The Recipe Thread! Part II: Electric Mixaroo

[Thanatos]

Anybody do baking here? I'm a trained pastry chef if anyone is in need of ideas or tips

 

[ebola?]

I like the healthiness of vegetarian chilli but the chorizo just adds that extra meatiness and flavour to the whole thing.

There's vegetarian chorizo that's...okay. One could probably make a functional analogue out of TVP and seasonings.

ebola

 

[bit_pattern]

There's vegetarian chorizo that's...okay. One could probably make a functional analogue out of TVP and seasonings.

ebola

You could easily just leave it out, add paprika or more fresh chilli. I guess I'm kind of a non-practising vegetarian, I totally believe in the health benefits and try to follow it where I can, but also enjoy meat which I try to eat as minimally as possible

 

[spork]

I like adding rice, potatoes, or quinoa to vegetarian chili to give it a little more depth.

 

[bit_pattern]

I like adding rice, potatoes, or quinoa to vegetarian chili to give it a little more depth.

Yeah! I ut potatoes in last night for the first time. I'd been out to mexican "street food" joint in Melbourne a few mights before and they had potato in their beef taco mix. I'd never seen it before, then saw a few recipes where the potato gets cooked in the chorizo fat to absorb the flavouring and decided to add that to my "vegetarian" chilli. It certainly works.

My fave at the moment is a butternut squash, sweet potato and chickpea curry.

Fave combo of mine too. Usually do it with mustard seed and bay leaf, onion, fresh grated tumeric, ginger, garlic, fresh tomato and squeeze of lemon/lime - sometimes add red beans as well. Awesome stuff.

 

[kytnism]

I made vegetarian chilli beans with chorizo tonight. I like the healthiness of vegetarian chilli but the chorizo just adds that extra meatiness and flavour to the whole thing.

Dice a chorizo sausage, fry for a few minutes until crispy, remove from pan and drain reserving the fat, add a diced onion to the pan and saute in the oil (full of flavoursome paprika from the sausage) for a few minutes, add a few diced potatoes, half a carrot and a stick of celery finely minced, a tsp each of cumin and coriander (powder), saute for a few more minutes then add two or three cans of beans (rinsed and drained), two cans of tomato, a good handful of finely chopped corainader leaf, stem and roots. Let that simmer for at least an hour, stirring occasionally.

I had that on top of corn chips with a pico de gallo - just minced tomato, white onion, coriander leaves and lime juice - and a bit of cheese. T'was amazing!

that sounds amazing. ill have to keep an eye out for vegetarian chorizo. savoury vege sausages ive encountered, but never a chorizo? please take a picture to share next time you make this.

Anybody do baking here? I'm a trained pastry chef if anyone is in need of ideas or tips

i suck at baking, but would adore to see/share recipes you may have for a novice that would love to learn.

...kytnism...

 

[Bluesbreaker]

The Royal Dessert IMHO: le Paris-Brest.

 

[Thanatos]

Kyt you know I'd do anything to help you with your culinary adventures. Just ask!
Give me a basic idea and I'll run with it and specialize the recipe exactly to your tastes. Even though I can't work in food anymore, I'll always be glad I learned how to make pastries for the ladies

 

[Mariposa]

Nice work, everyone, and Thanatos, any tips you have on puff pastry from scratch would be greatly appreciated. Do you think I could give it a go in a cast-iron skillet, parbaked, for a Brie en croute, or would that be asking for trouble?

 

[Thanatos]

Puff pastry is a tough one. The biggest secret I've to cut freeze your butter, almost frozen solid and finely mince the butter. Just like pâté choux it's not much more than butter, water, and flour.

If possible you need to get a stone or steel surface to work your pasty on so that the butter will stay cool while you kneed it and make the sheets. The concept of the cold butter is that once it is heated the fat will start to steam instead of homogenize thus resulting in a thin flaky pastry. I personally would just go for a baking sheet lined with silpat (silicon baking sheet) so there is no compromising of the dish, as it's very gentle by nature.

 

[ebola?]

Master recipe for tofu that people will actually enjoy:

Begin with either pressed extra firm tofu or super-firm / high protein tofu. I prefer the latter's texture.

1 block of tofu
salt to taste
pepper to taste
crushed red pepper to taste
a sprinkle of msg (optional)
a generous dash of garlic powder (use fresh crushed garlic if you're less lazy than I)
a splash of red wine vinegar
several drops of sesame oil
a splash of soy sauce
.5-1 TBSP of canola oil (or your preferred neutral cooking oil)

1. Cut tofu into cubes slightly wider than .5 in.
2. Begin frying in oil over medium heat.
3. Sprinkle salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, msg, and garlic powder over tofu.
3. Stir until spices have a uniform distribution. Continue to stir occasionally.
4. when tofu is brown and to desired level of crispness, reduce heat to low, and drop on sesame oil.
5. reduce heat to nil and add splashes of soy sauce and red wine vinegar, the quantity of the former being greater than that of the latter. Mix until distribution is uniform.

This will incorporate into most any recipe.

Variations:

Pan-Asian:
Add in a dash of powdered ginger (or Chinese 5-spice mix, if you're feeling adventurous). Substitute fresh ginger if you're not lazy.
Substitute mirin or rice vinegar for red wine vinegar. Other rice wines should work too.
Add in sriracha to taste during the finishing step (reducing salt accordingly).

Italian/Western:
Substitute olive oil (not extra virgin) for canola oil. If you only have EVOO on hand, use a mix of that and canola oil (EVOO has too strong a flavor to make for a good frying oil).
Substitute seasoning salt (eg, Lawry's or Johnny's) for salt and msg (it has msg in it). Reduce amount of garlic powder accordingly.
Add a generous dash of dried basil and a stingy dash of oregano half way between the solid seasoning phase and liquid seasoning phase.
Substitute lemon juice for red wine vinegar, if you want.
Add parmesan or nutritional yeast during the finishing phase, reducing soy sauce accordingly

Curried:
Add in ~1 tsp of the curry powder of your choice during the initial seasoning phase (I suggest homemade).
Substitute a squirt of sriracha and a dash of amchur (powdered unripe mango) for red wine vinegar. Lemon juice is fine in lieu of amchur.

'Mexican' (probably inauthentic but works well in burritos):
See western recipe above, but
substitute ~.5 tsp / ground cumin for basil.
Substitute lime juice for lemon juice.

ebola

 

[llama112]

ebola - do you soak the tofu for a couple days before cooking it? We cut our tofu in strips and soak it for a couple days in similar(ish) ingredients and then bake it and I've noticed it is so much more flavourful than when we just cook it without soaking it.
I'm basically addicted to tofu.

 

[ebola?]

ebola - do you soak the tofu for a couple days before cooking it?

No, but I find this method useful when preparing baked tofu. I guess that the frying process more easily leads the flavor to inhere within without a marinade being necessary.
...
I just had really great success with 2 seitan recipes, I'll throw those up when I'm less lazy.

ebola

 

[Mariposa]

^Ebola's tofu is legit.

Here's an easy recipe for the omnivores: baked lemon chicken breast medallions. I had great success with this earlier this week.

1 lb chicken breasts
1 lemon
Various herbs (salt, pepper, paprika, dill were what I used)
Garlic (use fresh - don't cheat on this)
Chicken broth
White wine
Lemon

Procedure: Preheat oven to 400F. Rinse and slice the chicken into large medallions (think oversized nuggets). Put broth and wine in equal parts in non-reactive pan to cover the chicken by 2/3 (this steams it and makes it tender). Add the chicken and spices. Slice lemon lengthwise into circles and place on top of chicken. Bake for ~40 minutes after allowing chicken to rest and enjoy.

I served it with mashed Yukon Gold potatoes with a side of green beans and bacon.

 

[ebola?]

I've tried making seitan a few times, first with the simmering method, which always either came out too spongy or too tough, never absorbing sufficient flavor from the broth either. However, the following procedure kicks ass. Eaten as is, it's fine as an entree (topping with veggie gravy is a good scene), but it also works well in stir-fries

Curried Baked Seitan:
(adapted from a recipe book)

1 1/2 cups cold vegetable broth (I used maggi veggie bullion, which is salty and contains MSG, if you think that's poison for some reason )
2 cloves garlic, peeled, pressed or grated with a microplane grater
3 tablespoons soy sauce (I used low-salt soy sauce, which I think gave balanced results)
1 tablespoon olive oil (I substituted canola oil for a more neutral flavor)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 cup canned chickpeas (the original recipe calls for chickpea flour, which can be hard to find)
2 tsp curry powder (for best results, use home-made...I posted a recipe above)
~1/2 tsp cumin
powdered cayenne to taste

Preheat oven to 350.
In a 1-quart measuring cup or bowl, whisk together vegetable broth, garlic, soy sauce, olive oil, and tomato paste. Mash chickpeas and mix in (I used my hands for this).
In a separate mixing bowl, stir together vital wheat gluten flour, nutritional yeast, curry powder, cumin, and crushed red pepper.
Form a well in the center, and pour in the liquid mixture.
Use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to stir the ingredients together; as the flour absorbs the broth, a moist dough will rapidly form.
When all of the broth is absorbed, use both hands to fold the dough in a kneading motion for 2 to 3 minutes.
Let the dough rest for 10 minutes, then divide into four equal pieces.
Tear away four pieces of foil about 12 inches wide.
Spray the dull side of each piece of foil lightly with olive oil or canola oil cooking spray.
Shape a piece of dough into an oval on the oiled side of the foil and pat it down to a thickness of about 3/4 of an inch. Repeat 3 more times.
Fold foil into pouches, leaving room for the seitan to expand as it cooks. As it bakes, the seitan will expand and if the foil is too tight, it might burst through the pouch!
Place the foil packages side by side directly on a cookie sheet positioned in the center of the oven.
Bake for ~45 minutes; seitan should be firm to the touch.
Remove from the oven and cool, still wrapped in foil, on the kitchen counter for 45 minutes before using.
For best flavor and texture, cool the seitan to room temperature, keep it wrapped in the foil, store in a tightly covered container, and chill overnight.
If desired, freeze seitan and use within 2 months; to defrost, leave in the refrigerator over-night.

This recipe takes well to variations. You can season with the spice-mixture of your choice (I'll post variations soon).

ebola

 

[llama112]

No, but I find this method useful when preparing baked tofu. I guess that the frying process more easily leads the flavor to inhere within without a marinade being necessary.

Makes sense! I haven't tried frying tofu but I really should, just to taste the difference!

One of the most delicious things I've made recently - avocado pasta!
http://ohsheglows.com/2011/01/31/15-minute-creamy-avocado-pasta/

I use shirataki noodles and kelp noodles and then it's like a sauce with avocado, lemon juice (I used 2 tbsp), garlic, and basil. It says you can't reheat (obviously because of the avocados) but I made multiple servings of pasta and then I made the rest of the sauce (besides the avocado) and brought it to work the next day. Just combined it all at work! It was SUPER easy and delicious!!!

 

[Solipsis]

Anybody do baking here? I'm a trained pastry chef if anyone is in need of ideas or tips

Are you familiar with spekkoek (thousand layer spice cake)?

I am a pretty good cook and basically never screw up, but I did with that recently... did everything wrong beating eggwhites. So will try again, this time spill no yolk - clean the bowl thoroughly (with what tho, soap then rinse well?) - and can I substitute citric acid for cream of tartar to sustain foam? Any other tips for when I have to combine the eggwhites, flour, sugar+yolk mix? Besides not using a whisk for that stage?

Other than that, some things I can really recommend is Duck Adobo, Coq au vin, Mushroom risotto, Saoto soup, jamie olivers recipe for tagliatelle + braised leeks + pangrattato... too many things to count really
I think really soon like next week or the one after that I am gonna treat myself with some exotic stuff like boar, kangaroo, quail, etc.

Thanks for that suggestion of saitan, ebola! Definitely will prepare that for when I am cooking for me and my roommate again... we do that at least twice a week and he is partially vegatarian (i.e. he does eat meat some of the time but only biological).

Something else I really love is making crusty baked potato by pre-cooking half-hard potato type for about 9-10 minutes and then shaking the pan+lid so that the outer layer of the potatoes gets all messed up.
If you fry course chunks like that either in a pan or in the oven with lots of olive oil (allow each chunk to lay free and separate and you gotta nuke with a good oven), with some practice you can get insane baked potatoes :D

I also adore sofritto - or better said the basis of it, mirepoix for making several dishes including godly sofritto pasta sauce (pretty much makes a day to really dissolve carrot and celery and get the tomatoes nice and sweet - I guess starch type compounds are falling apart into oligosaccharides?)

Puff pastry is a tough one. The biggest secret I've to cut freeze your butter, almost frozen solid and finely mince the butter. Just like pâté choux it's not much more than butter, water, and flour.

= beurre manié ?

 

[kytnism]

Other than that, some things I can really recommend is Duck Adobo

i recently purchased a slow cooker, with the recommendation that i must TRY and make chicken adobo. this was the recipe i was given, and wow, i was not disappointed. not only was the meal extremely tasty; but it cooked itself!

do you have a recipe for your duck adobo to share? id love to try it

...kytnism...

 

[animal_cookie]

i've been doing a grocery delivery service for the last 6 weeks. the variety of food is awesome and i've made some tasty dishes. and i've been cooking at least 3 week night dinners at home (i usually save my cooking for weekends)!

one of the best was shamikabab with chickpeas:

for the yogurt sauce:

mix 1/2 cup plain yogurt with 1 small cucumber, 1/3 shallot, 1 clove garlic, lemon juice, dill, mint, salt and pepper. use whatever amounts of the last 4 ingredients to make it taste how you like.

for the meat:

mix together 1 pound ground meat (i used a lamb and beef mix, but pretty much anything will work) with 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs, 1/3 shallot, 1 clove garlic, salt and a wee bit of the yogurt from above. make the meat into patties and pan fry on medium until cooked.

for the chickpeas:

drain 1 can of chick peas. saute them on medium with 1 onion, 1/3 shallot, 1 garlic clove, some grated ginger, salt, turmeric and curry powder (again, add the seasonings based on your tastes). you may need to add some water to help the chick peas cook. it should take a few minutes and the chick peas are done when they are slightly soft and the onion and shallot are fully cooked.

 

[ChemicalSmiles]

BUMPING THIS! Ive been cooking a LOT more... gonna post a few recipes soon.