What can you expect in the Food Thread on PF?

[Jimmy Snyder]

Roast leg of lamb, from mix.

1 piece of marinaded leg of lamb
brussels sprouts
broccoli
eggplant

Sear the lamb while heating the oven to 350.
Put the lamb in the oven with the potatoes left over from steak dinner a few nights ago.
Cut up the veggies.
When the center is 140F, take it out and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Start boiling the broccoli and brussels sprouts in a medley and fry the eggplant.

Serve with mint jelly and a cheap Argentine Malbec (what was I thinking?)

 

[turbo]

Today was a day on the back deck with my father visiting. We had my hot/spicy marinated shrimp fresh off the grill, steamed clams with melted butter-and-vinegar dip, then pan-seared sea scallops in butter. We stretched all this out over 3+ hours with a pound of shrimp, 5 pounds of steamers, and a pound of scallops. Dessert was a Friendly's Thin Mint chocolate ice-cream cake.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Japanese style Curry Rice. Warning: This recipe has absolutely nothing to do with curried rice.

Some medium grain white rice, the sticky kind.
Some stew meat
Some curry paste
Some potatoes
Some carrots
Some mushrooms
Some onions

Feeds: Some people.

I know brown rice is better for you, but trust me, it ruins this dish. You could use Basmati rice, but then it wouldn't be Japanese. We have a rice cooker. If you don't, just use 1 part water, 1 part rice and bring to a boil. When the water boils away, take it off the heat, put a lid on it and let it steam for 10 minutes.
Sear the meat cubes. If you don't want to sear them yourself, you can buy them ready made from Sears for pennies.
The 'curry paste' I'm using is called "Golden Curry" hot. Other brands are "House", and "Vermont".
Boil the stew meat, carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms. I don't put onions in myself, but I think most people do. If you do, I think it would be better to add them later or else they might melt. If you want them to melt, then go for it. Add the curry paste to make a thick sauce.
Lay a bed of rice on a dish and ladle the curry on it.

 

[Evo]

Japanese style Curry Rice. Warning: This recipe has absolutely nothing to do with curried rice.

Some medium grain white rice, the sticky kind.
Some stew meat
Some curry paste
Some potatoes
Some carrots
Some mushrooms
Some onions

Feeds: Some people.

I know brown rice is better for you, but trust me, it ruins this dish. You could use Basmati rice, but then it wouldn't be Japanese. We have a rice cooker. If you don't, just use 1 part water, 1 part rice and bring to a boil. When the water boils away, take it off the heat, put a lid on it and let it steam for 10 minutes.
Sear the meat cubes. If you don't want to sear them yourself, you can buy them ready made from Sears for pennies.
The 'curry paste' I'm using is called "Golden Curry" hot. Other brands are "House", and "Vermont".
Boil the stew meat, carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms. I don't put onions in myself, but I think most people do. If you do, I think it would be better to add them later or else they might melt. If you want them to melt, then go for it.

That sounds good. I like my onions melted.

I have curry powder, I guess the paste is a lot different?

 

[Evo]

I'm making corned beef and cabbage tonight. I had Evo Child buy an extra brisket when they were half price.

Pot of water, dump in corned brisket, add spice packet, cover, bring to boil, reduce to simmer. This is a small one, so 2 hours should do it. I gots cabbage to add, (I'm starting to talk like a lol cat) and maybe a couple of potatoes. I have horseradish sauce. This one has so much fat, I'll be lucky to have enough left for breakfast.

 

[ingenvector]

I was lucky in that I cam from a family with a food intensive background. My father is a master sausage maker master butcher with his trade master degrees in the fields from Germany, so I had a delicious upbringing working in his store surrounded by wonderful meat. Unfortunately, it also has made me a snob and I can't stand to consume meat that isn't of the same quality standard - even other butcher shops sometimes can't match my expectations and too much of the food industry is often caught in some pseudo-scientific "healthisms" and various green-movement nonsense. Thus, I am often consigned to the fringes near, but not quite to, the culinary evil that is vegetarianism.

Regardless, it should be excusable if I'm somewhat biased to German food, however, having lived in around the world, my list won't be entirely dominated by German food. Just mostly. I love German food, but I think it doesn't have the recognition it deserves.

First, Schinkenspeck: beautiful. It is a dry-cured pork that, generally, has been smoked (meaning it is raw) having been seasoned with juniper berries. Don't believe the propaganda, if it lean with little fat, it is tough tasteless garbage. Schinkenspeck needs fat for flavour, and my father is still resentful having to make it so lean for the North American market as he thinks it is essentially ruined. Thus, for many of you, finding nice good quality schinkenspeck, should you try to find it, will be extremely difficult. Also, one can try raw smoked beef, its flavour is quite potent and sometimes overwhelming. Still, the best foods are those that are so flavourful as to be painful to eat.

Rouladen: I will simply describe how to make it. Thinly sliced outside round of beef, mix mustard (Löwensenf is a good standard mustard) with paprika and some cayenne pepper to give heat, and spread the mixture on one side of the meat slice. Next, after seasoning with salt and pepper, lay down some bacon on top and lay on the bacon sliced sour gurkin, but not the sweet crap, it must be sour (Hengstengberg is a good example, or Lisc), and red onion. Wrap, pierce with something to hold to together like a toothpick, brown in a pot, remove and add some water to begin a gravy base, return and finish cooking. Finally, complete the gravy and eat with some red cabbage or mashed potatoes.

Pork hoc: boil in water or beer, or saurkraut too, remove when done and enjoy. This is amongst my favourite meals. The meat is flavourful and succulent.

Nuernberger bratwurst: don't ask me about it, go find and eat some!

Ox tail: The key to good ox tail is simplicity. Boil it in water, and add salt, but don't do anything else and forget about side-dishes. This is a delight to eat by itself without distractions. The gooey melting fat and tender soft beef is something perhaps even hedonismbot would find overly excessive.

Roast Striploin: while delicious as a steak, frankly, if one was to have a roast, then one can really do no better than a striploin roast. It has all the benefits of the steak being of suitable tenderness and relatively high fat content in marble. But please, don't cut the fat of before roasting, do it after if you must.

Hainanese chicken rice: I grew up eating this, so its a personal favourite of mine. Basically, boil a chicken. Then cook some rice using the broth from the boiled chicken. Add sesame seed oil over the chicken, add to rice. Eat with chili and soy sauce.

The next two selections are somewhat harder to find: sri lankan soft-shelled crab and fish curry head. This is more of Indian and Chinese fusion, so I'm less familiar with it, but if you are ever in Singapore, you should try these two especially.

When I was in Colombia, I had some great soups in the Andean regions. Of particular note is changua, which I hated and think is an abomination. It's complete and wonderful opposite is ajiaco con pollo from Bogota (I think it's best with the chicken). It is a soup with chicken, cut corn on the cob, with little potatoes which break apart when cooked and thicken the soup, and a herb called guasca. It may be hard to replicate it closely unless one finds the appropriate potatoes, and guasca. It is usually served with cream and capers, though I myself prefer it plain and hate capers.

Sashimi: A friend of my father is a sushi chef, and used to spend several weeks in the summer time with him. If you can, find a Pacific coho salmon for sashimi, this is typically the best fish one can find for this purpose.

A desert: crepes with chocolate ice-cream filling (not the tub crap), chocolate sauce drizzling, powdered sugar with cinnamon, flambe in grand-marnier. Good traditional rice pudding with cinnamon-sugar is also great. As well, frozen-cheese cake is great, not every cheese cake has to be New York style.

Drink: Coca-Cola. It is the best drink, as objectively proven by Science! (Yes, I'm being facetious, but I do think it is a great drink and pairs excellently with everything I listed).

To try: many have yet to learn of white asparagus. Go now! Also, french fries, when made properly, can be amazing. It should be crisp, thin, but light and somewhat airy, and I think it goes better with mayonnaise than ketchup, but this is probably me exposing some of my culinary imperialism to the world (colonialism is good! It was what allowed me to eat Asian food with a fork!). Try roast beef that's pink inside, not everything needs to be cooked until flavourless. And try collecting some nice wild berries to eat if you have the opportunity. Bring a shotgun though, bears usually are not friendly. Those of you who tramp around in the wild without a gun are nuts (or live in an area that wiped out the predator population).

Finally, go out to your local friendly and professionally educated sausage fabricator and buy his delicious sausages. Don't buy that crap with nitrates that make everything taste oily, milk powder which makes the sausage brown faster but ruins its flavour, and is half filled with bread crumbs and water pumped for cost savings and added weight. Insist on real sausage! Make sure your local sausage maker has his Meisterpruefung before buying!

Also, of considerable importance: good company and good conversation. Eating is not merely some base hedonism, it is a cultural expression that is best shared with stimulating intellectual arguments. Great food and great conversation makes for a much better experience overall.

 

[Borek]

just use 1 part water, 1 part rice and bring to a boil. When the water boils away, take it off the heat, put a lid on it and let it steam for 10 minutes.

Strange, I was taught by my Mom to use slightly over 2 volumes of water per volume of rice (sometimes more - depends on the rice variety). If there is less water rice is still hard inside.

 

[turbo]

Strange, I was taught by my Mom to use slightly over 2 volumes of water per volume of rice (sometimes more - depends on the rice variety). If there is less water rice is still hard inside.

I use 1-3/4 of water (per volume) of rice and let the water and rice steam and settle while finishing.

 

[Evo]

I was lucky in that I cam from a family with a food intensive background. My father is a master sausage maker master butcher with his trade master degrees in the fields from Germany, so I had a delicious upbringing working in his store surrounded by wonderful meat. Unfortunately, it also has made me a snob and I can't stand to consume meat that isn't of the same quality standard

Welcome fellow food snob.

Don't believe the propaganda, if it lean with little fat, it is tough tasteless garbage. Schinkenspeck needs fat for flavour, and my father is still resentful having to make it so lean for the North American market as he thinks it is essentially ruined.

I had this discussion yesterday, I'm pro-fat for flavor. (be careful there are lean meat lovers here, but they are nice people).

 

[ingenvector]

Ha ha! No problem, I won't be too polemical, though I do tend to have crazy radical ideas when it comes to food. Still, noblesse obliges, and I see it as my sacred responsibility to guide the kinder to see that there is only one correct way.

Alright, I'll be nice...

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Strange, I was taught by my Mom to use slightly over 2 volumes of water per volume of rice (sometimes more - depends on the rice variety). If there is less water rice is still hard inside.

I forgot to mention that you need to rinse the rice first. Japanese rice is shipped with talc that needs to be rinsed off. I usually rinse it 4 times before the water runs clear. By then the rice has already absorbed a small amount of water. The 1-1 ratio is correct. But after the water boils away it is crucial that you cover the pot and let it sit in its own steam for 10 minutes. Otherwise it will be too hard to eat.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I have curry powder, I guess the paste is a lot different?

The paste makes a thick sauce. However, the taste is nothing like curry powder. It comes in cakes that look like large bullion cubes.

 

[Astronuc]

Welcome fellow food snob.

I had this discussion yesterday, I'm pro-fat for flavor. (be careful there are lean meat lovers here, but they are nice people).

Lean game meats taste fine. Elk, moose, bison, all taste very different than beef from domestic cattle, and wild boar tastes different than domestic pork.

I'll eat fat, particularly the gristle from a roast.

I'm making corned beef and cabbage tonight. I had Evo Child buy an extra brisket when they were half price.

Pot of water, dump in corned brisket, add spice packet, cover, bring to boil, reduce to simmer. This is a small one, so 2 hours should do it. I gots cabbage to add, (I'm starting to talk like a lol cat) and maybe a couple of potatoes. I have horseradish sauce. This one has so much fat, I'll be lucky to have enough left for breakfast.

That sounds wonderful.

 

[Astronuc]

I was lucky in that I cam from a family with a food intensive background. My father is a master sausage maker master butcher with his trade master degrees in the fields from Germany, so I had a delicious upbringing working in his store surrounded by wonderful meat. Unfortunately, it also has made me a snob and I can't stand to consume meat that isn't of the same quality standard - even other butcher shops sometimes can't match my expectations and too much of the food industry is often caught in some pseudo-scientific "healthisms" and various green-movement nonsense. Thus, I am often consigned to the fringes near, but not quite to, the culinary evil that is vegetarianism.

Regardless, it should be excusable if I'm somewhat biased to German food, however, having lived in around the world, my list won't be entirely dominated by German food. Just mostly. I love German food, but I think it doesn't have the recognition it deserves.

First, Schinkenspeck: beautiful. It is a dry-cured pork that, generally, has been smoked (meaning it is raw) having been seasoned with juniper berries. Don't believe the propaganda, if it lean with little fat, it is tough tasteless garbage. Schinkenspeck needs fat for flavour, and my father is still resentful having to make it so lean for the North American market as he thinks it is essentially ruined. Thus, for many of you, finding nice good quality schinkenspeck, should you try to find it, will be extremely difficult. Also, one can try raw smoked beef, its flavour is quite potent and sometimes overwhelming. Still, the best foods are those that are so flavourful as to be painful to eat.

Rouladen: I will simply describe how to make it. Thinly sliced outside round of beef, mix mustard (Löwensenf is a good standard mustard) with paprika and some cayenne pepper to give heat, and spread the mixture on one side of the meat slice. Next, after seasoning with salt and pepper, lay down some bacon on top and lay on the bacon sliced sour gurkin, but not the sweet crap, it must be sour (Hengstengberg is a good example, or Lisc), and red onion. Wrap, pierce with something to hold to together like a toothpick, brown in a pot, remove and add some water to begin a gravy base, return and finish cooking. Finally, complete the gravy and eat with some red cabbage or mashed potatoes.

Pork hoc: boil in water or beer, or saurkraut too, remove when done and enjoy. This is amongst my favourite meals. The meat is flavourful and succulent.

Nuernberger bratwurst: don't ask me about it, go find and eat some!

Ox tail: The key to good ox tail is simplicity. Boil it in water, and add salt, but don't do anything else and forget about side-dishes. This is a delight to eat by itself without distractions. The gooey melting fat and tender soft beef is something perhaps even hedonismbot would find overly excessive.

Roast Striploin: while delicious as a steak, frankly, if one was to have a roast, then one can really do no better than a striploin roast. It has all the benefits of the steak being of suitable tenderness and relatively high fat content in marble. But please, don't cut the fat of before roasting, do it after if you must.

Hainanese chicken rice: I grew up eating this, so its a personal favourite of mine. Basically, boil a chicken. Then cook some rice using the broth from the boiled chicken. Add sesame seed oil over the chicken, add to rice. Eat with chili and soy sauce.

The next two selections are somewhat harder to find: sri lankan soft-shelled crab and fish curry head. This is more of Indian and Chinese fusion, so I'm less familiar with it, but if you are ever in Singapore, you should try these two especially.

When I was in Colombia, I had some great soups in the Andean regions. Of particular note is changua, which I hated and think is an abomination. It's complete and wonderful opposite is ajiaco con pollo from Bogota (I think it's best with the chicken). It is a soup with chicken, cut corn on the cob, with little potatoes which break apart when cooked and thicken the soup, and a herb called guasca. It may be hard to replicate it closely unless one finds the appropriate potatoes, and guasca. It is usually served with cream and capers, though I myself prefer it plain and hate capers.

Sashimi: A friend of my father is a sushi chef, and used to spend several weeks in the summer time with him. If you can, find a Pacific coho salmon for sashimi, this is typically the best fish one can find for this purpose.

A desert: crepes with chocolate ice-cream filling (not the tub crap), chocolate sauce drizzling, powdered sugar with cinnamon, flambe in grand-marnier. Good traditional rice pudding with cinnamon-sugar is also great. As well, frozen-cheese cake is great, not every cheese cake has to be New York style.

Drink: Coca-Cola. It is the best drink, as objectively proven by Science! (Yes, I'm being facetious, but I do think it is a great drink and pairs excellently with everything I listed).

To try: many have yet to learn of white asparagus. Go now! Also, french fries, when made properly, can be amazing. It should be crisp, thin, but light and somewhat airy, and I think it goes better with mayonnaise than ketchup, but this is probably me exposing some of my culinary imperialism to the world (colonialism is good! It was what allowed me to eat Asian food with a fork!). Try roast beef that's pink inside, not everything needs to be cooked until flavourless. And try collecting some nice wild berries to eat if you have the opportunity. Bring a shotgun though, bears usually are not friendly. Those of you who tramp around in the wild without a gun are nuts (or live in an area that wiped out the predator population).

Finally, go out to your local friendly and professionally educated sausage fabricator and buy his delicious sausages. Don't buy that crap with nitrates that make everything taste oily, milk powder which makes the sausage brown faster but ruins its flavour, and is half filled with bread crumbs and water pumped for cost savings and added weight. Insist on real sausage! Make sure your local sausage maker has his Meisterpruefung before buying!

Also, of considerable importance: good company and good conversation. Eating is not merely some base hedonism, it is a cultural expression that is best shared with stimulating intellectual arguments. Great food and great conversation makes for a much better experience overall.

I'm hungry for some good German food.

I believe it's now Spargel season in Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spargel#White_asparagus_in_continental_northwestern_Europe

 

[lisab]

Lean game meats taste fine. Elk, moose, bison, all taste very different than beef from domestic cattle, and wild boar tastes different than domestic pork.

I'll eat fat, particularly the gristle from a roast.
That sounds wonderful.

Barbecued beef fat...like the fat strip on a nice quality steak...aaaaaah :!)

 

[Evo]

Barbecued beef fat...like the fat strip on a nice quality steak...aaaaaah :!)

:!)

 

[lisab]

What do PFers prefer: the head end, or the tail end of fish? Any fish, I guess, but I had salmon tonight. Usually I get the tail but someone told me the head end was better. I tried the head end, and found it had a lot more bones. Any improvement of flavor (which I didn't notice, btw) is totally lost in all the dang bones.

 

[dlgoff]

...(be careful there are lean meat lovers here, but they are nice people).

And be careful as there are some that don't like sweet lean meat.

Lean game meats taste fine. Elk, moose, bison, all taste very different than beef from domestic cattle, and wild boar tastes different than domestic pork.

Quail, pheasant, duck, goose are even better (best IMO) tasting and are nothing like chicken.

 

[turbo]

What do PFers prefer: the head end, or the tail end of fish? Any fish, I guess, but I had salmon tonight. Usually I get the tail but someone told me the head end was better. I tried the head end, and found it had a lot more bones. Any improvement of flavor (which I didn't notice, btw) is totally lost in all the dang bones.

I like the head end of fish - especially large trout or salmon that have been baked. Most people don't realize that under the gill-flaps there are jaw-muscles that are the most delectable pieces of meat on the entire fish. My younger cousin always bakes large fish with the head on and she got me into the habit, too.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

What do PFers prefer: the head end, or the tail end of fish? Any fish, I guess, but I had salmon tonight. Usually I get the tail but someone told me the head end was better. I tried the head end, and found it had a lot more bones. Any improvement of flavor (which I didn't notice, btw) is totally lost in all the dang bones.

I think most people that say they don't like fish cite "too many bones" as the reason. I'm with turbo on this, I like the head itself. Especially salmon heads. The cheek muscle is a treat and so are the eyes. Anyway, salmon bones are large and rubbery so it doesn't matter how many there are as much as with other fish..

 

[Borek]

But after the water boils away it is crucial that you cover the pot and let it sit in its own steam for 10 minutes. Otherwise it will be too hard to eat.

Yes. Alternatively you can put it in the blanket/sleeping bag for several hours. At least that's the best method in the woods, when you are saving fuel. Still, no idea how 1:1 works for you.

Not that I am discussing with facts, I just don't understand.

 

[OmCheeto]

My sister sent me something last week via snail mail that I'd typed up as a senior in high school. It is 3 pages of instructions on how to make Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte from scratch. I can tell it's the original as it was done on a typewriter and is covered with chocolate and cherry stains. How odd that it should show up 35 years later, just in time for Evo's BD.

 

[Evo]

My sister sent me something last week via snail mail that I'd typed up as a senior in high school. It is 3 pages of instructions on how to make Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte from scratch. I can tell it's the original as it was done on a typewriter and is covered with chocolate and cherry stains. How odd that it should show up 35 years later, just in time for Evo's BD.

Ooooh.

 

[Evo]

Food myths busted.

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/beware-meat-myths-150000645.html

 

[OmCheeto]

Food myths busted.

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/beware-meat-myths-150000645.html

Those are all really interesting. I'd have been dead long ago if #3 & #4 were true.

#1 & #2 kind of inspired me to think that we should start a food chemistry thread.

I've never studied organic chemistry, but dabbled a bit in home brewing about a decade ago, and kind of remember that at certain temperatures for certain amounts of time, starches turn into sugars. Is it possible that proteins cooked at varying temperatures could convert down to starches, and then down to sugars?

Anyways, slow cooked, smoked meats, probably taste like candy, because of my most awesome bd theorem.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Most of the web recipes for short grain rice use slightly more than a strict 1-1 ratio, but I don't. Here is one example:
How to cook short grain white rice.

 

[Evo]

Most of the web recipes for short grain rice use slightly more than a strict 1-1 ratio, but I don't. Here is one example:
How to cook short grain white rice.

But for Japanese style, you would use less water for a stickier rice.

My japanese rice calls for 1 cup well rinsed rice, 1 1/4 cup water. After cooking, remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes.

Your link didn't work for me.

For my regular rice, it's one cup rice to 2 cups water, just like Borek.

 

[Borek]

starches turn into sugars

Starch IS a sugar. A composite one, something like polymer. It breaks down into smaller sugar. Think monomer and polymer (ethylene vs polyethylene)

Is it possible that proteins cooked at varying temperatures could convert down to starches, and then down to sugars?

No. Proteins are different kind of a polymer, made not from simple sugars, but from amino acids.

 

[OmCheeto]

Starch IS a sugar. A composite one, something like polymer. It breaks down into smaller sugar. Think monomer and polymer (ethylene vs polyethylene)

No. Proteins are different kind of a polymer, made not from simple sugars, but from amino acids.

Can you tell that chemistry was my worst subject?
Now I know how the non-electrical kooks feel when they make things up in their heads.

I'll just be quiet.

---------------------------------
Om <-- Chemistry Kook

 

[Hobin]

FISH COOKIES!

I'm not even kidding.

This evening, I'll be making 'fish cookies', which is basically baked fish and potatoes. First, I'm going to make a certain paste by crushing the potatoes, adding some nice herbs, sauces, you know the drill. I will then enfold pieces of baked haddock with this so I have eight 'cookies', and bake them in a frying pan. Voila!

 

[Dembadon]

FISH COOKIES!

I'm not even kidding.

This evening, I'll be making 'fish cookies', which is basically baked fish and potatoes. First, I'm going to make a certain paste by crushing the potatoes, adding some nice herbs, sauces, you know the drill. I will then enfold pieces of baked haddock with this so I have eight 'cookies', and bake them in a frying pan. Voila!

That sounds really good. I'll have to experiment with that.

 

[Evo]

FISH COOKIES!

I'm not even kidding.

This evening, I'll be making 'fish cookies', which is basically baked fish and potatoes. First, I'm going to make a certain paste by crushing the potatoes, adding some nice herbs, sauces, you know the drill. I will then enfold pieces of baked haddock with this so I have eight 'cookies', and bake them in a frying pan. Voila!

What are they called Hobin?

 

[turbo]

I love the idea of fish cookies! I love pan-fried potato patties, but never thought of incorporating fish into them. Onions, sweet peppers, chilies? Yeah, but not fish. Now I have a project.

 

[Hobin]

What are they called Hobin?

Ehm... Cookies a la Hobin?

I don't actually know. From the original recipe, literally translated to English, it would be 'Haddock-fish-cookies'.

 

[Hobin]

I love the idea of fish cookies! I love pan-fried potato patties, but never thought of incorporating fish into them. Onions, sweet peppers, chilies? Yeah, but not fish. Now I have a project.

If you want, I can try to sort-of-translate the original recipe to English.