What's cooking? part 4

is the farmer gonna butcher it for you or

Made an Elizabeth David recipe for risotto.stewed chicken,onion,tomatoes,a pepper,mushroom,a bit of Bacon,celery,glass of white wine,thyme for 2 hours then added it near the end of cooking the arborio plus some butter and parmesan.

Yeah it's butchered - there's a meat processor / storage place near here that does his stuff for him. It's all packaged and frozen already, stored in my basement freezer. I haven't even looked at it all yet to figure out what we have.

should keep you busy for the winter!

wish i had a massive freezer so i could do that!

A guest at my house made a unique soup last night with things I never would have put together. The taste of it was actually great and warming and wonderful and I am 100% grateful to him for sharing his cooking & hospitality w us cos he's a rad dude, but mentally I couldn't get over the fact that there were cooked chunks of cucumber in my hot soup, along with canned corn and ground beef.

However with a few alterations I may adopt his recipe, because, my mental food issues aside, it tasted awesome and had things I would never have thought to try, and I need to break out of my mirepoix & soup bones rut a little bit.

Oh I just bought Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet! Have not cooked anything from it yet--need more recs!

― quincie, Thursday, October 28, 2010 12:24 PM

does it have relatively easy to make stuff or is it all about having you grind your own curry pastes out of 30 ingredients you can't find anywhere

most of the stuff in this book is really easy to make. i am a very inexperienced cook and i can get good results with this book consistently. (like last night - tofu in hot chili oil yum.)

you can find all the essential ingredients for most recipes no problem. (otoh every time i make anything i'm like "guess i can skip the kaffir lime leaves")

the green curry thing is just a fun project if you have extra time.

Yeah I mean I made the Vietnamese lemongrass chicken soup once -- I left out the things I couldn't find, so basically in the end it tasted just like normal chicken soup with some lemongrass in it? It was still good soup but it didn't have that "spices of the Orient!" mystery flavor. But for that, I guess you need...the actual spices in question, so... If you never had and never had any desire to have black cardamom in your arsenal, maybe make something else?

yeah what i would say is that finding a few key ingredients can go a long way. you'd be surprised how far you can go with eg fish sauce, fresh lime juice and fresh chilis.

ok i'll check it out. i found kaffir lime leaves at one place but they're too overpowering imo. still searching for non-barfy fish sauce brand

You can use the green part of a regular lime's peel as a sub for the kaffir leaves. I don't grate it like zest, but slice it off in little chunks. It is not a flawless sub but it is better than nothing.

I have never had any desire to make my own curry paste though because that Mae Ploy stuff is so cheap.

I am a big fan of Squid brand fish sauce but maybe you shouldn't be taking advice from someone who can't smell it.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_TgrbPuulNfc/SmoXg7zzQYI/AAAAAAAAANg/7u-T7o6QPBk/s400/41GZr-RXbmL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

lime juice works for me. ive searched everywhere for mae ploy pastes, short of ordering online. squid i'll probably try next, tiparos brand is too obvious about being liquid death warmed over

My housemate is ill, so I decided he needed some kind of nourishing broth, so I made a brothy soup out of all the random greens I had to hand - cabbage mostly, some celery, cubed potato and some spinach, with loads of garlic and thyme.

Much to my suprise it was delicious. It'd be better with homemade chicken stock but I didnt have any so I had to make do with Massell vege stock.

i buy my mae ploy pastes at cub foods of all places. used to get my galanga root there, too, but they just stopped carrying it.

i think squid brand is supposedly pretty decent? i haven't tried it. so far every fish sauce brand i've picked up at whim has been a bit overly fishy...richin, um, i forget the others. i just can't bring myself to throw out my current bottle for a new one until it's gone cuz i'm weird about wasting stuff.

has anyone used golden boy fish sauce? i made a mental note about it after reading something...somewhere.

i'm lots of help.

am0n potung has maesri and i think mae ploy curry paste. i usually use maesri and most of them are good except the karee one? it's like yellow-brown and tastes like indian curry.

you can't buy golden boy fish sauce

I got Squid brand -- I think some tv chef recommended it -- and like it a lot.

I always get Three Crab Brand - it's still foul ass in a bottle because hey it's fish sauce, but it's mellower than some of the overly strong other ones I've tried. Kind of sweeter tasting.

It's labled 'nuoc mam nhi', and I've heard the 'nhi' means its the extra virgin olive oil of fish sauce - the first fermentation and supposedly better quality, that you use for sauces more than cooking.

I haven't looked through Hot Salty Sour Sweet in a long time. I've been jonesing to go through cookbooks again and find things I missed or never sounded good the last time I looked at them.

potung didn't have mae ploy last time i was there and not really into the maesri cans. they also don't have golden boy or tra chang sauces. they suck.

i've avoided 3 crabs since reading this http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/features/fishsauce1.html

I do not personally recommend Three Crabs Brand, which several Asian cookbook authors recommend, mainly because it does not appear to be a naturally fermented fish sauce but is, rather, a flavor-enhanced, processed food product. According to the label, hydrolyzed wheat protein and fructose are among the ingredients – both are additives that have not been adequately time-tested for their potential long-term effects on health. Their inclusion suggests that the sauce is made through the process of hydrolysis, whereby a catalyst (sometimes from chemical sources) is added to hasten fermentation, allowing the company to produce large quantities of the product in shorter periods of time than would be required in natural fermentation.

It also appears suspicious that the label states that the fish sauce is a product of Thailand but is "processed in Hong Kong," further indicating that it is more highly processed than naturally fermented fish sauce. When compared with high-quality, naturally fermented fish sauces, the additives in Three Crabs Brand, to the discerning palate, gives this fish sauce a somewhat metallic, artificial after-taste. Since there are a number of excellent natural fish sauces, produced as has been traditionally done for generations, on the market, my preference is to stay with the traditionally made and time-tested products.

Oh weird - I started buying it ages ago because I'd read some of those cookbook author recommendations and never really thought about it afterward. I don't get any weird aftertaste but maybe I'm just used to it.

But yeah, it's one of those things that really should have like two ingredients in it, I should check out others.

you can't buy golden boy fish sauce

― john water (harbl), Thursday, 4 November 2010 23:18 (Yesterday)

wait you can't? i could swear a place down the road from me has it.

anyway, http://importfood.com/satc2408.html

keeping my eye out for ^

When I went on the Chile Pepper Institute tour in September, one thing they had in the gift shop was chile powder made from a new variety they've developed, the NuMex Heritage 6-4. They claim to have bred 5x the flavor compounds into these chiles

Would be a perfect xmas present for my dad, thanks. Hope I can buy them online somewhere.

I think the Institute is the only source. I emailed them and they said they'd sell it mail order -- I guess they just haven't added it to their online shop yet. I'm going to write them for prices on 8 oz. and 1 lb.

http://www.chilepepperinstitute.org/

email hotchile at nmsu.edu

Tell Danise that W!ll!am Crµmp recommended their "brick-red cocaine"

I never went there the whole four years I lived in Cruces. I had friends working there and everything (who would bring me chiles, which is probably why I never felt the need to go). I should check it out next time I go visit friends there.

I also bought a pack of the Heritage 6-4 seeds, which I'm looking forward to growing next year.

Two big briskets is what's cooking

fresh spaghetti all'arrabbiata

Think I'll grill some burgers today.

Also, we're in a good stretch of high pressure/low humidity, so I can make some peanut brittle.

laurel, i am watching a cooking show right now and they just put lemon cucumber in a soup!

you can't buy golden boy fish sauce

― john water (harbl), Thursday, 4 November 2010 23:18 (Yesterday)

wait you can't? i could swear a place down the road from me has it.

anyway, http://importfood.com/satc2408.html

keeping my eye out for ^

― arby's, Friday, November 5, 2010 7:07 PM (Yesterday)

i was making a joke about a song about golden boy peanuts, arby's

Wow, tza! So I guess it's not just a one-off. Does the soup look good??

it did! it was more a bright vegetable puree soup though, served w/ actual pieces of veg. it was a show about the 'new guard' of french cooking - those throwing old french cooking rules out the window and being adventurous with new techniques and flavors.

ay amon you know that fish sauce is pretty barf-y anyway right? that usually it's when you add it to stuff that it becomes magical

made a shaved brussels sprouts & parm salad last night. forgot how delicious it is! and sooo easy!

made persian recipe for lamb meatballs, butternut squash with prunes and walnuts, and arab salad last night

from claudia roden middle east cookbook and najmieh batmanglij vegetarian cookbook

lamb shanks with three types of mushrooms, puy lentils, shallots, onions, cheap shiraz and redcurrant jelly

lamb shanks!! jealous!

Tza, what's the sprouts & parm recp? Was remembering sprouts the other day in produce sect but didn't spring for them for lack of immediate ideas.

http://www.culinate.com/user/Marissa-RD/recipes/marissas_recipes/shaved_brussels_sprouts_salad_with_pecorino_romano_and_walnuts

i have had many variations - that's the one i made last night, but did not use walnuts as boy has a violent dislike of nuts other than peanuts (boo!). i think next time i will toast walnuts on the side and throw into my serving. first had this at lupa... it's on their antipasti plate of awesomeness... along w/ roasted beets in a mustardy vinaigrette, which i also love to make now.

ay amon you know that fish sauce is pretty barf-y anyway right? that usually it's when you add it to stuff that it becomes magical

― just sayin, Saturday, November 6, 2010 1:41 PM

yes i know what fish sauce is and there are different degrees of fishiness w/ each brand, the better quality ones are supposed to be less fish-stinky.

also potung had mae ploy curry pastes in stock, why didn't harbl tell me!

minestrone soup with kale and a barley/veg casserole type thing

roasting a pork tenderloin marinated in bourbon, soy, brown sugar, garlic, and ginger... hope it turns out well! this is my first ever attempt at roasting a large piece of meat! (finally bought a meat thermometer lol)

i am roasting pork tenderloin too jinx! bought it cuz it was super cheap at fancy supermkt, like $2 a lb for organic/local/etc. anyway, laid it out and dressed w/ a mashed-up combo of garlic (lots), fresh sage & rosemary, dried thyme, salt, olive oil. (plus threw in some pan drippings from chicken breast i cooked yesterday cuz i hate to let a reduction go to waste. misguided, maybe, but we'll see.) refrigerating now to marinate, will cook late tonight, along with roast brussels sprouts. pinot grigio because i lack taste.