Cooking thread

Thanks.

I made burgers yesterday, with my own kind of recipe.

Quickly, and without quantities, it goes like this: ground beef, textured soy, chopped onions, chopped celery, mustard, egg, barbecue sauce and Worcestershire. Mix it all up, shape into patties and grill (or in my case, cook in a pan). For topping I used caramelized onions and mushrooms.

They were pretty good, but not quite what I had in mind. Of course, the original idea was to use cilantro. When I was cooking I found out the cilantro I though I had was parsley <sigh>. Also I think perhaps next time I could try chopping up some bacon as well. The thing is burgers cook rather fast, even done only medium or medium-well, so the bacon won't cook all the way through. It's edible "raw" as it were, but not very good. This aplies both to regular as well as turkey bacon.

On other things, I'm thinking about experimenting some more with cottage cheese. It does melt, as demonstrated by my cottage cheesecake recipe. But I'm not sure what I want to do or how to go about it. I thought about adding it to the burger mix, but didn't. Today I may put some on, cold, as topping on a burger, but that's not exciting. Just the same, I use a lot of it and it works wonderfully in soups, sauces and desserts.

One other thing about burgers, they're very easy and quick to do (assuming you get ground beef and don't have to grind it yourself; which I'd do if I had a meat grinder). One last tip: get a bunch of diposable latex gloves for handling the ground beef. It's not necessary, but they keep any beef and fluids from getting under your fingernails. Very convenient.

BTW, I've been ahving problems with my camera. I finally figured it out yesterday evening (don't ask!). But for the time being if I post to the blog it will be without photos <sigh>.

Between the new PC and having to get to the office yet again on a weekend, and a three-day weekend at that <mumble>, I found myself cooking rather late Monday afternoon.

I wsa going to make a creamy version of pasta sauce from scratch, but I neglected to get any pasta.... So I played "What's in the kitchen and what can I cook with it?" The result was a lentil and barley stew with soybean sprouts, mushrooms and sausage (I use way too much sausage lately). The result was rather good, but way too much "me" to post it.

So next week creamy red sauce, I hope.

I made my pasta :)

More specifically, I made the sauce from scratch. It was a good first try, but ti has a ways to go yet. It's good, but not all it should be. It's also a lot of work,a nd I mean a lot. You have to peel, core and seed a kilo and a half of tomatoes (wonder why I get the biggest ones I can find??), then hydrate and seed some morita peppers, then chop some onion, garlic and mushrooms, then cook it all for about 40 minutes, then let it cool, then put it in the blender with some ricota (in two abtches... I should look at really big blenders), then stir fry soybean sprouts, onion and brocoli, then cook the spaghetti, then add the sauce to the vegetables and wonder if you're making a mistake, then cook the whole thing some more, then realize you're abusing the word "then" to death, then add the apsta,a nd then, at alst, you can eat (after you stir things well, of course).

A lot of work...

I also made my usual cottage cheesecake, only I used a different kind of yogurt. Fage, however that's pronounced, began to export their product here. The texture and taste is about the same as other local types of Greek yogurt, though the consistency is much, much thicker. When emptying the first cup, the whole thing came out all at once, more like a solid than a thick fluid. But my main reason for trying it is that it is fat free and without added sugar.

It's also very expensive, compared to the local brands. My regular vareity, Yoplait (low fat, high sugar) costs 8.10 pesos, or about US $0.65. The Fage costs 22.90 pesos (at Walmart) or about US $1.75 So almost three times as much for 150 gr. of yogurt.

I topped ti again with chocolate and rompope, though I added a dollop of peanut butter and a teaspoon of instant coffee. For the next time, I'm thinking a mix of chocoalte and straberry jam, assuming that could possibly work, or something yogurt based. Anyway, I had too much flavoring going on, or not enough coffee.

I also got my first kind of cooking-related injury. See, to melt chocolate you put it in a heat resistant glass measuring cup and you put that on a small pot with boiling water. Well, you should definitely wait til the choclate melts, then remove the cup. If you try, as I did, to add and mix ingredients while it's on the pot, you'll get burned by the steam.

It wasn't so bad, kind of like staying too long in the sun to just get a minor kind of sunburn. It doesn't hurt, but it's annoying. I'm glad to report my hands are ok by now.

Quote: Nareed

One other thing about burgers, they're very easy and quick to do (assuming you get ground beef and don't have to grind it yourself; which I'd do if I had a meat grinder). One last tip: get a bunch of diposable latex gloves for handling the ground beef. It's not necessary, but they keep any beef and fluids from getting under your fingernails. Very convenient.

One advantage of buying the ground beef in these tightly wrapped cylinders with the metal staple at each end is that you can put your hand on the package and slice it all into separate burger patties without the waste and hand soiling involved in using the ground beef that comes on a large cardboard tray. Wetting the knife seems to help also. All but the two end patties will be of the same diameter.

As to gloves, the easy-on kind are more expensive but worth it otherwise it takes forever to get the gloves on and off.

've never understood just what textured soy protein is.

Quote: Mosca

Bacon grease is awesome for clogging your arteries. Use it for frying almost anything: eggs, potatoes, onions, steaks, whatever. Store it covered in the refrigerator, about a month.

Thanks. I don't think I have to worry about clogged arteries, I already have two cardiac stents.
Bacon grease is great for eggs or potatoes. I used to eat a coffee shop where they had this great big turkey platter full of fries piled as high as they would go. It was kept under the grill but with at least five pounds of bacon on top of the potatoes slowly melting from the heat of the grill above it. All that bacon grease dripped down through a foot and half of potatoes. When they had to serve bacon they just took a few strips from the top of the pile and finished it off on the grill. Every now and then they would laddle the bacon fat up to the top of the potato pile to let it drip through again.

Quote: Mosca

Not really, it turns rancid very quickly. You could clarify it, but that's more trouble than it's worth; if you were the type of person who would benefit from clarifying cooking grease, you would already know how to do it and what you would want it for.

Thanks, I happened to find out that mixing oatmeal flakes into the burgers or ground beef package is expected to absorb much of the fat so it gets eaten as part of the burger/meatloaf.

I managed to surprise myself. I made soup and chicken in just under one hour (not counting the time the chicken spent in the oven). It seems these "simple" recipes I've been coming up with work well enough and are not just "plain" or boring.

Quote: Fleastiff

Thanks, I happened to find out that mixing oatmeal flakes into the burgers or ground beef package is expected to absorb much of the fat so it gets eaten as part of the burger/meatloaf.

Tasted like greasy oatmeal. Terrible.

Oy vey. I made passable beef picadillo using poblano peppers and beef broth. It was ok, but needs some work. The bad news is I amde rice to go with it. Well, today I mixed some rice and picadillo in a contianer, then put it in the fridge and brought along just the rice container for lunch <sigh>

I guess that's what a 19-hour day with just 7 hours sleep the next day can do...

Now it's past 8 pm and I'm hungry.