weed ravioli i’ve made, and its DELICIOUS. Also brownies and cookies are great.
and what else, aside from sautee pans should I invest in? I have most basic and semi non basic shit (frying pans, pots, broiling pans, bbq, grills, crockpot, etc)
Food processor. If you have a blender that is alright but don’t expect to make any thicker stuff like purees with it. Food processor is great for making cold sauces or a variety of shit that can be added to cream or butter sauces. You should have one non-stick omlette pan just for omlettes, crepes and eggs only. Nothing else.
Should invest in a fish spatula, if you’re into making pizza a unglazed ceramic stoneware. If you don’t want to spend the money on a pizza stone a unglazed quarry tile would do the trick. Try to get soapstone, but if not get either composite stone or quarry tiles. 99 cents beats $40 any day. Just double check if it’s foodsafe to use from your hardware supply guy.
Microplane for zesting citrus items because a LOT of flavour is in the zest, even more so than the juice sometimes. Also great for hard cheeses and garlic just to add a bit of kick to most dishes like stir fry or pasta. The residual heat and the fineness of the grain should cook it just right. It’s great for grainy root items that need a grating as well like horseradish.
OC
A good size Cast Iron Skillet. Might also want to look into a cast iron dutch oven too.
Quick question, i’m lactose intolerant and was wondering if there is any difference really in using Lactose free milk as opposed to straight milk.
No. Lactose is a sugar and from what I understand it’s not that much of a difference. You can use lactose free or other milk subs 1:1 for most recipes. Only problem I would find is with baking which are more precise but I imagine most cookbooks would adjust for that.
Go Dairy Free - Dairy Substitutes
So going to issue a challenge to you guys for this weekend if you have the time.
Challenge is…make a stock.
Could be any stock. Me personally I’m going to make veal stock in order to prep up for Xmas and just general saucing of meats. Chicken stock I usually don’t bother with since Swanson’s is passable for me (yes a huge concession being a cook, but that’s me cutting corners). If most of you guys don’t have time to bum around for the 8+ hours to tend to a stock (really it’s more like 2 hours, but you don’t want to burn down the house.) then try to make a fish stock from whitefish bones like Halibut. Some Chinese markets or fish places will sell you the bones for super cheap if you know where to ask and really, it only takes 45 minutes of simmering to get your stock and thus soup base for all sorts of seafood chowders, sauces for seafood other things for warming yourself in the cold fall months.
As for me. Going to download all the seasons of Top Chef since I’m tired of the yelling of Ramsay now. Learn nothing and I just get antsy from listening to the announcer make things seem so batshit.
Also books for you serious foodies. Here are the ones recommended by my chefs:
Culinary Artistry: You don’t know shit, I don’t know shit. Lord knows we don’t have the time to try out every fucking flavour combination under the sun. Hopefully the combined collective minds of chefs all across the continent can remedy that. Culinary artistry is INDISPENSABLE if you want to get fucking serious. Hate the fact that you can only find one good recipe in a $40 cookbook that is actually different and not a different version of another recipe? If you heard people say to free your mind from books and just let your senses and tastes guide you? This is the book that you want to be attached to.
In short almost any flavour, ingredient, veg, protein, spice and herb you can think of, they listed down the flavour affinities and combinations that work with that flavour.
Sometimes I think of an item, look at it and just build from 2 or 3 items in that list. That’s how I got most of my chef tasting menu a few pages back from.
SRK EXPLANATION: It’s like knowing which effective and complimentary team and assist to use in MvC2 without having to try out every fucking combination. Mushrooms and beef is like Strider/Doom.
Flavour Bible The sequel to the above book. A bit more streamlined with separate sections made into one huge section. Previously it was food items, flavours (such as herbs and spices) and then cuisines, but now it’s just every single thing in alphabetical order. I’d say to choose between the two, get this one since it’s more updated.
SRK EXPLANATION: It’s like Super Culinary Artistry 2 Turbo. Same basis, but presented differently and more refined in some ways.
Sauces Classical and Contemporary Sauce making: Holy fuck an entire book on sauces and more. It goes into every single aspect of sauce making from Asian sauces, traditional French, some contemporary stuff. This book will change the way you think about food. There is a huge ass section that talks about just spices and herbs, how to use them (professionally) and how they can change from different perspectives. Whether to use as fresh, dry, beginning, end, middle of cooking etc.
SRK EXPLANATION: It’s like reading a Seth Killian article. It’s specific on a topic of games, but it describes so much more about the big picture about the genre from this one aspect of culture.
Geometry of Pasta: Geek shit. But also if you are hardcore into Italian cooking, probably would like to have it. Most people don’t know this, but pasta shapes aren’t just a wacky way to make silly Italian names for pasta, or to add variety to a staple food item, but each shape is to accommodate a filling or texture of a sauce that it’s in. I don’t have it yet, but I love design and I want to get this just to learn the different applications of pasta.
SRK EXPLANATION: Learning how each shoto is different from each shoto.
On Food and Cooking by Harold MacGee: The next step for you Good Eats Fan who want more. Super efficient and quick reference guide on all aspects of food, the science and outcomes of them. If you want to know about your ingredient in detail of a dictionary style with a slight encyclopedic explanation, this is your quick reference guide. What’s great is consistency of format.
SRK EXPLANATION: It’s like reading frame data.
Also update on my career. Out of work right now and back in school for a month. Was a total asshole at work for the co-worker who took my place on brunch. Since we only have brunch prep on the weekend, I did all of his prep for him on Saturday (my last day). However to be an ass, I hid all the prep and made a separate “fake mise en place/prep” tray for him. All he said was that I should make him a prep list and that’s it. What I left in that fake tray was like 1 breakfast sausage, some slices of salmon, a little bit of back bacon, a pinch of herbs and a note that says “Fuck you Stu.” I heard the outcome was quite hilarious.
OC
I made this Pork Tenderloin the other day. INSANELY simple recipe, and I can honestly say I have never tasted a tastier piece of meat. The au jus was incredible too!!! I think it cost me like 12 bucks for the whole thing.
making Chicken Breasts Pierre this weekend.
Whatcha y’all cookin for Thanksgiving?
So a few weeks ago I got myself an enameled cast iron dutch oven (5QT Staub “Titanium” color), and I love it. I’ve made baked beans, Bolognese sauce, country style steak and various other recipes in it and they’ve all come out great (I use the recipes as guidelines but add my own twists). I should start taking pictures.
Well since I’m not hosting I’m just making some desserts. I’m making Chocolate Pie and candied yams. The pie I’ve made a bunch before and it’s easy to do and delicious. The candied yams are my mom’s recipe, apparently it isn’t a very common side dish here in Hawaii so I had to make it. I’m making double recipes of both since I’m going to both my GF’s parents house and to my Aunt’s place afterward (I’m gonna be soo stuffed)
Nice information shared…Useful for all of us .
Have a Good Day
ok, so I’m thinking I may finally make a huge amount of pho sometime soon (from what I understand, you really just need to make an assload of broth, then freeze/store it for future use).
The vietnamese meatballs, do you buy them like that or do you have to make them???
Also, wtf is this 5-star thing that goes in?
And I notice it uses a lot of ingredients in their natural form (ie- ginger). Can you not just use pre-ground ginger or shit like that?
I’ve never made pho, so I cannot say for sure, but generally when a recipe asks for fresh ingredients then it’s best to use them. For ginger, I’d think that fresh and ground would have 2 very different tastes. Ginger is simple enough to use though, you can peel it with a spoon then just buy a ginger grater (looks like a plate with a ton of little bumps on it) cover it in plastic and rub the ginger across it and you’ll be able to get lots of ginger easily, and since you put the plastic wrap on top you just pull up the plastic wrap and the grater it clean and you ginger is easily used…
5-star thing? I’m not too sure what it was, maybe star anise?
Making Ox bone soup, korean soup called seolleongtang.
In a way, its kinda similar to the concept of Viet Pho, but no herbs.
sounds awesome. I love crock pot recipes. I’ll share one real quick that you recipe reminded me of:
Kahlua Pork
Ingredients:
Pork Butt/Shoulder
1 1/2 tbsp Hawaiian Sea Salt (probably can get away with normal seasalt, and amount depends on size of pork)
1 tbsp Liquid smoke
Directions:
Take the pork Butt and stab it all over with a knife.
Rub salt all over, then rub the liquid smoke all over.
Put it in your cooker and cook it on low until it shreds easily turning it once during cooking.
I’d give it a time, but it depends on the size of your meat. I was told 12 hours but I have a small crock pot so mine was done in 9. It tastes just like Kahlua Pork you’d buy here or at your local Hawaiian BBQ spot.
[media=youtube]ihCXD7TWA3M[/media]
Looks absolutely delicious!
The meatballs you can buy frozen at a lot of Asian grocery stores. You just throw them back into the broth until they aren’t frozen anymore.
The 5-star thing I believe you are talking about is star anise.
When I made pho broth, you don’t want to use pre-ground stuff… in fact, most of your spices you want to throw in a spice bag. You want the broth to come out fairly clear, and that won’t happen if you do it over high heat or use a lot of pre-ground stuff.
Some other tips for making the broth:
Burn the shit out of the skin of the onion before throwing it in the pot of water. Just charring the skin makes a difference in flavor versus just throwing a raw whole onion in there.
After bringing the water to a boil, back it down to a simmer and add your ingredients. Simmer for hours and hours (I did 12 hours and 20 hours the two times I tried it) because if you have the heat too high, it will turn your broth super dark from all the blood being released into the water from the bones you are using.
Another reason you want to use ingredients in the natural form is that it is easy to fish everything out of the broth when it is ready. That’s why I recommend a spice bag.
A huge pot goes a long way, I ended up freezing over half the pot. Use it within three months since after that it doesn’t taste the same.
I came to this thread to pretty much admit that I’ve become a foodie. I did two years hard labor working making sandwiches for drunks at three in the morning and over the past few years, I realized that I’ve been learning kitchen techniques and am now competent enough to serve a meal to myself and others without fucking it up. However, I’m still a scrub as I’ve got no intention on working in a real kitchen - the twelve hour a day, six day a week lifestyle for relatively little pay just isn’t for me. Cooking is a huge hobby for me, and as far as passions go it may even be my mistress, but she’ll never be my main bitch.
That out of the way, a few questions. First off, I’m planning on buying new kitchenware because I’ll be moving to my own place pretty soon. This is my to-get list:
-Small food processor
-Emulsion blender
-Cast iron pan
-Wok
-Grater
-Cake pans/baking pans/baking sheets
-A big, regular kitchen knife
-Cutting board
-Stainless steel set (saucepan/skillet at least)
-Crockpot
I’ve already got my coffee game down pact:
-Popcorn maker (for roasting green coffee)
-Coffee grinder
-Consumer espresso machine
-French press
All of these are cheap but I’m compensating by making my coffee as fresh as possible (buying whole green beans).
And I’ve also got:
-George Foreman grill
-Griddle
word. Oh, and a microwave. Basically I think I can tackle just about most dishes with these things. I’m thinking about throwing together a couple nights a week or so where I invite friends over and we just eat shit we cook and bring to the table. Communal bonding. That’s the good shit. I’ve been influenced by the foodie craze on TV just like the rest of us - Food Network, Anthony Bourdain. And I’m looking forward to venturing out with my palate and becoming more adventurous.
I hope you’re kidding.
thats the worst thing I have seen anybody eat all year 