I love cooking. It's such a nice counterbalance to architecture, imo. In my job it takes sometimes years to see the fruits of my creativity, but cooking lets me be creative and also gives me immediate gratification. The past ~16 months or so I've been getting deep into super local & seasonal ingredients. Trying to make whatever pops up in our garden (my wife gardens, I cook), or what I see at the farmer's market. We've also started exploring mushroom foraging this autumn(the PNW is a bounty of wild mushrooms!) There's something so primal, almost earthen, to tasting the flavors of seasons.
Anyway here's some sexy photos of autumnal meals I've made recently. I'm definitely gonna keep bumping this thread as I retreat into my kitchen to avoid the scary scary world.
Roasted delicata squash stuffed with white bean + herb risotto. Ricotta. And lobster mushroom butter. Squash and herbs from our backyard, mushrooms from the forest.
"Double Mushroom" Farro - with foraged Oysters, dried Shitake, mushroom broth, spinach, parsley and parmesan. One of my favorite vegetarian dishes. It tastes like the earth in Autumn.
Beer-braised bratwurst with also-beer-braised lentils, onion, kale + tomato, pickled serrano peppers and cilantro.
tduds, we use a lot of similar ingredients but your dishes look delicious! I have equipment to start growing our own mushrooms but have not found time to start yet.
Our 5 year date-iversary (the anniversary of our first date) is this weekend, and every year I like to make a ridiculously over the top meal. Gotta somehow
out do myself from last year... I'll be sure to take some pics for the thread!
Right now I'm cooking cabbage rolls with lots of saurkraut and smoked pork meat (hearty central european meal).
I cook a lot - new meal almost every day...need to stop, because we've gained a lot weight!
Tomorrow will be fish (typical Friday meal), Saturday will be garlic and pasta in olive oil, Sunday might be chicken parmigiana, Monday maybe sheppards pie................check out Italian Grandma or Laura Vitale or various European based cooking Youtube sites...filled peppers, apple strudel, roasted lamb, pork shops and mushroom sauce, osso bucco, roast duck...............
Aps, sounds like good hearty fare! My wife's family is Sicilian and Polish so those recipes sound familiar. In fact I'm planning to make a soup tomorrow with caramelized onions, lots of cabbage and meaty pork hocks from our own pigs. We have well over two hundred cookbooks but I'd rather get inspiration from my architect friends. Also, it's not political!
We subscribe to one of those meal-prep weekly box deals. Started it a week before corona hit us and have loved every bit of it. I do all the cooking and meal planning and my wife is ridiculously picky but yet I've been able to find 4 to 5 meals per week that are new. Tonight will either be vegetarian curry or Italian sausages.
Also try to have a new beer almost every day and my average (since I started keeping track) is 1.2 new beers per day. Tduds, what the brew in the pic?
I don't have experience with those--do they just send you ingredients, or recipes too? There are advantages to being picky--I LOVE food and have not yet found a food I don't like, which makes it hard to remain at a moderately healthy weight. We often do veggie curries, especially for quick mid-week dinners.
What do you do with Italian sausage?
We never get enough sausage from the pigs we raise, as we also like butcher cuts, but always get some. 1.2 new beers per day is impressive. My wife got me a microbrew maple beer--it's interesting, but too sweet for me. She loves it.
Can't remember the name right now but it's by Block 15 http://block15.com/ Really nice wild ale.
Edit, found it: Cassidy. "Inspired by my daughter, this farmhouse-style ale was brewed with spring flowers and matured in Sauternes wine barrels with a select strain of Brettanomyces. Cassidy is brewed each spring, bottled the following spring with honey from her Grandpa’s bee hive, and released around her birthday. Each bottle contains a portion of all previous years' blends."
WG, the boxes come with either prre-prepped or un-prepped ingredients and a recipe card. I pick 4 to 6 meals out of maybe 20 options of which 80% change weekly. Some are a few $ more but will already have some of the prep done like minced garlic or chopped onions, etc. I typically dont get those.
The meal boxes are super convenient with good recipes. We've saved the recipes we've gotten, and have re-made them with stuff from the grocery store. My two frustrations are the amount of trash from the packaging, and lack of leftovers. Maybe they have family-sized options we never purchased, but there is almost always not enough to take in for lunch the next day. That's a deal breaker to me.
Speaking of food, tonight on our BS + Beer Show (BS for Building Science) we have Matt Risinger and a couple of other smart dudes, and the theme is barbeque--I'm not sure how deep we'll go down the BBQ hole but a couple of the guys are really into it. https://mailchi.mp/544cd6ddd2f...
I just discovered a British YouTube show where they have a "regular guy" with no budget limitation and a professional chef with a low budget prepare the "same" meal. It's less interesting to see who prepares the "best" version of the whole meal than to see which specific dishes are more dependent on quality ingredients and which you can safely scimp on. I'll try and find the name of the YouTube channel.
I love the idea for this thread. Can we please try to keep it going?
Same same but different, I started reviewing beers with friend on Instagram and while I need to do a better job of being consistent, it's a fun thing to do while we're all stuck at home. I may even start brewing again. Cheers!
You have to boil wort to make beer, so isn't that technically "cooking?" I have brewed my own and about 15 years ago was seriously considering going pro with it, but convinced myself the market was saturated with microbreweries. In the meantime several dozen microbreweries have opened here in Maine, so clearly I misgauged the market. I bought equipment to brew 15-gal batches instead of the usual 5-gal but things got busy and I've never used it. Anyone need a plate chiller? ;-)
love the idea of this thread, have nothing to offer recipe-wise, I simply boiled potatoes today and added some sweet potatoes to that and green peas and fried up some nutballs.
When the ingredients are high quality, preparing them simply can be the best way to have them. IMO. I'm not sure what a nutball is but I assume it's food and not anatomy?
That sounds good. We try to eat meat sparingly and always on the lookout for alternative protein that's not lab-grown (though I'm fine with lab-grown mushrooms!)
Nice. I plan to take up baking once I have built us a new kitchen. I've never made gravy that took more than 20 minutes--what does it do for 7 hours?!
Nov 5, 20 8:55 pm ·
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x-jla
Gravy is just a slang term for tomato sauce that cooks for a long time aka Sunday sauce. I make it from scratch...from fresh tomato’s...then let it simmer for 7-8 hours.
Ah, nothing like long-stewed tomato sauce! We grow a lot of tomatoes and my MIL makes sauce--haven't bought tomato sauce from a store in years. It's funny the slang names we come up with. I say "good soup" to my wife for anything remotely saucy or even casserole-like. Only she gets the joke, and it's not really funny, but entertains me...
Chicken Parmigiana...chicken breast, provolne cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmigiano-reggiano cheese, tomato sauce with white whine, hot pepper seeds, salt, pepper, garlic, onions, olive oil, on linguini, and parsley...do it once a month or so.
Just some rigatone with chopped tomatoes in Europe
Italian sausage, peppers, potatoes, and chopped tomatoes with parsley...olive oil, salt, pepper, and hot pepper seeds...
Rabbit stew in tomatoe sauce...served on mashed potatoes in Europe.
Little piglet on a spit...family gathering in Europe.
Cheese strudel
Pan roasted chicken thighs, rice and beets.
Oven roasted pork chunk...top be served with roasted potatoes and tomatoe/cucumber salad (only added olive oil, white vinegar and a pinch of salt to the salad).
And a picnic lunch on the grass in front of a church on a lovely Sunday afternoon over in Europe...wine, proscutto, grapes, pate, cheese, and tomatoes
I love rabbit meat--there's a restaurant in Quebec City called La Lapin Saute that looks like a tourist trap, and it is, but they also make excellent food. Their braised rabbit is the best rabbit I've had.
I've thought about raising my own, as I like to grow a lot of my own food, but I'd have trouble with slaughtering them. I do raise pigs but take them to a butcher--I'm a softy and should probably be a vegetarian.
Right now, we're in Montreal. You can buy rabbit in the stores here - already butchered thank God. I had them as pets when I was a child, and there is no way i could butcher one. Even eating them takes some willpower. That one was given to us by cousins wife in Europe...they raise a bunch, same with chickens. They don't raise pigs any more - they used to - now, they buy them already cut up. You live in the countryside? Pig farms are not exactly common in the cities, though you could have a horse if you live in The Hill Country outside of Austin, and probably many other places in the West.
Nov 6, 20 11:09 am ·
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poop876
Oh yes to the pig roasts. I do about two pig roasts a year and about 3 lamb roasts. I typically go to a farmer that I've become friends with and buy lamb from him and he let's me butcher them on his farm. I usually do 3 or 4, keep two for roasts and cut up the rest of them and freeze them. Thanks for sharing.
Nov 12, 20 10:43 am ·
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poop876
My wife loves cheese pita but prefers burek!
Nov 12, 20 10:43 am ·
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apscoradiales
I prefer lamb over pig, but the pig will do as well. Dad used to freeze the roasted pig on the spit...tasted awful. Are you guys Bosnian?
In high school Spanish class we had to bring in a Spanish-influenced dish. A big fancy grocery store with foreign food opened up nearby (this was around 1989) so I brought in Chili con Perro and swore the store was carrying dog meat. Current me would not spread such a harmful stereotype but it was hilarious at the time.
Garlic pasta...lots of olive oil, lots of garlic, hot pepper seeds, parsley, lots of cherry tomatoes and linguini (I think, maybe it was fettuccine, can't remember).
As i said above, the anniversary of our first date was this weekend. It's turned into a fun little tradition that I cook a super elaborate meal for my wife. This year I did four courses, each with a beverage pairing. Went a little overboard but had a ton of fun planning this out and executing it to (near) perfection!
Alright here's the good stuff:
1 - French onion soup in a roasted butternut squash cup. Crouton. Gruyere. Chives. w/ Ayinger Altbairisch Dunkel
2 - Risotto "Cannoli" in a parmesan tuile. Lobster mushroom butter. Pancetta.w/ Wolves and People "Honeycone" Farmhouse IPA
3 - Seared Hamachi on a beet chip. Cucumber vinegar. Fresh horseradish. Daikon sprouts. w/ citrus + blossom seltzer
4 - Duck breast. Celery root soubise. Miso-maple glazed sweet potato. Black lentils. Scallions + pistachio. w/ De Garde "Ivy" Wild Ale
Halfway through the meal, she surprised me with a gift! Which served as a perfect post-meal sip.
That looks absolutely awesome, and beautifully presented! You are in the wrong business - forget architecture; it's a dumb profession - you should be a chef!!! Michelin stars, here I come!!!!
As someone who used to work in a professional kitchen, kudos for properly resting that duck breast! That’s where you usually spot the amateur home cook, all that blood in the sauce.
Great Scotch! Have you tried Talisker or Laphroaig? Excellent choices.
Nov 18, 20 4:47 am ·
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tduds
I just finished my bottle of Talisker Storm, and I have two bottles of Laphroaig on the shelf. Slight aside - I rewarded myself with a nice bottle of scotch for each ARE I passed.
I've been doctering up instant ramen into some pretty good lunches lately, no pics tho. Parodically make an awesome sourdough bread or brew up an excellent IPA.
Yes you can. Just watch some Youtube videos of recipes and follow. Long after architecture is dead, you will still have to eat - might as well eat well.
Nov 9, 20 1:32 pm ·
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randomised
You can look at the package of your ramen for serving suggestions!
Nov 9, 20 1:46 pm ·
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shellarchitect
Randomised, that was my starting point, got some good stuff going now! Spent a good part of the summer smoking some really good meats!
pretty basic, just a weber with with temp probes. I use some bricks to pile the charcoal to one side. I've no patience for more than a few ingredients, but somehow no problem watching a smoker for 12 hrs. Maybe the beer helps....Used to use a kamado joe which was awesome! Big plans to build a custom bbq table in the spring along with replacing our deck
Grilled Salmon with grilled lemon slices and finished by throwing a branch from my rosemary on the grill and letting it smoke, grilled eggplant, broccoli rabe...
The least you could do was have kettle or tyrrell’s...what are you a monster ;-) They at least have them with balsamic vinegar, the black pepper and sea salt option is awesome too!
Fire roasted Campari tomatoes, blended, with thyme, onion, olive oil, garlic, white wine, shell stock, crab meat and shrimp....a lot of work...this is 2 lbs of linguini.
We have been doing a catfish filet battered with corn meal and creole seasonings that gets fried in a cast iron skillet. Once the fish is fried we take a small cup of olive oil and mix it with the same seasoning and brush it on the fish. Then we make up a spicy remoulade that gets served with the fish.
About an hour goes by after you eat this and your knocked out for a few hours!
Not gonna even try and say its healthy cuz it aint - but damn does the soul like this dish!!!
I have an immersion circulator that I use to do a bunch of meat on Sunday for the week (chicken/pork so I can do them at the same time). I'll usually pre cook some brown rice and a couple of vegetables that I can easily reheat without quality loss.
Then I can whip everything out and have a 3 item meal in about 15 min by just searing the meat and heating the other stuff up on the stove. Often will toss in some fresh steam or sautéed vegies of some kind, like broccoli or asparagus. Having things that aren't exactly fresh but taste fresh has been a real silver bullet for me wanting to cook more.
Lunch today was seared pork tenderloin with a lemon sauce, oven roasted carrots, and brown basmati rice.
Dinner was pan seared chicken with white gravy and peppercorns, and sautéed garlic asparagus.
I love frozen veggies for that reason, just cover them with herbs, spices and oil and pop them in the oven, 20 minutes later you have dinner ready as you can do all the other prep during that time...
I'm not one to take pictures of food, but I do tend to plate my 4y old's meals like Gordon fuckin Ramsay was looking over my shoulder and fuming... I then use about 1/8th of that finesse on my own plate. (1/2 for my wife's since she super picky and things can't touch other things).
There have been a few silver linings to the pandemic, and one is that with most meetings being virtual, and in-person meetings being masked, I don't have to worry about what garlic does to my breath! I love strong flavors and your boss' sauce sounds delicious. Who cares if it was smelly--good food usually is.
My gf is vegan and I'm trying so last night I cooked pasta bolegnese using impossible beef. It wasn't bad, but can definitely tell it's missing the oils and fat from real meat, which gives it a lot of the flavor.
My MIL was using impossible beef the other day to make some taco meat. It tasted ok, but I agree that there was something missing. The seasonings and spices probably helped disguise it. I would have eaten it and been happy, but we weren't sticking around ... just picking up the little one.
Nov 12, 20 5:17 pm ·
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SneakyPete
I find it to be an acceptable substitute considering the harm beef does to the planet the way we currently produce it.
I prefer dishonesty if I'm honest. I haven't had any luck finding enough meat free meals I like, so subbing meat with fake stuff is a good way to split the difference. I respect people who have the ability to go meat free and not use substitues.
No judgement there, just my own feelings. Here's a pretty great vegan dinner I made a while ago: Crispy tofu, brussel sprout shallot + serrano slaw, with avocado. Nothing fake, nothing processed or grown in a lab, just some good plant stuff and a tortilla.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I aim to limit my animal consumption for a whole slew of reasons. I think good sourcing, simple ingredients, and attention to ethical practice results in a better / healthier lifestyle than simply avoiding animal products and eating processed garbage. Not that you can't have a full, healthy diet by eating vegan, just that eating vegan doesn't automatically mean you're eating better.
I make meat free meals pretty often (I aim for more than half of my week's meals to be vegetarian), but my philosophy is that meat free food (all food, really) should be honest about itself. Fake meat is weird to me. Substitutes are off-putting to me. I'd rather have the real thing or something else entirely.
I'm getting a lot of mileage from Mr. Kahn lately, but...
"You say to a vegetable, 'What do you want, vegetable?' And the vegetable says to you, 'I want to be hamburger.' And you say to vegetable, 'Look, I want that too, but you're a vegetable, and I can go slaughter a cow. What do you think of that vegetable?' Vegetable says, 'I want to be hamburger.'"
That looks good! Do you use a wok on a gas cooktop, or some other arrangement?
Nov 12, 20 5:07 pm ·
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SneakyPete
I have a junky electric stove. My wok is flat bottomed, so it sits nice and has good contact. A wok spatula is so much better than I would have guessed. It looks like a shovel, but it turns things MUCH better than any other implement I could have imagined.
Pete, same here, we have a glass-top electric. My wife really wants a gas stove but since my design focus in increasingly on healthy indoor environments that's a hard leap for me to make. I'd rather have an induction cooktop. A flat-bottomed wok would work on that, and might help me convince the wife...
The wife doesn’t eat cheese, so made her homemade pizza with tomato’s, basil, prosciutto...forgot to take pics of the margarita pizza with fresh mozzarella :( pizza stone on a regular barrel grill makes a good makeshift pizza oven...tip, put the stone on top of two bricks so that it doesn’t touch the metal or it will crack.
Speaking of olive oil, why is it so hard to find in many USA restaurants? I've traveled back and forth, up and down, east coast, west coast, mid-america, and every time I eat at a restaurant, I ask for olive oil for my salad. The waiters look at me as if I fell of a Moon...I can get ranch dressing, I can get cheese dressing, I can get thousand islands dressing, I can get any kind of dressing, but never olive oil and white vinegar. What the hell is up with that?! I'll have to carry my own next time I travel and bring it to the restaurants.
Nov 12, 20 6:18 pm ·
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SneakyPete
It's expensive. Also a large portion of restaurants get condiments and a lot of other sundries from sysco or the like.
Pork chops (pan fried in olive oil and couple of pieces of unsalted butter), mashed potatoes (butter and milk added), green beans (cooked then pan fried in olive oil, some onions and garlic), and German pickles (very little sodium unlike North American pickles that have a tonne of salt added). Finished off with a little port.
Gave some pork chops to my little honey, but she didn't eat them...she had dry figs earlier - loves them, so do I - so she wasn't hungry enough...
Lunch today.homemade smoked paprika tomato soup, with bacon crumbles, cheddar bacon grilled cheese sandwiches, cranberry juice and one observant pup with paws on the table.
I've not a photo, but my recent favourite breakfast has been fried onions, wild mushrooms with chestnuts and a drizzle of maple syrup either as is, or in a wrap, with a maple latte.
Will be making some good recipes this weekend. I forgot photos, but will be making again on Saturday. We do food shopping Friday night, so out of stock :(
Your first dish looks like it has one of my favorite ingredients--"wet bread." My wife is Italian and Polish, and grew up eating lots of pasta. My heritage is as waspy as it gets, and we didn't have a lot of money, so many dishes were some sort of stew over bread or toast. Looks great.
When I was in Highschool I worked summers on a ranch and this was out typical breakfast before we were out the door repairing barbed wire fences , replacing post, riding horses, or baling hay and stacking it. I was told two things by that rancher: Don't be late to a meal and don't put any pepper or salt on your food that is done in the kitchen by my wife.
Not the most photogenic meal I've made, but it was a damn good & relatively easy weeknight dish:
Mushroom-Buttered* gnocchi dried shitake mushrooms, lima beans, & spinach in mushroom broth (from rehydrating the shitakes), with garlic, shallots, thyme, and parmesan.
(*This fall I made mushroom-infused butter from the cuttings of foraged lobster mushrooms. Had a few ounces of it kicking around the fridge. Amazing stuff.)
They do look like little potatoes. Yum. Mushroom-infused butter sounds amazing. We forage Reiki on our land and sometimes find gray Oyster, but we have to buy Lobster mushrooms. (Reiki mushrooms taste horrible, btw, but good for ya.)
My wife got some reiki powder with other herbs & what not. It's supposed to help with mood. I don't know how making my coffee taste like garbage is supposed to help my mood but here we are.
What's Cooking?
What have you cooked lately that you thought was good? My wife and I both love to cook (and eat) but need some new ideas.
If you're interested, you can see some of the things we cook here: https://www.instagram.com/expl... And I have some food (and farming) pics on this account: https://www.instagram.com/gree....
Oh yeah great thread!
I love cooking. It's such a nice counterbalance to architecture, imo. In my job it takes sometimes years to see the fruits of my creativity, but cooking lets me be creative and also gives me immediate gratification. The past ~16 months or so I've been getting deep into super local & seasonal ingredients. Trying to make whatever pops up in our garden (my wife gardens, I cook), or what I see at the farmer's market. We've also started exploring mushroom foraging this autumn(the PNW is a bounty of wild mushrooms!) There's something so primal, almost earthen, to tasting the flavors of seasons.
Anyway here's some sexy photos of autumnal meals I've made recently. I'm definitely gonna keep bumping this thread as I retreat into my kitchen to avoid the scary scary world.
Cheers!
A lot more food pics (and photos of my dog & my wife and the wilderness) on my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tdudstagram/
I'm coming over for dinner next week!
tduds, we use a lot of similar ingredients but your dishes look delicious! I have equipment to start growing our own mushrooms but have not found time to start yet.
Thanks! Half the fun is in the composition. Non-restaurant cooks under appreciate the "wow" factor that a good plating can convey .
That's some seriously impressive cooking! Love it.
Danke.
Our 5 year date-iversary (the anniversary of our first date) is this weekend, and every year I like to make a ridiculously over the top meal. Gotta somehow out do myself from last year... I'll be sure to take some pics for the thread!
That squash looks mad good.
Nice
Looking awesome
Right now I'm cooking cabbage rolls with lots of saurkraut and smoked pork meat (hearty central european meal).
I cook a lot - new meal almost every day...need to stop, because we've gained a lot weight!
Tomorrow will be fish (typical Friday meal), Saturday will be garlic and pasta in olive oil, Sunday might be chicken parmigiana, Monday maybe sheppards pie................check out Italian Grandma or Laura Vitale or various European based cooking Youtube sites...filled peppers, apple strudel, roasted lamb, pork shops and mushroom sauce, osso bucco, roast duck...............
Aps, sounds like good hearty fare! My wife's family is Sicilian and Polish so those recipes sound familiar. In fact I'm planning to make a soup tomorrow with caramelized onions, lots of cabbage and meaty pork hocks from our own pigs. We have well over two hundred cookbooks but I'd rather get inspiration from my architect friends. Also, it's not political!
We subscribe to one of those meal-prep weekly box deals. Started it a week before corona hit us and have loved every bit of it. I do all the cooking and meal planning and my wife is ridiculously picky but yet I've been able to find 4 to 5 meals per week that are new. Tonight will either be vegetarian curry or Italian sausages.
Also try to have a new beer almost every day and my average (since I started keeping track) is 1.2 new beers per day. Tduds, what the brew in the pic?
I don't have experience with those--do they just send you ingredients, or recipes too? There are advantages to being picky--I LOVE food and have not yet found a food I don't like, which makes it hard to remain at a moderately healthy weight. We often do veggie curries, especially for quick mid-week dinners. What do you do with Italian sausage?
We never get enough sausage from the pigs we raise, as we also like butcher cuts, but always get some. 1.2 new beers per day is impressive. My wife got me a microbrew maple beer--it's interesting, but too sweet for me. She loves it.
Can't remember the name right now but it's by Block 15 http://block15.com/ Really nice wild ale.
Edit, found it: Cassidy. "Inspired by my daughter, this farmhouse-style ale was brewed with spring flowers and matured in Sauternes wine barrels with a select strain of Brettanomyces. Cassidy is brewed each spring, bottled the following spring with honey from her Grandpa’s bee hive, and released around her birthday. Each bottle contains a portion of all previous years' blends."
wild ale with flowers? sounds good.
WG, the boxes come with either prre-prepped or un-prepped ingredients and a recipe card. I pick 4 to 6 meals out of maybe 20 options of which 80% change weekly. Some are a few $ more but will already have some of the prep done like minced garlic or chopped onions, etc. I typically dont get those.
The meal boxes are super convenient with good recipes. We've saved the recipes we've gotten, and have re-made them with stuff from the grocery store. My two frustrations are the amount of trash from the packaging, and lack of leftovers. Maybe they have family-sized options we never purchased, but there is almost always not enough to take in for lunch the next day. That's a deal breaker to me.
Speaking of food, tonight on our BS + Beer Show (BS for Building Science) we have Matt Risinger and a couple of other smart dudes, and the theme is barbeque--I'm not sure how deep we'll go down the BBQ hole but a couple of the guys are really into it. https://mailchi.mp/544cd6ddd2f...
I just discovered a British YouTube show where they have a "regular guy" with no budget limitation and a professional chef with a low budget prepare the "same" meal. It's less interesting to see who prepares the "best" version of the whole meal than to see which specific dishes are more dependent on quality ingredients and which you can safely scimp on. I'll try and find the name of the YouTube channel.
It's called SORTEDfood.
Wood Guy,
Italian sausage and peppers...look up Italian Grandma on Youtube - the dish is yummy!!! Made it many times...can't really screw up.
Italian sausage and peppers - very easy to make
I love the idea for this thread. Can we please try to keep it going?
Same same but different, I started reviewing beers with friend on Instagram and while I need to do a better job of being consistent, it's a fun thing to do while we're all stuck at home. I may even start brewing again. Cheers!
You have to boil wort to make beer, so isn't that technically "cooking?" I have brewed my own and about 15 years ago was seriously considering going pro with it, but convinced myself the market was saturated with microbreweries. In the meantime several dozen microbreweries have opened here in Maine, so clearly I misgauged the market. I bought equipment to brew 15-gal batches instead of the usual 5-gal but things got busy and I've never used it. Anyone need a plate chiller? ;-)
i just had pot roast and mashed potatoes paired with a paso nobels cab sav.
My favorite meal
I literally just started drooling. Time to go make some dinner!
love the idea of this thread, have nothing to offer recipe-wise, I simply boiled potatoes today and added some sweet potatoes to that and green peas and fried up some nutballs.
When the ingredients are high quality, preparing them simply can be the best way to have them. IMO. I'm not sure what a nutball is but I assume it's food and not anatomy?
I’ve met a few nutballs.
They are meatballs but without meat and instead are made from nuts and soy.
That sounds good. We try to eat meat sparingly and always on the lookout for alternative protein that's not lab-grown (though I'm fine with lab-grown mushrooms!)
The pan is ugly, but made some good Italian bread...ran out of sesame seeds, but still good.
and some gravy 7+ hours from scratch with meatballs (made with a little cheese pine nuts and raisins -like my sicilian grandma).
Nice. I plan to take up baking once I have built us a new kitchen. I've never made gravy that took more than 20 minutes--what does it do for 7 hours?!
Gravy is just a slang term for tomato sauce that cooks for a long time aka Sunday sauce. I make it from scratch...from fresh tomato’s...then let it simmer for 7-8 hours.
Ah, nothing like long-stewed tomato sauce! We grow a lot of tomatoes and my MIL makes sauce--haven't bought tomato sauce from a store in years. It's funny the slang names we come up with. I say "good soup" to my wife for anything remotely saucy or even casserole-like. Only she gets the joke, and it's not really funny, but entertains me...
Chicken Parmigiana...chicken breast, provolne cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmigiano-reggiano cheese, tomato sauce with white whine, hot pepper seeds, salt, pepper, garlic, onions, olive oil, on linguini, and parsley...do it once a month or so.
Hell yea. I love a good chicken parm!
Oh man, that looks good.
Just some rigatone with chopped tomatoes in Europe
Italian sausage, peppers, potatoes, and chopped tomatoes with parsley...olive oil, salt, pepper, and hot pepper seeds...
Rabbit stew in tomatoe sauce...served on mashed potatoes in Europe.
Little piglet on a spit...family gathering in Europe.
Cheese strudel
Pan roasted chicken thighs, rice and beets.
Oven roasted pork chunk...top be served with roasted potatoes and tomatoe/cucumber salad (only added olive oil, white vinegar and a pinch of salt to the salad).
And a picnic lunch on the grass in front of a church on a lovely Sunday afternoon over in Europe...wine, proscutto, grapes, pate, cheese, and tomatoes
Where do you live again? I'll be right over.
I love rabbit meat--there's a restaurant in Quebec City called La Lapin Saute that looks like a tourist trap, and it is, but they also make excellent food. Their braised rabbit is the best rabbit I've had.
I've thought about raising my own, as I like to grow a lot of my own food, but I'd have trouble with slaughtering them. I do raise pigs but take them to a butcher--I'm a softy and should probably be a vegetarian.
Right now, we're in Montreal. You can buy rabbit in the stores here - already butchered thank God. I had them as pets when I was a child, and there is no way i could butcher one. Even eating them takes some willpower. That one was given to us by cousins wife in Europe...they raise a bunch, same with chickens. They don't raise pigs any more - they used to - now, they buy them already cut up. You live in the countryside? Pig farms are not exactly common in the cities, though you could have a horse if you live in The Hill Country outside of Austin, and probably many other places in the West.
Oh yes to the pig roasts. I do about two pig roasts a year and about 3 lamb roasts. I typically go to a farmer that I've become friends with and buy lamb from him and he let's me butcher them on his farm. I usually do 3 or 4, keep two for roasts and cut up the rest of them and freeze them. Thanks for sharing.
My wife loves cheese pita but prefers burek!
I prefer lamb over pig, but the pig will do as well. Dad used to freeze the roasted pig on the spit...tasted awful. Are you guys Bosnian?
My little honey with whom we share our meals...she only eats what mommy and daddy cook. second best thing that happened in my life...
Looks delish!
In high school Spanish class we had to bring in a Spanish-influenced dish. A big fancy grocery store with foreign food opened up nearby (this was around 1989) so I brought in Chili con Perro and swore the store was carrying dog meat. Current me would not spread such a harmful stereotype but it was hilarious at the time.
Aps, cute pup!
Today's meal;
Garlic pasta...lots of olive oil, lots of garlic, hot pepper seeds, parsley, lots of cherry tomatoes and linguini (I think, maybe it was fettuccine, can't remember).
Yesterday's meal;
Chicken Parmigiana again....chicken breast, provolone cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmigiano-reggiano cheese, tomato sauce with white whine, hot pepper seeds, salt, pepper, garlic, onions, olive oil, on linguini, and parsley.
Tomorrow's meal; salt and vinegar chips!!! Day off from cooking.
My kids eat from square plates with round corners, do your plates have a suction cup to stick to the table too?
Yum!
randomised,
seriously? never heard of that....
https://www.beaba.com/en/cutlery-tableware-and-bibs/2164-silicone-suction-plate-blue-3384349134303.html
As i said above, the anniversary of our first date was this weekend. It's turned into a fun little tradition that I cook a super elaborate meal for my wife. This year I did four courses, each with a beverage pairing. Went a little overboard but had a ton of fun planning this out and executing it to (near) perfection!
Alright here's the good stuff:
1 - French onion soup in a roasted butternut squash cup. Crouton. Gruyere. Chives. w/ Ayinger Altbairisch Dunkel
2 - Risotto "Cannoli" in a parmesan tuile. Lobster mushroom butter. Pancetta.w/ Wolves and People "Honeycone" Farmhouse IPA
3 - Seared Hamachi on a beet chip. Cucumber vinegar. Fresh horseradish. Daikon sprouts. w/ citrus + blossom seltzer
4 - Duck breast. Celery root soubise. Miso-maple glazed sweet potato. Black lentils. Scallions + pistachio. w/ De Garde "Ivy" Wild Ale
Halfway through the meal, she surprised me with a gift! Which served as a perfect post-meal sip.
That's all, folks!
consider my singular thumbs up equal to 42. Damn.
That looks absolutely awesome, and beautifully presented! You are in the wrong business - forget architecture; it's a dumb profession - you should be a chef!!! Michelin stars, here I come!!!!
Impressive.
Cooking is my hobby, not my job. If it became my job I'd have no hobby to decompress from my job. Anyway, thanks for the kind words!
Show off. Nice work.
good work!
Nice work!
As someone who used to work in a professional kitchen, kudos for properly resting that duck breast! That’s where you usually spot the amateur home cook, all that blood in the sauce.
The trick is to finish the potatoes in the duck fat while the duck rests.
++ For the Ayinger and whiskey
Great Scotch! Have you tried Talisker or Laphroaig? Excellent choices.
I just finished my bottle of Talisker Storm, and I have two bottles of Laphroaig on the shelf. Slight aside - I rewarded myself with a nice bottle of scotch for each ARE I passed.
Look absolutely fantastic!
How do you come up with the receipes? Do you just improvise or use resorces? I would love to hear about any websites or cook books you use.
I've been doctering up instant ramen into some pretty good lunches lately, no pics tho. Parodically make an awesome sourdough bread or brew up an excellent IPA.
I can't compete with you guys.
Yes you can. Just watch some Youtube videos of recipes and follow. Long after architecture is dead, you will still have to eat - might as well eat well.
You can look at the package of your ramen for serving suggestions!
Randomised, that was my starting point, got some good stuff going now! Spent a good part of the summer smoking some really good meats!
Shell, what's your system for smoking meat?
pretty basic, just a weber with with temp probes. I use some bricks to pile the charcoal to one side. I've no patience for more than a few ingredients, but somehow no problem watching a smoker for 12 hrs. Maybe the beer helps....Used to use a kamado joe which was awesome! Big plans to build a custom bbq table in the spring along with replacing our deck
That's a lot of food...family to feed or just you? Looks great!
There are six of us, and one is a 17yo with a bottomless pit stomach...
Today's meal...delicious.
I have eaten at least a ton of those in my lifetime...
The least you could do was have kettle or tyrrell’s...what are you a monster ;-) They at least have them with balsamic vinegar, the black pepper and sea salt option is awesome too!
Now all I can think of is a foamless lukewarm pint from an English pub at 4 in the afternoon...
Yeah probably only half a ton of Lays, and another of Kettle or Cape Cod.
Fire roasted Campari tomatoes, blended, with thyme, onion, olive oil, garlic, white wine, shell stock, crab meat and shrimp....a lot of work...this is 2 lbs of linguini.
And dried chili’s
Sometimes just make with whole crab...easier but messy...
About an hour goes by after you eat this and your knocked out for a few hours!
Not gonna even try and say its healthy cuz it aint - but damn does the soul like this dish!!!
Photo?
I have an immersion circulator that I use to do a bunch of meat on Sunday for the week (chicken/pork so I can do them at the same time). I'll usually pre cook some brown rice and a couple of vegetables that I can easily reheat without quality loss.
Then I can whip everything out and have a 3 item meal in about 15 min by just searing the meat and heating the other stuff up on the stove. Often will toss in some fresh steam or sautéed vegies of some kind, like broccoli or asparagus. Having things that aren't exactly fresh but taste fresh has been a real silver bullet for me wanting to cook more.
Lunch today was seared pork tenderloin with a lemon sauce, oven roasted carrots, and brown basmati rice.
Dinner was pan seared chicken with white gravy and peppercorns, and sautéed garlic asparagus.
I love frozen veggies for that reason, just cover them with herbs, spices and oil and pop them in the oven, 20 minutes later you have dinner ready as you can do all the other prep during that time...
Do red meat maybe twice a month...grilled t-bones...with rosemary,garlic, butter...delicious
This may be my favorite thread ever! I have nothing to contribute other than a love of good food and admiration for you cooks and chefs.
Chicken piccata ....made this last week.
A little simpler than the last one: Bucatini with "meat sauce" (except the meat is chorizo & the sauce is butternut squash).
Really tasty & nicely spicy!
I'm not one to take pictures of food, but I do tend to plate my 4y old's meals like Gordon fuckin Ramsay was looking over my shoulder and fuming... I then use about 1/8th of that finesse on my own plate. (1/2 for my wife's since she super picky and things can't touch other things).
My boss cooked us spaghetti for lunch with tuna, garlic, paprika, capers and olives in a cream sauce, does that count?
I hope they handed out mints afterwards.
I hope they sent you each to a separate floor afterwards... with a case of mints.
There have been a few silver linings to the pandemic, and one is that with most meetings being virtual, and in-person meetings being masked, I don't have to worry about what garlic does to my breath! I love strong flavors and your boss' sauce sounds delicious. Who cares if it was smelly--good food usually is.
That 1.5m social distancing came in handy!
Last night - Jasmine Rice Pilaf, Haricort Vert, and a poached egg.
Getting back on my poached egg game - so easy but so satisfying.
Few things better than a good poached egg.
Ooh, haricot vert... I haven't tasted green beans in a long time but combination is making my mouth water.
My gf is vegan and I'm trying so last night I cooked pasta bolegnese using impossible beef. It wasn't bad, but can definitely tell it's missing the oils and fat from real meat, which gives it a lot of the flavor.
Sesame oil or maybe some umami from seaweed, perhaps?
The easiest way to make vegan meals taste good is to add some animal protein! Only partly kidding...
My MIL was using impossible beef the other day to make some taco meat. It tasted ok, but I agree that there was something missing. The seasonings and spices probably helped disguise it. I would have eaten it and been happy, but we weren't sticking around ... just picking up the little one.
I find it to be an acceptable substitute considering the harm beef does to the planet the way we currently produce it.
I like my meat-free meals to be honest. That said, I've had a few Impossible Burgers and they're not bad!
I prefer dishonesty if I'm honest. I haven't had any luck finding enough meat free meals I like, so subbing meat with fake stuff is a good way to split the difference. I respect people who have the ability to go meat free and not use substitues.
No judgement there, just my own feelings. Here's a pretty great vegan dinner I made a while ago: Crispy tofu, brussel sprout shallot + serrano slaw, with avocado. Nothing fake, nothing processed or grown in a lab, just some good plant stuff and a tortilla.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I aim to limit my animal consumption for a whole slew of reasons. I think good sourcing, simple ingredients, and attention to ethical practice results in a better / healthier lifestyle than simply avoiding animal products and eating processed garbage. Not that you can't have a full, healthy diet by eating vegan, just that eating vegan doesn't automatically mean you're eating better.
I make meat free meals pretty often (I aim for more than half of my week's meals to be vegetarian), but my philosophy is that meat free food (all food, really) should be honest about itself. Fake meat is weird to me. Substitutes are off-putting to me. I'd rather have the real thing or something else entirely.
I'm getting a lot of mileage from Mr. Kahn lately, but...
"You say to a vegetable, 'What do you want, vegetable?' And the vegetable says to you, 'I want to be hamburger.' And you say to vegetable, 'Look, I want that too, but you're a vegetable, and I can go slaughter a cow. What do you think of that vegetable?' Vegetable says, 'I want to be hamburger.'"
Like this?
I got a good wok this year and MAN is it fun to cook with a wok.
General Tso's at home.
That looks good! Do you use a wok on a gas cooktop, or some other arrangement?
I have a junky electric stove. My wok is flat bottomed, so it sits nice and has good contact. A wok spatula is so much better than I would have guessed. It looks like a shovel, but it turns things MUCH better than any other implement I could have imagined.
what's your sauce?
Pete, same here, we have a glass-top electric. My wife really wants a gas stove but since my design focus in increasingly on healthy indoor environments that's a hard leap for me to make. I'd rather have an induction cooktop. A flat-bottomed wok would work on that, and might help me convince the wife...
Flat bottomed woks make the wokking world go round.
The wife doesn’t eat cheese, so made her homemade pizza with tomato’s, basil, prosciutto...forgot to take pics of the margarita pizza with fresh mozzarella :( pizza stone on a regular barrel grill makes a good makeshift pizza oven...tip, put the stone on top of two bricks so that it doesn’t touch the metal or it will crack.
Also, rather than sauce...I like to just lightly char the tomatoes first, let them cool, hand crush, and mix with a little salt pepper and olive oil.
Pizza being good is one thing we can agree on. Better if homemade.
We tried deep dish in a cast iron. Was tasty, but not especially pretty.
Looks good
Speaking of olive oil, why is it so hard to find in many USA restaurants? I've traveled back and forth, up and down, east coast, west coast, mid-america, and every time I eat at a restaurant, I ask for olive oil for my salad. The waiters look at me as if I fell of a Moon...I can get ranch dressing, I can get cheese dressing, I can get thousand islands dressing, I can get any kind of dressing, but never olive oil and white vinegar. What the hell is up with that?! I'll have to carry my own next time I travel and bring it to the restaurants.
It's expensive. Also a large portion of restaurants get condiments and a lot of other sundries from sysco or the like.
I made dulce de leche.
I have avoided learning how, as if I had it on hand I would have to eat it all.
Fish (Tilapia), rice, with mushrooms and for salad tomatoes, cucumbers, olive oil, and white vinegar. That was Friday's lunch.
Vegetable soup...potatoes, green beans, carrots, onions, garlic, celery, whole skinned tomatoes, vegetable stock, parsley...
Yesterday's lunch. Had two bowls...was yummy.
Sunday's dinner...
Pork chops (pan fried in olive oil and couple of pieces of unsalted butter), mashed potatoes (butter and milk added), green beans (cooked then pan fried in olive oil, some onions and garlic), and German pickles (very little sodium unlike North American pickles that have a tonne of salt added). Finished off with a little port.
Gave some pork chops to my little honey, but she didn't eat them...she had dry figs earlier - loves them, so do I - so she wasn't hungry enough...
My little honey...
Lunch today.homemade smoked paprika tomato soup, with bacon crumbles, cheddar bacon grilled cheese sandwiches, cranberry juice and one observant pup with paws on the table.
Yummy - pup had enough? Or was he still hungry?
She is a Food Hound but only when given to her. After this shot she sat perfectly adjacent to the table with the famished look on her face.
I've not a photo, but my recent favourite breakfast has been fried onions, wild mushrooms with chestnuts and a drizzle of maple syrup either as is, or in a wrap, with a maple latte.
I'll get photos!
did you get photos yet?
Will be making some good recipes this weekend. I forgot photos, but will be making again on Saturday. We do food shopping Friday night, so out of stock :(
I changed the wraps for tender stem broccoli.
I'm a total ignoramus cooking-wise, yet even I know how to make a perfect snack.
That is a perfect snack. More perfect with crunchy style ;-)
Maxine would be in your lap that is her favorite snack.
Chicken Salad lunch...
Pan fried chicken in olive oil, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, salt, pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.
Sad day today, the greatest footballer ever died...RIP in Peace Diego Maradona.
So sad to learn of his passing this way. Apparently God wanted his hand back. Eterno Diego.
all the feels
I remember that goal...watching it live on tv. without a doubt, the mother of all goals EVER!
Odd thing, or maybe not, ARG is my favourite team even when they play against my country. Love the passion for the game they show.
Swedish Meatballs, green beans, cranberries, mashed potatoes with parmesan cheese and a glass of wine. Now it is time for bed.
hungry crowd to be fed?
14 folks in our immediate families that we haven’t seen for the most part of the year. We’re dropping them off a box each as an early
Xmas gift.
Vegan Thanksgiving!
Think I’ve gained several pounds just looking at it!
Your first dish looks like it has one of my favorite ingredients--"wet bread." My wife is Italian and Polish, and grew up eating lots of pasta. My heritage is as waspy as it gets, and we didn't have a lot of money, so many dishes were some sort of stew over bread or toast. Looks great.
When I was in Highschool I worked summers on a ranch and this was out typical breakfast before we were out the door repairing barbed wire fences , replacing post, riding horses, or baling hay and stacking it. I was told two things by that rancher: Don't be late to a meal and don't put any pepper or salt on your food that is done in the kitchen by my wife.
Not the most photogenic meal I've made, but it was a damn good & relatively easy weeknight dish:
Mushroom-Buttered* gnocchi dried shitake mushrooms, lima beans, & spinach in mushroom broth (from rehydrating the shitakes), with garlic, shallots, thyme, and parmesan.
(*This fall I made mushroom-infused butter from the cuttings of foraged lobster mushrooms. Had a few ounces of it kicking around the fridge. Amazing stuff.)
I love the gnocchi here they look like little miniature potatoes with the spices coating them. 10/10 on presentation, cute af.
Thanks!
They do look like little potatoes. Yum. Mushroom-infused butter sounds amazing. We forage Reiki on our land and sometimes find gray Oyster, but we have to buy Lobster mushrooms. (Reiki mushrooms taste horrible, btw, but good for ya.)
My wife got some reiki powder with other herbs & what not. It's supposed to help with mood. I don't know how making my coffee taste like garbage is supposed to help my mood but here we are.
My wife dries and powders some of ours, and puts it in our homemade stocks. It disappears pretty well that way.
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