Any "like to cook" foodies here?

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is French onion soup. Includes instructions for making the beef stock. (And I hope you're hungry; the recipe calls for 8 litres - roughly 2.1 US gallons - of stock.)

[Bob Schroeck]

Mm. Interesting. I've done my own French onion soup before, and the recipe I used included sugar -- a bit to help caramelization on the onions, a bit more to tweak the flavor after it's reached the "soup" stage. I think I like this better.

I also wasn't expecting a blend of cheeses for the topping. I usually do straight mozzarella or gruyere. This makes me want to experiment, especially with manchego cheese, which Peg and I just got a taste for in the last six months or so.

Oh, and on a mostly unrelated (except insofar as it involves cooking) we finally got ourselves a Kitchenaid standing mixer as our Christmas gift to ourselves. (We've been making do with a traditional hand-mixer and a stick-style mixer up until now.) We still need to unpack it, though, as it still doesn't have a proper place to live in the kitchen, but after all the cookies we made over the past holiday season, we decided it was time we had one.

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is compatible with the keto diet: Keto Noodle Bowl

Recipe versions with chicken or beef.


(If you're looking for "watch the biggest football game of the year" snacks, I refer you to post #161 in this thread.)

[robkelk]

You're in luck! Last week's radio recipe is yee sang - prosperity toss salad (EDIT: No, that isn't a typo.)

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is no scam: Nigerian Black Eyed Peas, also called "Ewa".

Contains "fish or shrimp".

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is Biltong salad. Contains cashews.

"Biltong? What's that?" It's cured beef or game, South Africa style. No, I hadn't heard of it either. In highly-cosmopolitan Ottawa with over a million people and our love of fusion (and creole) cooking, apparently it's available in one store.

[Star Ranger4]

And apparently can be purchased via the web (now at least) from:
http://www.biltongusa.com/

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is Keepover Strata - use up the leftovers!

Bonus time!

Recipes from Canada's Food Guide - aimed at people who don't usually cook.

Feature Recipes from Dietitians of Canada - for National Nutrition Month

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe gives you an excuse to not kick ass - you'll never be all out of bubble gum.

Rosewater bubble gum, to be exact.

[Star Ranger4]

*blink blink blink* Rose water for flavoring? bah... right... where is that delete button....

[robkelk]

I'm sure you can swap something else for the rosewater.

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is for a mortadella panino.

The story's about the mortadella... but the deli owner isn't sharing the recipe for that.

[Aleh]

Since my, ah, "triumphant" return to this forum, I might as well share a few of my own recipes. I've written a few of them out elsewhere on the Internet, but... well, might as well do so here.

So we'll start with one that I haven't posted elsewhere: My recipe for a rather interesting tomato-fennel salad.

Equipment:

• A salad bowl.
  
• A chopping board.
  
• A chef's knife.
  
• A wooden spoon or stirrer.
  
• A steel or aluminum frying pan capable of tolerating high heat. 
  
• A stove burner. Gas is preferred -- if you're using a glasstop or coil burner, transfer the pan to another burner whenever I tell you to turn off the heat.
  
• A kitchen sink (for washing vegetables).
  

Ingredients:

• Lettuce, or your favorite salad greens.
  
• 1-2 decent-sized tomatoes, the fresher the better. You'll want enough diced tomato to cover the top of the salad in a reasonably thick layer.
  
• Roughly 1 cup of freshly and roughly-chopped fennel. From experience, this uses 1/3 to 1/2 of a bulb. Think "one inch strips".
  
• About half a pepper (red works best flavor-wise, IMHO, but good presentation involves contrasts. You may want to substitute orange, yellow, or even green pepper to taste).
  
• Olive Oil
  
• Feta or a crumbly goat cheese.
  

Wash and dry lettuce, and layer on the bottom of your salad bowl. Julienne the pepper. Add the pepper to wherever you're storing the fennel.

Put the frying pan on a burner and add a bit of olive oil -- a little more than you normally would to saute. Put the burner on high. When you start to see vapor rise from the oil, toss in the fennel and pepper.

(Alternately, use this method.)

Stir regularly, continuing to saute until the fennel is reasonably cooked and has changed color, becoming slightly yellowish and transparent (but still crunchy). Turn off the burner and add a bit more olive oil. Stir a bit more, until it stops sizzling and some of the olive oil remains visible as fluid.

Dice the tomato and spread over the lettuce. It should make a reasonably thick layer. If you need more tomato, dice another.

Toss the contents of the frying pan (which should have cooled down some more by now, but still be warm) on top of the tomato and lettuce.

Crumble the feta or goat cheese on top of all of this.

Serve.

[ECSNorway]

Tonight's dinner: Onion-Mushroom Teriyaki "Pizza"

Ingredients:
4-5 cloves Garlic
1 largeish yellow onion
4-6oz mushrooms
Butter
1/4 cup soy sauce (low sodium)
A packet of shredded mozzerella cheese
A bottle of good sesame-teriyaki sauce
Some nice sourdough bread.

Put about 2-3 tbsp butter in a large frying pan over medium heat. While that warms up, peel and thinly slice the garlic. One the butter is melted, add the garlic to the pan.

While the garlic does its thin, peel and slice the onion, go for about 1/4 inch slices to get nice half-rings out of it. After the garlic's had a few minutes to soak into the butter, toss the onion in.

Let the onion cook, stirring occasionally, for 5-7 minutes. While it does, clean and slice the mushrooms (about 1/8 inch is my standard). By the time you toss them in, the onion should have started to brown.

Continue cooking for another 5-7 minutes, still stirring occasionally. Add the soy sauce and continue cooking until most of the liquid has cooked off.
Turn off the heat but do not remove the pan.

Cut 2-4 slices of bread, about a half inch thick. (The number will depend on how wide your loaf is, 4 slices for standard sandwhich-size loaf, mine is much wider so I just do two.)
Thinly spread some butter over them, then a sprinkle of mozzerella cheese.
Scoop the onion and mushroom mix onto the bread with tongs, covering nicely. Drizzle on some sesame-teriyaki sauce and add pizza-like layer of mozzerella atop.

Shove the whole thing in your toaster oven or broiler and cook until the cheese is melted and starts to brown.

Remove. Slice in halves. Serve.

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is special for Mother's Day as celebrated in Syria on March 21: ruz ma bezella

Beef, rice, peas, and spices.

---

Recipes and food ideas that the youngsters can help with... or, in some cases, make themselves:

4 Things To Make With A Bag Of Frozen Peas - quick recipes for Keema (mild beef curry) and onion and pea soup, and two suggestions on how to serve pasta with peas.

Quick And Healthy Fish Baked In Parchment Packets - Poisson en papillote, easy enough that a youngster could make it (assuming you trust a youngster with an oven at 400F). The provided recipe uses salmon.

Dinner on the Couch Tonight? Try These Fresh Takes On TV Dinners - more suggestions than preset formulas. Dinner Bowls, Fried Egg Hash, Mac & Cheese, Thin Crust Bar-Style Pizza (needs tortillas), Slow Cooker “Thai” Chicken Thighs (this one actually has a recipe), Noodle Bowls, and "A Big Salad".

(I wonder what ECSNorway's recipe would be like on a tortilla instead of the sourdough?)

Vegetarian Lasagna You Can Make In The Slow Cooker - er... vegetarian lasagna you can make in the slow cooker.

[ECSNorway]

(I wonder what ECSNorway's recipe would be like on a tortilla instead of the sourdough?)

Hmm, could do it almost enchilada style... might even add some chicken.

[robkelk]

Last week's radio recipe is quintessentially English: Scones

If you don't have access to the product of a working heritage gristmill, you can replace the Watson's Mill flour with all-purpose unbleached whole-grain flour. EDIT: But it's worth getting the heritage gristmill flour if you can.

[Bob Schroeck]

...I'm going to have to try that one. Peg and I are fond of scones, but that recipe is different from any we've ever previously done. Lard and sour cream? Interesting...

[Inquisitive Raven]

As usual with such things, I'm trying to figure out how to cut the carbs in this. I can grab a random erythritol based sweetener in place of the sugar, although Swerve is the one I keep around the house. Maybe use flax meal in place of the Watson's Mill flour. Unlike the original flour, that would be more for texture and color than flavor. The question is, what do I use in place of the white flour? I might be able to make a 1:1 substitution of almond flour for the white flour work or I could experiment with two cups of coconut flour. The problem with coconut flour is that the recipe already calls for six eggs. I shudder to think how many would be needed if I used coconut flour.

Oh well, something to think about after I get my hands on a vacuum sealer to make freezing leftovers easier.

[robkelk]

I should have posted this one yesterday so people could have followed the livestream; I was late and missed it too.

Last week's radio recipe is orange chicken. Contains soy.

[Star Ranger4]

Huh. My recipie for Orange chicken is a trip to costco.

[robkelk]

Leonardo da Vinci was a vegetarian. (It's interesting that we know that... Anyway.) Here's his recipe for chickpea soup, copied from this blog post

Wash a pund or more of chickpeas in hot water. After being washed they should be put in a pot to simmer without water. With your hands mix half an ounce of meal, a lil oil and salt, and twenty grains of coarsely ground pepper and ground cinnamon, and then put this near the hearth with three measures of water, and add sage, rosemary and finally chopped parsley roots. Let this bill so that it is nearly cooked, drop in a lil oil; but if it is juice for sick persons, only add a lil oil and spices.

---

Last week's radio recipe is two recipes - for cocktails.

[robkelk]

While working on a page about Callahan's Crosstime Saloon for the shared-world project There's Nothing Better, I discovered that the Callahan's Cookbook had disappeared from the live web.

Here's the most recent version in the Wayback Machine.

[Jinx999]

Random question.

Are the carrots available in Japan different from the ones in the UK (and I presume the US)? Because I find carrots sweet and there are lots of scenes in Anime of children complaining about how bitter they are.

[Aleh]

Random question.

Are the carrots available in Japan different from the ones in the UK (and I presume the US)? Because I find carrots sweet and there are lots of scenes in Anime of children complaining about how bitter they are.

There are differences in carrots even here in the US -- nevermind heirloom varieties and the like. Publix, for instance, almost never carries the thicker varieties (which are better for soups and roasted carrot recipes), for instance... but that's only a superficial thing.

Broadly, there are five or so varieties (or categories of varieties) of carrots that people think of: Danvers, Nantes, Imperator, Chantenay, and Ball or Mini. Most grocery stores sell the Imperator varieties over the others -- perhaps because they're the sweetest. I mean, seriously -- if you get into the actual cultivars, they have names like "Sugarsnax 54."

Or it could be about their physical durability, comparative uniformity of shape, and length. Some of the product descriptions suggest that might be it.

Based on this conference presentation, which is admittedly not the best source, carrot production in Japan tends towards the Kuroda or Kuroda-Chantenay varieties... which kinda confuses me, given that Kuroda is a Chantenay variety (although it may just be an issue of different classification and taxonomy systems coupled with my only passing familiarity with the subject). I do suggest watching at least the first bit, as he has multiple pictures of what the carrots actually look like at market.

(I stopped watching about three minutes in; even though he's talking about some reasonably interesting things, I'm tired and his accent makes him hard to follow. Plus, well, YouTube video from a conference I've never heard of.)

Further research does generally back that point, however... so the short answer is "yes" -- Asian and American markets tend to prefer different carrot varieties. The somewhat longer answer is "kinda", given that other varieties of carrots are available in both types of markets.

Oh, and I have no idea about carrot sales in the UK.