The lockdown cookbook

How are you feeding yourself in self-isolation?

(I was going to ask how are you preparing but that question might get a bit stale, unlike my bag of besam flour)

My wife has made a load of pickled things, they look good.

actually maybe it would be fitting to share our Hubei food at this time.

beef cheek ragu and baked apples with butter and brown sugar

veg broth with lots of roots and kale

several portions of each in fridge and will prob batch up some more stuff tomorrow for lunches next week seeing as im still heading in to work

What is Hubei food? Despite my instance that you can eat regional cuisine from every province in China here in Melbourne I don’t think I’ve ever run into it.

Also please share recipes.

Trying the Thai curry ramen w/American cheese thing tonight

Don't think you can find anything from Hubei outside China, only a handful of regional cuisines seem to make it overseas. Famous Wuhan dishes include hot dry noodles and spicy duck neck, cant say we eat either of those often though, she's from another town to the East of the province with different food. My father-in-law considers anything not from Huangmei to be suspicious foreign food which he won't touch.

https://m.yelp.com/biz/hu-bei-restaurant-millbrae-2

just abt to make slowcook red lentil daal for the first time: it says it feeds 12, we shall see

i should make this more often, it could hardly be easier and the main problem has been helping myself several times before it's had its proper full eight hours bcz it's so delicious

do you have a recipe?

This is how it doesn’t feed 12.

Farinata will feature a lot, it satisfies that need for something bready and Savory whilst only being made of chickpea flour, olive oil, salt and water.

recipe is here: https://cafejohnsonia.com/2014/02/slow-cooker-red-lentil-dal-recipe.html

(i didn't have any fenugreek or fennel or onion seeds and i used non-canned toms)

Several xps

Joy Luck in London does Wuhan dry noodles and they are extremely delicious.

I have a freezer drawer full of fish which I’ll be rubbing with various pastes (gochujang, miso, tandoori paste etc.), roasting and eating with rice. Other than that it’ll be DUMPLINGS!, ramen and black daal for the foreseeable. If I can be bothered to bake bread I have fish fingers for a sandwich.

Mainly I’ll be making a dent in my wine stash to stop myself getting through too many teabags.

This is what's cooking now, can't quite convey the smell which is intense and wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=091ympU6P_0

hot dry noodles are the shit, Wuhan has the best breakfast in China, would also recommend the doupi, which is like rice with a meaty sauce on top then a sort of egg-tofu shell, also there are these little savory donuts, forget the name of those, and shaobing, which is like a very light puffed up pitta

lol @ the DUMPLINGS! autoreplace still existing :D

<3 <3

I found a Hubei restaurant in Melbourne but it may be too late to go now. Will check if there is Hubei food on EASI or Hungry Panda.

Although if this is an good recipe I have everything in the cupboard to make an ersatz version.

http://heneedsfood.com/recipe/hot-dry-noodles-reganmian/

V says it looks good, but not reganmian, the noodles are the wrong sort and the pickled radish is not cut finely enough, small quibbles tbh, and she says it still looks good. For me it doesn't look like reganmian because it's not in a little cardboard bowl.

Given my store cupboard currently extend to soba, spaghetti and udon, and my pickled raddish is Korean I might not get even that close.

Still give it a go, wheat noodles in sesame paste with pickled radish is always a winner.

makin some superiority burgers for the first time

also made some modernist cheese slices

we shall see

curious how the superiority burger comes out; i have the cookbook and i've eaten the burger in nyc but have not attempted it myself

curious how the superiority burger comes out; i have the cookbook and i've eaten the burger in nyc but have not attempted it myself

― call all destroyer

jeez, that just sounds like a lot of work for a hamburger!

we're mostly sticking with our standards. lots of noodles and rice and chicken with various spices as appropriate. inspired us to go through and actually determine what ingredients we had on hand and what we can do with them, so our eating is going to have more variety than it's had in a while probably!

the burg was good folks

that said, there's definitely some tweaks and technique not specifically spelled out

used more potato starch than called for to get a better bind. using a ringmold after the first burg fell apart made a huge difference

There is an alternate Chinese world in Melbourne and some of the delivery services that were previously mandarin only (a struggle but you could make it work) have been opening up English language store front. Apropos the hubei food up thread I find I can now get prepackaged shelf stable duck neck snack on same day delivery along with all the hot pot ingredients I’ll ever need.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rc4f6ladox3blxy/PNG%20image.png?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rc4f6ladox3blxy/PNG%20image.png?raw=1

I made sweet potato and pea curry last night with, among other things, tamarind, and it was p good. mushroom fried rice tonight with a bit of roast chicken thrown in for me. saving my one tin of tomatoes for a special occasion!

I can never really deal with spicy duck neck - the tolerance of my mouth for the heat is substantially more than the tolerance of my lips, if there's a single crack there it's agony to eat.

TIL that chinese five space and indian five spice are very much not the same thing :)

hackney five spice

bisto granules, daddy's sauce, non-brewed condiment, ice magic, butterscotch angel delight

never heard of indian five spice before. it has fennel at least, and the concept of five.

I never heard of it either! I just started finding Chinese five spice ok last year. I used to really dislike it.

the idea of not liking any spice is insane to me

people react strangely to sichuan pepper I guess, I cannot get enough of it.

Sichuan Pepper and sancho pepper are the best favours.
I’m trying to grown them on my roof right now because they are such wonderful flavours and even better when fresh.

sichuan pepper w/ fish curry is incredible

"hunting for fennel in the time of pandemic"

the daal i made yesterday is in fact a five-spice daal acc.madhur jaffrey, it just didn't advertise as such on the one-line site i raided (bcz i wanted slowcook advice)

that advice in full btw: "8-10 hours on low"

This is a good thing to do with sichuan pepper and fish - though in the picture they have squeamishly taken the fish off the bone, also I would expect a lot more oil in there.

https://thewoksoflife.com/sichuan-boiled-fish-shui-zhu-yu/

that looks excellent

it was the star anise that put me off I think .I am not a fan of that flavor.

but i had a far of the five spice from forever ago and used it when I made these scallion flower buns and it was good.

I'm wondering wether its time to find some interesting WWII rationing style recipes that involve bulking things out with like jello.

we are just doing avocado, scallion, raw garlic, cooked mushroom do it yourself sushi handrolls tonight.

+ jalapeno.

Because it was an activity in and of itself, we itemized everything we had in freezer/storage and will be focusing on that first and foremost. It's a good excuse to eat some stuff we forgot we bought. For example, a whole turkey we bought for pennies the day after Thanksgiving 2 years ago.

basically, I am eating a lot of beans and drinking a lot of protein shakes (which are disgusting, but one thing the situation has done is completely destroy my appetite, and it is easier to drink calories than eat them)

tofu grapow 3 nights in a row, but now we are out of tofu and rice. no regrets. holy basil doesn't last forever. it's funny (well, gross) how people have raided the asian markets for rice but left all of the rice noodles because they don't know what they are. hopefully nobody tells them.

weird how things differ per place; the grocery store near me is floor to ceiling huge sacks of rice

if you make a thick enough dal you can bubble-and-squeak it on day three

you can what

katherine, if these are not premixed protein shakes and you have a blender you should try it with frozen bananas, berries, peanut butter, ginger, spinach (not all together, or altogether up to you).

these specifically are premixed -- planning ahead for days when my roommates are using the kitchen, there's only room for one person to cook at a time -- but yeah, that's the plan for when they run out (in the past I've used tofu as well)

i am gonna make a pizza tonight. a week or so before the panic i went ham on canned tomatoes at the grocery store.

We made a huge batch of pesto and froze most of it, but are doing pesto, sundried tomatoes and radiator pasta tonight.

The pesto is basil, pistachios, too much garlic (no cheese).,

radiator pasta?

Radiatori!!!

pot roast beef as previewed in our ilx chatz

pasta with parsnips and pancetta, which wasn't bad, needed something else though

made big batch of sri lankan curry that makes SO much sauce it made whole new second dinner with different meat & a lots more veg added

yesterday was some chicken and eggplant thai curry. today was corned beef hash, this is the only time of year you can actually get corned beef around here. we also made some baba ganoush with the rest of the eggplant, it's super good.

Made red curry beef stew tonight for the first time, a big hit.

kimchi brussels sprouts with broken rice

I just made okonomiyaki on the griddle on my roof. Barely made a dent in the enormous cabbage I hoarded at the weekend.

Finally dug out the slow cooker i bought in 2010 and have never used. A good red-lentil dal yesterday and have an eight-hour leek and potato soup on the go.

The biggest change is likely to be making much more bread from scratch. If i'm going to be making a lot of dal, i need to dust off my tawa and get some buss-up-shut going.

Sourdough flatbread

200% hydration rye leaven
Starter: 5g
Water: 50g
Wholemeal rye flour: 25g

Aim for a leaven that's about 27 degrees C. Mix the above ingredients and leave covered 8-12 hours at room temperature. Leaven is very wet so might not rise a lot but when ready should look very bubbly and smell v sour.

Final dough
200% WM rye leaven: 75g
Water (or milk): 125g
Oil: 12g
Strong white bread flour: 125g
Stoneground white flour: 100g
Salt: 5g
Sugar: 5g
Total: 447g

Mix the leaven, water and oil and then mix in the dry ingredients. Dough temp should be about 26 C.

Bulk ferment for about 3 hours, giving 3 sets of stretch and folds during the bulk.
Divide into 95-100g pieces, pre-shape and let rest for 1 hour
Preheat oven as high as it will go with a baking stone.
Roll each piece out to about 3 to 5mm thickness, place on semolina sprinkled peel or parchment and load onto the stone
Take out as soon as it puffs up and gets just a bit of colour
Let cool a bit but when still hot pack in a plastick bag so it holds the moisture and stays soft

Update! we did not use the radiatore pasta and used fusilli instead.

wildly overestimated how many parsnips I'd need for the pasta so I'm probably going to make this parsnip-date muffin recipe I found online (they have enormous tubs of dates on sale sometimes, before all this escalated was one of the sometimes)

Radiatori!!!

There is a bougie/hipster BK pasta company that makes hemp radiatori that are so good. The hemp gives them a gritty texture that is really strange the first time you try it, but I am so into it now.

I dethawed some of my tomato sauce I made last fall and mixed in a little burrata (just a little) that melted into the sauce at the end for a really great body. Added some parsley/almond pesto on top. It was the shit

I am going to make a quick store run today for some more green veg. Making and freezing a bunch of pesto is my plan, since you can put it on almost anything.

you mean 'thawed'? :)

the day I discover radiatori pasta when my roommate used it in mac and cheese was the day I realized the universe had been holding out on me.

i need a pasta only pornhub channel.

The only flour left at the store was semolina so pasta it is

i had to dig up my favorite twitter thread

In honour of #WORLDPASTADAY, I present the following scientific thread that constitutes definitive ranking of Non-Primary-Canon pasta shapes

— ཊལབསརངཧ (@David_Rudnick) October 25, 2017

"just a disc" someone clearly has not had rice cakes

he has a point but i'd probably like that disc pasta. i like the edges of ravioli, the part with no stuffing. i like the soft starchiness of it.

I mostly agree with that list. My favorite is bucatini but mostly because malfadine is not often around. I spent too much time trying to figure out the difference between campanale and gigli.

aren't there shells in this picture, correct me if i'm wrong https://www.haaretz.com/food/.premium-yotam-ottolenghi-s-gigli-with-chickpeas-and-za-atar-1.5467081

yes, those are big-ass shells

i'm really not inclined to post in covid-19 threads b/c i don't think my experiences will be particularly notable but i did make a couple things this week designed to have lots of leftovers and now i'm preoccupied with my inventory of useful containers and freezer space : /

I acquired a bag of rice and some tofu. Big day.

I had hiyadofu with ginger and wasabi and pickles for lunch.

Made my favorite Cooks Illustrated chilli recipe tonight. Lots more cooking to come.

still experimenting with bubble-and-squeaked breakfast daal

(viz shallow fried in butter and oil with onions, or this morning MUSHROOMS as they were looking a bit mummified)

basically it's too wet to caramelise much at all but it does a little, and it's cheery (i have made a fvckton for just one self-isolated person, so difft ways of serving it = U&K)

My ex is a better cook than me-- really a culinary prodigy tbh, never trained or anything but just makes miracles-- and yet I did 80% of the cooking when we were together. Either out of spite or out of post-breakup-reinvention, he's trying his hand at being a Domestic King post-breakup and posting photos of shit he's been whipping up for him and his new roommate, @'ing Alison Roman, and just generally making me feel confused and rueful but also very hungry and wishing he'd invite me over to eat some of that shit.

Anyway we been on good terms and he's been trying to convince me to get on the Alison Roman train. I kind of skeptically made a couple of things from her book and they were fine, I get it, her plating ideas are really interesting sometimes. That said, a couple nights ago I made something of hers so spectacular and amazing that I'm gonna make it every couple of weeks for the rest of my life, for sure. I sent photos of the results to my ex and he replied "I've overdone it with shrimp" and "you eat too much pasta" lol.

Here's the wonderful recipe, with some edits:

Sungold Pasta with Lemony Shellfish, Garlic, and Pistachios

1/3 cup olive oil
8 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 large fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 T fennel seeds, crushed
1 t crushed red pepper flakes
1 lb grape tomatoes
12 oz linguini (I made mine fresh)
1/2 c dry white wine
1.5 lb clams (I used 3/4 lb frozen clam meat, defrosted)
1.5 lb med. shrimp (I used 1.5 lb frozen, defrosted, and peeled them)
1/2 c shelled pistachios, coarsely ground (I throw em in a coffee grinder for a few seconds) (expensive to purchase w/out shells, but Ottolenghi uses them so much that I always have them in my pantry; they're very nice in this recipe but not 100% necessary)
1 lemon

Heat water
Heat oil in enormous pot with lid, med high
Put in garlic and fennel and stir 'til starting to caramelize, 8-10 min, season
Add seeds and flakes, stir
Add tomatoes-- I halved the grapes but you don't need to, season
Cook 10-12 min, breaking down the tomatoes with a spatula
Cook the pasta
Add wine to the sauce, reduce for 4-5 min
In go the clams and the shrimp (if you're using fresh clams, put them in before the shrimp, add shrimp when the clams start to open)
Shrimp should be cooked through but I always err on the rawer side
Throw pasta with a little pasta water and the sauce in a huge salad bowl and toss
Check seasoning, sprinkle with pistachios and finely chopped fennel fronds, additional pepper flakes and Maldon if you like
Serve with a lemon wedge

Alison Roman likes to use the word "jammy" to describe reduced tomatoes and I like that

Also this is one of several of her recipes where she essentially replaces a typical mirepoix with sautéed garlic + thinly sliced fennel. I'm a big fan of this. (Fennel is my favourite veg to put through my mandolin because there's no fingerdanger)

pics when you get a chance.

I think mirepoix is bullshit so I am very pro this substitution.

I use jammy to describe some wines.

I love "beginning a dish by sautéing a lily and a stalk" but agree that standard mirepoix opening moves lead to repetitious dining

that looks good. my wife hates fennel so i'm not sure i could get away with making it for her....maybe in the summer when we have good tomatoes from our CSA.

i have also been trying to figure out if alison roman is anything more than a decent recipe developer who got a high-profile gig? her stuff never looks bad to me but i'm not sure i need an entire book of it.

Using winter-available grape or cherry tomatoes is a cool $7 for the dish but it works fine. The fennel taste is not overwhelming at all, I would try it. Roman seems to be popular because of her winning personality and also the fact that she's made-mainstream certain mid-level plating tricks. (Smear some buttermilk sauce on the plate, arrange beets over top layered with quick-pickled onions, i.e.) There's an extra step of "assembly" added to her recipes that I think people really find appealing. Ottolenghi's newest cookbook "Simple" seems, in my eyes, to be a response to Roman's popularity-- or a reflection of more holistic cooking trends-- every recipe is the same trad cuisine with an added plating trick, the prep times are reduced (my big complaint about Ottolenghi is that there is a lot of prep involved, I could've rewatched half of The Sopranos in the amount of time I've spent making Etti's Herb Salad over the years).

I love that Roman's book is called "Nothing Fancy" and Ottolenghi's new book is called "Simple" lolol. We're living through a particular zeitgeist rn

that's a good point about plating. i wish i were better/more artful at it but honestly by the time everything is done i don't have much remaining energy for making it look nice

i rarely reach for my ottolenghi books these days because of the prep and some of the truly insane ingredient lists. i have a very well-stocked pantry and he will still challenge it with like nine spices, 4 different fresh herbs in large quantities, etc.

If I had a cookbook it would be called "I Am Making this Up As I Go Along As a Vehicle to Drink More Wine".

and it's a little sad that I am not really drinking at all right now, in order to keep my immunity up within however many days after I've last been outside.

if you join the ilx slack that ed started, some pics of cooking have started.

Yerac I feel like that’s most cookbooks, I do love Fergus Henderson’s assertion that “white wine exists only to make you wish you were drinking red wine”

Actually almost every Fergus recipe uses words like “restorative” suggesting that he traffics entirely in hangoverfood

Novice!

Almost everyone who hangs out with me slowly grows to love white wine more than red. It's so much more flexible with food.

yeah, we started out with heavy reds and transitioned to lighter reds and now mostly whites as we started cooking more. use-everything-in-lockdown mode has turned me on to Italian salsa verde. so simple and cheap to throw some tasty stuff together. made some with carrot tops and parsley and it's brightened up fried eggs, vegetables, and sandwiches the past few days.

Tonight: white crabmeat mixed with lemon and parsley on rye bread, bottle of godello. Might have an egg if I'm still hungry.

Just got a load of kilner jars in the post so I'll be lacto-fermeting the shit out of all the veg I can get my hands om this weekend. Consulted my Noma guide to fermentation the other day and will be attempting some fake miso made from yellow split peas, as a months-long project to eat up some time.

Almost out of red wine but got some Mee Godard Morgon and some Envinate reds arriving soon.

Four cases of wine just added to the basement and I cleaned out an 8-shelf pantry yesterday, washed it all down, and am using all the Mason jars from last summer to hold flours, pastas, etc to thwart the pantry moths that haven't quite been eradicated. Wish C had bought a chest freezer when he started saying, "Maybe I should get a chest freezer" because then I could put so much more in it.

i've def been thinking about buying a chest freezer

looks like that won't happen for a couple weeks though

I just read something about a P.C. Richard & Son in the hamptons getting 700 orders last weekend for chest freezers.

My wife has been making various pickled things to last us a month or two, so I put a post up here.

https://haonowshaokao.com/2020/03/21/in-a-pickle/

Nice. Seems like a very sensible approach.

If I may jump in after a week of home cooking, almost all done by tt...well, I stepped in to do one thing and it was AMAZING haha, not to blow my own horn here - I will give credit where it's due:

https://veganonboard.com/creamy-wild-garlic-soup/

Hard to get hold of wild garlic now alas so probably no chance of a repeat. I also made croutons with some leftover seed-bread and they brought things up even more, probably the best meal I've made idk

wow! that Hubei one, but also the sichuan, and kim chee look so good. any chance of pointing to a recipe for any of those, please?
xpost

i've never heard of this wild garlic leaf before. do you think green garlic would be a decent sub?

what an awesome array of pickled things! everything looks great.

is wild garlic leaf like ramps?

oh, smart of me to read the recipe first which says yes

i think it'd be worth a go, yes, although wild garlic has more of a spinach shape and texture (while tasting of garlic, it is incredible stuff)

once you have a soup base of fried (red) onion, veg stock and coconut milk it's p hard to fuck up tbh

I need to make some of those Hubei style pickles.

Could you share the recipe?

Also garlic chives from a Chinese market make a good sub for wild garlic.

Just falling asleep, will ask my wife if she has a recipe in the morning

Many thanks

yes

in the grass near my house there are random bunches of wild chives and my bf always gets mad at me when i try to eat them. he's wrong! dog pee chives.

Oooh I planted Chinese chives and Chinese garlic chives last year and then didn't end up using them for anything so I just moved them to an ornamental bed with the decorative allium but maybe I'll try again.

Six Seasons raw asparagus salad is great.

Hubei-style pickles-

The main ingredient is Chinese radish AKA daikon AKA mooli - cut into strips (including skin) and dried in the fridge for a few days at least

Sauce - in equal weights; onions, garlic, ginger root, pear and apple - all blended with a cup of fish sauce, a teaspoon of shrimp paste, a tablespoon of demerera sugar, chilli powder to taste (she says "enough to make it red")

When all is ready mix radish with sauce and put in jars, can be eaten after three days - don't leave it too long or it will get too sour.

Thanks, this also solves the problem of what to do with the slightly dried out daikon in the fridge. I have everything in the house apart from pears.

She says you can substitute apple for the pear - only a little of both required, maybe one apple is fine.

Interesting to see how many different names luobo has in English - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikon#Names

Making smokey paprika chicken with potatoes and cauliflower, really love this recipe

Thanks, Cameraderie! Sadly I didn't keep my shrimp paste last time I moved but should have some anyways so will reacquire

Zahav salmon kebab w/ pilaf coquelicot

realizing i've had a pound of semolina not getting use i made pasta from scratch a couple times the last few days. had made some sundried tomato pesto the other day, too, so that's worked out well.
gonna make lockdown cookies today.but leaving out the "salted" part. i don't care for salty sweets, tbh:
https://food52.com/recipes/76919-salted-chocolate-buckwheat-cookie

very rarely cook ottalenghi, but i'm a big fan of the slow-cooked mushrooms and butterbean puree here:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jan/18/yotam-ottolenghi-slow-cooking-recipes-mushrooms-parsnips-and-brussels-sprouts

had it last night and it was great. incredibly satisfying, good for vegans too (i'm not a vegan, but it's always good to have excellent vegetable only recipes to hand).

Made a lot of chicken soup this weekend. We're freezing most of it in case we catch it and don't have the strength to deal with cooking.

having lots of opportunity to do bigger breakfasts on weekdays (other meals shrinking in size accordingly) - today we had some bread getting old, so made french toast bread pudding with sliced banana (also rapidly aging) on top and some goat caramel drizzled over it for moisture and extra sweetness.

Yum that sounds amazing

What is goat caramel?

*breathes raspily* DON’T ASK

onion and tomato egg fried rice satay

(that's fusion baby!)

had some sunchoke in fridge for awhile and didn't know what to do with it, so married it with the leek i had no real use for into a (puree) soup. with a tiny bit of cauliflower. i need to do something more exciting for my palate soon, but at least am using up stuff

i wasn't expecting much since i can hardly ever recall eating a sunchoke before, but the soup is downright stellar. will make again

i have been trying to make yogurt for a week now and failing. i feel like someone is trying to tell me something.
failure 1: heated milk, added packet of starter that has been in the fridge (and not expired). incubated 9 hours. nothing happened, starter was probably dead.
failure 2: ordered new starter on amazon. package delivered. picked up "package" from porch. it was empty because the glue on the bubble wrap envelope had come undone and the thing was probably dropped in the truck. amazon refunded and said order again.
failure 3: reordered the same thing. it was delivered wednesday. i heated the milk just now and opened package. i received...dog treats. it's only a quart so i'm gonna just add-in some storebought now. i wanted to use the starter so i could repeat it, store-bought doesn't work that well with that.

I made about 8 quarts of ribollita, an Italian vegetable and bean soup. Of course I started of with two slices of bacon and threw in an old rind of parmagiano reggiano that I saved for this purpose, but you could omit both and it would be vegan and still awesome.

Salmon, asparagus w/garlic sauce, and brown rice tonight.

Cooked panko crusted buffalo salmon last night, easy and good

pasta with too-lazy-to-get-the-food-processor-out pesto, i.e. tossed with zucchini slow-cooked in olive oil, garlic, peppercorns and a jar of anchovies (yes, the whole jar, just imagine the "one clove = one bulb" garlic conversion meme, except with anchovies), with romano cheese and crushed walnuts on top

xp -- sunchokes are amazing roasted, just, uh, also might give you an extra reason to stay 6 feet away from anyone

fartichokes

Lockdown has been great for cooking (mostly vegetarian Italian).
Two days ago I made for the first time a great orzotto (orzo risotto) with mushrooms and various leftover veggies. Very earthy and definitely a winter dish so probably the last time I oculd make it tis year. Yesterday I made a soup-y pasta with borlotti beans for dinenr and eggs Kejriwal (ie "Indian croque monsieur") for lunch. At some point, I'll need to go to the supermarket though...

Clearing out stuff from your freezer/pantry cooking: scrapple with snails, mustard, horseradish, and salad. This is based on a dish I had at the old M. Wells Diner.

I'm eating so much pasta that I'm not even bothering to clean the pasta maker, I just leave it out and put more in it a couple days later

Help there was a banana bread recipe posted somewhere on ilx recently and it looks like search is busted.

Can u help me find.

i just made a fvckton of unfancy* leek and potato soup, which i will now let cool for an hour then place in small tupperware boxes in the freezer

*it's a tiny bit fancy, i put allspice in and grated some nutmeg also

I am now very much hoping the veg box today comes with leeks and potatoes

I did leek + pot + sausage soup with a base of pureed cauliflower and I hated it. It was "good" but too cauliflower-y and vegetal for me.

I made leek and potato soup today and got distracted, so it caught on the bottom and turned into a slightly caramelised stew - which was delicious with fresh bread.

I made a new sourdough starter. Then I made 27 sourdough English muffins with it. Before I baked them, I dried out the sourdough discard and ground it up, then sprinkled it on top.

From start to finish: eight days. Cost: about six bucks. I dried and ground

soda bread

corn bread

Making some bullshit Thai shrimp soup. Red curry paste, shrimp stock, coconut milk, shrimp. I forgot noodles on my kamikaze store run this morning.

Oh, I also don't have tamarind, so I am using lime zest to bitter it.

i made a little pizza from leftover naan and leftover regular pizza ingredients

leftover curry over cheap previously frozen fries that we hate

made some bullshit butternut squash soup with miso and dashi, threw in a lot of rice and a block of tofu, which lasted me the weekend at least

Made a very large batch of ghormeh sabzi (Persian herb stew) to freeze after a 2am trip to the grocery store.

In the food processor:
-3 large leeks (green part only)
-2 bunches of parsley
-1 bunch dill
-1 bunch cilantro
-About 7oz fresh spinach (too much will ruin it)
-A small handful of dried fenugreek leaves ("methi" from an Indian grocer)

In a large non-stick pot: sautee an onion in a generous amount of grapeseed oil with a pinch each of turmeric and black pepper until translucent. Add herb mixture and sautee over fairly high heat for 10-15 mins, stirring constantly (burning the herbs will ruin it). The herbs will turn a darker color, then slowly add water until it has the consistency of mud, bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Add 4x limoo omani (dried lemons or limes) and 3/4lb of dried red kidney beans, and 1tbsp salt or to taste. You should poke holes in the limoo omani with a fork before adding them. (Adding more lemon juice, as some recipes call for, will ruin it IMO)
Cover and simmer for 2-3 hours.

You eat it with basmati rice.

That sounds delicious.

Made soup base with heads and bones of a big sea bass and a little dover sole and a load of prawn heads/shells with white miso and some bits of veg and dried seaweed, then strained it and poached some cabbage and a couple of skate wings in it, served over cold flat noodles tossed in crispy chilli oil. Same again for lunch tomorrow.

Local market had $0.99/lb pork shoulder so I picked up a 8.5lb shoulder and roasted it cuban style. Feel like I have a main dish for the week.

much deliciousness in these posts. made the six seasons cauliflower ragu. It is the kind of thing kids and adults can enjoy. But also tricked 2 and 4 year old into eating a quarter head of cauliflower in one meal. Will probably replace all other iterations of mac and cheese with this.

That’s a big shoulder and a delicious way to cook it. I hope you have associated Cuban sandwich fixings.

to go with the pasta I sauteed some turnips in butter, then tossed with bread crumbs and romano cheese; I feel like my two modes during all of this are no appetite at all or compulsion to prepare vegetables in the least healthy way possible

Pulled elk sausages out of the freezer this morning. I think I will poach them in beer and serve with boiled potatoes and sautéed frozen kale.

Anyone got any recommendations for salt beef, beyond bagels, reubens etc? Am considering incorporating into some kind of Portuguese-style wet rice thing but other suggestions gratefully received (I have a lot of salt beef)

I assume you have thought of corned beef and cabbage

What's a good, ethical (ie their workers are not currently striking for paid sick leave) place to mail-order food things? I'm looking for flavors I can't get in this small town--curry paste, sambal olek, dried guajillo, pasilla, arboles chilies, also I can't find a single lentil in the whole county so if I could order some that would be great. There's no grocery deliver, it would be straight mail order.

Also I don't need anything from there but browsing the Food 52 site is extremely soothing.

By the by

The most delicious and surprising way of eating a lot of vegetables for dinner is to make pinakbet, Filipino vegetable stew. Every time I make it, I am constantly surprised at how delicious it is, and how healthy it is, which is completely out-of-step with the majority of Filipino cuisine.

I'll type out the recipe here-- I can't find as good a one online as the one I use from my cookbook. (I omit chicharron/lechon that the recipe recommends as garnish, because I don't like that shit.)

Pinakbet

serves 4

3 cloves garlic
1 onion
4 tomatoes
6 long beans
1 bitter melon (or several mini ones, if you can find them) do not omit the bitter melon even if you don't like it, trust me, it is amazing in this dish and I don't generally like bitter melon
3 winged beans (pretty niche, not necessary)
8 okra
half a small eggplant
half a butternut squash
1/4 c oil (I use peanut)
3 Tbsp fish paste (if you can't get the real thing, I use mashed-up anchovies with commonly available fish sauce, or combine that IKEA-available Kalles shit with fish sauce)
A handful of cherry tomatoes

1. Put a litre of water on the boil, as salty as the sea. Set up your rice cooker to make rice.
2. Mince the garlic. Chop the onion. Wedge the tomatoes. Cut the long beans into 2" pieces. Halve the bitter melon, remove the seeds and slice. Cut the winged beans into 1" pieces. Remove stems from the okra. Cube the eggplant. Cube the squash.
3. Boil the squash for five minutes in the water. Remove with a wire skimmer; keep the water boiling.
4. Boil the other vegetables (except garlic, onion, cherry tomatoes) for 1 minute. Remove from heat and drain in a colander.
5. Get a big sauce pan and heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, saute until nearly translucent. Add the garlic, let cook for a minute.
6. Add the tomatoes and fish paste. Let simmer a couple minutes.
7. Add the other vegetables. Mix for about a minute or so over the heat, then remove from heat.
8. Garnish with cherry tomatoes and fish sauce

So, like, your veg are boiled a minute, fried a minute, served over rice, and honestly I can't really communicate how surprisingly delicious this mass of undercooked vegetables ends up being. I hope somebody reads this and makes it!

https://www.foxyfolksy.com/pinakbet/

Here's an online recipe-- ground pork is often added (I'd cook the onions/garlic less, then throw it in for ten minutes until it starts to foam). Parboiling the veg (as above) is REALLY effective, unlike this recipe and others would suggest. Look at how delicious this dish is, though!

Not sure how I came across this, could definitely have been ilx

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/braised-chicken-thighs-cabbage-bacon-recipe.html

Cannot recommend highly enough. Anything that doesn't start with frying garlic is uncharted territory for me but it turned out really well.

io I've heard good things about https://oaktownspiceshop.com/

I made toum with some garlic that wasn't the best and past it's best and it's too astringent. mellowed it with some yoghurt and it tasted ok drizzled on a roasted whole head of cauliflower and as a dipping sauce for rotisserie chicken (my gf had the latter)

What's a good, ethical (ie their workers are not currently striking for paid sick leave) place to mail-order food things? I'm looking for flavors I can't get in this small town--curry paste, sambal olek, dried guajillo, pasilla, arboles chilies, also I can't find a single lentil in the whole county so if I could order some that would be great. There's no grocery deliver, it would be straight mail order.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Thursday, April 2, 2020 9:33 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

loz, if it's chiles you want i can probably sort this out

Thanks, dude! Actually C brought home some arboles and pasillas from Queens the other day so I'm good there but I'm still missing the Asian stuff. Might just wait it out.

There could be a modified posole in the cards though.

IO, I get chile products from here — http://thechileshop.com/ — every year or so. Everything's been really good so far.

had some zucchini about to turn so I made pesto with it (not the greatest I've had but pesto is very substitutable), then took a hunk of goat cheese and made pasta sauce; if I ever have children I really suspect I'm going to become that mom who hides vegetables in everything

made amazing asparagus risotto last night. one of the best things i’ve made for ages. absolutely ballsed up a chicken pilaf earlier in the week - whole grain rice was all that was available and cos i never cook with it i forgot it takes twice as long to cook. result totally inedible. had to make it all again and drank a lot of beer and danced round my kitchen in the process. the end result was v 5/10.

waterzooi - belgian fish soup - tonight.

I have so much arborio rice, I really need to commit to some risottos. Chx soup on my schedule for tomorrow though, with the intent of freezing it for later.

I don't like zucchini or eggplant or any squashes so it's been basically kale and broccoli and fresh salad veg (as long as they'll keep) for us--feels like I need to branch out a bit but I'm not that creative with veg!

we have been murdering the fennel risotti recently. lattermost one also had a large leek in it which pushed things even further. great lockdown food, would endorse

courgette and aubergine were both very apt ingredients in the giant daal tt made last night. they stew really well and soak up any flavour

my big question for tonight is how to deal with kohlrabi. the current feeling is a soup but that's almost a waste of its texture maybe?

great for high-heat roasting

or shaved raw in some sort of salad context

the former sounds eminently plausible!

went with the soup, accompanied by the leaves turned into crisps a la kale

it is superlative

https://www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/hellas-creamy-kohlrabi-soup

fake larb (i.e. with textured vegetable protein instead of meat because it's shelf-stable), which didn't turn out half bad actually

arroz con pollo with some drumsticks that have been in the freezer for some years. they were vacuum sealed and look good as new, though.

there's a loquat tree on hoa property behind our home. going to harvest some for jam this year. i say that every year, and i've never actually done it, though.

had some saffron in my pantry for a truly unreasonable amount of time, but finally used it today to marinate some chicken, alongside a roasted radish salad, which is probably one of the best things I've made in years

saffron so expensive. must use it up. someday I'll get a proper tahdig on saffron rice. Today, i harvested the 8 cups loquats. We watched paddington 2 and made 2 jars of marmalade.

yeah, it's like that thing when you're playing a video game and you're reluctant to use up the best potion item in the game because then it's gone. except with ingredients

Even though I made a massive shopping run yesterday, from which we shall be eating for most of the next 3 weeks (!) I now confine myself to one store only rather than the three I usually shop at, and there is no menu prepared in advance from which to make my list and no guarantee what I seek shall be findable. So, there are a great many dishes we could make, but it's a bit like Tetris, in that it is easy to have gaps among necessary ingredients, and if one dish is chosen, it may preclude four other dishes by virtue of using all of one ingredient that then won't be replenished for quite a while. It is a daily game of optimization, constantly restarted with a shorter list of fresh ingredients. Fun at times, frustrating other times.

saffron so expensive. must use it up. someday I'll get a proper tahdig on saffron rice. Today, i harvested the 8 cups loquats. We watched paddington 2 and made 2 jars of marmalade.

xp the recipe optimisation game is very relatable. I am quite fatigued by it this week. My indecision is bad at the best of times, but when it necessitates sacrifice too then it's hard to make any decision at all! Especially because everything is now organised by what is going to go off first rather than what I want to make. I miss impulse.

But anyway, the proliferation of pesto and houmous varietals continues to favourably rule many dishes. So cheap and easy to make!

I am making my own wide rice noodles again now that I have a proper steamer basket. Getting prettay good.

made this, was phenomenal (with substitutions -- couldn't find ground lamb so substituted turkey and upped the spices, used pistachios in place of pine nuts because I hate pine nuts, I'm sure someone on twitter is screencapping this and getting 100,000 likes on what a horrible person with horrible taste I am) https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/spiced-lamb-and-dill-yogurt-pasta

https://scontent.fphl1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p720x720/96774332_10158106960244000_5216103069342760960_o.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=C9OOwr2UY0sAX-QG52j&_nc_ht=scontent.fphl1-1.fna&_nc_tp=6&oh=b7487e8a32dd271550c5a55dfae01fc1&oe=5EDB8215

A homemade chocolate custard--not as photogenic as my sister's loaves of bread, but definitely delicious. Tomorrow once it's set, we'll see if it's better than pudding from a mix.

Anybody with an Aeropress can make amazing cold drip coffee at home really easily. Here is the recipe. OK this looks long but I swear it's easy. Serve black over ice. Do not water down! It's like the whiskey of coffees.

1. Set the plunger aside, you won't be using it.
2. Get a small plastic water bottle
3. Cut the bottom off of it with some scissors
4. Take the cap off, poke a very small hole in it, and screw the cap back on
5. Turn it upside down and pour water in what used to be the bottom. You should get about 1 drop per second coming out of the hole in the cap. If it's going too fast, put a piece of sellotape over the hole and play with it a little until you get the right flow. Nice.
6. Set everything up the normal way, i.e. a jar or coffee cup underneath everything, and put enough coffee in your Aeropress for about 3 cups of coffee. i.e. 3 scoops. This is going to be strong!
7. Put another one of your paper filters OVER the coffee grounds, down in the Aeropress. This is going to ensure that the water distributes evenly through the coffee.
8. You may want to put the funnel on top to hold the upside-down water bottle steady.
9. Turn your water bottle upside down, fill about 3/4 full of cold water, and put into the top of the Aeropress.
10. Voila - you should be seeing cold water drip slowly through the grounds, and eventually drip down into your jar. It'll take an hour or so.

Whoa, mini-Toddy, nice

David Rudnick's three-hour pomodoro sauce. I got orange tomatoes, so it ended up being the color of SF's sky.

https://pastebin.com/1RbdnctG

I'm sure there are other good cooking threads but this is the first in my bookmarks... Anyway, do I need/want a OnePot (or variant thereof)? I keep reading about them and have a bit of Christmas cash from my old dear and am hovering over the buy button.

is that like an instant pot? i like them

yeah we use ours a fair bit - weekly steel cut oatmeal, all-in-one casserole things, they’re good!

Right, it's that or a new knife/new skillet pan. How do I choose?!

that's a tough one. what is your current skillet and knife situation?

that's a tough one. what is your current skillet and knife situation?

Honestly, both kind of ordinary. Knives are ordinary - could do with a better chef's and cook's knife (the shame).

if you're committed to the idea of cooking meals for yourself over the long haul, I'd say buy the knives before you buy the One Pot. good ones last for many decades while electronic gadgets rarely have such staying power.

yeah agree

good knives first

fancy gadgets later

good knives is a game changer

i agree with that. i like to pressure cook but went so long without it, it's fine.

Knives it is. Cheers.

At the start of August, we decided to try a more vegetarian diet and haven't looked back. My wife has continued with dairy but, the odd dalliance here and there, I'm basically vegan. It's been such a fucked up year, I've no real idea if I feel 'better' as such but I'm not missing meat at much at all and dairy even less. The big question is why didn't I do it sooner?

chicken strips or nuggets seem to be one of the most desirable meals for young dudes under 7, and I also like to make meals the whole family can eat. Lately I've been making chicken strips using the ad hoc fried whole chicken recipe. They are good! The brine is also a great way to get rid of some extra fresh parsley and thyme.