Cooking

keeping it in a dark room like an attic or a basement, even at the back of a cupboard would keep light from it

Why are we topping these cloves of garlic? Only tailing is ever necessary.

― suzy, Wednesday, June 19, 2019 10:50 AM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark

the crush splits the clove open better and the peel comes off easier if it's topped and tailed prior to crushing ime

a mixture of activities with other bulbs of garlic and a little alone time probably healthy

I get really nice garlic akin to the Basque stuff described upthread (grown by a particular market farmer) and it never sprouts, even when kept over winter. Also when there’s a long skin I only need to tail it, whack it, and pull off the little hat shape instead of top and tailing. These bulbs are easily the size of my fist, too.

the garlic I get from Tescos is often very small and short-dated, need to start find some fresher and bigger bulbs ffs!

Usually the answer to this problem (for those of us who don’t have a side hustle working with a market farmer who grows amazing garlic) is Asian/Turkish supermarket (the garlic at those shops is probably less expensive).

this doesn't surprise me. i tasted a sprout on its own recently and it rly didn't seem different than the clove from which it was taken
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/the-truth-about-sprouted-garlic?extcode=NSCIF19FB&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=photo&utm_content=sproutedgarlic&utm_campaign=cioarticles&fbclid=IwAR2waKyyAE48qTe-hp4GAyuVG8tsyFm7dzkLFkojE0qcU1tGpilY2_aJSdI

bout to do some cookin rn

ilx follow my food instagram @sam_eatz

is there any spam

c’mon bro

heh

finding myself in the position of having a lot of random ingredients used to make various recipes over the years but very few staples/binders* to go with them; any suggestions for adaptable templates?

* that said I do have staple ingredients like flour (semolina and regular, the semolina is probably going to go faster since I've been using it as a thickener), a ton of sugar, and oil, no eggs currently, just one box of tomato puree and two cans of hopefully-still-good whole tomatoes, no milk as of right now

basically, just imagine the candles meme except with, like, culinary lavender

crackers are good if you only have flour/water/salt/other

eat the crackers w some soup if you have anything you can puree into soup

not at the moment unfortunately, I do have stuff to make anchovy stock though (left over from making a few korean stews a few months ago during my then-rare windows of having time to cook)

you can make tomato soup!

could, yeah, at least once (also have a lot of miso)

idk if there are asian groceries near you but they are open and stocked pretty well afaict
get some kombu + bonito flakes + dried shiitakes + noodles/greens of your choice and go nuts w miso soup!
i made it recently w this recipe https://thewoksoflife.com/superfood-miso-soup/

you can toss in whatever you like
dried shiitakes are pretty versatile too

all that stuff is shelf-stable too
miso soup is the best, i'm gonna make it again as soon as i run out of things to eat

there's an H Mart that normally I would say is "near" me but without public transportation it's about 30-40 blocks

this may be too personal but do you live in chicago?

i have heard that Devon Market is pretty well stocked, Tai Nam on Broadway, Fresh Farms on Touhy looked surprisingly well stocked this morning aside from chicken and butter ?!!?

katherine, have you tried a bodega for just some pasta/rice/noodles/eggs.

nope, nyc

xp -- yeah, I'm planning on doing a grocery run later today, at last check the bodega still had that kind of thing; what I am more concerned about is two, three, four, etc. weeks out

don't worry about that yet, just focus on now
worrying about the future is futile/catastrophizing doesn't help

hard to tell what's catastrophizing in a catastrophe but that is a topic for another thread

my point is that if you have no food right now, get some eggs and whatnot and worry about the rest later! there are eggs on shelves.

Easter is coming, so egg suppliers have been gearing up to deliver a much larger quantity of eggs than normal.

The overall supply of non-perishable groceries hasn't shrunk at all. The big problem right now is that the normal smooth flow of supply and demand disappeared under a tsunami of end-consumer demand, so that 5x more carloads of stuff than normal swiftly got transferred from stores into people's homes. This can't instantly be replaced. It will take many extra truckloads of stuff getting delivered t stores to remedy this imbalance and there aren't any more trucks out there than there were last week. Give it time and the stuff will arrive.

thought jesus said easter was cancelled this year

But He didn't cancel the hens.

has cancel culture gone too far

(also, for an actually worthwhile contribution to this thread, this is a very adaptable template; just made this the other day: https://smittenkitchen.com/2010/03/spinach-and-chickpeas)

btw: The I Love Cheese Board has much more recent, active cooking threads.

fuck it, going to make me some onion bhajis with 6 month past its sell-by date gram flour, because google told me its ok and it would be a sin to waste good flour at this current time of scarcity.

We found a kg bag of 00 flour in the cupboard, expiration date 2017. What exactly goes bad in flour anyway?

as a precaution I spooned some of the the top layer of the bag in the bin, but probably didn't need to it looks absolutely fine.

I wouldn't hesitate to use 6 month past flour. Might not have optimal results/flavor depending on the application, but it won't hurt you.

onion bhajis turned out fine by my standards, fuck the modesty they were extra nice!

I recently made arepas with areapa flour that expired in January 2019 because I really wanted arepas. They tasted like something that expired a year and a half ago.

6 months is probably not so bad but i had some chickpea flour that was 18 months past and it had that characteristic rancid stink. 00 flour probably fine because it's white--no oily brown parts to go bad.

yeah - in California i have found my only caveat to using old white flour is checking for weevils/flour moths - our summers get SO hot that it can def fuck w my flour if i am not careful.

but otherwise, go crazy!

what are people's fave falafel recipes? I've been getting into the habit of making them frequently recently. Mine are quite boring but nice: processed chick peas, onion, garlic, gram flour, cumin, coriander, fresh flat-leaf parsley, sesame seeds, cayenne pepper. just would be interested to hear other falafel ideas.

I too am interested

i always just buy the mix :/

I do not and will not own a deep fat fryer but luckily Leather Lane has about 10 different great falafel joints.

big pot! frying oil! slotted spoon! cheesecloth to strain the oil and re-use (next time more fragrantly!)

Tiny flat! Fine mist of frying oil over everything!

Also the best felafel I know can be had for five pieces for £1 (“If you can wait two minutes we’ll give you fresh ones!”) at the Middle Eastern ship on my way home from the farmer’s market.

looking at online recipes the only ingredient mine have been missing is fresh dill and some recommend refrigerating the mix for at least an hour before cooking and add a little baking powder before rolling them.