It makes perfect sense. My father used to soak buck meat (the gamier of the two) in milk prior to cooking. Same principle, it would taste less gamey afterward. As for wild game, you don’t want to know what that milk looked and smelled like afterward, just know that it helped with evening out the taste.
I’m not sure why I never put 2 and 2 together for fish though.
I would think so, since I think it’s the fat that is doing the smell reduction. I’ve used 1% though and it worked. I’d use whatever you have on hand.
I may keep that milk thing in mind at my parents’ house in the future, @Timex; they HATE the smell of fish, but sometimes my gf and I really want to eat some while we’re there. . . and @playingwithknives, that turbot was absolutely fucking gorgeous.
TONIGHT! Japanese week continues with. . . hibachi!
My eternal goal with this stuff is to mimic the absolutely perfect hibachi chicken and vegetables at my favorite Japanese steakhouse, Knoxville, TN’s Little Tokyo. I’ve had this dish in all sorts of places all over the country, but that will always be my favorite!
Chunks of well-brined chicken breast + chopped button mushrooms cooked in oil, butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, salt, and pepper, with a little splash of lemon juice at the end. The zucchini and onion get the same treatment less the lemon juice, then the rice gets much the same less the lemon juice and sesame oil, but with some sesame seeds and fried egg. On the side, trying to polish off my various veggies, is some tempura–sweet potatoes, zucchini, broccoli, and mushrooms. Plus some more miso soup with wakame seaweed, tofu, and green onions :)
Looks great, man!
Now I crave some miso and tempura.
I made more sous vide chicken breasts and some leftover rice and vegetable stir fry this evening. No pics though, I was rushing to get it done before errands. Slowly getting better at sous vide, I need to attempt some post searing on the grill now.
So tonight I made Bolognese ala Rich.
My neighbor visited Italy and she brought Is a bag of stracci toscani pasta. Stracci means rags. It’s a kind of pasta where you start with a rolled out semolina and durum wheat pasta. It begins as a lasagna but you cut it in strips and then tear the strips by hand to make little rags.
Stracci toscani just means that the pasta was torn up by ladies in the Tuscan region of Italy. You go ladies.
Anyway. Pasta of this size is usually paired with a ragu type sauce. A ragu is a sauce thick with meat and vegetables. As opposed to a marinara sauce, which is thinner and more suited to a thinner pasta like spaghetti
The process.
I had a few small tomatoes from my backyard plant.
I added a can of lovely San Marzano tomatoes to it.
Then I hit it with a stick blender to make a smooth sauce.
Not seen, chopping up an onion, some garlic and grating a couple of carrots.
Then I add ground pork and beef to a very hot pan.
Ultimately I had this after about a cup of good red wine.
I let it simmer for about three hours. This is not always necessary for a sauce. But for a meat ragu it is.
I was going to add milk. This is called for in many recipes. But as many that suggest it, others say that if you didn’t cook off all of the wine, the milk will curdle. I would have used cream. But I didn’t have any.
Any way, it turned out really good. I sent a container of it to the lady who gave me the pasta and she said she loved it.
I still have more.
I’d hit it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yztx8qfoNu0
-xtien
“Listen, tell Michael not to let the sauce stick…to keep stirring it.”
Loving it. Your sauce looks great, man. Nothing like some rustic looking sauce with that pasta too.
Ssdly, I had a grilled cheese this evening. It’s my comfort food. Where do we all go when we have little time and just don’t feel like a big production? To what we had made for us when growing up.
Sadly! That’s one of my girlfriend’s favoritest things I cook for her.
Be proud of grilled cheese, man!
-xtien
Tonight! Japanese week more or less concludes with. . .
OKONOMIYAKI!
The batter is made with flour, eggs, baking powder, salt, sugar, cabbage, and four unusual ingredients: grated nagaimo (Japanese mountain yam that turns into a sticky, starchy paste when grated), pickled ginger strips (the red things), dashi stock (a flavorful stock made with dried fish flakes and seaweed), and tenkasu (little bits of crispy tempura batter).
Pork belly would be more traditional here, but I had bacon, so bacon it is. A little extra nitrates never hurt anyone. Well. . .
Fry till crisp on one side, covered to help the batter in the middle cook, then flip to start cooking the meat (you could put shrimp, fish, etc. there, instead).
Crispy bacon. . . a little too crispy. I turned down the heat after the first one. Flip back and continue cooking uncovered to crisp up the opposite site.
Cover with okonomiyaki sauce (a salty-sweet BBQ sauce like condiment) and Japanese mayonnaise. . .
Then serve with condiments and toppings at your leisure. I went with bonito shavings (a salted, fermented skipjack tuna fish), dried aonori seaweed, and green onions to polish it off.
It’s umami heaven, with bits of sweetness from the flour and nagaimo, tanginess from the pickled ginger, mayo, and cabbage, and of course tons of saltiness from the bonito, okonomiyaki sauce, and bacon. There are three more to last me the week :)
well @ArmandoPenblade’s look a lot healthier and tastier than mine. This is my first attempt at shepard’s pie (beef version). I didn’t get the gravy quite right but with a butcher shop literally down the street, I’ll try again soon.
The Instant Pot gave me potatoes quick enough to toy with this on a weeknight.
I love it. I’ve done the serious eats version, and many others. Honestly, a small dab of butter and a very thin layer of mayo, yes, mayo on the outside makes it crusty and awesome.
Related to that, my GF and I had a conversation once about things or traits we couldn’t get over in a partner. That led to food dislikes. She and I both agreed dating a non-cheese lover would be just too much to overlook.
And now I shall drool over shepherds pie and Japanese food.
I think people who aren’t into cheese may actually be aliens infiltrating our world. Just saying.
I made chicken cordon bleu for my in laws once. They lacked swiss, or a similar, cheese. My father in law suggested mozzarella.
I made my wife go out and get swiss.
I learned from an irish pub that serves a good shepherd’s pie, that this would be cottage pie. Shepherd’s pie is with lamb or mutton, and cottage pie is with beef.
Either way, I’d hit it. This was a favorite from when I was growing up.
And wtf is Armando doing now? He’s getting all crazy fancy and making shit I’ve never even imagined, and I want to eat it.
While it’s loaded with veggies, it takes a decent amount of oil to get that crisp going, and we’re just all gonna agree to not think too hard about Japan’s obsession with copious quantities of mayonnaise on every-fucking-thing ;-)
There was a point where my gf and I realized we’d purchased something like 6.5lbs of cheese in a month and knew we had a serious problem.
This is Murica, and we’re gonna call whatever we goddamn well please a shepherd’s pie.
Also, @Nesrie, if you want to maximize deliciousness and unhealthiness, top your shepherd’s pie with a solid layer of frozen tater tots (over the cheese so they stay crisp) studded with chopped bacon and bake as normal. Tater tot casserole is the most legit shameful thing I’ve ever made for myself, and it was glorious.
I mean okonomiyaki isn’t that crazy, but doing it from scratch was nuts.At least I didn’t make the mayo and okonomiyaki sauce from scratch (though I’ve done mayo recently and it’s crazy easy). . . but seriously, buy a bag of seasoned okonomiyaki flour, the sauce, and some bonito flakes and aonori off of Amazon and go nuts with it. It’s ludicrously delicious. I am actually angry with myself for not having eaten this before.
I grilled a steak the other day using bacon grease for the first time in my life. First I enjoyed the hell out of consuming the by product of the bacon grease for breakfast and then enjoyed the hell out of my bacon grease steak that night. I shall henceforth cook steaks in bacon grease. I highly recommend it. Kosher salt, Lowrys season salt, a little garlic powder and then hit the steak with fresh ground black pepper after grilling. Use cast iron if you have one.
In a related story I also learned that bacon grease is healthier than butter.
What was the problem?
That we were professional baby cow starvers.
Oh please, I passed that total just in 1 pack of cream cheese and a bag of Parmesan from Costco. The glorious Penbladian Revolution needs more cheese.
