So my second attempt at dumplings went much better. Turns out that it is better to make them too small than too large. Also @Eric_Majkut’s recipe is much stickier.
Anyhow the results were tasty.
Well that certainly looks a lot more like the paprikash I’m used to! Glad you enjoyed it :) I like to store the sauce and the dumplings separate so things don’t get mushy. But the chicken sorta marinates in the sauce in the fridge so it’ll slowly get even tastier until you eat it all :)
My sauce didn’t seem to want to stay together terribly well but it was still tasty. Made it with some steamed cauliflower.
I think I said the same thing after making that. Kenji never steers me wrong when it comes to great tastes. The sauce, in particular, was so good I could have just made that a soup and eaten it with the peppers and veggies.
Between all of you guys and the pics I’m now hungry as hell and it’s only breakfast time. Time to thaw some chicken.
Roast lamb! Well, boneless leg of lamb, not a whole one.
Artsy spices for spice rub:
I still don’t have a spice grinder, so I just mashed the hell out of them in a mortar:
Rubbed lamb inside and out, then put it on a little parsnip and celery platform for roasting:
Done and sliced, now much messier, out of focus, and in a totally different house:
It was a good experiment. The spice rub was interesting. None of what I think of as the usual lamb seasonings: no cumin, no garlic, no rosemary, no thyme. But coriander, white pepper, onion, salt, and a ton of fennel (maybe too much, though the sweetness was different). Very easy to cook. The prep was uncomplicated, if time-consuming, and the roast itself was well behaved.
Not pictured: turnips with garlic and maple syrup (!), mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli. I’m always surprised how tasty simple mashed potatoes can be.
Except for ground lamb once or twice I’ve never really cooked with it. No idea why since it’s delicious. Probably because it’s not as easy to get a hold of as other meats. Now you’ve got me thinking!
Yeah, it’s not always easy to find. If you have a Lucky’s Market nearby, they carry New Zealand lamb for a reasonable price. My local Kroger usually has it, but the quality varies and they stock mainly chops, which are pretty expensive. It’s lovely stuff, though, and a nice change from beef.
Made a free-form chili for the super bowl (I.e. no recipe or spice packets, just whatever I had in the spice drawer). Chili is a great “magic of cooking” thing because when you add everything it looks like just a bunch of ingredients, and you worry maybe to did something wrong, and the flavors haven’t melded, but then you simmer it for a couple hours and all the chunks kind of melt and the flavors blend and you have chili.
The other thing is that I used dried beans (soaked overnight), which really contributes to the “I’ve made a terrible mistake” feeling at the beginning, since they actually need time to cook (as opposed to canned beans). And once again, I remember that dried beans are really, really fucking worth the marginal effort required over canned beans. The beans have a little texture to them and are an actual element in the dish instead of just filler. I hate it when doing things the harder way is legit actually worth it, because I like being lazy.
I also virtually never have lamb, much to my own disappointment. I bought some for gyro once and then ruined it with way too much onion, and that’s about it…
Over the weekend, I added a couple more items to my growing Korean menu:
Baby potatoes pan roasted, then braised in soy, corn syrup, and a good amount of sesame seeds and oil alike. Salty, a little sweet, and crispy-fluffy. Yum!
Shrimp pancakes, made with a basic flour batter flavored with soy and gochujang, and containing a ton of green onion, garlic, spinach, Korean squash, and tiny shrimp from a can cuz lazy/cheap. Not as crisp as I’d have wanted–need to add some corn or potato starch or something.
And, bonus shot:
My cultural interpreter friend threw a small (and week late) Chinese new year party. Recognizing the inherent nontraditionalness, she took no issue with my offering to bring new batches of the beef bulgogi (in the silver roasting tray) and oi muchim (glass bowl). She grabbed some shrimp crisps, BBQ pork, threw together some sticky rice and vegetable noodles, and remade some bacon-wrapped, goat cheese stuffed dates that had gotten overcooked during the flambé and fondue party we had last week. There were a variety of Chinese desserts like red bean stuffed cakes, oranges for luck, and some seasonally appropriate party favors like “gold” chocolate coins and red envelopes filled with Hell Money, which we later burned in the fire outside to send to those who’ve passed on.
Despite the somewhat ramshackle menu and reduced numbers due to some disappointing drama, it was a really lovely evening :-)
Awesome stuff, everyone. My wife and I don’t really experiment much with cooking although I do enjoy it when I take the time. @ArmandoPenblade man you seriously need to rethink your career choice :). Impressive stuff you come up with.
My wife surprised me yesterday when I got home from a bowling tournament and was starving and ready for some food before the Super Bowl. She found this recipe and whipped these up for us. They smelled awesome and really tasted good although probably not so healthy at all :).
http://www.kevinandamanda.com/cheesy-party-burgers-aka-diamond-burgers/print/
I’m way behind on all of you guys, I only made popcorn for the superbowl. I made 3 huge tubs of it and provided enough popcorn for a bar full of folks. I made the most requested flavors that some of them have had before, buttered, taco corn (taco seasoning, cumin, cheddar and chipotle,) and “crack corn” (cheddar and jalapeno.)
Anytime I make that much of something, I’m reminded of why I could never be a cook. I love doing it on a small scale, cooking makes me happy. But when you add in the stress of pleasing a lot of people, and the complications of it, it just isn’t fun. :(
That being said, @ArmandoPenblade, I agree with the others, you should be a private chef.
Kelan, the burgers sound awesome. I have a deep love for “tray-baked” sliders like that. Definitely keeping that in mind for the next time I am accidentally involved with a Sportsball celebration or similar :-D
And thanks for the kind words everyone. At first, I want to rebel against the thought, but when I read things like
and think to myself, “I mean, that makes me super happy!” I acknowledge you guys might not be totally off base!
If you’re ever at a loose end, give kibbe a shot. It’s a bit like gyros, but more like meatloaf, if meatloaf were something you wanted to marry and start a new life with.
Same. A year working as a short order cook in my early 20s cured me of any long-term interest in doing food professionally. Too damn hard, for one thing :)
I get asked a lot why I don’t sell popcorn, I make a ton of different types, everyone loves them. It’s fun. I bring popcorn to events a lot. I give it away to my neighbors and coworkers. But I give the same answer to why I don’t sell it, because I like doing it. If I wanted to absolutely hate making popcorn for eternity I would form a company and do that from here on out. I just don’t want to do that.
Also @Courteous_D, short order cook, man you went all in when you did it. Isn’t that like the most stressful cooking there is?
I had no idea what I was getting into….
It actually wasn’t too bad. The menu was fairly limited—basic diner food—so there wasn’t an insane range of orders to juggle. And the techniques were simple. But yeah, high pressure when it got busy. Learned a lot, though, especially the importance of good tools, and what the French call “mise en place,” which is basically how you organize and prep your space to facilitate good work.
Cooking yesterday and today:
Manchurian Tofu and Cauliflower
from How to Cook Everything Fast
The idea is you crisp up a couple blocks of tofu in the skillet (sliced or chopped), set the tofu aside for a bit, brown some cauliflower, add ketchup, garlic and cayenne and let it heat until it’s a bit bubbly and caramelizing at the edges, then mix the tofu back in and heat it through. My tofu absolutely refused to crisp or turn golden so I have to assume that it wasn’t the right kind, but there was no other kind at that store so I don’t know. It worked out okay anyway.
Broiled Ziti with Feta and Olives
from How to Cook Everything Fast
Cook ziti in a pot. Meanwhile in a skillet you sautee chopped onion and garlic, then add a can of crushed tomatoes with some salt and pepper and chopped pitted kalamata olives, and then let that bubble away at a fairly low setting until the ziti’s ready. Drain it, return it to the pot, dump in the sauce, mix the sauce and the feta into the pasta, and then spread it out in a rimmed baking sheet, top with mozzarella, and broil for 3-ish minutes. (The basic recipe uses twice as much mozzarella and includes some grated parmesan in the topping, omits the feta and olives. But I like olives, so.)
This I must try. Omit feta and olives? NEVER! The wife truly loves kalamata olives. This may just become a weekly dish.
This would probably work best with extra firm, but even then, you’d need to press it with weights wrapped up in paper towels in order to drain off some of the moisture, I suspect.
A little disappointed with tonight’s cuisine:
Made Korean Fried chicken from a mishmash of recipes and then steamed some frozen edamame. Managed to overcook both pretty noticeably. In fairness to me, the chicken in particular was very tough, but as usual, I was using white meat, and doing a double-fry on white meat is. . . tough. But I think the pre-cut chicken tenders I bought were sliced a little thinner than is optimal.
I didn’t fry all the chicken I had, so tomorrow night, I’ll try marinating the chicken in a salt/sugar brine for an hour or two, frying a little less each time around, and possibly praying to the god of fried chicken, Colonelion.
Still, the chicken–tossed with salt, pepper, baking powder, and ginger, then mixed up with 50/50 flour/potato starch + half an egg, then fried once @ 325 and again @ 375, was insanely crispy. The sauce was less great. . . I wound up going for about a 40/30/10/10/10 split of corn syrup, soy sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, and gochujang chili paste, all cooked in oil with a couple of cloves of minced garlic and three or four whole, dried red chilies. The sauce probably cooked too long, getting very tough and candy-like, and there wasn’t nearly enough of it, and it was quite salty. Will try adding water next time around, and maybe adjusting the soy down and the corn syrup up. Wishing I’d bought the fancy Korean rice syrup @ the Asian grocer, but it was a huge bottle and like 10 goddam dollars, so I wimped out.
Ah well, they can’t all be winners! I’ll try again tomorrow, though, and report back :-D
Crisping up tofu is tricky. I’ve read and tried a lot of methods, and I’ll share what I do now. First off is to use firm or extra firm if you can find it.
Slice the tofu into cubes and soak them in a hot water brine (2 cups boiling water and 2 to 3 tablespoons of salt). Soak (off the stove) for 15 minutes. Pull the tofu out of the brine and pat it dry. I use mild pressure to try to squeeze out a little more, but not too much pressure. It’ll usually sit on the paper towels for a few minutes too (but I don’t time it).
I use a high heat oil (safflower, peanut, non-toasted sesame oil) and heat the oil up over medium-high heat until it just starts smoking. Back off the heat, add tofu while shaking the pan (probably less relevant if you use non-stick, but absolutely necessary if you use stainless steel). Be sure to not crowd the pan (I usually do a store bought block in two batches) and don’t be shy with the oil.
I’ve been doing this for a few years, and its the most consistent method I’ve used. You can go anywhere from barely fried to golden brown pretty easily. I do it once or twice a week.
Cook’s Illustrated did a short writeup recently too. It’s pretty similar, but they like to let the tofu drain even longer and use cornstarch to help develop better crisping. And they have some science-y reasons why the brine is necessary.
This was labelled as being firm, FWIW.