Cooking thread

Well, the pork leg was a washout. Between the busy-work at work, long hours and other matters, this isn't a good time. Then I called my friend at the meat packing plant to see if they could cut it into four smaller pieces, and he offered me a fair price for it (about 60% of the wholesale market value, which is not bad for something I got free).

So this weeks I tried three experiments:

1) I made egg-drop soup. Rather good, but by following directions exactly I got too much egg for too little broth. and too much ginger.

2) I baked real bacon. It turned out well, but I need to either get a more even oven or rearrange them better next time. I used it on mashed potatoes with bacon and peas.

3) I got some pork loin slices (I think it's pork loin, here it's called something like pork back) and baked them in a bottled sauce of smoky raspberry and chipotle, to which I also added a few morita chilies. the sauce was so thick I had to get it out of the bottle with a knife (like old-time Ketchup). After baking, though, it became a very thin liquid. Maybe I'll mix corn starch in along with the moritas next time.

Oh, I'll try the tequila on pie crust sometime.

Zillions of recipes calling for Tumeric as a spice. Anyone know of a recipe wherein tumeric is an ingredient rather than a condiment.

BTW, cooking bacon is a huge pain in the neck. Oh, baking it works very well. It comes out crispy but not hard, easy to chew, with very little curling and if you keep half an eye on it you won't even get burnt parts.

But, oh the grease goes everywhere!

I took a cookie sheet (I keep one in the bottom of the oven when I bake in order to catch spills) and covered it with aluminum foil. The idea was for the grease to stay on the foil. Ha! when I removed the foil, the baking sheet was slick with rendered pig fat. And the sheet's too big to wash easily in the kitchen sink.

I have a couple of strips left, which I'll try to microwave tomorrow for breakfast. Maybe that will work out better.

I made a dessert using marshmallows, which proved an interesting study in cultural differences.

The original recipe called for Rice Krispies and Graham cracker crumbs. Kellogg's has, for some reason, stopped selling Rice Krispies in Mexico. I could find not other cereal to adequately substitute, either due to flavor, shape or texture. So I decided to use plain roasted amaranth grain I had left over. Graham crackers are unknown in these parts, so I used thin, crumbly cinnamon cookies.

Without further ado:

3/4 stick of butter (or about 67 grams)
Additional butter for greasing
1 bag of marshmallows (about 300 grams)
6 cups roasted plain amaranth seed
3/4 cups cinnamon cookie crumbs
1 small jar of cake frosting (any flavor, but I recommend something like cream cheese or vanilla)
Chocolate (I used what I had, but I'm guessing it was about half a cup).
(*)

To make cookie crumbs, I break them up by hand, put them in a clear plastic bag, then smash them with a rolling pin. After that I roll the pin over the bag to finish the job. Make sure, though, you end up with crumbs and not cookie dust.

First, the chocolate needs to be melted. I do it by using a technique called "Baño Maria" in Mexico. this consists of taking a small pot (very small), filling it half-way with water, and setting the water to boil. Once it boils, you place a heat-resistant glass measuring cup in the water, then add the broken-up chocolate to the cup.

Timing is tricky. the chocolate melts faster than the marshmallows. If left in the cup in the hot water, off the heat, it will stay melted, though.

Before you do either, take a cookie sheet and place a length of wax paper on it, then grease the paper with butter.

So, melt the butter in a deep, deep sauce pan at medium low heat. Add the marshmallows and melt them, stirring at all times. BTW, melted marshmallows are a sticky horror. be warned they'll stick to everything: wood, metal, silicone and even Teflon. When they melt, add the amaranth (or Rice Krispies) and the cookie crumbs, stirring well to combine.

You'll be left with a messy mass of very sticky, very thick mixture (not to mention a very hard to clean pan). Spread it on the waxed paper. You can use a spatula, but your hands will prove most effective, especially as regards flattening the mixture. Careful, it's hot. Once it's flat spread a layer of frosting on top, with a spatula. Then spread the melted chocolate on top of the frosting.

Finally roll the whole thing in on itself, removing the wax paper as you go. When it's all rolled, and you of course will fold the last seam in, put it in the fridge to let the chocolate set.

The end result is a pinkish log (due to the pink marshmallows) with a pretty white and black spiral inside. This can be easily cut into slices with a kitchen knife.

I'm thinking of a name for this thing. But its very, very tasty.

From start to finish I took about 1 hour and twenty minutes. Washing the pan took half an hour. I found it best to fill it with hot water and let it rest a few minutes. Next pour out the water and carefully scrape the last sticky remains with a soft brush.

(*)Note there is no "love" listed among the ingredients.

Quote: Nareed

BTW, cooking bacon is a huge pain in the neck.

No its not. Get huge...huge turkey-sized platter. Dump on mounds and mounds of sliced potatoes, put several pounds of bacon on top and bake at very low temperature. Bacon will be perfect and grease will be absorbed as it slowly drips through the mounds and mounds of potatoes?

Ain't you never cooked in hobo jungle beside a Catching Out yard?


OOPS:.... --bake-- broil . The low temperature heat source above the bacon cooks it real, real slowly and the grease drips very slowly through the mounds and mounds of slowly cooking potatoes.

I also made egg drop soup again.

It's a lot of fun!

The recipe is very simple, bring 1.5 liters of chicken broth to a boil, add the seasonings (in this case some corn starch, garlic powder and powdered ginger), then get it off the flame and add the eggs. Take it off the heat and add some green onion and corn kernels.

The trick is to add the eggs. First you scramble them, then put them in a measuring cup with a spout, or any kind of vessel with a spout. Next you stir up the broth quickly (being careful not to splash hot soup all over the kitchen) and let the raw eggs drop (hence the name) slowly so they'll form long ribbons. If you add them too slow you get clumps, too fast and the ribbons will be too thin. The eggs will cook in the broth.

in a few weeks I want to try an egg drop hot & sour soup. Perhaps with thinly sliced mushrooms rather than corn.

I want to try the amaranth-marshmallow desert again, but in a different form. I'm still thinking of strawberries due to the color, which can be made pinker by removing most of the white marshmallows. Color isn't that important, most times, but there are some colors which evoke certain flavors. Pink evokes strawberry (or cherry, I guess).

I've thought to use strawberry jam or marmalade instead of frosting, and use white chocolate instead of dark. Speaking of color, though, I do get a slight cognitive dissonance when eating white chocolate. It seems something that light shouldn't taste like chocolate.

What I still lack is a name.

I made picadillo, without consulting recipes and with only minimal outside help (half of which was wrong).

See, my parents employed a woman, call her L, from the day previous to their wedding until her untimely passing in 2011, to cook and clean. She was very talented in the kitchen, and shortly most of what she did was cook. Her picadillo was the best there ever was.

Now, I've been able to reproduce some of her recipes solely from having eaten them. Many of these were obvious, like Mexican rice, chipotle mialnesas, etc. The picadillo isn't. naturally it has ground beef, onions, garlic and a poblano pepper cut into tiny pieces and sautéed to within an inch of its life. But there was bound to be something more. So I cooked everything, then I added about 3/4 cup of beef broth with corn starch and let the thing simmer til the broth was almost gone.

I came very close. partly I think I need a coarser grind of beef. The one I usually get is grass-fed, antibiotic and hormone free, but it's very finely ground. This makes the texture all wrong. Also I recall a more fatty flavor, which might mean the ground beef L used wasn't so lean as what I usually get. I don't think she added much in the way of spices, either, but I'll try something more next time. I just have no idea what.

I have a three-day weekend coming. I'm thinking of trying two new things. One is a variation on the chicken with white wine, without using flour or frying it at all. the other is real cheesecake. I loved the cottage cheesecake I've made, but it's just a little bit off. For the best I ever made, I added a piece of "low-fat" cream cheese to the mix. I'm thinking on going full out without regard to calories or fat, and to make a really nice topping for it (I'm also going to retake full workouts, cardio and weights)

We all have a three day weekend coming it is called the Superbowl! Do you have any suggestions for some nice appetizer type of dishes I could make?