It’s been a while so I decided to make some fried rice.
The core spices in here are Szechuan pepper, fermented chili paste, crushed red pepper, garlic, ginger, black pepper, soy, and oyster sauce. The effect is quite spicy, kind of tangy, with the weird tingly effect from the Szechuan pepper.
This time I used chorizo as a meat, and it worked quite well.
That looks gorgeous, @Timex. I would definitely enjoy going to there.
Yesterday was a big day for me. After living in this joint for almost 6 years, we finally cleaned up, reorganized, and discussed it enough for my gf to allow me to host people. Mind, while she was out of town–girl really doesn’t like being around people, least of all my gamer friends.
Anyway, I invited about 10 and wound up with 7, and elected to make everybody brunch upfront and then do cheesy chili for later on. Brunch included
We omitted sausage gravy because I was literally out of space to cook more things. Oops.
Dinner was leftover chipotle-beer chili, melted with a pound of Velveeta in the slowcooker, served over fritos, nachos, and/or leftover home fries :-D
Sorry for trash pictures and no waffle action shot, but trying to catalogue what I was doing while simultaneously checking bacon/biscuit process in the oven, frying omelets, waffle-ironing waffles, and stir-flipping the home fries, all while making all this shit to order, was crazy intense. So intense, in fact, that immediately after the picture of the plate of food, I dropped my phone and shattered the screen. Dammit!!!
Additionally, cuz fuck it, things I did with chili, potatoes, and fritos this week, the visual novel:
All potatoes prepped house-style: oil and salt liberally, bake until fluffy, split, stuff with butter, black pepper, and mozzarella, douse in cheddar (and sometimes bacon), then re-bake till melty, then cover in sour cream and chives.
Gussied up Frito Pie: bed of Fritos covered in hot chili, then cheese and black pepper, microwaved till melty, then covered in sour cream and pico de gallo. Mmkay.
@ArmandoPenblade I don’t see nothin’ wrong … with a little frito pieeee…
@Timex that fried rice looks fantastic. I need to stir fry more.
Armando, you need some queso for that. And strangely I made some yesterday, again testing out the sodium citrate. In playing with it more, it doesn’t take very much liquid to mix with prior to adding cheese. So if you use too much, like I did, you end up adding a TON of cheese to balance out the liquid content. And it’s deceiving in that just like a roux, you need to heat it for a bit, then let it cool for a bit, before you can find out what the final consistency will be. What I’m trying to do is determine a good ration for 1/2 cup of liquid for a very small batch of cheese sauce in different consistencies.
I picked up some sodium citrate last month too. I had seen this article, that I’m pretty sure I saw posted here, http://skillet.lifehacker.com/will-it-sous-vide-melty-cheese-sauce-from-any-cheese-1791944142
I’ve been following that ratio of cheese/liquid/sodium citrate with good results. The Sous Vide element is nice for the consistent temp and not needing to babysit it. I’ve tried a bunch of different cheeses- blue cheese is crazy good (even my wife and kids loved it, we were dipping some grilled sirloin and carrots) and of course pepper jack blends are fantastic.
I was planning on melting up a bunch of swiss to top some reuben sliders but forgot all about it. Good stuff though it works like magic and it still stays creamy when cold. Science is cool.
Figure I’ll share a photo instead of just chatting. This is a typical weeknigt dinner in our household. Stir fried tofu with black sauce with charred broccoli (and rice, not pictured).
Not sure if I’ve seen that article but I’m going to check it out. I like the stuff too, it’s very cool. Thanks for the link!
@nKoan, that looks delicious AND healthy. Are you vegetarian only?
Thanks! I’m not vegetarian but my wife is, so we cook vegetarian at home pretty much all the time.
I’d love to cook vegetarian more. It’s a lack of knowledge on my part on good dishes to highlight.
First rule of vegetarian cooking: stop trying to pretend it’s “Just Like Meat!™” and just make stuff that focuses on the preexisting deliciousness of your ingredients.
I just looked them up. No need evangelize, I’m sold. You could also swap the pesto for hummus and it’d be amazing.
So, turns out, super easy to make. I like using SeriousEats’ Halal Cart Chicken as a decent sub for the spit-roasted stuff at Jasmin, then just pile on the pesto aioli (lol, nah, that’s just 50/50 Mayo/Pesto blend in my house you fancy motherfuckers), mozzarella, feta, and sundried tomatoes, fold up and panini-grill until crispy and oozing cheese-love.
Ya, the only places that I’ve seen which can pull off fake meat are some Buddhist restaurants. Some of those monks have seemingly perfected fake meat over a course of a thousand years.
I think a key to good vegetarian food is to learn what vegetables have “meaty” tastes. Mushrooms are good for this. Another really good type of vegetable for this is young green jackfruit. You can buy it canned from Amazon. It is almost like a giant artichoke heart? If you slice it up and cook it, it has an almost chicken-like texture.
MSG is a good addition for vegetarian food, as it adds glutimate which is normally found in meat.
After cooking vegan food for a girl for a while, vegetarian food is super easy now… if you can use things like cheese or eggs? Then it’s easy. Pure vegan food can be harder.
Jain cooking also drives me mad, but I try to figure it out because a lot of authentic South Indian recipes are meant to be prepared that way. But losing access to garlic and onions is painful to my heart and soul. But hey, limitations are the basis for all great art, right?
But really, if yer looking for good vegetarian/vegan fare, you can do a lot worse than an Indian cookbook.
Ya, I encountered that Jain cooking when I first learned about Asofoetida. I guess that’s kind of the point of that stuff? It tastes like onion/garlic once it’s cooked, kind of.
Smells like feet beforehand though.Weird.
I can make a pretty good chana masala. It’s a start. Don’t forget Middle Eastern and North African food too. Also a lot of veg dishes, but even more flavor variety than Indian only. Hell, we could throw in a lot of Asian cuisine too.
Come on, America, give us better veg options.
Every post is better with pics. This was my last Chana attempt. I over reduced my sauce a bit, it was too chunky. Over brown rice.
Oi, that’s beautiful, man. Lovely presentation, too. And *brofist* for the brown rice accompaniment :-D
Fun trick I learned from some blog somewhere. Toss a couple of normal black teabags into the pot/slowcooker/pressure cooker/whatever alongside the chickpeas, if you’re cooking them from dry. Lends a really pretty purplish hue to them in the final product!
All that is well and good, but this is the future of cooking: http://lewisandquark.tumblr.com/tagged/cookbook
I’ve never heard that, that’s a neat trick. I really love anything masala, and my veg only friend introduced chana masala to me. She gave me a demerit for not having basmati rice though.
Cool link! I enjoy the notes on the progression of it. If you’re going to pick a fun project to work through neural network programming, making it fun with AI recipes makes sense.
