You can do it with frozen brussels sprouts and fresh asparagus as well. I’ve actually had better luck with frozen brussels sprouts since fresh ones tend to be larger and don’t roast as well/thoroughly (and to me seem a bit more bitter).
PSH. That’s what we did for New Year’s.
I steam tons of artichokes, and I just made some pork chops wrapped in tinfoil.
I also let my freak flag fly a few weeks ago and made a spicy pesto bean quesadilla with carrots.
And oh, I also get forced to make bagel pizzas all the time, so I have started making crazy bagel miniwiches, like roasted turkey and avocado. Ok, that one is not crazy, but some of the other ones were.
pork chops in tinfoil? This is a new concept, how’s that work out?
I hate so much about the things that you choose to be.
I made butter chicken tonight. Well, I tried to anyhow. First off making tandoori marsala from scratch was a bit out of my league. I improvised with garam masala, cumin, and cayenne.
Mixed the “tandoori masala” with crushed ginger and crushed garlic into yogurt. Tossed the chicken thighs in the mixture and left it over night.
Browned the thighs before putting in sauce.
The sauce was made by heating ghee (clarified butter) and putting in a cinnamon stick, bay leaf and cardamom pod for a minute. Added garlic and ginger. Then added more garam masala, cayenne, sugar and a can of crushed tomatoes. Brought it to a boil and put in the chicken. After it was boiling again, added heavy cream.
It was good. But, I didn’t think it was the butter chicken I had eaten before per se.
Any pointers?
Me too.
Recipe, please!
I just went and watched a couple of these videos. One of them was a Zucchini Carpaccio with Balsamic vinegar. He prepared the dish and then got ready to drizzle the balsamic. He said that what he was using was aged Balsamic that was 100 years old and that it was prohibitively expensive but really good if you had it available. I was curious what Eric Ripert means when he says “prohibitively expensive”, so I checked it out. The answer is “about $2600 for 3.5 ounces.” Christ.
Just FYI, but buttermilk is actually the sour milk left over after you remove the butter. If you want to sub for it, take 1% or 2% and add a little bit of vinegar or lemon juice to thicken.
Great thread. I’ve been getting into cooking recently since my family decided to largely ditch eating out at restaurants (tri fecta of cost, health, and hassle). Each Saturday morning I go to allrecipes.com, pick out a few recipes for the weekend, and make a shopping list.
Some of my favorites from that site:
Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings
Slow cooker Chicken Stew
Broiled talapia parmesean
Chinese Chicken Fried Rice
Potato and Cheddar Soup (I added leeks)
Also just this morning I made Alton Brown’s French toast and it was AWESOME. Both my kids asked for seconds, which is unusual.
I also have a great chicken tortilla soup recipe from my sister somewhere in my gmail account. You use corn tortillas cut into strips and simmered with the other ingredients, which thickens it up nicely.
Well, consider we are at work, no kitchen, and only a power outlet, and a mini-fridge. The only logical thing to do is try and ruin our day with bad food. If this was a gourmet meal, it would be a complete failure, but being as how it was cooked on a conference table, it was pretty awesome.
This is amazing, I had no idea that you could fudge up some buttermilk. Around here, it’s difficult to find it, so you just saved me a ton of time, thanks. :)
ACTUALLY! What Glenn says is true of olden times, when buttermilk was the thin liquid left over after extracting butter from the curd. But today “buttermilk” in the store is cultured like yogurt, by adding bacteria. Still, you can sub whole, 1%, 2% or skim milk mixed with vinegar or lemon juice, as Glenn notes. Unless you’re a nutcase like me, you probably wouldn’t even try it, but DON’T try that trick with powdered milk. That was disastrous.
They also sell powdered buttermilk that works quite well in baked goods but dries out and becomes hard as a rock after a while. I thought it was genius because I rarely keep milk or buttermilk on hand but love cooking with buttermilk, but it dried out before I had used as much as I wanted.
Yesterday I made a creamy tomato soup with onion, garlic, chili and dried apricot. It was delicious.
Last night I made a lovely potage of celery and potato - a riff on this recipe. I had no leeks, nor any parsley and thyme, but it came out beautifully. Straining it was not optional, however. I usually like soup with some body to it, but it was unconscionably stringy. Perhaps I could get around that if I ran the celery through the food processor before hand. Now it’s very smooth and fancy looking, at least.
My girlfriend and I have taken to making sushi - it’s surprisingly fun, and the various necessary bits and bobs didn’t cost too much from our local Japanese shop (in Piccadilly Circus, no less!). We’re sticking to the basic maki and nigiri stuff at the moment, with salmons, prawns, and mackerel, and it’s all been turning out pretty well. Is anyone here a sushi guru that knows what sort of slightly more complex stuff might be worth branching out into, given that I am an utter butterfingers and would wreck anything more complex?
We also made a cracking bangers and mash last week, with red-wine gravy and caramelised onion. We kind of botched it together, but it certainly hit the spot as a stodgy winter warmer - it’s been bloody cold lately.
Dumb question, is a banger a sausage, or more of a hotdog-type thing? Being as how I’ve never been to the UK, I have no idea, they seem to be a popular thing from what I gather.
::EDIT::
I’m dumb, Wikipedia just got me the answer.
It’s a sausage, usually pretty mild.
I used to make lots of maki rolls. It’s fun for a party to let people make their own. We just used vegetables and tofu, though, as fillings. The conical hand rolls called Temaki aren’t too hard to make, I think, and you can go crazy making them beautiful.
Cheers, I’ll have to look into Tomaki - sounds like a pretty decent step to expanding our repertoire.
As for a banger, I’m sure wikipedia solved that just fine, but it’s a thicker sausage, rather than a hotdog style affair. They can be any sausage really, Lincolnshire and Cumberland are the most usual varieties for pairing with mash though. Never really though about how popular they might be elsewhere, but they tend to do the rounds over here a fair bit.