Cooking questions

[colacentral]

Great.


So what's for dinner then?

Oregano madras

[Sebastian Cobb]

It wouldn't be a proper chat about Italian cuisine without heated arguments about adherence to rules eh.

I make veggie lasagne because it's easier than making a ragu and it uses ricotta in place of bechemel, which I find a chore to make. Standing at the stove continually stirring it? Arsed mate.

[TrenterPercenter]

Oregano madras

You mean Chilli?


I'm joking but I might just start referring to Chilli-con-carne as Oregano Madras from now on.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Haven't made a proper chilli since I realised how delicious refried beans, rice, salsa and cheese tossed together is as a burrito or quesadilla filling.

[Ferris]

I add 1/2 finely grated jalapeño to all my soffritos now. Come at me, purists.

[chveik]

It was a mixture of meats, as a ragu should be. Supermarket mince indeed. Sigh.

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,47928.msg2536083.html#msg2536083

you're a psychopath if those pictures don't put you off eating meat forever.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I add 1/2 finely grated jalapeño to all my soffritos now. Come at me, purists.

What do you do with the other half?

[TrenterPercenter]

Haven't made a proper chilli since I realised how delicious refried beans, rice, salsa and cheese tossed together is as a burrito or quesadilla filling.

This 100%

Can i reccomend you sack off the chilli sauce and find a good mole (the mexican sauce not the burrowing kind) and also try adding fresh rocket to your quesadilla.

[TrenterPercenter]

I add 1/2 finely grated jalapeño to all my soffritos now. Come at me, purists.

"You're wrong and you're a grotesquely ugly freak"]

[Sebastian Cobb]

Will try, I haven't been using chilli sauce actually, just a mixture of powder and fresh spare chilli's in the beans and some fresh in the salsa (which I whizz up in the food processor).

[Sebastian Cobb]

Although on the chilli thing - I've been trying some of the plant based minces instead of beef and while they came out fine, I noticed they were a bit of a fucker to brown and a lot stuck to the bottom of the pan, I assume the fat in beef mince prevents this a bit?

[TrenterPercenter]

Will try, I haven't been using chilli sauce actually, just a mixture of powder and fresh spare chilli's in the beans and some fresh in the salsa (which I whizz up in the food processor).

Yeah mole is a complete faff to make and pretty hard to get hold over as well. You want something that is bit acidic like in the US they have steak sauce (bit like HP brown sauce less sweet) which you could add a bit of heat too.

Fresh salsa is always great though (I use that freeze-dried coriander which melts in the mix and lasts for ages).

[Ferris]

What do you do with the other half?

Back in the freezer or up the harris depending on if it's a work day.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah mole is a complete faff to make and pretty hard to get hold over as well. You want something that is bit acidic like in the US they have steak sauce (bit like HP brown sauce less sweet) which you could add a bit of heat too.

Fresh salsa is always great though (I use that freeze-dried coriander which melts in the mix and lasts for ages).

I freeze my own corriander - I use it quite a bit in chana massala and it doesn't keep well so I tend to buy a big bag, food process it and divvy it up into servings for that plus some leftovers for chucking in stuff.

[TrenterPercenter]

I freeze my own corriander - I use it quite a bit in chana massala and it doesn't keep well so I tend to buy a big bag, food process it and divvy it up into servings for that plus some leftovers for chucking in stuff.

Yeah i've done this and made that coriander pickle that you can then freeze (if you are familiar with this stuff).

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'll look into it. Similarly I think I've been doing biryani's with garlic/ginger enough that it might be worth me pre-making a paste.

[TrenterPercenter]

I would highly reccomend this book

http://anjumanand.co.uk/Home/BookDetails/12


which is just simple, great and brilliant recipes

If you want to all out then this is an absolute tome but it is incredible.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35959152-feast


The first 100 pages are just on different types of bread.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'll take a look, thanks!

I seem to have inherited this after being the last man standing in a house-share, I see it recommended sometimes but have never actually gotten around to cooking anything out of it:


The ones I cook fairly regularly are actually from a couple of Hairy Bikers books I've been given - I know they're not authentic but the HB's are seemingly very good at shortcutting recipes so they're a fraction of the effort of the real thing and only marginally less good. Their Goan lamb vindaloo is excellent.

[colacentral]

I'll take a look, thanks!

I seem to have inherited this after being the last man standing in a house-share, I see it recommended sometimes but have never actually gotten around to cooking anything out of it:


The ones I cook fairly regularly are actually from a couple of Hairy Bikers books I've been given - I know they're not authentic but the HB's are seemingly very good at shortcutting recipes so they're a fraction of the effort of the real thing and only marginally less good. Their Goan lamb vindaloo is excellent.

Yeah, I can't stand the HB shows but their books are good. There's a thai green curry and katsu curry recipe in one that's better than most I've eaten out.

[colacentral]

It's been a long road to perfecting my pasta sauce since I stopped eating meat, but what I make now is almost always better than anything I had when I was using beef.

A good pasta sauce is mostly down to the base - properly frying the onions and garlic, and adding some fineley diced extras to it, whether that be carrots, courgettes, celery, fennel, or whatever, and a red or orange pepper. I usually fuck it up if I get impatient at this stage and add the tinned tomatoes in too early, and that's when the end product is bland no matter what you do.

Sometimes I add a few chopped sun dried tomatoes to it too. I also use plum tomatoes rather than chopped, as I find they're less watery, and I always like to add a few fresh chopped tomatoes too. A bit of spinach doesn't hurt either. And I'd always add at least a dash of chilli flakes.

Apart from that, just stock, salt, pepper, basil and oregano to finish it off.

I actually forgot an important bit, namely substituting the meat for a decent portion of mushrooms. I've also been adding mushrooms to meat free gravies on roast dinners. I don't know if that's sacrilege with the fooderati. It goes inside a pie so I don't see why not.

[bgmnts]

Is a spicy veggie option all thats on offer in most places? I don't eat at restaurants much anymore but it's not that restrictive.

[TrenterPercenter]

Agreed got a few HB books knocking around the place.  Sick and tired of the constant stigma that comes with working in mental health I was seriously exploring retraining as a chef a few years back and bought a load of proper technical books but I got convinced to stay and work on another project.  Maybe when this one is done in another 3 years time I can have another look.

[chveik]

I don't know if that's sacrilege with the fooderati.

fuck 'em.

[TrenterPercenter]

Is a spicy veggie option all thats on offer in most places? I don't eat at restaurants much anymore but it's not that restrictive.

I think it is still a bit common but obviously we've moved on a lot.

[TrenterPercenter]

I actually forgot an important bit, namely substituting the meat for a decent portion of mushrooms. I've also been adding mushrooms to meat free gravies on roast dinners. I don't know if that's sacrilege with the fooderati. It goes inside a pie so I don't see why not.

If in this situation i am considered the fooderati then no it is completely fine and I do this all the time.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I actually forgot an important bit, namely substituting the meat for a decent portion of mushrooms. I've also been adding mushrooms to meat free gravies on roast dinners. I don't know if that's sacrilege with the fooderati. It goes inside a pie so I don't see why not.

I found out mushroom bourguignon is a thing and really want to have a go at it.

[Dex Sawash]

It was a mixture of meats, as a ragu should be. Supermarket mince indeed. Sigh.

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,47928.msg2536083.html#msg2536083

I was still eating meat in that thread.

Getting on the amphetamines Baileys cheesecake asap

Come on, let's have some Christmas recipes!

VAGUELY HEALTHY SORT-OF BAILEYS CHEESECAKE:

Serves 8

Ingredients:

350ml of Irish cream- don't bother with Baileys, all Irish creams taste the same, even those Irish Knights/Irish Country Cream ones which supposedly have a bit of wine in (I can never taste the wine) and it doesn't matter if you're only going to be baking with it anyway. Go to Lidl or Iceland, spend your £4 wisely and save the rest of your Christmas booze money for something you're actually going to throw down your neck. Buy a 70cl bottle and use the remaining 350ml for adding to hot chocolate in liberal doses.
600g of unflavoured Skyr. This is Icelandic fat-free strained yoghurt which is more like cream cheese- more dense than Greek yoghurt with more of a neutral taste and less of a sour tang, and smoother than Quark. It works for baking anyway. You can buy it in bigger branches of Tesco and Sainsbury's and probably other places.
150-200g of icing sugar
1 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder
A pinch of salt
5 medium eggs
10-12 bourbon biscuits or any chocolate-flavoured biscuits with no chocolate chips in them, fewer if you're keeping the base thin'n'healthy
1 knob (huh huh) of butter

Method:

Preheat the oven to 150°C

To make the BUTTERY BISCUIT BASE: If you're using bourbon biscuits, pull them apart and discard the cream (or stick it in your face if you must), otherwise skip to the next step. Crush the biscuits into crumbs and put them in the bottom of a springform cake tin. Melt the butter and mix it into the biscuit crumbs then spread the biscuit/crumb mixture evenly across the bottom of the tin.

To make the cheesecake mixture: Put the Skyr in a bowl. Fold in the Irish cream, adding more to taste if you want, until it tastes sufficiently Irish. Add the cocoa powder and fold this in until no lumps can be seen- Irish cream generally has a bit of cocoa in it and the cake will taste wrong without it. Fold in the icing sugar, adding more until it tastes sweet enough. Adding a pinch of salt will make it taste sweeter without the need to add too much sugar and it will also counter the sour taste to some extent. Once it tastes right add the eggs and fold them in. Make sure everything is nicely mixed and then pour the cheesecake into the cake tin.

Put the cake tin on a baking tray, because springform cake tins always fucking leak a bit and doing this will save you having to clean burnt stuff off the bottom of your oven later. Put the cake on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR during this time or the cake will collapse like a fucked flan. After 1 hr and 15 minutes turn the oven off but KEEP THE DOOR CLOSED until the oven has cooled down- this will take a few hours. Finally take out the cake, let it cool to room temperature and chill it in the fridge for a bit before serving.

I tried this last night and it seems to have worked pretty well- I got a bit of a soggy bottom but that's possibly because I used reduced fat butter which has more water in it than normal butter, and I probably should have used more biscuits and made the base a bit thicker. The cheesecake does taste very much of Baileys though, the texture is nice and the top is lovely and caramelised so I'm pretty chuffed with it.

I tried this as a simplified, lower-fat version of the recipe for Heston Blumenthal's mum's baked vanilla cheesecake which is a recipe I'd definitely recommend trying if you don't mind doing a little more work and you're not trying to be less of a fat bastard because it really is great. I've never bothered putting the cornflower in, I always replace the cottage cheese with more cream cheese, and I don't know about that "try not to use a fan oven" thing because I've never not used a fan oven for baking and it's always worked somehow. Try it with tonka bean instead of vanilla if you want to be a bit Masterchef about it. Tonka bean is an ingredient so good it's banned throughout the US- some of your dinner guests may be intrigued by this, some may not, so just tell them this little fact after they've eaten it and haven't died.

[steve98]

BAILEY'S CHEESECAKE.

I got as far as "don't bother with Bailey's, all Irish creams taste the same" - Like hell they do. The 4 quid a bottle stuff (Irish Mist, Dreams Of Erin, Creamy Heaven) tastes like cheap (non-creamy) piss. It's Bailey's or it's nothing in my kitchen.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

I freeze my own corriander - I use it quite a bit in chana massala and it doesn't keep well so I tend to buy a big bag, food process it and divvy it up into servings for that plus some leftovers for chucking in stuff.

Yep, I do this too. I buy the big fuck-off bunches, wash them and separate all the thick stalks from the leaves and thinner stems. I add the chopped thick stalks to the initial fry of the onions, garlic, ginger, whole spices etc. and freeze what's left - normally enough for another two or three curries.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

BAILEY'S CHEESECAKE.

I got as far as "don't bother with Bailey's, all Irish creams taste the same" - Like hell they do. The 4 quid a bottle stuff (Irish Mist, Dreams Of Erin, Creamy Heaven) tastes like cheap (non-creamy) piss. It's Bailey's or it's nothing in my kitchen.

I've heard from my - admittedly not super-discerning partner - that vegan Baileys is arite