Gendal
1901
Ah, the CI review was from Cook’s Country, which I don’t get, but apparently have access to via the CI web site. Odd they didn’t review the cheaper Crock-Pot brand pots, would have been nice to get a confirmation that it is indeed as shitty as I think it is.
What I did instead was get a La Creuset dutch oven. Not quite as convenient but I can use it for quite a bit more and I don’t have to worry about equipment failures or uneven heat distribution.
Aki
1902
We used Michael Chiarello’s gnocchi recipe to make home-made gnocchi yesterday. We topped it with some home-made tomato sauce, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella. We’ve always been fans of gnocchi but have never made it ourselves at home. It really wasn’t as much work as I thought it would be and the results were every bit as good as gnocchi we’ve had in some very nice restaurants. No pictures because we were too busy drinking great wine and enjoying our food to bother with a camera.
One note about the Chiarello recipe: you definitely want to, at the very least, double it if you’re cooking for more than 2 people. I doubled it for our family of five and there was just enough. I’ll probably quadruple it next time since I like leftovers for lunch the next day.
Anyone know the difference between a fritatta and a spanish omelette (are all of those spelled wrong? according to firefox yes, but google no)? In any case I’m making one or both of those. I’m trying to clear out my fridge. You fry whatever you have in a skillet, then pour eggs and cheese over it, then bake it for like 15 minutes. I’m doing potatoes, jalapenos, and carmelized onions.
I’m going to try to top it with cilantro chutney. That’s also very easy - 1 bunch cilantro, 1 thai chili, a little sugar and salt, juice of 1 lime, a little olive oil, a little cumin, and blend. I’m sorry about not having more precise measurements, I always just add more of whatever and re-blend until it tastes good.
interman
1904
No photo, but I went to a “beer tasting” of sorts last night, and decided I wanted to try making pretzels the old fashioned German way, which involves dipping them in a lye solution.
To make them a bit more tasty I made a pre ferment the night in advance, which is essentially a small dough with a relatively low hydration that’s left in the fridge for 12-16 hours or so. You then take it out, leave it for a while to get warmer, and then make a new dough that you add the pre ferment to piece by piece.
I then let it rise for 2-3 hours or so, deflated it, shaped it to the best of my abilities. They then need to rise for a while, but in the meantime I measured up 1000 grams of water and 40 grams of lye. I let it boil, turned off the heat, dipped each pretzel for 10 seconds or so, put it on a pan, sprinkled over some sea salt, and baked it for 14 minutes I think it was. Color was dark, and taste was really good. Next time I want the crust to be crunchier though, but that’s always been tricky.
Nellie
1905
Tonight I’m having a go at a traditional French fish Soup. ALthough the recipe doesn’t strictly call for it, I’ve got a bag of fish scraps turning into stock on the stove at the moment. Just having a break before I run off and try tweaking the aioli. Last time it had a little bit of a bitter edge to it but I was using a pretty strong Olive oil, this time I’ve got a much milder version and some plain veg oil to “flatten” it out a bit.
Annoyingly I can’t find Pernod around these parts at all so I’ve doubling up on the fennel to hopefully try and give it enough of a kick and I’ve two really nice pieces of hake still on the bone to add at the later stages.
Gendal
1906
Not really, but I can confuse the issue by introducing the Spanish Tortilla. Made one of those recently because I am a sucker for all egg based dishes and it was pretty good.
just had this last week at my parents’. my mom tosses in onions and some wings and drumsticks in there, too. everything comes out nice and tender/soft/smooth.
Dang, that’s what I meant when I said “spanish omlette!”
What did you put in it (other than eggs (that’s interesting))?
Anyone try some delicious seaweed soup? :)
Gendal
1910
I told you I was going to confuse the issue (sadly not intentionally, I just failed to link the two). Used Cook’s Illustrated recipe, which includes a lot of potato and whatever else you want to throw in.
Just tried this out last night and I love the way it worked. Stuck with the recipe the first time out…or at least I thought I was doing so until I realized I was screwing up and using fresh chiles instead of dried. Idiot. I forgot that pasilla is the dried version of the pepper. The stores I went to labeled the fresh peppers as pasilla and I just didn’t think it through. A lot of places do that. Didn’t occur to me until I was in the re-hydration phase of the recipe and my brain finally poked me and said, Why are you re-hydrating fresh peppers? What a dork.
Still, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Pleasant amount of heat, though next time I think I’ll crank it up. I traded one pound of the ground beef for some cubed stew meat as I usually use that type of thing in my chili (as AlanC suggests below). However, I was pleasantly surprised at how great the ground beef turned out (followed your advice and didn’t break it up too much) so I’ll probably omit the cubes next time.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this, Athryn.
-xtien
Kaigen
1912
Last night I made a fairly tradition Hungarian Goulash. Perfect for the rainy Portland weather and the minor cold I’ve taken on in the past few days.
So fresh from the pot that it fogged up my lens:
And today I made a sour cream coffee cake with the springform pan I just bought (and love, oh so dearly).
I tried making Chinese braised beef brisket recently and it turned out well. I more or less followed the recipe / instructions that I found on this blog. As they say, the key ingredient is the Chee hou sauce which I insisted on calling woo-hoo sauce. I didn’t have any brisket available so I grabbed some stewing beef from the supermarket.
The whole thing was done in a dutch oven. I also added cubed daikon (twce as much daikon as beef cubes by volume). I didn’t add any green onion nor use any sesame oil. Once it was all int he pot and mixed up well, the dutch oven went into a 300F oven for a couple of hours. Towards the end of cooking, I stirredin a corn starch slurry to thicken.
The end result was delicious.
Chop up a pound of bacon, fry it until it’s a little brown and there’s a lot of fat in the pan, add 1 cup of heavy cream and juice from 1 lemon, stir for one minute, remove from heat, add a good handful of chopped dill, toss with pasta, garnish each plate with 1 (or more, to taste) teaspoon minced lemon zest.
So I’m trying to eat healthier and lose weight.
Of course I want to have a Monte Cristo sandwich.
Kaigen
1916
White chocolate rosemary blondies.
Sarkus
1917
Angel hair pasta +
garlic pasta sauce +
mozzarella cheese +
diced cooked chicken +
diced tomatoes with garlic and onions =
Awesome dinner.
Marged
1918
Tri-tip steak
Cauliflower
Potatoes
All roasting in the oven.
Omniscia
1919
I got at least a +1 to my cooking skills this evening, as my sisters for my birthday (back in August) enrolled me in a sauce class.
We ran out of time to properly cover beurre blanc, but we did get to mix up a Bechamel, which gave way to a Mornay (which I realize I’d already pretty well figured out that one time I made Welsh Rarebit).
We also put together a nice red wine reduction, which we combined with a veal demi-glace (from stock made beforehand by the instructor) to make a wonderful sauce for a grilled skirt steak. It was amazing.
Finally, we whipped up a quick (ha!) Hollandaise sauce, which tasted lovely but made my arm feel like it was about to fall off. So much stirring…
I have enough leftover Hollandaise for Eggs Benedict for breakfast, though. That will be a treat.
nlanza
1920
Blender Hollandaise is the only way. It’s good to know how to make the sauce the traditional way so you understand how it works, but after that the blender is always better.
