What's cooking? part 4

I must have another go at making mayo from scratch with my food processor, I hardly ever use the darn thing! Rosemary mayo sounds delicious.

I have a dinner date at my house tomorrow, I am thnking of making silverbeet + ricotta cannelloni - that seems reasonably simple to build and shove in the oven while someone comes over for dinner, doesnt it? Perhaps I can pre-make the cheese/greens filling tonight and have it ready to go in the fridge...

...and thats what I did! Ive prefilled some lasagna sheets with a ricotta/feta/silverbeet/green onion/dill mix, rolled em up into a lasagne dish, and covered them in clingfilm and shoved back into the fridge. I've never really done much "pre prepare" cooking before so I am hoping this goes ok - the plan is, pull it back out when I get home, coat it in tomato passata and cheese, and bake it. Add a salad, and throw it at my hot date.

Well er not literally, cos that would be rude.

aha, silverbeet is chard! now i get it. sounds delicious!

i just bought a bento box for myself and am trying to brainstorm stuff to put in it for work lunches. i have seriously been wanting one for YEARS and i just decided now was the time. i've been looking at justbento/justhungry forever too, so now is the time to start trying new things.

excited, but i have to take a trip to the japanese grocery with my friend who knows what she's doing. she reads cookbooks in japanese (she is not japanese herself)! i'm super impressed by that.

anyway, bento.

wasn't there an article that said the secret to good artisanal was a teaspoon of water?

making burgers again tonight so I think I'll whip up some homemade mayo

did you mean "artisanal mayo"? i don't think it was artisanal. but maybe i could have a new career as a mayonnaise artisan. i did see an article re: adding water. i didn't add any but i used the whole egg instead of just the yolk because something said it would make it more fluffy.

I am caving and making white macaroni w butter and paprika tonight, don't judge

no way dude, that sounds delish

we had pulled pork on hamburger buns and corn on the cob last night, sometimes simple is awesome

I frequently make pasta with just butter, or butter and cheese. Carbofatlicious

I've been pretty excited about this Indian-ish beet concoction that I saw in the NY Times last fall:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/dining/roasted-beets-with-chiles-ginger-and-yogurt-recipe.html

I've made this this a bunch of times over the past year and now that beets are pretty regular at the farmer's market I anticipate this at least once a week for the next couple of weeks.

tonight was kinda fun; seared sea scallops + arugula + melon/avocado salsa + brown rice. scallops were sweet and delicious and there was no way i could botch them.

those beets look GOOD

marconi w/ butter and paprika is much blander than the last time I had it (which was like 4 yrs ago). Will switch back to buying local grass-fed butter and also buying quality Hungarian paprika.

tell me about nachos

like, what do you do with the beans? how do you prep them? i have a good cashew cheese recipe, i make a pretty good basic salsa, and we're watching football this weekend - i feel like making nachos for the first time ever.

beans you refry. I like Goya the best bcz they are filled w/ sodium and yum; I usually do 1 can of black beans, drained but not rinsed (you need a bit of liquid left) and 4T butter (but I'm sure earth balance would work great) in a skillet and just mash them with a fork and fry them

basically exactly what say Stevie. I add some spices like cumin and epazote and Mexican oregano b/c I like them.

oh yes, cumin! and garlic! so:

Saute a few cloves of minced garlic in 4t Earth Bal
add beans
mash and cool for like 5 min
and eat

thanks!

Have stooped even lower than mac + butter and paprika: frozen pizza. Though much to my delight, the one I happened to buy (Freschetta Brick Oven 5-cheese) is by and far the best frozen pizza I've ever fucking tasted, like in-a-league-of-it's-own good. So if any of you like just cannot bring yourself to cook a whole meal, pick one of these jawns up and then thank me later

http://freschetta.com/images/thumb-brick-oven-pizza-5-italian-cheese.png

my vegan nachos were DELISH

awesome!

Oooh!! Did the beans turn out ok?

delish!!!

got the makings for tampeh reubens. inspired by that vegan cookbook and also from taking the pastrami off a reuben that was on the menu at work the other day. thousand island slathered on the bread interior, grilled marinated tempeh, sauerkraut, sliced pickle and some nice French reaclette, buttered outside bread and then grilled.....it's gonna be gooooood

The Kitchenaid mixer is a bit of a pain (hell, it's a huge pain) to rassle around the kitchen, so I've gone back to the high-moisture, long-rise, low-yeast, no-knead bread recipe that I imagine everybody knows about by now, via Lahey or Bittman or whoever. Got a loaf coming out momentarily, and it looked really good when I took the lid off the dutch oven for the last few minutes of baking.

yum!

I've got jambalaya workin in the slow cooker. 3 more hours and we'll be eating the good stuff

Cooking bread in the Dutch oven! That never occurred to me; will have to investigate.

i made a vegan ground-beef version of nachos tonight - added onion, can of muir glen tomato sauce and a package of gardein fake ground beef - also incredibly delish!!

Jambalaya turned out pretty good! Chicken was a little...mushy? I think I'll pre-brown it and the sausage before cooking, it might help the texture.

brb moving to just1n3's housr

<3

i also made reallly super extravagant vegan french toast for ytth recently (FT is not my thing at all) - it was ripoff of the real food daily's FT (ytth's favourite LA restaurant) which i found with a little googling.

i also bought 30 ball jars in different sizes, threw out all my recycled marinara jars and non-airtight containers, so now i have a beautiful 'rustic' kitchen

standing in front of my open kitchen shelves is now a mesmerizing experience (and i still need about 20 more jars!!)

An ex-colleague is leaving work at the weekend, so I got roped into making sausages for the barbecue.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8451/7937085770_288b848338_z.jpg

Old standards are pork, apple and cider and the Caribbean one I've done before with rum, pineapple and chili flakes. New experiment is to try and get an all-in-one hot dog - tomato chunks, mustard, and crispy onions, and I've upped the rusk and dextrose to try and get more of a snap to them.

For dinner yesterday J. made: Seared tuna steak with your choice of pear, cilantro, ginger and serrano chutney or an avocado, wasabi sauce. It was served with really fresh and perfect tasting green beans and basmati rice. It made my top five dinners of 2012 and top 10 dinners of all time!

Are you two still traveling for J's work a bit? You're more than welcome to stop by and use my kitchen if you're in the neighborhood.

(that sounds absolutely delicious)

Aldo those look amazing (cannot imagine pineapple in a sausage but I be provincial)!

fake chicken, pan fried with garlic and sake, threw in some v finely julienned zucchini at the end for a minute, served over roasted beets with a sauce of fake butter, rice flour, fake chicken broth, dijon and fresh tarragon

pretty good!

should have taken a photo, it looked really pretty

That sounds very yummy, would you like to visit Toronto? :D

What can I make with chicken broth, meatballs, and dried macaroni? Besides ital wedding soup?

Can of tomatoes and some veg and you could make a kind of one pot casserole/pasta bake kind of deal

Yeah, totes! Only boil the pasta 2/3rds of the way and finish it in the pan where you have browned up onions + garlic + meatballs, then added tomato and some chicken broth for liquid. Sort of a makeshift bolognese.

*hi five*

Dollop of jarred pesto will do wonders whisked into that pan sauce btw. From experience.

I have no tomatoes or vegs :-( I am just cooking the Mac in the broth and adding the meatballs and some cannelini beans and edamame. We'll see how this turns out.

White beans are a great addition! Hope it works, stevie!

Omg this is just like a pot of weird foods w a tiny bit of broth filling in the cracks and it totally does not taste cohesive. Luckily it's not all that bad.

fresh whole-wheat fettucine
garlic, prosciutto, crushed red, spinach
white wine, lemon zest, a little light cream

yes

I'll be over for dinner :)