what's cooking? part 5: 2017-2027

Chile crisp looks v interesting. I'm having trouble finding examples. Tower is not aeroponic. It is the kind with worm compost in a tube at the center with soil surrounding.

actual Chinese / Sichuan chili crisp ("chile" is the preferred new mex spelling) is fantastic

Is it the sauce I am seeing? Or is there also a particular dish associated with it in New Mexico?

No I just made a version with new mexican ingredients / flavors

I cook a lot

This summer I decided I was going to do it properly, and I bought 25 pounds of tomatoes and a food mill and made enough basic tomato sauce to last me a year (although I'm already half-way through it). I followed this amazing recipe that requires that you speed-dry in a warm oven 10 pounds of milled tomatoes, to create your own paste (and approximate the traditional sun-drying process). The result was spectacular, probably the best tomato paste I've ever tasted. The remaining 15 pounds I milled and stewed, did the Hazan "halved onion" trick, bathed a couple of bunches of basil in it at the end, there was garlic in there too. Threw in a litre of reserved un-cooked tomato as well at the end to keep a note of freshness.

I can post the recipe I followed. Here it is. https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/08/the-best-fresh-tomato-sauce-for-pasta-recipe.html I made some minor adjustments. I love my food mill.

I was cooking a lot from Hazan and I think my boyfriend got a little tetchy about how... basic all the great Italian dishes are, not a lot of bells and whistles, really. He likes surprises and garnishes and secret oils and so forth. He was unimpressed with my tomato sauce achievement (although any late night guests are blown away when I just pull out a perfect pasta in the time it takes to boil the water, roll out the spaghetti, heat up the sauce, about 15 minutes really all told, and it's really delicious). So boyfriend decided to get me Fergus Henderson, so I'd change up the tastes of our meals.

I have been too busy to cook much this past month, but I have been reading the Henderson-- I've made a few of his things over the years, and actually quite a few Margot Henderson recipes, I really love her book a great deal. Last night I made a plan to speak to my nearby butcher and tell him I was going to be doing a lot of that bullshit, and ask him to save me calf bones and pig's heads and trotters and livers and so on. (I planned to make the bone marrow salad, the brawn, and do a home-cured liver).

While I was reading about Fergus and his patterns last night, I googled and found that he, too, thought Italian cooking was really the best of the best, and that his favourite recipe was... tomato pasta. "My children's bodies are 80% tomato pasta," he said. I was delighted to read this and reported it back to my boyfriend this morning with vindictive relish.

As I told him my plans for boiling heads and curing livers he asked me to stop folding the corners on the recipe book, that it was ruining the book, and he reminded me that I have tour in two months and I should probably be eating healthier and thinking of "tour body". I got really grouchy about that and told him to hush up, sweetie, as I served him some peaches stewed in custard that I whipped up this morning over oatmeal.

Love this ^^^^.

Sounds to me like your boyfriend needs to chill out and stuff his face with homemade pasta.

I made the whole roasted rabbit wrapped in bacon and fennel from Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast. Pretty nice and actually very easy.

fgti you are a beast!
just reading about the tomato paste alone stresses me out

i mean i love to cook & i love scratch making stuff but O_O

i bow down

The tomato sauce took about seven hours all told, but I made it when the tomatoes were cheap as chips, and now I have gallons of it in my freezer. Tastes amazing when reheated. I'd urge anyone to get a food mill, wait until it's Tomato Day, and take the plunge-- I always hated parboiling and skinning tomatoes for a fresh sauce, and for years just kept the $5 cans of San Marzanos in the pantry for my needs, but the food mill made it easy. Not difficult, either, as long as you're prepared to have to clean and rinse the strainer on the food mill about eight times.

I am also really interested in the Ham In Hay recipe that Fergus offers. It's such an interesting cookbook! Old news for most, I guess.

There is a bizarre method of clarifying a broth that Fergus recommends. I'm not going to type it now. It's bizarre.

food mills are very cool, i don't use mine much but it's an underrated gadget.

i'm bad at bulk cooking/storage but did make and freeze a couple quarts of michael anthony's fresh tomato sauce from "v is for vegetable" which is basically a little garlic, red onion, basil, and chili flake plus a bunch of rough chopped tomatoes. cook down until just soft, then puree in a blender until smooth. it's quick and easy and works well. i would like to try that seriouseats recipe but didn't have time this year.

I was cooking a lot from Hazan and I think my boyfriend got a little tetchy about how... basic all the great Italian dishes are, not a lot of bells and whistles, really.

can't argue taste but yeesh

He likes Ottolenghi style stuff. Marcella would have me run a fennel through a mandolin, rinse and wring it four times, dress lightly and serve. Yotam wants spices toasted, pestled, nuts dry roasted, seven herbs and minced preserved lemon with three perfect olives on two designer lettuces.

i would love ottolenghi style stuff everyday too if it just magically appeared in front of me. I look at those recipes a lot but it's just too much.

the humble pleasures of european food are quite entry-level compared to a lot of asian cuisines, we accept this, we are still in some ways a barbarous ppl

google news recommended i make this https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019772-spiced-chickpea-stew-with-coconut-and-turmeric
i was amused to see that almost all the commenters loved it...after they made changes to the recipe. because it's bland. as for me, it was great after i used just one can of coconut milk, added a load of curry powder, extra cumin, and cayenne pepper, then lime juice before eating

no, i misremembered, it was youtube. i didn't know who alison roman was but i hate her.

"If you type "the stew" into Google, you'll get Alison Roman's Spiced Chickpea Stew With Coconut and Turmeric as the first result. It's so popular that it even has its own hashtag across social media, #thestew." seriously? it's just chickpeas, and turmeric is not enough! i should be in the new york times

i also started some fermentation projects because fall temperatures are here. ghost peppers for very hot sauce (i will regret this) and dilly beans. ignore the trader joe's salad dressing in the photo.
https://i.imgur.com/V10pWcL.jpg

have very fond memories of seeing a wall of jars like that in the grandparents' basement. nice work.

Farro with Roasted Mushrooms Recipe | Bon Appetit
https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/farro-with-roasted-mushrooms

i bought a small sheet pan with a rack at a discount place and made this. Was v good, but i think the simple path toward delicious crispy roasted mushrooms is the most exciting part. Did convection at 400 to really go for crispiness.

woah that looks great, url doesn't do it justice judging by the pic.

ghost pepper pickles look impressive. am completely jealous tbh

xxpost

i also started some kimchi yesterday. fun!

no, i misremembered, it was youtube. i didn't know who alison roman was but i hate her.

"If you type "the stew" into Google, you'll get Alison Roman's Spiced Chickpea Stew With Coconut and Turmeric as the first result. It's so popular that it even has its own hashtag across social media, #thestew." seriously? it's just chickpeas, and turmeric is not enough! i should be in the new york times

― forensic plumber (harbl), Sunday, October 6, 2019 4:37 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think the stew is very good. surprisingly so given the few ingredients. i think serving it with some nice thick and fatty yoghurt is pretty key though. i also cook it for longer than directed so it reduces more

i got a dinner and 3 lunches out of the stew, cooked from dry chickpeas and it was more than 2 cans worth, so i do owe her some credit. i will be making more #thestew variations.

i agree that tumeric isnt much of a flavour but i liked it... i think that like jim said, reducing it is key as well as mashing up the chickpeas to thicken it up, so it's not just a soup with chickpeas floating it.

I could see myself trying to make that stew and it would just turn into chana masala with kale.

hehe, yeah i think i'd be tempted to toss in garam or curry powder to that recipe. BUT freshly cooked beans (i know - they're a legume) are so effin tasty and texturally noble maybe that would be enough delightfulness to carry it for me. think i'll get some chickpeas and ginger in the morning. have sorta been craving something coconut milky and stewy lately.

i don't usually use fresh turmeric, but i think it'd be a nice idea for this tbh

i made this #thestew and it is very nice but not necessarily life-altering (like a curry can be, say). really easy to put together though which is nice. did sub freshly cooked 'banzos and a bunch of kinda roughly chopped fresh turmeric - dried turmeric as acceptable, fresh has SO much more going for it (texture, flavor, blablabla).

i've grated the tumeric and also juiced it but have never done a chop. I should try it. I kind of freaked myself out over reports that some dry tumeric from certain countries has high levels of lead so I think I want to use the fresh more.

I use fresh turmeric in smoothies — I like the earthy flavor and I can pretend it’s a health concoction if I has spinach, ginger, and turmeric.

Also soups and spinach pies

I just went through a weekend process of buying a ton of ginger, peeling it and then slicing into 1/4 inch medallions to freeze (to toss into smoothies). I should do the same to turmeric.

i'm making a chicken pot pie. i actually rolled the pie crust without ripping it or making a huge split. not a good circle but an improvement.

that's a victory in my house

I did deconstructed chicken pot pie yesterday. Filling/stew of everything except the potatoes, in a well of stiffer than usual mashed potatoes. Served with biscuits on the side instead of top crust.

^^^ this is making me want vegetarian shepherd's pie. with loads of shrooms (don't think i've ever encountered a actual veggie pot pie?). i like the biscuit idea though. it's still in the 90's here, but when it cools off. . .

made stuffed manicotti last night based on this recipe https://www.noracooks.com/vegan-stuffed-jumbo-shells/ but subbed kale in for spin. the filling was terrific and the dish wasn't a pain to put together at all. i've made calzones before with a very similar tofu ricotta mixture that were great fwiw

i love making stuffed shells! and i am suddenly interested in all kinds of meat pies.

i am attempting to make my own pitas to go with lentil/potato/kale soup. i've been adding berbere and some canned tomato product to lentils and it's like a miracle combo

Ohhh, I make vegan manicotti a lot but never thought to do the cashews before. I also do kale sometimes (or add in whatever greens/mushrooms I have around).

last night i made a soup of red thai curry paste, 1 can chaokoh, 1 qt homemade chicken stock, 1 can pumpkin, some sliced cabbage, and cooked chicken. served with a couple scoops of jasmine rice. i died.

I am dying to make these steamed scallion buns this weekend but I don't have a steamer so I guess I might have to do the plate in a pot method.

https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/steamed-scallion-buns-hua-juan/

Steaming pain seems worth it. made the momofuku fried chicken 2 days ago. The "octo vin" is wonderful. Chicken was also good, but frying even a small pre-steamed chicken for 8 minutes is more mess than I can handle in a small kitchen. Going to find more use for the octo vin, though.

Ooh, I've bookmarked those scallion buns, they look good.

also made the mushroom and kale lasagna from six seasons for dinner yesterday. so easy and good. It has velouté instead of red sauce! A step futher from adding bechamel!

I guess this past Friday was Lidong, the 19th solar term of the traditional Chinese calendar, the beginning of the winter? So you eat specific food to keep the cold away. My taiwanese wine sister had pics of her meal on fb and those were included.

I am totally ignoring the bechamel in lasagna madness.

but it is velouté. A mother sauce loophole!

he calls it a "green lasagna," and I've accepted it.

I will not be tricked.

but you can sing "velouté" to that enya song while you make it

I made those scallion buns. They were VERY good and once I youtubed a video on how exactly to form them it was pretty easy. I did a batch of scallion, ginger, garlic; portobello, ginger, garlic; portobello, scallion, cilantro, ginger, garlic. I thought I was going to skip the 5 spice because I have never liked it but I think I changed my mind on it.

Did you eat them with sauce?