What's cooking? part 4

Here's the pork tenderloin's with grilled peaches and pineapple
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8055/8106930810_dcf2501bf8.jpg
T made a strawberry almond Pavlova
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8048/8106916889_59cc0791bf.jpg

Wow! Those both look great. And I love that sweet embroidered tea cloth, too.

Oh my lord, wish I were having dinner with you two (three) tonight! Pairing the grilled pork with grilled fruits was an ace call.

Meanwhile, I sliced up my two yellow squash along with an onion and three smallish red potatoes, tossed them with salt and pepper and about a quarter cup of leftover sour cream, and tossed them in the over. They smell good, at least! Just topped them with some breadcrumbs and grated parm. Wish I had pork and pineapple and peaches and pavlova to go with it.

Thanks guys! I was nervous since I never grill, but I read a grilling primer online, and turned the pork every five minutes until it was 150 degrees inside. I still thought it looked dry, but after letting it sit for 10 minutes, you could cut it with a fork.

Had my lil brother visiting on a work trip so I made us all an indian dinner with tandoori meats (lamb and chicken) and a potato/kumara curry and rice. Delish.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/522981_10151049422297757_1461966731_n.jpg

Instead of spending 10 minutes peeling and grating ginger can I just cut it into chunks, bruise them with the side of the knife, and take them out at serving?

I hate prepping ginger. Sometimes I dread it for an hour before even starting cooking.

I usually shred it with a cheese grater and it works out/tastes fine. Less fuss than what you're describing or the cutting that you seem to dread.

terrible pic but one of these
http://www.wellpromo.com/upload/upimg32/Metal-Cheese-Grater-121232.jpg

grate grate grate
done

it takes like 30 sec

i almost always replace fresh ginger with powdered, it's so much easier (plus i just prefer the taste)

Yeah, I microplane it these days (and by "these days" I mean since I bought a microplane.) Used to dice it rly small like garlic. It's just fussy. :)

One of the best things about an uber-powerful blender or food processor is that you can chuck a whole piece of unpeeled ginger, unpeeled garlic, whole spices (coriander, cumin, dried chilies, etc.) with a bit of water (or coconut milk, stock, etc.) in and grind the shit out of it with nary a sliced finger.

Wait but then you have garlic peel in yr food!

Not if you run it through the VITAMIX! You can stuff shit in there with a peel (garlic, ginger, apple, whatevs) and you will have no idea because it is pureed into oblivion!

i don't always peel ginger and i never notice it. if knife is sharp enough it will get it nice and small.

or food processor, no need to peel it then

Lentil soup on the stove, Italian-style cos it didn't require ginger. I winged it, started with pancetta (I think this is non-trad?) then all the ush soup flavors plus a parmesan rind out of my freezer. Lentils are a mix of brown Goya ones and red Goya ones but I am incapable of buying nicer lentils than that.

When a recipe calls for puy lentils or French lentils or whatever, I mentally just sub the kind I can get at my local stores. Bonus: they're done in like half the time.

<3 lentils and bacon

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Green-Lentil-and-Bacon-Salad-105069

or i make this one except instead of using olive oil for the onions and carrots i use bacon drippings like in the last recipe

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2006/11/cheap-caviar-1/

and yeah i just use brown lentils from the farmers market too

also i was just thinking because i am slow, what do you mean peeling? any time i remove the peel i just slice it off with the knife so it ends up being like a square.

My chef friend told me years ago to peel ginger with the back of a spoon! Later I switched to a vegetable peeler because FUCK picking the bits of brown skin off a thumbs-length of ginger. It has never occurred to me to cut away like 30% of the thing to make it square, maybe that seems wasteful? Idk.

Lentil soup delicious btw.

i want to make this tonight but i am having trouble figuring out how to scale it. there's no way i can eat a cup of lentils, is there?

Vahid, you must have an amazing assortment of bookmarked recipes!

well they're mostly from epicurious

I just made 2 cups' worth of lentils into soup so...?

Admittedly I'll be eating it for 5 days but that is the plan.

if you keep your ginger in the freezer you never waste any of it, and it grates very easily. i also use a microplane, but the zesting one, and i don't bother to peel since it grates so finely.

Heeeeeeeeeey

i can't eat leftovers more than once, i get really grumpy about it for some reason on the second day of eating the same leftover

maybe 3/4 cup's worth of lentils for just me would last meals days? and use one onion and one carrot ... hmm, think i will give it a shot tomorrow

whoops i meant two days

you waste like 5% of the ginger. can also make a shape with more sides. i can't even begin to imagine peeling with the back of a spoon? how in the world

I knnnooooow, god. At that point I had never cooked w ginger before or seen anyone else do so, I just took her word for it. Thank you, this thread!

I think lentils in a red curry coconut sauce is my favorite. I also love barley and lentil stew, but I've never tried to cook stew yet. I've decided this winter I will after hearing that anchovies are the secret ingredient to making a great stew.

I meant Anchovy paste.

You use the tip of the spoon, I think. I have a gimmicky ginger peeler that looks a lot like that. It works really well once you get the hang of it.

http://www.thekitchn.com/oxos-good-grips-ginger-peeler-96763

this is insane. i never knew there was such acrimony about ginger.

V, I used 2C of lentils, one large carrot, two medium stalks of celery, half a large onion, like 6 cloves of garlic because <3 garlic, 2 bay leaves, 1 stalk of rosemary, and 6C of water. Oh, and one diced tomato because that's all I had tho the recp called for 2C of diced tom.

Currently on the hob I am attempting the Hazan tomato sauce using San Marzano tom. I can't quite believe you just...put the stuff in there all together.

i prefer lidia to hazan personally, really <3 her alla vodka and all'amatriciana recipes

All this lentil talk reminds me I gotta cook and chill some tonight to make into my patented lentil and antipasto salad.

Ohhhhh this sauce is so beautiful

It has all the acidity that I crave but richness too. I over-dried it a little so I added some pasta water back in. It's like velvet.

my ginger strategy is usually to start with a bigger piece than i need, do a really rough chop into a rectangle to get the skin off, and then chop it down into matchsticks and dice it from there. it's tolerable.

estela you're a genius. am going to freeze my ginger from now on.

I freeze mine just so it keeps, but it's harder to peel that way. :D

I make something that needs fresh ginger probably half the time I cook anything and I hate peeling it and grating it but it's part of the deal. I wish there was some equivalent of a garlic press for ginger, but instead I have to mess around with scraping or shaving the peel and running it through a microplane.

It's onion, potato, cabbage, and squash season at the farmer's market and I ended up buying like ten pounds of onions for maybe five or six bucks. I filled my 8qt all clad dutch oven and my 14 inch lodge cast iron skillet to the point of overflowing and cooked them down for like six hours total.

I probably have a pound of caramelized onions now which means there is nine pounds of onion juice evaporated into my house which is kind of insane to ponder.