What's cooking? part 4

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.

i put it there around 4, so the after work shopping crowd hopefully saw it :)

re: soup - i think you should put some baby bok choy in there

i am currently making a cold lentil salad for my class potluck tonight

great minds, bak choy was my first thought :)

whoa whoa whoa what abt PUMPKIN

i've seen this in similarish vietnamese soups w/ chicken and scallions hmm

food is so good!!!

The only cooking note that I got from my mom is her mnemonic device for remembering which envelope of taco seasoning to buy: "french's is fine, durkee is dandy, but schilling is shitty".

oven-roasted tomato pesto over pasta
pumpkin baked with wine and onions and nutmeg
cauliflower with onions garlic ginger cumin coriander lemon cinnamon

kind of a weird mix of stuff but was gooood

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....

― remy bean, Friday, May 11, 2012 3:18 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― remy bean, Friday, May 11, 2012 3:20 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hahah this made me lol because I am like this with my cooking instructions. No wonder my mum gets so mad at me, when I show her how I do things, shes like BUT HOW MUCH FLOUR and I'm all "you know, the usual amount."

harold wrote back to me!

About hot-water doughs--the heat partly denatures the gluten proteins, so they become less able to bond to each other and form a strong network. That's why the dough is less elastic, more plastic and easily shaped as your father says.

zojirushi rice maker has arrived. looking forward to using it soon!

is red sauce with mushrooms cool or lame? i have about a cup of red wine i could put in it too. i want it on pasta with sauteed broccoli rabe on the side, ok? how do i make the sauce? i also have a shallot.

i happened to get 2 tv chefs' books from the library yesterday and mario batali has a recipe i can convert. i got cremini mushrooms instead of porcinis so it'll be a little less exciting.

I reckon red sauce with mushrooms is totally cool

I don't even like mushrooms and it sounds pretty good.

I'm going to guess the cooking process would be something like this, in order: heat oil, sautee minced or sliced shallot until softened, add herbs & seasonings & sautee, add mushrooms. Let mushrooms sweat out moisture and let pan get dry-ish again, deglaze w red wine; add tomatoes of some sort and let simmer for...10 mins? 20? Mount w chunk of butter; pull pasta out of the pasta water and add to pan for final stage so it soaks up some of the sauce as its last bit of water.

This is what I would do, given no cookbook at all.

I like the versatility of mushrooms in pasta sauces. Meatiness/umami in red, delicacy in white.

yeah that's a staple around here
no shame in the mushroom game

i never put butter in it though?

i made a delicious mushrooms-with-bechamel thing recently that i think i may recreate tonight on account of this thread
thanks

harbl that is exactly what I would do; gotta say I think butter is urgent and key

Dry off your shrooms before sauteing <--julia child protip

I slice them and wrap in paper toweling for an hour or so.

for clarity - i put butter in bechamel, just not red sauce.

yeah I don't do butter in red sauce

But I'm thinking this isn't so much a red sauce as like er the kind of red wine mushroom sauce you would serve on a steak? OK maybe I am missing something here--ah, OK, pasta sauce. Yeah you could skip butter but man some butter would be good.