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

[ArmandoPenblade]

Yea, that might work. My daughter found one that involved cashews

I’ve used cashews as a thickener/creamifier in Indian cuisine before; boil some cashews, let em soak and soften, and then grind to a paste in a mixer-grinder and add to curry. It’s great, but really tough to eliminate stray graininess.

I think @stusser’s point above about roux (very faintly toasted) + blended potatoes will work well. I’d consider maybe coconut oil rather than coconut milk to lend further creaminess and richness, in place of more typical fats (and especially because I assume that butter’s off the table).

[Scuzz]

Cooking with butter doesn’t seem to bother them. But any milk, cream, cheese etc is just to much. But then they usually use a product like Crock Pot or whatever that is called. But I know in restaurants they will both eat food prepared with butter without it causing any problems.

[ArmandoPenblade]

Country Crock. I don’t have a ton of luck cooking with it as a butter replacement; all those faux-butters seem to burn or go off when exposed to direct heat. Most I’ll do is slather bread with 'em before making a grilled cheese. (I’d use real butter, but it takes way more planning than I’m capable of to remember to take it out of the fridge an hour beforehand so it’s spreadable)

Anyway, if butter’s kosher, yeah, just make a healthy amount of roux in the pan with slightly more butter than flour, toast it for maybe a minute tops just to kill the raw flour flavor. Then diced onions, carrots, celery, a little salt and pepper (if it’s me, at least, that’s what’s happening). Sautee in the roux, then add in stock–fish stock ideally–plus some clam juice. Boil potatoes separately and blend a portion of them, pour that in, bring it all to the boil, them back off to a simmer and add in the potatoes, maybe some corn, and obviously your seafood proper. Taste for seasoning and serve away.

You could probably cook the potatoes directly in the mixture, but then you get to futz around, adding water as you go to maintain texture, trying to blend some potatoes without catching carrots in the mix and turning the whole thing weirdly orange, etc. . .

[malkav11]

Butter will keep at room temperature for ages. my grandma just keeps a stick out for spreading (albeit covered).

[stusser]

You can also use almond milk thickened with roux to make a faux-bechamel. It won’t have the richness of a white sauce with milk or cream, but a bit of well-blended potato or cauliflower ought to compensate for a lot of that.

[rshetts]

I quit using any form of margarine decades ago. Buy an inexpensive butter container and use butter. Margarine is gross.
PS: its also easy to soften butter by microwaving it for around 10 seconds or so on 30% power.

[ArmandoPenblade]

Which makes me think of a random question:

Anyone’s microwave actually microwave things at a lower power level when in sub-100% levels, or does it just cycle on and off like both of my recent ones seem to do?

[stusser]

They all cycle on and off. It’s possible to have a microwave with variable continuous power, but much more expensive to build and doesn’t offer any real advantages over power-cycling.

[malkav11]

My microwave has an automatic butter softening button. Just saying.

[ArmandoPenblade]

Oh you fancy huh

[malkav11]

So fanceh.

[RichVR]

12 seconds in mine. Exactly 12 seconds.

[ArmandoPenblade]

Yeah well my microwave has a tiny orange spot of chicken tikka masala sauce that I keep forgetting to clean up everytime I could do so.

[Timex]

Someone may have pointed it out, but the most traditional New England clam chowder doesn’t actually use cream or milk.

[stusser]

Yeah Kenji has the definitive word on that one. I agree with his conclusion too; expectations and tastes change over time. Today, new england clam chowder has dairy.

How to Make Real New England Clam Chowder | The Food Lab

[Timex]

Agreed, I was just pointing out that you can find some solid chowder recipes that would meet the requirements of you look to the old traditional recipes.

[stusser]

Kenji also talks about how to thicken a soup with just potatoes, no roux, if such a thing becomes necessary. Maybe if you can’t eat gluten. Or arrowroot. Or corn starch.

[nKoan]

Definitely soup season here in Portland, Oregon.

Made a red bean pozole tonight. It’s vegan, though that wasn’t the goal. Recipe to be edited in as soon as I grab my laptop.

Recipe:

1 cup dry Sangre de Toro Beans (Can sub almost any little red beans)
1 cup dry hominy (I used some blue corn variety here)
3 Cascabel chiles (mild chiles, lots of body)
1 Guajillo chile (medium heat chiles)
1 Morita chile (essentially a dried chipotle, medium-high heat)
1 Onion diced
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Celery stalks (whole)
1 Carrot peeled (whole)
2 Bay Leaves
5 C water
1 Tbsp salt
2 Cloves garlic
1 Tbsp Mexican oregano
1 Tbsp dried epazote (can sub more oregano)
2 Tomatoes, peeled and diced

Pre work:
Soaking:
Soak the dry beans and hominy overnight (or at least 8 hours) in a brine of 4 cups water, 3 tbsp salt. Before cooking, be sure to drain AND rinse the beans.

Chile Powder:
Remove the stems and (optionally) the seeds from the chiles, roughly chop and put into a spice grinder. Grind into a chile powder. Or you could sub a different chile powder. About 4 Tbsp I would think?

Directions:
Heat the olive oil over medium heat until hot and saute the onion until it starts to turn brown. Add chile powder and cook until it becomes fragrant (about 30 seconds). Add the water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add the drained and rinsed beans and hominy, along with the celery, carrot and bay leaves. Bring back to a boil, cover the pot, reduce to low and simmer for 90 minutes. After 90 minutes, add the rest of the herbs, garlic and tomatoes. Bring back to a boil, cover the pot, reduce back to low and simmer for another 30 minutes. Hopefully by this time the beans are nice and soft. If not, more time might be in order. If at any point it looks like there isn’t enough water, add more but make sure its boiling or near boiling so you don’t ‘shock’ the beans with cold water. Pick out the carrot, celery and bay leaves before serving.

Other notes:
I added cocoa nibs into the grinder with the chiles for the chile powder. I also added one cinnamon stick in with the second addition of ingredients. I’m not sure these things added anything though, as I’m not sure I could taste them in the final product. If anything, I think the cinnamon stick added a little subtle warmth. The cocoa nibs would have possibly added more earthiness, but I’m not sure it needed more with all the chiles already present.

[malkav11]

This week’s cooking.
Yesterday was Stir Fried Beef and Broccoli with Scallions and Ginger

from How to Cook Everything Fast

This is the original recipe from which I posted a pork-and-chiles variant a week or two back. It’s beef instead of pork and no chiles. Pretty much no other difference. I think I did a slightly better job of following the recipe (although I used a little more meat than called for as the cheapest way to get beef was a two pound family pack), but that’s about it.

Today, Pasta with Spicy Eggplant and Tomato Sauce

also from How to Cook Everything Fast

Basically, you get pasta water boiling and then add pasta. Meanwhile, for the sauce you lead off by sauteeing a chopped onion for a few minutes while you trim and cube an eggplant, then add the eggplant, some garlic, some red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper and brown that for several additional minutes. Finally, you add a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes and simmer for several minutes. Once the pasta and sauce are both ready, you toss to combine and add some chopped fresh basil (mine had gone moldy so I used dried). Voila. This was the first time I’d ever used eggplant and I was a bit surprised to find it’s actually hard inside and kind of almost potato-like in general, if less starchy. I didn’t really notice it very much in the sauce, but garlic, tomato and red pepper flakes are pretty strong flavors so they kind of overrode it for me, I expect. I was going to make this recipe a week or two back but I didn’t realize that eggplants were meant to be refrigerated and used quickly or they would turn bitter, and by the time I read that it had been over a week. I guess you can get that out by letting the chopped flesh sit in salt for a while but for my first time I figured I’d rather just start fresh.

[ChristienMurawski]

I’ve been keen on trying my hand at making hot sauce. I looked up some recipes and it got dizzying, so I just decided to try something for starters, and treat this as a learning process.

I got a bunch of jalapeno peppers, an onion, a head of garlic, a couple of tomatoes, and roasted them in the oven for a bit.

I squoze out the bits of garlic (damn roasted garlic is something I need to do more…it’s so freaking good you can just pop it in your mouth) and put the tomatoes, the onions, and all the peppers into a pot. I added some vinegar and some water and a little salt and let it simmer for a little bit as everything broke down. Then I used my stick blender–since I was nervous about what the taste/color might do to my regular blender that I use for smoothies and milkshakes–to get everything together.

I reduced it a bit and tasted it. HOLY CATS IS IT HOT! I love the spicy, so I left a lot of the seeds in the peppers. I’m so glad I did. I love how hot this stuff is. We’ll see how I feel about that a couple weeks from now as the hot sauce comes together.

Then I put it in containers for the fridge.

Yes. I effed up the spelling on the labels. Ugh. Those things were too hot and I couldn’t think straight.

Anyway, not a bad first experiment. It’s too vinegary. I need to use a better vinegar. Maybe apple cider vinegar? And I think the next time I’m going to go with dried red peppers for a different flavor. But so far I love the taste of this stuff. I’ve not tasted it with food–I’ll try it in a simple burrito later tonight–but the taste testing was lovely. If burningly so.

Any tips from those who make their own hot sauce would be greatly appreciated.

-xtien