Cooking In General

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Had the top of my sea salt grinder come off as I was sleepily seasoning my eggs this morning. Last eggs in the house, too. Oh, well . . .

 

Oooh I hate it when that happens! At least if it was pepper you could scrape it off to an edible degree. Salt on the other hand just soaks right in, and sea-salt is even saltier. I know I've had more than one stew or soup that I've had to grab a spoon fast to scoop out too much seasoning before it soaked in.

 

Only if you let me syrup the pancakes after

Hey, guys and gals, I've got a special request from my bro - carbonnara lasagna. Any of you happen to have this one laying around? I'll admit I too am curious as to what it tastes.

 

Chicken and Vegetable Soup

4 cups, more or less, of chicken or vegetable broth - canned is fine
about 1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts or chicken tenders
1 medium onion, chopped

Combine these three ingredients and simmer for about 30 minutes until chicken is thoroughly cooked. Use a slotted spoon to fish out the chicken and set it on a plate to cool. Don't worry about the bits of onion that cling to it.

Now add to broth/onion mix:

4-5 carrots, thickly sliced
4-5 celery stalks, thickly sliced
8 oz. sliced fresh mushrooms, if you like them
1 15 oz can (or whatever size is nearly that) diced tomatoes
2 bay leaves
2 - 3 teaspoons dried basil
salt and pepper to taste

Simmer this about 15 minutes until vegetables start to soften. By now the chicken should be cool enough to handle. Cut it into chunks and return it to the soup. Simmer about 10 minutes more to reheat the chicken chunks.

I like to serve it with grated Parmesan cheese on top - when I can find decent Parmesan cheese, a challenge in these hinterlands. Today, for instance, there is none to be had.

Keeps fairly well in refrigerator for about 4 days. Because of the chicken you shouldn't keep it longer. Try to find and remove the bay leaves as you're transferring it to storage though sometimes I miss one of them and it doesn't seem to hurt it much.

I don't actually measure the basil when I make it. I just sprinkle it on top of the mixture till it looks right, so I'm guessing at the quantity.

 

Not really being one for "amounts" and "weights" so much, most of my cooking is done kinda haphazard but I have managed to find a few interesting combinations...

Such as adding garam masala (sp?) and/or cream cheese sandwich spread to saucy dishes such as Spaghetti Bolognese, and as for the shredded potato-pancake things I referred to in the Potatoes poll, mum calls the dish Mock Fish (don't ask me why, I don't even know) and basically you just:
Grate/shred the potatoes - use a food processor if you want to get all fancy and quick, I have to be content with just one of those hand-held cheese-grater type things for now
Squeeze out as much of the water/starch crap as possible and mix in enough eggs to hold the mixture together without overly flavouring it (unless of course you want that flavour in it)
Shallow fry, temperature about middling I guess so they don't burn before they cook through
Plate it and chuck a bit of sauce/salt and pepper etc on top and Bob's your uncle.
Lived on those for weeks at a time when I first moved out of home cos they're so cheap and easy to make and so damn tasty. You can of course add any spices etc that you want to the mix before cooking...I always get a bit creative when I cook, often just to use up stuff that's lying around and doesn't get used often...

 

A recipe for something simple, quick and spontaneous:

• Take a largish cup of basmati rice, salt mildly and cook.
• Heat up the pan on medium heat with a little butter, cut an onion into tiny bits and put into the pan and let them go
• Rasp three carrots (so you have about as much carrot rasps as you have rice) and add them to the onion, extinguish generously with white wine. Add one stock cube, one leaf of laurel, salt, pepper, thyme and juniper berries
• Let cook for 5 minutes on medium-ish heat so it concentrates.

Serve. 15 min active work. Tastes well, scents well and looks good.

 

Sounds very good Ragusa. I wish laurel leaves and juniper berries were available locally around here. Wine on the other hand is available so I'm thinking that if I got the other ingredients I could hit myself on the head for missing the laurel and juniper and just drink the wine.

 

Dragonfly,
glad you like it. It's more a result of what was left in my fridge and shelf rather than real planning. I chose the thyme and juniper berries because they both have a strong, hearty taste and give the meal character. They would go also well with rabbit, wild meat in general, or bacon. The thyme is rather dominant and ought to be handled with care. You could alternatively use sage and a few cloves. Laurel leafs are relatively easy to get in Chinese shops. Or you could go down an alternate route, and try curry, which is never a bad idea.

The rasped carrots have a similar shape than the rice, and that's what makes it look harmonic, orange sticks among white sticks. If you add the carrots late to let them have some more bite, mind that carrots without fat don't give you the vitamines. So you can't sensibly make this recipe without at least some butter.

 

Dragonfly, you probably have ready access to laurel leaves... they're also called BAY LEAVES. And check your grocery carefully, I've seen juniper berries sometimes, without going to the specialty market. They're the thing that often gives gin it's characteristic flavor.

Ragusa, I love reading your posts, if only to appreciate how different terms translate (the ideas are good, too!). Keep cooking!

 

I have reached the point at which I hear when my fried potatoes are ready from their 'whispering' noise when I shake them in one of my pan. Granted, it's an aluminium Teflon coated one, and it sounds different than in my enamel pan

But this would be a post without a recipe without Oven Potatoes Ragusaise:

• First you need potatoes, cut them into small 'moon' shaped slices.
• As for the rest: A friend of mine gave me a ready made oven potato recipe, but I couldn't serve them to a friend who's vegan because they contained 'albumen' and she didn't know whether it's from plants (I tipped soy beans) or animals. So I took sunflower oil, salted it well, generously added spicy paprika and cayenne pepper and shaked the 'moons' in it until they were covered.
• Put them in the oven on baking foil or baking paper (much easier to clean that way) and, depending how thick the slices are, bake them some 30 to 45 min on high heat.

Voila. And vegan compatible.

 

O.k. well I guess you have a point there. If that is the case then I have laurel leaves in my cupboard and I almost always use them in soups and stews. I will check around for some juniper berries. I'm always interested in finding new ingredients to work with.

 

How funny, when I used them last it was written large on the package - bay leaves.

Draronfly,
Paul Bocuse suggested in his bouillabaisse recipe that since fennel and anise are difficult to dose one could as well carefully use Pernod. That suggests to me that in case you don't have juniper berries at hand you could use some gin, no? Of course that would work best with soups and sauces I suspect.

Then I gained a cooking insight today: Tofu doesn't taste like crap, it merely tastes like nothing, thus it all depends on the spicing and the other ingredients. It will never be a thing that I particularly like, but it serves it's purpose as a filler.

 

That is am excellent idea Ragusa. I've really only cooked using red or white wine but gin would be a great experiment.

As far as tofu goes, it is very nutritious and you really can do some interesting things with it if you experiment. You might even begin to like the stuff. I generally use the extra-firm because the texture is somewhat meatlike. Just make sure that you get a good brand and taste it before you prepair it for a meal. I did get a bad batch once which is sadly discovered after I had taken the time and effort and ingredients to dress it up.

 

Made steel-cut oats overnight in a slow cooker. They were very good and ready when I got up. Basically you put the ingredients in the slow cooker, set it on low, and go to bed; it's done in 8-9 hours. The catch is that slow cookers need to be at least half full to work properly, so I used the small 1 1/2 quart one I have and made 3 servings (it microwaves back to hot fairly well, with a little stirring).

In this case I also added some cut-up dried apples and apple pie spice (yes, an American spice perversion, so just add cinnamon if you can't bear the thought of spice mixtures).

Here's the precise ingredients I used:

3/4 cup steel-cut oats
3 cups water
about 1/4 cup chopped dried apples
1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice
1/8 or 1 pinch salt

Combine in small slow cooker and cook on low setting 8-9 hours.

 

Butterfinger Cake
Gigi Schooler, Morgan County TN Chamber of Commerce

Ingredients Needed:

1 dark chocolate cake mix of your choice
ingredients as needed to mix cake
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 12 oz container whipped topping, thawed
1/2 cup caramel ice cream topping
1/2 cup chocolate ice cream topping
1 large Butterfinger candy bar
Directions:
Prepare cake according to package directions in a 9x13 inch pan. When you remove cake from the oven, punch holes in cake (use a fork or the handle of a wooden spoon), spoon sweetened condensed milk evenly over cake. Cool, cover and allow to stand overnight in the refrigerator. When ready to serve, crush the candy bar fairly fine. Ice cake heavily with whipped topping. Drizzle caramel and chocolate attractively over cake. Sprinkle with candy crumbs. Serve. Keep any left over (which is unlikely) in the refrigerator.

OK, I know this is made up of all kinds of bad for you, processed, overly sweet foods, and it's even a little tacky in its concept. But it's good anyway. The local TV cooking guy made it on his news shot and it was hilarious to watch him commenting how "GOOOOOD" this is. But it is good, and a nice combination of flavors, and a good thing to take to a pot luck meal. (Do they have such things in other parts of the SP world?)

 

They do, and this cake is called "Better than sex cake" (or BTS for short). The cake is not that good to deserve such a name and it is my belief that only a woman could invoke such blasphemy.

Now I do have a chocolate souffle that comes close... But bringing such a dish to a pot luck would make things-- okay, I'll stop.

 

@Giles, hmm, sounds kind of like Nanny Ogg's recipe, I think in Maskerade.

And I don't think the Butterfinger cake is better than sex . . . uh, let's see, can I remember that far back . . .

 

It's grilling weather where I live. And where I live, grilling means the outdoor barbeque (since I know that term does not have a universal meaning across the world).

So, what are your favorite recipes for the grill? I do it all and I've currently got steak, chicken, fish, pork (loin), and turkey burgers in the freezer. And I do love me some grilled veggies.

The steak I had last night was:

8 oz. top sirloin
smother with oilve oil and sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper and steak seasoning if you've got it
cook on medium heat for 5 minutes, flip and give 'er another 5-10 depending on how rare you want it.

Serve with a baked potato (i like mine with just salt and pepper, maybe a splash of milk) and fresh green veggies. You now have the perfect steak.

Oh, and for heaven's sake! Leave it alone while it's cooking and don't you DARE put steak sauce on it!!

 

Giles, somewhere back in this topic is my recipe for marinated boneless/skinless chicken breasts that works fine for any chicken parts, though better if the skin's removed - it's just 1 part soy sauce combined with 2 parts bottled Italian dressing, marinate in a plastic bag a couple of hours in fridge, turning occasionally, and then grill as usual. Very tasty. There are lots of marinades on the grocery shelves but this one is easy, cheaper, and IMHO better than the bottled ones.

 

I really need an outdoor grill, that is something that I've wanted for a long time.

I don't really have any grill recipes but I can post a recipe for fudge if anyone is interested. I've discovered that making fudge is quite a skill and a very good way to develop the arm muscles. It is also a really good way for me to make people happy because I end up giving most of it away when I make it because I find it too sweet to eat very much of.