haresfur
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Posts posted by haresfur
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Wanted comfort food and made meatloaf with sauerbraten gravy* and spaetzle.
* gravy is used loosely because I didn't have pan dripping from cooking the roast so used beef stock and because I way over thickened it.
The meatloaf recipe said to grate the onions for a moister result. I used a mini food processor attachment for my stick blender and they were right. Probably overblended. Oh and panko instead of bread crumbs, which is good because I never have bread crumbs around
The spaetzle were more successful than my previous attempts but I ended up with paste stuck to many utensils and countertops.
Turns out the reason I thought this sauerbraten and meatloaf would be a good combination. My partner pointed out that a restaurant we used to go to decades ago served it.
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9 minutes ago, rotuts said:
So his rant is really more of a troll.
If it was a chemistry lab, with someone who actually understands analytical chemistry, you would put in decimal places to show the required precision. The last decimal place would be uncertain. So 1.0 kg could be 1.1 kg or 9.9 kg and 1 kg is a wild-ass guess.
In this case, it is still easier to use weight, which negates his argument.
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3 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:
I totally agree. US cookbook editors/publishers seem to have a phobia when it comes to weights. Or they think all of us do. Metric weights in particular.
I purchased the UK edition of Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, the revised 20th anniversary edition that came out last year. It lists weights for most ingredients in both grams/ml and ounces which I thought was very smart so the US editors wouldn't need to muck things up. Oh, but they did! The Amazon preview for the US hardcover edition shows that they went through and REMOVED all the metric measures, leaving just the ounces and cups. From what I can tell, they left the Kindle version alone but what a bunch of boneheads.
I know there are people who love their measuring cups and don't want to deal with a scale. I'm the opposite but it's not that hard to satisfy both styles and show both measures.
I understand one format or the other might not be neatly rounded off but the recipes would still work fine.
In the meantime, I'll continue to order any cookbooks by UK authors from UK bookshops so I don't risk getting the dumbed down version!
That is crazy to take out the original measures. I'd go further and say the recipe writers should test the recipe using the volume measurements that they calculate rather than trusting some table of conversions. In particular, going to the US, I would want to be sure that the conversion is correct since a cup is not always a cup.
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46 minutes ago, JAZ said:
Some years back, Kenji Lopez-Alt wrote about measuring by mass v. volume, using onions as one specific example. While he didn't discuss onion size, he made some interesting points about using onions in recipes. This is part of what he said:
I'm currently working on an onion soup recipe. In my final recipe, I'm going to be calling for "4 large onions, finely diced (about 6 cups)"—a relatively imprecise measure. A quick search for onion soup recipes in the UK reveals this one from the BBC, which calls for "1kg onions," a far more precise measure. So precise, in fact, that unless you're really lucky, you're going to have to use some fraction of a whole onion in order to land right at one kilogram. What does this level of precision get you? I'd argue that it doesn't get you better food, and in fact gives users a false sense of precision, which, in reality, doesn't even exist." He goes on to point out that in some recipes, a difference in the amount of onions of 20% (by weight) doesn't actually make much difference in taste.
I'm not sure he's right, mind you, but it's an interesting view. (Scroll down about halfway for the onion discussion.)
https://www.seriouseats.com/why-mass-weight-is-not-better-than-volume-cooking-recipe
Why does he think that using weight rather than volume somehow means you have to be as precise as your scale can be? Go buy a 1 kg bag of onion and that is how close you have to be. Ok, I know you don't get 1 kg bags so go buy 2.2 pounds or as close as you can get in the store. Maybe throw in another if it is spring and the onions are old so you will have to censor out a fair bit of the outer layer. Still easier than packing diced onions into a measuring cup. Sure, it would be more precise to say the weight of diced onion rather than the weight of onion before dicing, but like he says, it doesn't really matter that much.
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12 hours ago, mgaretz said:
Having missed out on eating a sausage roll on my recent visit to London, I ordered some frozen sausage rolls and assorted bangers and chipolatas from Jolly Posh Foods. Made the sausage rolls. They were just OK, not bad but not great.
IMO if your sausage rolls end up just ok, you are doing well
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Early in the Australia & New Zealand forum fish and chips topic, barramundi was compared to eating a dishcloth. I have heard that wild barra is much better than farmed.
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Baked Chicken katsu curry and smashed cucumber salad. I made chili oil for the salad using Korean-style flakes (from China) so it was not very spicy but the flavour is decent. Salad was on a bed of lettuce that needed to be used up. The curry was from a previous meal and rescued from the freezer. Manageable but better not frozen and thawed. Served on brown rice. Sorry about the messy counter top.
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I do quinoa in my Sanyo rice cooker using the basic white rice setting. It turns out perfect
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Convection ovens are ubiquitous here so almost all pre-pack food comes with conventional and fan-forced temperatures listed. Also our ovens have a heating element at the fan, are you saying yours do not? So there is a difference between fan-forced which uses that element and the fan and a different setting for just the lower element and a third for lower element plus fan but not the convection element. Gets very confusing what works best for various things. Also my Bosch oven manual encourages not preheating for many things as energy saving, just start timing when it reaches temperature. I find that works pretty well, except for baking. For my brownie baking project, I found that I had to reduce the temperature about 15 degrees C but that could be due to other differences.
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I grew up eating it year round. I mean not eating a lot of it but we had it in the house and my memory is shaving off thin slices of cold butter to eat with it. I wasn't brought up Jewish, we just ate a lot of Jewish food. I mean why else would they sell matzo that isn't kosher for Passover? It's really just big square Carr's Table Water Biscuits.
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Pasta con Costco, originally created to use up those huge jars of stuff you buy there. I'm not a member anymore so unfortunately no 4 bean salad, but the name lives on.
Semi-dried tomatoes, semi-dried olives in oil, roasted red pepper and artichoke hearts. Served with unexpected food gift tomatoes, bocconcini, and basil.
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9 hours ago, liuzhou said:
Best long before Easter
Boxing day is the start of hot cross bun season
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As if pizza flavoured Shapes biscuits aren't a bad enough idea
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Decided to make another attempt at learning to sharpen with stones. I have a Spyderco Sharpmaker which is ok for some things. I realised I needed to start over when the 1000 grit stone I had been using to learn was incredibly dished but the knives weren't exactly sharp. I had shelved that for a while.
Anyone running a sharpening service where I live seems to be in the tool destroying business. Except maybe for the people sharpening sheep-shears, but that's a whole other ball game.
So I bought a 500 grit Shapton glass and a 1000 grit Shapton Rockstar and realised, in for a penny, in for a pound, I needed an Atoma diamond flattening plate. Then spent a few days watching videos, which of course don't agree with each other so you have to figure out who seems to make the most sense.
Haven't tackled the good knives yet but some of the cheap ones turned out much better than they were, although not what I would consider really good. One of the things I learned is that starting with a relatively coarse stone is a good idea. Much easier to figure out if you are screwing up the angle or haven't apexed yet. Feeling a burr is much more obvious to me. Once that is right, it doesn't take too much with the 1000 to get an ok edge. I feel like I'm a long way from wanting to attempt my carbon steel petty, though.
I can see how people get into sharpening as a hobby but frankly, I just want to be able to do a decent job slicing a tomato.
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52 minutes ago, BeeZee said:
Seems like the mushroom liquid that comes out during microwaving might be good for saving for soup?
Absolutely. On the show, the guest chef put it into the mushroom risotto he made.
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A family favourite, "turkey slop". Normally, I wouldn't post such an ordinary meal but I decided to give the technique of microwaving mushrooms before frying a shot. A relatively challenging test since I started by browning the turkey mince then adding the microwaved mushrooms when the mince was partly cooked. Had to cook off some moisture but the shrooms browned up surprisingly well. Would work really well doing the mushrooms alone. Some onions, garlic, a load of paprika, and chopped parsley then sour cream at the end. Served over pasta.
The main problem was that the Aldi turkey mince is shockingly bad.
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If I recall, Teeling's Irish whiskey has done whiskey aged in stout casks and their whiskey barrels are sent to a brewery to age stout. Kind of a closed-loop goodness.
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A mushroom tip from The Cookup With Adam Liaw, which is one of my favourite Australian cooking shows because there are lots of tidbits about technique, either from him or from his guests. It seems like they are genuinely learning from each other.
Before frying mushrooms in oil, he microwaves them for about 4 or 5 minutes. The idea is that the air pockets in mushrooms are what suck up the oil and by microwaving them first, the pockets collapse but the mushrooms don't break down because they are basically chitin. Spoon the mushrooms out of the stock that drained during microwaving and they brown right away without getting oily.
I'm going to give it a shot. Seems like it may have more or less the same effect as dry-frying the mushrooms before adding to a dish.
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How do I cut brownies?
I shelved my efforts to get my mom's recipe working where I live now and have made a few batches of the Washington Post's Ultimate Brownies. When I cut them, I end up with a knife full of glue and broken crust on top, and can't get decent squares. I tried increasing the flour a tiny bit and giggling with the temperature and time to no avail. Any hints?
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I used to go to Horsham, Victoria, quite a bit but confess I had never heard of a florrie. I'd try one, though.
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Do leeks caramelise? Making some cauliflower-leek soup and most of the recipes call for you to saute them, cauliflower, and the onion (if used), in the oil/butter for a few minutes then add the stock to simmer.
I'm wondering if they just assume no one wants to take the time to caramelise them properly, or if it's not worth the bother.
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I stand corrected. I'm sure I've been to a supposedly gluten free bakery selling spelt products, not that that means anything. Any gluten free substitute for flour that would work?
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Is there any reason I couldn't substitute spelt flour for all purpose in brownies? Any alteration to amount you would suggest? I'm baking them for a sale and it would be nice to expand the market to include gluten free.
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At first I thought these were for garnishing martinis - a bad idea.
Then I realised they were supposed to taste like gin & tonic and tasted one, confirming they are a very bad idea.
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Dinner 2024
in Cooking
Posted
Yes, I'd call that a schnitzel, or in the vernacular of my country, "a schnitty"