food and such
Nov. 13th, 2013 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitMy schedule got switched around this week, so I had yesterday and today off instead of my usual Thursday and Friday. I was too broke to go out or anything (tomorrow = payday) so I did a lot of cooking.
Yesterday I cooked Pigeon Peas With Peanuts and Jaggery from Raghavan Iyer's indispensible 660 Curries. They're very good, although it would be more accurate to call them pigeon peas with peanuts, fenugreek leaves and coconut. I ate them with curd rice and stuck the leftovers in the freezer for busy days.
Today I did laundry and cooked/baked several things:
1) Bread, specifically the Easy Four-Grain Pot Boule from Nancy Baggett's Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads. It's pretty much a basic no-knead bread (you can google to find Jim Lahey's original recipe at the New York Times) but with cornmeal, rolled oats, and rye flour substituted for some of the regular wheat flour. I didn't have rye flour on hand, so as the recipe suggested, I just added a little more cornmeal and oats. And Baggett's recipes allow you to add the step of refrigerating the initial dough for up to 10 hours before beginning the first rise; I always do that now because it improves the flavor dramatically. Anyway, the bread turned out fantastic, with a real depth and complexity of flavor. I think it may replace the original no-knead bread as my standard loaf. Note: add more water than Baggett says. For this kind of bread, which doesn't need to be shaped, I've become very much a partisan of wet doughs because they produce a lighter texture and a crisper crust.
2) Chocolate-orange pudding cake. I adapted this recipe, which is itself an adaptation of a classic 50s or 60s recipe from Better Homes and Gardens. I reduced the sugar to just over half a cup for the cake part and scant 1/2 cup measures of the white and brown sugar for the pudding layer. Into the cake batter part, I grated the zest of a tangerine I'd had sitting around. Then I juiced the tangerine and added that to the water that goes into the pudding layer, along with a big heaping spoonful of orange marmalade. Oh, and I used more cocoa powder--I heaped all my measures of it instead of measuring level. This produced a cake that's less sweet than the original (this is a good thing) and has lovely chocolatiness and bittersweet orange. The top did get a bit too brown and crisp, though--I think it was the marmalade, so next time I'll turn the oven down a bit and maybe not cook it for the full time.
3) Potato soup with chicken. I wouldn't normally put chicken pieces into a potato soup, but I didn't have ham or any chicken broth, so I just used a chicken thigh from the freezer along with a big onion and a piece of celery, bay leaf and thyme, and simmered it all for an hour or so for a light broth. Added cream and chopped potato and at the end, because I was hungry for ALL THE CARBOHYDRATES, I topped it with dumplings. And then I ate it with some bread. *slips happily into food coma*
I think the moral of this story is that it's good to stock your pantry when you have a little money, because then it will see you through leaner times. After I paid all my bills I didn't have much left out of my last paycheck, but I already had flour and sugar and cocoa powder and spices and dried beans and rice, and a half empty jar of marmalde bought ages ago, and various odds and ends like some raw peanuts. Oh, and meat in the freezer. My local supermarket chain has these "buy one get one free" or even "buy one get two free" deals on meat every so often, so I end up with, say, eight pounds of pork chops stashed away. This is helpful.
Finally, a question. As I explore Asian cuisines, one thing that keeps happening is that I encounter ingredients that westerners like me aren't familiar with and may think of as weird/smelly/scary, like fish sauce, shrimp paste, or asafoetida. I was thinking of doing a casual series of posts about them. I'm not at all an expert, but that's kind of the point. It wouldn't be "let me teach you everything about shrimp paste" but "here are my reactions and thoughts as a newcomer to these flavors." Would that kind of post be of interest to anyone?
Yesterday I cooked Pigeon Peas With Peanuts and Jaggery from Raghavan Iyer's indispensible 660 Curries. They're very good, although it would be more accurate to call them pigeon peas with peanuts, fenugreek leaves and coconut. I ate them with curd rice and stuck the leftovers in the freezer for busy days.
Today I did laundry and cooked/baked several things:
1) Bread, specifically the Easy Four-Grain Pot Boule from Nancy Baggett's Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads. It's pretty much a basic no-knead bread (you can google to find Jim Lahey's original recipe at the New York Times) but with cornmeal, rolled oats, and rye flour substituted for some of the regular wheat flour. I didn't have rye flour on hand, so as the recipe suggested, I just added a little more cornmeal and oats. And Baggett's recipes allow you to add the step of refrigerating the initial dough for up to 10 hours before beginning the first rise; I always do that now because it improves the flavor dramatically. Anyway, the bread turned out fantastic, with a real depth and complexity of flavor. I think it may replace the original no-knead bread as my standard loaf. Note: add more water than Baggett says. For this kind of bread, which doesn't need to be shaped, I've become very much a partisan of wet doughs because they produce a lighter texture and a crisper crust.
2) Chocolate-orange pudding cake. I adapted this recipe, which is itself an adaptation of a classic 50s or 60s recipe from Better Homes and Gardens. I reduced the sugar to just over half a cup for the cake part and scant 1/2 cup measures of the white and brown sugar for the pudding layer. Into the cake batter part, I grated the zest of a tangerine I'd had sitting around. Then I juiced the tangerine and added that to the water that goes into the pudding layer, along with a big heaping spoonful of orange marmalade. Oh, and I used more cocoa powder--I heaped all my measures of it instead of measuring level. This produced a cake that's less sweet than the original (this is a good thing) and has lovely chocolatiness and bittersweet orange. The top did get a bit too brown and crisp, though--I think it was the marmalade, so next time I'll turn the oven down a bit and maybe not cook it for the full time.
3) Potato soup with chicken. I wouldn't normally put chicken pieces into a potato soup, but I didn't have ham or any chicken broth, so I just used a chicken thigh from the freezer along with a big onion and a piece of celery, bay leaf and thyme, and simmered it all for an hour or so for a light broth. Added cream and chopped potato and at the end, because I was hungry for ALL THE CARBOHYDRATES, I topped it with dumplings. And then I ate it with some bread. *slips happily into food coma*
I think the moral of this story is that it's good to stock your pantry when you have a little money, because then it will see you through leaner times. After I paid all my bills I didn't have much left out of my last paycheck, but I already had flour and sugar and cocoa powder and spices and dried beans and rice, and a half empty jar of marmalde bought ages ago, and various odds and ends like some raw peanuts. Oh, and meat in the freezer. My local supermarket chain has these "buy one get one free" or even "buy one get two free" deals on meat every so often, so I end up with, say, eight pounds of pork chops stashed away. This is helpful.
Finally, a question. As I explore Asian cuisines, one thing that keeps happening is that I encounter ingredients that westerners like me aren't familiar with and may think of as weird/smelly/scary, like fish sauce, shrimp paste, or asafoetida. I was thinking of doing a casual series of posts about them. I'm not at all an expert, but that's kind of the point. It wouldn't be "let me teach you everything about shrimp paste" but "here are my reactions and thoughts as a newcomer to these flavors." Would that kind of post be of interest to anyone?
no subject
Date: 2013-11-14 03:35 am (UTC)The chocolate orange pudding sounds delicious! As for pigeon peas, I'm having one of those weird experiences where you hear about something for the first time (a few days ago on a cooking show) and then it's *everywhere*!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-14 03:50 am (UTC)If you want to try them and have access to an Indian grocery (I know you live in a little town, but I guess you get to Melbourne once in a while?), you'll find them as "toor dal" or possibly "tuvar dal." They're small, golden-brown split beans. (The whole ones are also available, but hardly any recipes seem to call for them.)
as someone doing the same thing
I'd love to hear about what you've been cooking and eating, if you feel like posting about it.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-14 01:18 pm (UTC)