JCC Tomo-spiced karkana ribenes - the foodies' thread

As I've gotten more and more into bread baking, I've found the biggest thing is to get comfortable with yeast. If you're using fresh yeast, it's pretty easy and you can just toss it in with some warm water and then get on to adding the rest of your ingredients. Active dry yeast is a little more fickle and it's just a matter of using the right temperature liquid (without using a thermometer, the best way to measure is liquid as warm as you can keep your finger in it for 15-20 seconds without it being uncomfortable) and letting it get nice and foamy before continuing with the recipe. Oh, and feeding that with some sugar to help the yeast activate!

And never be afraid to add more or less flour than a recipe calls for. Humidity and elevation will play into your breadmaking. I don't know how many times I've had to add significantly more flour to a recipe because I'm staring at a bowl of goo.

It's honestly just one of those things you have to dive into and keep at until you get comfortable with it. You may end up with some semi-failed recipes, but that's how you learn!

harpua Chyntuck

 

I've always wanted to make monkey bread.

 

Easter lunch today. It was just the two of us, but we meant business.



And this was for dessert, but we saved it for later *burp*



And now, siesta time. Life is so difficult...

 

What's that on the left of the first pic?

 

It's called kokoretsi - seasoned lamb offal wrapped in intestines and roasted, and it's fabulous if you're into that sort of stuff. The traditional Easter meal normally further includes a soup called mageiritsa, which is also made with offal, but I didn't bother this year. It's way too much trouble to prepare and my butcher doesn't sell the offal all cleaned up and sliced and diced for it (which is kind of lucky because I think I'd be dead now if I had another mouthful of food )

 

Sounds offal... (groan)

Actually I like some offal - chicken/turkey livers, for example. When I get a turkey for Christmas I make sure it has giblets because I like to saute/eat the liver while the turkey is cooking.

 

I hear you. Bought some tomato and spice plants to plant yesterday.

 

I planted too last weekend -- mostly herbs (parsley, dill, basil, etc) but also some rocket and spinach, because dp4m pasta has become the standard backup plan in this house and it's nice to have fresh greens available 365 days a year for that recipe

I also planted two avocado stones over the winter and they're coming along nicely.

 

No herb has ever survived more than a month here and I don't know why. Basil, thyme etc. die within a week, rosemary holds up for a while, but not enough. Tips?

 

My former prime minister has been lying on TV for the past hour, so here's an updated index of this thread -- this time I included recommendations for foods and restaurants as well as recipes. (I also merged the "old" index in this one, can a mod please update the link in the OP?)

Boba Nekhbet recipes

• Banana bread

Chyntuck recipes:

• Chicken with orange/lemon juice and bell peppers
• Pork/boar with honey and raisins
• Fish soup
• Imam baildi
• Baked chick peas with spinach, + fried feta cheese with honey and black sesame
• Lentil soup
• Spicy vinegar
• Tahini rolls
• Vasilopita (new year's cake)
• Corfu cheese pie
• Anthotyro (Cretan-style cream cheese)
• Tahini cake (adapted from xblackout's peanut butter cake)
• Rakomelo

Darth Morella recipes

• Chili chicken

dp4m recipes

• Pasta with garlic and anchovies + a variation thereof
• Ideas to prepare chicken thighs
• Slow-roasted boneless leg of lamb
• Chateaubriand roast
• Filet tenderloin, with roasted Brussels sprouts and shiitake fried rice and the leftover sandwich
• Pasta with white wine sauce and sausage
• Meltdown sandwich
• Brisket with mushrooms and onions and the leftover sandwich

Ewok Poet recipes

• Caprese kabobs

Ezio Skywalker recipes

• Various, including mammoth burgers

Findswoman recipes

• Burmese-style Crispy Shredded Poultry
• Two-Tuna-Avocado Salad
• Kofta Meshweya
• Machaca (Tucson-style shredded beef)
• Very Fluffy Eggnog

Healer_Leona recipes

• Marinated chicken breasts with mushrooms
• Blackened tuna with mango salsa and brussel sprouts
• Banana bread
• Marinated pork chops
• Throw-together jambalaya

hudzu recipes (you may want to reduce the quantities, unless you have an army to feed )

• Cheese grits
• Whipped cream
• Carrot soup
• Creamy spinach

JoinTheSchwarz recipes

• Paprika chicken bites
• Mushrooms or Champis
• Aromatic olive oil
• Garlic chicken (with 40!!! cloves)
• Turkey lettuce wraps (check out the discussion after the post, there are more recipes and ideas)

mavjade recipes

• Bacon butter
• Red pepper, mozzarella and basil stuffed chicken
• Cinnamon apple chocolate chip scones

xblackout recipes

• Thai-style chicken and root vegetable soup
• Brown sugar cupcakes with sage browned butter and a pumpkin cream cheese frosting
• Thai-ish marinade for pork
• Red Wine Cake with Blackberry Cream Cheese Frosting
• Chicken with veggies, salsa and macaroni
• Cinnamon rolls
• Marinated chicken
• Stir fry
• Amaranth porridge
• Peanut butter cake
• Brown rice risotto

Miscellaneous

• Bread making tips -- part 1 -- part 2
• Ideas for Christmas meals - starts here
• Ideas for Easter meals - starts here
• Ideas for juices and smoothies - starts here
• Tips to fry stuff - starts here

Rogue's food reviews are all compiled here. Other stuff recommended in this thread includes:

Recommended reads

• The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine (hudzu)
• Joy of Cooking (Findswoman, xblackout) - check out the rest of the page for more cookbooks
• Williams-Sonoma website (KissMeImARebel)

Recommended dishes (no recipe)

• Apple cake soaked in cider, peanut butter mousse, and salted caramel (xblackout)
• Dan bing -Taiwanese breakfast dish (Ender Sai)
• Various Greek meat patties (Chyntuck)
• Wellington (Ezio Skywalker)
• Sougania - stuffed onion in lemon sauce (Chyntuck)
• Super-duper million-course menu (hudzu)
• Healer_Leona's aromatic olive oil and vinegar kit
• Greek Christmas sweets (Chyntuck)
• Catalonian canelones (JoinTheSchwarz)
• Hudzu's fancy toast with edamame and hummus
• Hudzu's fancy octapus plate
• Kokoretsi (Chyntuck)
• Baked Pumpkin Mac & Cheese (Ezio Skywalker)

Recommended restaurants & stores

• The French Laundry (GrandAdmiralJello)
• The Flower Drum - Melbourne (dp4m)
• The Fat Duck - Melbourne (MarcusP2)
• Le Bernardin (xblackout, dp4m)
• Da Ping Huo - Hong Kong (Ender Sai)
• Arzak - Basque restaurant in San Sebastian, Spain (JoinTheSchwarz)
• Nedim pastry and confectioner's shop - Komotini, Greece (Chyntuck)
• Le Zeyer - Paris, France (Chyntuck)
• Mad Rooster Café (Healer_Leona)
• Café des Spores - Brussels (Chyntuck)
• Oliviers & Co (dp4m)
• Thanassis kebab restaurant - Athens, Greece (Chyntuck)
• Parker House Hotel Restaurant - Boston, MA (mavjade)
• Hakkasan Hanway Place, Gymkhana, Bob Bob Ricard - London, UK (MarcusP2)
• dp4m's list of Michelin-rated restaurants
• Thoughts about food in Paris (Chyntuck)
• La Coupole - Paris, France (Chyntuck)

Fancy cooking tools

• R2-D2 baking set (Barriss_Coffee via the Lit social thread)
• Lightsaber BBQ tongs (LAJ_FETT)
• Wolverine-style bear paws for shredding meat (dp4m)
• Nessie ladle (harpua)

 

Thank you for doing all of that Chyntuck!

 

That's awesome!

 

hell yes. excellent work.

 

That post is amazing. Thanks for compiling it, I'll definitely be coming back to it.

Okay y'all, (Dave, cover your eyes) I got a heck of a rock hard stale baguette and the internet mostly tells me my options are breadcrumbs or bread pudding. Anyone have a killer bread pudding recipe they've used before? I've done my own googling and I can always go with Martha's, but I thought I'd prefer a tested one if it's an option. I've never made bread pudding before.

 

These in pots or in the ground? Basil is very tender - frost will kill it if it's outside. Rosemary likes it on the dry side - I have had a few plants in my garden for years. So far frost/snow hasn't killed it. I don't water it extra - I just let the rain do it. (I'm in the southern UK). Not sure on thyme - never tried it. But I don't think it's tender like basil.
If these are in pots it could be a case of too much water and not enough drainage. If on a windowsill maybe not enough sun.

 

We're making pineapple cobbler!

 

http://www.recipelink.com/msgbrd/board_14/2009/JUN/33668.html

This is from Carmine's, a family style Italian restaurant in NYC. The cookbook on the bottom of the recipe has more, but I can vouch for the chef and the dish.

 

You're welcome, everyone Thank *you* for the cool recipes and reviews.

I'm terrible with plants in general, but herbs I seem to manage without a problem. For parsley, dill, coriander etc I just put the seeds in a pot and they do their own thing (the Mediterranean climate obviously helps too, my pots stay on the balcony year-round). Rosemary, thyme and oregano I got years ago as small plants and re-potted them, they seem to be immortal. The only useful tip I have is never to put basil in the same pot as something else -- the basil will kill the other plant pronto.

 

I might also suggest a savory bread pudding. I don't have much experience with them in general, but it's my understanding that they're incredibly forgiving and easy to work with. Really all you need is a custard to soak the bread in and that's what's going to bind it together. I'd suggest you saute garlic and shallot with spinach, drain the juice off, and mix the spinach in the pudding with a nice soft cheese like goat or feta and maybe some onions or peppers and some crumbled bacon or something. Serve it up as a side with a steak or some grilled chicken.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

You could try this, although I'm not sure if this is what you meant when you said "breadcrumbs". It's traditional food, no haute cuisine, but that's what we do with stale bread in my homeland.

 

Why was I convinced that migas includes eggs? (Not that this recipe sounds bad AT ALL!)

I was saying yesterday that I wanted to have fresh spinach at home, and today a family friend who lives in a rural area outside of Athens visited and she brought a mountain of stuff from her garden, including a huge bag of spinach, so it looks like I'm going to be eating a lot more spinach than I ever bargained for. Tonight I made spanakorizo (spinach rice) -- a really yummy traditional dish that doubles as great comfort food because it's all soft and mushy. This is a cheap-Greek-food-out-of-my-childhood thing and there's no proper, standard recipe for it, so here's what I did this time, but the variations are endless -- you can also make lachanorizo (cabbage instead of spinach) or prasorizo (leeks), or combine spinach and leeks, etc.

I chopped up 4 small onions and fried them in olive oil in a big pot until golden, then I added some spices (salt, pepper, ground cumin, ground paprika, coriander seeds), lowered the heat and added the spinach leaves (the quantity was about what you can stuff in a supermarket bag). No need to add water at this point, I just covered the pot with a lid until the spinach "shrank" and then I added a big mug of rice (that would be perhaps one and a half cups) and a big mug of water. I mixed a bit and I let simmer until the rice absorbed all the water and spinach juice, and that's pretty much it. When serving what makes this dish special is to squeeze half a lemon on your plate -- it really brings out the flavour very nicely.

Everything in that recipe is kind of optional. I also make it without onion, or sometimes I put herbs instead of spices, etc. I like my spanakorizo with a lot of green in it but you can also vary the quantities depending on your taste. It's also a great way to recycle leftover rice -- in which case you don't need to add water, just let the rice absorb whatever juice comes out of the spinach.

 

The Tex-Mex version of migas is more of an egg dish.

 

In pots, in the kitchen. We have moderate heating in that part of the apartment in the winter and it's pretty hot in the summer.

A friend has rosemary in her garden as well and it grows well, but I don't remember her trying to grow anything else. My paternal grandmother had just about everything in her garden, including berries. I feel like a failure here.

Hmmm, so would you recommend planting them on my own, as opposed to *buying* those small potted plants from the supermarkets and trying to take care of them at home?

In my case, the plants stay on the balcony from mid-April to mid-to-late-October or so.

 

Well, I'm not one to recommend doing anything because I'm known to have killed plants just by looking at them but I plant everything from seeds every year (except the "dry" herbs like rosemary, oregano and thyme) and it works for me. When the winter is really mild they even survive from one year to the next -- right now I still have some parsley that I planted last September and mint I planted last spring. The stems have become so thick that I could probably use them for the fireplace though.