The lockdown cookbook

V says it looks good, but not reganmian, the noodles are the wrong sort and the pickled radish is not cut finely enough, small quibbles tbh, and she says it still looks good. For me it doesn't look like reganmian because it's not in a little cardboard bowl.

Given my store cupboard currently extend to soba, spaghetti and udon, and my pickled raddish is Korean I might not get even that close.

Still give it a go, wheat noodles in sesame paste with pickled radish is always a winner.

makin some superiority burgers for the first time

also made some modernist cheese slices

we shall see

curious how the superiority burger comes out; i have the cookbook and i've eaten the burger in nyc but have not attempted it myself

curious how the superiority burger comes out; i have the cookbook and i've eaten the burger in nyc but have not attempted it myself

― call all destroyer

jeez, that just sounds like a lot of work for a hamburger!

we're mostly sticking with our standards. lots of noodles and rice and chicken with various spices as appropriate. inspired us to go through and actually determine what ingredients we had on hand and what we can do with them, so our eating is going to have more variety than it's had in a while probably!

the burg was good folks

that said, there's definitely some tweaks and technique not specifically spelled out

used more potato starch than called for to get a better bind. using a ringmold after the first burg fell apart made a huge difference

There is an alternate Chinese world in Melbourne and some of the delivery services that were previously mandarin only (a struggle but you could make it work) have been opening up English language store front. Apropos the hubei food up thread I find I can now get prepackaged shelf stable duck neck snack on same day delivery along with all the hot pot ingredients I’ll ever need.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rc4f6ladox3blxy/PNG%20image.png?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rc4f6ladox3blxy/PNG%20image.png?raw=1

I made sweet potato and pea curry last night with, among other things, tamarind, and it was p good. mushroom fried rice tonight with a bit of roast chicken thrown in for me. saving my one tin of tomatoes for a special occasion!

I can never really deal with spicy duck neck - the tolerance of my mouth for the heat is substantially more than the tolerance of my lips, if there's a single crack there it's agony to eat.

TIL that chinese five space and indian five spice are very much not the same thing :)

hackney five spice

bisto granules, daddy's sauce, non-brewed condiment, ice magic, butterscotch angel delight

never heard of indian five spice before. it has fennel at least, and the concept of five.

I never heard of it either! I just started finding Chinese five spice ok last year. I used to really dislike it.

the idea of not liking any spice is insane to me

people react strangely to sichuan pepper I guess, I cannot get enough of it.

Sichuan Pepper and sancho pepper are the best favours.
I’m trying to grown them on my roof right now because they are such wonderful flavours and even better when fresh.

sichuan pepper w/ fish curry is incredible

"hunting for fennel in the time of pandemic"

the daal i made yesterday is in fact a five-spice daal acc.madhur jaffrey, it just didn't advertise as such on the one-line site i raided (bcz i wanted slowcook advice)

that advice in full btw: "8-10 hours on low"

This is a good thing to do with sichuan pepper and fish - though in the picture they have squeamishly taken the fish off the bone, also I would expect a lot more oil in there.

https://thewoksoflife.com/sichuan-boiled-fish-shui-zhu-yu/

that looks excellent

it was the star anise that put me off I think .I am not a fan of that flavor.

but i had a far of the five spice from forever ago and used it when I made these scallion flower buns and it was good.

I'm wondering wether its time to find some interesting WWII rationing style recipes that involve bulking things out with like jello.

we are just doing avocado, scallion, raw garlic, cooked mushroom do it yourself sushi handrolls tonight.

+ jalapeno.

Because it was an activity in and of itself, we itemized everything we had in freezer/storage and will be focusing on that first and foremost. It's a good excuse to eat some stuff we forgot we bought. For example, a whole turkey we bought for pennies the day after Thanksgiving 2 years ago.

basically, I am eating a lot of beans and drinking a lot of protein shakes (which are disgusting, but one thing the situation has done is completely destroy my appetite, and it is easier to drink calories than eat them)

tofu grapow 3 nights in a row, but now we are out of tofu and rice. no regrets. holy basil doesn't last forever. it's funny (well, gross) how people have raided the asian markets for rice but left all of the rice noodles because they don't know what they are. hopefully nobody tells them.

weird how things differ per place; the grocery store near me is floor to ceiling huge sacks of rice

if you make a thick enough dal you can bubble-and-squeak it on day three

you can what

katherine, if these are not premixed protein shakes and you have a blender you should try it with frozen bananas, berries, peanut butter, ginger, spinach (not all together, or altogether up to you).

these specifically are premixed -- planning ahead for days when my roommates are using the kitchen, there's only room for one person to cook at a time -- but yeah, that's the plan for when they run out (in the past I've used tofu as well)

i am gonna make a pizza tonight. a week or so before the panic i went ham on canned tomatoes at the grocery store.

We made a huge batch of pesto and froze most of it, but are doing pesto, sundried tomatoes and radiator pasta tonight.

The pesto is basil, pistachios, too much garlic (no cheese).,

radiator pasta?

Radiatori!!!

pot roast beef as previewed in our ilx chatz

pasta with parsnips and pancetta, which wasn't bad, needed something else though

made big batch of sri lankan curry that makes SO much sauce it made whole new second dinner with different meat & a lots more veg added

yesterday was some chicken and eggplant thai curry. today was corned beef hash, this is the only time of year you can actually get corned beef around here. we also made some baba ganoush with the rest of the eggplant, it's super good.

Made red curry beef stew tonight for the first time, a big hit.

kimchi brussels sprouts with broken rice

great for high-heat roasting

or shaved raw in some sort of salad context

the former sounds eminently plausible!

went with the soup, accompanied by the leaves turned into crisps a la kale

it is superlative

https://www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/hellas-creamy-kohlrabi-soup

fake larb (i.e. with textured vegetable protein instead of meat because it's shelf-stable), which didn't turn out half bad actually

arroz con pollo with some drumsticks that have been in the freezer for some years. they were vacuum sealed and look good as new, though.

there's a loquat tree on hoa property behind our home. going to harvest some for jam this year. i say that every year, and i've never actually done it, though.

had some saffron in my pantry for a truly unreasonable amount of time, but finally used it today to marinate some chicken, alongside a roasted radish salad, which is probably one of the best things I've made in years

saffron so expensive. must use it up. someday I'll get a proper tahdig on saffron rice. Today, i harvested the 8 cups loquats. We watched paddington 2 and made 2 jars of marmalade.

yeah, it's like that thing when you're playing a video game and you're reluctant to use up the best potion item in the game because then it's gone. except with ingredients

Even though I made a massive shopping run yesterday, from which we shall be eating for most of the next 3 weeks (!) I now confine myself to one store only rather than the three I usually shop at, and there is no menu prepared in advance from which to make my list and no guarantee what I seek shall be findable. So, there are a great many dishes we could make, but it's a bit like Tetris, in that it is easy to have gaps among necessary ingredients, and if one dish is chosen, it may preclude four other dishes by virtue of using all of one ingredient that then won't be replenished for quite a while. It is a daily game of optimization, constantly restarted with a shorter list of fresh ingredients. Fun at times, frustrating other times.

saffron so expensive. must use it up. someday I'll get a proper tahdig on saffron rice. Today, i harvested the 8 cups loquats. We watched paddington 2 and made 2 jars of marmalade.

xp the recipe optimisation game is very relatable. I am quite fatigued by it this week. My indecision is bad at the best of times, but when it necessitates sacrifice too then it's hard to make any decision at all! Especially because everything is now organised by what is going to go off first rather than what I want to make. I miss impulse.

But anyway, the proliferation of pesto and houmous varietals continues to favourably rule many dishes. So cheap and easy to make!

I am making my own wide rice noodles again now that I have a proper steamer basket. Getting prettay good.

made this, was phenomenal (with substitutions -- couldn't find ground lamb so substituted turkey and upped the spices, used pistachios in place of pine nuts because I hate pine nuts, I'm sure someone on twitter is screencapping this and getting 100,000 likes on what a horrible person with horrible taste I am) https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/spiced-lamb-and-dill-yogurt-pasta

https://scontent.fphl1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p720x720/96774332_10158106960244000_5216103069342760960_o.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=C9OOwr2UY0sAX-QG52j&_nc_ht=scontent.fphl1-1.fna&_nc_tp=6&oh=b7487e8a32dd271550c5a55dfae01fc1&oe=5EDB8215

A homemade chocolate custard--not as photogenic as my sister's loaves of bread, but definitely delicious. Tomorrow once it's set, we'll see if it's better than pudding from a mix.

Anybody with an Aeropress can make amazing cold drip coffee at home really easily. Here is the recipe. OK this looks long but I swear it's easy. Serve black over ice. Do not water down! It's like the whiskey of coffees.

1. Set the plunger aside, you won't be using it.
2. Get a small plastic water bottle
3. Cut the bottom off of it with some scissors
4. Take the cap off, poke a very small hole in it, and screw the cap back on
5. Turn it upside down and pour water in what used to be the bottom. You should get about 1 drop per second coming out of the hole in the cap. If it's going too fast, put a piece of sellotape over the hole and play with it a little until you get the right flow. Nice.
6. Set everything up the normal way, i.e. a jar or coffee cup underneath everything, and put enough coffee in your Aeropress for about 3 cups of coffee. i.e. 3 scoops. This is going to be strong!
7. Put another one of your paper filters OVER the coffee grounds, down in the Aeropress. This is going to ensure that the water distributes evenly through the coffee.
8. You may want to put the funnel on top to hold the upside-down water bottle steady.
9. Turn your water bottle upside down, fill about 3/4 full of cold water, and put into the top of the Aeropress.
10. Voila - you should be seeing cold water drip slowly through the grounds, and eventually drip down into your jar. It'll take an hour or so.

Whoa, mini-Toddy, nice

David Rudnick's three-hour pomodoro sauce. I got orange tomatoes, so it ended up being the color of SF's sky.

https://pastebin.com/1RbdnctG

I'm sure there are other good cooking threads but this is the first in my bookmarks... Anyway, do I need/want a OnePot (or variant thereof)? I keep reading about them and have a bit of Christmas cash from my old dear and am hovering over the buy button.

is that like an instant pot? i like them

yeah we use ours a fair bit - weekly steel cut oatmeal, all-in-one casserole things, they’re good!

Right, it's that or a new knife/new skillet pan. How do I choose?!

that's a tough one. what is your current skillet and knife situation?

that's a tough one. what is your current skillet and knife situation?

Honestly, both kind of ordinary. Knives are ordinary - could do with a better chef's and cook's knife (the shame).

if you're committed to the idea of cooking meals for yourself over the long haul, I'd say buy the knives before you buy the One Pot. good ones last for many decades while electronic gadgets rarely have such staying power.

yeah agree

good knives first

fancy gadgets later

good knives is a game changer

i agree with that. i like to pressure cook but went so long without it, it's fine.

Knives it is. Cheers.

At the start of August, we decided to try a more vegetarian diet and haven't looked back. My wife has continued with dairy but, the odd dalliance here and there, I'm basically vegan. It's been such a fucked up year, I've no real idea if I feel 'better' as such but I'm not missing meat at much at all and dairy even less. The big question is why didn't I do it sooner?

chicken strips or nuggets seem to be one of the most desirable meals for young dudes under 7, and I also like to make meals the whole family can eat. Lately I've been making chicken strips using the ad hoc fried whole chicken recipe. They are good! The brine is also a great way to get rid of some extra fresh parsley and thyme.