What's cooking? part 4

am i spelling omelet wrong? it looks so weird. i guess it is "omelette"

I made butter chicken for the first time the other day and it made an enormous amount of sauce. It's so handy and versatile for poaching/simmering a bit of protein that I may try just making up a bunch of that and freezing it in 12 oz. containers for a quick meal. Chicken, shrimp, tofu, tilapia filet all work well in that, throw in a handful of spinach, leftover rice, done.

i've only just discovered that a egg, esp fried or poached, is really thing that often makes a snack into a meal.

unfortunately, i can't do bitter greens - i really can't stand any kind of bitterness!! my unsophisticated palate is not wired that way :/

fried eggs and fresh parmesan with lots of black pepper

This is one of my favorite things ever, like sort of a carbonara thing.

I've gotten so lazy/concise about cooking since having a kid, I just can't bother spending a lot of time on something elaborate. One weekly standard now is some combination of roast cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, beets, or asparagus cooked at 450 on sheet pans with chicken breasts, thighs, or pork chops started in a hot pan and finished in the oven.

Adding some sort of sauce or garnish at the end - yogurt and chutney, harissa, lemon and capers, thai sweet chili sauce - lets it vary a lot and not be as boring. You can basically stagger when you put stuff in the oven and walk away for a while which is great when a toddler is poking the dog with a truck.

lately i've been doing a ton of zucchini sauteed with a little oil and salt, add a can or two of roasted tomatoes, and then a package of this really great no-meat ground "beef" that tj's carries and lots of fresh parmesan.

xp that still sounds much more elaborate than anything i do...

i;ve basically ~retired~ from cooking, and my life is so much better!! i felt like i wouldn't be eating properly if i didn't cook regularly, but then i realized that i ate terribly no matter how i cook anyway, and that i would actually eat better if i cut most of the cooking part out.

i think i always felt like i had to cook to make sure my husband was eating properly, but that wasn't coming from him, it was just me. then when we got serious about cutting down carbs, the main and mostly only thing we did was cut out the white carbs at dinner and started eating salads. he's terrible in the kitchen but likes eating a lot of salad and it's easy to make himself. that helped me take the pressure off myself.

i haven't cooked a proper meal in months! it's awesome!

a couple of great sauces that you can freeze and pour over veggies and protein:
makhani gravy

sweet red pepper sauce

yea condiments and sauces are v important

It is a fact that slow cooker beef chili is the groan inducing dad joke of recipes, but mine is getting really good since I decided to get back to first principles and just combine immense volumes of raw stew beef with immense amounts of seasoning in such a way that they fight each other to a draw over six hours at low. Here are some key things though:

- I was browning the beef for a while. No more. It wastes the juice, and toughens the beef. I have no idea why people do it, to be honest. It's in every other recipe though! Why? I like being able to cut it with a spoon when it's done.

- Beans are a joke. Full stop. Chili should not have jokes in it, too meta.

- One of the best America's Test Kitchen ideas ever is to use tortillas shredded into very tiny pieces soaked in beer as a thickener. I actually dice the tortillas - some corn, some flour - and I splurge on a good malty beer like a brown or amber. This works, you should do it.

- Buy some gloves. I stopped using jalapenos because they're too grassy. Last batch I diced up five little orange habaneros and three plump red cherry peppers. The gloves are a lifesaver.

- all the soft, cold stuff goes in a big pile in the pot, with the beef chunks on the top.

- I dice up the bacon and then throw it on foil, the foil goes in the toaster oven, 20 minutes at 400F. Leave the grease on the foil, use a plastic spatula to get the bacon bits off without tearing the foil. Crumple up the foil and chuck it. No frying pan! No scrubbing required!

- mix up all the salt & dry seasonings in a little bowl and then use a teaspoon to distribute evenly across the top of everything. apply lid, let cook for 2 hours or so, then get out ye wooden chili spoon and break the crust and stir everything in.

I'm thinking of some tweaks involving such as garam masala or allspice in the next batch or so. Also thinking about using different peppers.

I add a little 5 spice powder and a dab of hoisin sauce.

Has anyone used a tagine - is it better on the hob or the oven? I got one from a charity shop, cleaned it, and concerned it will crack in the oven. I think it's ceramic, not clay.

Anyway.

Thanks!

Tomboto = Kenan?

Some tagines you can get are definitely only for presentation.

J Kenji Lopez-Alt's chili recipe where you toast dried peppers, simmer with chicken stock, then saute onions with a spice blend then blend it all together is great, infinite variations to play with. I've actually taken to making it with chicken thighs more often than chuck roast, just because it's cheaper.

Browning shouldn't waste juices or make meat tougher?

kenji's book touches on that, iirc --- he recommends (in one of his recipes) browning whole cuts of beef, and THEN chopping/mincing and stewing that way. for ground beef he recommends skipping the browning stage altogether (i'll have to look up why that is)

in his crockpot barbacoa recipe he suggested browning oxtails and throwing them in with the unbrowned chuck for the browned taste without wrecking the meat

Tagine goes on the hob - the lid makes it a tiny little oven all on its own.

i love kenji

I bought a bunch of frozen salmon filets because I need some meat in my freezer for when I haven't shopped recently. Salmon recipes appreciated.

I really need to make that chicken khao soi recipe again!

That crockpot barbacoa is magic and I don't even do all the steps.

i really wanna try salmon mi cuit

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/salmon-mi-cuit

wow. me too

Shit, gonna try that this weekend. I'll have to substitute filets for a full loin but I don't see any reason that won't work even if it's not perfect.

i keep meaning to try it but i feel like i need an ~occasion~

humina yumina, made this super-easy and insanely delishy thing the other day
http://honestcooking.com/matcha-chia-pudding-coconut-whipped-cream/
ended up adding more matcha but excellent recipe that comes together in literally two minutes.

Time for me to just admit I'm terrible at homemade hummus and that just about every storebought variety is better than anything I can make.

so was i till i figured out canned chickpeas just don't work. i still haven't made The Best hummus yet (i don't like store hummus, but i've had amazing stuff at restaurants) though.

made this specific cacio e pepe recipe last night and it was too good. I am all for butter and oil, fuck tradition

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/02/spaghetti-cacio-e-pepe-recipe.html

canned chickpeas can work but i have to simmer them for a while, chickpeas for hummus need to be way softer than i'd otherwise want for chickpeas

made this fake korean chicken for lunch and it was pretty good. don't see the point in the baking though; i just sliced it before marinating (for 10 min) and cooked it on stovetop. also the chinese grocery didn't have gochujang so he pointed me to some other korean pepper product with no ingredients label. he said come back tuesday. i will. http://www.twolazygourmets.com/2011/08/gochujang-chicken/

Mmmmm.

I walk past multiple Chinese grocery stores every day, and I've been trying to find things I can recognize or figure out how to use. There are lots of kinds of leafy greens that I have no idea what they even are. What they call chives look nothing like our chives, and in a separate package they sell bunches of chive stalks with blossoms budding on the ends. And they have a meat counter AND a seafood counter, so last night I made Thai green curry with shrimp and scallops from the store.

It's spicy. Very spicy. I suppose the fact that 30% of the curry paste content is just green chilies should have tipped me off.

Need to cook more things.

the leafy greens are always great as some kind of saute or quick braise! even when you don't know what they are.

I like to float them in soups. One of my fave things are those pho spice sachets you can steep like teabags in beef broth for a satisfactory alternative to real pho broth. Also <3 Napa cabbage

Hey whaddya know

http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/05/asian-green-guide.html

I will look for the pho sachets! I've been digging the rice-only ramen noodles, I add leafs/veg and a scrambled egg and some sesame oil and it's a big meal. Wish I could eat the wheat noodles because they have these cute bougie-looking ramen packages with a hank of straight noodles that look really good.

I love random Asian greens; I just bought an unlabeled bag today and feel 99% certain that they'll be delicious stir fried with some garlic and oyster sauce.

People at work are ordering these. Is it me or does this price seem sort of crazy and exploitative (of people who don't know how to cook)?

http://www.mindfulchef.com/collections/plant-based-recipe-box

lol

wait idgi do they send you ingredients and a recipe?

yup

for the price of an expensive meal in a restaurant

lol

you get to stuff a squash with some mushrooms and an avocado for $26

It's comparable with Hello Fresh, I think, who we get boxes from occasionally. Premium ingredients, exact amounts, very well packaged and delivered to the door at a convenient time, recipes slightly outside my comfort zone (about one in four of which get added to my repertoire). I wouldn't do it every week but it's an easy way to get out of a rut.

I would probably value it less if I didn't spend close to 12 hours a week commuting between home, work and childcare.

yeah i tried the purple carrot for a few weeks this winter because i thought it might actually make my grocery bill cheaper (less waste) and help with time management (medical resident) but the two recipes i tried were pretty weak (the chili was esp heinous) and i just couldn't countenance the cost. it was something like $11/serving

but would agree with madchen --- these services seem most likely to appeal/actually be useful to ppl who a) already willing to pay for premium ingredients b) like trying new stuff and c) are time-limited enough that the increased cost can be reasonably weighed against the time/cost of shopping and meal-planning

we did like 3 blue apron boxes last year just to try it and it was ok, there was always one recipe in the box we weren't that psyched about and it got boring from a technique perspective since everything was designed to be cooked pretty quickly on a range.

this is kind of an aside, but was wondering if some cheaper/subsidized version of this would be helpful for some of my patients --- lots of people i work with could improve their diet, and "better diet" is often prescribed by other well-meaning physicians, but just a little probing reveals that an astounding number of ppl simply have no idea ~how~ to cook using even the relatively simple techniques these boxed recipes require

i know some of the case managers i work with will help clients acquire ingredients and such, but i realllly don't think there's much investigation into how ppl actual prep or what they actually eat

also as an aside: some of my pts are old farts at the VA and when i ask about cooking/eating it's like 50/50 "the wife does it" and "i ran the mess tent/galley in the service of course i know how to cook sheesh"

it's a great point--you can absolutely learn to cook using whole foods from these services and that's prob of less value to the bourgie urban ppl they tend to market to.