Cooking (not just dinner)

I’m sure between all the folks on BBS, we have a lot of good crock pot recipes too. My crock pot is my favorite way to cook (followed closely by my combination rice cooker / fryer).

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I guess what I have is basically the same, and with a large quantity the oven probably isn’t that much less efficient:

It makes really good roasts, and the steam stops it from drying out or burning easily. I’ll have to try using it more though.

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After my slow cooker died, I got a pressure cooker. Mostly same-same when it comes to recipes. But a recipe that’s a bit too big for a slow-cooker is way less hassle than a recipe that’s a bit too big for a pressure cooker.

Pro-tip - don’t overfill a pressure cooker. It gets very exciting.

ETA: :taco: for tea tonight.

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Apparently you can bake really good bread in them too.

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Not done but getting there.

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Looks great! And thanks for reminding me: today we made a kind of chicken masala dish with rice that had been pre-fried in biryani spices. Ohmygosh, it was amazing. The chicken had the texture of pulled pork, and the rice was perfect. I can’t claim credit for this though: My wife prepared it with an Indian friend who travels everywhere with her spices.

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Yes, we’ve gotten rid of almost all of the unions. Ripe and otherwise.

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I would LOVE to see this spice collection. Is it big? How many different spices?

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Thanks! :slight_smile: It’s my first-ever food GIF and I had more trouble making it than I anticipated. :cold_sweat:

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Making 6.6 lbs of fajita filling (I didn’t know it weighed that much until after I’d already made it) is a bit overkill for one week’s worth of lunches so I sampled it (a lot) last night. It turned out awesome. I can enthusiastically recommend the recipe (especially the seasoning ).

I’m not so sure about slow cooking something I associate with pan-frying but since it’s starting life out as leftovers, I’m not too concerned.

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Not many - I’ve noticed a few couchsurfing friends (especially from India or Korea) have a small selection so that they can make a handful of recipes with the right spices. One Indian guy we hosted a couple of weeks ago had one recipe he would cook for everyone he stayed with.

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I was hoping it would be some crazy suitcase filled with aromatic goodness! :wink:

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I was talking with a friend last night, and we played a game of, “if I could make anything for you, what would it be”. We went back and forth and I was a little evil (yeah, I am gonna test your paella skills, and you better know what a soccarat is). But the last one she said to me was, “something with strawberries”.

So I have a part of a recipe devised. I am going to make a little tool out of a brass tube so I can core and hollow out petite strawberries, fill then with just a smidge of sage infused caramel, then put the tops back on. But that can’t be it, there needs to be some supporting structure.

Perhaps a tiny almond sponge with a raspberry filling? It would have to be super small cause I want the entire thing to be bite sized. Puff paste with sage infused powdered sugar? (That so easy mode it feels like cheating, but I bet it would be delish). Or simply serve the sageberries on a skewer like a kebab?

Now that I think of it, that last one is inspired.

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Yeah, skewers. I had forgotten about these bad boys I picked up in Phoenix. And they will be suspended over perhaps a bowl of dense compound whipped cream for dipping. The caramel should be sticky enough to keep the sageberries together.

Eta

Okay, a couple of final thoughts. The green tops get cut off, and I replace them with teeny, tiny sage leaves. I may dye them, so they are a little greener.

Then I make a sugar coating, hard crack, and literally paint each berry. I want them to look like tiny jewels that glint in the light.

The bowl with the cream has to be wide and shallow, so when you dip the berry it only goes half way and you don’t get cream on your fingers. And the skewered sageberries are served community style to encourage sharing and playfulness.

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I was going to make asparagus risotto to cheer up my wife, who’s got a sinus infection and is feeling exhausted, but when I went to open up the asparagus I found it had gone rotten sitting in the fridge.

No matter - I had bought leeks earlier today along with some fancy-pants short-grained rice for the risotto, and we had cauliflower, so I made a big batch of leek and roasted cauliflower risotto, with a bit of Riesling, and fresh parsley and basil for flavoring, and with a big pan of roasted carrots as a side. It was a fair bit of work, between roasting all the cauliflower and carrots and making the risotto, but it was all delicious!

Risotto came out nice and creamy-textured as it should. You’ve just got to trust the process.

(No pics, sorry!)
P.S. No recipe, didn’t go near a cookbook for any of this. Just rocked it completely off-the-cuff.

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That’s one of the things I love about risotto. If you trust it, it will turn out great. If you doubt it, it’ll ruin your pans, relationships, and self worth.

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It’s all about the journey, not the destination.

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Hmm, my experience is more along the lines of “if you don’t trust the process, you get rice pilaf!” which isn’t exactly a disaster, but I’ll accept your wisdom as matching your experience.

It really does delight me that you can use the exact same ingredients and virtually the same proportions, cook it one way and get pilaf, or cook it with a moderately different process and get risotto.

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After making cheese bombs for years, I am finally converted to the slightly soupy veloute risotto. The flavor of asiago and romano should enhance the nuttiness of the arborio, not overwhelm it. And a strong stock, even though I loves me some strong fortified stock, is verboten.

Ironically what I consider a delicate risotto is still probably substantial for most people.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if a miso based risotto would work. Miso, carrot and daikon stock, plus (bombshell alert) nutritional yeast could make a solid vegan risotto.

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