What's cooking? part 4

yeaaaaaaaaaaaah

Why in fucks name do moms and everyone else everywhere buy breasts exclusively? I mean oh my god girl these things got flavor like Stevie got sass

everyone's scared of the fat content in thighs

Also people like my mom and dad won't eat dark meat chicken because it's too weird and gamy tasting. I am not joking.

yeah I know a lot of people who don't like the taste of dark meat

them ppl be crazy imo

The boneless part a-ok but NOM SKIN

I am eating a giant taco/tortilla/unrolled burrito thing with:

• Cabot Private Stock super-sharp cheddar
• black beans refried in butter
• green pep, onion, garlic sautéed in butter
• chicken BST's simmered for an hour w chili powder, garlic, cumin, cayenne, oregano, salt
• chipotle salsa

xpost I've trained myself not to eat skin but every now and then I break down and omnomnom

Tonight's dinner, spaghetti bolognese. An old classic, maybe mu favorite comfort food ever

http://i412.photobucket.com/albums/pp201/sharonjoy666/9be6153c.jpg

My food styling could use work, I know

Dammit Stevie now I want to make a chicken cacciatore for dinner with thighs, italian passata, and some good olives and capsicum.

also thats a tasty lookin classic bol, Veg! :D

it was deeeeelicious

Stephanie Alexander bol sauce recipe. Tried + true

I have an all-day recep from somewhere--it is awesome but sometimes at the end of the day I'm starving and I'm like THIS took 5 hours?? or whatever.

Maybe it's from Cooks Illus, I use their everything.

Yeah, see I find their recipes v tiresome and overly complicated, often with silly instructions to do things that truly don't matter.

I have a recipe of theirs that I use, only I don't don't line the pan *just so* with four woven together strips of parchment paper or use that particularly difficult to find type of blueberry. Or whatever -- you know what type of instructions I'm talking about. Following their recipes to the letter doesn't usually lead to any better results ime than when I make small changes to make things easier for myself; really what I want is something that tastes good when I want to eat and doesn't make me feel stressed out while I'm preparing it. Their recipes are a guide, but usually I chart my own path (and take notes) when I use one.I find the cult of recipes kind of weird and interesting, tbh. (Also I hate being told what to do)

Hee. I cut corners w their stuff sometimes but then it doesn't come out the same (obv). The thing about the spag bol recp is that it calls for you to cook all the water out of the meat 3 separate times: first the brown ground meats until they give up water & go dry, then add milk and cook til dry, then add white wine and cook til dry, then add tomatoes and start the simmer period. Not even including the mirepoix etc.

But then I love painstaking things, I just get hungry in the 4-5 hours it takes to make.

This recipe is a lot shorter than that, about an hour simmering or more if you want -- just wine reduction, no milk, then chicken stock and puree'd tomatoes and simmer for at least an hour.

simmer for an hour i can handle
it's just the "you must spend 4-5 hrs making our perfect food" that i bristle at -- that's a luxury i don't even want, like a fur coat

I still love Cook's for the occasional new take on something or a weird technique that saves time or when they seem to have done the work for me in terms of distilling a bunch of recipes down to one definitive one. But I don't slavishly follow every bit of a recipe and get kind of tired of the new turkey recipe every fall. They also have different ideas than I do in terms of what ingredients are obscure or hard to find.

I've been using their pumpkin pie recipe for the last couple of years and every time I use it I swear it's the last time, because it's so annoying and overcomplicated. like cook the pumpkin etc and then whisk in the cream and then put the eggs in a food processor and while that's running pour the HOT liquid into the food processor, and it's just like u_u really

but stupidly I never think to do the research to find an alternative! it always turns out nice enough though, I think is why I forget.

Laughing at Lechera and me in this thread because we are so ourselves. She's like, "How does this thing work for ME because my life/needs come first or gtfo?" and I'm like "How much can I suffer to do this per some lofty standard? Oh, was it supposed to be fun? I must have missed that memo."

selfish only child, at your service!

I was thinking something far healthier and more practical but either way!

that too ;)

for the record i use the pumpkin pie recipe on the can of pumpkin and just fiddle with the spices and rely on a good crust to make it taste fancy and not like cafeteria food

also i don't think i am selfish

yeah I've heard that the Libby's recipe is the way to go. I think I will resolve to do that this year.

You all are cracking me up this morning :) I like CI for its faux science experiment approach, but damn if I'll ever cook that way. I do leverage a few steps out of their longwinded stuff if they interest me, just to try it some times (turkey flipping, I'm looking at you. Also, pumpkin dewatering...). I think the only recipe I've made from them is the Wacky Cake one (chocolate eggless cake that has baking soda and vinegar for the leavening - sheet cake very similar to one we had in grade school and full of nostalgia).

I bought their Baking Illustrated book 10 years ago -- but I've only made the pumpkin pie and maybe 1 other recipe because I can always find a less irritating recipe for almost everything else in there elsewhere lol

I made their green bean casserole for Thxgiving last year and it was the worst. They had you taking dozens and dozens of tiny button mushrooms and not even cutting them up – tearing them into quarters. Which I did against my own better sense that asked why I couldn't just cut them. And using more cream than I even buy in a year. A bunch of factors that made the recipe both expensive and tedious. And in the end the precious sauce of torn mushrooms tasted like Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. NEVER AGAIN

I wonder if Cook's Illustrated is really an Onion-type joke on what lengths they can get us to go to?

I mean, tearing button mushrooms just sounds like the WORST of all Cook's illustrated experiences

That kind of impressive, as people try quite hard to simulated the Campbell's flavor! I think most honest recipes just give up and tell you to put the soup in.

and it's so true, 9 times out of 10 you do the stupid dance they want you to and the end result turns out...*shrug* fine. But not amazing.

Yeah I know a much faster way to get the childhood casserole flavor of cream of mushroom soup.

why in the world would you tear up a mushroom

The end results often turn out amazing but then I cut corners, lots, the second go round, and it also turns out amazing. Most food is like an amazing miracle to me, I guess my standards aren't that exacting. And sometimes CI does give you a shortcut. Like iirc they said you don't have to salt eggplants. Or maybe I looked at pages of minutiae in CI about how to prepare eggplants and said fuck it and just gave up on salting them.

i think also i don't really love the kind of food they are asking me to make in the first place
i don't want to get anywhere near a can of cream of mushroom soup, esp one where i tore the mushrooms to pieces myself

sad as it is to say, green bean casserole is pretty freaking good with canned beans and canned soup. if you like that kind of thing, which I do.

i think also i don't really love the kind of food they are asking me to make in the first place

yeah for real – and I wonder about them loving it. I think every one of their recipes starts out with "every version of this we tried before was bland and insipid, with a soggy crust and a greasy finish" and I think, if you've hated this food every time you've eaten it, why are you trying to make it?

argh at tearing mushrooms - why? See also, peeling those tiny damned pearl onions. No. I do not need those precious things in my chicken pot pie ever again when I can have 2 hours of life doing something else.

There is a story somewhere (here? idk, can't remember) about someone who cooked and cooked and cooked and ended up basically with warmed up canned Spaghetti-Os.

lol yuk

2 kinds of 7-up salad

http://i46.tinypic.com/2q2k9kk.jpg

2 c hot 7-Up
1 c mayonnaise
1 c cottage cheese
green food coloring, if desired

(that is not what's cooking, it's purely for lols)

I'd take the green over the orange, personally.

♥ 7-UP SALAD ♥

I love that basically anything mixed up with some mayo is a salad :) Hello, heavenly hash.

btw, Laura Shapiro's Perfection Salad is a super read about the history of US cooking from the 1940s and 50s.

jello salad is my worst nightmare