What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?

Recently had some steaks in a delicious red wine pan sauce! I love making pan sauces because they turn out delicious, it's an excuse to buy wine, and it makes my pans easier to wash after cooking since they get deglazed with the wine.

I've been doing a lot of curry in my instant pot lately..

It works alright, but the instant pot is really not meant for viscous slow cook meals. So, I can't make it too thick.

It's delicious though :)

Over the last year or so I've been getting into good rum, especially the different varieties and expressions and how they can be used in cocktails. To that end, a recent discovery is a mix of Cruzan Blackstrap Rum (or similar super-dark rum, such as Gosling's Black Seal) and Giffard Banane (a banana liqueur that tastes like actual banana bread, not artificial "banana"). I think about 0.5 oz of Giffard to 1.5 oz of rum is the sweet spot; more and it becomes almost too sweet; less and it's not noticeable.

While blackstrap rum is usually used sparingly in floats (or with ginger beer in a Dark & Stormy), the strong molasses flavors pair exquisitely well with the banana liqueur. Oddly enough, the Giffard is the most expensive part of this, but the flavor is worth it (it's made in France with Brazillian bananas and aged in French oak barrels).

Spouse cooked up a pile of burrito filling. Home-smoked chicken from the last batch in the freezer, queso, corn, beans (Rancho Gordo beans, cooked and seasoned, not canned), red onions, spices, cilantro, lime juice. We just wrapped handfuls in a couple of packages worth of flour tortillas, and tossed them in the freezer for miscellaneous quick meals.

I've been cooking a lot of Himalayan food recently. I find it to be a cuisine that shines with simple, fresh ingredients.

One of my favorite dishes is roasted potatoes tossed in a spiced garlic oil. Essentially you saute garlic, ginger, and spices like cumin, tumeric, and chili flakes, then add cooked potatoes. Top with cilantro and lemon juice to contrast the fat and heat. It's glorious. Can be served hot, or cold like a potato salad.

It was a good year for Ramps in the area. Made a bunch of Ramp Pesto and Ramp Butter to store in the freezer. Last night made a bolognese meat sauce with pasta. Haven't made a meat sauce in a very long time, turned out great. It's starting to get too hot to make pizza or bread so that's gonna be on the back burner for awhile :( The only upside is grilling which I finally cooked a whole t-bone that was in my freezer for 2 years. Turned out pretty good for how how old it was.

I made steamed mushroom dumplings for the first time recently. Made dumpling wrappers with a 1:2 water to flour ratio, with 2% of the flour weight in salt. Did about 7g of dough per wrapper for a 7 cm disc, but wish I'd gone for 10g and closer to 9 cm.

For the filling I finely chopped 500g of mushrooms and finely diced a single shallot, about 60g. I also finely sliced about 30g of bean sprouts. I slowly cooked the mushrooms down in a dry pan until all the water was cooked off, and then I pushed the mushrooms to the side of the pan and poured in about 20ml of sesame oil, and let it preheat for a little bit before frying off 2 cloves of garlic/~15g and a small knob of ginger/30g. After it became fragrant, I added 20ml of soy sauce and stirred everything into the mushrooms, then added a splash of mirin and some Worcestershire sauce to taste. After giving everything a few minutes to cook together, I stirred in a slurry of 2 teaspoons of both water and cornstarch to thicken.

Each dumpling had about 15g of filling, and I decided on the shape pretty randomly to be honest. I steamed them for about 8 minutes, with the wrappers going kind of translucent.

My wife just made us Bourbon Chicken with Peaches. It is so good! She added some scallions in as well. I can't wait to get home tonight to eat the leftovers.

I recently bought a copy of The Sioux Chef and really wanted to take inspiration from its recipes despite not having all of the ingredients on hand, but the author makes great recommendations for substitutes.

I made a venison pappardelle with a wild blueberry wojapi and chanterelle mushroom sauce. While I did have to take some leeway with some items such as spring onion instead of wild onion/garlic or black pepper instead of juniper, I did avoid all dairy since that wasn't a typical indigenous ingredient. My intention was to only have the pasta be the sole non-traditional ingredient with some reasonable substitutes.

To start, I soaked some dried chanterelles until they reconstituted and saved the liquid they sat in to be used later. I added some salt to taste and enough water to make it a full cup. Sunflower oil was used to add fat to the lean venison as it cooked and I used salt, black pepper, rosemary, and sumac to season. The reconstituted chanterelles were chopped and added to the meat once mostly brown along with the white parts of some chopped spring onion. Once softened, I added the one cup chanterelle mushroom water plus an additional cup of just water. About 4-5 heaping Tablespoons of blueberry wojapi was added along with 2 Tablespoons honey since I did not have maple syrup. Added in some beans and pepitas for more texture variety and nutrition. Mixed together and then let to simmer until reduced.

Venison sauce was then tossed with pappardelle pasta along with a splash of pasta water to help it emulsify. Once in a bowl it was topped with more pepitas and wow was it a flavor surprise! Not a berry punch in the face, but a wonderfully savory and complex dish that was so different from my other cooking. I love how it inspired me to constrain my ingredient options and the simplicity allowed for something so flavorful.

Next time I want to do something more traditional without pasta and lean in more to the corn basis that The Sioux Chef works upon. I had some ingredients that really need to be used and this was a great opportunity to do so.

Made fresh pasta with my siblings yesterday. They showed me a recipe for a sauce where you pulverize cherry tomatoes in a blender then free fry the liquid in olive oil with salt and pepper. It had this super intense and sweet tomatoe-y-ness, which was really nice.

I'm probably going to start freezing a bunch of fresh pasta every now and then. The texture difference between it and boxed is too much not to crave.

Chilled noodle bowls. They’re quick, easy, versatile, nutritious, and delicious. I rotate between udon, soba, and ramen noodles, pair the noodles with dashi, sesame dressing, etc., and throw in some tofu cubes, maybe a boiled egg, and lots of vegetables.

I bought a big bag of garden peas still in their pods which were going cheap the other day. Had the peas on Sunday night with some pasta in a light tomato sauce and then wondered if I could do something with the pods as well.

I ended up roughly following this recipe for peapod soup which worked pretty well despite my pods being pealess. Served it with some bannocks, which is my go-to quick and easy bread recipe. Very pleased with how it turned out!

Been on a Caribbean food kick - did jerk shrimp with this coconut rice recipe, which was fantastic.

https://www.recipetineats.com/jamaican-rice-and-peas/

The shrimp was in a tamarind ginger sauce, which went well enough that I actually would recommend adding some tamarind to the rice if you're not serving it with anything that has that flavor.

I recently picked up a gourd and a bombilla and have been trying yerba mate. I initially kind of hated it, it was very very bitter. I read a couple of guides online about the process and realized I was treating it like tea. Once I got through that first "pour" it tasted much much less bitter and was quite enjoyable. I'm almost tempted to kind of discard that first pour as it seems excessively bitter. It also might just be that I bought a bad brand from my local international market.

I tried my hand at dal makhani this week. I’d never made it before and it came out… okay. I definitely have some things I’ll do different the next time. I was very careful with adding salt, probably too careful. After adding some salt and a squirt of lime it was better. Next time I’m going to check out a different recipe and then I’ll start going rogue.

I made some pad thai at home. For a more Americanized taste, which I tend to prefer, you can swap the amounts for fish sauce and soy sauce in a recipe. I added green bell pepper, jalapeños (has anyone else noticed Aldi jalapeños aren’t spicy?), and broccoli for veggies so it was a very green meal.

I can’t recommend fried chili oil enough either. Added it liberally to the veggies and it just gives such amazing flavor without burning your mouth.

Anyway I couldn’t even let the leftovers make it to day 2 before finishing it all off. I need to make that more!

I made Korean fried chicken (Dakgangjeong) yesterday. It's crunchy, sweet, sour, and a little spicy (because I added spicy dried chilli). It's simple yet pretty good. It's a bit time consuming but that's just me being slow.

I'm still thinking about the rice cakes I made for dinner on Monday. I sauteed mushrooms, carrots and onions, then pan fried some rice cakes, mixed them all together and added sweet chili sauce to it. So good.

Been eating a lot of Indian food as of late. I went to an Indian grocer and bought a ton of spices so I've just sorta been fucking around with them trying to find some ratios I like. My chicken Tikka masala is currently as good as any restaurant I've had, which I'm pretty proud of. I bought a spice mix called Bisibelebath and have made that a few times, the flavor profile on it is amazing and it's got this taste that's slightly unlike anything I've had before. I think it comes from the Marathi moggu/ kapok buds. Honestly I just really enjoy having tons of different spices and herbs to fuck around with, I feel like I as getting bored using the same dozen I've used for most of my life.

I’ve been craving Horchata so much that decided to make it at home. It came out so well and I made a big batch to last me a few days!