What's cooking? part 4

Ranchero beans/charro beans served as a soup or over rice!

Soba noodles with peanut or sesame sauce, add different julienned veggies to change it up, also SRIRACHA

Crockpot chicken or pork served various and sundry ways--tacos, omlettes, sammich, pasta

a good nutritious tasty dish that keeps well:

http://chubbyvegetarian.blogspot.com/2012/06/spicy-quinoa-black-lentil-salad-with.html?m=1

I usually sub couscous for quinoa and basil for cilantro.

Also: cooking a bunch of lentils and grains of your choice and serving with some roasted veg + salad + different vinaigrettes

I grilled kebabs on Friday based on this interpretation of a cook's illustrated recipe, with mushrooms, red peppers, onions, and sirloin from the University of Idaho meat counter which is amazing and wonderful to have around.

I just chopped the leftovers up and fried them in a pan and cracked two eggs into the mess at the end; anything fried with eggs on top is my favorite sort of breakfast thing.

OK so my idea for a nice summer soup for the next couple of days is to make a blender full of "basic" gazpacho, then vary it up with a different theme each day. Basic today, add chipotle with adobo and avocado for the next, then, er I dunno need ideas! Wish I had some red curry paste because that would be ace. Maybe I can Indian-ize it somehow.

Maybe kick it with some Vietnamese flavors - lime, mint, fish sauce? With some cold shrimp added?

not cooking but made bomb-ass sandwiches

big hunks of crusty bread
prosciutto
ripe beefsteak tomato
olive oil, salt, pepper
basil
smoked cheddar

eat & smile

That sandwich sounds sooooooo good! I miss all those fancy-pants sammiches you can get in the US, or even just a good italian cold-cut. Cold cuts don't seem to be much of a Mexican thing. Oh god now I'm thinking of a delicious reuben, which is so not gonna happen sadly.

I finally made shakshuka, using the smitten kitchen recipe

It turned out pretty good, except it took WAY longer to cook the eggs, like at least 10-12 minutes before the whites stopped being clear, which seemed v weird to me. So some of the eggs were overdone etc. If anyone has any good tips for finishing off the eggs, I'd love to hear them

but in general it was pretty yum, I will try again.

I found it took a while too, I tried to speed up the process by spooning some hot sauce over all but the yolks?

Have the eggs at room temp in their shells instead of straight from the fridge?

had some habaneros and cilantro to consider in the fridge so currently simmering a batch o' salsa. I think is gonna be hot and nice. something like quesadillas for din-din with a salad.....

xpost - never made this dish but assuming you basted and kept lid on to help steam? why nao spooning over yolks if I may ask? they'd take a bit more heat to coagulate than the whites since they're mostly fat and the whites are mostly protein

yeah I basted the whites with the sauce occasionally, kept the lid on except when basting, and I used room temp eggs.

*shrugs*

I've made a similar dish lots of times and the eggs have always taken about 3x longer to cook than the recipe says.

Not much more you could do then!

does anyone finish their eggs in the oven?

btw, yolks start to firm up around 140 F while whites are completely clear and liquid until around 160 F, a fact which came as a surprise the day I took the 140 F sous vide eggs (12 hours @ that temp) to work for lunch.

ooh that is good to know

I really really hate snotty whites

in life as well as cooking imo

Agreed!

Today, there was very little cooking because I decided to re-org the kitchen by getting another (longer narrower) ikea kitchen island. Just finished building Norden. Groland got moved back by the windows and the little rolling storage bins are now hanging out in the dining room. Photos if I can ever stand back up.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3706/9542907438_b1592d8e83.jpg

Needed to get up for aspirin anyway. It took about 2 hours to put together, and only one minor injury (little finger stabbed by screwdriver).

I actually have the exact same butcher block Norden here that I've been meaning to sell!

well, better do something with this purple yam

hmmm

this sounds nice and looks easy. http://www.tarladalal.com/Grated-Purple-Yam-with-Roasted-Peanuts-36104r

you could make yam and spinach latkes

the answer to a fasting person’s prayer!

sold

favorite new recipe for dressing kale or for other purposes:
Ume Dressing
combine in blender:
1/4 cup onion
1 T sesame seed
1 T ginger
1 1/2 T umeboshi paste
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp white miso (optional)
pinch o' salt & pepper
commence to blend and drizzle in 1/4 cup neutral flavored oil

ooh yum

5/7 of my most recent dinners have been vegetarian i have no idea how nor why but it only just struck me

I think I can call the pear & leek pork chops I make a "signature dish." Very very good last night.

Grilled some chicken (marinade: lime juice, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, S&P, oil). Rice, black beans, glazed carrots as go-withs. I'm going to burrito-ize some of those with green chiles, because I've been craving a grilled chicken + green chile burrito for weeks now.

i would like to preface this post by saying that we should just be real with ourselves and admit that burmese tea leaf salad is the best food ever invented. the asian market in town improbably sells a box of fermented tea leaves and even has all needed nuts included -- all you need to do is shred some cabbage and chop a tomato and you have heaven in your mouth

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTlJOOTCQAAfWrk.jpg

Can you get a pic of this box of magic? I would like to track some down, but wouldn't know where to start without a visual.

What's Cooking here is soft foods for the dentally impaired (me atm). Soup has been done (and done, and done), as has shakshuka; we are moving on to black beans and rice.

here it is (the other 2 panels are in burmese)

http://i41.tinypic.com/aakaop.jpg

it's pretty great, tastes just like i remember it from over there. nice and spicy too

I've only had this once but I loved it
Burmese food is one of the best foods!

are you west coasters? i've heard there are some places you can find it in the bay area

otm btw

I meant tea leaf salad in general btw, not that stuff, but I did eat Burmese food in SF :)

yeah "it" was referring to the dish in general. tough to find it in the northeast, which is why i was pleasantly surprised the shop carried it

ingredients list on the box is v persuasive
what's in the box? shredded leaves, & you cooked them or?

there are just two bags inside, one with the tea leaves and the other with all the nuts. the tea leaves look pretty gross by themselves (almost like a wad of wet chewing tobacco) and have a strong flavor if you try it by itself and aren't accustomed to it. the ingredients are all very moist (and triple-wrapped) so all you gotta do is mix the bags together in a bowl. when i lived on the burmese border of thailand it was always served with cabbage and tomatoes in there too, so i added that myself. you can also add chillies and squeeze a lemon or lime over it

Well I'm not even going to try finding such a thing in Mexico, but when I am back in DC I'll have access to tons o' groceries that carry all manner of SE Asian stuff, plus there is a burmese restaurant that I have yet to try!

That sounds amazing! No Burmese restaurants in Seattle but maybe I can find that salad at the giant pan-Asian supermarket.

Cooked for the coming week today: chipotle rubbed pork shoulder, 5 pounds of roasted beets, a quart of macadamia nut/port wine vinegar mayonnaise, a stack of grainfree crepes/wraps.

when i lived in thailand my friends and i took a burmese cooking class, and they gave us a little recipe book afterwards. here's what i made tonight:

1) veggie curry with dal beans, red peppers, okra, onion, long beans, cauliflower, potato, and garlic
2) "festive fruity rice": white rice with carrots, green peas, onions, garlic, and pineapple (i would probably go easier on the onion next time tbh but it's good)

Some friends were in burma last month and actually brought me a bag of fermented tea leaves, amongst other random foodstuffs. I had never heard of them and had no idea what to do with them.

I've made deviled eggs twice this week for cookouts and they're the best snack ever