The recipe thread.

[WeAintFoundShit]

Oddly enough, completely independent of any threads on this board, my roommate and I were eating tiny triscuit pizzas last night, and I was cracking her up by yelling "TREAT-ZASSSS!" like a fucking goon.

But that's not what I'm here to tell you about.
I'm here to tell you about the bitchinest spring salad I've ever made, that I just made just now.

As far as ingredient quantities go, you'll have to figure them out on your own, but I'm sure y'all can do that.

Make a mustard vinaigrette by mixing a dollop of dijon mustard, a fair amount of red wine vinegar, half a teaspoon of salt, a few twists off the pepper grinder, a sprig of chopped or muddled parsley, and a sprig of muddled fresh rosemary (no stems), then whisk it as you slowly add in olive oil until it's about as half as thick as mayo, maybe even a little thinner.

Put that on:
50/50 Butter lettuce and fresh beet greens (no stalks).
Some canned tuna.
Chopped pecans, sauteed in butter (low heat, for a decent bit of time, so the butter can absorb, or evaporate, or go wherever it goes; just don't use TOO much butter, or it will never happen).
A fresh tomato, wedged.
Dried cranberries.

If you get the flavors to balance just right, it's salad freaking heaven.

[Sonic Rob]

CHEAP - EASY
There are few things I find handier to have or more satisfying to make than a nice, slow chicken stock.

This, of course, is made by saving all the bones, skin and fat every time you have roast/fried chicken. Keep them in a gallon ziplock baggie in your freezer til they add up to about a chicken+ worth of bits. Wings and backs are especially good.

Throw all the skin/fat, plus any wings into a stockpot – mine is nonstick, not sure if you need to add some oil otherwise but it couldn’t hurt – and heat it until the fat is cooking out of the skin and frying everything. Now throw the bones in, toss to coat in the fat, and let them fry up all golden. I am convinced this makes the final product tastier. Add any limp-looking veggies you have dying in your fridge’s crisper, especially carrots and celery. Add water to cover, and cook on the lowest possible heat for 3-9 hours, till everything is falling apart when you stir it.

Strain the lot into containers and refrigerate overnight. Skim the fat off and do what you will with it, then pour the stock into baggies and freeze – it lasts a few months. I like to save it in pre-measured 2-cup amounts, because that’s how much I use to make:

Hot and Sour Soup!

Technically, you really just need stock, water, vinegar, and white pepper for this recipe. It helps if you have meat (any will do, really, but I like pork, chicken and/or beef), mushrooms, soy/tamari, and sesame oil. Some other stuff may occur to me as I write this up.

Place your meat in the freezer for about 15-20 minutes, enough to firm it up without freezing it solid.

Stir/dissolve/melt 2 cups of stock into 6 cups of boiling water. Add: ¼ cup of soy sauce; 1 teaspoon each salt, sugar, and sesame oil; a few drops of hot chili oil; 4-6 tablespoons of vinegar depending on taste. I like a 50/50 mix of white vinegar and rice wine vinegar.

Take your meat out of the freezer and slice it very thin. Toss it into the hot soup and stir it about, and it should cook almost instantly. You can also dice up some tofu and toss it in at this point if you like, or throw in a bit of shrimp meat. Slice your mushrooms and toss them in.

If you like your soup thick, mix 1 tablespoon cornstarch into ¼ cup of hot water, mix it slowly into the soup, bring to a boil and then kill the heat. Beat a single egg, stir the pot so that the soup is spinning in one direction, and drizzle the egg in to make nice, rich egg flowers.

Stir in up to a tablespoon of white pepper. Slice a green onion thin to garnish each bowl.

[Pintgudge]

Take raw whole cranberrys,

dip them in egg white (as a glue),

roll in granulated sugar,

lay out to dry separated from each other.



Not too tart, not too sweet.

Merry Christmas!

[sun rat]

cheap - easy - large quantity - holidayish


Pumpkin butter

Ingredients
1 (29 ounce) can solid pack pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 packet unflavored gelatin (note: a box holds a few packets)
4 1/2 cups white sugar

Directions
Mix solid pack pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice and gelatin in a medium saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil. Mix in sugar all at once. Stirring constantly, return to a full boil and boil 1 minute. Remove from heat. Put in a clean, resealable container and keep refrigerated.

This is good on biscuits, on toast, as a filling in a layered coffee cake, etc. Okay, it's like having pumpkin pie filling already cooked and ready to put on anything except without any eggs and no pie crust.

[WeAintFoundShit]

The best goddamned French Toast you are ever likely to eat, courtesy mostly of my amazing, imaginary girlfriend from Canada.

Step one: Garlic Honey Butter.

It's just like it sounds.
Melt a few tablespoons of butter in with a tablespoon or two of good honey, and throw it in the microwave. Once it's all melted together, press in one clove of garlic and stir. Let it sit for a while (not long enough to get hard, just so the garlic can ooze and blend with the rest of it).

Step two: Bitchin bourbon French toast.

Also just like it sounds, but with a few twists.
Eggs
Milk
Cinnamon
Vanilla
and here's the kicker: half a teaspoon of thyme, and a healthy dollop of maker's mark (or whatever).
We made it with honey whole wheat french toast, since it's a sweet, savory type of thing.
Turn all of that into French toast.

Step three: blueberry bourbon compote

Take a fistful of fresh berries, and throw them in a small saucepan with just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook on medium heat, and once the water starts to simmer, throw in a small lemon wedge worth of lemon juice and zest, two tablespoons of sugar, and another dollop of bourbon.

Slice up some room temp brie cheese and layer it with the french toast with a healthy dose of the garlic butter in between. Put the compote on top and enjoy.

Sweet, savory, and the garlic ties the acrid taste of the brie mold into the rest of the dish and makes it gorramned delicilous.

[WeAintFoundShit]

Bacon Wrapped Dates.

Each one of these takes a half a strip of bacon, so you do the math as to how much you need.

You will also need:

The appropriate amount of dried dates.
Part of an apple
A bit of Chevre
Toothpicks

Using your preferred method of cooking bacon, cook the bacon until it's about 2/3 done.

Slice open the date so you don't end up with a hollow void in the middle of your snack.

Cut your apple into chunks about the same size as the dates, and heat them up in the microwave (or however you prefer) until they are warm.

Pack the date full of chevre, wrap it and an apple chunk together with a half a slice of bacon, and skewer it with a toothpick so it stays rolled up.

Place the whole lot into the oven at 425 degrees and bake it until the bacon is crispy enough for your liking. The point is to make the oven hot enough to crisp the bacon without totally nuking the cheese out of the center of it. The center should be warm and tasty and gooey, but without being totally melted and running out onto the tray. Therefore, you may need to adjust the temp so you can get the bacon to your liking without destroying the filling.

Let it cool a bit and enjoy.

(BTW, I sniped this recipe from a nice, fancy restaurant that charges $9 for three of these. I'm pretty sure we just made a whole fucking pan of them for maybe five bucks, and ours were better.)

[DerGolgo]

I'll just throw one in, just for the heck of it.

Ingredients:
Meat
Spices
Vegetables
A roasting bag or roasting tube.

Stuff the first three into the latter, shove in the oven 'till it's done and enjoy. 5 minutes of actual work preparing, NO CLEANING afterwards except wiping down the area where you cut your veg.
Works excellent with poultry and pork, haven't tried beef (because I respect it too much to experiment on it).

Examples:
Inside fillet of chicken.
Seasoned with ready-made gyros spice mixture. Some disappoint, but the coarse stuff I like lot.
Chop up an onion or two, drain a can of sliced mushrooms through a sieve, maybe chop up some paprika, throw it all in the bag.
180°C (about 356° Fahrenheit) for 40 minutes.
Serve up with tzatziki, goes excellent with the gyros seasoning, of course.

Sliced pork. Seasoned identically, vegetables also. About 25 minutes or so at the same temperature, if memory serves (haven't made any in over six months), but I always check with a kitchen thermometer anyways. Served as above.

I've prepared other bits of chicken or pork, schnitzel, pork chops, bits of turkey in much the same manner, using different seasonings, vegetables or condiments as the mood took me. Always quite edible, no fuss, no mess. Roasting bags rule.

[Pintgudge]

Tell us about the roasting bags?

Is that like the very thin heatproof mylar bag that you roast a turkey in...the one that tells you to put slits in it to prevent explosion?

Roasting tube?

Ehhh?

Enquiring minds wish to assimilate customs from far-away places!

[DerGolgo]

I guess the technology is the same as what you use for the turkey. Yes, you make a slit in it for the steam to get out.
Roasting tube is the same, but instead of a bag of fixed size that you only tie up at one end, you get a tube on a roll and can cut off however large a bit you need and then tie it off at both ends.
I don't know if Toppits, the only brand of this stuff I've seen thus far, has a market presence in the US, but they have an English website where you can peruse the product:

http://www.toppits.de/section_braten_en,1336.html

It's also microwaveable, apparently, and they make bags for steaming vegetables in the microwave. Tried 'em, but am not entirely convinced yet.

[Merlyn]

Here's one I came up with after getting the idea from a novel I was reading...

Expensive/Tasty/HUGE quantity/gets better the 2nd day

3 "Fish" Stew

1 pound (or more) fish fillets of your choice (I usually use catfish)
1 pound shrimp (I bet crayfish would work too)
2 cans (or one pound fresh) oysters (or clams, or scallops... some sort of shelled critter)
2 cans okra (or equivalent fresh)
2 cans Rotel tomatoes (any variety - I like one can of standard and one can of lime/cilantro)
2 cups rice (I use brown rice)
1 Onion, diced course

Salt
White Pepper
3-4 cloves of garlic
tsp curry powder
Soy Sauce (a goodly splash)
Paprika
optional: cayenne pepper

Season the fillets with just a touch of salt, curry powder and white pepper and cut into bite-sized chunks.

Get a skillet good and hot, add a touch of olive oil, and sear the fish lightly (don't want to cook it through, just a little color)

Break out a BIG stock pot.

Combine everything and just cover it with water or you could try vegetable or fish stock if you had some handy.

Bring to a low boil over medium heat and then lower the heat and simmer for an hour or so to get the spices working together.

This one still changes every time I make it. The curry is a recent inclusion that i really liked, but then I love curry.

If someone tries this with scallops, PLEASE don't tell me how good it is- I am allergic to the damn things :: grin ::

Merlyn

[guitargeek]

KitKat mentioned this recipe in another thread, I feel it deserves to be immortalized herein...

ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S BURGER RECIPE

Ingredients–

1 lb. ground lean beef

2 cloves, minced garlic

2 little green onions, finely chopped

1 heaping teaspoon, India relish

2 tablespoons, capers

1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands sage

Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning — 1/2 teaspoon

Spice Islands Mei Yen Powder — 1/2 teaspoon

1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork

About 1/3 cup dry red or white wine

1 tablespoon cooking oil

What to do–

Break up the meat with a fork and scatter the garlic, onion and dry seasonings over it, then mix them into the meat with a fork or your fingers. Let the bowl of meat sit out of the icebox for ten or fifteen minutes while you set the table and make the salad. Add the relish, capers, everything else including wine and let the meat sit, quietly marinating, for another ten minutes if possible. Now make your fat, juicy patties with your hands. The patties should be an inch thick, and soft in texture but not runny. Have the oil in your frying pan hot but not smoking when you drop in the patties and then turn the heat down and fry the burgers about four minutes. Take the pan off the burner and turn the heat high again. Flip the burgers over, put the pan back on the hot fire, then after one minute, turn the heat down again and cook another three minutes. Both sides of the burgers should be crispy brown and the middle pink and juicy.

[DerGolgo]

Just thought I might dump this here.

Simple vegetables that go good with ... meat.

1 onion
1 bell pepper
1 can of button mushrooms.
Oil. Sunflower or rapeseed is good.
Salt
Herbs and spices to taste (I just throw in a bunch, always seems to work out).

Cut the onion into chunks. The bell pepper, too. Small enough so a couple will fit on a spoon.
Drain most (but not all) of the fluid form the can of mushrooms. Throw it all into a microwave-steaming bag. Add salt, herbs and spices to taste. I've settled on a bit of salt and "Italian herbs", as we here call the generic mixture of things we jerries get to buy in little tins for whenever some dish doesn't need pepper or basil but just "Italian". Add a tablespoon or two of the oil. Mix the contents of the bag thoroughly, to spread the spices and things and the oil around and mix all the chunky bits of vegetable matter together well. Everything in the bag should be thoroughly wet, what with the rest of the fluid form the mushroom can. If it's only damp, add a little bit of water. You don't need a big puddle at the bottom of the bag, it just needs to be all dripping wet. You might as well add as much water (or mushroom fluid) as you like and then drain excess fluid form the bag, that works also. In that case, herbs and mixing it all comes last, of course.
Close the bag and throw in a microwave oven, about six or seven minutes at 800 Watt. If your onion, bell pepper and mushroom can were of the same common size as is commonly found over here, there should be just under a pound of vegetable matter in the bag now. For less, or for more "bite" in the onions and peppers, don't microwave quite as long.

When the microwave is done, remove the bag from that and pour the contents into a sieve to get the superfluous fluid out. Shake that sieve vigorously (without spilling any of the solid contents) to remove more excess fluid. Maybe let it sit for a minute after that and give another shake then, so stuff can work it's way out. It's not super-necessary to remove whatever fluid is stuck to the vegetables at this point, I just find it annoying if it collects on my plate and dilutes the steak-sauce. Which is what this goes well with, steak. Or similarly prepared pork.