Behemoth

Octaveman, that is one beautiful looking pot o' food. Last night again in Urbana, I had lamb biryani at a little indian place. the guy there asked me if my name is indian (it is arabic) and then promised next time I come in he would make me "special" Biryani. What this means I am not sure... Tonight I used defrosted P. Reinhardt pizza dough and leftover canned tomatos to make pizzas. With some prociutto and buffalo mozzarella I bought on the way home. Forgot to take a pic though. Great for reasonably fast food but I am looking forward to a few nice long cooking sessions after this week is over!

I just can't stand producing that much landfill. I am an adult of sound body (if not mind). I suck it up and wash the dishes.

I don't own one but our house came with one. The one thing it is great for is defrosting the stock cubes I keep in the freezer -- great for a last minute pan sauce. I don't use stock often enough to keep it in the fridge. Also good for reheating soup. I don't keep stuff in pots, cause I need my pots. Oh, to avoid microwave smell I only use heat-proof glass or stoneware, never plastic. That helps a lot.

Just needed to share this -- I go to a thai place near my department for lunch on a semi-regular basis. I order larb gai and a side of rice every once in a while. This time a new girl who works there walked out with my order and said "hey, you eat just like thai people. This is what I always have for lunch" I thought it was very cute.

Salt it, bake it until crispy and then use it on top of salads or (let's be honest) eat it straight out of the oven like a potato chip. But why on earth would you want a boneless, skinless chicken breast? edit: oops, I was too slow. Great minds think alike, I guess.

Jinmyo, Kassler is one of my all-time favorite foods. I have had some good ones, sure enough brought by friends to parties. Friends with good butchers -- from what I understand few people make their own. Here is a photo of tonight's dinner. The chicken's skin was all puffed up when it came out of the oven, which looked pretty neat. Foreground, roast cauliflower. Background, romaine with gorgonzola and walnuts. Martini bianco with, espresso and a piece of Niederegger marzipan after. Now, back to work. Oh, just to show off, the salad bowl belonged to my grandparents. It's nothing particularly special but I have always loved the shape...

I haven't done this in a while. I still have the big round aluminum pan my mom used when we were in Lebanon. I remember learning how to cut the diamond pattern when I was a kid...my early geometric training. I also melt some ghee over the top. Strangely, we almost always had hummus & salad on the side with kibbe, rather than the yogurt salad.

Here are the ingredients for German Nutella: Plant oil, hazelnuts (13%), low fat cacoa, skim milk powder (7.5%), emulcified soy-lecithin (Emulgator Soyalecithin), vanilla. It doesn't say that the oil is hydrogenated, though I have no idea if they mention such things on labels there. What goes into the American one? We noticed a distinct difference in taste but got rid of our last American jar ages ago.

You mean like the German roast pork product? In this case I find this statement to be true. Last night I stayed in Urbana. I ate cereal. Presumably my spouse ate the leftoverpork chops and something involving nutella. Tonight I am home and plan to roast a chicken.

Yikes, I hope not.

Oh yeah, definitely. (See today's entry in the dinner thread.) And I don't think it's nuts. For all the reasons you mentioned, as well as cost, and a feeling of connection to my "homesteader" grandmothers. Basically ever since I found a used copy of "cutting up in the kitchen", I've gotten all crazy DIY about my meat. If I had the freezer space I would only buy primary cuts. I wish I could find an equivalent book for french-style cuts though. Anyone know of any?

Pan-fried pork filet steaks with potato roesti & sour cream. The filet was liberated from a sirloin roast a few months back (and frozen, obviously). That was my first real "challenge" butchering job -- sirloin roasts have a lot of weirdly-shaped bones. The amount of money you save doing it yourself is unbelievable. The steaks were flattened slices of the filet, seared in a pan with olive oil, garlic and sage, then added vinegar, sugar and some vermouth and let reduce while the steaks cooked a bit more. Remove steaks, deglaze with a drop more vermouth, a little butter swirled in and voila. Clearly an improvised dish, but came out very nicely. The mandoline makes roesti very quick work. Basically, a nice quick dinner for a busy time of the semester.

Hey, I make these too! My single favorite dessert from childhood. But I have been trying to improve upon the family recipe. Have you gotten to the point where you can unmold them so it's cake on the bottom custard on top? Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn't. I'm still working on a formula that is lemony enough but comes out solid enough to unmold.

For what it's worth, consider offering to teach a class at churches. I am far from religious, but given where funding is going these days, churches are a big part of community outreach in a lot of neighborhoods -- many have after school and community programs already set up, and all have kitchens. (My tutoring was at a church after school program. I just walked in one day and volunteered to help kids with homework, and they were happy to have an extra hand.) As for goals, It doesn't need to cover every need, and it doesn't need to be some giant social revolution. Just offer to teach what you know how to do, or ask them what they would like to know, and just put it out there for whomever is interested.

Damnit. I won't have time to do this until after the 29th.

Okay, just please stop complaining about your English. It is pretty damn near perfect Let me know how I can help.

chefzadi, I saw this on your original post, and thought it was really cool. It is something I have also always wanted to do. I have tutored disadvantaged children, and my job would have been a lot easier if they had been giving the kids nutritious snacks after school instead of all those sugary drinks and cookies. There really seems to be a need for this type of education out there: I lived in a rough neighborhood for a while and always felt bad when women would stop me at the cash register and ask me about the month's worth of food I was able to buy with so little cash..."what is that/ what do you do with that?" (Lentils, rice, onions etc...grad student food.) One key thing would be to teach people to make simple good food that doesn't take a lot of time or can be done ahead, since most people work very tough hours. The other problem is having access to good ingredients. At least in Philly the cheaper places to buy produce or less expensive groceries really required a car. To be completely frank as much as I enjoy eG as a place to learn about food, I'd be a lot more comfortable donating if I felt we were doing something besides comparing fancy dinners. I would love to see this place reach out to a larger community.

Toasted ciabatta slices with gorgonzola Red lentil soup with turmeric, cumin, coriander. Yogurt stirred in gently at the end, topped with caramelized onions. (Olive oil from caramelized onions also stirred in, of course). Espresso and a piece of Niederegger marzipan for dessert.

to take advantage of my accidental double post -- Nullo, instead of a steamer you can balance a plate on an upside down custard cup inside a pot. & fill with a little water. Works great. I'm just sayin'.

If you eat turkey i'm sure it would be easy to adapt any recipe. I would personally leave some skin in there to get an interesting texture. If you want it to be vegetarian, I have made vegetarian char siu bao using seitan -- I used to fry slices of seitan until golden, then dunk into boiling water to get rid of most of the oil. Then shred and sauce appropriately for whatever filling. The texture comes out nicely that way, kind of chewy/meaty with some crispy edges, similar to BBQ. Looking back, I would be interested in trying to season the gluten more before kneading, to get extra flavor in there.

I'd prefer to steam them. Oh, my recipe was also out of "chinese snacks". They have a good baked dough recipe but it's just too rich for my taste (they chinatown kind as well as the homemade kind). I would be into trying the commercial method steaming dough out of that book, as the home version was already quite good. It looks like it is just a basic starter (leavel some dough out overnight, that kind of thing).

Ha ha, so am I. Sort of. Here's a cultural difference for ya -- I always liked the ones where you had to build a toy with some sort of funny mechanism (eg car with spinning umbrella, spider with crazy leg action etc) but as it turns out I had bad kinder egg taste. My husband informs we you are supposed to pick up the heaviest ones, because they contain figurines which are the ones that become collectors items. Whatever, but he did have the "holy grail of Kinder" asterix and obelix figurines, which I readily admit to coveting. I bring kinder eggs for friends, but not for myself. I don't know what to do with all those little things anymore, so I just buy the Duplo bars when I need a fix. Oh, I forgot. I also always buy lion bars for my dad.

Will frozen coconut milk produce enough cream?

That book is amazing, isn't it. I still use a mortar and pestle to pound the curry paste but I have given up on making my own coconut creme. I can't find fresh coconuts here in any case, and when I have tried using packaged (from an indian store) it simply doesn't yield enough. I have found a couple of good thai canned coconut milk brands that have a lot of creme in them. Like fifi, I just leave them sit for a while, then open carefully and scoop out the creme. Otherwise, I just find myself putting off the whole project. The results have been better than what I have been able to produce from scratch. Meh. Oh, I used leftover ingredients to make DT's pad thai again tonight. No shrimp or salted radish leftovers to use, but it still came out well.

Our suitcases back from Germany are always full: - Nutella (the american stuff is not as good.) - salty licorice - Ritter Sport (you can get it here but its much cheaper there) - Niederegger marzipan (you can get it here but fresher is much better!) - We used to transport amaretto "vom fass" from a certain neighborhood place until the store closed. - if I could transport meats to the US, I would, but since I can't, whenever I am in Hamburg I have to have krabbensalat, at least one smoked eel sandwich, and we usually share a Thuringer at some point during a shopping day. - I have also transported rapshonig (home-made!), and apfelbrand. I've never transported beer though.