3281

One of my son’s favorite things is the way I make fried rice. It’s simple and quick and he looks forward to it.

Last night after his D&D session I cooked him up a batch of fried rice and delivered it unto him. He happily tucked into it, but after a couple of bites he stopped and asked, “Is this different rice?”

“No,” I said. “Same as always. Eat.”

I tried not to be annoyed, but he’s a real picky eater (like his mom) and you never know when something he liked a whole lot yesterday, suddenly is off the menu the next day. This is really frustrating because there are precious few things I can make him as it is.

He went back to eating and then stopped again. “This rice is different.”

I threw up my hands and said, “No! It is not!” I got up from my chair. “Come on. Come with me.”

I marched into the kitchen intending to show him the bag of rice from the cupboard, to give him visual evidence that this was the same rice I make every time. He dutifully followed. I opened the cupboard door and pulled out the package of rice from Trader Joe’s that I always make…and realized it was not the same rice that I always make. The rice I always make is the Jasmine rice they sell. That package was sitting back in the far corner of the cupboard. The bag I held was Basmati. And then I remembered that my girlfriend gave me the Basmati after her recent move because she didn’t like it. She has a gigantic bag of rice she got at some Asian market or something.

Anyway. My son looked at me, waiting for me to prove my point, and my shoulders slumped. “Nope,” I said. “I have to say you were right. This is the stuff I made. That’s the rice you usually get.” He broke into a smile. “I was totally wrong.”

He nodded and went back to his room. And I went to the freezer to get the ice cream, embarrassed but weirdly proud that my son can tell the difference between Basmati and Jasmine rice.

-xtien

3282

I’d be interested in how you make your fried rice!

3283

I have never cooked with Korean cabbage before but picked some up as it was on sale. I shredded half a head and made a stir fry with chicken and some onions and garlic. It turned out quite good. It seems the Korean variety is sweeter trading than the regular green cabbage. I think I will be buying the Korean type more often.

3284

A few months back my old slow cooker proved to have developed a barely visible crack along the bottom of the liner, going all the way through to the other side so that liquids could leak into the heating elements. Obviously this was not something I wanted to continue using, which is why I haven’t been posting about slow cooking lately. I finally got a new one (a KitchenAid model that ATK recommended highly) and took it for an inaugural spin today with the Slow Cooker Revolution 2 recipe Cowboy Steak and Beans, which I then fed to my game night crew (they brought coleslaw and cornbread). I did not think to take a picture, but it’s a pretty straightforward recipe. Just put two 16 (15, these days) oz cans of baked beans in the crockpot, add a half cup of barbecue sauce, 3 tablespoons of molasses, and one tablespoon of dijon mustard, then stir that all up. Put salt and pepper over 4 8 ounce steaks (they called for blade steaks but I couldn’t find them and substituted two larger top round steaks cut in half, which were $3/lb), put them in the beans, slow cook for 8-9 hours on low or 5-6 on high, and you’re done.

One of the steaks got a little burnt on the back edge (I suspect in part because it cooked while I was at work and was over an hour on warm before I got home), but it was otherwise quite yummy and surprisingly inexpensive.

3285

I like trying to make pickles. My favorite thing to pickle is roasted beets (Alton Brown recipe), but I haven’t seen any decent beets lately.

So I stumbled upon this recipe for simple fridge dill pickles. I’ve made a couple of batches and I’m kind of loving this.

fridgepickle.JPG1566×2088 982 KB

It’s super easy. Calls for no heating. And you can eat them in a day. I’ve been putting in some sliced jalepenos. Serranos. Some red onion. I love how easy this is.

I want to try some tomatillos next.

At any rate, I’m interested in what you all do with pickles.

-xtien

3286

Funnily enough, I’ve more or less never done a “real” pickle. I’ve quick-pickled some sliced red cabbage to accompany the big Falafel bar I did for my friends a few months back for their Middle Eastern-themed RPG session, and did the same with some carrots and daikon when I tried my hand at Vietnamese cuisine a couple of months before that. . . but I always figured that real pickling was beyond my patience/equipment threshold.

Do you find that the pickles that recipe produces are better enough (or at the very least, different enough) than storebought stuff to be worth the while? Cuz if I don’t have to muck around with temp-control, jar-burping, etc. in a creepy cellar I don’t even posses, I’d be way more interested in the concept :-D

3287

My wife has fallen whole-hog into canning and preserving stuff. I’m not sure why, exactly, except that it’s the summer and she needs something to occupy her time during the long days. And weirdly, this new hobby goes against almost everything she’s ever stood for:

My wife HATES clutter and nick-nacks. She will fly into a cleaning whirlwind once every day or three, simply running through the house disposing of anything that appears to be “perishable” and more than a day or two old. The story I often tell is getting home from work, opening the trash bin to throw away a piece of junk mail to find my copy of Newsweek magazine on top of all the other trash (obviously this is an old story). I pulled it out and said “Honey, why did you throw away the Newsweek?” She gave me a long-suffering look and said “I was tired of looking at it – it’s been on the table forever!” I then pointed to the delivery date – it had come in that day’s mail.

The same general attitude applies to food. She can’t even comprehend the idea of leftovers. She tolerates my (untidy, in her mind) habit of saving food from one night’s dinner for the next day’s lunch, but no leftovers survive more than 36 hours in our house; they are eradicated from the refrigerator ruthlessly. The very fact that Tupperware exists in our cabinets to potentially be used for leftovers is maddening for her.

So the fascination with canning is bewildering to me. She is effectively making new leftovers and she is taking great pride in pasteurizing the contents so that it will last months or years on end. Where is she going to put these things so that they survive her own purges?

In the meantime, I am enjoying the fruits of her labors. She’s made a couple really tasty jams.

3288

And to think, she could have avoided that just by saying “It’s Newsweek”.

3289

I’m curious where you are shopping now… I mostly get my intl. foods at Neomonde (near NCSU) or the Around the World Market on Chatham St Cary.

3290

Honestly, virtually all of the ingredients for that spread were had at Walmart and Harris Teeter (Walmart in particular has these gigantic tubs of Tahini paste that are pretty reasonably priced).

I think I might have gotten the pita bread for the chips at Food Lion, based on the bag there.

That said, I do the bulk of my international shopping at AC Supermarket on S. Saunders in Raleigh (for Asian stuff) and–same as you–Around the World Market in Cary (for Indian). In terms of spices, funky veggies, and frozen stuff, those places are tops. Just happened that more or less all of the stuff for that Mediterranean night was pretty easy to find at regular supermarkets (even the bulghur wheat, which I snagged at HT for like $1.50).

3291

This reminds me that I have to pickle some more red onions.

3292

Yes. Because it’s so easy. But they’re not necessarily going to scratch the taste itch that regular storebought kosher dills will. They’re not a replacement if you’re into those. These are different.

And again, easy and cheap. You get to put in the flavors you want. Want to throw some garlic in? Go for it. Want some peppers? Why not?

I love red onions, for instance, and I really like how they impart their flavor to the cucumbers and also mellow out so you can eat them without becoming Onion Mouth Man for the next two days.

-xtien

3293

Interesting, and thanks for the further insight, Christien! I think next week’s chili week (since I had to buy a 6-pack of beer to make bangers n mash & fish n chips this week for British week, and will have several bottles leftover that Arika and I will never drink outside of a recipe), but next time a good pickle-needing week comes around, I’ll be excited to give that a shot :-D

3294

I look forward to hearing about it, Armand Openblade!

For once one of these recipes that says, “They keep for three weeks, but they only last one in my house!” is actually correct. These things go pretty quickly, which is good since I’m excited about experimenting.

-xtien

3295

Yeah, kosher dill pickles from a 100 year old family run business beat anything you can make at home. ::Drool::

3296

Not necessarily the most appetizing looking thing, but I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out:

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From-Scratch Roasted Garlic Alfredo w/ Blackened Cajun Chicken & Red Bell Peppers
plus From-Scratch “Cheddar Bay” Buttermilk Biscuits

The chicken was a little tougher than I’d have liked, but I didn’t brine or marinate it, which is unusual for me. Alfredo was surprisingly tasty, and the big upside is that my whole house still smells like roasting garlic :-D

3297

Speak for yourself. If you sat that down in front of my family it would be more inhaled than chewed.

3298

Okay. You’re gonna need to walk me through this please.

My son loves the cheddar biscuits from Red Lobster. He goes there with his mom, and it’s the only thing he likes from there. They’ve started selling a box mix version of those things at the grocery store, and he loves those as well, but they’re kind of annoying to make and I’d much rather teach him how to make them from scratch.

So help me out here!

-xtien

3299

You can’t post that and just leave us hanging without a recipe.

3300

Well, it’s super late, but you folks are lucky: I actually had stayed up a little later anyway to type it up for myself before I forgot (I wound up synthesizing about half a dozen recipes I found online and on Youtube for this).

##“Cheddar Bay” Buttermilk Biscuits
###Ingredients - Dough

  • 2 cups All Purpose Flour, sifted
  • 1 tbsp Sugar
  • 2 tsp Baking Powder
  • 1 tsp Kosher Salt
  • ½ - ¾ tsp Garlic Powder (I actually forgot how much I wound up using; use your best judgment based on personal garlic-preference)
  • ½ tsp Baking Soda
  • ¼ tsp Cayenne Pepper
  • 1 ½ cups Cheddar Cheese, shredded
  • 1 cup Buttermilk (whole or lowfat)
  • ½ cup Unsalted Butter, melted
    ###Ingredients - Spread
  • ¼ cup Unsalted Butter
  • ½ tsp Garlic Powder
  • 1 tbsp Parsley, finely chopped
    ###Directions
    Preheat the oven to 450F.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, garlic powder, baking soda, and cayenne, stirring thoroughly. Mix in the shredded cheese, taking care to knock apart any large lumps.

Separately, combine the buttermilk and the butter, stirring together until clotted and thick. Pour into the flour mixture and fold together gently, stirring as little as possible. The “dough” will be thick and clumpy, breaking apart easily.

Measure out approximately ¼ cup of dough at a time (you can use a measuring cup sprayed with a little cooking oil, if you’d like), then roll each lump into a rough ball and press it into a rounded disc.

Place the biscuits 1” apart on a large baking sheet; you should have enough dough for 10-12 biscuits. Bake them for 10-12 minutes, until the tops just begin to take on a pale golden color.

Melt the remaining butter together with the rest of the garlic powder and parsley until the bubbles die down. Spread this mixture over the baked biscuits using a brush or similar. Put the biscuits back into the oven for another 2-3 minutes until they begin to brown and become crisp on top from the butter.

Remove and serve warm!

As written in my own hyper-fiddly style. You could probably condense significantly, but I always start with way more detail than necessary, especially with baking, which still intimidates the hell out of me.