Finally bit the (small) bullet and got myself a proper mortar and pestle set. The real bullet isn't the financial cost, but the time and food cost of experimenting with different homemade seasonings until I get my recipes right. I'm a firm believer in the "eyeballing" theory of cooking, so I don't follow actual recipe books. And when I do something good enough I want to duplicate, I know it, because the combination is good enough that I remember how to duplicate it. I always maintain that lemon peel/zest and cilantro are two of the most underrated spices ever.
I wish I didn't know that decent fudge was this easy to make. Damn. GINGERBREAD FUDGE yield: 8X8-INCH SLAB OF FUDGE prep time: 5 MINUTES cook time: 2 MINUTES INGREDIENTS: ¾ cup sweetened condensed milk 12oz white chocolate, chopped (or chips) 2-3 tsp ginger, sifted ½-1 tsp cinnamon, sifted ½-1 tsp nutmeg, sifted DIRECTIONS: Pour the condensed milk and white chocolate chips into a microwave-safe bowl. Heat for 2-3 minutes, or until the white chocolate chips are almost completely melted. DO NOT OVERHEAT! Stir until completely blended, melted and smooth. Immediately add the spices and combine thoroughly. (Optional) Add a handful of sprinkles and fold in quickly. They will melt and make the mixture an awful muddy colour if stirred for too long. Transfer to an 8×8 inch aluminium foil-lined baking pan. Leave to set either in the refrigerator or at room temperature. If you live in a hot and humid climate, it’s preferable to allow to set in the refrigerator. Once set, cut into cubes. Store leftovers in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.
Are you the sort of healthy motherfucker that thrives on lean meat and spices while dropkicking carbs in their fat bloated face? Fuck yeah you are, you sexy beast you. Here's a recipe for the good shit. Vaguely Indian Chicken Curry ▪ 2tbsp garam masala ▪ 10 gloves garlic chopped ▪ 100ml vegetable oil ▪ 5 whole red chillies ▪ 150g onions, thinly sliced ▪ 20g ginger-garlic paste ▪ 2tbsp tomato paste ▪ 2tbsp lemon juice ▪ 500g chicken thighs ▪ 200g low-fat yoghurt ▪ 1 1/2 tbsp salt Method 1. Stir fry the garam masala and garlic in the oil. Add chillies and sliced onions and stir fry until light brown, then fry the ginger-garlic paste for 2-3min. 2. Add tomato paste, 100ml water, lemon juice and chicken, then simmer. Season to taste. Whisk in the yoghurt and simmer gently for 10min. Share with your astonishingly attractive partner before having vigorous fit people sex.
Holy shit... I just had to take my pants off. Anywho, I got put in-charge of cooking the turkey for my wife's family. I've never cooked a turkey before. Spoiler 14lbs- Started out by brining it with salt, sugar, whole peppercorns, bay leaves, and some orange juice. Pulled out, patted dry, then smothered with a mixture of softened butter, chopped rosemary, orange zest, garlic, salt/pepper/red pepper. Stuffed the cavity with orange slices, celery, and onion. The bottom pan has chicken stock & beer (Abita Amber), plus some more rosemary, onion, celery tops, and oranges. Threw it on the Big Green Egg for 5 hours at ~350 degrees. Used lump charcoal and chunks of soaked cherry wood. When finished, the inside was so moist and tender that my wife thought I had undercooked it. Awesome.
I feel like baking cookies this weekend - nothing complicated, nothing fancy, just a batch of cookies to appease my sweet tooth. What kind should I make? What's the ultimate homemade cookie?
Droppings These can only loosely be called cookies. But, they kick all kinds of ass and are really easy to make. Ingredients 1 package butterscotch morsels (11 oz) ¾ cup peanut butter 4 cup Corn Flakes Instructions Combine butterscotch morsels and peanut butter in a small sauce pan and melt over low heat, stirring frequently. Once melted, pour over corn flakes in a large bowl. Stir gently to combine. Drop onto wax paper and allow to cool completely. There's a version that adds 1 cup of peanuts, but I prefer them without. And, you can melt the morsels and peanut butter in the microwave, too, if you know how to do that. It takes longer to buy the ingredients than it does to make them. If you use the fridge to speed up the cooling, they are also delicious cold. The lady that made these for me when I was a kid used to just call them butterscotch cookies, but I've also heard them called them different things. But, like I said, they're not really a cookie. So, I just call them Koala Droppings, because it's funny.
I am making all of these for a holiday get together this weekend, chosen for their relative simplicity: santa shortbread bites http://www.bakedperfection.com/2013/11/ ... bites.html gingerbread cookies http://www.culinaryconcoctionsbypeabody ... d-cookies/ eggnog cookies http://allrecipes.com/recipe/eggnog-thu ... etail.aspx choc chip snowball cookies http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2014/11/ch ... l-cookies/ peppermint squares http://ibakeforattention.blogspot.com/2 ... uares.html cathedral windows http://www.christmas-cookies.com/recipe ... ndows.html The only one I've actually ever made is the eggnog cookies, which are tasty. The cathedral windows look to be the easiest. I've made and liked the snowball cookies that have a hershey kiss inside. It is really good, but best eaten when the kiss is still slightly melty. Since I can't arrange for that to happen with guests, I decided to do one that has mini chips inside. I'm not a big fan of peppermint sweets, but I know others are and I know the person who does the blog that the peppermint squares are featured in.
Some Thanksgiving food... A stupid simple egg bake Spoiler My family members range from aggressive carnivores to next-to-vegetarians, and this not only fed a bunch of people but satisfied them all. Eggs (18 in this one), hash browns, chopped broccoli onions and tomatoes, Italian sausage, and shredded cheese. Baked at 350 until a knife poked into it came out clean. I made one end super meaty, and the other end was meatless, so everyone got what they wanted. Was super easy to do. Turkeys Spoiler My dad's famous "grilled" turkey. It is fantastic. He coats the thawed bird in mayonnaise and dashes on salt and pepper. Puts it in the roasting pan with a couple inches of chicken bouillon broth with the neck, etc. Then it goes onto the grill prepared with a water dish at the base of the kettle surrounded by just enough coals, so the bird gets low indirect heat. Cooks for about 10-15 minutes per pound, and works best with a small to medium sized turkey too (the big birds just take a long time and dry out more easily). My dad likes using chips of hickory wood for smoke flavor, of course that is up to you. You can see we were doing this in cold temps so it took a little longer that day but still works well. We did another turkey too, which the kids loved. Also, I'm pretty sure pretzels covered in almond bark is just crack cocaine disguised as a simple snack. I did lots of testing on this theory. Spoiler
Have you ever had white trash? There are many variations to it, but usually pretzels, nuts, some sort of cereal like cheerios or chex, and m&ms, covered in either the almond bark or white chocolate. You stir it all together in a bowl and then when it hardens you break it up into chunks. I'm very annoyed right now. I've been to two different grocery stores looking for the red and green marshmallows. I was hoping to avoid Walmart where those things are like one of the food groups, but looks like I'm gonna have to bite the bullet.
The only colored marshmallows I could find were pink/yellow/green, but that was fine, I think they were even cooler looking that way. I was right, the cathedral windows were the easiest to make. Really easy, they will have to go in my rotation. all of them were tasty, with only a couple of execution problems.
No, haven't yet, but that sounds good. The almond bark pretzels, as well as peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches dipped in almond bark, are household standards for my family. My girlfriend and I have been trying a few different recipes with ground venison recently. Did a nice meat sauce with crushed tomatoes and stuff over spaghetti squash last night, chili the weekend before that, and meatballs the weekend prior. Pretty standard stuff, but a cheesy, saucy sliced meatball sandwich is phenomenal leftovers- oh lord.
I opted for gingerbread cookies, which then evolved into gingersnaps after the addition of crystallized ginger. These are a crunchy thin cookie and if you add a ton of crystallized ginger (as I do), they have a really good bite to them. Gingersnap Ingredients 1 cup butter, softened 1 cup granulated sugar 2 eggs 1 1/4 cup fancy molasses 3/4 cup crystallized ginger, minced 5-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 tsp ground ginger 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 1 tsp ground cloves 1 tsp cinnamon coarse sugar for topping In large bowl, beat butter with sugar until fluffy; beat in eggs, fancy molasses and crystallized ginger. Whisk together flour, ginger, baking soda, salt, cloves and cinnamon; stir into molasses mixture in 2 additions, mixing well and blending with hands if necessary. Divide dough into thirds; shape into squares. Wrap each in plastic wrap; refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours. Roll chilled dough to 1/4" thickness between waxed paper, then dust with flour and cut into rounds. Lay on parchment-lined baking sheet and top with a sprinkle of coarse sugar. Place baking sheet with cookies into the freezer for 10 minutes. Bake in a preheated 325F oven for 12-14 minutes, remove from sheet to a cooling rack immediately.
Some people recognize genius and I've had multiple (okay fine, one) requests for the actual broccoli salad recipe. Broccoli Red Onion Mozzarella Cheese Crumbled bacon 1/2 cup mayo 1/4 cup sugar 1 tbsp vinegar Mix together. I like to make it the night before and let it sit overnight as the moisture softens the broccoli and helps absorb the flavor. It will also be more liquid-y as it sits, so don't overdo if you feel like it isn't wet enough. Now, when I was given the recipe, they didn't give me the breakdown of the first 4 items. So I usually consider a pound of broccoli to be one serving, so I'd double the mayonnaise, etc. if I had two pounds. The other three items I eyeball. Well, not true. I always use a pound of bacon (minus whatever my son steals) since you can't have too much bacon. Some of my finest work:
So I got a brand new pressure cooker for Christmas. This one to be specific. Never used one before, figured I'd throw it out here and see if anyone had any tips or tricks to start out with.
Don't open it till it's done clacking. Great starter though is ring bologna, potatoes, green beans, and bacon. Season to taste. Doesn't take too long but it's tasty.
This isn't my recipe, but we served this in out restaurant as a special and people couldn't get enough of it. We tweaked a few things here and there, but this is what we started with. We used Mahi Mahi for the fish. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/ ... cos-352976 Edit - We paired this with a fresh salsa verde.
I'll try. While sky carp don't come to mind first as fine game for the table they can still be done really well. This recipe courtesy of Ihprop here (thanks again because this is the only way I'll do geese now), and it has probably been shared here already but since Rush just posted that... Spoiler Take out the breasts. Rinse and lightly score them, and put them in a bag with olive oil, sea salt, and fresh rosemary (chopped). Mix it around and make sure the breasts are covered in it, and let them sit for a few hours. Then fire up the grill and put them on high heat 'til they are just medium rare- that is critical because the line between "wow this is good" and "am I eating seasoned boot leather?" is thin. But the point is, this recipe is dead simple and has converted fowl haters. Fresh tasty meat right off the grill with a cold beer. No better way to end these early fall days. Or any day, for that matter.
Spoiler Okay, maybe the Rosemary will help. My dad and I went goose hunting in Texas for 10 straight years. We tried a bunch of different recipes, and could only make the Specks and Snows tolerable. The Canadas always tasted way to gamey. Something with cloves an garlic was about the best we could do, but I'm not sure we ever tried Rosemary. So, I guess I'll give it another go, since Canada is the only goose I can kill around here. (Supposedly we have some Snows and Specks here, but I've never seen them.)