It's June and this is normally a New Year's recipe, but I guess if anybody's really into sweet potatoes (and chestnuts, and probably waaaayy more sugar than is good for you honestly lmfao) then here's my family's recipe for kinton. It's a shiny golden yellow, like the gold in its name, and is believed to bring luck and prosperity. This is a pretty spoons-intensive recipe and doesn't really have solid measurements because we kind of just wing it every year, but. Here you go. Sasaki Family Kinton you will need: probably like 4 or 5 Satsuma sweet potatoes (they are like a pale yellow-white inside, different from yams or I guess the domestic American flavor of sweet potato.) sugar to taste two or three small jars of chestnuts in syrup (or I guess one large one if you can find one at the local Asian market, adjust depending on how much you like chestnut) mirin To make: Cut your sweet potatoes into segments about an inch to an inch and a half thick. Peel them thickly (there's like a circle of... pores? capillary openings? anyway it rings the inside of the slices with teeny dots and you want to peel everything between the dot circle and the skin off. These are the less sweet and not-as-pretty bits. Make sure also that you get the eyes and any discolored-looking bits off at the same time, even if you have to dig further into the slice to get them off. I usually use a knife for this instead of a vegetable peeler because sweet potatoes tend to be tough and kind of on the woody side before you cook them.) Take your nice clean, peeled slices and put them in a tallish stewpot (adjust size if there's too much/too little potato for the pot). Pour in enough water to cover them and leave them to soak overnight. The next day, drain your potatoes. Make sure the pot's empty and put the potatoes back in, pour in fresh water to cover them and bring the slices to a boil. They're done when they're soft enough to stick a chopstick through without having to force the issue. Fish out your potatoes. Save the water they were boiled in--you're going to need that later. Mash your potatoes without burning yourself, although traditionally you scrape the potato chunks through a wire sieve to get all the fibrous bits out beforehand. (This is super tedious and takes a long time, you have carte blanche to just use a masher or whatever is handy.) When you're done mashing, put the mash back into the pot with the water the potatoes were boiled in and bring it to a boil. Dump in sugar to taste (we tend to average around like three cups, maybe, but note that the less sugar you use the quicker the end product goes off) and reduce, stirring constantly so that the potatoes and sugar don't stick to the bottom and burn. You can technically also use agave syrup or like artificial sweetener, though it's probably not going to taste the same. Be careful, because when this stuff starts to do the lava bubble you'll occasionally get hit by flying specks of hot sweet potato mash and it will burn :( You can avoid burning your arms as much by turning down the heat, though it'll take longer, or stir while wearing oven mitts and long sleeves (which is what I do.) When you can draw a line through the stuff with your spoon or stirring utensil of choice and it sticks around for a little bit (you can still see the line even though the utensil's path has closed up) pour in the syrup from your chestnut jar(s) and reduce, stirring some more. Then add the chestnuts carefully so they don't all do a cannonball in and splash you with sweet yellow lava. At some point you will think "good fucking grief am I done stirring yet" and the answer is... probably not. Add a splash of mirin when the consistency of the lot is the sticky equivalent of slightly watery mashed potatoes, it's to make it shiny. When you can draw your utensil through the potatoes and instead of a line you get a flat-out channel, because you're scooping it instead of stirring it about, you're done! Take it off the heat and let it cool. It'll be very sticky. Pack it up in whatever containers you have handy that you can fit it in when it's cool and store in the refrigerator. Probably don't count on it lasting for more than a week unless you freeze it. Cleanup is probably going to be terrible because sticky potato all over your stewpot and wooden spoon/paddle, but it's pretty delicious. Serves eleven and leaves leftovers, but mostly because we eat it in tiny portions with other New Year's foods. If you serve it as a dessert item in like reasonably sized bowls it probably serves like eight. Probably adjust potato quantity depending on how many people you have around to help you eat it and reduce/increase sugar accordingly.
Oh man, I'll have to ask my mom to send me her recipe file (she keeps a big-ass digital file of all our family's favorite recipes)...I'll have a lot to contribute. (And it's all vegetarian--my folks are both veg--so for any vegetarians on the forum...you might find these useful. c: ) But I'm on my laptop now and I don't have those files, so I'll post them later?
So there does exist a thing you can put on top of splattering-type pot to catch the splatters before they get everywhere. I don't think they have a way to mount them to spoons, yet, but there's a good idea. (Assuming it's detachable for washing, of course. Trying to maneuver a spoon attached to a screen into a dishwasher is rather difficult.)
Does it work for while you're stirring? Because if it does I want like five. SoCal winters are not exactly the epitome of cold so after a while wearing a sweatshirt and oven mitts gets pretty hot when you're standing over a lit stove. I would just leave it but the recipe won't let me because sugar burns like a mofo and part of the reason why the process is so goddamn laborious is so it turns out properly golden in the end.
The one I originally linked doesn't, but it seems that this one should work for small-to-medium pots. (Haven't found anything with that kind of slot in large, though. You may have to buy a regular one and cut a hole in the center, bending the little pieces of metal back.)
Does anyone have suggestions what I could do with a surfeit of basil? My plant is thriving on the windowsill and I can't keep up. I've already made a huge batch of pesto which didn't even put a dent in it. Plus I can't eat tomatoes because trigger food, so no insalata tricolore (much sadness).
substitute strawberries for tomato. works in most dishes. Like can you make icecream? you could try making strawberry basil icecream or something like that.
Oh man heck yes @ this thread. I'll toss in some recipes in a bit, but as a note all of my recipes are Gluten Free and generally good for poor digestion!
freeze it in olive oil! just throw your basil leaves in the blender with enough olive oil to get them moving, pulse to roughly chop them, and pour the resulting aromatic slurry into ice cube trays to freeze. keep the cubes in a baggie or tupperware and use one on pasta occasionally. my basil plant is getting uppity, i'm gonna need to do this again soon.
I have recently discovered the joy of one-pot pastas. This seems to work much better with dry pasta than the semi-fresh kind you find in the refrigerated case, so save your fancy fresh shit for later. Couple handfuls of dry pasta into the pot. Just enough stock to barely cover the pasta into the pot. Couple handfuls of veggies (spinach, halved cherry/grape tomatoes, broccoli, squash, whatever) into the pot. Protein into the pot (or not). Cover, simmer on medium until the pasta is done to your liking. Turn off the heat, uncover the pot. There should still be some liquid left, but not like...soup or anything. Pour off some liquid if you think you need to, but leave at least, like, a quarter cup or so. Drop in a spoonful of cream cheese, stir till cream cheese is melted. Add parm, basil, whatever else you want to add. Thanks to the starch that cooked out of the pasta, the stock/veggie juices/cream cheese stuff turns into delicious sauce. Dump it in a bowl and put it in your face.
oh hey, cool. i've seen a lot of recipes for this kind of thing, but they always seemed to rely on tomatoes to provide the liquid, and i don't like tomatoes (texture thing, i like the sauce just fine). using stock makes sense though.
here is my most recent triumph -- teeny fried apple pies! 5-6 apples, peeled and cored, chopped up pretty small 1 stick butter 1/2 cup raw sugar (or brown sugar) 1/4 cup dark rum 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp ground cloves 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg 1 tbsp corn starch 1/4 cup water won ton wrappers cinnamon sugar melt the butter in a big skillet (or a wok, that'd work too). mix in the sugar, spices, and rum and heat until it starts to bubble. add the apples, stir to coat, and turn the heat way down; cover it and let it burble gently to itself until the apple is quite soft, 10-20 mins depending on the type of apple and how ripe it is and so forth. mix the cornstarch and water together, and add that to the apple goop, stirring it in well. continue to simmer it until it thickens. then take it off the heat and let it cool to room temperature (or fridge it, and do the next part the next day). when the mixture is cool, fill your won ton wrappers. i guess you could use egg roll wrappers and make bigger pies too, i just like the teeny ones. this recipe makes approximately a fuckload; if you're not going to eat them all right away, freeze the uncooked extra rolls on cookie sheets, and move them into bags once they're frozen; that'll keep them from sticking together. extra filling is good on waffles or you could mix it into pancake batter. deep-fry the resulting itty packages of yum until crispy, then roll them in cinnamon sugar. let them cool a little so you don't burn your face off. devour! edit: whoops i forgot to write the spices. those are important!
Not a huge fan of tomato texture myself, I can eat tiny ones whole but if I use bigger ones at all, I have to rinse the seeds and goo off them first. :} I use both stock (well, water with soup base) and tiny tomatoes in my one-pot pasta and you'll be pleased to know that other than their skins, the tomatoes pretty much just vanish into the sauce (other than the seeds but those can be rinsed away before the tomatoes go in the pot). Should work fine without them anyway, though.
Tummy soothing "i feel bad and dont want to eat" drink Some sort of milk. Usually i do this with soy milk cause thats what i have on hand, but coconut milk is delicious thick and creamy and almond milk is good. Nonfat would work but is less helpful since the fat is pretty much what youre using to placate the angry stomach gods. Sweatener. Honey for preference, but you can use sugar/stevia/splenda whatever too. Whatever of the following youve got to hand: Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom. Pumpkin pie spice mix in a pinch. Optional: splash of brandy or rum, half a tsp butter
CrockPot Lasagna! (No pre-boiling the noodles!) 6qrt slow cooker 1 lb package Italian Sausage (The kind packaged like hamburger works best, though you can squeeze it out of the sausage tubes if you want) 1 lb ricotta or cottage cheese 1 pack thin sliced provolone or mozzarella cheese 2 jars red pasta sauce (I like Four Cheese because I no longer know what a healthy amount of cheese is. Add extra garlic, onion, and seasoning to taste here) Parmesan cheese to taste 1/2 box uncooked dry lasagna noodles Brown & drain the sausage, then LAYERS! (I have no measurements for layer depth but you want at least three layers) 1/3 Sausage Sauce Provolone Noodles Ricotta Noodles 1/3 Sausage Repeat Save a little sauce to cover the top layer (whatever it is) and top that with Parmesan. Cook on Low for 3hrs You can also drop the meat and swap out the lasagna noodles for ziti and TADA it's "Baked" Ziti
Yellow curry Saute a small onion, two tbsp chopped garlic, and 1-2 thumb sized chunks of ginger grated up in a wok or big pot. Brown chopped up chicken breast. Add a tiny bit of cayenne, a tbsp each cumin and chili, and 2 tbsp yellow curry. Break a head of cauliflower into florets. Add enough water or chicken stock to just cover. Simmer uncovered til the cauliflower is soft and the water's mostly cooked off. Add a handful of frozen peas, and a can of coconut milk. Serve over rice or naan flatbread. My mom always puts chopped apple and yogurt and chutneys and stuff on the side, but i like it better plain.
oh hey, awesome! fussing with floppy noodles is why i never make lasagne, even though i love it a lot. it's like a layer cake... of meat! i gotta try this.
When I make lasagna I use fresh lasagna noodles. My recipe calls for them, that way I don't have to mess with floppy lasagna noodles either. And I never have :P
