Recipe challenge 2010

[Chris Amirault]

First, a combination of mutsu and granny smith; the second time, just granny smith. I think their tang works better than the less tart (but otherwise excellent) mutsus.

[Anna N]

Anna, be sure to try it again with the Aleppo pepper, which makes a huge difference. Using high quality lamb shoulder is the other key: the dish really depends on the quality of lamb for everything. When I made this last for a friend from the Middle East, using Eco-Friendly lamb shoulder, he said it was the best lamb dish he'd had in the states: "It tastes like home."

I am hoping that Kerry and I will have some Aleppo pepper later this week. The Granny Smith's are not a problem but amazingly the Mutsu's were. The lamb shoulder is another huge problem as, again, it is not easily found. We grow lambs in Ontario but apparently we have managed to breed them without shoulders (or necks).

[Snadra]

. . .

Here’s my list:

Lamb with Apple from Paula Wolfert’s The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean

. . .

I made this a few days ago but didn't have time to post. The techniques in this recipe are unusual. The lamb is first "sweated" in a covered pan, then browned before the onions are added.

This recipe which accompanied an article on Georgian cuisine by Darra Goldstein in Gourmet uses the same technique. I'd never seen it before, but it works really well and I make the pork dish 3 or 4 times a year. It seems a lot less troublesome and messy than browning in small batches and you still get a nice fond.

2. This lamb dish from Neil Perry - sounds perfect for summer with a cucumber salad and cold beer.

I made this dish on Sunday. Unfortunately no pictures, as while I was chopping onions for a bolognese sauce at the same time (I've also been inspired to clean out my freezer thanks to another thread!) my attention wandered and I removed a piece of my thumb. Ouch. On the plus side, by the time we managed to stop the bleeding the lamb was nearly done! A highly recommended dish for one-handed cooking.

This was very good, although I don't think I had the best quality lamb (it was in the freezer too). The chile dressing (for which I forgot to make the salted chiles, so substituted Vietnamese ground pickled chiles instead) gave a nice lift to the richness and slight sweetness of the lamb.

To finish off the leftovers, I'm going to make some steamed buns like these ones from Momofuku and fill them with the shredded lamb and cucumber tossed with the chile dressing.

And now I have some masterstock in my freezer ready for my next experiment!

[Anna N]

. . . Here’s my list:

. . .

Chicken Fricasse with Artichokes and Mushrooms from Molly Steven’s All About Braising

TBA from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home

I made the Chicken Fricasse a few days ago but forgot to post about. The canned artichoke bottoms were a challenge to find in local stores but Kerry Beal and I went out on a food safari last week and I found them in the most expensive food store in Toronto - Pusateri's. At $4.99 for a small can I doubt I will make the dish often. However it was a lovely dish and not difficult to execute. As always I reduced my oven heat as Molly's temperatures seem too high for my oven. Also, if I make it again I will use all chicken thighs as they are so much juicier than breasts no matter how they are cooked. No photo as this dish is not the least bit photogenic.

Not sure yet which recipe I will make from Ad Hoc to meet my promise to myself as there as so very many I want to try! I have already made the hamburgers and they were a revelation. Tonight I am doing the Tri Tip roast but I need to sit down and see if there is a recipe that I really, really want to try but that offers some challenges in terms of either technique or sourcing of ingredients.

[Kerry Beal]

I've got to get to work on my other 4 - looking for nice young ginger - I think this is the season.

[Lapin d'Argent]

OK...turns out #5 is going to be...Preserved Lemons!

I followed the instructions from Canal House Cooking, which basically says to slit the lemons, pack them with Kosher salt, stuff them into a sterilized container, squeeze in some more lemon juice, and refrigerate. Why the heck did I wait so long?

I did wait until I found nice organic lemons at Whole Foods, so I didn't have to worry about pesticides on the rind. This was definitely a happy thing to do on one of the coldest days we've had so far this winter. And the temperature in our mud room means this big container won't have to take up space in our fridge for a while.

If you've been thinking about making some, even a small batch: do it!

- L.

[Prawncrackers]

1.Curry

2.Curry

3.Curry

4.Curry

5.Curry!

......

This is the year, mark my words.

Okay I've been very diligent these past couple of weeks and have been trying out a few curry recipes. Some have been disastrous, a mutton biryani turned out just so bad it was almost inedible - burnt tough meat, salty rice and too much screwpine water! But a couple have just been wonderful. My first eureka moment was an Ox Cheek Vindaloo using Camelia Panjabi's recipe in "50 Great Curries of India" and parathas:

It was so good I had to call my mate over to try it and confirm, he was knocked out by it too.

The second success was a spiced rack of lamb with saffron cashew gravy and pilau rice inspired by local restarant Lasan's recipe here. The sauce was simply sublime:

Very much looking forward to cooking more curries this year.

[Bonnie Deahl]

OK, I am also in...thanks Anna for a fun way to share with others. I will put my list together over the weekend, but I must say that most of them will be indian recipes since I am learning indian cuisines now. I made a wonderful hyderabadi chicken biryani last week and can't wait to try another dish..

stay tuned for Bonnie's list over the weekend....

'

[Anna N]

I am so glad to see this topic is still alive!

Thanks to Kerry Beal who managed to source some Lady Apples I re-did the Lamb with Apples. We had also tracked down some Aleppo pepper in Toronto. I still had no luck finding actual shoulder of lamb but did find some lamb shoulder chops that worked fine. The Lady Apples were like little rocks and raw they did not impress me at all in terms of taste. They also took much longer than 20 minutes to cook down to anything like edible! However the finished dish was interesting with just a bite from the Aleppo pepper. I love this recipe just because its technique is so counter-intuitive with its steam/fry method of cooking the meat. Last on my list, the Keller recipe will be a while before it shows up here. The person I want to impress with it will be on a restricted diet for a while so I will wait until he too can sample it. Meanwhile I intend to compile a new list of 5 recipes that I have to try. I think the Filipino dish, chicken adobo will be high on the new list.

[Bonnie Deahl]

I consider myself to gravitate more to savory cooking and less to pastries & baking..so with that in mind I am going to put these on my first list:

1. Chocolate profiteroles

2. Roti

3. Spring risotto

4. Ina's easy sticky buns

5. Suvir's panchkuti daal

If I can make these 5, it will start a lot of fun things in the kitchen. I love profiteroles and have fond memories of them when i loved in London; roti is just one of those many indian breads you must have so need to start somewhere; spring risotto (well I have always wanted to make one but never quite got there); Sticky buns, (say no more..I'll just go to the gym more and enjoy these); and daal ( i want to try all daal recipes, so will start here with a more complicated one. This is on an indian thread here on eG on dals.

Thats it for now! Gotta make a shopping list. bonnie

[kayb]

I did at least make the lamb shanks with herbes de Provence. (photo posted on the dinner thread a week or so back) They were...OK. I don't think I care much for herbes de provence; I think the shanks would have been much, much better in a bolognese.

And I made Sally Lunn bread, which, while not Shirley Corriher's brioche, is quite similar. Photo on the breakfast threat a while back.

Tonight is chicken markhani.

[Lapin d'Argent]

So today I finally got around to trying the Preserved Lemons which became number 5 on my list by default when I started a batch a while back. I put some chopped in a finished basic risotto with mushrooms & parm, and also in the broccoli served as a side.

Yum, yum and more yum!

Nothing could be easier or tastier. I doubt there's much you couldn't put these into that wouldn't be improved as a result. Pretty much think of anything that would perk up with the flavor of a little lemon, olive, salt, or pickle, and throw in a bit of preserved lemon.

I just took a quarter lemon, scraped off the innards, rinsed off the excess brine, and chopped or minced it up.

We're going on vacation to Grenada in a couple weeks, and some of this stuff is definitely going in a vacuum sealed bag as part of our cooking survival kit.

In terms of making your own condiments, this and the homemade vanilla extract have been absolute 5-star winners, and I will always have a batch in the fridge from now on.

Thank you Canal House Cooking for making it seem so easy!

[Lapin d'Argent]

1.Curry

2.Curry

3.Curry

4.Curry

5.Curry!

......

This is the year, mark my words.

Okay I've been very diligent these past couple of weeks and have been trying out a few curry recipes. Some have been disastrous, a mutton biryani turned out just so bad it was almost inedible - burnt tough meat, salty rice and too much screwpine water! But a couple have just been wonderful. My first eureka moment was an Ox Cheek Vindaloo using Camelia Panjabi's recipe in "50 Great Curries of India" and parathas:

It was so good I had to call my mate over to try it and confirm, he was knocked out by it too.

The second success was a spiced rack of lamb with saffron cashew gravy and pilau rice inspired by local restarant Lasan's recipe here. The sauce was simply sublime:

Very much looking forward to cooking more curries this year.

Prawncrackers -- those look amazing! Congratulations!

[nakji]

That picture of the curries sent me scrambling for our eGCI course on North Indian breads - which includes a method for paratha. I'd never tried one before last year, and now I'm hooked - especially after three weeks in Malaysia eating roti canai every day for breakfast.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Well I am very happy to be able to bump this thread up again... I think it's a great idea and so I hope more people will notice and get involved even though we're almost halfway through the year (what?!!? yipes, how did that happen?!).

I have ticked off the first dish from my list - ravioli/stuffed pasta.

I ended up doing tortellini with a ricotta and parsley filling, served in a cream/butter sauce. All from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking.

I was happy with the end result but not blown away. I think I like more assertive fillings. The pasta was really enjoyable to work with, nice and silky, but I was surprised at the final texture - even after boiling for over 7 minutes the pasta was quite toothy. I thought that homemade pasta cooked really quickly, and often became too soft if one wasn't careful, but here I couldn't get it quite as soft as I liked, even with longer cooking times. Anyone know what's going on there? The pasta also wrinkled quite a bit when boiling, which I don't remember happening in the past. Perhaps I have overkneaded the dough, or got the proportions a bit wrong?

I started out with a few nicely shaped tortellini, but quickly declined

The different shapes of pasta coming out of the machine meant that some were bigger, some were a bit lopsided, some were bulgey or bloated, haha. But all pretty in their own homemade way.

I think with someone else around to help and chat to it would be more enjoyable.

I served them with some salad and braised carrots (also from the book) which were simply intensely carrot-y carrots, cooked for a long time with water and a bit of butter, till all the flavour concentrates. A nice, rustic side.

Edited May 14, 2010 by stuartlikesstrudel (log)

[Darienne]

It's almost mid-May and I find it hard to believe that I never came across this wonderful topic before. Some slip-up on my part.

To limit my list to five things...impossible, but here are five off the top of my head:

1. Spun sugar

2. a proper braided Challah - do it till I get it right

3. pumpernickel. dark, heavy, round, cornmeal on the bottom, like my childhood memories of Montreal

4. Black Rum cake. I have the fruit all ready and all the ingredients. I just have to DO it.

5. Ice cream sandwiches will redeem me after last summer's abysmal failures. DL's chocolate cookies and Alton Brown's Serious Vanilla Ice Cream. I want the sandwiches to look pretty so that folks go "oooh".

ps. Yesterday I fulfilled two 'to do's', actually three: made pulled pork and made my first ever bread without a machine and made sticky buns from it. It felt very good.

Edited May 15, 2010 by Darienne (log)

[Lapin d'Argent]

Good heavens...thanks for the reminder! Time does fly! I still have all these in front of me:

1. Bacon.

2. Duck confit.

3. Souffle.

4. Ravioli.

Stuart, I only hope my ravioli comes out half as nice as yours. Looks like it's time to crack open Marcella...

[nakji]

I served them with some salad and braised carrots (also from the book) which were simply intensely carrot-y carrots, cooked for a long time with water and a bit of butter, till all the flavour concentrates. A nice, rustic side.

I've made those carrots! They're amazing, aren't they? Try her recipe for cabbage as well - I'm almost sure you've never had cabbage as good as that before.

I wanted to buy "Beyond the Great Wall" the other day, and my husband reminded me that I hadn't made much from any of my other books I'd recently acquired during my travels, so it seems like I should make a show of using what I've got.

There are some spicy cauliflower pickles from Everyday Harumi, I've been eying, so I brought home a head of cauliflower yesterday to see how that goes.

And I'm determined to produce a decent hong shao ruo before I return home to Canada for the summer. I have not had success with the recipe I have in Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, but everything else I've cooked has come out great, so I suspect user error. I'm going to try again.

[Anna N]

TBA from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home

So I decided to try the pepperonata rustica. First, of course, one has to make a soffrito which takes about 5 hours! Keller asks you to cook some Spanish onion in olive oil over very low heat for 2 -2 1/2 hours and suggests a flame-tamer to keep the mixture at a very slow simmer. Since I cook on induction hobs a flame-tamer is not an option and I was unable to get the slow simmer on any setting so I resorted to raising and lowering the heat. This was not a huge issue since you are supposed to be watching this carefully to ensure that no caramelized onions stick to the side of the pan; you must stir them in frequently. While the onions were cooking I decided to roast the peppers. Keller can become a bit of a fuss pot – he wants you to roast the red peppers for about 5 minutes longer than the yellow peppers! But if you are going to go the Keller route then you need to listen to the Master when he whispers, "Patience, Grasshopper".

After 3 hours the onions were still pale and wan so I upped the heat and babysat them until they reached a shade just one up from golden raisins, dumped in the tomato puree and went back to bed.

In the afternoon I finished making the soffrito and peeled the peppers. On Saturday I pulled it all together and finished it with another 30 minutes of cooking.

Was it all worth it? In a word - NO. It was tasty. It was silky. It showed well. But there was nothing about the dish that warranted the amount of labour it entailed. No regrets though. I had to give it a try and I did. I won’t do it again.

[nakji]

There are some spicy cauliflower pickles from Everyday Harumi, I've been eying, so I brought home a head of cauliflower yesterday to see how that goes.

I tried the cauliflower pickles, and they rocked.

Well, they look nice. What did you serve them with?

[Anna N]

There are some spicy cauliflower pickles from Everyday Harumi, I've been eying, so I brought home a head of cauliflower yesterday to see how that goes.

I tried the cauliflower pickles, and they rocked.

....

Well, they look nice. What did you serve them with?

Slow-roasted salmon - not necessarily the best choice - just what I had. The salmon was a little too close in texture to the peppers - silky and smooth - yum.

[cathyeats]

Here's what's on my list for this summer:

1. Homemade smoked salmon

2. Grilled pizza

3. Grilled whole trout

4. A healthy version of lemon meringue pie

And #5, I crossed off my list this weekend. I wanted to make a vegetarian vindaloo. I had a lot of trepidation about this, but it came out so great. The only bad thing is that it looked sort of ugly. So when I put it on my blog, I had to use a photo that didn't show much of the dish

Here is the recipe, in case anyone wants to try it. Of course, you could use chicken instead of seitan.

Seitan Vindaloo

1 small onion

3 fresh hot peppers (preferably serrano), halved and seeded

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and cut into chunks

4 cloves garlic

1/4 c. vinegar (cider or white wine)

2 dried hot red chiles, soaked in water for 15 minutes (omit if you don't like spicy food)

1 t. turmeric

1 t. ground cumin

1 t. ground coriander

1/4 t. freshly ground black pepper

1/4 t. cayenne pepper

1 T. canola oil

1 t. black mustard seeds

1-inch piece cinnamon stick

5 cardamom pods

1 large or 2 medium carrots, chopped (about 2/3 c.)

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 8-oz. package seitan, drained and cut into bite-size pieces

1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained

1/2 c. water

1 t. lemon juice

1 t. sugar

1/2 t. salt

To make the vindaloo paste, put the first 11 ingredients (through the cayenne pepper) in a food processor and process until smooth. Heat the oil in a large skillet or dutch oven. Add the mustard seeds, cinnamon and cardamom pods and cook for 1 minute or until the mustard seeds pop. Add carrots, green peppers and seitan, and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add your vindaloo paste and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, 1/2 c. water. lemon juice, sugar and salt. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until carrots are tender. (Add another 1/4 c. water if the mixture gets too dry.)

[ChickenStu]

I recently became unemployed (yesterday) by my choice. I am excited to spend some time cooking and trying new things for a bit, especially elevating cheap ingredients to great food...one reason I got into cooking in the first place. No clue what I will do yet, but I will figure something out. Good luck everyone.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Sounds like a great time coming up for you, Stu!

Don't know if you've looked into legumes and beans much, but when i became vegetarian a few years ago I found a whole world of experimentation opening up and there's a LOT there, looking at different cuisines and types of preparation. Nice and cheap when you use dried beans, they're very healthy and I think a lot of people haven't really had good beans in the past, so it can be a bit of a revelation!

[robirdstx]

Okay, I'm in. I need to expand on my vegetable dishes. I don't know which 5 recipes yet but they will be using vegetables I have not yet tasted, such as kale, kohlrabi, fennel (I love fennel seeds), Brussels sprouts and maybe collards or other greens.

The year is almost over and I still have not expanded the vegetables I have not yet tasted. So, today I purchased what turned out to be an over 3 lb bunch of locally grown kale for 80 cents and will be sauteing some of it with onions and garlic to go with our pork tenderloin for dinner tonight.

Edited November 14, 2010 by robirdstx (log)