what's cooking? part 5: 2017-2027

not because it really needs to go to 2027 because we'll all be under the ocean by then but because part 4 started in 2007

i made some pretty great tomato soup yesterday

san marzano toms + butter in pressure cooker w salt and baking soda
veggie stock + drained liquid from toms + a few bags of lapsang souchong
puree toms w stick blender, drain through sieve, combine with liquid ingredients
maple syrup + fish sauce to taste

how do you get to the point in life where you're putting heterodox ingredients like tea, maple syrup and fish sauce in tomato soup? is this entirely your own invention or are you following some unknown and wild tradition?

its the food of my people

bored single men who spend a lot of time on food blogs

well I am impressed, it sounds delicious (though not sure about the tea). how long did you cook it for?

toms were in the pressure cooker for 20mins, which is the bulk of the cooking time

in the context of bold tomato flavor and stock, the tea adds primarily smokiness and some sweetness. it's worth trying, i think!

Were these canned whole toms? Why pressure cooker? Why baking soda???

whole canned toms

pressure cooker reaches higher temperatures, which, in combination with the increased pH you get with baking soda, leads to caramelization that would be impossible otherwise

i actually made a batch earlier in the week that i forgot to add baking soda to and the difference is pretty noticeable --- w/o it the soup is much brighter and more acidic/tomato-y (which might be what you want!)

i have a bream in the oven, stuffed it with lemon, garlic and parsley, threw a few slices of potato around it and i've got cabbage braising in some stock on the hob. been roasting fish a lot in the last few months, feels like one of the nicest things to eat without much effort.

Making a lamb shoulder tonight with broccoli and the serious eats roasted potatoes that I believe somebody posted on the other thread and have been intriguing me since.

how do you get to the point in life where you're putting heterodox ingredients like tea, maple syrup and fish sauce in tomato soup?

otm

its the food of my people

bored single men who spend a lot of time on food blogs

loltm

What are these blogs? Are they instant pot propagandists?

hey gbx do you do a natural release or quick release on the p.c. with this method?

mine's electric so i just do a slow release

should I get an instant pot? it seems like more like an appliance of convenience rather than one of, like, some crazy new benefit (like sous vide)

rfi: what is yr favorite way to prepare fennel?
preferably side dish but i'll take all comers

one place i worked at useda make a potato, fennel and leek gratin that was nice. other ideas: superthin sliced and put in a salad is great, too. or "melted", cooked slowly in olive oil with onions and garlic to get it really soft and borderline carmelised could be a nice side?

fennel is nice roasted

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/02/vegan-ramen-miso-creamy-vegan-vegetarian-food-lab-recipe.html

going to cook this at the weekend

I like fennel raw in salads, sautéed with leeks & green beans, roasted & carved up with a piece of meat or fish

Jim: it's good. Double and freeze, for all the effort.

thanks everyone! pretty new to fennel. i tried braising it in stock & vermouth last night & it turned out delicious, keen to try some of these recommendations

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/02/vegan-ramen-miso-creamy-vegan-vegetarian-food-lab-recipe.html

going to cook this at the weekend

― Islamic State of Mind (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, January 10, 2017 5:28 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh man i've been wanting to try that but its daunting --- soda, you've done it? how long did it take?

i like fennel here are some things

fen risotto, maybe w/ salami
fen & chickpea broth w/ lemon zest and chilli
fen & potato soup
baked fen in like a puttanesca sauce w/ orange zest and feta
roast pork w fen (add fen seeds to pork herb rub too)
any bit of wite fish w/ fen, thyme, rosemary, lemon zest, capers etc

pernod good to have around just for fen

also if u ever want to parboil fen for anything do it in milk, or mostly milk, and keep for mash potato or gratin later

I don't like fennel because it is anise-y. I feel like I need to broaden my horizons tho w/r/t winter vegetables, I can't only eat potatoes all year, and I love kale but let's be honest it's not in season in February.

A friend is coming over on Sat bc she wants advice on cooking large hunks of meat. Considering a pot roast alongside a rolled stuffed pork loin -- one easy, one complicated.

try parsnips! one of our favorite winter things is just roasted winter veggies (beets, onions, carrots, garlic, parsnips, turnips, potatoes) mixed up with some olive oil, rosemary, and a bit of sausage, cover and bake.

best way to enjoy fennel is to throw it in the damn garbage bcz it tastes like licorice and it is GROSS

I made a great pork dish with star anise the other night and the first time I made it I used like one star anise (recipe says 5) because I hate licorice but actually it's so subtle it's really good so I always use 5 now

THANK U STEVIE YOU <---> ME = SAME TEAM

anise and fennel are wonderful flavors

that said i have bought fennel bulbs in the past and they have rotted in my fridge bc i couldn't decide what to do with them fast enough :/

tbh I wish I didnt' loathe anise/fennel bcz it wd make things a lot easier but welp here we are, what can ya do

parsnips are the devil fyi

hmph

parsnips are fine, they're sweet and a lil weird but they're fine

quickest way to ruin a soup imo

THE DEVIL

parsnips are good caramelized together with other vegetables as the base for a winter soup stock, they contribute a lot of complexity and are similar to carrots w/ their sweetness. im not a fan of plain parsnips though

for burly winter root vegetables i prefer celeriac

I stand with VG.

Honey roast parsnips are my secret ingredient in a veggie soup

monsters, all of u

mushroom pizza that has a bunch of rehydrated porcinis sauteed with a load of criminis and garlic, on top of fontina, carmelized onions with rosemary playing the role of sauce on some bland-o plain white dough i made

haven't had farinata in years, might attempt this recipe for saturday lunch http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/05/how-to-make-farinata-italian-chickpea-pancake.html

we had my brother and his family over for dinner the other night. they love cooking indian and so do we, so we made a huge feast. i haven't cooked this much food in a while:

masoor dal
benghali green beans and potatoes
tomato sambal
summer squash w/ mustard seeds
saag tofu

All the way at the other end of the vegetarian-omnivore spectrum, I'm making beef stock today.

I agree with VG that parsnips would not work well in any soup I know about, but they roast well and were quite acceptable in a beef and peanut stew recipe my wife made just a few days ago.

I really like roasted parsnips but they are such a damn awkward shape--the top fat part and the itty bitty skinny end make it diffcult to get evenly-roasting pieces.

i like to toast them with my chile powder blend, butter, salt, sugar and put them in granola/on french toast/in chia pudding/on salads/even sometimes in pasta. i also am the sort of person who would never make a fruit pie when i could eat the fruit as is.

ohh yeah candied pecans are great

i also am the sort of person who would never make a fruit pie when i could eat the fruit as is.

The number of times I've tried to make some kind of strawberry dessert that I regretted is basically every damn time.

ATK's pralines are pretty amazing, but they're significantly more work than a pie.

made an odd thrown-together meal the other day. chicken alla diavola - you (sort of) spatchcock and flatten it, so it resembles a butterfly, cover it liberally with cracked black pepper (the diavola), marinading it in lemon juice and olive oil for a couple of hours, and put it on a lowish bbq or griddle and let it sizzle and cook, turning it and basting it with the olive oil and lemon juice from time to time. It’s delicious, succulent and tender.

at the same time made a haphazard pissaladière, which came out ok.

but then was inattentive on some rice, which ended up soggy, and the mustard salad dressing split because i added the ingredients in the wrong order. (salt, pepper, wine vinegar THEN mustard THEN oil, whisking vigorously all the time to get it to emulsify).

anyway, the chicken and pissaladière were both v good the following day too.

Made “bacon” and cheese potato skins last night and they were quite good! Went in to our first attempt at using Field Roast’s new plant-based bacon with C- expectations but they rose to the challenge and got a B+

it's easy to bring a broken dressing back together, like if it broke during the oil addition just put a little bit of (in this case) vinegar and mustard in a clean dish, and add the broek dressing, in drops to start, whilst whisking. it'll come right back together. or you could just buzz with a blender IMHO. Anyways, just wanted to say that pissaladière sounds fucking grand.

xpost

bought some lions mane mushrooms just now. the couple of times i've tried to cook them i couldn't get rid of enough moisture and they did not come out how i wanted. just gonna try and sear slices this time in a medium hot, dry, cast iron and be patient. can't imagine that won't do the trick

I make my own oatmilk now which means about I'm creating 2 cups of wet, blended oats that I'm trying to find uses for. So far the most successful option is weekly buckwheat-oat-apple muffins! Being gluten-free and milk-free means doing a lot of creative substitution but I basically throw in whatever's in my cupboard/fridge. The recipe I start with calls for almond flour, but since I'm out of that I subbed corn meal? So now I have buckwheat-CORN-apple muffins? Little lemon zest, shredded dried coconut, apple chunks. Usually I shred a carrot and have apple-carrot combo. And a handful of pepitas or whatever nuts are in the cupboard.

I'm really not trying to get to one "perfect" recipe, just using what I got. Makes a very good breakfast all week! Probably pretty high fiber too? I don't really know how to calculate that, I'm not that into the math of it all.

https://greenkitchenstories.com/apple-almond-buckwheat-muffins/

I start with that recipe but I'm warning you I cut the applesauce (I'm not making homemade apple sauce weekly) and I cut the yogurt because I would never have yogurt + lactose is a problem. Sub some melted butter, 1/3 cup of veg oil, and oat milk for the liquid.

Maybe one day I'll have some leftover applesauce around and will try the "filling" idea. Anyway, they're good! The cornmeal and lemon zest version from this morning might be a keeper!

i have tons of apples in the garden and freeze apple sauce as we never need much at once.

then I forget we have it!

My mom used to regularly make an applesauce spice cake, usually in a baking dish so it would be kind of, like, taller than a brownie and moister than a layer cake? Cut into squares like a coffee-cake? It's good, I've never had the recipe but it would use up applesauce.

I am a huge fan of apple in cake! I'll look out for some recipes.

Mr Kinder doesn't like raisins which a lot of apple cake recipes have. I really like this apple and apricot almondy cake from Mary Berry and made it last weekend.
https://jjasonwhatsinseason.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/mary-berrys-american-apple-and-apricot-cake/ (if you make it, you need a deep ish tin)

This one is also nice https://www.sweetestmenu.com/cinnamon-apple-cake/

I've just made a bunch of very buttery cookies which I don't often do - I'm all about huge slices of cake.

Oh I also hate raisins. Disgusting little bugs. Dried cherries are allowable if I have 'em and sometimes subsitute, but generally I don't need a sweet, sticky thing in my baked goods.

That apple cake receipe looks excellent! Plus maybe slivered almonds in it or on it with the glaze? Strips of candied orange? Orange or lemon zest somehow incorporated? I fear my tendency is to add too many things.

I also hate the dark raisins but golden raisins are pretty good!

i like goldens, but nuts.com sells these crimson colored Manukas and they are sublime

Last night was steak night for my daughter and I and I decided to make a Montreal seasoning compound butter. Recipe called for fresh dill, and I got so entranced by the smell of it I added a little extra and it overwhelmed. Lesson for next time!

tomorrow is pizza al taglio and I am excite about the crust. We shall see if this can beat the detroit style pizza I made a couple weeks back that got rave reviews

I and I decided to make a Montreal seasoning compound butter

Sounds irie

Dill is so good, I need to find more recipes that use it. A few that I can vouch for:

https://rainbowplantlife.com/creamy-vegan-mushroom-stroganoff/
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1025017-lemony-pearl-barley-soup (S tier of you add some tahini to thicken it and add more savory notes)
https://lovingitvegan.com/vegan-frittata/#recipe

Made a lamb, rosemary and honey stew from Claudia Roden’s slightly coffee-tablish Med. V delicately flavoured, slightly like a Mediterranean/North African Lancashire hotpot.

Also made an Italian sausage and lentil stew, from a US book, and forgot that American tomato purée and UK tomato purée are two different things. It was *just about* edible <pulls face>

I mean I did think "that seems like waaaaaaaaaay too much tomato purée" but did that thought make it to the executive centre of my brain? It did not.

i didn't know that! what's the us one?

trader joes has there 10-minute farro which has been an absolute lifesaver for my kids. basically sofrito a bunch of vegetables they don't want to eat (seasonal, of course) and then puree. add water/seasoning when necessary.

i guess in the US it’s tomato “paste” and a purée would be literally just whizzed up tomatoes?

correct. aiui puree is more like passata in the US.

lol so you added like a cup and a half of concentrated tomato paste

i had a similar less defensible episode very early in my cooking career when i read clove as bulb and added two of the latter to a sauce

i sat next to a guy at work who had all sorts of sensitivities and allergies and he had go go home sick the next day as i was so radioactive

well, yes, a cup. i mean let's be clear this was very evidently a mistake even at the time. aciiiiiiiiiiiiiid. and not in a good way.

it's kinda fascinating and definitely a failure mode of mine that one part of me can be screaming 'what are you doing are you an IMBECILE' and the other part is going 'this is how it is and only how it can be'. many such examples xpost.

i had a similar less defensible episode very early in my cooking career when i read clove as bulb and added two of the latter to a sauce

i sat next to a guy at work who had all sorts of sensitivities and allergies and he had go go home sick the next day as i was so radioactive

― Wichita Referee's Assistant (darraghmac), Tuesday, 29 September 2026 09:27 bookmarkflaglink

v much feature not a bug territory there.

Richard Olney's (excellent) Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic to thread.

never understood recipes which ask for 2 cloves of garlic in a dish that makes 4 portions, that seems like a homeopathic amount

he sent me an image of iron man open palm energy beam from his sickbed, that was how he claims to have experienced the waft

there's ways and means of cooking garlic to varying proportions is i think the message

indeed. I hear 40 raw cloves in five cups of tomato puree, lightly warmed for one minute, is good.

i sat next to a guy at work who had all sorts of sensitivities and allergies and he had go go home sick the next day as i was so radioactive

Wasn’t going to say but the old pair asked me what you did for a living when you left, “Is he a chef or something” “No.” “Oh.”

American Italian recipes use so much more garlic than the same recipes from Italy.

Italians don't put garlic and onion in the same dish usually.

garlic is so good. i’ve personally never had the experience of a dish seeming “too” garlicky

Xps I am SCREAMING at a whole cup of tomato paste in a recipe 😂

Wasn’t going to say but the old pair asked me what you did for a living when you left, “Is he a chef or something” “No.” “Oh.”

― bruich, a stór (gyac), 29 September 2026 11:56 (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

are you sure they didnt say "chief"?

fillet of lamb with polenta and peppers. this from Georgio Locatelli's extremely irritating Italian cookbook Made in Italy. The recipes are all extremely 'chef-y' - that is to say you can easily imagine them being made in a restaurant kitchen, but that to do them at home is a multi-stage, labour intensive process.

Anyway, I had a lamb carcass from the honey and rosemary stew above, so could do a lamb stock, which i would never normally have on hand, i had polenta, which i would never normally buy because it tastes of nothing, so i thought i'd do this.

he has that suggestion of roasting the bones for the stock and then brushing them with tomato PUREE (uk) or PASTE (us), which i've seen before and never done, and did with what was left over from my puree extravaganza.

no idea whether it made any difference. anyway, there's a lot of skimming and a lot of reducing etc, and you marinade the fillet overnight, or for six hours if you've only remembered to do it in the morning. and it was really excellent. a several times reduced stock and red wine marinade for a thick coating sauce, and cooking the polenta with milk and cream mysteriously makes it much more delicious. not sure if i could ever be fucked to make it again outside of some sort of dinner party, which I never hold. but anyway.

I wanted to make a salad featuring field roast’s newish bacon substitute, which is easily the supreme leader of all the fake bacons I’ve tried, but my romaine lettuce wilted in the fridge. Today stinks.

never understood recipes which ask for 2 cloves of garlic in a dish that makes 4 portions, that seems like a homeopathic amount

― The Ella Langley Schools Music Project (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, September 29, 2026 2:31 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

pretty inviolable rule that garlic is doubled or tripled from the recipe in every dish I make.

I don’t double it but I do always plus up by at least a clove. I am a lazy schmuck who uses the dorot gardens frozen crushed blobs of the stuff so when the recipe calls for X number of cloves and the dorot packaging claims 1 blob = 1 clove I say “yeah right” and eyeball 25% more or so

Same rule follows for their frozen ginger blobs

good blob math

I was limiting myself to one widget this year and got an instant pot, but the costco deal on the ninja-branded air fryer was too good

I’m a very spur of the moment cook, so both have been useful so far. I have even lowered myself to not pre-soaking beans — did I mention I also became a rancho gordo person in the same time period? — so the ability to throw beans in the instant pot, walk back ten minutes later, do minor prep and throw some stuff in the air fryer, and have it all done at the same time has been crazy. I am guessing I will
be three-deviceing it soon once I figure out if I’ll blow out my electrical circuit by running a rice cooker at the same time

did I mention I also became a rancho gordo person in the same time period?

Nice! I've made RG beans the three and two weekends ago, then last weekend made a pork/pozole stew with their hominy.

I’ve gone through uh maybe 2.5 bags in as many weeks. Just arrive home
and mix my rice, beans, air fried meats and maybe a green in there with some sauce and you’ve got a slop bowl