Tell us what you have cooked lately (that's interesting)

If we’re being honest, mine was a sort of thrown-together mish-mash based on a half-remembered recollection of the dish at a restaurant once and some Youtube videos I watched awhile back.

Mine wound up fairly tangy, with a decent spice/heat to it, with sliced onions and bell pepper alongside the eggs. if that sounds up your alley, I’ll try to recall exactly what I did :)

Haha. It seems like it’s very much a peasant food, good been the use of eggs as protein which is usually super inexpensive. So, not something that ends up in a lot of recipe books.

For what it’s worth, at least the pic of Armando’s looks more like shakshuka versus egg curry. The differentiation is usually yoghurt or cream in the curry. To your point, there are variations on shakshuka in a lot of cuisines.

It was something along the lines of this:

  • 12 large Eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
  • 1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
  • 1 tsp Cumin Seed
  • 2 Cinnamon Sticks
  • 2 Bay Leaves
  • 1 medium Red Onion, diced
  • 1 tbsp Ginger-Garlic Paste
  • 2 Green Chilies, minced
  • 1 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
  • 1/2 tsp Turmeric
  • 1 tsp Cumin Powder
  • 1 tsp Red Chili Powder
  • 1 tbsp Coriander Powder
  • 1 Yellow Onion, sliced
  • 1 Green Bell Pepper, sliced
  • 2 14oz cans Diced Tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup Water
  • 2 tbsp Cilantro, chopped
  • 1 tsp Garam Masala

Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet or dutch oven over medium heat. Add in the cumin seeds, bay leaves, and cinnamon sticks and fry for about 15-20 seconds, then add in the diced onions. Cook for about 6-8 minutes until well softened,then add in the ginger-garlic paste and cook another minute or so before adding in the green chili and cooking one more minute.

Dump in the dried spices/seasonings (salt, turmeric, cumin powder, coriander, and red chili powder), stir it all up, and add in the sliced onion and bell pepper. Coat those well with the spices and then add in the canned tomatoes and let the mixture cook at a simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 10-15 minutes until thickening. Add water to your preferred texture, stir in the cilantro and garam masala, then gently add in the eggs. To be extra fancy, you can slice those in half ahead of time, but since I was gonna be transporting it, I didn’t want all the yolks to fall out. . .

Man, a whole table full of vegetarian indian food and egg curry, served to a bunch of guys sitting around inside playing board games… the farts must have been epic. Veggie indian food does it to me like nothing else.

Ahahahaha, the visual of that scene playing out gave me a hearty laugh. Do tell, Armando!

Honestly not that I noticed, sad to say. Well, sad to disappoint y’all, glad to have not lived through that.

I did, however, win the graces of the Princess in way too many rounds of Love Letter and die horribly as Flash in Betrayal at House on the Hill in a single round after the traitor was revealed…

You folks are just killing it here. I love this thread.

I haven’t posted in some time as I haven’t been doing a lot of cooking of late, but one thing I have done is figure out how to make a decent chicken soup, something I never tried before. I don’t know why, it just seemed too daunting. Something only a grandma could do and would take all day. But then I was tasked with making a batch for my girlfriend’s visiting family, so I buckled down. I was pretty nervous because I was also working off of a recipe from her mother. Talk about yikes.

But the recipe was super simple, and it turned out great. I’ve made it a few times since, tweaking it to suit my taste, and it keeps getting better. It’s a great thing to make because it provides meals through a whole week’s visit and it freezes pretty well. I don’t know why I find this so pleasing, but making chicken soup just fills me with joy.

It doesn’t photograph well, but here’s the last batch:

I generally use dark meat–I do this just to annoy @ArmandoPenblade btw–in the soup, roasting those legs at the tail end of cooking so I can add more meat with slightly different character than the chicken cooked in the broth. I find it adds another layer to the soup. Then I strain and strain it, and we add cooked pasta when it is served and reheated. The noodles do not go in the pot or they’ll just become mush.

Anyway, y’all are doing some great stuff here. I love it.

-xtien

That’s some nice browned chicken legs you got there. Should add a nice satisfying flavor to it.

@ChristienMurawski I love that other people like dark meat chicken! It means there’s more white meat for me and my gf!

But seriously, that’s awesome that you knocked the recipe out and managed to improve it over time. I love cooking things more and more and getting more and more confident in it.

FB memories recently resurfaced an old album of my cooking experiments circa 2008-2010, and mannnnnn. . . that shit was rough :). But I got better!

For the longest time, I was convinced that 1) making potato salad was hugely complicated, and 2) I was no good at it.

Nope, turns out my default “Potato Salad: Impossible! Bad!” setting was a result of having been crap at making potato salad and damn near everything else when I first attempted it as a teenager.

Mumblety decades later, it transpires that I can make perfectly good potato salad, and it isn’t all that complicated. Which is nice.

So. I was tasked with making three chocolate cake layers for the wife. She in turn is going to use them to make a cake for a Halloween themed Bunco night. Good husband that I am I went to work. I had to measure the batter to evenly fill three cake pans. I calculate a shorter baking time due to batter thickness in the pan. I carefully mixed so as to not over develop the gluten and make a tough cake.

And I completely forgot the eggs.

I could not understand why they did not rise at all. Until I realized my fuckup.

So what do you call a chocolate cake made with just water and oil? A flat round brownie? A soft cookie?

Needless to say I’ll be baking early tomorrow. With eggs.

Edit: Congrats on the potato salad, CD. Love the stuff, all different types.

Yep Potato Salad is easy. I do have 2 rules though. Don’t over cook the potatoes ( so many people do! ) and leave out those nasty pickle parts. I make a mean spicy bacon tater salad.

5 - 6 russet potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
5 eggs hard boiled and diced
2/3 cup mayonnaise ( add more as needed if it’s too dry )
2 tbs mustard
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper ( double if you like the heat )
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. cumin powder
4-5 jalapenos, minced
2 green onions, sliced
7 - 8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

A vegan tragedy ;-)

While I cannot countenance the front of this quote, the back half deeply intrigues me.

I love a good German potato salad.

It wasn’t until I started making potato salad and got advice from a friend that I realized most potato salads use way too much mayo. I’ve started putting in just enough to moisten, and it’s incredible that way.

Cooked additional Indian food tonight, particularly some shrimp and vegetable korma and a dessert dish known as gajar ka halwa–carrots cooked in whole milk and sweetened condensed milk until it boils down to a crumbly, sweet-and-creamy mass. Topped with roasted nuts and golden raisins :)

I also had more dal makhani and anda curry for myself :)

And the dessert!

I didn’t do anything that fancy tonight. Just some stir-fried pork with broccoli and chiles:

It’s another How to Cook Everything Fast recipe. Just brown some pork w/ salt and pepper in the skillet in some oil, stir in some minced garlic, ginger and hot green chiles, then move that to a bowl while you crisp up some broccoli in more oil, then add a bit of water and cover to steam them the rest of the way, mix the pork back in, and toss with hoisin sauce, sesame oil, and green onions.

I was going to make the base recipe of this (with beef, without chiles) for my mom and grandma but we ran out of time in my visit before I got around to it. Hopefully mom made it for them to enjoy. I did cook several things while I was there but forgot to take pictures, including a lamb goulash (except beef because we couldn’t find lamb), a vegetable beef soup with nine kinds of veggies, butternut squash bisque, egg salad, cowboy chili (bean-free since mom is paleo) and honey balsamic pork chops, all in mom’s newly acquired Instant Pot in pressure cooker mode. Over the weekend in the middle of my stay, since we had eight people eating briefly (we were all gathering since my grandpa was dying - and indeed died on that Saturday), I slow cooked some Italian sunday gravy (flank steak, pork ribs, two kinds of sausage, plenty of tomatoes, red wine, and some fresh oregano and basil) pasta sauce to go over gluten-free spaghetti for the whole crowd, and then didn’t quite get slow-roasted pork butt roast w/ maple sugar/salt rub and red pepper chutney done in time to catch two folks before they departed, but the remaining six of us made a good dent on that 7 pound roast.

One other thing I cooked not long before my trip:

Despite appearances, that’s actually pasta, not pizza. Specifically, the Pizza Pasta Bake out of Pasta Revolution. Macaroni with a tomato sauce, chunks of sausage and sauteed mushroom, all topped with mozzarella and pepperoni. Except somehow I managed to either misplace the mozzarella or get Monterey jack instead? Not sure. So I ended up making the topping cheddar. Not as pizza-y, still yummy.

Just had some. Rather tasty. Needs ice cream.

Must. Not. Let My Inner Kelly Wand. Into. This. Thread.

-xtien