I made a try at a bastardized version of dirty rice the other night that came out well. I bastardized it because my wife and eldest son are insanely picky eaters so I had to cut back on the spices and substitute ground beef for the meats that should have gone in.
I browned 1lb of ground beef, then diced up half an onion, a stalk of celery, and a smallish green pepper and tossed those in with the beef. While they softened I warmed up four cups of chicken stock. I then threw in salt, pepper, garlic powder (was out of real garlic), a small amount of cayenne paper, the stock, and two cups of rice. Let it all simmer for twenty minutes covered and it was ready to go. It was a tad bland honestly but still pretty good and it passed muster with one of the two picky eaters. I will probably try this one again since the ingredients were pretty cheap and it was easy to whip up. Those are the essential candidates of a week night meal for a guy with a family to cook for.
Cook's Illustrated is a smiling simpleton NPR lover's scam. I have a membership for 35$ (!) a year for the occasional recipe, and now suddenly they want me to "upgrade" my membership to see half of the recipes offered. Because it's an "Editor's Choice Cookbook Collection" recipe, and because they've already published 3,000 recipes, so obviously any more recipes must be, like, the superest bestest deliciousest ev4r!!
Screw you Christopher Kimball.
Made some Jerked Baby Back Ribs with a Rum and Coke glaze, cilantro lime coleslaw and corn on the cob. Came out great, although I need to have my camera handy for photos before all the food gets eaten. Going to make it again this coming weekend for company, so I'll get some photos then.
Help me out here. I'm really jonesing for black-eyed peas and greens and have both here at the house waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. I've got a couple of okay recipes, but they're just okay.Originally Posted by tiohn
Is your recipe in this thread? If so, would you link it, if not, would you share it?
Thanks tiohn.
-xtien
Yeah, it really feels like they're starting to do everything they can to nickel-and-dime you for every bit they can on the website. Definitely makes me less inclined to renew after my year is up.
I'm a bad person, but most of this recipe is copied directly from Cooks Illustrated. I've made some changes.
INGREDIENTS
Cooked Black-Eyed Peas
1/2 pound black-eyed peas , soaked until rehydrated, overnight or at least 4 hours (I find that my local Indian market sells higher quality black-eyed peas than anywhere else)
1 bay leaf
4 cloves garlic , whole
7 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
Greens and Remaining Ingredients
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
2 pounds kale , collard, mustard or turnip greens; stemmed, washed in 2 or 3 changes of clean water and coarsely chopped (I use mustard greens)
4 + 4 slices thick-cut bacon, 4 whole, 4 cut crosswise into thin strips (And here's where the key to this whole thing is: Use the absolute best bacon you can get. My favorite, by far, for this recipe is this Black Forest style bacon that Whole Foods sells in the meat counter. It's totally badass.)
1 medium onion , chopped fine
2 medium cloves garlic , minced
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
Table salt
INSTRUCTIONS
Prologue: Take 4 of those slices of bacon that you bought and fry them up for breakfast. Reserve the fat.
1. For Peas: Bring peas, bay leaf, garlic, and water to simmer in large saucepan. Simmer, partially covered, until beans are just tender, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in salt, cover, and let peas stand until completely tender, about 15 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid, and discard bay leaf and garlic. (Beans in liquid can be cooled, covered, and refrigerated up to 5 days.)
2. For Greens: Bring 2 quarts water to boil in stock pot. Add salt and greens; stir until wilted. Cover and cook until greens are just tender, about 7 minutes; drain in colander. Rinse pan with cold water to cool, then refill with cold water. Pour greens into cold water to stop the cooking process. Gather handful of greens, lift out of water and squeeze until only droplets fall from them. Repeat with remaining greens. Roughly cut each bunch of greens. Set aside. (This is a giant pain in the ass.)
3. Heat the bacon fat that you reserved from breakfast and add the other 4 slices, cut up as indicated above. Fry bacon in a large dutch oven over medium-low heat until crisp, 4 to 5 minutes. Add onion and garlic; sauté until softened, 4 to 5 minutes.
4. Add greens; sauté, stirring, to coat with oil. Stir in black-eyed peas and 1 cup reserved bean cooking liquid. Add vinegar, bring to simmer; cover, and cook to blend flavors, about 5 minutes. Adjust seasoning. Ladle portion of beans and greens into each of four soup plates. Serve with cider vinegar.
Just cooked Pad Thai from this recipe. Odd dish - up until I ate the first bite, I was sure it was going to taste terrible, especially because the sauce smells pretty bad. But it ended up good - as good or better than anything I can get near where I live. Although I think this recipe leaves the noodles not soft enough; looking at Cook's Illustrated's free stuff, I should have soaked the noodles for twice as long as this recipe recommended.
In my ongoing vegetarian taco experimentation, this week I simply added salsa to the pinto beans and cheese. The taste was good, but I hadn't really forseen how sloppy the mixture would be due to all the water in the salsa. I tried to get the thickest I could find, but this brand was kind of a fail in terms of what I was hoping for. I think I'm going to strain it prior to use next time, which will probably be in a few days.
Pico de gallo. Forget the salsa.
-xtien
Molten Lava Cake
Easy as hell and gourmet restaurant quality dessert. This is the 'get you laid' dessert if you have a date over for dinner.
Preheat oven to 425
Spray 4 custard cups with cooking spray and put them on a cookie sheet. The cooking spray is mandatory-don't skip that. I don't have custard cups so I used two small glass bowls. Custard cups must be damned tiny because this recipe made just the right amount for my two small glass bowls. Any small bowls that can survive the oven will work.
4 squares (4 ounces) semi sweet baking chocolate
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
Put these in a medium sized microwave bowl and nuke for 1 minute. The butter will melt but the chocolate won't. Take it out and whisk it until the chocolate melts. Stick it back in the microwave for 30 seconds if you need to to get the chocolate to melt all the way.
1 cup powdered sugar
Add it in and stir until smooth. Might want to use a fork as it will get pretty thick and clog your whisk.
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
Add them in and whisk until smooth
Finally,
6 Tablespoons of flour
Whisk until smooth
Divide the results among your custard cups or bowls or whatever.
Bake for 13-15 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand for one minute.
Place a dessert plate on top of each cup and invert it so that the cake slides out onto the plate. If it doesn't then you forgot the cooking spray. Do this gently-the outside is solid, the inside is chocolate custard. You don't want to break the outside.
Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. You can lightly sprinkle the top of each cake with powdered sugar to make them prettier if you like. A sliced up strawberry as a garnish would be a good touch also.
Result:
I can easily imagine some variations on this-type of chocolate used, maybe a splash of orange liquor...
My pizza stone broke in half! WTF? We got it from Bath and Beyond or some such nonsense and it cost about $20-$30. Now it is laying out in the back yard in halves. We only used it twice.
It ended up getting this crusty black stuff on it the first time we used it (cheese?) and it looked like hell, but I was very surprised to see that it broke. Did I do something wrong?
I was thinking about buying a pizza stone but I never realized how involved it is to use one. I think I'll just stick with the metal cookie sheet I use now.
http://www.recipepizza.com/pizza_stone.htm
From the site.
How to use a pizza stone
The pizza stone has to be preheated to a certain temperature to work and that often means leaving the oven on for quite a while before you begin to cook. Always place your stone in a cold oven and then turn the oven on. The purpose of this is to allow the stone to absorb the heat evenly. Once the stone has reached the required temperature then it is far too hot to handle with a conventional oven glove. Remember that you are working with a fire brick! If you place your cold pizza stone (no matter how expensive it was) into a hot oven it will very probably not withstand the thermal shock and it will shatter.
Wow, thanks tronnc! Sounds like I made a totally newbie mistake. Well, at least I didn't get an expensive stone.
I think it's been mentioned before in this thread, but get your next one from the hardware store and save some money. [Note: not my idea. Alton Brown's, as usual.]
-xtien
And if your pizza stone is only in two or three pieces it can still be used without any issue.
I have to admit, I scanned your black-eyed peas recipe and thought, Eh...looks okay. Doesn't look special. I went ahead with it tonight.
Woof. This thing freaking works. Seriously. After a couple of bowls I almost feel drunk now. I want to eat the whole batch, but that would surely kill me. So I won't.
I shall never doubt you again.
Thanks.
-xtien
Thanks for the tips.
I asked my wife and she reminded me that the stone had been in there for an hour when it cracked. That seems -- I don't know -- odd. You'd think if it were giong to crack because of a sudden temp change, it would happen right off.
I am glad that you liked it. I know it doesn't look like much, but it is really delicious. I think a big part of what makes it so good is that you aren't overcooking the greens. Also, bacon.
Forget that, what you need is about 1/4 inch stainless steel plate. Have it made at your local metal shop/scrapyard to fit within 1/2 inch of every side of your oven; make sure to have them burnish off the burs! Works much better, cleans better, and you'll have it forever.
I used this recipe to make some slow cooker chicken and sausage gumbo which turned out rather tasty.
The supermarket sold the chicken thighs in packages of 6 which is two more than what the recipe called for so I dropped it from 4 chorizo sausages to 2. That may of affected the spiciness a little but that's okay as my wife can't handle the spiceness.
What wasn't alright was the ingredient list missing tomatoes. I had bought everything I needed according to the ingredient list. And as I go through the recipe, I see it tells me to add the tomatoes. Tomatoes? Do they mean the tomato paste? Nope, that's also listed as being added. They meant the tomatoes that they never bothered to mention until this point in the recipe. I have no idea how many tomatoes are needed, and I really don't feel like running out to the supermarket again, so I just substituted a can of 28 oz diced tomatoes drained of the liquid.
Whoah.Molten Lava Cake
Easy as hell and gourmet restaurant quality dessert. This is the 'get you laid' dessert if you have a date over for dinner.
Result:
I can easily imagine some variations on this-type of chocolate used, maybe a splash of orange liquor...
Whipping up a batch of red beans and rice in slow cooker A and chicken adobo in slow cooker B.
Hello Enidigm,
I saw your post and wanted to respond to your comments regarding our new Editors' Choice Cookbook Collection.
Editors’ Choice Cookbook Collection recipes are separate from the Cooksillustrated.com membership and are accessible to CooksIllustrated.com members who wish to upgrade their membership to include access to these additional cookbook recipes. In 2000, we launched CooksIllustrated.com, and we’ve been offering online access to recipes from Cook’s Illustrated magazine for nearly 10 years. Since then we’ve significantly increased the amount of content we offer online, but never before have we offered online access to recipes from our ever growing list of Cook’s Illustrated cookbooks.
So, in response to growing interest from our members in online access to our cookbook recipes, our editors have hand-picked the very best recipes from our cookbooks and created our new Editors’ Choice Cookbook Collection membership. This collection not only adds depth to the CooksIllustated.com database of foolproof recipes for appetizers, beef, chicken, salads, side dishes, soups, stews, and more, but also adds significantly to categories of recipes that we get asked about again and again, including cooking-for-two, make-ahead, and light recipes.
I would be happy to offer you a complimentary membership to our Editors' Choice Cookbook to go along with your Cook's Illustrated membership to you or anyone who is interested.
Please feel free to contact me directly at:
jvalerio at americastestkitchen . com
Be sure to include your name and complete mailing address.
Jacqui Valerio
Customer Service Manager
Cook's Illustrated
Home of America's Test Kitchen
REPORTED!
How very odd. Google reveals Jacqui to be either a real person with an admirably direct approach to customer engagement via social media, or a convincing candidate to win the Loebner Prize.
Anyway, back on topic, my girlfriend and I had a stab at this Doi Maach. It was enjoyable enough but nothing special; the balance of flavours wasn't quite right and the halibut we used all but disintegrated rather than staying in more pleasing chunks. I feel like it might be that recipe rather than our execution that let us down. I wouldn't be averse to trying again using a different one.
On a more successful note, we also made peanut butter fudge courtesy of Sophie Dahl. That shit is weapons-grade delicious; we got an enormous slab out of it and between my friends yesterday and the folks at work it's disappeared rapidly. I only got three small pieces, which is probably a good thing for my waistline.
What you should be doing is working to increase the overall value of the $35/year subscription so's to steadily increase your subscriber base, rather than make your existing, loyal subscribers feel like Chris Kimball is trying to nickel-and-dime them by having a significant portion of recipes still out of reach even though we've already ponied up for the site.
It's bad enough that you have all these separate Cook's Country, Cook's Illustrated, etc, fiefdoms, which all require separate subscriptions -- when I'm a paying subscriber to your main site, and you start blocking stuff off through a second paywall, fuck you, there's no shortage of recipes on the internet available for free. I'm a decent enough cook that I can suss out the good from the bad.
Geez, no need to be hostile. I love the way people on the internet feel qualified to say "What you really should be doing..." like they're disinterested parties critiquing the business plan. If this turns out to fail miserably, I'm sure they'll adjust and move on.
I often cook this exact recipe and I can vouch for it. It is positively amazing.
Actually I have three things I vary:
1) I line the ramekins with butter, not cooking spray. Then I sprinkle some cocoa powder into them.
2) I use superfine sugar in the desert, not powdered sugar (sprinkle powdered sugar on top. PROTIP: drop the powdered sugar through a sieve; it will spread more evenly and look prettier).
3) I heat the chocolate and butter mixture in a double boiler (basically a bowl sitting in a pot of heated water on the stove).
I'm not a disinterested pary, I'm a paying customer. I'm hostile because I already paid them $35; I naively assumed that my subscription would buy me access to all the content on the site, rather than having extra bonus recipes I can't access sprinkled in amongst all my search results.
I'm not angry at Jvalerio personally, I just feel like it's a cheap tactic, and I want to be very clear about my displeasure (and why I won't be re-upping my sub with them).
I'm sure plenty of people feel displeasure that the site isn't available for free - but this is their business model and they'll stick with it for as long as it works, I'm sure. Express your displeasure all you like, I guess, but I can't really see the point of doing so.
To provide a different point of view, I signed up for the Editor's Choice as soon as it was offered. I love the magazine and the cookbooks but I'm over buying new cookbooks. I want everything online, available to me whether I'm at the grocery store or at a friend's house, or on my laptop in the kitchen. I saw it as the base price covering the recipes from the magazine, mostly, and the add-on for recipes from some of the cookbooks. It held value for me and I was willing to pay for it. The recipes are just really good - nothing I've ever found online has rivaled them in terms of quality. I'm glad the option of the expanded recipe base was there.
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