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What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
I don’t frequently respond to these posts because while I do a lot of cooking, I’ve got a staple of 10-20 dishes that my wife and I both like and we rotate through those. But I’ve been on a culinary adventure over the last week.
Recently one of my dogs was diagnosed with kidney disease. The vet suggested we put her on a special diet to slow the progression as much as possible. We tried the special kidney friendly food from the vet but she refused to eat it after the novelty of wet food wore off. According to the vet, that’s not too surprising because it’s not very tasty when compared to normal food.
So I did some research on my own and consulted with my vet and decided to make my own dog food.
Turns out that cooking for a dog is quite a bit different than it is for humans! Basically, you have to double the cook time of most things to make sure it’s easy for a dog to break it down, since they are naturally carnivores and their digestive tracts aren’t made for processing non-meats.
After some experimenting, I found out she loves sweet potatoes and rice. So we decided on a mix of sweet potatoes, white rice, peas, carrots and chicken thighs. It isn’t too time intensive, since it mostly involves boiling the vegetables and baking the chicken and it gives her all the nutrition she needs as well as being low in sodium and phosphorous.
She gets three square meals a day and she wolfs them down now.
Anyway, that’s my culinary adventure for the week.
Enjoy this photo of her doing what she does best, taking a nap after a meal.
Over the holidays I discovered a specialty cheese shop in my general area, and I have to say, I've been really enjoying going there whenever I've had an excuse. Two of my favorite things I've tried there was a very buttery brie stuffed with mascarpone and black truffles, and a cheese with spices and wild flowers in the rind that gives it a very floral Italian flavor, almost like pizza.
I also baked some Sticky Toffee Pudding over the holidays because my parents and some friends they had over for Christmas dinner practically begged me to, and I feel like it was a mistake. They each took the tiniest piece and then left me with 3/4 of the cake remaining for myself to eat even though I'm trying to diet. It legitimately is one of my favorite things to bake because it has a great flavor, but as a steamed cake/pudding it can be finnicky to get just right. Anyways, I'm pretty sure most of it will go bad at this point and I'm upset because it's not something you can just make from a box recipe.
As for drinks my SO's family recently uncorked some mead that had been left bottle aging for a while. They'd originally brewed it themselves about 5 years ago, but it tasted...not great. They've been periodically opening bottles every year or so since then just hoping it would get better, and apparently this year was it. All the off notes are gone and it seriously just tastes like wildflower honey now, though obviously less concentrated and more like a sweet red wine in terms of sweetness and texture. I've bought mead from stores before and it never really lived up to expectations, but this stuff tastes like how I always wished mead tastes.
We have a really amazing specialty cheese & charcuterie shop close to us, and it's one of my favorite places to shop too. My wallet can only take visiting it once every few months though, since the prices on some of our favorite imported cheeses, cured meats, and antipasti from there are borderline absurd. :P
Brie aux Truffe is also one of my favorites too, but nothing beats a good Grand Crème / Triple Cream Brie, IMO. You should give one a try if you have never had it before, your shop has one available, and you enjoy ridiculously rich and creamy Bries.
Do you know if there's a difference between Brie Aux Truffe and Brie Truffe Maison? That's what it was called at my cheese shop, and I'm wondering if it's just a regional thing, but I'm not getting anything conclusive to show up.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to check it out!
I'm not a cheese expert by any means, but AFAIK Brie aux Truffe, sometimes shortened to just Brie Truffe, is the official name for that specific style of cheese. And so I suspect Brie Truffe Maison (Maison = House) is just their homemade version, but I could definitely be wrong about that, and it may be a particular brand or something. Next time you're at the cheese shop you should ask them that, and I'm sure they will actually be delighted that someone is interested enough to want to know more about their cheeses. :)
As a native French speaker, "Brie aux Truffes" indeed sound like a generic term, and "maison" indeed tells us that's it's a homemade version.
Super French grammar pedantry bros II
It's "brie aux truffes", you forgot the plural mark. Contrary to English, you also have number agreement with prepositions.
For sure there's no truffle brie in the register of protected cheese.
I've been thinking a lot about eating less meat because of the environment and also how expensive it is. With that, I got turned onto chickpeas about a month ago.
They are high in protein, fibre and lots of other nutrients and not too high in calories. Also a bag of dried chickpeas is only a few dollars and they triple in size after soaking them.
I've been making a lot of roasted chickpea's using this recipe. Very easy to make and you can season them however you'd like. I love salty snacks so these have been a great healthier alternative. I've been making a batch like every week.
I've also tried making falafel a couple times now, and while delicious, I find it really hard to work with. They keep falling apart while trying to form them into patties, but they taste great.
I've known about it for a while but lately I've been somewhat obsessed over a dish that doesn't seem to have definitive name. It seems like most of the internet has settled on Hong Kong Style Noodles or Hong Kong Chow Mein, but I've also heard it being called fried instant noodles or crispy noodles.
The dish is very very simple to make and there's not a lot of ingredients to it. As such it's a fairly versatile; you can make a basic version for when you just want something tasty at home or you can gussy it up to make things fancy. You can even make it vegetarian if you want (though I would imagine a vegan version might be difficult).
The core of the dish is the noodles, which are relatively thin Chinese style egg noodles which are first steamed (or boiled) and then put in a hot pan with oil to fry. In a separate pan you build a braise with some combination of flavors (usually oyster sauce and soy sauce, but there's a lot of options to choose from), toss your vegetable (usually bok choi or chinese brocolli, less commonly some kind of mushroom) and your choice of meat into it, and when everything's cooked through add some starch to thicken the braising liquid into your sauce, let it cool a bit, then pour it over your finished crispy noodles.
The thing that makes this dish so irresistible is the relatively simplistic savory flavor of the dish combined with the range of textures that it offers. The center part of the noodles will be soft and tender with a bit of bite. The outside edges will be crunchy, and the vegetables will give you a completely different kind of crunch. And then the meat gives it's own tender chew as well. And with every bite you also get this thick sauce with it's own delicate texture.
That is one of my absolute favorite Chinese food dishes too, which I order every single time it's on the menu. And I especially love it when the noodles are fried until extra cripsy. My favorite local restaurant adds tiger shrimp, squid, and char siu pork to the dish, along with all the veg, and it's to die for.🤤 Though I have always seen the Chinese restaurants here in Ontario, Canada refer to it as Cantonese Chow Mein, or anglicized to Cantonese Pan-fried Noodles.
p.s. Here's a great article on the base dish, which has a thorough breakdown on all the main ingredients, plus detailed instructions on making it: https://madewithlau.com/recipes/cantonese-chow-mein
Coincidentally I came across that one while trying to figure out what exactly to call it. It's definately one of the more fancy preparations I've seen.
There's a small chain of local Hong Kong style restaurants near me and they make theirs with their barbeque pork. It's nice but I actually like the simpler beef or pork options a little bit more. Prawn/shrimp is probably more popular everywhere but I can't stand seafood personally.
Yeah, I can see why that would be the case. The simpler beef/pork/chicken options are a lot more tender so provide a more noticeable textural difference. I just fucking love char siu in anything/everything, which is why cha siu bao (baked or steamed) is my #2 Dim Sum dish (after har gow).
And I totally understand about seafood too. "Fishiness" (the smell and taste) can be pretty unpleasant for some, but I absolutely love it. Blackened Chilean sea bass is the food of the gods, IMO! I love it so much I even eat the skin, despite not doing that for most other fish. :P
Had Vegemite for the first time, can't believe the Australians were keeping something so tasty to themselves. Been trying it on a bunch of different things, but the best thing I've made with it so far is also the simplest, English muffin with butter, Vegemite, and nutritional yeast. I tried marmite too, but found it a bit too mild in comparison. Still pretty good though.
I also discovered that picked Vidalia onion slices are just a thing you can buy by the jar, which has incomparably improved my sandwiches.