The Cooking Thread

I just did a nice London Broil on the grill, kind of an easy cut of meat to cook. I marinated that in lemon juice, a lot of beer, lots of ginger, garlic, salt, lots of fresh ground black pepper, lots of brown sugar. then it sat in a 'freezer bag' for 24 hours. I cooked it on maximum heat on the grill, let it sit for about about 15 minutes or so, cut into slices against the grain,*REAL* baked potatoes and asparagus, salad as sides, and I'm not bragging, but it was about perfect. I was a rockstar in this household, at least for a day, lol, my life is sad.....

Just a tip for anybody wanting to try this recipe: Use a knife and put thin slices, in the meat, in a diamond shaped pattern, to allow the marinade to soak in before preparing, just a tip.

We made tabbouli, a Lebanese salad of sorts.

Take a big bunch of burghul. Soak it in water with some lemon juice to soften it. Then chop up about a bushel of mint and flat-leaf parsley very, very fine, add white onion also chopped very fine, and tomato and cucumber cut into small cubes. Pour in a couple of lemon's worth of lemon juice, a quite a lot of olive oil, and (if you can get it), a dollop of _debs al-remmaneh_ -- unsweetened pomegranate syrup -- and a bit of salt. Toss carefully and serve in a bowl garnished with Romaine salad leaves. Eat with your fingers by making little packages of it from the salad leaves.

We'll be doing some skewers tonight, though, so it's not all vegetarian:

Take chunks of lamb and chicken breast. Make a marinade of tomato paste, cinnamon, garlic crushed with salt and olive oil, black pepper, and more olive oil. Marinate the meat in it for a couple of hours. Apply onto skewers alternating with slices of sweet bell pepper and onion, and grill over a hot grill.

Jaz said:

@pizza: Homemade pizza is the best, that's true, especially if you have a herb garden (mixing some fine herbs in the dough usually doesn't ruin the pizza, so I tend to do that).

As the resident 'cook' I should add a recipe as well, I guess... let me think of one, I'll get back to you!

BACK! Okay, several hours later, but I had to visit my mom. So here we go:

First of all, I prefer food that doesn't leave the kitchen a mess: one chopping board, one bowl and/or pot and/or pan are enough.
Let's start with something fast and simple - olive spread. Especially fine on fresh bread, but it also goes very well with barbecued meat of all sorts.
....

Click to expand...

Great recipe, Jaz. I'm like you in preferring recipes that minimize the mess, especially these days when after cooking every day for forty-some years I find the whole process less exciting than it once was.

Here's a recipe yours reminded me of that's very easy and tasty--good at a party or as an appetizer with beer or wine--again, no measurements really--I've long since stopped using teaspoons and tablespoons, and Corwin can't follow our arcane US system anyway :

Shrimp Spread
Take the desired quantity of cream cheese to feed however many people you have in mind.
Let it come to room temperature and add:
Very tiny boiled cocktail shrimp at a ratio of 2 parts cream cheese to one part shrimp
A pinch or two of dry mustard and curry powder--not too much or it will be overpowering
A few shakes of tabasco sauce--(or any kind of vinegar-based clear hot pepper sauce--don't know what's available in your neck of the woods) to taste, enough to give it some kick.
If you like onion, you can grate a small amount over the mixture, adding a bit of onion juice.
Mix this all together with a fork til it's fairly smooth--the shrimp will break down a bit, but there should be some lumps.
Serve on good crackers or hardtack.

Here's a quick, simple and very popular snack- Mexican bread

Get 2 thin large wraps (Burrito, or similar) heat a dry non-stick fry pan and while it's heating spread one side of one wrap with sweet chilli sauce and sprinkle on some mixed herbs. At this point you could also add fresh garlic, or thinly sliced pieces of tomato, etc, to taste. Place wrap in hot frypan and sprinkle with grated cheese of choice. Place second wrap on top of the cheese and cook both sides for a couple of minutes. The cheese wil seal the 2 wraps together. Remove and (using a pizza slicer) cut into about 8 wedges. Serve hot.

Check out this guys pizza oven

He actually has this in his home kitchen.

http://www.chow.com/stories/11065

Okay, today's dinner is going to be GOOD.

We bought a guinea fowl ("pintade" in French) from the butcher shop, and a small jar of summer truffles (tuber aestivum) from the market. Summer truffles are sort of like truffles lite -- they look more or less the same as the super-expensive really appreciated black truffles, which are only available in winter, but are much less perfumed. They're also much, much less expensive.

What we're going to do is this:

(1) Make incisions in the bird's skin by the legs. Separate the skin from the flesh with a finger, both on the legs and the breasts.
(2) Slice the truffles very thin, and lightly salt the slices.
(3) Insert the slices under the bird's skin.
(4) Sprinkle a bit more salt on the bird (all sides).
(5) Cook in the oven in medium heat until done (about 1 hour and a bit).

As a side dish, we're going to do a risotto with purple artichokes ("poivrades"), also from the market:

(1) Cut the top and stem off the artichoke, and remove all the hard outer leaves, until only the tender, pale inner leaves and heart remain.
(2) Put in a kettle with an inch or so of vinegared and salted water. Bring to a boil, and boil until tender (about 10-15 minutes). Remove and cut into quarters. (If you were too stingy with the leaves in step 1, never fear -- you can just remove any remaining tough bits now.)
(3) Crush three or four cloves of garlic in a mortar with salt and olive oil to make a paste.
(4) Grate a nice chunk of Parmesan cheese (Grana Padano or Pecorino Romano will do in a pinch as well).
(5) Heat a saucepan to medium heat. Add a generous splash of good olive oil, and pour in a cup and a half or so of risotto rice. Then stir in the garlic paste and blanch. Grate in some black pepper. Lower the heat and stir in the Parmesan, then pour in white wine until the rice is just covered. (You can also add stock -- vegetable, chicken, or beef -- at this point, if you like; this time, we're going to omit it to keep the tastes clearer.) Bring to a boil, lower the heat to very low, and cover. Cook until the rice is "al dente" -- between 15 and 18 minutes depending on the kind of rice you're using -- while adding a splash of wine (or stock, if you're using it) as the rice absorbs it.
(6) At the end, stir in the artichoke chunks prepared beforehand.

Hint: to make a Venetian-style risotto that's cooked "all'ondo," add more liquid at the end, so that it's moist enough that it makes a slow "wave" when you rock the saucepan. This works best with Carnolio rice. This time, we're going to leave it a bit drier, though.

We're going to round it off with some lovely tomatoes (Rose de Parme) that we'll slice in half, smear with a thick layer of tapenade (olive paste), and cook in the oven.

I like market day.

I'm so jealous, PJ....
...though our lunch was fine, too.

I'm getting ready to go food shopping, family away for the weekend back to Massachusetts (darn work ...). Wife and I were discussing how we had to curtail all of our more intricate meals because of the schedule we're all keeping this summer ... we had some cool 'cooking light' style meals this year ...

PJ, one concern I have with your recipes is the amount of salt you use. I don't use salt, don't like food with a salty taste, and am on a salt freeish diet and have been for years. Do you have any good ones that don't need salt?

You can always leave out the salt. The only place it's sort of necessary is for making the garlic paste in the mortar -- without salt, you have to work a lot harder at it, since it acts as a grinding medium. Pepper or other hard spices get the job done too, although not quite as well.

Salt is probably my biggest single vice when it comes to diet; other than that, the things I like and the quantities and proportions in which I like them tend to be rather healthy... but yeah, I do like salt. I don't use huge quantities, and since I avoid processed foods, my intake isn't off the charts, but it's probably a fair bit more than is good for me. If it kills me, so be it -- *something* will, so it might as well be something I enjoy. If you're able to maintain a low-sodium diet without undue hardship, though, more power to you!

By the way, the dinner turned out quite nice and more or less as described, although I decided in the end to cut the artichokes in slices and fry them in olive oil instead of boiling/steaming them.

Corwin said:

PJ, one concern I have with your recipes is the amount of salt you use. I don't use salt, don't like food with a salty taste, and am on a salt freeish diet and have been for years. Do you have any good ones that don't need salt?

Click to expand...

PJs sin is common in Nordic cuisine. Can you use other mineral salts (eg potassium- rather than sodium-based)? I think that is one way to handle over-consumption of sodium, even if you dont want to have to much potassium either. How about stock (we often cook without salt, only relying on the saltiness of the stock cubes, but they contain plenty of sodium too...)?

Anyway here is an easy favourite that we often cook when in a hurry and out of inspiration:

Spicy fish soup for two
1 litre light stock (use half as many stock cubes as normal), 1-2 sliced galangal roots (found in thai or asian shops, can be excluded), 1-2 straws of bashed lemongrass cut into inch (2.5cm)-long pieces, 2 thinly sliced shallots or one onion, 4 kaffir lime leaves, 25g of sliced mushroom, 1 sliced chili, 200 g of sliced or cubed seabass (most white fish will do, we use pangasius).

Seasoning: 2 tablespoons of fish sause, 4 tablespoons of lime juice, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of coriander (fresh or dried).

Bring stock to a boil with all the ingredients except for the fish. Once boiling add the fish, lower the heat and simmer until the fish is cooked (2-5 minutes for defrosted fish, add 3-4 minutes if frozen, we usually use frozen fish that we cut into cubes while "half defrosted"). Once the fish is cooked you add seasoning and a pinch of white pepper ("to taste"). If you want a more filling dish you can serve the soup with egg noodles (one package of Ramen/instant noodles per person without the flavouring package will do). Do not eat the lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves, and chili.

And a somewhat saltier favourite that is easy but requires constant oversight for 30 minutes (it also shows a slightly different method for cooking risotto compared to PJs):

Mushroom risotto for 4
3 dl of Avori/Arborio rice (you can use parboiled rice for a budget version), 1.2 litres of hot chicken stock (two stock cubes, keep the stock hot in a pot on low heat), 2 red onions, 100g of mushroom (any will do, fresh is much better), 1 clove of garlic, 1 teaspoon thyme, 0.5-1.5 decilitres of grated parmesan cheese (use cheaper cheese for a budget version), 2-4 tablespoons of butter (we use table margarin for bread which is lower in saturated fats but obviously not quite the same thing).

Seasoning: Black pepper to taste

Heat up the stock in a pot and keep it hot on low heat. Fry the mushrooms with thyme and pressed (or extremely finely diced if you dont have a press) garlic on medium heat until the mushrooms start to make a crackling noise. Set aside. Fry the onions in a large pot on medium heat until transparent. Add the rice and fry for another 30 seconds to a minute, stirring constantly. Add just enough stock to cover the rice and change the heat to just below medium. Stir every now and then to avoid the rice sticking to the pot. As the rice releases starch and the "rice soup" becomes more gluey you add more stock (every 2 minutes or so usually does it) and stir, always having just enough stock to cook the rice but never letting it dry up. It takes about 20-25 minutes to cook the rice, it should be Al dente, e g cooked but still firm. Take off the stove and mix with cheese, butter and seasoned mushrooms for a lovely almost creamy mess. Serve with a green salad (and a piece of meat if that's your cup of tea, but the risotto is pretty filling on its own). Goes well with a red wine.

Slightly quicker and dirtier version: If you use canned mushrooms then you can fry them with the onions rather than separately, and add thyme and garlic while the risotto is boiling. Mix the juice from the can with the stock if you feel like it.

Variations: Replace the mushroom-garlic-thyme combination with some asparagus, prawns (handle very gently, shellfish doesnt take much cooking) or whatever. Use yellow onions instead. Subtract the mushrooms-et al, fry rice and (yellow) onion with saffron, add a glass of white wine to the stock, and serve with a piece of grilled chicken and tomatoes. Saffron and clams+prawns also makes for a nice combination that goes well with a tomato salad and a lager.

Regarding different unit systems: Measurements usually dont have to be terribly accurate. You can use your ordinary utensils when measuring tea- and tablespoons, and 3.5 tablespoons make about 0.5 deciliters. An ordinary mug is about 2-2.5 deciliters, a wine glass slightly less.

Back to Finland -- but the cooking doesn't stop. We had some friends over yesterday, and I made a lamb and sausage tagine -- a sort of a Moroccan stew cooked in a clay dish covered by a conical clay lid; looks like this:



The nice thing is that you can get extremely creative with the ingredients; there's enormous room for variations and no real strict recipes. Here's roughly what I did this time -- and no, it's not entirely faithful to Moroccan cuisine:

Ingredients:
* Four small chorizo sausages (merguez would be even better; any spiced sausage works well, milder ones like bratwurst would probably work best with chicken)
* About 600 grams (a pound and a half) of shoulder of lamb, cut into chunks
* Half a turnip (about 300 grams)
* Three medium potatoes
* A lemon (Maghreb-style pickled lemon would be even better, but I didn't have any)
* Two onions
* A garlic bulb
* A bunch of coriander
* A bunch of leaf celery (I'd have preferred flat-leaf parsley, but couldn't find any)
* A chunk of fresh ginger
* A half-tin of chick peas (dried and soaked chick peas would be even better)
* Olive oil
* White wine (definitely non-Moroccan here, but it makes it tastier)
* Ras el-Hanout -- means "best in the shop" -- which is a spice mix made with whatever is to hand; I used cinnamon, cardamom pods, black pepper, a bit of fenugreek, a dried chili, some cumin, a few threads of saffron, some turmeric, and some sweet paprika, plus a few juniper berries that I discovered in the spice cupboard. But this is anything but exact; I'd say that the cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, and turmeric are the only indispensable ingredients, and almost any Indian spices (used in moderation) work well in the mix. Coriander seed, mustard seed, fennel seed, star anise, green, pink, or white pepper, even vanilla... the main idea is that it's a complex and fragrant mix.

So.

Carefully wash the lemon, and cut into thinnish slices. Salt the slices on a plate and set aside. Pour a generous splash of olive oil into the tagine dish (no lid), and put it in a medium-heat oven to heat up. Add the chunks of meat, and switch the oven to "grill" mode (still no lid), to brown it.

While it's browning, cut the onion into thin slices and the root veggies into cubes about the size of a d6 or a bit bigger; peel and slice the ginger into thin slices, and peel the garlic cloves. Set the onion aside and combine the other stuff.

When the meat has browned on one side, turn it over, and add the onion slices to the dish. Toss a few times in the olive oil.

When the meat has browned on the other side and the onion is looking translucent, remove the tagine plate from the oven, and add the cubed root vegetables with garlic and ginger on top of the meat. If using dried and soaked chick peas, add them now too. Sprinkle the ras el-hanout, and pour a generous glass of wine on top of the whole, until you can clearly see the liquid at the bottom of the dish. Cover and return to the oven, setting the mode back to regular and lowering the heat to medium (about 175 C).

Cook for about an hour and a half. Check periodically to make sure the liquid hasn't all boiled away; add if necessary. (If it shows a tendency to boil away, the oven is too hot; lower the heat as necessary.)

Chop the sausage into chunks and add to the dish (don't mix). Then take the lemon slices, and arrange them on top of the meat, sausages, and veggies. Return to the oven, and cook for another hour.

If using tinned chick peas, add them now. Sprinkle with chopped coriander and celery leaves (or flat parsley), and cook for another half-hour.

Serve with couscous or burghul and, if you like, a salad -- Joanna did a fennel and cucumber salad with vinegar, salt, and black pepper; the traditional thing would probably be sliced tomatoes with fresh coriander, olive oil, and salt. Moroccans also serve this kind of thing with "harissa" -- a very hot chili paste. It's something of an acquired taste, though, so it's no big loss if you can't get hold of any.

If you don't happen to have a tagine knocking around the kitchen, the dish turns out quite nice in any old earthenware pot -- you might have to blanch the onions on a frying pan, though, because it's not all that easy to work inside a deep pot. Under extreme duress you could even do it in a cast-iron pot on the stove, rather than in the oven -- but by then it'll be more of a stew inspired by a tagine than something actually approximating one. Still good, though.

As to the "substitutions," you can use chicken or fish instead of the meat, or make a completely vegetarian tagine with e.g. eggplant and olives; you can add tomatoes (fresh or tinned) and/or tomato purée to make a very different kind of dish; you can use fresh herbs like thyme or rosemary instead of coriander and parsley to make another variation... your imagination is the limit. I love tagines, because they're dead easy to make, they never fail, and they always impress.

N.b. for Corwin -- you can use fresh, unsalted lemon slices as well. Won't be quite the same, but still quite close. That way this will be a completely salt-free recipe, except the salt in the sausages, which, of course, you can also omit (or substitute with chicken pieces).

One of my best friends has a tangine; I might send him and his wife this recipe to try!!

wow this thread is a treasure, I am definetely going to cook something from here soon!

Making of Egg Curry:

There are several different styles for making Egg Curry and this recipe is North Indian in origin. Serve Egg Curry with a vegetable side dish and rice.
Ingredients:

* 6 hard boiled eggs
* 5 tbsps vegetable/ canola/ sunflower cooking oil
* 2 medium sized onion cut into quarters
* 3 medium sized tomatoes cut into quarters
* 2 green chillies
* 2 tsps garlic paste
* 2 tsps ginger paste
* 2 tsps coriander powder
* 1 tsp cumin powder
* 1 tsp garam masala
* 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
* 1/2 tsp red chilli powder
* Salt to taste
* Chopped fresh coriander leaves to garnish
* 2 potatoes cut into 1" cubes (optional)

Preparation:

* Heat 2 tbsps of the cooking oil in a deep pan and when hot, add the onions. Fry till slightly golden. Turn off the fire. Use a slotted spoon to remove the onions from the pan and put them in a food processor. Grind the onions, tomatoes, green chillies into a smooth paste. Try not to add water while grinding, if possible.
* Heat the remaining oil in the same pan and add the paste you just made to it when it is hot. Fry for 2-3 minutes.
* Add the ginger and garlic pastes, all the dry spices, mix and fry till the oil begins to separate from the masala (onion-tomato-spice mix).
* Now add 2 cups of warm water to this masala and bring to a boil on a medium flame.
* If adding potatoes to the curry, add them now and cook till half done.
* Half slit the boiled eggs vertically and add them gently to the gravy. Simmer the flame and cook for 10 minutes or till the gravy is thickened/ reduced to about 3/4 of the original quantity (when you added the water). If you have added potatoes they should ideally be cooked by now.
* Turn off the fire and garnish with chopped coriander leaves. Serve hot with rice and a vegetable side dish.

Ive been a bakin' fool this week.

Made "Hurry up chicken pot pie"
Which was an instant hit, it was really good. I improvised and threw in chopped celery, and tossed the boiled eggs out. Also, it behooves you to let it sit for a little while after taking it out of the oven, thickens up a little.

Also busted out some Chicken Parmesan, was actually quite easy.
2 big chicken breasts
jar spaghetti sauce
italian flavored bread crumbs
parmesan cheese
2 eggs
Mozarella cheese

Took two chicken breasts, beat them to about an inch thick w/ my bare fists (quite cathartic), then thoroughly egged them and coated w/ the crumbs/parmesan cheese mixture. Baked for 30 mins on 375 (my oven is screwy so i go 25 degrees more a lot of times). Then put them both in a glass baking dish on and coated w/ the spaghetti sauce, threw cheese on top. Baked @ 400 for about 10 mins. Viola!

Here's something we discovered recently:

Steamed fish Chinese style, serves 2

You need:

1 or 2 fish, about 1 kg total (before being gutted). Any white-fleshed, non-oily fish will do, and cheaper fish will do especially well. I used an 800 gram bream, because I was LTTP and that was all my favorite fishmonger had left (other than imported or cultured fish, which I try to avoid).
Spring onion
Fresh coriander
Ginger
Sherry or rice wine
Light soy sauce
Salt and pepper
Green chili (optional)

Prepare a steamer. If you have an actual purpose-built one, awesome. If not, improvise. I used our biggest kettle, put one of those stainless-steel folding-out flower-like steamer things in it, then took a plate that just fit in there and checked that it stayed nicely put on top of it, and put enough water in it to reach the bottom of the stainless-steel thing. If I hadn't had that, I would've put a couple of coffee cups in it to hold up the plate, or something.

Empty the fish. You can cut the head and fins off to fit it into your steamer, but leave the scales on. Coarsely chop half the spring onion, coriander, and ginger, and stuff some into the fish, and use the rest to make a bed on the plate you want to put in the steamer. Add some salt and pepper to taste. Then take a few throwaway chopsticks and lay them on the plate to make a kind of griddle. Place the fish on top of the chopsticks. The idea is that the fish doesn't quite lay flat on the bed, although it can certainly touch it. Lower the plate into the steamer, cover, and heat. It'll take 10-20 minutes from the time the water boils to cook, depending on the size of the fish. The rule of thumb is 7 minutes per inch of thickness of the fish. This cooking method is very gentle, so there's no huge damage in overcooking.

While the fish is steaming, prepare the sauce: take the rest of the coriander, ginger, and spring onion, and green chili if you have it. Slice the ginger as finely as you can, and chop the green stuff according to your preference. Quickly sauté it in a little vegetable oil (a wok is great if you have one), then turn down the heat and pour on a bit of sherry and a dash of light soy sauce. Switch off the heat when done.

When the fish is done, remove it from the steamer. Add some -- but not too much, it's very fishy -- of the juice that's come out of it onto the plate to the sauce you prepared above. Remove and discard the stuffing and the bed.

Prepare the fish for serving by removing the skin and biggest bones. Don't worry, it's easy:

(1) Gently lift the fish onto a clean plate, with another plate nearby to put the skin and bones, and yet another one to put the cleaned-up fish. The chopstick griddle will make this easy; just carry it by them.
(2) Make a cut to the skin along the spine, and curve down just by the tail. Make a similar vertical cut near the head and just behind the pectoral fins.
(3) Gently lift off the skin with a table knife. If the fish is done, it'll come off in one piece, or almost; you might have to cut a bit at the belly side. Remove it on your trash plate.
(4) Gently insert a table knife into the gap between the top and bottom part of the fish, and nudge the top part upward (relative to the fish) to loosen it. Then use another table knife to lift off the top part, and place on the plate ready to receive it. It doesn't matter if you can't quite get it to stay in one piece; just reassemble the half of the fish in the same order you disassembled it.
(5) Stick a fork between the fish's ribs, via the space just vacated by the filet you removed. Lift it to loosen the meat there along the length of the ribcage. Then switch to a table knife, and use the same technique as above to remove the belly half of the fish and reassemble it on the second plate.
(6) Use a table knife to lift off the spine and bones attached to it, and discard. Then use the same knife to remove the sharp little bones poking down from the dorsal fins.
(7) Lift the other half of the fish onto your second plate as above.

Then just pour the sauce you made on top of the fish, and serve with the side dish of your choice. (We had bitter melon with egg.)

Easy, very healthy, and very tasty -- and, as stated, a great way to make one of those cheaper and less appreciated fish; IMO the combination of flavors enhances the fish's own taste very nicely, without overwhelming it. The only real trick is to discard the ginger and spices that were in the steamer, and serve it with the sauce made from the fresh ones.

Very nice recipe, Prime J. I need to try it sometime; though it's very hard to get a decent selection of fresh fish here in the middle of the continent, sometimes you can find flash-frozen ones(frozen at the time of the catch on the fishing rig) which are comparable. Unfortunately, very few choices are not either farm raised or from a very far away country.

Actually came to this thread to express thanks to Jamie Oliver for coming to America and trying to improve our childrens' eating habits, (and also thanks to Brittain in general for producing him.) This is one of those positive stories that seldom get much traction, but make a difference in people's lives:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042001181.html?wpisrc=nl_most

Open 1 Red Baron frozen pizza (original crust, 4 cheese), place on baking sheet. Add pepperoni (don't be shy, load 'er up!). Sprinkle extra cheese (a Kraft mozzerella/provolone/asiago mix never fails to please) over top of the pepperoni. Place in pre-heated oven (400deg) for 17 minutes. Remove and cut in quarters. Dine. Recommended wine: A cold can of Dr. Pepper (or two, all this cooking is thirsty work).

Fats, empty carbs, and a good bit of salt. All the nutrition a growing baby boy needs!