The Food Thread

Rach3

Great dinner today! I got 8oz/227g of Alaskan salmon from the market ($13/lb=$29/kg), added black pepper liberally, sauteed in olive oil, and served on a huge bed of boiled asparagus, with steamed brocolli on the side. Served with sake. Very easy&quick to make!

Yeah, I'm nowhere near as talented as some of the old guys here (turbo, I'm looking at you!). But I'm trying, at least.

turbo

Yep, or even make a vegetarian version. I had green tomato/jalapeno salsa with mine, and my wife topped hers with shredded lettuce and sour cream. Stuff like this is pretty versatile, and you can use what you've got on hand. Sometimes, our favorite dishes develop out of something thrown together. A couple of nights ago when I was busy with something else, my wife started shredding carrots and cabbage and other vegetables, so I thought she was going to make a cole-slaw of some sort to go with the thin strips of blade steak marinading in the refrigerator. Instead, she browned the vegetables in the big cast iron frying pan then simmered them in dry red wine while browning steak strips in olive oil with a little fresh-ground ginger. It started smelling pretty good in here, so I stopped what I was doing and warmed some basmati rice we had steamed the night before and set the table while she combined the meat and vegetables. That stuff was quite tasty served on a bed of rice.

hypatia

wow! You set the table? I think we should clone you.

turbo

Are you sitting down? I also do the dishes.

danscope

Hi, This uncomplicated dish is a winner and worth tooling up for.
...........................
If you have a meat grinder ( the Kitchen-Aid mixer shines here) ....
get a largish package of corned beef ( plastic wrapped....about 2 to three lbs)
and put it into a large stainless steel (non-reactive)pan, and cover the CB with water by an inch. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down and cover, and get this to simmer ( a very low boil....occasional bubbles). It can simmer for about three hours . Corned beef is a sorry cut of meat untill you transform it.
........... Peel and quarter some potatoes...( russet work fine ) and bring to a boil,then simmer for 6 or seven minutes untill they are almost fork tender.
Don't over cook. Rough chop 2 onions.
........... Saute two onions with olive oil and butter. Don't use canola oil for anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! poisonous
Season the onions....celery salt,pepper , Cook easy, not high heat. Just get them to clear a little, but don't burn them.
With a nice sharp knife, cut the cooked corned beef across the grain in one inch slabs. and then cut up into 2 by 1 by 1" pieces that will easily fit into your grinder. (I rinse my grinder with hot water first). Then, with the coarse
grinding cutter ....1/4 inch holes, put in a piece of CB, some onions, a piece of potato, and keep repeating. You should use slightly less potato than CB.
Once it is all ground, run a piece of bread through the grinder. It will become part of the hash and clean through the grinder. (Now clean grinder).
If you have a dough hook, use it to mix the hash in the great bowl. While mixing, you can season the hash. Ah....the seasoning: This from James Beard
,a great cook . He uses some fresh allspice berries and ginger. I use about
1 1/2 Tbs. of fresh ground allspice berries. and 1 Tbs. of Ginger.
and some fresh cracked pepper. For myself, I use some fresh Ginger and grate it with a stainless steel micro-plane , but you can slice it across the grain, smash it and chop it. ......Or just use powdered Gnger . While the hash is mixing , I sprinkle the seasonings here and there to get a good homogenous
spred-out of the seasons.
Once this is well mixed, put it into a large tapered plastic container,
like a 2 lb. Ricotta cheese container, or yogurt container. I usually fill 2 of these with this recipie. Freeze one. Refrigerate the other. Pack it in by spoonfulls, and avoid air pockets. Once it has chilled overnight, and the flavours meld, take it out, and knock it out upside-down. The whole will come out as a tapered cylinder. Slice about 3/4 inch and fry up in a no-stick pan with a little butter on the bottom. Use medium heat. You can burn CG hash if you work at it, but it is easily browned on each side in about 4 minutes.
After I flip it, I usually squish it down a little with the spatula. You get a little crust which people like. This stuff doesn't taste like canned corned beef hash at all. Hats off to James Beard for the inspiration.
This stuff keeps well in a refrigerator , cover directly within the container with some plastic wrap, for a week. It's usually disappeared by then.
A winner at any meal. Worth the effort.
Best regards, Dan

turbo

I just got done preparing a couple of pounds of jalapeno peppers (remove stem, slice in half lengthwise, and scoop out seeds and placenta) for one of tonight's treats at the family get-together. We will stuff them with cream cheese and crumbled crispy bacon, top them with shredded Monterey Jack, and broil them until the cheese browns. We taking up a bunch of other stuff, too, but those are my favorites. I insist on making a big batch because we've got some nephews that aren't shy about eating these poppers, and I want to get at least a few of them before they're gone.

We've also put together a vegetable tray with two kinds of dips made with chives, garlic, wine, goat cheese, etc. One of the dips is loaded with our home-made habanero sauce - that will reduce the competition a bit.

I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season - in our family, it's all about food, games, and socializing.

arunbg

Hey, long time no contribute, but it's nice to see that you guys are keeping the thread going

It's that time of the year again ..... it's X'mas !
A time for celebration and what better way to do it, than enjoying good food surrounded by the ones you love.

Although I am not Christian, I still love to celebrate X'mas. Though we don't have extravagant feasts, we still celebrate it in our own little way here.
There's the ceremonial cutting of the cake, and what a cake it was !
Then we hung a paper star lantern outside our home, as is customary.
It looks beautiful by night.

I am having a hard time right now tellin myself that I have go back to college and hostel life early tomorrow

I am sure you all have your own Christmas celebrations to talk about, so let us hear them.

Spread the joy...

danscope

Hi, And have yourself a Merry little Christmas Too!!
Best regards, Dan

Astronuc

I have several hot sauces from this place.

http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/index.php

Devil's Duel Habanero Pepper Sauce (not too hot, but great Habanero taste)
http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/viewProduct.php?p=43
Fiendishly Hot... the all natural blend of fresh herbs and those evil flame-licking habanero peppers bring hellfire to your tongue!


http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/viewRecipe.php

http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/viewProduct.php?p=37

Moonbear

All my plans to sit around the house eating away have gone totally awry! I'm sick. Anyone have a good recipe for water? I can't even get that to stay down. I'm going to brave some chicken broth though, in the hopes that some nutrients get absorbed before it comes back up, because the only thing worse than being sick is being sick and hungry and not able to eat.

Evo

Oh Moonbear, that's terrible! Do you have any REAL coca cola? The cola syrup is good for releaving nausea. I won't tell you what I eat when I'm sick, it'll just make you sicker, but it works for me.

Moonbear

Nope. All the stores are closed and my friends and co-workers are out of town, so there's nobody local to call and plead for them to bring me medicine for my tummy. I attempted some chicken broth, though, and that seems to be staying put (it took effort to sip it slowly rather than gulp it down, because it tasted so good). I had to drink some Pepsi too, which didn't go down as easily, but I was adding a caffeine w/drawal headache on top of everything else (I didn't have my morning coffee, because I was trying to avoid caffeine to prevent any further dehydration).

This is a horrible whatever it is, because I AM hungry and have my normal appetite, but nothing was staying down. What I would give just to have a lemon to squeeze into some water to get some vitamins in.

And Ember is sitting here surrounded by her piles of new toys, and nobody to help her play with all of them.

Evo

Oh, that's terrible. If I was closer, I'd bring you something. Main thing is to not get dehydrated.

Astronuc

Make sure the Coke Cola is decarbonated. Pepsi does not work.

Isn't there anyone you can call? Even if you call a pizza (or other food) delivery place and just order Coke - real or classic Coke as Evo specified - that would do. Or you could order something for later when you are well.

Always keep Coke and Gatorade for emergencies!

I hope you recover quickly.

Moonbear

College town on Christmas day...things are pretty much all closed. Definitely nobody delivering. I should have sent a PM to Physics_Wiz...he's still in town and we met last week.

I'm not sure I could stomach Coke or Gatorade...I don't like either on a good day...too sweet. I have to drag myself out to the farm tomorrow, and to feed my friend's cat, so I'll drag myself to the grocery store too and depending on how I feel, stock up on easy to eat things. I don't really like yogurt either, but I think I better eat some of that to repopulate all the bacteria that I think have been stripped from my gut today. If I still feel really awful tomorrow, one of the grad students will be back to help on the experiment we're running this week, so I can probably persuade him to run the errands for me instead.

I always have chicken broth in the pantry, and that went down well. And now I've moved up to oatmeal. That's better than the teaspoon of sugar I started with this afternoon when I knew I had to get something into me and nothing would stay put...just sucked on that for a while and got some sugar into my bloodstream which helped somewhat.

I think the worst is over now...I'm suspecting food poisoning from fish I had yesterday...the symptoms started showing up a few hours after eating that, and I didn't eat anything else unusual (baked potato and boiled frozen peas from a bag I had eaten from the day before). Now that it's all out of my system, I'm starting to get better. Still feel a bit nauseous and just plain wrung out, but nothing like this morning.

Evo

Poor Moonbear, I know that feeling and it's the worst.

I recently bought a frozen fillet of fish and just as I went to put it into the pan, I noticed some little white things that didn't look quite right. On closer inspection, they were worms. I looked it up on the internet and it seems that worms in fish are quite common. I haven't been able to eat fish since. People eat the worms all the time, they won't hurt you but...

Once the fish cooks and turns white, you can't see the worms anymore.

Moonbear

The only worms I want touching my fish is the one that was on the hook when it was caught! I've never had a problem with fish before, even from this grocery store, but they probably were just putting out old stuff to get rid of it before being closed for a day, and I didn't really think about that. I was just in the mood for fish.