Food you created by cooking: Meals

[Changeling]

Egg benedict with some asparagus! Making hollandaise is hard. Requires me to attune every neuron of my tiny brain to the task.

[Brooks]

i’m getting real good at sticking meat, cabbage, carrots, spring onions, shitloads of mushrooms in a pot with dashi stock, garlic and ginger and eating that every night
nabemono with no possible care for presentation and delicacy

[Mikey]

Selectbutton please furnish me with your best chilli recipes, both vegan and non. Right now I just combine ground turkey, red beans, chopped green pepper, and a packet of store brand chili seasoning. The result is… fine. I’m sure I could do much better.

A few caveats:

-Melissa has a limited tolerance to spicy foods. For reference your average “medium” salsa available in a supermarket is pretty spicy to her and average buffalo wings are something she can only eat a few of at a time. So maybe let’s leave out the Aztec Insanity Peppers and shit

-I’m pretty lazy so one-pot, minimal prep recipes get bonus points.

Thanks in advance.

[daphaknee]

@Tegiminis get in here chili man

[Tegiminis]

if you want better chili you’re gonna have to do more prep. them’s the breaks, unfortunately. it’s about an hour of prep and thirty minutes of cook time in my experience. the result is absolutely worth it though!

my advice:

ingredients

• base ingredients: onions, tomatoes, beans.
• spices: chili powder, cumin powder, garlic, salt, pepper.
• optional ingredients: meat of your choice. peppers (bell for sweetness, serrano for spicy), squash, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, cucumbers, leeks, basically anything you want that can be sweated

preparation

• to start, chop all your veggies into cubes or quarters
• put all fresh veg in a pot with a splash of oil (non-virgin olive is the best, but veggie works too) and add salt + pepper
• turn high for a few minutes and stir, then turn down to a simmer and let the veggies sweat
• (if meat) add meat to a pan and brown it with a mixture of spices
• fry up some garlic in pan, optionally add a little vinegar for extra flavor
• dump the garlic (and meat) into the pot once the veggies have softened
• add beans and any canned stuff (for me, usually canned tomatoes)
• add more spices to the mix
• simmer for 10-20 minutes
• add more spices before serving
• serve with garnish of corn chips, sour cream, lime, cheese

[gary]

i go for blasphemous simplicity and just dump one vegan chorizo, one can corn, one can fire roasted tomato, and two cans of beans together in a crock pot, along with any bits of salsa or tomato sauce need to be used up, and leave it for four hours. ideally i also brown some onions and bell peppers and garlic and maybe sweet potato with cumin and smoked paprika and a little worcestershire sauce and soy sauce and some vinegar (enough of all the spices and sauces to coat the veg in a thin layer of seasoning paste). then deglaze with a splash of whatever, more vinegar if you feel like it, and dump that in the pot too, toward the start of the long simmer. but if you don’t feel like bothering, the chorizo seasons the rest fine with a bit of some of the above sprinkled in for extra salt/savory

[Infernarl]

[Mikey]

Those both seem pretty doable, thanks!

[Infernarl]

I like the Franklin one because the bean seasoning is shelf stable.

Would recommend ignoring the cooking instructions and learning how to use a pressure cooker.

[spinnylights]

I made bread today for the first time in a while. This loaf is recently out of the oven. It weighs about 1.6 kg/3.5 lbs and took about 22 hours from start to finish.

I’ll add a picture of the crumb after it cools more.

Update:

[spinnylights]

Okay, if anyone wants it, I got around to writing down the recipe. This is my recipe, but I think it shows the influence of Ken Forkish and Gina Petitti as well as the pastry chef I used to work for, Virginia Wood. I make little tweaks to it every time I make it, so this is only the most recent iteration. I also came up with a sourdough version about a year ago, which Lily and I were both very very happy with, but I haven’t come across any records of what I did with it for some reason (although I think I remember pretty well because I made it over and over for a while) and I don’t have a sourdough culture going right now, so in any case I feel kind of nervous writing up a recipe for that without being able to test it. The next time I have a sourdough culture going I’ll post that one. This is just made with regular baker’s yeast, but it involves a long pre-ferment, which does add more yeast character and improves the texture and flavor.

Mabel Bread, as of 6/26/24

I decided to call the sourdough bread “Meower Bread” because it rhymes with “Sour Bread”, so I’ll call this one “Mabel Bread” because it rhymes with “Table Bread”. They’re both suitable as table breads though.

This one has a friendly, mildly nutty taste, a bit like fancy pasta. It’s got a fairly light crumb which is very soft when it first comes out of the oven but dries to a more al dente texture when exposed to the air for a while. The crust is thin and chewy with a rich flavor, deepened subtly by olive oil. A nice general-purpose bread.

recipe

Pre-ferment (Poolish)

Ingredients

• 200 g. white flour
• 300 g. whole-wheat flour
• 400 ml. ~31°C (87°F) water (you can go a bit warmer in cold weather)
• 100 ml. ~46°C (115°F) water
• ~0.4 g. active dry yeast, a scant 1/8th tsp. or so
• A bit of sugar

Equipment

• A large tub or bowl, at least 4 l. in volume; it’s helpful if it’s see-through, has measurements marked on the side, and has a lid
• A small cup or beaker, around ~200 ml. in volume
• A small-to-medium mixing bowl

Method

1. The night before the day you plan to bake, add the yeast to the cup together with a dash of sugar (about equal sugar to yeast by volume is fine).
2. Add the ~46°C water.
3. Stir the mixture until the yeast and sugar are dissolved, scraping down the sides as needed, then leave it to sit for 5–10 m.
4. Once 5–10 m. have passed, the liquid in the cup should be frothy on top and it should smell a bit like sherry. If this does not occur, your yeast is kaput, and you should get new yeast and repeat these steps before continuing.
5. Presuming it does occur, mix the flours together in the tub.
6. Add the yeast mixture along with the ~31°C water, using the ~31°C water to wash any residual yeast out of the cup into the tub.
7. Fill the mixing bowl with as-warm-as-you-can-stand water and put it next to the tub in your working area.
8. Begin to mix the dough by bringing your middle finger and thumb together in a loop and closing the loop repeatedly in the dough, “cutting through” it. Do this 7–10 times or so in different places until the dough is fairly well-cut-into. Then, reach under the dough, grab lightly and gingerly, and quickly stretch what you’ve grabbed over the top of the dough. Spin the tub a bit to one side and repeat, then again, going all the way around. Repeat, also tossing the dough around a bit here and there and such, until it’s well-mixed. Try to keep your hands fairly clean—use one hand to scrape down the other regularly to prevent any pockets of flour from gathering or anything, and clean them in the bowl of warm water as needed. Scrape down the sides of the tub with your hands as you go, too, to prevent dry spots of flour from accumulating.
9. Put the lid on the tub, or cover with plastic wrap if it doesn’t have a lid
10. Leave in a 20–22°C (68°F–72°F) environment for around 10–15 hours. When it’s ready, it will be bubbling fairly actively, maybe a bubble every second or two, and have a heady flowery aroma with a brandyish character.

Main dough

Ingredients

• 3 g. active dry yeast
• A bit of sugar
• The pre-ferment
• ~280 ml. 37°C (99°F) water
• 500 g. white flour, plus extra for dusting
• 21 g. salt
• Olive oil

Equipment

• A cup for the yeast
• The tub from before
• A half-size sheet pan with short raised sides
• Parchment paper
• A small cup
• A pastry brush
• A wire rack

Method

1. Wake up the 3 g. yeast as in Pre-ferment, Steps 1–4, using some of the 37°C water.
2. Add the yeast mixture to the tub. Use some of the remaining water to rinse out its cup, dissolving the salt in the water as you go, and add that to the tub. Add any remaining water t othe tub, then mix as in Pre-ferment, Step 8.
3. When you finish mixing, the stretching-over action will have shaped the dough into a ball. Pick up this ball gingerly and quickly flip it over, trying to keep the dough off your hands as well as possible. Put the lid on the tub or replace the plastic wrap, then leave it to sit until the ball relaxes and the surface of the dough has become relatively flat.
4. Once this occurs, move the tub to your working area, take the lid/plastic wrap off, prepare a bowl of warm water and wet your hands, then move around the dough pulling from underneath over the top as before, but this time, try to stretch the dough almost-but-not-quite to breaking as you fold it over the top. Gather the dough gingerly into a ball, then flip the ball over. Leave it again to relax.
5. The next time it relaxes, repeat step 4, then let it relax, then repeat step 4 one more time.
6. Wait for the dough to roughly triple in size. It will be about 3.5 l. in volume. This whole process will take a least a few hours or so.
7. Flour your working surface, and prepare a pile of flour on the side for your use. Ease the dough as gently as you can out of the tub onto the floured surface, sprinkling flour down the sides of the tub and the like to ease it away. You want to keep as much of the gas in the dough as you can.
8. Make up the loaf by reaching underneath, grabbing gingerly, then rapidly pulling over the top to the middle. Perform this action on the other side as well. You will start to end up with a log shape. Pull under-to-over on the narrow sides of the log to “close them off,” then reach underneath and flip the log over. Roll it back and forth a bit to make it fully come together.
9. Set out the wire rack and put the sheet pan on top. Cover the sheet pan with parchment paper. Move the loaf quickly and fluidly onto the parchment.
10. Wait around an hour or so for the loaf to proof. The speed of proofing will vary somewhat depending on the ambient temperature. You can tell when it’s getting ready by pushing a finger a ways into the loaf; you will feel pressure against your finger like poking an air mattress, and the depression will only bounce back partway. When it seems to be approaching this point but isn’t quite there yet, preheat the oven to 200°C (390°F).
11. When the loaf is about proofed, using a very sharp knife, make three straight slices into it, parallel with the short side, about 1–1.5 cm. deep or so.
12. Put some olive oil in the small cup. Using the pastry brush and oil, cover the loaf evenly all over by pressing the brush to the sides of the cup to remove excess oil and then very gently padding the oil onto the loaf. Try not to press any gas out of the loaf.
13. Put it in the oven and set the timer for 30 m.
14. When the timer goes off, flip the sheet pan around inside the oven and put it back for another 30 m.
15. The loaf should be golden-brown. If so, remove it from the oven and put it back on the wire rack to cool.

The method of shaping the loaf described in Main dough, Step 8 leads to the nice feature of a little dip in the middle on bottom, where you can split the slice of bread in half if you want normal sandwich-sized pieces:

[MintyJuffowup]

Sesame-crusted baked feta and halloumi with black lime honey

[falsedan]

make some trifle. started with making a Genoise sponge because I refuse to leave the house to buy ladyfingers

amazed how beating eggs over a bain-marie takes 20 minutes to go from “this stinks” to “actually that was simple fun and effective & I can’t wait to do it again”

[Father.Torque]

Made biryani tonight. That was a fuckload of cardamom

[MintyJuffowup]

Did you use whole pods?

[Father.Torque]

What do I look like some kind of cardamom produce grower knower

[MintyJuffowup]

I mean, was it in powder form? Did you use green cardamom or black? Paint a picture for me!

[Father.Torque]

It was the stuff you can get at the white person grocery store. It wasn’t green.

[MintyJuffowup]

That’s all I wanted to know.

[MintyJuffowup]

I made a chili last night with purple sweet potatoes, gochugaru, black beans, and dark chocolate. The starch made it super velvety and rich. I was worried the color would look unappealing but I actually prefer the look over regular sweet potatoes