What you eatin' there then?

[bickster]

Beef Brisket (cooks in 30 mins thing) Sliced with Teryaki Sauce and VeeTee Basmatic Rice £5.75 from Waitrose. meat £3.75, Rice and sauce £1 each.

Yes the missus is out on the piss

[chrisp65]

Spicy pumpkin soup, using up two of the last four of this year’s pumpkins.

bloody lovely

[peterms]

Made a mess of some Vietnamese spring rolls.

The rice paper has to be soaked in hot water before use, and it turns glutinous.  That's good, as I was trialling something to make for a load of vegans and so couldn't use egg to bind things.  The glutinous paper stickes really well.

But if you let them touch while in the wok, before they have formed a crust, they will stick together,  and when you try to separate them, you break them and let the contents become exposed to the cooking oil, which is exactly what the wrap is designed to avoid.

Oh well.  Learning point.  Will try again.

Have retired hurt, while madam cooks dinner.

[peterms]

Anyway.  To consign my disaster to the dustbin of dementia-infused memories of meals best forgotten: something different.

Hake tempura, ponzu sauce.

Skin the hake, cut into small pieces (I suggest no bigger than half a thumb).  Bigger risks breaking up.

Batter is one egg, 220 gm plain flour, 500gm sparkling water.  I halved the quantities except the egg, was ok.

Dip hake in batter, fry at 180 for a couple of minutes, drain on kitchen paper.

Sauce is a bit of sugar, 1 tbsp mirin, 1 tbsp rice vinegar,  4 or 5x soy sauce, some acid like lemon or lime or yuzu, and perhaps some dashi stock.

Don't crowd them when frying.  They should not touch.

[maqroll]

Pan seared, oven finished chicken breast.  Sauteed mushrooms,  onions, garlic, spinach.  Red wine/pan juices for the sauce with chili flakes.

[Ingram85]

Hit new heights this afternoon, you can keep your pan seared scallops and your saffron infused duck breast risotto. For today, I had, instant noodles cooked in Heinz chicken soup. With the packet of powder added in. Boom.

[peterms]

Bought a chicken.  What can we do with it?  Loads!  One chicken.

First, strip it down.  Legs off, wings in the freezer for another day, ends of legs and wings for stock, breasts off, fat and skin join the carcass for stock.

Wings, legs, soup (Vietnamese Pho), risotto, fajitas.  Starting with stock.

For the wings, when you have enough (2 per person as part of a mezze, 4 each for a main meal), defrost properly, maybe marinate in crushed garlic, tahini, lemon zest and juice, tahini.  Or crushed garlic, chili, paprika, a little tomato paste, a bit of vinegar.  Or other variations.  Roast for 30-40 mins or so at 180, but watch they don't burn.  Baste occasionally.  Eat with fingers.

Stock, cover bones with water, bring to boil, turn down to a gentle simmer, skim off the scum (not an election reference), add halved onion, celery stick, carrot, simmer for another hour or so.  Add things like bay leaves and parsley stalks if you have them, but not salt  (you add salt to the finished sauce or soup).

Use half the stock for risotto, half for pho.  Or freeze it for another use.

Risotto: strip off all the tiny little bits of chicken from the cooked carcass.  Knife and fork works, fingers also work.  Save the bits.  Make a soffrito, gently frying chopped onion, garlic, celery and carrot in oil.  Extra virgin olive oil is best if you can afford it.  Use lots. Ignore the nonsense about not cooking with it.  Start the onion before the rest of the veg.  When the veg are soft, add rice (Arborio or Carneroli for preference, round-grained pudding rice if that's all you can get).  Stir so the rice is fully coated with oil.  Add a glass of wine if you have it, otherwise stock, but stock anyway.  Add salt and pepper.  Stir, keeping the mixture just simmering and adding a little more stock or water as it becomes absorbed.  You can at this point add in things like sliced mushrooms and peppers if you want, give them a few minutes to cook through.  Finish by whipping in butter, maybe some grated lemon zest, serve with grated Parmesan (preferably) or other cheese.  You want the texture sloppy, not dry, not liquid.

Legs: marinade in crushed garlic, lemon, oil, chili, paprika, or whatever you like.  Grill under a medium hot grill, far away from the grill - you don't want the skin burnt and the inside raw, and cooking on the bone slows down cooking times.  It may take a bit of practice, and be prepared to have a plan B if it seems undercooked - either grill it some more, or of really undercooked, cut it off the bone and recook. Generally people tend to cook chicken legs too quick, too close to the grill, and that's a risk.  Serve with chips and salad, or whatever.

Fajitas (one breast for 2 people): I prefer to do this in a wok.  Soften some chopped onions and garlic (as always, start the onion before the garlic).  Have some sliced raw chicken breast ready,  add it to the pan when the onions are soft,  turn up the heat to cook the chicken through.  Add some chopped tomatoes, chipotle chillis (in jars are good but chop them up), sliced red peppers, maybe some paprika and oregano, a little water to stop it sticking.  Serve in wraps, with yogurt or sour cream, salad on the side, and chips if you like.

Pho 1 breast for 2 people, (see pic): dry fry some cinnamon, star anise, black cardamom, coriander seeds for a minute or so.  Wrap in muslin like a bouquet garni, tie tightly.  Soak some dried mushrooms, if you have them.  Dry fry a halved onion and some garlic slices in the pan you used for the spices, you want them a little blackened.  Add the veg and spices to the chicken stock, bring to boil, simmer for 15 mins, remove veg and spices.  Bring the stock to a simmer, add the chicken and soaked mushrooms and liquid, simmer until chicken is cooked, maybe 25 mins.  Boil a kettle, cook some noodles (eg udon for 10 mins), drain and leave to soak in a bowl of cold water.  Warm some bowls.  Have some additions ready, eg sliced spring onions, bean sprouts, kimchee, chopped coriander, pickled tea eggs.  When ready to assemble, drain the noodles and put them in hot water for a minute or so to warm through, then drain again and place in bowl, add the soup, add the kimchee and other garnishes...this was with all that, though I have to report the missus pronounced the pickled tea eggs a fail, and refused to eat them.  I am undone.  Sigh.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by peterms
something missing

[mikeyp102]

Are you a chef? I always see your posts in here and wouldn’t even know where to start on what you do.

[peterms]

4 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Are you a chef? I always see your posts in here and wouldn’t even know where to start on what you do.

Am definitely not a chef.  Just a normal guy, and you and others can do what I do.  It sounds harder than it is, really.  There are also loads of videos on youtube about all this. 

I worked in catering for a year, decades ago,  but that was humping equipment not cooking.  It maybe gave me an appreciation of the skill of preparing food, but didn't leave me better equipped to cook.  I learned that later, by myself.  Unlike most European countries,  it wasn't part of the heritage.

Cooking is one of those base skills you really want your kids to know, like lighting fires and midwifery and making gunpowder.  A post-apocalyptic skill.

 

[maqroll]

Looks good, Pete. Cooking good food really is very easy and YouTube is definitely a good resource. 

[KenjiOgiwara]

Breakfast. 

Oatmeal, almond butter, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, chopped almonds. Orange juice, triple espresso. 

Edited December 7, 2019 by KenjiOgiwara

[KenjiOgiwara]

11 hours ago, peterms said:

 

That looks like a professional Ramen bowl. Superb. 

[ml1dch]

On 02/12/2019 at 19:37, peterms said:

Made a mess of some Vietnamese spring rolls.

The rice paper has to be soaked in hot water before use, and it turns glutinous.  That's good, as I was trialling something to make for a load of vegans and so couldn't use egg to bind things.  The glutinous paper stickes really well.

If you're cooking for vegans, I'd suggest summer rolls instead of spring rolls.

If the setting fits, let people make their own. Couple of dipping sauces and you're away.

Edited December 7, 2019 by ml1dch

[peterms]

On 07/12/2019 at 11:54, ml1dch said:

If the setting fits, let people make their own. Couple of dipping sauces and you're away.

Nice idea, but it's a buffet for about a hundred, so anything that slows down the process would be a problem.  I'll do something else instead, keep things a bit simpler.

[peterms]

 

[maqroll]

I'm adding a "British Butty" to our menu but I've never made one.

I'm going to be using a fresh sourdough bread for it, bacon, butter. Should I also use Worcestershire sauce?

I feel like I need to jazz it up from the basic bread/butter/bacon thing.

 

Thoughts?

[blandy]

4 hours ago, maqroll said:

I'm adding a "British Butty" to our menu but I've never made one.

I'm going to be using a fresh sourdough bread for it, bacon, butter. Should I also use Worcestershire sauce?

I feel like I need to jazz it up from the basic bread/butter/bacon thing.

 

Thoughts?

Can you get HP sauce, or failing that tomato sauce/ ketchup, or failing that, hot mustard?

or to add to the basics, bacon and fried egg in there. Go well.

[villa4europe]

offer the butter as a choice! not on your nelly for me

definitely needs something wet, I change my sauce depending on my mood, egg is a good suggestion, so would be proper tomato of some style but then if you use fresh you're half way down the BLT route

bacon black pudding and tinned toms is my weapon of choice, maybe with hash browns thrown in if its a bad day

[lapal_fan]

How many F****-c*****-w****** times do we have to go through this?!

No butter on sandwiches which contain more grease than the butter itself! 

Hot sandwiches are generally (few exceptions, hello fish finger sarnie) exempt from butter, unless you like being fat and dying early! 

 

Something like this would be good though;

Edited December 12, 2019 by lapal_fan
Oops, hello swear filter :S

[Ingram85]

Thick cut crusty bread. Dipped in the hot bacon fat/egg grease after cooking. Bacon. Fried egg. Brown sauce.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Ingram85