The lockdown cookbook

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

I just made okonomiyaki on the griddle on my roof. Barely made a dent in the enormous cabbage I hoarded at the weekend.

Finally dug out the slow cooker i bought in 2010 and have never used. A good red-lentil dal yesterday and have an eight-hour leek and potato soup on the go.

The biggest change is likely to be making much more bread from scratch. If i'm going to be making a lot of dal, i need to dust off my tawa and get some buss-up-shut going.

Sourdough flatbread

200% hydration rye leaven
Starter: 5g
Water: 50g
Wholemeal rye flour: 25g

Aim for a leaven that's about 27 degrees C. Mix the above ingredients and leave covered 8-12 hours at room temperature. Leaven is very wet so might not rise a lot but when ready should look very bubbly and smell v sour.

Final dough
200% WM rye leaven: 75g
Water (or milk): 125g
Oil: 12g
Strong white bread flour: 125g
Stoneground white flour: 100g
Salt: 5g
Sugar: 5g
Total: 447g

Mix the leaven, water and oil and then mix in the dry ingredients. Dough temp should be about 26 C.

Bulk ferment for about 3 hours, giving 3 sets of stretch and folds during the bulk.
Divide into 95-100g pieces, pre-shape and let rest for 1 hour
Preheat oven as high as it will go with a baking stone.
Roll each piece out to about 3 to 5mm thickness, place on semolina sprinkled peel or parchment and load onto the stone
Take out as soon as it puffs up and gets just a bit of colour
Let cool a bit but when still hot pack in a plastick bag so it holds the moisture and stays soft

Update! we did not use the radiatore pasta and used fusilli instead.

wildly overestimated how many parsnips I'd need for the pasta so I'm probably going to make this parsnip-date muffin recipe I found online (they have enormous tubs of dates on sale sometimes, before all this escalated was one of the sometimes)

Radiatori!!!

There is a bougie/hipster BK pasta company that makes hemp radiatori that are so good. The hemp gives them a gritty texture that is really strange the first time you try it, but I am so into it now.

I dethawed some of my tomato sauce I made last fall and mixed in a little burrata (just a little) that melted into the sauce at the end for a really great body. Added some parsley/almond pesto on top. It was the shit

I am going to make a quick store run today for some more green veg. Making and freezing a bunch of pesto is my plan, since you can put it on almost anything.

you mean 'thawed'? :)

the day I discover radiatori pasta when my roommate used it in mac and cheese was the day I realized the universe had been holding out on me.

i need a pasta only pornhub channel.

The only flour left at the store was semolina so pasta it is

i had to dig up my favorite twitter thread

In honour of #WORLDPASTADAY, I present the following scientific thread that constitutes definitive ranking of Non-Primary-Canon pasta shapes

— ཊལབསརངཧ (@David_Rudnick) October 25, 2017

"just a disc" someone clearly has not had rice cakes

he has a point but i'd probably like that disc pasta. i like the edges of ravioli, the part with no stuffing. i like the soft starchiness of it.

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.