JCC Tomo-spiced karkana ribenes - the foodies' thread

I want that fried cod deliciousness!

And no fancy Easter meal happening here. I don't really celebrate Easter unless I'm home with my family. But I did take some leftover roasted potatoes & carrots, reheated them in a pan with some butter & threw a fried egg on top.

 

We're doing brunch at this wonderful place that makes delicious omelets.

 

Revenge is a dish best served beautifully and then shared via photographs on the internet.

Those do look amazing.

 

Easter Monday is a UK (and European) holiday. So I did my weekly grocery shopping this morning and the store had sirloin steaks on sale. My holiday lunch will be one of those along with mashed potato, the rest of the mixed veg from yesterday and the rest of the bottle of shiraz. Lovely day here for the holiday as well - sunny and supposed to be warm. I foresee much lawn mowing and a few BBQs in my neighborhood today.

 

You're a fan of meat, did you ever have ćevapčiči (the meat from the first pic)?

 

That first picture kind of looks like dog poop, but the second pic looks awesome.

 

Can you, please, not always say what you think? I am getting anxiety attacks each time I see you post after me; and your subtle insults are starting to become annoying.

 

I'm probably always going to say what I think, but I'll be more conscientious about posting after you.

 

Can't say that I have. It looks delicious.

Harps is a real gem; you'll get used to her. Lord knows she's poked enough fun at me in this thread for my reviews, but I love her anyway. Case in point ( ):


Limeade – Whatta Burger Drive In, Russellville, AR



I don’t know much about Russellville or Whatta Burger. I know it used to be called Feltner’s Whatta Burger and that it’s been in their current location since 1967; a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that they’re right across the street from Arkansas Technical University. The place really does feel like a diner from a by-gone era, the kind of place where the high-school and college kids congregate on a Friday night. Think Pop’s from the Archie comics. Seriously.

So, there are a few things they’re famous for. The first is their cherry limeade, or rather it’s the first I chose to sample. I’d never had a cherry limeade before; the drink itself seems to hark back to a more innocent time. One thing there are plenty of down in my neck of the woods are Sonic Drive-Ins. They also offer a cherry limeade and I happened to be traveling with a friend that drinks the Sonic variety quite often. So I had her give it a try. I liked it; tangy and sweet in exactly the right measure, cherry flavor nicely set off by the sour twang of the lime. But what do I know? Maybe all cherry limeades are created equal. Not so, said my friend. I don’t know a limeade from a hole in the ground, but this is better than the fast-food variety apparently. It was good. Maybe not legendary. Above average. Whatever. 2 ½ stars.

tl;dr – sweet, tangy drink is part of restaurant’s retro style, but isn’t exactly spectacular. 2 ½ stars.

More Food Reviews!

 

Made a ridiculous stir-fry yesterday!

Start by preparing your sauce --
1/2 c chicken broth (or veg or whatever)
2 t cornstarch
2 T creamy peanut butter
4 t lime or lemon juice
1 T dijon mustard
1 T honey
4 t soy sauce
2 t sesame oil
1 T oyster sauce (if you have it)
1 t Sriracha or other hot sauce

Whisk this together until smooth and set aside.
Then prep whatever veg and meat you want to use. I sliced up some chicken breast into small pieces and tossed it with salt, pepper, and cornstarch (when we were eating it, my boyfriend commented that the chicken wasn't even necessary and it would have been just as good without it so don't feel like you need meat in this). As for veg, I used 2 thinly sliced carrots, half a yellow onion, 1 clove garlic, 2 small head of bok choy (does that make sense? is that how you describe bok choy?), and maybe about a 1/2 pound of snap peas?
Heat some oil (I would recommend sesame or vegetable) over medium high heat and once it's hot add your chicken. Cook through and then remove to a separate dish. Add a little more oil if needed and then toss in your onion and carrots. Once those soften a little bit (3 minutes or so) add in your garlic and cook for another minute. At this point I had a lot of crustiness from the chicken on the bottom of the pan, so I tossed in a splash of water to loosen things up. If you have extra broth on hand, you could use that too. Throw in the rest of your veg and cook for a few more minutes, then add the chicken and the sauce. Let that cook for another 2-4 minutes just to thicken the sauce and cook out the cornstarch taste. Serve it over rice or whatever, but I recommend spaghetti squash. I'm probably going back to the market to buy more of them since they were only 99 cents a pound and I'd much rather serve that as a side/meal addition than rice or pasta.

But there ya go! One of the best meals I've made in a while. A bit of prep work with all the vegetables but so delicious and flexible to fit your preferences.

 

Amaranth porridge for breakfast. Added some toasted coconut, sunflower seeds, and almonds, plus almond milk, blueberries and a drizzle of wildflower honey. It's super easy to cook and high in protein!

 

That looks healthy and yummy.

 

Not a juicer, but I make a smoothie pretty much every day. I'm kind of obsessed.

 

So. Orthodox Easter is on Sunday and I realised today that I missed all the good Lent stuff this year -- Lent over here is basically vegan, and there are some fantastic dishes and sweets -- so I decided to make Tahini-petimezi rolls. Okay, I was also in a pretty wild party last night and I wasn't really operational to do anything else

Tahini rolls are a Cypriot Lent food, but what I'm giving below is the improved Chyntuck recipe (there's no petimezi in the original version and it's unleavened dough).

For the dough:
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup honey
1 sachet yeast (8g)
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup orange juice
1/2 tsp salt
4 to 5 cups flour (it varies depending on the sort of honey you use)

For the filling:
1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste)
1/2 cup petimezi (grape molasses)
1/2 cup brown sugar

Dissolve the yeast in the water, add the honey, cover and wait 10 minutes until it froths.

Add the oil and orange juice and then the flour as if you were making bread (I use a stand-up mixer, so I know I've put enough flour when the dough forms a sticky ball around the paddle.)

Turn over to a floured surface and knead for a few minutes, adding more flour until it's not sticky anymore. Form the dough into a ball, put in a greased bowl, cover and let rise until double in size.

Mix the tahini, petimezi and sugar just before you punch down the dough, so that the sugar doesn't have time to dissolve. It should make a thick paste.

Punch down the dough, spread it out into a rectangle (50 by 80 cm or so), spread the filling over it and roll it up, then slice into 16 pieces (if you want your rolls to look really neat, wrap the big roll in wax paper and stick it in the freezer for 20 minutes before slicing).

Put the rolls in a well-greased baking dish and let rise for an hour or so until nice and puffy before baking in a preheated over at 180C for approx 45 minutes (as I already noted in this thread, I have a mystery oven that seems to take longer to bake things than anyone else's, so start checking after 30 minutes in case they're done.)

Voila! I'll be back later with a picture.

 

I change it up all the time! The one I had today was lemon, pineapple, grape, kale, and parsley with maca powder, bee pollen, hemp hearts, and chia seed. Just made one for tomorrow with grapefruit, beet greens, half a banana, strawberries, blueberries, pollen, hemp, and chia.

 

Tahini roll update: I forgot to take a picture, but they were great. The problem that happens sometimes (and I never figured out why it happens sometimes and not always) is that the tahini-petimezi mix sinks to the bottom of the baking dish -- the nice thing about it is that it caramelizes really nicely, but then you have to scrap the dish and spread it on the rolls again.

A simple way to avoid that if you want to be on the safe side is to cut your dough in 16 pieces, flatten each piece into a disk, spread the tahini-petimezi mix on it and then wrap and seal it to make sure it doesn't escape during baking. Then you spread a spoonful of tahini-petimezi on each bun so that it forms a nice sweet crust on top.

Also, since it's still Passover, you can do a Passover-compliant version by not putting yeast in the dough (if you consider sesame kosher over Passover, that is -- I'm a bit fuzzy about that specific rule). In this case you can do away with the water and add more orange juice or more honey if you want your rolls to be sweeter. You break your dough into 16 pieces, roll them out into a small rectangle, spread a spoonful of tahini-petimezi-sugar in the middle and fold over the edges/roll them up and seal them so it can't escape during baking. Then you roll that sausage-shaped thing into a spiral and add some tahini on top before baking.

 

I may have to get some beginner's bread tips from you. I love to bake, but aside from pizza dough, I've never done a bread/ I really want to get into bread making, though.

 

Yikes! I'm not sure I'd be really helpful, because I learned mostly by doing -- and I'm sure that xblackout has a lot of pro tips for the both of us. The way I do it is approx 600 ml liquid to 1 kg flour, plus 1 tbsp salt and 1 sachet dried yeast (8g) or 2 cubes fresh yeast (that's either 40 or 50g total, I don't have a cube at hand to check the exact weight). You'll probably need to adjust the liquid-to-flour ratio a little (I always have to when following American recipes, I guess that's because we have different varieties of flour?)

What I can tell you from experience is that it doesn't really matter if you put a bit less yeast, because in the end you can always let your dough rise a little longer so that the yeast can multiply.

For liquid, I always put approx 1/2 cup olive oil, and then water and/or beer (approx 2 cups) for the rest. Sometimes I also throw a shot of ouzo in there Admittedly I have a nearly-unlimited supply of olive oil from my village so I can be generous on that front, but I find it gives the bread a very nice aroma. In any case you want some oil, so if you don't have olive you can substitute pretty much any other variety.

For texture what I do is to set a cup of flour aside when I start. I make this really sticky dough with all the ingredients, then I knead it on a floured board, adding more flour until it stops sticking to my hands (it will be more firm than pizza dough when it's ready). Then I let it rise once or twice, depending on how fluffy I want it to be, shape it into whatever shape I want and let it rise again.

When I want to put "things" inside my bread (olives, cheese, sunflower seeds, cumin seeds, whatever) I mix them with the flour before I add the liquid. (Cumin seeds with beer are a great combination btw).

I like my bread with a nice thick crust, so I brush it with olive oil before baking at 180°C and I raise the temperature to 220°C for the last 10 minutes or so. But if you want to sprinkle it with sesame or some other seeds, you should brush it with water instead, so that the seeds "stick".

1 kg flour makes two loaves and in principle they should come out with a thick golden crust and be quite thick on the inside.

As you can see, this isn't an exact science, so basically I think you need to experiment a bit to figure out how you like it

 

Yeah, the "things" are key, for me. I like texture in my food.I put nuts in a ton of my recipes.