6049

Maybe I just don’t like kimchi enough to go through with it. Sounds a tad gross. :P

6050

Didn’t mean to appear snarky. Apologies. As for hot sauce I’m afraid I’m not much help. Never made it. But I’d use apple cider vinegar as was already stated by those who actually know.

6051

Maybe rice vinegar?

Or dilute at some concentration with water. Pretty sure my favorite hot sauce from the local taco joint here is dried peppers boiled up for a bit, drained of most of the water but definitely reserving some, and then pureed. Keep meaning to try to do that. Already bought the peppers.

Also found this: https://www.bonappetit.com/people/out-of-the-kitchen/article/secret-awesome-hot-sauce

Oh, and here’s a recipe. Knew I wasn’t making this up:

And I’ve definitely seen it sans all the spices added at the end

6052

Yeah. I think I’ll try this next time.

Or this. I saw an interesting recipe by Jamie Oliver that used apple and apple cider vinegar that was pretty interesting. I guess I just went cheap with my first attempt to see what happened. I made a number of mistakes–sauce is too think and is more like a salsa, for instance–but the thing still works nicely. I think it might be better as a dipping sauce for dumplings or wontons instead of what I intended.

No need to apologize, Rich. I was just giving you a hard time. I hate cleaning with vinegar even though I know it’s the right thing to do, because I think the ants are just laughing at me when I attack them with it. And they have returned with a vengeance this week as the heat has returned to Los Angeles. It’s 92 degrees in my house today. At the end of October!

Thanks Obama!

-xtien

6053

Researching recipes I’ve seen rice and apple cider vinegars feature prominently. Also white sometimes.

6054

You know, besides making me salivate, you just continue to blow me away. That spread makes me feel like I’m sitting down at a top-notch korean restuarant I frequent and I dare say, the veggie options you have really are better.

But I’ve got to ask - how much time do you invest in prepping this? Is this done over multiple days and you’re staging everything, or are you able to go from grocery sacks to this in ~2hrs or less?

6055

First up, thank you very much for the kind words. I really poured it all out for that spread in particular, so I’m glad it compares to “the real thing” :-D

So in general, I cook ~3 nights/week, preparing 2-3 recipes each night and slowly amassing a collection of complementary foods. For instance, tonight, I’ll cook some black beans just to save time. Tomorrow I’ll make chicken tinga, cilantro-lime rice, and guacamole. Thursday, I might put together some taco meat-style beef and pico de gallo. Depending on the recipes in question, this might be a 2-hour investment or 4!

The remaining nights (and lunch breaks), I have leftovers I can quickly toss together. For instance, for Thursday’s lunch, I can have a griddled burrito stuffed with sour cream, rice, beans, chicken, guacamole, and cheese, then toasted in my panini maker for 4-5 minutes to brown it up. It’s just a matter of pulling stuff outta tupperware and dumping it onto a big tortilla at that point :)

However, for things like the Korean spread above, I was cooking for family and had mom’s help. We went for about 4-5 hours straight on Saturday when I got back from my partner’s mother’s wedding (the “real” reason for the trip) and wound up with the recipes in the first photo. The next day, we spent about 3 hours total in the kitchen, but in addition to the fried chicken, sauce, edamame, and veggie pancakes pictured, we also produced a double batch of Cajun-style red beans for her to freeze and eat on for the next few weeks.

For Blizzcon in particular, I’ll cook most of next Thursday night and on into Friday morning, then schlepp everything over to my buddy’s place, where I’ll do final prep of a few items (I’ll make the sauces for the chicken from scratch there, and bread the already-dry-brined chicken then deep fry it, plus make fried rice and veggie pancakes “live” for people from pre-prepped ingredients).

That one’s probably gonna be about 8-10 hours total active cooking time invested, but I’ll be feeding ~10-12 people for two 12+ hour days, and most of 'em will tip about $5-10 apiece. So it’s a good thing I do this outta love for cooking and friends and not for the paycheck ;-)

6056

I like the suggestion of rice vinegar. I feel like white vinegar is too harsh but it at least doesn’t contribute unexpected flavors. Apple Cider vinegar adds flavor to it. It’s not bad necessarily, I think you just have to account for it.

6057

That’s some serious planning / execution but is super smart. Most of our meals at home consist of the primary course, a salad and a starch. I would love to have all the sides / variety but time and shelf space are at a premium in our fridge.

What about all the sauces? That’s where I swear 30% of our shelf space is dedicated to all the bases for all the sauces we do and we hate to throw things out, because we’ll use it in another month. Do you make your sauces from scratch or do you keep a staple of things on hand (lemon juice, pad thai, sweet / hot, mushroom, red & green curry paste, etc)

6058

Sauces in general are from scratch except in cases where I’ve found a particular sauce to be too much trouble to do at home. So, for instance, Thai curries, which involve just a few too many individual steps for most nights, start with a curry paste held in the fridge long-term.

I do run into fridge space concerns. Arika, my partner, keeps cold brew coffee, Coke, apple juice, half-n-half, and creamer in the fridge full-time. I generally have diet coke, 2% milk, and an energy drink or two handy. Between those, plus really common condiments I keep larger bottles of (ketchup, mayo, red and green salsa, BBQ sauce, and some fancier salad dressings for days when I’m lazy and don’t wanna make a vinaigrette), we’ve basically filled the entire top section of the fridge.

Asian cuisine has also consumed a lot of shelf-space–soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, fish sauce, chili sauce, mirin, Kewpie mayo, okonomiyaki sauce, etc., are basically a shelf and a half. Toss in some syrups, jellies, mixed drink fixings like simple syrup and grenadine, and olives/pickles/etc., and all the shelves are already gone. Then the big cheese drawer, random Indian stuff like tamarind sauce and chutneys, and yeah, it’s getting very full.

So there’s basically just one big bottom shelf dedicated to storing tupperwares, plus the crispers/meat drawers at the bottom. Some weeks are a real adventure in fridge Tetris! And for Blizzcon, I’m probably gonna be stacking things extra tight just to fit it all, or even making use of my cooler + ice packs from Thursday night into Friday morning. . .

But in the end, this is what makes me happy and keeps us both fed and reasonably healthy, so I make it work :)

6059

Just had a thought. Another thing that white vinegar is good for is cleaning the wax off of citrus fruit. 3pts water to 1 pt vinegar. Spray or soak the fruit. Scrub a bit and rinse. Great for lemonade or limoncello making.

6060

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Tex-Mex week returns with my chicken tinga, cilantro-lime rice, bacon-infused black beans, and guacamole. Life is good :)

6061

Vaguely Oktoberfesty bratwurst, braised red cabbage and apple, kartoffelpuffer, and not-so-Germanic asparagus:

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Not pictured: sour cream and applesauce for the latkes.

The cabbage took for-freakin’-ever. Recipe said 1 hour, which I was dubious about, but in hindsight I could have put it on after lunch and left it going all afternoon. My guess is that it will improve overnight, which is a good thing because there’s a metric ton of it. Also, more apple next time.

6062

I made an Almond and Egg tart for Spanish Girl’s movie night. It was apparently a favorite of Charles V, so says a few sources. Anyway, it was not photogenic at all, so I didn’t take a picture, but it was well received. The hostess even kept a slice. I know the texture wasn’t quite there though. The almonds refused to smoothen out, and by the time i realized the problem I couldn’t really start over. I am going to try again though and hopefully get a prettier result.

6063

Slow cooker buffalo chicken lasagna with blue cheese crumble topping. Kinda sloppy when you serve it, but delish.

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6064

Spaghetti Pie.

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Using this recipe.

http://abc.go.com/shows/the-chew/recipes/spaghetti-pie-gail-simmons

6065

That’s serious business right there, chief.

6066

That is some inspired lunacy right there. I’d eat it that in a hot minute.

The spaghetti pie reminds me of the ad hoc casseroles my mom used to do with spaghetti leftovers. In a good way. Hadn’t thought about those in years…

6067

I saw your post while standing in line at the co-op. I then clicked on the recipe, got out of line, and went and shopped for the dish. Will try it tomorrow night.

6068

So cool! Looking forward to pics.

Edit: I used a 10" diameter springform pan that is 3’’ deep. It exactly holds the entire recipe. Even if you feel like it seems to be too much, don’t worry. Have fun!