Cooking thread

Dude, Mosca, that looks too good to be true.

I need a better system to organize my recipes. The other I looked through this thread and found several dishes I'd forgotten about...

Speaking of which, electronic cookbooks are not such a good idea. Browsing through them is fine, searching is easy, but when it comes time to cook, you're as liable to fins the recipe split in two pages. There is no means I've found for copying any text, or printing it. Really, reading is not why you buy a cookbook in the first place.

Quote: Nareed

Speaking of which, electronic cookbooks are not such a good idea. Browsing through them is fine, searching is easy, but when it comes time to cook, you're as liable to fins the recipe split in two pages.

And another things, they often reference something in another page. Only you can't as easily find a page in en ebook...

That said, I got another one. Am I supposed to pass up a good offer just because it's inconvenient? Hell, no! This one is about cooking with a wok.

I've already found some of my limits. This book recommends using steel or iron cookware and to season it. I refuse to go there. Why? Well, it's a lot of work seasoning a wok, skillet, pan or pot. Then, too, it stroke me as unhygienic. Not the seasoning itself, but the advice to merely rinse the cookware rather than wash it with soap. Something I'm very careful with is properly cleaning the cookware and utensils after using them. Rinsing doesn't remove food residue and/or bacteria. Soap does.

My aim for the weekend is, if possible, to get done with the weekly battle with BLUESCREEN for the petty cash reimbursement today, so I'll have the whole of Sunday wide open for another ground beef experiment, plus the much delayed biscuits. I also got some more tortilla meal and I'm planning something creative for it. Not this weekend, but later. First I need to research how long tortilla dough can be kept or whether it can be frozen. Because first I want to experiment with hand-shaping vs a tortilla press.

Peanut butter stew.

I'm not claiming this as my own, as I followed the recipe exactly. But I've been using the basic technique with different meats and add-ons. And I love the spice mixture. So:

About 1 Kg. meat of your choice (I've used chicken thighs and ground beef thus far)
Two potatoes, boiled and diced in large pieces
Peanut oil
1 large onion chopped or sliced.
2 cloves garlic.
1 tsp. each of dry coriander, dry mustard (or ground mustard seed), cinnamon, cumin, turmeric and ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
1 cup tomato sauce or puree
1 1/2 cup vegetable or chicken broth
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

First you cook the meat til it's near-done using peanut oil. If you're doing ground beef, you should mix in 1 or 2 eggs so it will clump a bit. Set it and any juices aside.

Add more oil and cook the onions and garlic to taste. Then add the spice mixture. I suppose you can add them one at a time, but I mix them all in a small bowl first. Mix and keep cooking for half a minute, you just want the spices to get fragrant, not to burn or toast. Add the tomato puree and mix. Add the broth and mix. add the peanut butter and mix until it dissolves. reduce heat to minimum. Add the meat and potatoes, and let it simmer until the meat is done.

It goes great mixed with plain white rice. yesterday I got some Jasmine rice and cooked it.

Speaking of rice, after many attempts I got rice down to a science. First wash the grains in a colander until the water flowing down is mostly clear. then let the rice dry. On a rice cooker add a little oil and sauté the rice in it, you can add garlic and/or onion in this step. Add water, cover the cooker and let the water boil. when it does, reduce heat, mix, and let it simmer until the water is gone. It's a good idea to stir when there's little water left so no rice will burn and stick to the cooker.

You can use liquids other than water. I've used chicken broth, and coconut milk. I suppose there are other possibilities. I wonder, chicken broth and white wine? Maybe next week...

I tried my hand at fusion.

I got some pasta and a can of corn from leftover samples at work. So I made the loose pasta bake with spaghetti sauce, mushrooms, poblano peppers, corn and oaxaca cheese.

I got a sous vide oven about a year ago, and I don't use it enough because, I dunno, I'm old and set in my ways and most of my life I didn't use sous vide. Sous vide means "under vacuum": you take your food, vacuum seal it, and put it in a water bath, which then slowly cooks it to a pre-selected temperature. For this meal I chose tenderloin steaks, because we haven't had them in years and because they are a pretty basic sous vide cut.

The idea is to get the doneness perfect, then sear the outside of the steak at high temp. Medium rare is 130, medium is 135. I like medium rare and Mrs Mosca likes medium, so I set the oven to 133, figuring that I'll make up the difference on the grill.




Once the steaks hit 133, I put them on the kamado, on a cast iron griddle at 850*. Things happen pretty fast at 850*, so there are no photos of this step. We served them with spinach, mac'n'cheese, Caprese tomatoes, and of course mushrooms and onions. These came out pretty much like I expected them to.




I need to explore the sous vide more. I've done turkey breasts, which came out very tender, and occasionally vegetable medleys with butter and seasonings, that were delightful, but the thing is just such a pain in the ass, what with limited counter space and limited time. Sous vide roasts take several days, for example. If anyone is interested, Anova makes a sous vide circulation heater that is about the size of half a baguette, and uses your existing pot. Lots of good reports on it.

Quote: Mosca

I got a sous vide oven about a year ago,

Neat!

It's one of those things I want to try eventually. First, though, I want a slow cooker

On other things, I made biscuits, finally.

The result was only so-so. On the one hand it was easy, and I even got layers to form. On the other, I didn't roll the dough thin enough, which resulted in a longer bake time, which gave the biscuits a hard outer crust. I shall try again next week, this time I'll add flavoring as well. I'll also try a coating, possibly egg whites.

I used parchment paper to line a cookie sheet instead of greasing it. It works fantastically well and leaves a pristine cookie sheet once I got done. It seems odd to put paper inside the oven, but it actually makes sense. Paper, as Mr. Bradbury has taught the world, burns at 451 F. Most ovens are used at around 430 F max. The parchment paper, made to be used in ovens, merely browned here and there.

Oh, forming layers is ridiculously easy. First you lay out the dough in a rectangle and fold it in half towards you. then you turn it 90 degrees and roll it gently (you don't want to squish the fold and thus undo it) back to it's original thickness. Next you repeat the fold and roll twice more and your layers have been formed.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup flour
56 gr. butter cut into small pieces
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup milk

For prep you first mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Next you mix the butter with the flour mix by hand. Basically you cover the butter in flour and squeeze it with your fingers. You don't want it to melt, but to mix. This gets rather messy, and I wound up with a lot of butter/flour mix under my fingernails. Next time I'll wear gloves. You want to get something like coarse meal as a result.

Then add the milk (buttermilk if you can find any) and stir. I used a spoon, until it's thick and sticky. Then you fold and roll as instructed above, on a clean work surface covered with flour, plus put flower on your rolling pin as well.

I cut mine with a knife and shaped them into rectangles, but you can use a cookie cutter instead. Lay them on a cooking sheet lined with parchment paper, or greased, making sure they touch at the edges. Bake at about 215 C for, well, there's a problem there as I baked them too long. I think I managed 25 minutes, when possibly 17-20 minutes should have been enough.

I can't wait for the weekend to try again.

Quote: Nareed

Neat!

It's one of those things I want to try eventually. First, though, I want a slow cooker

A slow cooker is FAR more useful, we use ours once or twice a month. The sous vide oven gets used once or twice a year.

Quote: Nareed

On other things, I made biscuits, finally.

The result was only so-so. On the one hand it was easy, and I even got layers to form. On the other, I didn't roll the dough thin enough, which resulted in a longer bake time, which gave the biscuits a hard outer crust. I shall try again next week, this time I'll add flavoring as well. I'll also try a coating, possibly egg whites.

I used parchment paper to line a cookie sheet instead of greasing it. It works fantastically well and leaves a pristine cookie sheet once I got done. It seems odd to put paper inside the oven, but it actually makes sense. Paper, as Mr. Bradbury has taught the world, burns at 451 F. Most ovens are used at around 430 F max. The parchment paper, made to be used in ovens, merely browned here and there.

Kudos to you! I wish I could bake, but I just don't have the inclination to learn that any more. I should have done it when I was younger!

Quote: Mosca

A slow cooker is FAR more useful, we use ours once or twice a month.

I'm concerned about the massive amount of power it is sure to gulp.

Quote:

Kudos to you! I wish I could bake, but I just don't have the inclination to learn that any more. I should have done it when I was younger!

Thanks.

At the risk of sounding clichéd, it's never too late. Start with something easy, like cheesecake or biscuits. By this time next year I want to try again to make carrot cake. And I want to make bread, too.