What's cooking? part 4

i did this thing with avocado seeds where you slow roast them and grind them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxrk-xWdoqY
supposedly they're full of antioxidants and whatnot. taste: kinda akin to a toasted artichoke (?). i ground up abt 10 seeds - am making falafel tonight so tossed some of into the mix. may endup using the rest in smoothies

One of the ways I make boneless skinless chicken taste like anything is throwing a bunch of breasts and thighs in the crock pot with onions, garlic, mushroom soup and a big branch of fresh rosemary from the bush out back, but it produces unattractive drawn-up little knots of protein. Today I prettied it all up by turning that into chicken pot pie.

xp - that's cool, I always thought avocado pits were poisonous or something

i have recently made two completely bomb-ass soups, largely according to the pressure-cooker blueprint laid out in the modernist cuisine at home

basically: cut up a veg, cook it in a pressure cooker with a lot of butter, blitz it with an immersion blender, pass it through a sieve, and then mix in water/stock/juice/whatever until it's a consistency you like

they seem to recommend that the liquid be some kind of extract or w/e that deepens the experience of That One Vegetable but i've made it with better than bouillon chicken stock both times (carrot, mushroom) and it was totally fine. maybe a little two heavy on the butter (recipe calls for a stick for each 500g of vegetable).

i's pretty much the same as a thomas keller recipe/technique i read about once: take a perfect, in-season vegetable, cook it sous vide (can't remember if it's with butter or without), blitz, strain, add liquid for consistency and add'l flavor

i'm thinking about joining a CSA, and this might make excess vegetables a little more easy to manage

i'm interested, what are the rough pressure cooking times for the vegetables you've used so far?

25mins -- after posting that I made an additional batch of asparagus to bring to a dinner party, which i varied by steeping the stock with lapsang souchong so it was a little smokey

general reaction from other ppl has been "omg this is good ass soup"

it doesn't seem to matter what veg you use, the recipe always calls for about 25mins. you also mix in a little water/salt/baking soda mixture which is maybe to break down cell walls more easily? the cookbook, after laying out the basics of the carrot recipe (which calls for carrot juice and not stock), just gives variations by suggesting a veg/liquid pairing

recipe (off the top of my head) --

500g carrots (after prep)
113g (stick) butter
30g water
5g salt
2.5g baking soda (I used baking powder cause I had it, which you multiply by 4)
~600g stock/juice/whatever

1 peel and cut carrots into about 2in pieces. remove the core for a sweeter taste (i did not do this)
2 mix water/salt/baking soda
3 melt butter in pressure cooker
4 mix in water/salt/soda
5 mix in carrots thoroughly
6 cook in pressure cooker for 25min at full presh
7 when done, blitz into a coarse puree with immersion blender
8 press puree through chinois/sieve (it doesn't look like it'll work, but use the back of a ladle and you'll be surprised at the yield)
9 add liquid (how much you add is really up to you, but I used all of it and didn't find the result too watery)
10 blend a bit more, adding a bit more butter for the emulsion (i did not do this, it didn't seem to need it)
11 garnish with whatever you like

yield is just enough to fill a standard plastic quart takeout container

peeling and chopping carrots was a major rate-limiting step in the first batch. asparagus was much faster at that point, but needed more work/time to get through the sieve. mushroom might have been the easiest since you can just kinda tear them up---I used a mixture of shiitake, cremini, and oyster (strongly favoring cremini due to cost)

this is basically going to be my go-to soup recipe from now on, i think. it's simple enough that i already have it memorized, the result is fantastic, and playing with veg/liquid combinations gives plenty of room for creativity

6

dunno about that 6

also obv there is a LOT of butter in there but the final result just feels rich and silky, not like "ew buttery"

thanks! i am a newish pressure cooker owner so def looking for things to do with it. i love the idea of this as a template.

i'll be curious to know how it turns out!

Got some crawfish yesterday. Disassembled them today and made a quick stock out of the heads...final product, crawfish and grits, is one of the best things I've made in a couple of years.

What does baking soda do in that recipe?

Some friends got one of the varieties of Instant Pot recently and I am really envious.

I have shrimp shells and two lobster tails in the freezer waiting for me to be inspired to do something w them.

My fish counter has wild stuff like conch and geoducks and eels and here I am on the boring end of the bivalve spectrum wondering if I know what to do with some nice razor clams?

xp i think baking soda helps things caramelize... but i'm not sure if thats still the case in a pressure cooker?

straight from the source:

Pressure cookers are particularly suited for promoting the Maillard reaction because elevated temperatures encourage foods to develop their characteristic flavors far more quickly than conventional cooking methods (such as roasting) do, thereby transforming a long process into a short 20-minute cook time. Adding 0.5% baking soda when pressure-cooking further speeds flavor reactions by producing an alkaline pH of about 7.5.

what's interesting to me is that the veg that comes out of the cooker isn't browned at all, really --- it's typically wan and almost a pastel version of what went in. but the flavor is super intense.

maillard without browning, wonders never cease

i have a 1 lb piece of lamb leg steak - how do i cook this?? i haven't cooked meat at home in about 4 years!

nb i like lamb to be really simple - acceptable additions are rosemary, mint, garlic
my oven isn't super reliable right now, so stovetop method would be appreciated

you could cook it in a big heavy pot on low heat, with liquid of some kind in the bottom, for several hours

Would a crockpot work!

yes!

lol

I made a Reuben quesadilla on naan for lunch.
#immigrant & ethnic food cultures, white ppl & appropriation, foodies

muligatawny! so much flavor goin' on in this pot with just a few humble ingredients imho

made phở the other night. never actually eaten it before but had an idea of what a nice vegetarian broth could be like. simmered a couple star anise,piece of a cinnamon stick, a couple cloves, some peppercorns with some garlic, onion, and a piece of a apple. after a half hour strained it and added some veg. base just to make a light base. it was /really/ good! trader joe's fresh rice noodles are garbage btw but the other ingredients - sauteed tofu, bean sprouts, sauteed shiitakes, cilantro, basil, mint -- made it a pretty satisfying, light meal

nice! i've had such little success cooking basically any southeast asian cuisine at home. any east asian cuisine really. i like my fried rice better than most places but that's really about it.

i made posole with green pumpkin seed mole last night, it was outstanding tbh

what hominy product did you use? i have found the world of buying hominy to be confusing.

definitely

i have cooked it from scratch once, meaning starting w/ nixtamalized (corn treated with an alkaline, usually lime or wood ash) whole corn kernels once. it cooks for hours before it is soft enough to use in a recipe. i want to do it again, even starting w/ untreated corn and doing the whole nixtamalized process, but i haven't yet. my sister-in-law runs a small farm in OH and she grew the corn and showed me how to do the whole process.

USUALLY i buy canned hominy. the various brands i've bought from whole foods are all pretty good ime -- they tend not to be overcooked and the corn has a nice texture. goya also sells canned hominy which i've used, both white corn and yellow corn. they were both okay (i love yellow corn in general so that was cool) but definitely on the mushy side.

sorry that first paragraph was confusing. i have:

1) cooked nixtamalized dried corn once.
2) never done the whole nixtamalization process myself but i want to.

canned hominy is good to go, you can cook w/ it right away

okay if i understand it correctly this is what you can do to get hominy:

1) get whole untreated corn kernels. nixtamalize the corn, then cook it, then you have hominy corn. most people don't do this. my sister-in-law did this because she was curious.
2) buy dried, nixtamalized corn. this is dried hominy. it comes either as whole kernels or cracked. you still have to cook it, which takes time. this is what i did when i got the nixtamalized corn from my sister-in-law.
3) buy canned pre-cooked hominy (i do this all the time).
4) buy frozen pre-cooked hominy (i have never done this but i know it is available).

I wonder what cultural thingy led my mom to serve canned hominy regularly when I was a kid. I think her parents had it, too, so maybe there was some old timey "hominy is good stuff" campaign selling it to rural midwesterners

I've mentioned it to a friend and they're usually "wtf canned hominy is gross"

the two brands i use are la preferida and juanita's, both are mexican style hominy

I should try some and see if there's a difference between that and boring non-mexican style

ha maybe there isn't and i was just duped

i think plain hominy from a can would definitely be boring and gross by itself

oh yeah you gotta salt and pepper it and maybe cook it with bacon

okay if i understand it correctly this is what you can do to get hominy:

1) get whole untreated corn kernels. nixtamalize the corn, then cook it, then you have hominy corn. most people don't do this. my sister-in-law did this because she was curious.
2) buy dried, nixtamalized corn. this is dried hominy. it comes either as whole kernels or cracked. you still have to cook it, which takes time. this is what i did when i got the nixtamalized corn from my sister-in-law.
3) buy canned pre-cooked hominy (i do this all the time).
4) buy frozen pre-cooked hominy (i have never done this but i know it is available).

― marcos, Monday, May 9, 2016 5:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, this is really helpful. i ended up with some weird product that may have been a version of 1 or 2 but did not behave as expected and burned the bottom of my big le creuset. now i have a bag of goya "giant white corn" that i may mess with at some point.

I want to get some of that, but to create homemade corn nuts. Because that is my convenience store vice.

i made posole with green pumpkin seed mole last night, it was outstanding tbh

― marcos,

o hell yeah! have a mole recipe you'd care to share? all this talk has made me posole curious, too. if you have a link handy to a recipe you like that'd be appreciated as well, marcos. i worked at a place a long time ago and have vague recollections of making posole once in awhile there, but for some reason i didn't care for it. but that was ~20+ years ago. iirc i just didn't know what to make of hominy, had never seen anything like it before (except the aforementioned corn nuts, i guess).. . .

sure! both the mole and the pozole verde recipe are from the art of mexican cooking from diane kennedy (i cooked a very similar recipe from deborah madison's vegetarian cooking for everyone that is itself based on diane kennedy's).

this page's recipe is kennedy's: http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/pozole-verde

the "3 to 3-1/2 cups cooked corn" in that website should be hominy corn

man, both of those recipes look/sound wonderful. hanx! wonder how accessible sorrel is or if a latin market might have lengua de vaca. i cld imagine using fresh spinach with a dash of lemon juice in an "emergency" i guess

i see sorrel in a lot of supermarkets, usually w/ alongside fresh herbs

d. madison uses romaine leaves + cilantro and that combination comes out great too

Sorrel is common in Latino and Caribbean stores, but it might be called "jamaica" in the former and "sorrel" in the latter?

i think green sorrel leaves and jamaica are different things?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roselle_(plant)

Just ordered some Prague Powder #1 (what the hell is the origin of that name?) to roll my own corned beef and to try an experiment: corned pork loin. Because beef brisket is expensive and pork loin is cheap.