The food I made for my committee was well received tonight :D Pasta Pesto à la Emma (I call it à la Emma, because one of my former housemates did Pasta Pesto completely differently) (also, this is the normal portion I would make, for tonight's dinner I doubled everything, we had some leftover for eight people :)) Ingredients: 3 leeks 500gr tomatoes 250 gr mushrooms 500 gr chicken or 300 gr bacon (I usually do bacon, but I did chicken tonight because one of the committee members is vegetarian and another doesn't like bacon) 200gr crème fraîche 190 gr pesto 500 gr dried pasta shapes If using chicken also needed: Fresh garlic (as much as you like) Olive oil Sea salt Freshly ground pepper --> This makes the marinade for the chicken: Finely chop garlic, and mix with olive oil. Add sea salt and ground pepper. Cut up chicken in chunks of a size you like. Put in a container (I used a ziplock bag) and pour over marinade (oil/garlic mixture). Mix well, let stand as long as you like. I did an hour/an hour and a half tonight. 1. Clean and chop leeks. I always put them in a colander after I chop them and put them under a running tap and wash them like that. I think it's easiest :) 2. De-seed and chop tomatoes into chunks. 3. Chop mushrooms. I like to slice them into slices. Sometimes half slices when they're particularly large, but it doesn't really matter, so do what you want :) 4. Bring water to a boil for the pasta, and cook according to package instructions. While water for pasta is boiling: If using bacon: 5a. Dice bacon into pieces. Fry them in a large pan until desired done-ness. They do continue cooking when you put the veggies in, so keep that in mind. 6a. Add leeks, tomatoes and mushrooms to the pan. Put on a medium heat, stir occasionally. If using chicken: 5b. Turn on oven, put it on around 180 degrees celcius. Fry chicken pieces in pan until brown on the outside. Transfer to oven proof dish and put in oven. It will continue cooking the oven, so that's why you only fry until browned. 6b. Take a clean pan and add some oil or butter or whatever you like to dry stuff in, and add the veggies. Fry on high heat for a bit, then turn heat down to medium heat. 7. Combine crème fraîche and pesto in a sauce pan. Heat on low heat, stirring occasionally until combined. 8. Pour liquid of the veggies. There will be quite a bit of liquid, so if you don't want your sauce to be soupy, pour it of :) 9. Combine sauce and veggies. Add pasta and combine well until all the pasta is coated. 10 If using chicken: take it out of the oven and serve it alongside the pasta. I like to put shredded cheese and mozzarella on this pasta. It's also very good if you add toasted pine nuts, but it can get expensive to get enough for eight people. Mozzarella is pretty much always good though :P
Garlic butter is very simple, and if you put this on bread and toast it it's cheaper than garlic bread from the store. Ingredients: 1 stick of butter (I suppose you could use margarine...?) garlic powder italian seasoning (optional) Directions: 1. Put the stick of butter into a small bowl, and leave it to soften at room temperature (half an hour should be plenty; alternately, microwave for 30 seconds AFTER taking the wrapper off). 2. Add something like 1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder. If you're eyeballing using a shaker of garlic powder, like I was, the amount of garlic powder you want is "more than you think you need". Optionally, shake a bit of Italian seasoning in, too. 3. Mix everything together with a fork. 4. Spread on whatever the hell you like. To store: Form a log of garlic butter on one side of a sheet of plastic wrap. Roll the plastic wrap around it, then twist ends like a candy wrapper. Or just put the plastic wrap over the mixing bowl. Either way, put it in the fridge. It should probably last a month or so, although you'll probably eat it before then.
This is for meat eaters: If you brown some hamburger meat in a skillet, drain the fat, add dried onion flakes, oregano, and garlic powder, and add that to a can of crushed tomatoes, you will get some bomb-ass low effort meat sauce for pasta. Everyone seems to love it, and thinks I'm a good cook even on a low spoon/lazy day. For me, boiling pasta is easier spoon-wise than making sandwiches. Dump it over some ziti or pasta of your choice, and you got some nice protein in your pasta dish. I have a hard time remembering when veggies are going bad, so dried onion flakes and freeze dried garlic or garlic powder is your friend. You can add a lot and it hard to mess up. You can also use this as a base for taco meat if you use a can of salsa instead of crushed tomatoes (add some chilli powder in that case for a little heat). Ground beef is my friend-- I have Crohn's Disease and I am anemic so it helps me a lot!
So once again I am incredibly out of money AND food but I found a can of pinto beans and a can of boiled, peeled potatoes and decided "some sort of protein patty????" Mashed the beans and potatoes with some sauteed onions, salt, pepper, garlic powder, sour cream, lemon juice and a few squirts of sriracha. Then added some cornstarch and what little I had left of my panko crumbs and shredded mozzarella cheese. Mushed it all up real good and chilled it in the fridge overnight, fried them up golden today and them put them in the oven to finish, and WOW they taste pretty not bad with some sour cream on the side! I wish I had measurements to give but as with most of my kitchen experimenting, I was eyeballing the whole time.
Okay, these spicy orange macaroons are deeeelish. The recipe is over-complicated in that food-blogging humblebragging way, but the quantities are good. My simplified version, with some ingredients cut because I didn't have them already: 1 cup (7 ounces/200 grams) granulated sugar (I used caster, because yeah) 2 oranges 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (7 ounces/200 grams) ground almonds 1/8 teaspoon salt 2 large egg whites, beaten to blend Garam masala, for dusting Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C). Mix together the sugar, ground almonds, salt, zest of both oranges. Squeeze a little orange juice (couple of teaspoons?) in. Mix in the beaten egg whites until you have a nice dough. With your hands, roll small lumps of the dough into smooth balls and flatten them slightly. Place them on a baking paper-covered baking tray with some room to spread (they probably won't spread much.) Dust with garam masala. Leave to rest for 15 mins, or don't. Bake for ~18 mins or until the macaroons are nice and golden.
So the baking bug bit me and I bought potassium carbonate sometime this year because gingerbread ingredient / baking powder substitute and I was too dumb to calculate the substitution rate for baking soda or baking powder, and now I'm too dumb to find the original recipe again and yeah and I got grandma's cookie recipes. And then I messed around some and downscaled some measurements and I still ended up with 3.5kg of ingredients and a shitton of gingerbread and cookies. (and I've got another wad of vanilla crescent dough resting in the fridge) Nürnberger Lebkuchen: (translation / what i did, aka cut some ingredients) 100g butter 170g sugar (i substituted honey) 300g flour 250ml milk 3-4 eggs 1 sachet baking powder (i substituted potassium carbonate) spices & nuts (i used almonds, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves) wafer papers mix butter, sugar, flour, milk, eggs, and the baking powder until it isn't lumpy any more, then add your spices and nuts. glob on wafer papers, bake at 180°C for 15-20 minutes cover either with couverture chocolate or a lemon juice/confectioner's sugar mixture. if you use the latter, for the love of all that is good and holy don't do it on the baking sheet, at least if you plan on reusing it. heating that mixture makes it taste like soap. Those are actually two different gingerbread recipes, and I've bastardised them a lot form the get-go. Pfefferkuchen: 1000g flour 500g honey 250g sugar 125g butter (which i forgot to add. whoops.) 1 egg 10g potassium carbonate 10g hartshorn (which i also didnt add) spices (i used cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and pepper) dissolve potassium carbonate and hartshorn in a bit of warm water. mix honey, sugar, and butter over low heat, and let cool. mix flour and spices, then add the previous two things, and the egg. Knead well. let the dough rest for a few days. then knead again, roll out, and put on baking dish. bake at ~200°C for about 7 minutes. Magenbrot: (I'd link the recipe but it's a horrid mixture of three different recipes for this) 500g brown flour (I used a 50/50 mixture of plain wheat flour and whole wheat flour) 200g sugar 100g honey 200g butter 1 egg 1 tl potassium carbonate some milk spices (i used cinnamon, nutmeg, cocoa, cloves, and allspice) dissolve potassium carbonate in milk, then mix everything together, and let rest for a few days. form into long, thin loaves, bake at ~200°C for 15 minutes i applied the same cover as for the Nürnberger Lebkuchen. now we're getting to the interesting stuff. Vanilla Crescents: 250g flour 150g butter 80g nuts 50g sugar more sugar for rolling the crescents in after baking mix well, let rest in a cool place for at least a few hours. form crescents, bake at 200°C for ~10 minutes. Roll in confectioner's sugar while they're still hot. I promise you you'll never want to eat store bought vanilla crescents ever again. Nonplus cookies: 350g butter 350g flour 50g sugar 4 egg yolks meringue: 4 egg whites 200g sugar (err on the side of more sugar) mix the dough ingredients, let rest for a few hours at least. then, roll thin and cut small round cookies (i don't have a cookie cutter, so i used a spice shaker lid). put on baking dish. beat the egg whites and the sugar until you can cut the mass and it stays and doesn't flow back. spoon on cookies. bake at 180°C-200°C for 10-150 minutes. if the meringue deflates when you open the oven, you either didn't put in enough sugar or didn't beat it long enough. happens. still tasty, though. I'll post the Ischler recipe once I actually applied the couverture chocolate covering to them and took a pic.
i did some sugar cookies! the recipe is from a bag so the actual cookies are just okay but i decorated them and look. Spoiler: beep it may not be like WHOA but i think they came out pretty nice so here they are. my sister did the trees.
I have kind of an amateur baking question, if someone could help me-- so I'm making a really basic cookie recipe, but it seems like a lot so I want to make a half-sized batch. But the original amount calls for 3 eggs, so how do I measure out 1.5 eggs? (There's probably a really obvious answer, but it's not occurring to me right now.)
I'd probably just use two eggs, but if you wanna try and be more precise, you can substitute vegetable oil. 1/4 cup of oil for one egg, so in this case, 1/8 of a cup or 2 tablespoons. Edit: OR you could just crack the third egg, whisk it, pour in half and then...IDK, scramble the other? Toss it?
Use two below-average-sized eggs? Otherwise cookie dough usually freezes pretty well, you could always make the whole batch and only bake half of it.
Perhaps using one large and one medium size egg? Medium eggs are pretty small in comparison, although that might be 1.75 eggs more than 1.5 eggs.
I think I'm going to measure out half of a second egg, that seems easiest and it's what google recommends. Thanks for your help! ^^
Going to be baking pies in the next few days, and tonight I did some prep work for the crusts. The recipe I use requires a food processor and I've gotten consistently good results! Here's the recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/12360/flaky-food-processor-pie-crust/ I have one modification, which is really just another prep step. A day ahead, stick your butter and shortening in the fridge until chilled and firm, then take it out and cut it into cubes. Then stick them both into a ziplock bag or something and freeze them overnight. DONT BE LIKE ME AND TRY TO CUBE FROZEN BUTTER ITS REALLY DIFFICULT. XD You might have to gently break apart the cubes before putting them in the processor, but that's simpler. As the link says, the trick is keeping everything as cold as possible! I believe it's because the tiny chunks of fat make air pockets when the crust is baking, and you don't want to melt those by overworking or handling it too much. So handle things as little as possible because even if you have icy hands you are warmer than frozen butter. :3
So I have a few foods i can't stand but i don't like that! food is supposed to be fun and i see it as kid of a challenge. SO! I'm making fuckin brussel sprouts pasta with creamy lemon sauce this week and i'll conquer* those evil little cabbage rejects, because they can't be the literal devil, i used to be that way about pineapple and sometimes i eat that now so SUCK IT BRUSSEL SPROUTS YOU ARE GOING DOOOOOOOOOWN!!! *Disclaimer: wouldn't even be trying if my mom didn't like the alien leaf balls so much, smh. trying to find something that would be a treat for her and tolerable to all the rest of us.
It has ocurred to me that I didn't actually post the Ischler recipe. Shame on me! Here it is: Ingredients: Cookies: 100g butter 75g ground nuts 140g flour 70g sugar Cream: 2 eggs 100g couverture chocolate 100g butter 100g sugar (optional) Glaze: 100-150g couverture chocolate What do: Mix the cookie dough well, then wrap in clingwrap and let it rest for a bit in a cool place. Whisk the eggs in/over (????) a double boiler, and melt the chocolate in there (That's also the stage you add the sugar if you're adding additional sugar). DO NOT LET IT BOIL. Seriously. Make it hot enough that the couverture chocolate melts completely and mixes, and then take it off the heat. Let cool a bit, then whisk it into the butter. Do yourself a favour and use a handmixer. You'll want an even, chocolatey mass after that. Set to cool. When you roll out the cookie dough, do it between sheets of clingwrap, because that dough sticks like a motherfucker. And if you end up adding some more butter because you realized you made it a bit too dry earlier and not it's crumbling, let the dough rest. Seriously. Not letting the dough rest only leads to frustration and tears. When you've rolled it out thin (~2mm), make cookie cutter cutouts. And take care that you have an even amount of them. Bake at 200°C for 10-15 minutes, they should be golden to light brown, when they've reached chocolate colour they taste like coal. The chocolate cream and frosting covers that a bit, but it's still noticeable. While the cookies are baking and cooling enough so you can pick them up with your hands without burning them, take out the chocolate cream, and start melting the rest of the chocolate couverture. Knife an amount of cream on a cookie, and put another one on top. Once you've made all your cookie-chocolate-cream-sandwiches, spread some molten couverture chocolate on top. And if you have couverture covering left in the pot, pour some milk in and make hot chocolate.
My local grocery had bone in pork shoulder roasts on sale for 75 cents a pound, so I got an 8.5 pound one. Last night I threw it in the slow cooker with three cloves of garlic, some onion powder, and a cup of water. This morning after I let it cool, I shredded it (by hand, because it was easier for me to get the fat and cartilage out that way) and I now have about 20 cups of pulled pork chilling in my fridge to go in the chest freezer tomorrow, and about 3 cups for dinner tonight. It's tender and pretty neutral-tasting, so I can add it to whatever needs a bit of protein without flavor clash. I have a bunch of veggie scraps and also some chicken bones in my freezer, so I decided to throw them and the pork scraps back in the broth still in the slow cooker and try to make a stock (I also added more water). If it turns out bad I won't care, because it's not like I was going to use the stuff for anything else, and if it turns out good I have essentially free delicious broth. I'll let y'all know how it turns out.
