leaving it to defrost over some muslin - because the fat is frozen at the top, it doesn't go through, and you end up with a crystal clear stock.

Laurel, thoroughly recommend making a parsnip gratin dauphinoise, just incredible. Parsnip is comparatively sweet but adds decent body to the stock.

They have a lovely lightly carroty flavor. I'm the sort of disgusting savage that would eat them though (roasted especially delish). xp

Jaq, you would despair if you saw my "kitchen" -- it's a hallway on the way to the bathroom, and I'm using my half-sized sheet pan as a dish drainer because it doesn't fit into the (electric) oven. Linear inches of counter space, total: 12.

I have an old gradeschool-yellow typing table on casters that holds the dish rack and ingredients, gets rolled back and forth depending on use. I hate our electric cooktop but at least the perfectly flat surface can double as counter space if you're not cooking anything. O_o

Landlords promising a kitchen remodel will begin in three weeks but a) I'll believe it when I see it, and b) there's just not much to work with.

oh man, that's hardship conditions.

I won't tell you about my next kitchen, it will make you cry.

If we don't get into a biblically amazing apartment next time with a luxury kitchen, I may have to say "I love my boyfriend but he has chosen Manhattan" and get my ass back to Crown Heights.

For real. I could not work in those conditions.

Just got back from the store, where I bought tons of veggies for my soup. I also got a baguette, which I intend to eat with some super nutty gruyere I got over the weekend. Cannot wait.

Previous tenant had turned the breaker for the stove completely off, that's how much he REALLY DIDN'T COOK.

Sounds so nice, Amanda! I put havarti on a baguette with my soup last night.

Previous tenant is crazy!

Questione!!! I'm in a blueberry muffin mood, but I HATE commercial & bakery ones because they use cakey batters that are v v sweet. I like a good salty baking-powder biscuit-ish dough instead.

The only problem is mixing in fruit without smooshing it. My solution has been frozen blueberries, folding them in carefully at last min. (Incidentally I'm going to use raspberries tonight because frozen fruit selection was lacking yesterday.)

Favorite blueberry muffin variants or tips & tricks?

For muffins I use the Joy of Cooking yogurt recipe and use plain kefir. It does produce a moist, cakey dough but it's only as sweet as you want it to be. Maybe I would recommend making scones instead of muffins? I like the JoC cream scones recipe.

La Lechera - I just tasted the soup before I added the cream - very nice indeed, tho I did end up using almost half pint of stock and half a pint of water in there. Simmer for half an hour, not an hour btw.

Will do! Got some watercress at the store just now. Going to eat a little in a salad w/fennel and oranges for lunch and the rest in my soup tonight. Watercress-only soup will have to wait til I get through this soup.

today is my day off btw, hence the shopping/cooking.
sun/mon are like sat/sun for me.

I have my mom's recipe which is from either JoC or BH&G, and it's a baking powder-version, but it never quite tastes like hers?! Afraid the problem might be that she uses local fresh berries. ;_;

I hope it's cooler wherever you guys are! I was a fool to make soup on a 90-degree day, which is what NY had yest.

it's 70 and sunny, quite nice!

Just made glazed baby turnips for the first time -- delicious. I'm definitely going to plant some turnips in my fall garden, pull them at golf-ball sized.

now in oven: enchiladas of chicken, black bean, onion, yellow pepper, jalapeno, wilted spinach, lots of spices, corn tortillas, sauce. basically throwing together stuff that i think will be delicious because there were tortillas in the fridge that needed to be used. it's so weird being in someone else's kitchen, but at least my sister has amazing cookware. way nicer than mine (also made smoothie with bro-in-law's vitamix this morning!!!).

I have the blandest taste in food sometimes – my mom made a pot of unsalted pinto beans when I visited her & I couldn't get enough. Making beans for myself today. Hopefully the addition of some bacon, garlic, onions & Hatch green chiles don't ruin it.

Those sound like perfect things to add to them.

Made a corned beef w onion, pot, carrot, thyme, etc in the slow cooker yest with Irish soda bread to go with.

Was roundly scolded for taking the meat out of the broth to slice it, because no one in Europe or probably the rest of the world would ever take salted meat out of the broth to dry off on the counter, it's just WRONG.

Also, soda bread needs more salt.

Would mess up your blade if you sliced it in the pot.

Abbott, yr bean additions sound delicious.

SOMEONE needs to go eat in Europe if someone cares so much.

I cooked up all the veg in the bacon grease before adding them top the beans (my dad used to praise his father's cooking of food in bacon grease, but refused to do it for us bcz his dad died of a heart attack – I'm sure its fine if you only do it a few times a year). I doubt the beans'll be gross, but I just hope I don't eat them & think "man, I wish these were as flavorless as my mom's."

Those are the perfect ingreds for beans, Abbott! You can't go wrong. Will you be eating these with stove top-scorched flour tortillas, perchance?

Probably gonna make some cornbread & serve 'em over that.

I go outside every morning to my Anaheim chile plants and say "come on, come ONNNN".

Near as I can tell, Anaheims are close to Hatch chilies, if not the same thing.

Anaheims are not as spicy as some Hatch chiles (which come in a variety of spiciness but around here you can pretty much only get the spicy ones). My old anatomy & physiology prof constantly associated them with death and murder: "...if you want to poison someone, you know, feed them the chile from Hatch." The Hatch chile, I swear, makes me kind of high in a weird way! The Hatch chile fest, otoh, is kind of a disappointment.

Anaheims are tasty, too, though. I have given up pretty much on using green bell peppers, & I always use Anaheims when they're called for. They have such a tasty flavor!

They really do. I buy a few pounds fresh every now and then and char them under the broiler for a batch of green. Last time I did them on the grill, but I didn't preheat it long enough, and it took so long for the chilies to get charred, they were nearly dried out. The juices are too important to lose!

Around here in the fall, they have people outside every grocery store who will roast them for you in this big rotisserie grill.

laurel i'm surprised he objected to the slicing and not to the POT you added! har har

he's awfully objecty for someone who is having food cooked just for him. maybe that's why you added the pot?

dudes, i just made macarons! lemon macarons with raspberry white chocolate ganache! they look pretty cute! but i don't have a camera so you will just have to believe me on this one.

Were they a pain to make?

much less of a pain than I expected - this video made it all seem quite... doable, so i found the relevant proportions from some blog or other and did what the woman in the video had done. (it helped that i have a handheld electric whisk thing: i would not have wanted to whip the meringue by hand)

for the filling all i did was mash and sieve some raspberries and then fold the puree into a bar's worth of melted white chocolate. and add red food colouring because it was an offputting lilac colour. and then put it in the fridge and feel sure it would never set and would taste disgusting (tbh i do think the white-chocolateness of it is kind of cloying/muddy).

Tonight: lamb burgers with curry and scallions, layered on a roll with cucumber ribbons and feta sauce with parsley. Served with orzo and wilted spinach dressed with lemon juice and crumbled feta. Greek night!

Last night I attempted something I do often: to replicate a dish I've had out somewhere that I really liked. A lunch place by my work does this amazing pasta: linguine with tuna, fried breadcrumbs, capers, garlic and lemon. It was so vibrant with the taste of garlic and lemon and saltiness.

I made my own last night, sans the crumbs. And it was majorly disappointing :/ I'm not sure what I did wrong, though I think I didn't add anywhere near enough grated lemon rind for one thing. It just tasted so flat!

Hate it when that happens.

What is a recipe that uses a LOT of lettuce? We have lettuce coming out our ears from our garden, and getting a little tired of green salads. Anybody tried stir-fried lettuce or lettuce soup?

Lettuce soup works.

butter, onion, garlic, 250g lettuce leaves + stalk, a tablespoon of plain flour, litre chicken stock/water, double cream, egg yolk, chervil/parsley (this is going to be pretty similar to the cress one upthread btw)

cook the onion and garlic, stir in the slice up lettuce, mix round for a minute, add the flour. cook for another minute, add stock/water. simmer for five mins. Puree soup, whisk egg yolk n cream together, add to soup, stir heat, eat.

i bought a huge amount of lettuce for $1 today. and way way too much basil and a couple eggplants. i think i'm gonna make this: http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/9078

I want that.

Instead baked potato, sausages and beans. Hmm. Actually I want that as well. But that stir fry looks good.

Made a nice haricot bean and tarragon soup the other day, had with some left over pork and anchovy meatballs and a mint, basil, lettuce salad with dressing just lemon juice, s + p, and olive oil. It was great.