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

Sauage / white beans / spinach with a hunk of crusty baguette :)

Me want.

Me too, man. That looks warm and delicious.

Roasted brocollini and garlic, beef meatballs, whole tomatoes (canned) and onion sauce on top of cheesy grits. You can’t really see the grits.

Holy crap, that sounds like a delicious combo, @Nesrie. Looks gorgeous, too :-D



The last of the Venezuelan food last week, including some Reina Pepiada in the rearmost arepa; it means “Curvy Lady,” named after a famous Venezuelan beauty queen by her favorite restaurant’s owner ;-)

It’s basically a Latin-flaired chicken salad, with a base of avocado, mayo, and lime juice, studded with diced garlic, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and parsley, plus shredded chicken. Tasty!


Dinner A for my gf this week: a couple of thin fillets of tilapia, blackened, with some good savory cornbread and a small baked potato, covered in cheddar and bacon. She later said she wished she’d had one thing that wasn’t salty and heavy :)


My dinner that night: the same cornbread, a similar potato, and some chili covered in cheese and sour cream.

The potatoes are fun: covered in olive oil and kosher salt, roasted uncovered at 400F for an hour till crisp all over on the outside and creamy in the center. Split, stuffed full of butter, thinly shredded mozzarella, and freshly ground pepper, then stirred around into an almost mashed potato like consistency within the skin, then topped in cheddar and rebaked. Basically lazy-man’s twice baked potatoes.

The chili’s just some chuck, dark and light kidney beans, diced onions, garlic, and chipotles, and a couple of small cans of diced tomatoes and chilies, simmered with a dark stout, salt, pepper, cayenne, chili powder, cumin, and brown sugar. It’s good shit :-D


A fancied-up Frito Pie: Fritos topped with the aformentioned chili, cheese, lots of black pepper, some pico de gallo, sour cream, and scallions.


Second dinner variation for the gf, including more blackened tilapia, some mashed potatoes, buttery toasted french bread, and a side salad for a little variation this time :-D


And my dinner, another double-roasted potato, soem chili, and my own salad. Our usual favorite mix of baby spinach, goat cheese, cranberries, gala apples, toasted pecans, and a maple-cider vinaigrette. Sweet and tangy and crunchy–noms!

And that’s a week of food for us, not counting a couple of nights with friends sharing Venezuelan food and chili with them and a couple of stops at restaurants ^_^


P.S. it was exceedingly hard to balance the chili and the salad containers on the edge of that plate for this shot. Invisible to the camera, there is a tiny container of spreadable butter propping up the chili, which itself is then propping up the salad bowl. . .

Made a pork butt roast today. They were on sale for $0.98 a lb, so I grabbed an 8lb roast

Garlic, rosemary, marjoram in a red wine and broth base with carrots, onion, potato and celery.

Oh my god was it delicious. And super tender after low roasting for 2 hours.

Help help! I’m making roast butternut squash (400 F, 25 minutes, bit of oil, pepper, salt, garlic). Last time it was great. This time it is super mushy and I saw there’s a big layer of liquid at the bottom of the pan.

I threw away the water and am broiling at 475 F to see if I can save it. It’s been 20 minutes or so. Seems to be helping but the stuff is already cooked. Can I save this?

Ok this one is ok, mushy but at least the metal helped cook it. The one i cooked in glass looks much worse.

I’d say it mostly depends on the intention. It’d probably still make a bangin soup or similar, but if it needs some body and bite, it might be too late. If you can save it, chilling it (esp. cubed) would also firm things back up, to toss into, say, a winter panzanella-style preparation. It’ll still be a little looser than usual, but the chill will definitely help.

But if the goal was, say, cubed for curry or something, may just need to let the texture go a little. It’ll still be tasty. Actually probably moreso with that extra browning!

Ok screw it! I’ll take it out, if it’s no good I make soup like you say.

I can help with soup if you go that route! I have a delicious butternut squash soup I make.

1 pack cream cheese
6 cups chicken broth
1 squash cooked
2T butter or olive oil
1 large onion
Rosemary
Paprika
Marjoram
Salt
Garlic
Tarragon
Brown sugar

Cool the onions in the butter or oil until soft and translucent.
Mix the broth and cream cheese until melted, blend in the squash until smooth texture. Add the onion. Add seasonings to taste.

I use about 1/3-1/2 cup brown sugar. Gives it a hint of sweet to go with the smoky of the paprika and the savory of the squash and other ingredients.

So I made Chicken Kofta again tonight - I made the effort to go out & find some Korma curry paste and I have to admit it did improve it over the thai green curry I used last time. It’s a bit more bold and a bit more spicy.

It’s a really messy dish forming the meatballs (it uses minced chicken), but this is so darn good. Really yummy.

from Taste.com.au

image

You guys amaze me. Your pics would sell recipe books!

I don’t really cook though I’ll make stir-fry now and then and being a guy I might BBQ stuff. I’ll pan grill a sandwich or make a veggie omelet for breakfast or maybe a bagel breakfast sandwich. That’s my repertoire.

The GF is great in the kitchen but we both have gravitated towards simple fare – steak, or chicken, or shrimp, with vegetables as a side. She does it so well with just a perfect touch of sauce or seasoning. For fancier fare we enjoy going out and enjoying St. Louis’ lively restaurant scene.

I did take leftover spaghetti with pork and dump some sriracha on it after I reheated it. It made it taste like spicy chili-mac, sans beans. It was so tasty that I reheated a second helping. That was lazy-man gourmet tonight. Everyone had various leftovers. That seems to be one of the challenges with cooking – making sure you eat the leftovers.

Gah, that is freaking gorgeous Tman. Absolutely beautifully done!

And yes, I almost never make meatballs almost purely because I find shaping them to be extremely unpleasant (and kinda time-consuming!).

Nothing at all wrong with that; those kinds of meals are amazing. In fact, the main reason that we don’t do them more often in our household is. . .

Steak and pan-seared chicken and most seafood don’t reheat especially well, and with my extremely busy schedule, I need to be able to prep meals for the whole week in just one or two nights’ worth of cooking each week. So lots and lots of leftoverable style fare for us. I’ve made something like 6 meals out of that chili for myself alone in the last few days while we were snowed in, heh.



Continuing to tweak my Southern-style biscuits recipe (they really are the best things the South ever gave to us!) was an excuse for breakfast for dinner last night while we were running low on groceries. Plus a couple of marbled fried eggs with Sriracha and scallions, some hash browns, and some bacon for me :)

The biscuits were. . . pretty good. But there’s a lot of improvement left to be done on my recipe and technique.

I’ve been working on my biscuit recipe for about 50 years, I swear. Still not where I want it to be. My grandmother made biscuits and dumplings that were to die for, but she never gave anyone the recipe, actually refused to give it even to her daughters.

Grandma Biscuits–or, in my case, Mawmaw biscuits–are a legendary item. An artifact of a time long past, a forgotten age of grandeur, replete with wonders the mind can now scarcely imagine. Would that we of this small and feeble era could achieve greatness anything like theirs.

So when you rebake the potatoes, how long do you rebake them? And do you close them up again or do they bake split open?

What stout did you use for the chili? I’ve always wondered about cooking with beer. What kind of flavor does it tend to add?

I think I will make your baked potatoes and chili this weekend. Those pics look so good!

I made a pot of chili this weekend as well. I’ve always used the Moosewood recipe for chili, though I sometimes use ground beef instead of bulgar–depends on whether I am feeling vegetarian or not I guess!

But one thing I definitely discovered this weekend: celery seed does NOT have the same effect on chili that celery salt does. And not in a good way.

About 5 minutes, or really, just till the cheese is melted (and, if I put some bacon bits from a bag on top, when said bits are crispy). I leave them mostly open, so the cheddar on top can melt down into the flesh of the potato.

I went with Guiness, since that’s what we had around. I’ve used things like brown ales and other stouts in the past, though.

In general, legend has it that there are flavor compounds in tomatoes that only become available when they are simmered in alcohol, so presumably it makes things more tomato-y. But it also adds a certain richness, depth of flavor from the malty notes. A tang of bitterness that rests against the bright tomato and chili flavors and earthy cumin and smoky chipotles. The brown sugar is mostly there to counter that bitterness from being too overwhelming, since I’m not a huge fan of it.

Full Recipes, if desired

Chili Recipe

  • 2 lbs 85/15 Ground Beef (A mix of chuck, round, sirloin, and/or shortribs is even nicer, but harder to come by unless your grocery store has a real butcher who’ll mix up 2-3 kinds of meat for you)
  • 1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
  • 1 large Yellow Onion, diced
  • 3 cloves Garlic, minced
  • 1 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt (or to taste)
  • 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
  • 2 tsp Chili Powder (or to taste)
  • 2 tsp Cumin Powder
  • 1/2 tsp Cayenne (optional, for extra heat)
  • 1-2 tbsp Brown Sugar, packed (sample chili with just one, add more at the end if needed)
  • 1 small can (I think 7oz?) Chipotles en Adobo, roughly chopped, with sauce
  • 2 14 oz cans Diced Tomatoes with Chilies
  • 1 12oz bottle Dark Beer (e.g. Stout, Porter, Brown Ale)
  • 2 14 oz cans Kidney Beans, drained and rinsed

Heat the oil over medium heat and add the onions, cooking for 12-14 minutes, stirring regularly, until they are noticeably browning in spots. Add the garlic and cook another minute, stirring, before adding in the ground beef. Break it up to your preference with a wooden spoon or similar, stirring it around until it’s all cooked through. Let the water in the pot from the meat evaporate till you hear sizzling as the meat begins to fry in its own fat, and cook another 1-3 minutes past that point, stirring more often, to add some nice browning to the meat.

Add in your salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, sugar, and cayenne (if using), plus the chopped chipotles, stirring to incorporate and letting cook for 30 seconds or so to wake up the spices. Then add in the canned tomatoes and beer, stirring well, and bring the mixture up to a simmer. Cook about 20-30 minutes, or until darkening noticeably, then add in the drained, rinsed beans and cook another 10 minutes or so to heat them through. Serve!

More Complete Potato Directions

  • 1 or more Large Russet Potatoes (about .5-.75lbs each), scrubbed well, pricked all over with a fork, and dried
  • Oil (spray or otherwise)
  • Kosher Salt
  • Black Pepper
  • Butter, softened (or spreadable butter substitute if you’re lazy like me)
  • Finely Shredded Mozzarella
  • Shredded Sharp Cheddar
  • Bacon, Scallions, Sour Cream, etc.

Rub the potato(es) all over with oil, then sprinkle to coat with a fine layer of kosher salt. Roast on a baking sheet at 400F until completely tender (you can test by poking it with a thin knife), about an hour.

Split each potato down the middle-long ways, starting about half an inch from the tips, and cutting almost all the way down. Using tongs or two spatulas, press the ends together to split it open. Spoon in 1-2 tbsp of butter, 2 tbsp of mozzarella, and 1/4 tsp of black pepper and use a fork to mix it into the flesh, trying not to pierce the skin from the inside.

Sprinkle about 2-3 tbsp of shredded cheddar on top of each, plus bacon pieces if using, and put back into the oven at 400F for another 5 minutes till melty. Serve with sour cream and chives/scallions :)

Enjoy! It’s a really tasty meal :-D

I haven’t been working on mine for 50 years, probably closer to 30, but I’m pretty proud of this recipe. The breakthrough happened one weekend when I didn’t have enough all-purpose flour and substituted in some whole wheat flour for 1/2 of it.

Outside of that, this is a pretty straightforward recipe - but through trial & error I would say most of the greatness of biscuits come with technique. Don’t overly knead, use a biscuit cutter to get those sharp edges that aren’t sealed (which using a drinking glass will do), and arranging them on the pan so the edges touch - but then the last 3 minutes, separate them.

All in all that is very close to what I’ve done, though not with the whole grain flour. I’ve tried milk, half-and-half but I don’t recall ever trying buttermilk.

And I know full well that my grandmother used Crisco, but geez I hate that stuff.