Reply With QuoteI baked two loaves of Dutch Crunch (or Tiger) bread and just had my first slice. It is goooooooood.
I'm inviting myself over for a BBQ when I hit Vegas in January...Originally Posted by VegasRobb
I really want to start out and try some more smoking. Smoked a chicken in my Weber (just a regular grill) and it was the best chicken ever.
I baked two loaves of Dutch Crunch (or Tiger) bread and just had my first slice. It is goooooooood.
Just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I've had a weird laziness to making my own sauce, but I bookmarked this just in case. I make pizza dough pretty regularly and the local store had 28oz cans of tomatoes on sale so I figured what the heck. Turned out great. I feel silly not trying it or hearing about it sooner.Tonight I made Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce.
It's very simple. Three ingredients:
- 28 oz can san marzano tomatoes
- 5 oz salted butter
- 1 medium onion, cut in half & peeled
Throw it all in a pot. Simmer for 45 minutes. Enjoy.
This was absolutely delicious. It's a very delicate, sweet sauce. I served it with chicken parmesan, with which it was fantastic. I wouldn't use this as like a base for meat sauce; the sweetness would get overwhelmed without more to back it up.
Not so much cooking involved, but yesterday we had the season's first serving of Rakfisk. Smells like hell, tastes like heaven!
How different is that from gravlax? I adore gravlax, but have never had rakfisk.Not so much cooking involved, but yesterday we had the season's first serving of Rakfisk. Smells like hell, tastes like heaven!
Gravlax is much milder, Rakfisk smells bad. Like, really bad but the taste is like a tangier Gravlax.
When you say "bad" do you mean like fishy bad or surströmming bad?
While not as bad as surströmming (which makes people throw up when they open the can), it has a certain charming hint of rotten fish in its bouquet. It's quite unpleasant when you open the packaging and the taste lingers in the kitchen for a while.
Been meaning to make something that involves figs and roquefort. Today it was finally time. I went with a pear / fig / roquefort galette. Basically it's a part whole-wheat pastry crust rolled out on the table. Add filling, wrap the crust around itself, pop into the oven for 40 mins or so, and it's good to go.
I only know what one of those things is!
I'm kinda worried whether it's pears or figs you know (or perhaps roquefort, in which case I'm really worried..)
pear:
fig:
roquefort:
Awesome, I have learned something. And honestly, I knew that a fig was a fruit and roquefort was a cheese, but if you took me to a supermarket where all the signs were missing I probably couldn't have found either of them by sight.
Made fresh gnocchi by hand for the first time this week - was surprisingly easy to make - boil potatoes, mash while steaming, add just enough flour to hold together, roll, cut, mark with fork, and boil. Yum!
Will have to see how hard it is to make homemade ravioli sans pasta maker next...
Well, pasta makers are really just for us weaklings. Real Italian mamas just use a big ass rolling pin - so you can too.
(I like my pasta maker, though)
Roquefort would be damn hard to spot visually, it's just a blue cheese and looks like most other blue cheeses. Fancy cheese folk could probably identify it by a combination of taste and smell, not me though. I like cheese but I'm not some connoisseur who could identify the different types of blue cheeses from one another.
I'd love to use a pasta maker, but I don't have the room, or the budget for it right now.
But ravioli is essentially just two sheets pressed together... so figure thats a good (and not terribly difficult) place to go next. I've made passable Fazzoletti - hankerchief pasta - previously, so its just one step beyond that.
You can buy a little mold for ravioli that's like 10 bucks to help you out. You roll out your first sheet of pasta, place it on the mold and let it sag a bit, spoon the filling into the ravioli, place the second sheet on top, and then roll over the mold to crimp and seal the ravioli together. Not sure I'd try doing them with hand crimping (though you can buy a crimping tool that works like a pizza cutter, in which case you roll out the bottom sheet for the ravioli, put the filling in little mounds, put a top sheet over it, and then roll the crimper/cutter to separate the ravioli). I never found the fancy ravioli maker attachment to my hand crank pasta machine of much use. However, the machine itself with the ability to precisely control your pasta's thickness, was worth the investment. (As was the noodle cutter; who wants to cut noodles by hand?)
Depending on how big you like your ravioli, an empty can with both ends cut of will work as well.
If you roll up the pasta sheet it's easy to cut noodles off of the cylinder that results. Just be sure to put plenty of flour/semolina/corn meal on both sides of the pasta sheet.
After years of making bread in a bread maker, I've tried one of those no knead bread recipes and it worked surprisingly well. Could use a bit more salt and more baking time, but I'm not going back to the bread maker bricks.
Yeah I'd have a hard time picking it out by taste/smell too. Roquefort is stronger and saltier than most blue cheeses though, so there's that.
I used it in homemade pizza yesterday when I made one with mushrooms, sausage and a few other bits and bobs. If you've got a good sauce, a good crust and some good cheese you're pretty much set. In this case most of the cheese was really cheap supermarket stuff, but adding some roq' took it to another level.
Made crock pot pork tenderloin today. I would have taken a picture but, damn. We've been smelling that wonderful aroma all day. When it was done the family tore it up.
I made cauliflower risotto from a Jamie Oliver recipe my dad used to make. Haven't done any serious cooking in months so it was kind of exciting to do something in the kitchen that required more or less constant attention. The risotto tastes amazing but I can't help but think that the presentation needs work. It looks like a bowl of grey glop.
Okay, technically this is not something I cooked lately as it is my wife who cooked them. But it is interesting nonetheless. The recipes came from Quinoa 365, a book she received for her birthday. She's been doing breakfast items from the book.
After some searching, we found some quinoa flour. She used that to make pancakes and waffles.
The pancakes were nice. Quinoa has a natural nuttiness to its flavour that came out quite well in the pancakes. They were quite good with maple syrup. The waffles were very good. They came out quite light, and were very nice with some berries and maple syrup.
There was also some hot cereal made with toasted sliced almonds, raisons, cinnamon, and apple. It sounds good, but the end result was so-so. I think I'd much rather have oatmeal with those accompaniments.
We also had quinoa and potato hashbrowns. That wasn't too bad. It would have been great with some bacon, but then again, what wouldn't be great with some bacon?
With leftover turkey, I made Kentucky Hot Brown for dinner.
Toasted Texas Toast + Turkey, smothered with Mornay sauce, topped with bacon and parsley and paprika.
FOR DINNER.
Take that, purists.
I'm going to go have a heart attack now.
Om nom nom nom!
I tried to make patties out of the leftover mashed potatoes to avoid the standard potato texture. Didn't come together. Ended up topping it with cheese and gravy, labeling it "deconstructed poutine," and calling it a night. No pictures, for good reason.
That has got to be one of the worst names for a dish, ever. Looks good though!
Right! As if the hot brown in West Viginia or Tennessee tastes any different!
My gift of UK working man's condiments rocks, relevant pictures here:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-t...&postcount=648
Branston Pickle: Still my favorite. I'm going to make some tuna salad with it.
Colson's Mustard: Validates my own attempts to make mustard which were invariably hot as hell. Had a phenomenal sandwich with this today.
Da Cheddar: Good, similar to the fancy stuff I can get around here but a bit creamier
Marmite: Um, jury's still out. I think I'm put off by the fact that it looks like one of my favorite things, sorghum molasses, but substitute the sugar for salt. I'm trying.
HP Sauce: Tasty, different.
Bovril: Still too scared to try.
And the honey. Still remarkable.
Last edited by Houngan; 12-21-2011 at 05:48 PM. Reason: Goddamned internet making me misspell "too"
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