The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Tonight it’s rice and beans and chicken and broccoli. I made pasta and cheese sauce for lunch so the leftover cheese sauce is going over the broccoli.

The toddler will probably just want ritz crackers.

Oh and I’m gonna blanch the broccoli and then cook some pasta in the water just to save for tomorrow.

I’m tired of cooking.

owl wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 22, 2020 1:06 pm

What do you use it for, crumpart? I had a bottle of it once but only ever made one dish with it (fesenjan)

I originally bought it because it was an ingredient in a Middle Eastern cookbook I love, but I've found recently that I've been using it in salad dressing a lot, and pretty much anywhere that I'd normally add some sugar or honey to bring out the flavour of other vegetables.

Ooh that sounds nice. Maybe I'll look for it when the world is open again.

Ye olde American Goulash! This is not the healthiest food ever, but it definitely is comforting. I used Chef John's recipe, which is a lot fancier than what I grew up with, but still very good.

I made a vegetarian lasagne with home made pasta yesterday. I make it once in a blue moon when I realise I have about three hours to spare, and every single time I get angry again at my high school home ec teacher, who tried to tell me and my cooking partner that the lasagne we’d just spent hours on was not a full, balanced meal, and asked if that was all we’d managed in the time.

Anyway, dinner was good!

@Chumpy goulash looks great! I was considering making this unhealthy comfort food casserole my mom used to make me with cream of mushroom soup, ground beef, cheese, and wild rice mix, but this looks marginally healthier so maybe I’ll try it instead.

@crumpart Do you have a pasta machine? People keep telling me you can roll out pasta by hand, but I’ve never managed to make that work.

My culinary experimentation yesterday was collard greens with a piece of salt pork that’s been in our freezer that expired in 2010(!!!) I ate it and so far seem to be OK, so I’ll probably use the rest to make baked beans and/or chowder (the original reason I bought it). I cut the pork into small pieces, fried it up, cooked chopped onion and some garlic in the rendered fat, and added the chopped collard greens, homemade chicken stock, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and red pepper flakes. I cooked it in the Instant Pot for 10 minutes and it came out great, aside from being a bit soupy because of adding too much stock.

Over the weekend I made this tomato cobbler from the New York Times with cheddar-herb biscuits instead of ricotta ones. It sounds weird, but I tried it at a potluck and fell in love and have made it a few times since then. Big fan of savory breakfast though.

oh dang I forgot to take photos of the amazing pozole I made

oh well. it was tasty

also really easy!

1. brown some chorizo or your favorite substitute for it
2. add diced onion, garlic, paprika, ground cumin, etc.
3. add a big can of hominy (drained) and some chicken stock (or pork stock if you have it!) and a couple bay leaves and some vinegar
4. let simmer for like an hour

serve with lime wedges and tortillas

owl wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:11 am

@crumpart Do you have a pasta machine? People keep telling me you can roll out pasta by hand, but I’ve never managed to make that work.

Yep, I have this one, except in royal blue and it's fantastic. https://www.amazon.com/Marcato-8320-Mac ... 482&sr=8-1

I also bought a cheapo one and turned it into a tiny etching press.

We got our first wine in a while bottled on the weekend (Californian Sauvignon Blanc kit), and for the first time in a few batches I actually got some labels made in time! I know for home made wine we really don’t need fancy labels, but hey, it’s what I do and they make me happy. These ones are screen printed with two colours.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_8BPc9gAvo ... 1gbjvojbdb

I've been on a Chef John kick recently. Here is his Prison-Style Meatloaf. Here is his Hungarian style Beef Goulash.

Yum! What makes it "prison-style," is it fermented in a sock?
I have a Dutch oven from Aldi that looks exactly like that red one.

owl wrote: ↑

Fri May 15, 2020 8:42 pm

Yum! What makes it "prison-style," is it fermented in a sock?

It uses quite a bit of filler in order to stretch the meat, like the did during the Great Depression, and also in institutions where you may want to cut costs. There are breadcrumbs soaked in milk (so they don't dry out the meatloaf) as well as Parmesan cheese and parsley on inside. I guess modern meatloaf is almost entirely meat, but personally I like it with filler. My mom used to make it with saltine crackers.

I always thought milk-soaked bread (or crackers, I guess) was one of the main ingredients of meatloaf! Wouldn't it be really dense without it?

I was too tired to cook today, but tomorrow I'm going to continue experimenting with something we made last weekend--Chinese green onion pancakes but with ground pork added in as well. They have a hot-water dough laminated with sesame oil. I also have a container of ricotta earmarked for ricotta gnocchi that most likely I'll serve with shredded roasted brussels sprouts.

Oh yeah I did a Chef John recipe recently, his sausage and bean stew. The recipe so nice I've made it twice!

I didn't take pictures though, sorry.

We were ordering a pizza cutter recently and because of you and the Surrealists song, Chumpy, I put my foot down and insisted on buying the one shaped like a Motor Scooter. Toshiro was not convinced it would work well and, much to his delight, has been proven very, very wrong!

(Pictured is a shop bought frozen garlic pizza that we ate with our home made vegetarian spaghetti bolognese.)

crumpart wrote: ↑

Sat May 16, 2020 1:13 am

We were ordering a pizza cutter recently and because of you and the Surrealists song, Chumpy, I put my foot down and insisted on buying the one shaped like a Motor Scooter. Toshiro was not convinced it would work well and, much to his delight, has been proven very, very wrong!

Nice! Cute pizza cutter, looks like the pie was pretty good too.

Broc Bolo, sort of. I use shells and chicken sausage and only roughly followed their directions just because I am a normal human without heads of garlic hanging all over my house.

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/brocc ... recchiette

I made the ricotta gnocchi last night and it was delicious, and easy to make as well! I served it with roasted Brussels sprouts, brown butter, and chili flakes, and pan-fried the gnocchi a bit after boiling so it got a little brown and crisp.
I made these Italian almond cookies called ricciarelli with the leftover egg whites.

The pork and scallion pancake things didn’t come out very good, sadly.

Today I might try making the Doubletree chocolate chip cookies—they released the official recipe last month.

Homemade no-knead pizza tonight! It turned out good.

fluffy wrote: ↑

Fri May 15, 2020 11:52 pm

Oh yeah I did a Chef John recipe recently, his sausage and bean stew. The recipe so nice I've made it twice!

After I saw this, I went and looked at the recipe, and thought "omg, that looks good, and I think I've got all the ingredients." I had navy beans instead of cannellini beans, but it still worked out.

I made some refried beans. Bought lard and everything. And just to make it interesting I used red beans instead of the traditional pinto or black.

Oh also used some very strong cold brew coffee to make soda. It’s interesting.