what's cooking? part 5: 2017-2027

Making potato leek soup rn. Love things made of like four ingredients.

I made potato leek soup last weekend using leeks from the garden, and it was glorious. Used the recipe below except:

* Used russet potatoes instead of Yukon gold ones because russets take in seasoning better.
* Left out sage cos I didn't have any.
* Put in a few chunks of cauliflower with the other veg.
* Used half chicken broth and half water for the liquid.
* Put in two cut up stalks of celery with the other veg.
* After all the veg were boiled through, I fished out the celery & herbs and threw away, then scooped most of the potato chunks into a bowl, then pureed everything that was left in the pot with an immersion blender, then added the chunky potatoes back in.
* Did not add any cream but did melt shredded gouda into each serving.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017981-golden-leek-and-potato-soup

What is it about soups that makes it seem like they're pouring health and life into your body?? Solid foods just don't have the magic no matter how good they are.

once I made a basic leek and potato soup and threw in leftover roasted parsnips and it was so good I always make it like that now

I made soup twice in the last week cause it's finally kind of cold out and the furnace kicked on for the first time in months.

Last week I made a kimchee stew - kimchee and pork belly and onions and doenjang and gochujang fried together with broth added and soft tofu and green onions at the end. I never really ate a lot of Korean food until a couple years ago and just started getting into cooking some of the dishes that seem to exist to use up kimchee. Unlike gbx I lived in a place with no real asian market for a decade and now live less than a mile from an incredible one with literally everything I've ever wanted and it's amazing.

Last night I made chicken and leek soup with peas and tarragon and old timey DUMPLINGS! on top.

I’ve been using japanese recipe apps a lot recently. The best two are Kurashiro and Delish Kitchen and the recipes feature little videos. Last night I cooked Fried beans with Chirimen (sardine fry) 揚げ大豆のじゃこ炒め. Really delicious although I’m not sure where I can get more chirimen in Australia. The ones I have were a souvenir of the Kyoto railway museum.

I've been working toward the unachievable perfect biscotti the last few months -- about 25 batches now, mostly for family and friends and a couple of failures into the trash. For a brief moment I thought about trying to pitch them to the local coffee shop. Getting the right balance of dough to fruit/nut/chip additions, playing with flavor extracts.

I know this is ultra trendy right now, but I have been making golden milk a lot (tumeric, black pepper, ginger, etc. milk). It's very soothing.

ooh i love golden milk. i have never ordered it out but make it at home as needed. i think i first had it as a free sample at whole foods and i looked at the ingredients and was like oh i can do that. i have tried it with different milks and settled on coconut or almond as the most delicious. i like regular milk in coffee though.

I have only used soy milk because it was what was available. It's amazing how you can't even taste the black pepper. I should try the almond/coconut versions. Do you put anything else in it? I realized that we ran out of cinnamon so i put in some pumpkin spice (blech). It was either that or garam masala.

i keep it simple -- grated fresh ginger, a shake of dried turmeric*, a twist of black papper, spoonful of honey. that's all it needs to be delicious imo!

* (i use fresh in smoothies if i can find it)

also those were the ingreds on the bottle that i sampled at whole foods and i was like oh wow this is super easy so i kept making it that way

for one very, very large mug I put in almost two teaspoons of tumeric and maybe 5 grates of pepper and maybe an inch of grated ginger? Ha. That sounds like too much comparatively.

My co-worker makes it for her kids when they have a sore throat and they call it caca milk.

Lol.Have successfully used garam but it was homemade and had no cumin or fennel. I love making this either hot or cold. Have done turmeric (fresh grated is ideal), grated ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, teeny bit of clove, pepper, maple syrup & soymilk.

ooh yeah cardamom! that is what i forgot! i crushed cardamom seeds in there too

also strained it before serving

two teaspoons of turmeric is enough to make liquid turmeric?

this is for the golden milk? I just use a lot of tumeric in general. For a mug that holds ~16 oz of liquid about 2 teaspoons of tumeric. I don't really measure.

i will never give my kids liquid turmeric. They will dye the whole house. Might make this for myself, though, sounds good.

I just saw it in 3 different coffee places in the city. I am trying to drink it 3-4 times a week. I need all the anti-inflammatories that I can get.

since you're doing this for medicinal purposes you know abt the positive effect piperine in black pepper (even white pepper) has on the circumin in turmeric? i'd heard about this before, but i found a olde paper that was looking at this. "increased bioavailability 149%"!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9619120

xxpossts to Sufjan - it IS good. kinda sorta like chai, but different

xpost, i didn't know about white pepper, but only knew about the black pepper. And that it has to be heated/cooked together?

never heard abt heat being required to lower the activation energy. doesn't really make sense to me that they would have to be cooked at all or together. but i'm not a food biologist or organic chemist. does make me think about how "they" used to say that you have to combine rice with beans for a complete protein. but in reality the foods just need to be eaten the same day so the body breaks them down in a similar timeframe on the molecular level

https://i.imgur.com/hcLaPmD.jpg
Enchiladas w/mashed purple sweet potato and russet, pintos, & goat cheese w/ghost pepper sauce.

jeez, i am not a shutterbug by nature. hope they taste better than pic looks

Lately - Joanne Chang's apple cake. Some basic cassoulet (I call any slow-cooked duck and beans combination cassoulet; this was limas and black-eyed peas). Resisting the temptation to make a million apple desserts - it's barely felt like fall yet, but the apples here are good, and won't be around for long.

I picked up some goat and goat stomach at an Asian/African market, but haven't decided what to do with the stomach yet. Presumably something braised.

xpost was the ghost pepper sauce from scratch?

Wow, report back on the goat stomach.

I have become very good at making orcchiette.

has anyone ever used dried hominy before? I bought some at Berkeley Bowl, and I soaked it overnight and cooked it for quite a while, but it didn't soften much. Was I supposed to nixtamalize it?

Yeah I bought a few dried ghosties in la last summer. Super simple - sauteed onion added garlic, then cumin and coriander. Then added a can of crushed tomatoes and the Chile and simmered any 10 minutes. Pureed b4 using. Xpost

Dried hominy has usually been nixtamalized before it was dried and sold, I think - the stuff I have was, anyway (from eBay! bless this weird century), and I know Rancho Gordo's is. But it does take a lonnnng time to cook. Even in a pressure cooker, I've cooked it for an hour or two and still had plenty of chew left.

(This also means I am terrible at estimating portion size from dried, so I often end up accidentally making a big batch and freezing most of it.)

Hmm. I guess I need to get a pressure cooker or an instant pot ... an hour on the stove didn't make a dent.

It may just need another couple hours - I know I made it a few times before we got the Instant Pot, including in a stovetop smoker, it just took forever. But it gets there eventually.

I took the last of the trifoliate oranges and made a small amount (there's not much juice!) of piney orangey tarty curd, boosted with a little trifoliate infusion and citric acid to stretch the juice a little.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqAuEMvFno2/

Not sure I remember how to do images. That may not work.

Ah well.

a bit of an experiment, cauli gratin with cashew cream which was deveganised w/ truffle cheddar. looks good!
also got some oysters to fry up which i haven't had in a long time. miner's excited!

I just made a spur-of-the-moment pumpkin pie. I was a bit sloppy with it, knowing it won't be on display to the family tomorrow. It will stay safely at home and be a treat for me, wife and child.

sounds like best pkace to be

on black friday i bought a 19 lb turkey for $10. i have never bought a turkey, wasn't gonna roast the whole thing, i am not that great at breaking down chickens but i want to get better at it. so i just slowly and sloppily removed all the parts and have like 7 lbs of boneless meat alone (5 is in freezer) and a bag of drumsticks and wings. i think i'm gonna marinate those in korean bbq sauce and roast them. but i'm gonna be eating a lot of turkey in december. i am making 1.5 gallons of stock also. which i am going to attempt to pressure can. wish me luck.

I have never bought or made a turkey. I applaud you.

I made a turkey for thanksgiving and made gumbo with the carcass and rest of the meat today. I also made shepherds pie with the rest of the mashed potatoes and some ground elk that my in laws gave us.

Thanksgiving is alright but weird invented stuff with leftovers the few days after is the best

I did not cook it but my bud made turkey enchiladas with a red chile + gravy and oh my god

every now and again a fella hosts his brothers to make sure they dont starve, this rough beast set me back eight quid and was v passable

https://i.imgur.com/PVBtVoN.jpg

remnants will go with the gravy and a tin of tomatoes into a tagliatelle tomorrow, im thinking

making leftover turkey tikka masala. Will probably be ok but turkey is kinda bad.

i made penne with a tomato sauce: onion, garlic, mushrooms, bacon (local grocery store not fancy enough for pancetta), broccolini, crushed tomatoes, red pepper flakes, pepper, rosé, parsley. a+

dmac you might need to explain to our American friends what that, the king of meats, is.

I had it in a NY restaurant once and the server gave me a warning about how it 'had a strong flavour' , 'more than I might be used to', etc.

that is 3kg of the worlds premium lamb, the achill blackface mountain variety

dont even @me estela

current favs include:

- marinating shiitake mushrooms in soy&oil and baking them til they shrink down to chewy black exceptionally flavoursome little bits
- ginger and spring onion/scallion sauce, not sure how it's taken me this long to discover it but good god
- marmite sweet potatoes wedges, a holy combination

xp 8 quid for 3 kilos, who's your butcher?!

Too hot stir fry things. Probably only need one scotch bonnet in the wok full. Especially if I'm putting in a Bird's eye with it.
& wondering if flavours coming through from shrimp paste, tamarind, peanut butter and all the various veg and fruit. Had pineapple added in as well as mango last night, cos I had a pineapple since they were on sale last week.
Mango tends to be a standard ingredient these days as well as plantain.
So chilli has a bite that I thought might be tempered.
Only drag is how long it takes to prepare.