I have just made refrigerator pickles and feel compelled to share with the class. Chop up some cucumbers. Or beets, beans, whatever you wanna pickle. Stick them in a jar or container. Fill up the remaining space with water. Pour the water into a pot. Dump half the water, and replace with vinegar, so you've got a 50/50 mixture. Add about a tablespoon and a half of salt for each cup of mixture. Also dump in spices or w/e to taste; I chopped up some ginger and threw it in. Heat vinegar water to boiling. Then let it cool to lukewarm. Pour it over the jars. Stick the jars in the fridge. Requires refrigeration, and they'll only last like a month or two, but... like ten minutes of work, and yum. Ginger pickles are awesome.
an invention! i had leftover tomato basil soup, but not enough for a meal. so i poached a couple eggs in it, and had it over rice with parmesan cheese. IT WAS SO GOOD OMG. oh and i cut up some green onion tops on the eggs while they were poaching.
I made hash browns for the first time! Three medium potatoes: washed, peeled, shredded, then drained + squeezed to remove excess water Quarter of a medium white onion, diced finely Salt + pepper (about half a teaspoon of each? I just dumped some in without measuring) Mix all together. We cooked bacon in a cast iron pan, so there was bacon fat to cook the potatoes, but veg oil would be fine. Pan on medium heat on stove, add potato mixture, cook (until they look done, basically; I just kept tasting until the texture was right)! The way we did it doesn't result in nice crispy patties because that's a lot of work; we ended up with a nice-textured mush instead. They also ended up quite gray, but the taste was fine, even if it wasn't the most visually appealing. Ate with onion-spinach eggs and the bacon.
So once again I went into HEB for one thing, got viciously attacked by the sample people wielding bites of stuff cooked in delicious and easy-to-use sauces and seasonings, and left with a bunch of stuff I did not plan on getting, most notably a bottle of something called Katy's Peri Peri Sauce that's got mild peppers and lime and mint and basil and stuff in it. The good news: I had chicken, tomatoes, spinach, and tricolor farfalle in tangy pesto cream sauce for dinner. Cut chicken into bite-size chunks, season to your preferences, brown with a little butter and garlic (I got a neat new ceramic-coated frying pan that can actually cook chicken and such pretty well without extra lubrication but... BUTTER, man). Add quartered grape tomatoes and a big handful of baby spinach, cook til the spinach wilts, add a couple handfuls of farfalle and enough water or chicken stock to just barely cover it all. Turn down the heat to medium-low, let it simmer till the pasta is done and most of the liquid has cooked off. Add a squirt of Peri Peri sauce, a spoonful of pesto (homemade or store-bought), and a splash of heavy cream, cook till it thickens up, dump in bowl, top with shaved parm, put in face. The sample people have been hell on my wallet since I switched to HEB but holy shit I haven't cooked this much in forever.
well, now i need a ceramic frying pan. i googled them and they sound amazeballs, plus they come in my favorite ridiculous green.
I got mine at a Burke's Outlet for like $8 and it is a sweet metallic teal on the outside. Best pan I've ever had.
i just made THE BEST banh mi. holy shit. - equal parts sugar and water. - as much rice vinegar as sugar and water combined. - carrots. i bought pre-cut matchsticks, but if you're a masochist, you can cut your own. - radish. you should use daikon but i used red because i didn't want to haul ass downtown to trader joe's. - scallions. - white onion. - jalapeno. - garlic. - sriracha. - fish sauce. - some ground meat, i used beef. - mayo. - good crunchy baguette. - some lemon juice if you're fancy. heat the sugar/water/vinegar in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves. let it cool. slice your carrots, radish, white onion and scallion tops into a bowl and let them sit in the vinegar water half an hour to pickle. mix up your scallion bottoms, garlic, a few good squirts of sriracha, a good pour of fish sauce, and your ground meat in a bowl. form meatballs. fry the meatballs. i dry-fried because the meat wasn't as lean as i like to buy it. you can use some oil if you're into that. i don't really care. if it's red meat, cook it about 5 minutes on one side, then roll them around a little, then 3 minutes, then check to see if they're horribly pink and give them some more time if they are. while they're cooking, cut your baguette in half and scoop out the white insides. this helps. deposit your meatballs into one side of the baguette. spread mayo on the other side of the baguette. apply de-seeded sliced jalapeno, drained pickled veg, some lemon juice if you're fancy, and smush baguette halves together. listen. it's fucking good. addendum: if you toast your baguette, i'm blocking you.
ok i was drooling until you put it in a bread with mayo. i'm a heretic. banh mi is too complicated for me, it is an alarming sensory explosion in my face, though your recipe is less overwhelming than what the restaurants in frogtown serve, they've got like 90 veg and 6 sauces. i exaggerate but not by much. garlic/sriracha/fishsauce meatballs sound SO GOOD. i wonder, if you also added a little sugar or mirin to the meat mixture, would they brown even nicer? anyhow @hanka i hope you won't take it as an insult to your recipe skills if i use your meatballs as topping for cold noodles or lettuce wraps instead of making terrifying juggernaut sandwiches as the almighty intended.
It occurs to me to share this -- if you're cooking up chicken in a pan, or especially if you have leftover chicken that's maybe a lil on the dry side-- Lately, I've been cutting it into strips and adding some balsamic vinegar to whatever else I'm cooking it in (oil, dry rub, onion goodness, whatever). It does very good things for the flavor, is my opinion. And it's super low-maintenance, which is a big factor, for me.
You guys. You guys. Apple Chicken Pie. ETA: I cut the sugar down from what the recipe recommends - I did more like 1:1:1:1.5 on the nutmeg:cinnamon:allspice:sugar. Like, a flat teaspoon of each of the spices and a rounded teaspoon of sugar. The first time I made it I did the recommended 1:1:1:3, but it came out a bit too sweet for my taste.
Like two days ago I made gluten free cube steaks and they were freaking amazing. I used: 6 cube steaks 1.25 cups rice flour .75 cup cornmeal about 1 teaspoon onion salt about .5 teaspoon black pepper 2 teaspoons powdered buttermilk .5 cup water 1 egg Canola oil A frying pan with high sides A lot of paper towels A large ziploc bag Tongs (you can use fresh buttermilk, too - I'd use .5 cup - but I never go through it fast enough so I use the powdered kind. you can't skip it, I'm sorry, as far as I'm concerned buttermilk is the secret to frying everything with breading perfectly) Before you start, you might want to leave your steaks out on the counter for 10-15 minutes. Cold steaks make the oil pop more. Pour about half an inch of canola oil into your frying pan and set it to heat up on medium high. Keep the bottle close because you might have to top the oil up. Put the powdered buttermilk into a bowl large enough to dip your steaks in. Slowly add water, stirring as you go. Crack an egg into the bowl and scramble it with the buttermilk. Add rice flour, cornmeal, onion salt, and pepper to the plastic bag. Seal it and shake it up well. Pat your steaks dry. Dip each steak into the egg mixture, then put two at a time in the plastic bag. Shake well to coat. Add the steaks to your hot oil using the tongs - two at a time are easiest to cook. Cook for 3-4 minutes, then turn and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Breading my blacken slightly. (note: this is the part I'm fairly unsure about because I ADHD my way through cooking. That time is my best guess, but every couple of minutes, poke the steak with the tongs. When it is fully cooked, it will have little give in the middle - something like a firm stress ball.) Put steaks on plate lined with paper towels. Cook other steaks in the same manner. Enjoy! I'm pretty sure you could use this same breading to fry chicken, since I basically just threw together things until they were the consistency as the chicken breader I used to make. I'd put some paprika and cayenne in for frying chicken, though.
yes! the sugar would probably balance out the heat very nicely. the pickled veg are also super good. i recommend giving those a try at some point, even if you don't make the rest of the thing.
do the veg first, then set them aside to pickle for 30 min. i was able to get everything else done in the time they took to sit.
I went to WaHo a few days ago and had an awesome grit bowl there that I decided to replicate. Theirs was served with a biscuit but because my boyfriend has Celiac's I made hash browns instead. Serves 4 1 lb loose sausage (the kind that comes in the plastic tube; I like Jimmy Dean's hot sausage) 1 package refrigerated hash browns (either diced or shredded; you can dice your own potatoes and it will take just a few more minutes to cook, but it's so much work) 1 cup dry grits Shredded cheese Salt Butter Canola oil large skillet Check your grits package and see how long they take to cook. If they take less than ten minutes, start boiling the water when you start your potatoes. If they take more than ten, start your water boiling with the sausage and cook your grits while the potatoes cook. (I buy my grits from the bulk bin. If you're doing that: boil 4 cups water and a tablespoon of salt. When the water is boiling, stir in your grits. Turn heat to 2-3 depending on your stove. Cover and let simmer for 5-7 minutes.) Heat your skillet on medium high. Open your sausage package, but don't form it into patties. Cook it as you would ground beef. When it's done, put on a plate lined with paper towels and cover to keep warm. Keep your sausage grease in the pan. Add Canola oil until its about a quarter of an inch deep. Carefully add your potatoes after about three minutes so the grease is hot. Don't splatter yourself! Cook your potatoes about seven minutes or until they're crispy - they may not brown, so check every few minutes. They'll form a crispy skin. Stir when you check. When they're done, transfer to a plate lined with paper towels. Your grits should be done about now. If they are, add two tablespoons of butter. Get out four large bowls. Layer potatoes on the bottom, about half a cup of potatoes per bowl. You may have some extra when you're done. Sprinkle about a quarter cup of shredded cheese on potatoes - I use sharp cheddar. Add about a cup of grits to each bowl. Top with sausage.
@hanka I have another question... is it possible to let the veggies pickle too long? I'm just wondering if I can make them a day or so ahead of time and keep them in the fridge until I'm ready to make the banh mi.
anything is possible if you believe. serious answer, i have no idea. you might get too strong a flavor or limp, flaccid veggies if you do, because they're sliced pretty thin and sugar+vinegar makes a pretty strong hypertonic solution. my science brain tells me it might be better to simmer the sugar/water/vinegar, jar it, and leave that in the fridge overnight once the sugar has dissolved rather than leave the veg overnight in case they're horribly sour. if you're looking for something you can let pickle as long as you want, i've made pickled eggs and they've kept for weeks. if you're looking for an inoffensive spice combination, most stores will sell single-serving sachets of pickling spice. if you're looking to go wild (like me) you can blend your own mix off someone's recipe online. the internet says use whole corns/leaves (pepper, coriander, mustard, bay, etc) when you can, but i've used ground spices and never had a problem.
i just discovered that this is a thing that exists: quail egg stuffed mushrooms, you guys. they're a thing. i need to hit the co-op tomorrow and see if they have quail eggs. because that is just too goddamn cute and it looks SO DELICIOUS.
Does anybody know how to tell if miso's gone bad? I have a large amount of it and I don't use it very often or quickly.
