Tyler, that pizza sheet is deceiving, how big i that pizza?!?
And, Rich, thanks for the link on the old fashioned recipe. I’m a sucker for that drink, as it got me into bourbon. I make various simple syrups and have tried a several different types of bitters as well. They can change the drink completely. The latest simple syrup was with brown cane sugar and a sprig of rosemary. Delicious! Infusing simple syrup is easy.
Who is our resident fresh pasta wizard? We have sheets of what was supposed to be lasagna coming out very thin, and with consistency of … breaking won ton noodles? Gah. Learning pasta making is not easy.
So for the holidays I tried a few new Indian dishes.
Samosas for the family (using flaky pastry since that’s what I had available) gulab jamun for dessert at other family gatherings, and the traditional Apple pancake for breakfast Christmas Day.
Do fellow QT3’ers count as family? All of that looks delicious.
Hey you, and any others here, are more than welcome to join. I just suspect that batch would be long gone by the time you even hit the Ohio River ;)
Holy shit that’s awesome, Craig!!! Proud of ya, too, haha. How did you find the process on the gulab jamun? It’s a recipe I’ve never attempted (nor samosas, actually; pastry dough is my bane).
Pretty easy overall. I, too, am mortified of making pastry dough, so instead I used crescent rolls. Different texture, but worked all the same. I will say though, I’ve never used couriander seeds before, and the recipe used about 2/3 of my brand new pack 😂
As for the gulab jamun, it was pretty easy. Made them Delhi style, with some thin strips of raisin in the core. Added a little cardamon and saffron to the syrup, and they were tasty and aromatic. It just smells fresh.
Since my partner has to drive home tomorrow midday, we did Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. It was one of my most ambitious preps yet and consumed 9 solid hours from my mom and I working in tandem.
First up, mostly for her, as she fell in love with it while traveling in Europe with her siblings this fall, Mulled Wine (albeit blurry):
@CraigM: I’ve never had that style of GJ and now desperately want to try it. That sounds delicious.
Buy your spices in Indian markets if at all possible. I got a 12oz bag of coriander seeds two years ago that are gonna lose their pungency before I finish them all for like $5. It’s amazing :-D
Thanks for the thoughts, btw! I may have to try samosas with premade dough. i love those fucking things.
* Apologies for doubled spaces throughout. Using my work laptop sans my usual mechanical keyboard attachment, and the keyboard on this thing doubles keys about twice a sentence on average; always has. I can catch the letters and punctuation easily enough, but spaces are harder to notice.
Ack! One of my favorite desserts ever! I recognized it immediately in the photograph. Great work. I’m coming over.
Cooking over the holidays was fun, I made Shepherd’s Pie for Christmas Eve, the main item feeding 9 adults. It came out quite well and was demolished.
I opened my secret Santa gifts that day, which led to my girlfriend and I deciding it would be a good time to break out the KitchenAid and make some homemade pasta. Pro tip: don’t learn how to make something the day before you need to make it for family, it’s a recipe for disaster. At any rate, we attempted to make lasagna noodles, based on a recipe from Lidia Bastianich’s book. Well … we didn’t do so hot. We made pasta that was way too weak, so once run through a press, it became too thin and broke up during a short boil. Almost like the consistency of thin wonton noodles. I think the mistake was not working it enough to toughen. More practice to be had, for sure.
At any rate, my girlfriend always saves the day. She pulled some store bought pasta (radiatore) and we built a baked pasta dish with homemade bolognese sauce, tons of cheese, and some extra tomato sauce blend, since that pasta absorbs a ton of liquid. All of this was stuffed into a roasting dish and browned to perfection. It was divine. We took it over to her mother’s house for Christmas Day.
@RichVR , that dish was calling your name.
And @ArmandoPenblade , I love the knotty pine wood from wherever that home was you were at during Christmas. It looked cozy.
More smoked poultry today. Two with Jamaican Jerk rub mix, two with toasted spice rub mix. Two of those are turkey breasts, two are chicken breasts.
In we go:
And, finished. A lot of this will be thin sliced for sandwiches, but one of the chicken breasts is going into some pasta, probably tomorrow. These were basted with butter and thyme and finished for just a short while in the oven.
In process of making mozzarella stuffed meatballs. Pics to come.
My parent’s custom-designed dream log cabin on top of a small mountain in Eastern TN, lovingly maintained by my dad for the last 17 years or so. If you like log cabins, it is a top-notch cabin :)
Also I didn’t realize you’d edited in the finished result on the chicken the other day. That’s beautiful!
@RichVR, looking forward to pics, man.
For my friend James’ annual New Year’s Day Boardgames Bash yesterday, I did a Venezuelan-inspired twist on some NY classics, plus sides to match.
So, grand total, I cooked or brought:
Ugh, that was a hell of a day of cooking. Super tasty, though.
Goddamn that looks delicious.
But I the end, it turned out to be quite good. I served it up with some leftover veggies and dumplings I had previously made and had frozen.
It tasted like severely taxing my own body beyond its limits ;-)
@Timemaster_Tim that’s amazing. Pasta-from-scratch is one of the third rails of cooking for me, personally, much less proper ramen. I’m super damned impressed.
I was going to ask if those were arepas before I got down to the list. 3 cheers for cooking network/food channel
Over my vacation, I prepared dinner three of five evenings, though one’s main dish was just leftover ham from Christmas dinner proper. Sadly I once again forgot to take photos.
Tuesday was Broiled Pork with Orange Sauce, from How to Cook Everything (as are the rest of the recipes I used). It uses boneless country-style pork ribs or shoulder meat cut into slices, sprinkled with salt and pepper, browned a bit in a skillet, and then broiled for some minutes on each side, going for an internal temperature of 145F. (You could also roast at 450F, in which case no need to turn over but cooking time will be longer.) Meanwhile you reduce 1 1/2 cups of orange juice, some cayenne, cumin, and one minced shallot to ~1/3 cup (we didn’t manage this at all, after much longer than the recipe said - I’ve had this issue before) as a sauce. Garnish with orange zest and fresh chopped parsley.
For sides, I made Braised Leeks with Olives and Brussels Sprouts in Coconut Milk. The former involves heating some oil in a large pot or skillet with a lid, then adding 3-4 (1.5 lbs worth) of trimmed leeks, sprinkling with salt and pepper, and browning them for about 5 minutes. Then add a half cup or so of chicken stock, bring to a boil, add olives, and cover, turning to low and cooking for 20 minutes or so. Uncover it and cook a little longer if there’s still a lot of liquid, but make sure there’s still some. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice and serve. For the brussels sprouts you heat oil in a pot, toast some yellow mustard seeds in it for 20 seconds or so, add a good dose of hot curry powder, a cup of coconut milk, and salt and pepper to taste and bring to a bubble. Add the sprouts, cover, and cook for 20 minutes or so until tender, then serve.
Wednesday night we had another big Christmas dinner but with much of the extended family as well.
Thursday we saw The Last Jedi and then came back with some of the prep work for dinner done by my grandma (who, unsurprisingly, was not especially interested in TLJ and also had just had a tooth removed so didn’t want to sit in a movie theater in case it started hurting). Main dish was Real Beef Stroganoff. Melt butter in a large skillet, then add a couple of large onions, sliced, and 8 oz or so of sliced mushrooms (optional), with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Cook for 10 or so minutes until soft but not browned. Add 1.5-2 lbs of cubed beef tenderloin or sirloin and cook for another minute, stirring. Then add dijon mustard, a couple chopped tomatoes (canned is fine) or a half cup of decent tomato sauce (either tomato option is optional) and a cup of beef or chicken stock. Get it bubbling steadily and cook until the beef is tender (~5 minutes). Mix in sour cream, garnish with fresh dill, and serve over buttered egg noodles or rice, or serve with bread. (We did none of the above as they are not paleo. I think this hurt it, unfortunately.)
For sides, it was Beet Rosti with Rosemary and Parmesan and Roasted Broccoli Gratin with Blue Cheese. The former was definitely the star of the meal. You grate about a pound and a half of beets, toss with fresh rosemary, salt and a cup of parmesan, then with an 1/8th cup of flour (gluten free flour was used here, it might have been a little more structurally firm with regular), then with another 1/8th cup. Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat until it begins to turn nut brown, then add the beets in a single layer, pressing down with a spatula so it fills the pan. Adjust the heat so that it sizzles but doesn’t burn, and cook, shaking the pan occasionally, for 6-8 minutes until nicely crisped. Transfer to a plate, cover with another plate, invert them, and slide it back into the skillet for another 6-8 minutes. (The beets did not really hang together as a single cake for us, probably a combination of the pan being smaller than intended - grandma just doesn’t have big enough skillets for my recipes - and the gluten free flour.) Cut into wedges and serve. It doesn’t taste like you may picture beets tasting, but it’s very rich and delicious and just that nice bit cheesy.
The latter basically involves tossing broccoli chunks with olive oil, salt and pepper, then transferring to an ovenproof dish. Add two cloves of smashed garlic, and bake for 10-15 minutes (until the tops are browning and the stems are crisp/tender). Sprinkle a cup or so of blue cheese over the top, then fresh bread crumbs (we forgot to make these but didn’t miss them) and bake for another 10 minutes.
Finally, on Friday we had the ham and Broiled Jicama with Chile-Lime Glaze and Bok Choy, Mediterranean Style. The jicama was super simple - we got it from Trader Joe’s so it was pre-sticked. We just tossed with one lime’s juice and zest, a tablespoon of neutral (flax, in this case) oil, a teaspoon of chili powder, a teaspoon of sugar (optional), and some salt, then spread out on a baking sheet on some foil and broiled on high for 4 minutes. The bok choy was more labor-intensive. You cut up the stems and the greens separately, rinse, start the stems cooking in olive oil for 3 minutes or so, then add the greens, salt and pepper, and a half cup of stock or water. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid evaporates and the stems are very tender. Add capers, olives and minced garlic, cook for another minute or so, and then add lemon juice or balsamic vinegar and cook for a few more seconds.
I don’t usually do sides at all, much less two per main dish, so having my grandma and/or my mom’s husband helping was the only way this all got juggled in any kind of reasonable timeframe. But lots of good veggies there.
I went to heat up some left-over stir fry, but I was too lazy to get a clean bowl. I put it in a bowl that already had some mustard in it. The results were not bad. I guess that’s one more ingredient I need to add to my sauce.
