supper tonight: twice-baked chicken casserole 10 medium red potatoes, baked 1 pound chicken, cooked and shredded [6 ounces bacon, cooked and crumbled] 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese 2 medium green onions, chopped 5 ounces evaporated milk 8 ounces sour cream 0.25 cups butter, melted 0.5 teaspoons garlic salt (or powder) 0.25 teaspoons black pepper cut up the potatoes mix together potatoes, chicken, bacon, cheese, and onions mix together evaporated milk, sour cream, melted butter, garlic, and pepper pour sauce over potato mixture, stir in bake 40 mins at 350°F one of my favourite casseroles. the evaporated milk really makes it superb.
I'm making garlic soup right now. I usually double the recipe but it originally went something like: 1/4 cup of olive oil 2 cups of bread, cubed (I usually use French bread, and triple this number because I like thicker soup) A big thing of garlic, or about 15 little things (I'm forgetting the words - cloves?) sliced thinly Some cayenne (I use whatever's around, today it was creole pepper) Salt to taste 5 cups of water (or chicken stock, but I don't eat that so I haven't used it recently) (Optional) as many eggs as you have people eating the soup Pour the oil into a large pan that can double as a pot. Heat it a little, then add the garlic and bread. Mix them around for about five minutes. Add some seasoning and salt. Add the water. Mix well, then boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Let it cool a little bit. Use an immersion blender to blend it all together so it's one smooth soup. You can serve it now after heating it a little bit, or you can poach eggs in it while heating it to serve. For each person that wants one, crack an egg into the soup. After about 4 minutes they're cooked and you can ladle soup and eggs into bowls. Eat immediately. Save the leftovers and eat them later.
Apple pie muffins! Aka apple pie in a muffin tin. I've ignored half of the instructions I found online and messed around myself, so here's my approximation of what I needed & did: Pie crust: 4 cups flour 2/3 cups browned butter 10 tbsp water or milk some milk Pie filling: 2-3 apples 1/2 cup flour 1/2 cup white sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar an eyeballed amount of nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon each. you can also add cloves and lemon. Pie crust: mix butter and flour, then add water and knead to an even-ish dough. wrap in saran and put in the fridge while you prep the filling. Pie filling: wash, core, and chop apples. Put into large bowl and mix everything else in. Either grease the muffin tin or put in those little paper muffin cup thingies. Put aside about one half of the dough, or a bit less than one half. Divide the other half into 12, roll each of them out, and put into the tin. Spoon in pie filling. Separate the other half of the dough into twelve and roll out, or roll out, cut into strips, and braid into 12 lattices, then put over the filled muffin pies, fold border over. Brush with milk. Bake for 30-ish minutes at 390°F/200°C
tamago kake gohan. super easy, super quick, so so yummy. put rice in the rice cooker, then put it in a bowl, make a hollow, crack an egg in it and put soy sauce in - bam. it is my favorite thing right now, i am really obsessed with cooking salmon right now for whatever reason, if anyone has good salmon recipes? (or mackerel) i tend to just buy a salmon steak and cook it with olive oil and salt and leave it, as is best with fish
@sunflower prince Got a dishwasher? If so: take salmon, add lemon wheel or veggies or whatever you like with your salmon, wrap securely in heavy duty foil to make a nice watertight packet, put on top rack of dishwasher, run a cycle (without detergent, obviously), take packet out, unwrap, enjoy.
We can fail at bread together jesse. I´ve got the savory spiced bread down, but my attempt at sweet bread also became a brick. What I get for trying to cheat. (I put it in what i´d hoped was only a warmish oven to rise but was too hot.)
@TwoBrokenMirrors, delicious couscous recipe! It's multi-step, which in my book means only worth making very rarely. Ingredients for massive batch version we just made: 1kg uncooked couscous butter cumin, coriander, nutmeg, garlic, paprika, pepper yoghurt head of cauliflower rotisserie chicken 4 cups water or chicken broth. Rinse and then chop up the head of cauliflower pretty small, then mix in a bowl with enough yoghurt so it's all coated, along with spices to taste: I went heavy on the cumin and coriander and nutmeg. Spread all that on a baking sheet and put in the oven at 425°F for like 25 minutes or until you can poke it and like the texture (Science!!!). At some point, start your water or chicken broth to heat with a little butter and pepper. When it comes to a boil, add all of the couscous and take it from heat. Let it sit five minutes. I used an 8-cup baking dish and it ended up really full, so I split the couscous between that and another container. Shred the chicken so you have bite-sized pieces. By now the cauliflower should be done, so add that and the chicken to the couscous. Mix it all together, add a little more butter and spices if you want, and stick it back in the oven at 425°F for like 40 minutes or whatever: all of the ingredients are cooked at this point, so it's just making the flavors combine. You end up with a fuckton. Bonus: having cooked the cauliflower coated in something else, you don't get the really distressing raw sewage smell from it when it's leftovers.
discovery: if you put it in the oven with the oven off, but the oven light on, it will be a p much perfect environgment for bred rising.
i just had chinese chicken soup with a perfectly poached egg in it. it was so good i needed to tell someone. that is all. edit: tip for improving udon, ramen, and all other noodle soups ever: once the noodles are cooked, turn the heat way down but not quite off, stir in the broth and a little soy sauce, and gently crack an egg into it. cover and leave for 5 mins. result: the white will be soft but solidified, the yolk will be thickened but still liquid. some people like to chopstick open the top of the egg blob and dip their noodles in the yolk. personally i prefer to break up the egg and stir it in, thickening the broth and incorporating shreds of egg alongside the noodles and veg. so warm and soothing. <3
The gal with four years of high school cooking classes shoves in her two(four?) cents: 1. If you're making some kind of meat-gravy (The american kind with cream of mushroom soup but I suppose sausage gravy could work, but if you use sausage gravy make sure it's thinned out decently, cuz that stuff just thickens up like crazy and you want it to still be a gravy consistency at the end)(i've done this with ground beef and ground turkey) then when it's finished and just simmering on the stove you can stir up some pancake batter (I use a mix because I'm lazy but it doesn't matter), and dollop the batter straight on top of the gravy stuff in little rounds that don't touch, then cover the pot with the het on medium-medium low, and wait until you can poke them and they won't be wet in the middle. I don't remember where I got that idea but I don't actually use it because the taste is a little off (maybe because commercial pancake mixes are a tiny bit sweet and I'm picky about which sweets and savories are allowed to touch) and they're damp on top because that half was steamed and that kind of icks me out, but if it sounds good to you then have at it :D 2. If for some reason the sausage you purchased does not give you any yummy fat after cooking to make gravy with (I've noticed the sausage links do this) do not fear! Take the sausage out, cut it up, and let it sit on a plate while you work your gravy magic. Spoiler: Gravy Magic Step One, make your roux! Which is a fancy french word for a thickening agent made of fat and flour! Since you have no sausage fat all you need to do is dunk a good 4-5 tablespoons of butter in the pan you cooked your sausage in. Melt! Then grab a rounded tablespoon and a half (or three regular tbsp if you want to get fancy) of flour and mix it with the butter over the heat. Cook on low or low-medium if you're an impatient daredevil like me until the mixture has thickened and is sticky. You want a thick, goopy paste with no flour lumps. Add a little bit (half a teaspoon at a time) more flour if you find it necessary. Congratulations, you have made what I consider to be the most magical of Cooking Things. Step Two: That was the fancy bit, the next part is just how you make sausage gravy when you didn't need to substitute in the butter for your roux. Take about two cups of milk. Have more milk at the ready just in case, this gravy can get ridiculous. It's an adventure. Take a spoon or whisk and get ready to stir like heck for a few minutes. Pour in a few tablespoons of milk. Stir until the roux is all incorporated. Pour in a few more tablespoons of milk. Continue until it gets more liquidy than goopy. This is important because lumps are not our friend. Add a larger bit of milk, say half a cup to three quarters. Mix more. Do not fret if it seems too wet and you think you've ruined it forever. That is where the magic of the roux comes in. After a minute or two on the heat you should have a thick wet gravy. Add the rest of your two cups and then spend the next five-ten minutes watching it and adding small measures of extra milk (a few tablespoons at a time unless it's really thickened like mad, then maybe a quarter cup) until you like the consistency and it stays at that consistency for a minute or so. (Roux is good at it's job if you're using it correctly and will go on a fun little thickening spree. You will find yourself taking the milk that you thought you were done with out of the fridge to add a splash. Then put it away and mix. Then do it again. And then just leave the milk out for a few minutes while you get the dang thing under control. Remember, it's an adventure. Or you could look up exact measurements, but I'm telling you now, that won't save you much time. Unless you don't care what consistency you get. I'm not holding that against you.) Step 3: Season. Use salt and pepper and garlic and maybe some ground cloves or cinnamon or whatever doesn't seem like a terrible idea, I have way too much fun with my spices. Remember to taste as you go. Add your sausage bits. Serve with biscuits or toast or potatoes or rice or whatever you'd like. This served about four people but one of us was a four year old so maybe more like three. 3. Lazy People 'Chowder'. This is something I whipped up when I was hungry and digging through the cub hoards. Cubhoards. What is spelling. It's nice because it's more filling than regular soup and that was a thing I wanted. Take anything you can make soup out of, broth, watered down cream of mushroom, whatever. You want it wet, you want it tasty. Add cooked vegetables or meat. I used canned tuna and chicken successfully. Plop it in a pot and heat up until it's bubbling or at least hot enough that you don't feel like putting your finger in would be a great idea. I can't remember exactly how much wet stuff I had, but I'd say it was in the ballpark of four-ish cups. Take freeze-dried potatoes. Those ones you mix with hot water to make mashed potatoes. I have also used leftover, already cooked mashed potatoes. Put about three quarters of a cup of potato flakes into your hot soup material, or about 2-3 cups of already cooked potatoes. Stir until combined, then keep stirring for a minute so you can see how they've thickened up. Feel free to add more or less potato. Once you like the thickness season it up and feed your grateful family. Or yourself. If you want to sneak vitamins into little kids then add pre cooked, pre chopped spinach into the soup, or seaweed. We used a bag of dried seaweed from asian markets. It's tasty. Then do whatever you need to do if they start asking what the green things in the soup are. 4. Paula Deen has a recipe for Tangerine Cake. It has sour cream in it and is a very runny batter but cooks up freakin' beautifully into moist little light cakes. Add cayenne pepper to make them even more wonderful. I am not kidding. Add cayenne pepper (the powdered kind) and taste the batter until you are agreeable with the spicy citrusy-ness and dunk it into the oven. I made cupcakes with this recipe but i see no reason why a regular sized cake wouldn't work. Cool and serve with fresh berries or whipped cream or ice cream or any pairing that sounds good to you. These are marvelous. They won me a competition. Granted it was only a competition within my class but it was a really good class that year. I made these with a chocolate frosting back then but while they were tasty they are NOT really complimentary of each other. I think plain old whipped cream and berries would do them justice perfectly well. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/fresh-tangerine-cake-recipe.html Paula has an icing to go with it and you can check that out but I've never had the unadulterated cake and I'm not sure how it'd go with the cayenne. I can't imagine it'd go too terribly, I mean, it's tangerine. Spoiler: If that frosting of mine is anything that interests you... Take dark or semisweet chocolate. Melt over a double boiler with one cup of plain rice milk. The amount of chocolate should be roughly the same as the liquid. If you can't find rice milk heavy cream would be fine, I'm sure, we're just making ganache. Once they are melted together take off the heat and mix in cinnamon and cayenne pepper (I use powder, I wouldn't advise anything else since I'm not sure how it would react to the chocolate) and do that until it smells/ tastes pretty freakin intense. Cover and let sit in a fridge until it solidifies. Then take it out and scoop it all into a mixer. Beat until it isn't as lumpy, then add 8 ounces of plain old (not whipped, not flavored) cream cheese. This lightens the overall taste. Once it's all mixed with the ganache and isn't lumpy or too streaky, add at least a cup of icing sugar. I don't remember using more than three cups. Just add until it's a good icing consistency (pipeable or spreadable) and sweet enough. If you really want you can put it on the cayenne tangerine cake but I don't recommend it. It didn't taste BAD, it just wasn't a great fit. If you want it more intense, use 4 ounces of cream cheese. To be honest now that I think about it I can't remember how much I used. You really can't do wrong though. If you aren't sure just add 4 to start then taste before you add the icing sugar to see if you want it milder.
I'm kind of happy with an attempt I made with cooking just now. It turned into a lot larger than I expected, and I feel like this would work best either with a large diced tomato added at the very end, or with adding more cream and an aged crumbly cheese like asiago, but with what I have I'm still satisfied. Plus, I know my mom and fiance can both eat this, which is good since I really wanted to incorporate more veg in everyone's diet. Sausage and Vegetable Pasta 1 box of tri-color rotini (alternately, any sort of similar thick, medium-sized pasta noodle. Penne would work really well with this) 1 large head of broccoli, cut into small florets with the stem diced (alternately, you can use the frozen broccoli florets here). This should equal out to more than a cup, possibly two cups of broccoli bits 1 half a large carrot, diced. This should equal out to a little less than a cup of carrots 3 italian sausage links, decased 1 fourth to 1 half of a red onion, diced 1 can of sliced mushrooms (alternately, 3/4th a cup of sliced button mushrooms) 2 tbsp of butter (can replace with a separate oil, I just had butter on hand) 1-2 tbsp minced garlic, to taste salt and pepper, to taste optional: 2 tbsp to a 1/4th of a cup of heavy cream 2 tbsp Parmesan 1. Using a large pot, boil the pasta according to the directions on the box, for 12 minutes. At every two minutes, add about a fourth of the broccoli to boil, with the final two minutes adding the carrots. 2. Drain out the mix of pasta and vegetables into a colander. Do NOT rinse them to cool, allow them to sit there and steam as you prepare the next phase in the same pot you just used to cook the pasta and the vegetables. This will let the carrots finish softening, while letting them retain a very slight crunch as well as their bright color. 3. In the pot, add the butter, onions and garlic and start to cook on a medium heat. Allow the onions to go slightly translucent, all the while crumbling up the uncased sausage. Once the sausage is crumbled, add to the pot, before adding a little salt and pepper to the still-raw meat and the onion mix. 4. Allow the sausage to cook fully, stirring regularly to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom and to help the sausage cook evenly. As soon as the sausage is evenly cooked, add the mushrooms, giving an additional 2-3 minutes of cook time to warm up the mushrooms and slightly brown the sausage. 5. Proceed to mix in the vegetable and pasta mix. Add more salt and pepper to taste, as you stir it to mix this all together and get an even coating of everything together. At this point, I also added the heavy cream and the Parmesan, however I feel like this would have worked better with asiago and a larger dose of cream. Or again, a freshly chopped tomato. Either way, once everything is evenly coated, it's ready to be served.
(this fails to be a recipe and is my preening instead but two or so years ago in class we each made a lil pot of curry from scratch with an ingredient list of approximately a mile long and mine was the only one that did was it was supposed to and thickened up heeeeehehehe) (my rice was less preen worthy. I am absolutely terrible at rice. when I need to cook for myself on a regular basis I'm getting a rice maker and never worrying about it again)
none is as bad at rice as my first attempt @bornofthesea670 I burnt it to a crisp it was black coal-like substance chalky and awful
AAAAAHAHAHAHAHA oh my lord the charcoal rice the best part was the note you left in it and i can't even remember what it said (don't worry i'll never live down the doodle soup story) next month's meal plan: Saturday breakfasts: tater tot casserole (big hit from last month) potato cakes benny zucchini muffins (with eggs and bacon) banana-chocolate chip pancakes (with sausages) weekend dinners: beer & bacon chicken steak & potatoes sweet & sour pork chops sweet potato pork tenders (large batch, for D&D night) freezer meals (two days' worth each): Jamaican pork & couscous broccoli macaroni bake balsamic tea-glazed pork chops twice-baked chicken & potato casserole potato primavera tandoori chili baked ravioli sausage broccoli carbonara honey mustard chicken stew sausage ragoût bought pretty much everything (except for pork tenderloins for the D&D night, a lime, a can of beer, and some cardamom) for $160 ish. not bad. pork tenderloins will cost another $30, so probably $40-45 left to spend for the month (and then extra milk, maybe a box of cereal or two) this weekend is the weekend to put it all together. chop veggies first (while watching X-Files!), then cook the meats that need cooking, then put it all together and freeze the fuck...out...of... DAMMIT. I FORGOT TO BUY ZIPLOCS. -_-;;;;;;
@Imoyram I was making caramel sauce for flan once and it was taking forever to color so I left it for a bit and came back to a coal black, crusty spongelike substance that got black dust all over the sink as I was cleaning it XD I no longer leave sugar alone.
