Having spent the last couple of weeks finding new things to sous vide (chicken and duck breasts turned out amazing), I decided to go old school and make my first entirely from scratch chilli - it can be pretty hard to find a decent variety of dried peppers in UK shops/markets, so I always used a store-bought paste or powder before. I found a place in Borough Market, though, that has a great range of spices and dried peppers, so I made one based on more or less this mix. Wow. I’m never going back. And now I have lots of the paste in icecube form, so the next several goes will be just as convenient as before.
Gendal
3102
I started doing something similar with Cook’s Illustrated recipe here and just guajillo:
So good, and fairly easy. Will have to try out the serious eats recipe next.
Technically it was from the Food Lab book (it’s the Easy Weeknight Ground Beef Chili recipe, using the paste), not the Serious Eats site, but the paste is basically the one I linked (chipotles in adobo added at the chili stage rather than in the paste, but three pasilla and three ancho in the paste).
One thing I’m curious about is that the recipe I used only called for 30 mins of simmering once all the ingredients were mixed, which seems very short and is much less than I’m used to doing for chili (or bolognese, for that matter). I guess ground beef doesn’t really need to become more tender, but I suspect the flavours would develop even more with more time.
In particular, if you use tomatoes, you can really get some extra flavor out of them via longer cooking. Otherwise, 30m isn’t all that out of the question, so long as that’s long enough to get you to your desired texture.
I usually consider simmer times in recipes like that to be a minimum required and usually go well over myself.
I received a cookbook in the 2015 Qt3 Secret Santa exchange, and yesterday I finally tried it out.
The inaugural recipe was poached salmon with mustard pan sauce:
The idea behind the craft beer cookbook is food made with craft beer or to be enjoyed with craft beer. In this case both: The fluid used to make the sauce and cook the salmon is a witbier. I decided to use one from a Norwegian craft brewery for the cooking, and a homebrewed one to serve with the food:
First, the parsley stems, onion and orange is put in the pan with the witbier:
Some delicious salmon:
Salmon placed over the simmering goodness:
After the fish was cooked and removed from the pan, the parsley stems and orange also had to go. The recipe called for sieving the fluid, but I skipped that step. Adding mustard, butter, zest and minced parsley makes everything better:
I decided to go with a mash of cauliflower and parsnip to accompany the salmon:
End result: It was delicious.
Fabulous! Did you make enough Thu share with the whole class, Jorn? :-)
mdowdle
3109
A culinary question:
I made some refried beans today and while it tastes pretty decent, it takes about 1 to 2 seconds for the taste to register after I put it into my mouth. This makes me think that there are what I would call ‘fast tastes’ and ‘slow tastes’. Savory items, like beans, are generally slow tastes, i.e., they take a while to register on the tongue. And I’m wondering if part of cooking is combining fast tastes with slow tastes. Like in wine, with the ‘slow taste’ being the ‘finish’. Does this make any sense? If so, what are the fast tastes? I think lemon / citrus is one, as are sugary types of sweetness. But I’m thinking there’s probably a lot more. For example, I think cilantro is a fast taste, but it’s just too weak to provide the front end for refried bean (the common fast-taste for refried beans, I suspect, would be lemon, but I think lemon too strong – I want something more ‘green’ – vegatable-y).
So, if this makes sense, what are the ‘fast tastes’?
nKoan
3110
That salmon looks awesome. I’m going to try something like that soon. Yum.
As for mdowdle’s question, I think it is an interesting one. I agree with your supposition, a lot of cooking is balancing those different types of flavors. My brother in law swears you need some representation from all 5 tastes in every dish. I mostly agree but think it’s okay to drop one from a dish as long as the whole meal is balanced. The five basic ones are sweet, salty, bitter, sour & umami. As a rough rule of thumb, I would say sweet, salty and sour register faster on the tongue for me, while bitter and umami come later along with other secondary tastes like spice, fattiness, earthiness, etc.
If food tastes dull for me when I’m cooking at first I usually go for the salt or something acidic like vinegar or citrus juice. And specifically with beans, a splash of acid towards the end of cooking does wonders. I use lime juice or some banana vinegar in latin dishes, and red or white wine vinegar for stuff from north of the border. I used to use a lot more spice to make dishes pop more, but there is only so much you can do with spice. Eventually you’ll spice out the dish without ever getting the right balance. Now I go for acids first and spices secondarily.
nKoan
3111
Also, with refried beans I started using onion in mine a few years back (after hearing about it from Rancho Gordo) and it is great addition. You almost don’t need the squirt of lime juice to round out the flavor.
mdowdle
3112
This is very helpful. I didn’t think of this in terms of the five tastes. So the question I have to ask myself is . . . “do you feel lucky, punk?” – wait, that’s not it . . . the question I need to ask is ‘what taste do I want to front-end the umami taste of the beans?’ Thinking of it that way, I come up with lime – a sour-sweet, which seems right – but I think sauteed onions would also work, if I could get them sharp enough, which I’m not good at doing yet.
Thanks nKoan! The sound you hear is the sound of my one hand clapping in appreciation.
Finally got a food processor after years of always meaning to but never really getting around to it. First time out with it I ground some chicken to make chicken burgers. HOLY SHIT THEY WERE AMAZING. Salt, pepper, cumin, paprika and a couple cloves of garlic into the processor, formed into patties and browned in a pan, then topped with some sharp cheddar and a slice of tomato. I was expecting them to be ok, perhaps good at best. But seriously, it was one of those meals where you’re stuffed at the end and some small part of you still wants to go back for more :) Not really sure if grinding the chicken myself had anything to do with it but definitely doing this again soon.
Also the IDARB chicken teriyaki recipe is really good too. Mirin is a new ingredient for me, definitely keeping a bottle of that handy from now on :)
RichVR
3114
The other night, I made a Thai coconut curry sauce, which was pretty good, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.
The aforementioned sauce, you see, was also almost identical in flavor to a bowl of tom kha gai I had at a Thai restaurant in Indiana, and I really, really want to replicate that soup. Can I just water+coconut milk down the sauce to get there? Is there more to turning a sauce into a soup than that?
The ingredients sync up pretty well to tom kha gai recipes I see on the net, so strictly speaking, yeah, I don’t see why you couldn’t add more liquid to it to achieve soupy texture. It doesn’t look like, say, an Indian curry with all sorts of thick, pastey masala base type stuff in it that would just weirdly float around if you poured a bunch of water into it. Also doesn’t seem like, say, pho or tonkotsu ramen, where long-slow simmering to extract gelatin from bones in the stock is key to the final flavor–most of the tom kha gai’s seem to derive their flavor from spices and aromatics and their “texture,” (such as it were) from coconut milk.
You might want to amp up the flavor with a little more curry powder/paste (possibly sizzled in some hot oil to wake it up) and of course salt (and/or just use, say, low-sodium chicken broth instead of water) to make sure that it doesn’t wind up tasting weak or limp, however.
Timex
3117
I made something tonight that turned out quite good, using some techniques that I decided to combine just to see what would happen.
I decided to make a Thai green curry casserole. I have no idea if this is similar to an actual dish from Thailand, but I would assume not.
I basically made a fairly standard green curry, but in order to form a solid base for a casserole, I usually use a roux to thicken stuff up so it really sticks to the pasta. So to do this, I made a roux using coconut oil. This is the part that I have no idea if it’s a thing or not. Maybe Vietnam has something similar, since they have french influences? Or maybe something from the Caribbean does this?
Regardless, the result is pretty solid I must say. It was definitely different than a roux based on a more neutral tasting oil, or butter. I didn’t use that liquid coconut oil, but the solidified stick kind. It smells coconutty.
Like I said, I have no idea if coconut oil based roux is a common thing or not, but it was new to me.
Thanks for the tips. I’m on cooking duty tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes.
JonRowe
3119
Turkey Denver Omelette Egg Casserole
My own recipe, cribbed from many other sources.
Pic
RichVR
3120
Not anything like many of the amazing things posted here, but I recently made pickled red onions with capers. Nothing special. 50/50 apple cider and red wine vinegar. salt, sugar and of course capers. A bit of water to thin the acid. Let it sit in the fridge for two days. And you know, tasty stuff. I would put them on hotdogs, burgers, salads. Pretty much anything you want raw onion on but without the bite. I’m betting you could saute this and have a pretty good garnish as well. It’s something I’m going to make a fridge staple.
