@beets#19570 Adding pineapple to curry sounds quite interesting!
I think next time I make one I might try this experiment. Perhaps just the juice first time to see how that goes.
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@Moon#19578 I’ll make a soy sauce/sriracha mixture
Sriracha, much like Lao Gan Ma, has the amazing property of making almost _anything_ better.
A little while back I was making scallion pancakes and I had the thought that this technique could work with other fillings as long as they had generally the right consistency and were oily enough. So later I made chorizo-scallion pancakes. Cooked the chorizo, let it cool a bit, mixed in some scallions and some oaxaca cheese for good measure, and then proceeded with the regular scallion pancake technique with that as the filling. Definitely didn‘t come out as pretty as normal scallion pancakes, as it was hard to roll them out without the filling bursting out at some points, but they turned out delicious anyway so it’s fine.
I am the kind of person who‘s waiting for that star trek food pill so I can forget about eating altogether, but I do a lot of cooking anyway because: you gotta eat to live. I’ve got a few cool foods I make and one of them is a taro leaf coconut soup. Chopped up taro leaf (3 or 4 of them) stewed for a long time (45+mins) in coconut milk and vegetarian “chicken” broth, with tofu, bamboo shoots (the ones in chili oil), sometimes lemongrass. Add fresh noodles toward the last 15 minutes. it's real good and if anyone wants to try it I can try to get the proportions for you but I mostly cook by feel/taste.
but really I wanted to mention I've been mixing drinks for my girlfriend - I don't like hard alcohol so it's a fun challenge, and the coolest thing I came up with was a drink that uses:
and winds up tasting like a caramel apple. it's pretty cool.
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@exodus#19646 vegetarian “chicken” broth
Even as a non-vegetarian, one of the store bought stock/broths that I like using the most is a 100% vegetarian "chicken style" broth. It comes as a powder, cubes, or liquid stock -- all are the same thing really, just depends on if you want to dissolve a cube or powder in water yourself.
[img=https://www.globalfoodproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/5088Massel-Chicken-Salt-Reduced.jpg]
.. that soup sounds alright! I'd probably have a go at making it. I'm not sure where to get a hold of taro leaves here however, but that is mostly because I have never looked for them before.
Making Japanese style curry tonite using some of Chris Kohler's suggestions and figured I would post this here given his unorthodox recommendation to include cheese and chocolate in the recipe. Tonite I tossed a few fun-size hershey bars and a few chunks of parmesan in (cheddar is better, but I‘m using what I have on hand). Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it! Tonite's curry blocks are Vermont Curry Hot, though even the hot variety is pretty mild so I put in a bit of homemade lacto-fermented habanero hot sauce.
I was just making chili and I was thinking about how I never really ate chili until I started making it. A few years ago, I asked my Mexican friend what it‘s all about and he sent me a recipe he called “vegetarian chili (I have never made this)”. (He is not vegetarian.) I used that recipe the first time, and then lost it. Since then, I’ve been cooking chili pretty regularly (probably monthly?) for years, but mutating it slightly to the point where I‘m not sure if purists or even regular people would call what I make chili?? The only time I’ve eaten chili outside of my house since I started cooking it was at a ski hill in Vancouver, meaning it was probably conceived and cooked by an Australian.
Here is my definition (as a white person from Canada) of what is essential to a chili:
Here are ingredients that I'm unsure of, but often find their way in anyway:
Here are ingredients that definitely don't belong in a chili, but have been included on particularly freaky evenings:
Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you.
@wickedcestus#30065 Huge fan of chili over here, and my idea of essentials is similar to yours, except never mushrooms, and always one can of beer. Corn can also add a nice texture, and sweet potatoes work surprisingly well.
If you want a chili-type cooking experience using some of those good but weird-for-chili ingredients (potatoes, mushrooms, root vegetables), and you're feeling adventurous you might want to give bigos a try….
@whatsarobot#30072 no mushrooms! i can't believe it! but corn sounds like a great idea, especially with summer coming up
@yeso#30076 i will look into this. always looking for varieties of soups/stews to keep life fresh
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@wickedcestus#30065 beets (this one… idk if this was a beet chili or a bean borscht)
I'd try a bean borscht!
A friend of mine is an immigrant from Ukraine, and they were kind enough to share the family borscht recipe with me after making it for me one time. It's great. Next time I make it, I'm going to try putting some beans in it and just seeing what happens. I'll send them a photo and probably get yelled at haha.
Regarding chilli, I love it but do not make it anywhere near frequently enough. Some other things in the "essential" column for me are:
very interesting!
i enjoy cooking, but mostly i just do it to feed my family. i‘ve learned that doing less and being more boring about food is a great way to ensure people enjoy it. i’ve probably got a million little unconventional tricks that i can't think of right now, but what does spring to mind is how i make tomato sauce.
i almost puree the onions in a food processor, salt them anf allow them to drain ina fine strainer for a little while before browning them in a skillet. i have to do this to hide onions from my kids, who both don't like onions and eat a lot of them because i've gotten good at hiding them. once the onions have browned a bit i toss in some crushed tomatoes, and once their in i mix garlic powder and soy sauce and a bit of molasses and leave the mixture to hang out while the sauce is cooking, tossing it in when the sauce is done.
The current “trendy” food spots for idiots here in LA is Poke Bowl places. Poke is basically shitty sushi in a bowl. A bed of rice with a selection of raw fish and other items. Unlike sushi, instead of needing to be crafted by an adult specialist, Poke Bowls get away with slapped together, Subway-sandwich style by a 19 year old. Rather than 1 nice piece of fish, poke is often a half pound of smaller cut raw fish, sometimes even ground. While I‘m sure there is great poke out there, the recent trendiness of it has them popping up on every corner over here. I find it nauseating, especially the finely ground stuff. It just seems like a cheapo, phoned in version of sushi where they get away with using worse quality ingredients. Also the rice always seems to be cooked horribly dry, like whoever did it doesn’t know how to cook rice.
Anyways, my unorthodox take on Poke Bowls is when I have the misfortune of acquiring said food, I take it home and throw it in the frying pan with some butter. This really brings out the flavor and is ten times more delicious. Today I had a poke bowl with pineapple and spicy peppers. simmering in the frying pan brought back the life to the rice and spread the juice of the pineapple and chile peppers around better. Not to mention the salmon and tuna went from being a nauseating slimy guessing game to some pretty decent chunks. Low quality sushi grade fish makes for a fine filet.
I love sushi, when it's good and proper. Poke Bowls is just an excuse to cut corners. Cook that shit!
@“treefroggy”#p35329 your take on poke bowls has me real hungry over here. sounds delicious!
I've been making a fair bit of garlic bread this winter. For the garlic butter I started with butter, crushed + chopped garlic and mixed herbs. Recently I have been adding chilli flakes too for a bit of spice.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for garlic bread?
@“beets”#p41640 my only tip is I give the bread a light toast before I spread all the stuff on it, and then I bake it some more after that.
@“beets”#p41640 Consider adding some grated cheese in with the garlic butter mix. Either Pecorino Romano, or Parmagiano Reggiano depending on your preferred flavour profile - Pecorino Romano is saltier.
Poke is good sorry the places you‘ve been to weren’t
But also gotta push back on this notion that sushi is limited to high class jiro dreams of you paying hundreds of dollars for omakase type places, sushi started out as cheap food and there's plenty of good fast food sushi in Japan and even some in LA too, even if it's a teenager working part time slinging something onto a conveyor belt and not tencho
@“Syzygy”#p41675 nah you just need to come to LA then I guess there are multiple chains from Japan where despite being at least twice as expensive as the Japanese prices, are still 1/4 as expensive as what you're quoting. Go to a conveyor belt place and get a plate with two pieces for about $2 (it would be about 100 yen in Japan).
A quick, easy, and cheaper way to make pesto-
Spinach instead of basil
Walnuts instead of pine nuts
I ain't gonna say it's as good as Basil/pinenut pesto, but it'll get the job done.