What's cookin' ?

[GGT]

Oh yeah, and if you want to make poached eggs, without using a "machine", just use a pot of water with some salt and vinegar added, and bring it to a roiling boil before cracking the egg. It will initially look messy and confused, like floating egg white spider legs. But after three minutes or so, a distinct shape will "float" to the surface, and can be scooped out with a slotted spoon.



Does anyone have a good, but simple, recipe for a homemade Biryani meat dish? I've tried some internet recipes that haven't turned out so well. I'm wondering if there's some cooking technique that matters more than the ingredients.....

[wiggin]

Had parmesan crusted flounder the other day. Not particularly healthy, but damn does it taste good. Lemon juice, mayo, lots of parmesan, scallions, and butter as a topping for lightly salted flounder fillets. Bake for 10 minutes; follow by broiling for a couple minutes to brown. Really works well with any basic whitefish.

[GGT]

I just use a pan with coating for fried eggs (sunny side up), and a little oil. Never had a problem.

Well, we call them mirror-eggs.

Do you mean Teflon or one of its variations? That can work too, but I'm not a fan of specialized pans or skillets lately.

Don't get me wrong....special cookware, food machines and cooking gadgets can be really great, and I've got a lot of them! But if they're not used very often, or can't do double or triple duty, what's the point?

[GGT]

Had parmesan crusted flounder the other day. Not particularly healthy, but damn does it taste good. Lemon juice, mayo, lots of parmesan, scallions, and butter as a topping for lightly salted flounder fillets. Bake for 10 minutes; follow by broiling for a couple minutes to brown. Really works well with any basic whitefish.

That does sound yummy! Could be made a bit "healthier" by coating the filets in milk instead of mayo, then rolling in bread/cracker crumbs for the baking crust, and adding smaller amounts of butter and parmesan for the broiling, with scallions on top, drizzled with lemon juice.

[Flixy]

Teflon pans aren't single duty, you can fry anything in them.

[earthJoker]

Do you mean Teflon or one of its variations? That can work too, but I'm not a fan of specialized pans or skillets lately.

Don't get me wrong....special cookware, food machines and cooking gadgets can be really great, and I've got a lot of them! But if they're not used very often, or can't do double or triple duty, what's the point?

A Teflon pan is not really something fancy. But Teflon is very easy to scratch, you need a lot of care. But there are other coatings. Actually it is quite hard to get a pan without at least some coating in most shops here. A massive iron pan would be regarded as "special". Coated pans are also good for pancakes and omelettes

Oh yeah, and if you want to make poached eggs(...)

Much more difficult to make nice looking poached eggs IMO. Also I don't do them that often, which makes it even harder.

[Aimless]

If you guys get the chance, try onglet. It's difficult to find in Sweden but I think it might be easier in the rest of the civilised world. So. Frickin. GOOD.

[GGT]

Yeah, Teflon is easy to scratch and particles end up in the food (yuck) and it can't be put in the oven. I like to sear seasoned meats, then put them in a high-temp oven, then use the juices and crusty tidbits to make a pan gravy. One good, well-seasoned (coated) cast iron skillet can replace lots of other cookware, and even be used over a campfire!

I had to look up "onglet". Interesting that it's a "hanger steak" from the 'plate' not the 'flank' of the animal, considered a preferred butcher's cut of meat....with an offal tang due to its proximity to organs (liver and kidneys). Who knew?

[GGT]

Forgot to mention....nabbing this from the WTF thread (about eating insects)....I've heard some folks are trying to conjure up recipes using Cicadas emerging this year.

[Aimless]

(preheat oven)

1. Buy chicken legs

2. Separate the skin from the meat, pull it back over the end but don't remove it completely

3. Use the back of a chef's knife (or the edge of a heavy-ass Chinese-style cleaver?) to chop through the bone just above the place where the skin attaches to it. One swift chop!

4. Separate the meat from the bone.

5. Chuck bones with attached meat scraps into a saucepan (fry a little then cook with garlic, onions, etc. Start making some stock).

6. Chuck meat into a meat-grinder or a food processor along with eg. onions, garlic, a large pepper, etc. I also threw in some pitepalt.

(optional step for those who go the meat-grinder route: fight with and yell at malfunctioning grinder for a very long time, create a mess trying to diagnose the problem, yell more, give up, punch yourself in the face upon realizing the blade wasn't in, proceed to grinding step)

7. Add yummy things to the goo, eg. soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, salt, spices, whatever you like. I also added an egg and some rolled oats.

8. Stuff the goo into the chicken skins

9. Pull together the edges, fold the excess over some of the seams if possible and seal it all up with a couple of toothpicks per satchel (or, if you're good at that, tie up neatly). Satchel? Pouch? I don't know.

10. Pat the satchels dry. Salt and pepper and, if you like, sprinkle with some nice spicy brown sugar

11. Fry in a frying pan

12. Put some thick long slices of zucchini (one per satchel) into an oiled oven-proof dish

13. Place chicken on zucchini, place dish in oven.

14. Make soup with stock (we made wild mushroom soup. A better idea might be some vichyssoise. If you like your soup cold you'll of course have to wait a while before putting the chicken into the oven).

15. Decide when chicken is done. Remove from oven, let it cool a bit, remove toothpicks.

16. Eat soup!

17. Eat chicken


Many steps but honestly not very difficult. Apart from the optional meat-grinder-fighting step it was an enjoyable and delicious experiment

[littlelolligagged]

How crispy was the skin?

[Aimless]

So this thing works:



Got a nice large cooler for cheap, once I have the workflow optimized this will be not only the best way to make steak but also one of the most convenient! It really is perfectly pink all the way through and the water temperature was very stable.

How crispy was the skin?

It coulda been crispier! I haven't perfected the method yet.

[GGT]

That's cool! Totally reverses the way we've been taught to cook meat -- searing first at hight heat, then baking or roasting at lower temps. Moisture has always been the trickiest part. The sealed hot bath soak is quite intriguing. I could get really nerdy about that, and try my dishwasher, clothes washer, or hot bathtub instead of a dedicated cooler.

[GGT]

I need recommendations for bringing food to a "Greek Christmas". I suggested lasagna, but it's not pastitsio. Green bean casserole is not fassiolacia (or however it's spelled). I brought a nice honey-baked ham at Thanksgiving, but it was considered too cured and 'smokey', compared to their homemade spicy Greek sausage. Also, the family doesn't like butter, or anything made with butter, as a general rule. Not even cookie, cake or pie recipes that usually call for butter.

The "matron" of the family said the Christmas menu should include some new foods....but everything I've suggested has been shot down so far. Not just pecan pie and peanut brittle desserts...but any main dish with rice, fish, or cheese. So wtf can I bring?

[Aimless]

Turkey

[GGT]

They served turkey at Thanksgiving, and only because it was considered part of the American holiday tradition. They didn't even save the carcass or bones to make turkey soup...

[Aimless]

It was a joke

Sounds like a horrible-ass family of horrible asses and assorted douchebags who're too full of themselves but they might be able to accept something like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=greek+christmas+food

[Aimless]

http://www.marthastewart.com/952030/...karona-cookies

[GGT]

You're right...it's gonna be a horrible mess of extended family members, and ethnic vs traditional American foods. My suggestion of going to a nice Chinese restaurant was roundly rebuked....because someone told the Greek matriarch that all Chinese restaurants are filthy, and serve "mystery meat", and she believes that. Merry Christmas, huh.

[GGT]

http://www.marthastewart.com/952030/...karona-cookies

oooh, thanks! That sounds similar to her braided tea cookie recipe, maybe "the family" would like it. And no butter involved.

[Flixy]

I need recommendations for bringing food to a "Greek Christmas". I suggested lasagna, but it's not pastitsio. Green bean casserole is not fassiolacia (or however it's spelled). I brought a nice honey-baked ham at Thanksgiving, but it was considered too cured and 'smokey', compared to their homemade spicy Greek sausage. Also, the family doesn't like butter, or anything made with butter, as a general rule. Not even cookie, cake or pie recipes that usually call for butter.

The "matron" of the family said the Christmas menu should include some new foods....but everything I've suggested has been shot down so far. Not just pecan pie and peanut brittle desserts...but any main dish with rice, fish, or cheese. So wtf can I bring?

Moussaka, kinda like lasagna, easy, tasty, but maybe not particularly festive. I have a recipe for filled squid, quite tasty, quite unusual I suppose, as well. Only downside is.. well the actual dish is not that much work, but cleaning squid is a bitch. So, if you can get already cleaned squid (calamari type, only need the head/sack/mantle/whatever you call it), it ain't bad. Also got a recipe for (vegetarian) stuffed vegetables with the rice cooking inside the vegetables while it's in the oven for an hour, which came from my sister's greek sister in law, so that's presumably greek

And they do sound horrible.

[Timbuk2]

+1 for Moussaka. Yummy.

~

Dolmades, or stuffed vine leaves - an absolute favourite of mine. Might be more of a Cypriot thing than a Greek thing, but I've certainly had them in Greece.



~

Kleftiko, which is slow cooked lamb, usually shoulder. Ends up like a stew, is dead easy to make, Greek as anything, and is delicious.

[GGT]

Thanks for that tip, Tim! I'm going to surprise them with a crockpot Kleftiko recipe I found on the web. Marinating the lamb today, going to cook it slowly for 4-5 hours tomorrow morning before making the drive, then can plug it in to keep warm. Her ovens are usually filled to capacity, so this way another dish won't be in the way.

Leg of lamb was too expensive ($18.99/pound ) so I got some stew shank cubes instead ("only" $14.99/pound). And I combined a couple of recipes, one used cinnamon to complement the lemon and garlic. I tried a beef version over the weekend first, to see how it would turn out....and it was really tasty, but on the dry side. Might skip the skillet searing step from the recipe, if that's supposed to seal in the juices it didn't seem to work. Hoping marination does the trick for melt-in-your-mouth tender, juicy, savory meat.

[GGT]

I'm also experimenting with Chex Mix recipes, trying to make them taste as good as the oven-baked "original" but with less sodium. My homemade saltless "seasoned salt" is pretty good, but Worcestershire sauce seems to be the key ingredient that can't be replaced or easily reduced. Is it the salty anchovy flavor, or what?

[Aimless]

So for my birthday lunch I made an elk's neck stew, a sort of dip thing with grilled paprikas and feta, a Bengali variation on (i guess) baba ganoush and served it up with some flatbread.

The neck was braised (more like stewed) with onions, garlic, marrow-bones, spices (including a large piece of cinnamon), bay-leaves and wild mushrooms for thirteen hours and mixed with roasted veggies towards the end.

Guys, neck-meat is just amazing stew-meat! Get it before it becomes trendy wine Woulda made it even better. Can't wait to nom down the leftovers tomorrow

[Dreadnaught]

You made neck stew? Don't you have a tiny apartment? How do you avoid it stinking things up?

Last night I made Zionist Salad.



Tonight I will take a pile of tofu, drown it in some sauce over a stove and slap it on top of broiled chicken. I want to have protein with my protein so that I can protein my protein. And get gout. And then recover from the gym while watching toddlers do pushups and chores for my entertainment.

[GGT]

What's Gout got to do with it?

I'm convinced that any meat can be made delicious with enough onion and garlic, plus other misc. herbs or spices, and baked slowly for hours. Marinating overnight in vinegars or citrus, plus oil and water, can turn boot leather into tender morsels.

[Veldan Rath]

Last night we made the BEST LASAGNA EVAR. We used ground turkey and sweet sausage, with green and yellow peppers, onions, and all the regular ingredients...and tonight Better Half made Bananas Foster for dessert!

[Flixy]

Last night we made the BEST LASAGNA EVAR.

That's impossible, we already make the best lasagna evar here

[littlelolligagged]

Vegetarian, with lots of spinach. Way nicer than your meaty stuff, and best lasagna ever!