blue_dolphin
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Posts posted by blue_dolphin
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19 minutes ago, Pete Fred said:
A recent episode of Kenji's podcast featured the grilled cheese sandwich/cheese toastie (listen or watch him make them).
His tips for a good "cheese pull" intrigued me (spoiler: American cheese and its emulsifying salt). As you can imagine, this stuff is not easy to come by in France. In fact I'm expecting to be deported at any moment for this treacherous affront to French cheese.
But it was "American week" in Lidl and they actually had some, as well as Monterey Jack. Seeing as I might not get another chance, I took the risk...
Not bad. I made another...
The internet tells me that this type of American cheese freezes quite well so I'll hide my stash there and hope the gendarmes don't come knocking.
Should the gendarmes confiscate your stash, you could visit the Melty Cheese Calculator and make a pull-able cheese from something that actually tastes good!
Also, I can't stop laughing about "American week" in a Lidl in France!
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1 hour ago, ElsieD said:
I can see me coming out of there with at least three grocery carts full of goodies.
I can see me moving in and refusing to leave!
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3 hours ago, Shel_B said:
I recognize that these are minor things, but they annoy me.
Thanks for your response! I think I'd find the price of that stuff more annoying than finding an empty bottle and a funnel but it's good to have choices!
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It doesn't look all that different from various seafood boils I've seen dumped onto picnic tables covered with cloth or paper in US southern states. And, as in those boils, I see that @liuzhou's favorite vegetable is also represented in the Chinese versions he shared.
Here's a photo from Serious Eats:
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I tried a recipe for Flatbreads with Beet Yogurt and Jammy Eggs from Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner. Interesting and I got a veg in my breakfast but not something I need to repeat.
Raw beet, jalapeño and lime zest are grated into yogurt and mixed with lime juice, ground coriander, salt & pepper, topped with a boiled egg and fresh mint and scooped up with a flatbread. I added a sprinkle of dukkah.
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3 hours ago, Shel_B said:
I don't fry foods in part because it's a PITA (for me) to dispose of the expended cooking oil.
1 hour ago, Shel_B said:The City of El Cerrito has an excellent recycling center and system. Cooking oil is either recycled or composted depending on its format and composition. It is not dumped into a landfill.
Do you live in El Cerrito? If so, can you say a little more about why it's such a PITA for you to dispose of the oil?
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Welcome to eG, @rukie. For help with your sweet dish, make sure to visit the Pastry & Baking Forums and search for the dish you're working on. There's a lot of good information there and you might be able to fine some helpful discussions.. If you can't find anything, go ahead and start a new topic to ask your questions.
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Our waste hauler specifically says not to put cooking oil in the compost bin. I save it in the bottles it comes in and put it in the regular trash, where is likely goes to a landfill, as @KennethT said.
There are oil and grease recyclers that accept used cooking oil. Last time I checked, there wasn't one handy to me but should check again.
Edited to add that there are plenty of places that accept used motor oil. I suppose because any place that sells it is required to accept it for recycling. Too bad the grocery stores don't have the same mandate to collect used cooking oil.
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Today, May 13, is International Hummus Day. I guess there's a day for everything!
Joe Yonan's book, Cool Beans is this month's book for the online cookbook club I participate in so I'm ready to celebrate with a few hummus recipes (and one bean dip 🙃), all made with Rancho Gordo beans.
First up is the Perfectly Simple and Light Hummus, with a sprinkle of smoked paprika. This one is written to use canned chickpeas but I didn't have any so I used the ones I'd cooked. It uses relatively little tahini and no oil in the recipe so I was generous in pouring it on top.
Next, we have the Black Chickpea Hummus with Black Garlic and Preserved Lemon. Lots of umami and nutty, earthy flavors in this one, brightened by the preserved lemon which is blended into the hummus and also used as a garnish. The book includes a recipe where this hummus is used as a base for roasted cauliflower that's really good.
Today, I made Little Sesame's Creamy, Fluffy Hummus. Little Sesame is a restaurant in DC and is apparently the origin of this recipe. The chickpeas are to be cooked with baking soda to make them super soft. I don't find that Rancho Gordo beans need that so I left it out but gave the beans a good cook. This recipe uses both fresh garlic and garlic confit, slow-cooked in olive oil which adds a note of sweetness and complexity. That same garlicky oil is poured on top to serve and this is indeed a very fluffy, pillowy hummus.
Last up is a Harissa-Roasted Carrot and White Bean Dip that I made with Rancho Gordo Alubia Blanca beans. I like the flavors and thought the little beans looked very cute as a garnish.
Happy International Hummus Day!
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Today is International Hummus Day so lunch was this Roasted Beet Hummus Bowl with Turmeric Tahini and Peanut Dukkah from Joe Yonan's Cool Beans, made with Little Sesame's Creamy, Fluffy Hummus from the same book, served with the Fluffy (and Crisp) Flatbreads from The Cook You Want To Be.
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37 minutes ago, Smithy said:
@blue_dolphin, that looks lovely and delicious. I've never heard of black chickpeas, though. Please elaborate on them.
Thanks! I have the black garbanzos from Rancho Gordo. The are an Italian variety also known as ceci neri. They are smaller than regular chickpeas, they take longer to cook and the skin remains fairly firm even after the interior of the bean becomes soft and creamy. I think that textural contrast is their best feature so I like them in salads, etc. I'm not sure that hummus was their best use but it does use their cooking liquid which is very flavorful compared to regular garbanzos and I like the black garlic and preserved lemon mixed with the earthy beans so I'm glad I tried it.
In the photo below, you can see the size differences. Regular garbanzos on the left and black garbanzos on the right. In each case, the raw beans are in the top row and cooked below. Due to the lighting, the cooked black garbanzos look a bit darker here and the ones used as a garnish for the black chickpea hummus in my previous post are a better representation.
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A riff on a recipe in Joe Yonan's Cool Beans for roasted cauliflower served on black chickpea hummus with black garlic and preserved lemon. The cauliflower gets rubbed first with a mix of garlic, lemon zest and olive oil. Towards the end of the roast, it’s brushed with tahini and sprinkled with za'atar and black sesame seeds, roasted further to brown evenly and served on a bed of that black chickpea hummus.
The cauliflower is supposed to be roasted whole but I broke it up into florets and there are supposed to be crunchy spiced roasted chickpeas to garnish but I failed to allow enough time to make them and went with arugula dressed with lemon and olive oil instead. Scooped everything up with some of the Fluffy (and crisp) Flatbreads from The Cook You Want To Be.
Edited to add: here's a photo of that black chickpea hummus which I made with Rancho Gordo's black garbanzos. It's rather murky looking stuff but it tastes pretty good.
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I really like your blackboard and need to try something similar. Since my big fridge broke, I've got an apartment sized one which gets over crowded and I tend to miss things until it's too late. I can try sticking a white board to that fridge and get myself some nice colored dry-erase markers to make it fun!
Sounds like you're good on the asparagus but I'll toss out an idea or two anyway. In her book, Ruffage, Abra Berens has a "recipe" for pan-roasted asparagus with yogurt + shaved radishes that's barely more complicated than just roasting it but looks very pretty:
If you have Josh McFadden's book, Six Seasons, there's a great recipe for Raw Asparagus Salad with Breadcrumbs, Walnuts & Mint on p 73. I've seen it online, too, so I suspect you can find it. It's a great way to show off really fresh, first of the season asparagus. You can top it with grilled salmon or throw in some beans to make it more of a meal.
Also in Six Seasons is the recipe for Pasta alla Gricia with Slivered Sugar Snap Peas which is one of my most-made dishes. It uses twice the amount of vegetables as pasta and works equally well with slivered asparagus.
I could go on but I think I should shut up now. Oh, wait. One more on the mint. Eric Kim's Korean American has a super easy recipe for Salt-and-Pepper Ribs with Fresh Mint Sauce. The ribs are cooked quickly in the oven and the mint sauce is the perfect bright contrast to them.
OK. I need to address my own veg collection now!
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7 hours ago, CantCookStillTry said:
At the insistence of my child, I tried the viral Tiktok Big Mac Taco tonight for the boys.
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I didn't not like it 🤷♀️.
I know you don't expect culinary classics from me... but if this is a step too far, I understand. 🤣
I'm not dying to make one but I don't think that looks bad at all. Crispy tortilla, layers of meat as thin as a McD's burger 🙃. Is the meat seasoned with taco seasoning? Is there cheese? What is the yellow stuff? Looks too liquid to be cheese but too yellow to be Big Mac sauce. Are there pickles?
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48 minutes ago, ElsieD said:
It is John's birthday today and to celebrate, we are trying our a new-to-us offering from a restaurant we like. The chef started a pickup/delivery service of 7+ course meals when Covid struck. Included in this dinner is a cocktail and a bottle of wine. It comes with a video wherein he describes what you need to do to finish preparing each course. All food is pre-cooked so all that is required are re-heating and plating. I've watched the video and what I need to do is simple and uncomplicated.
Wow, what a treat! That sounds like a lot of fun. Do let us know if it's as delicious as it sounds and Happy Birthday to John!
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Hetty Lui McKinnon's book, Tenderheart, has a recipe for a no-churn Fennel and Black Pepper Ice Cream. It uses both fennel seeds and chopped fresh fennel which get blended with sweetened condensed milk, cream, ground black pepper and a little olive oil. It just gets frozen and scooped. I found my Blendtec did a good job on the fennel but I didn't care for the texture of the seed particles. I could have put it through a sieve but decided to just freeze it in a Creami container and give it a spin to take care of those seedy bits and I thought it worked well.
It's supposed to get a drizzle of olive oil but I forgot. The flavors make for an appealing, almost palate-cleansing effect.
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I reheated a couple of the sopes I made the other day in the CSO and they came out nice and crispy. Filled with black bean purée, pepper jack cheese, scrambled egg and TJ's Green Dragon hot sauce.
Pico de gallo and avocado on the side
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17 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:
That flat bread! Looks wonderful. After some searching i checked his website where there is a plethora of his recipes including the flat breads.
The breads are really good, take almost zero effort, require no oven and reheat nicely from the freezer. The yogurt gives them the kind of tang that usually takes a much longer to develop. I'm scooping up some hummus with one right now!
Compared with the online recipe, in the book he gives the option of using melted butter, ghee or olive oil, gives a 60-90 min rise time, has you place the rolled out dough on an oiled sheet pan and flip so both sides get coated and doesn’t put additional oil in the skillet.
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Yesterday, I made a batch of the Fluffy (and crisp) Flatbreads from The Cook You Want to Be by Andy Baraghani so I reheated one, topped it with a thick layer of the black bean purée from yesterday's sopes and some grated pepper jack cheese and put that back into the oven to get all melty. I planned to scramble an egg and make a folded breakfast sandwich but I couldn't resist frying the duck egg instead so I needed a knife and fork but didn't mind.
With avocado and pico de gallo.
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13 minutes ago, Nancy in Pátzcuaro said:
Just returned from a cardiac ablation in Guadalajara at a quite nice hospital. Nursing and support staff were excellent--the food less so. The best was the dinner on the night I was admitted before I had to fast for the surgery. 3 nice meatballs with lots of vegetables in a tasty broth. In Mexico they're called "albondigas," and they're my husband's favorite meal. Some sort of unidentifiable juice, the requisite jello, some fresh fruit and a cookie. The rest of the meals went downhill, and pretty rapidly, after that. The low point was 2 halved zucchinis filled with unseasoned ground meat and then topped with melted cheese. I took a couple of bites and couldn't eat the rest. Red rice (which I dislike) and jello (of course) and chopped apple, with horchata to drink. Not sure why white rice is so often served since it tends to stop you up. And the bed killed my back. I'm still recovering from that horrid mattress.
And then there was the interminable delay to check out. Our insurance evidently went through the bill with tweezers to pluck out the most minor expense. I was really glad to get home, though it was a 4-hour drive.
I'm glad you are home and up to posting and that you had good nursing care. Sorry about the food, the bed, the insurance issues and the long drive home. Sending healing thoughts!
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20 hours ago, Shel_B said:
New Olive Oil at Trader Joe's
I stopped by the local TJ's this morning and discovered this new olive oil that they're carrying:
Red Island Olive Oil, $7.99 for 500ml
https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/red-island-australian-extra-virgin-olive-oil-079467
It's my understanding that it's available for a short time only. The oil in the bottle I bought was less than a year old, and that caught my attention.
Thanks for the tip, I picked up a bottle. Mine had a harvest date of April-Jun 2023 so around 6 months older than the olive oil I have from Katz Farm and Frantoio Grove here in California. I must arrange a tasting 🙃
Also, TJ's has Mobay cheese once again @ $6.99/5 oz piece. That's the Wisconsin cheese with layers of goat and sheep cheese separated by a layer of ash and the name is a play on the French Morbier which is a cow's milk cheese but also features that ash streak.
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2 hours ago, adrianvm said:
If there's an incompatibility between my pan and the CF I'd like to know so I can return the pan and get a different one. Any thoughts on a test that involves cooking that would be enlightening?
I know you want to know the pan temp but it’s a lot easier and more relevant to a lot of cooking to measure the temp of the pan’s contents - water for low temp, oil to go higher. I assume you did that first but only read back to the IR thermometer part.
if you want to visualize that hot spot in the middle, a thin layer of granulated sugar will show it to you. Its melting point is 367°F-
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Black bean sopes from Cool Beans
I used the red corn masa harina from Masienda and they're filled with a black bean purée, feta cheese, arugula dressed with lime juice and Trader Joe's Green Dragon sauce.
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Flavour: Over 100 fabulously flavourful recipes with a Middle-Eastern twist (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)by Sabrina Ghayour, a March 2024 release is currently $1.99 on Amazon in the US and Canada.
I need another Middle Eastern cookbook like I need a another hole in my head but I've got some credits so I caved anyway.
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Dinner 2024
in Cooking
Posted
I'm thinking the calculator is fairly self-explanatory (do correct me if I'm wrong) and you'd like to know what to do with the results of the calculations. This Perfectly Melting Cheese Slice has pretty good instructions for that part.