What's cooking? part 4

Probably using other utensils in the pot instead of the little plastic rice paddle it comes with.

good point; you def want to use that thing

i need a more fancy rice cooker but i need so much stuff right now so probably not getting it soon

I got some dumb red rice cooker at Target for $13 and it works a treat. Brand is Aroma. It came with a little metal container with holes in the bottom so you can steam food, too.

i have the cheapest zojirushi. i need more capabilities.

yeah i used to have one of those cheap ones but having the timer actually changed my life; in addition to overnight oatmeal you can go to work and come home to cooked rice--esp with brown rice the cooking time is long enough that if i waited to start it until getting home i'd just snack and snack and etc.

I still make rice on the stovetop #littlehouseontheprairie

have any of you guys done any brining of poultry? tonight i brined a couple of bone-in chicken breasts and roasted them and i did less than the minimum brining time but i can't decide if it was too damn salty.

ooh yes mr veg has brined chicken and turkey before.

I don't find it too salty, makes the meat so juicy and yum. I love it!

was your brining solution designed for brining just pieces, or for a whole bird? If you use that same solution for pieces I could see how you might end up with a saltier piece of meat

I want to do either of these two

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/03/the-pizza-lab-awesome-pizza-without-an-oven-aka-skillet-pizza.html

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/07/the-pizza-lab-how-to-top-grilled-pizzas.html

I still make rice in a pot on the stove too, absorption style, always comes out perfect. Ive never had a rice cooker not flake off its teflon on me within 3-6 months, theyre all made like shit. And no, I dont scour, use forks on it, or put it in the dishwasher. It just loses its integrity after minimal amounts of time. Theyre always made with shitty cheap aluminium bowls. I dunno.

xxp nope it was designed for pieces--it's the brining instructions for bone-in breasts in all about roasting by molly stevens. she really recommends a 24-hour-in-advance presalting so maybe i'll try that next time.

hhmm, yeah probably. that's the only downside to brining, you kind of have to give it the time it requires. no shortcuts.

my dad taught me how to make scallion pancakes yesterday and they were great!

curiously, one uses 'hot water dough' as a base. I am wondering why that is, so I e-mailed harold mcgee. I wonder if he will get back to me!

Does it have yeast? My bread recipes always ask for slightly warmed water - 80 to 90 degrees celsius (lol canadian)

I make hot water dough for the crust of pork pies - flour, butter, lard, salt, boiling water. It changes the texture of the crust - crispy and toothsome without having the long flakes of a cold water pie crust. Stands up really well to handling/shaping.

no yeast, no lard to be melted

Craved DUMPLINGS!; made DUMPLINGS!. (pork and shrimp + pork)

My daughter absolutely loves lemon curd, learned how to make it herself, and has been experimenting with lime curd, grapefruit curd, and last night she tried blueberry curd. (We have quarts and quarts of blueberries in the freezer with the prospect of gallons more coming in the next few weeks.) I approve of all of this fruit curds.

coming over right now, fyi

The blueberry curd is really good, btw -- she added a bit of citric acid and got just the right tartness.

hay, i'm trying to make this indonesian soup right now and the recipe for the bumbu paste calls for five shallots (this feels like such a yahoo answers kinda question but) five whole shallots seems like a lot? u guys think the recipe just means the bulbs?

the ingredients for the paste:

5 shallots
3 garlic cloves
1/8tsp cardamom
1/2tsp nutmeg
1/4tsp cloves
2 chilies
1/2" slice ginger
2tbs kecap manis or soy sauce
12 macadamia nuts

Five doesn't seem too many

hm, cool, thx.

oh i left out the 1/3 cup broth. anyway...thanks

If you did use 5 whole shallots would that seem to be a proper amount of paste for the dish? Shallots (and onions, garlic) get much milder in flavor when they're cooked, so if you're worried about it being too strong I don't think there's a problem there. And based on the other ingredients that sounds like a reasonable amount of "base" for a sauce/paste.

X-post!

ha, yeah, i think it'll be ok, i worked myself into paranoia considering that if the author meant cloves i would be using like 3 or 4x the intended amount. how my brane works. i have the shallots all peeled and in the food processor, it seems right.

oh good, i am out of ginger. darn.

My 2 sets of muffin/scone rings arrived yesterday...made my first batch of crumpets this morning. A+++, especially with the lemon curd and blueberry curd. Also with just butter...also with butter and honey. I'm full.

I'm not nearly as experienced w/ Indonesian cuisine as I am with Vietnamese/Chinese, but in the latter case I've found there's a lot of slipperiness in the naming of alliums. 'Shallots' might be intended to indicate chives, leeks, garlic, scallions, just as 'limes' might signify lemons, bergamot, tangerines, grapefruit, some strange local thing that has no analog known to English speakers. Coupled with the (relatively) impressionistic style of most Asian recipes, and a total lack of standardization w/r/t size, 'five shallots' can mean, anything from a handful of chives to six vidalia onions.

So now that we've cleared that up....

My girlfriend asked her grandmother for a family Thit Kho To (New Year's Pork) recipe, and was told to get three medium hard porks the size of a baby's head, cut them into little pieces about the size of a finger, marinate them in five spoons of sugar ('tablespoons? teaspoons?' 'no, this spoon right here...') from tea until the sun goes down, etc., etc....

oh, and you needed to add a little glass cup of the fish sauce that comes in the bottle with the red rose on the cap, and but not the red rose with the thorns, because that one will totally ruin it

lol that is awesome. and maddening.

Let me just get my little glass cup, I have it here somewhere.

wow

that's like a hardcore version of getting recipe instructions from my Mum

"oh I just use a dash of this...no don't use what it says on the recipe, use this other thing that you would never know about unless you asked me....double that, but not evenly, so you have a little more than you would if you double it"

*throws bowl at Mum, storms out of kitchen'

ha, yknow i never knew that was a thing. mom cooking. my mom always had cookbooks, used real measuring utensils etc. i was looking through her old cookbooks recently, the ones from when we were growing up, and she kept track of dates she made them all for us, whether the kids and dad liked it, variations on the recipes she tried, that sort of thing. notes all over every recipe she made for us, it was the sweetest thing!

my mother has only four margin notes, and they are next to nearly recipe. they are:

'great' = great
'very good' = 'good'
'good' = crap, will never make again
'excellent for a party' = 'pain in the ass, too expensive'

did someone say ginger?

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5344/7166861626_da2b514b62.jpg

wow that ginger on the right looks like a teddy bear

uh can i have some of those chilies too, thx

xp a meeellllting teddy bear

I'm thinking more like an R Crumb Keep On Truckin teddy bear

the one on the left is a little pet dinosaur

they bout to walk off with yr chilies, watch it

wahoo my soup is done!

it's p darn good

It sounded like it was going to be good -- how is the shallot paste used?

I set up that little scene in my produce market btw -- then I left it there for others to admire. I wonder how long it lasted?

you stir fry the chicken (3 breasts cut in lil strips) a minute then add the paste and keep stir frying a few minutes more before you add abt 7 cups of broth and the rest (tamarind, lemongrass, a few green onions)

simmer a few mins and done, easy recipe.

that sounds GREAT. vegetables?

it didn't call for any, but it's a pretty brothy soup so the addition of some veggies i think would be v welcome

i got it from the book Splendid Soups which really enormous and awesome. like 600 pages? all soup.

oh Lech, I love you! It would have made me so happy to see your ginger buddy scene during mundane shopping.