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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 tried a new method for roast potatoes for Christmas dinner and this is now my preferred technique.
I take Kind Edward potatoes, wash them and give them a firm peel. (This gives lots of flat edges and corners). Then I chop them up. I boil a pan of water, heavily salt it, and add the potatoes to the boiling water. (Normally I'd add root vegetables to cold water and bring it up to the boil). I simmer them for a long time -- the aim is to get the salt all through the spud, and to get the inside cooked, and the outside soft. I drain them, let them air dry and cool for a bit, and then put them on a wire rack in the fridge overnight. This gets that outside very dry. The next day I preheat goose fat in a pan, and when the oven is up to temperature I take that pan and put it on the hob to keep it hot, and gently add the potatoes. I spoon goose fat over the potatoes, but being careful not to break them up. I then roast these fairly hard, turning occasionally. The hot fat really cooks off and crisps up that crust, and these are now my favourite roasts.
My previous method was to add a tiny bit of baking soda to the water and give them a hard simmer, then drain them and rough them up in the pot. This works, but I always found it hard to get the balance right between timing to avoid a pot of mash and roughness of bashing the spuds about.
Here are videos to both methods:
Chef Kush unleashed: NO LIMITS Christmas Side Dishes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57z0iJeEoQA
Who makes the best roast potatoes? Chefs or Reddit?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3qhpMyoIxE
Kush used to work as a development chef at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, among other places, so he really does know what he's doing. He's the best thing that's happened to SortedFood for a while, IMO.
Poppy O'Toole ("PoppyCooks") is a Michelin trained chef, and she brings a joyful chaos to the videos.
I treated myself to an Aeropress (and Prismo attachment). For about $65 total, I’ve been making all kinds of espresso-based things with it. Hot and iced lattes and cappacinos, americanos, espresso martinis, affogato, and just straight up espresso shots! I know it can technically only get close to making real espresso, but you could totally fool me with it.
I’ve been taking it easy on the caffeine these days so this thing has been throwing a real wrench into my attempts to remain low-caffeine. I’m on the hunt for some good decaf espresso dark roasted coffee beans online that don’t cost an arm and a leg. My local coffee shop sells decaf beans but it’s like $21 for 330grams, where I paid $15 for 1000grams on Amazon for full-caffeine and unfortunately I think they taste a good bit better.
From what I remember from my barista days, decaf beans are decaf because they're super over roasted. They roast it to the point of denaturing the caffeine molecules, but a side effect is a worse flavor (burnt, darker, earthy)
This is also why blonde espresso has the most caffeine, it's not nearly roasted as long
Also, I apologize if you already knew this. I just wanted to add in some of my hardly relevant coffee knowledge lmao
Also, I've been thinking about getting an aeropress for camping, how do you think it would do in the outdoors? The the plastic tree ugh enough? (Assuming you got the plastic model. Do they even make a glass model?)
Not accurate; caffeine is typically removed from decaffeinated beans via organic solvents. While a longer/hotter roast can remove some caffeine, it can also make the caffeine that’s still present easier to extract when brewing, so there are no hard-and-fast rules for caffeine content of light vs. dark roasts.
So from the reading I’ve done on decaffeination, there are a couple of commonly used methods. In the Swiss Water Process method, it’s not about roasting them more, they use diffusion (similar to osmosis) to “pull” the caffeine molecules out of the beans by soaking them in a water bath of something called green coffee extract. GCE is basically a solution of all the compounds in the coffee beans except caffeine. So due to the imbalance, the caffeine molecules diffuse out of the beans and into the solution to try to get to equilibrium. They keep pumping in fresh GCE to the solution to ensure there’s always less caffeine outside the beans than in, and in about 8 hours or so you have 99% caffeine free beans. Then you dry them and roast them as normal. So you don’t have to over roast them. But over roasting beans is how most espresso beans are made (regular and decaf) because the darker roast helps lead to a more even extraction even with finely ground coffee under extra pressure (like an espresso machine). That’s from memory so don’t take it as gospel, but I’m pretty sure roast level isn’t related to caffeine content.
As for the outdoors, an Aeropress would be an excellent choice. It’s smaller than most French presses, and you don’t even need paper filters if get a metal one. The Prismo attachment comes with one. I got the clear plastic one. I think they call the material Titan or Tritan, but it looks great and is supposedly shatterproof. The compact size, durable construction, ease of cleaning and ability to be used without disposable filters (no trash!) makes it ideal for camping I’d say. Just pre-ground your beans and you’ll be a happy camper! (Sorry not sorry)
Not that this is anything special, but last week I took the time to marinade steaks overnight and I think it made a big difference. The steaks felt much juicier and tender. I loosely followed a recipe that used lemon juice, olive oil and soy sauce as the main ingredients for the marinade. I never heard or thought of using soy sauce in a steak marinade before either.
Yay for umami!
My go-to is Worcestershire sauce mixed in with the hamburger meat.
Gives that umami and extra juiciness 🤌
Next time, try some yogurt or buttermilk instead of the lemon juice.
Why that specific rec? Seems like all three qould accomplish the same goal (adding acid)
Lactic acid is milder. I haven't used lemon marinades enough to end up having a mushy exterior on my steaks, but it can supposedly happen. Personally I like the texture & taste I get with dairy marinades
Entertaining lots of whisky drinkers this season, so Mortlach 12 year and Oban 14 year for close friends and family. Jameson's and Maker's Mark for everyone else. Big square ice cubes from silicon molds for on the rocks drinkers, and a set of glencairn glasses for those who drink it great. More than a few old fashioneds and boulevardiers too.
*neat
Traditional Christmas food!
I got a furit dryer for Christmas, which I'm looking forward to trying.
Many, many Christmas cookies this week. Also egg sausage casserole at brunch and roast beef for dinner. I didn't cook for the most part, but gratefully received.
Since we have summer Christmas, I spent a few days putting together a brownie fudge ice cream for the bbq.
Made the brownies Friday night; the ice cream mix on Saturday; made the fudge, churned and threw it all together on Sunday.
There was a lot of dishes. Stirring the mix in the heat was uncomfortable. I made several mistakes and forgot to account for the brownies increasing the volume, so I had a ton of cream and fudge spilling everywhere.
And for all that effort, the result was pretty meh. I did forget to salt the cream a bit and the brownie chunks were a bit too big and badly distributed. But the concept itself is pretty flawed. It's just far more satisfying to warm up some brownie, throw on a few scoops of my vanilla ice cream and drizzle on some fudge.
But lesson learnt and it'll go on the failure pile with cookie dough, banana split and biscoff.
For Christmas Eve this year, my roommates, fiance and I did hot pot at home, using one of those Zoujirishi brand table hot pots. It was really nice having the social bonding of a shared meal without the loud noises of a hot pot restaurant. 9/10 would recommend getting a home hot pot
Well, I had to have three gum grafts so I've mostly been on a liquid/soft foods diet. Lots of pudding, lukewarm soups, congee/jook, and I developed a fun lentil chickpea curry that works well in a blender, but I want to refine the flavour a bit before sharing. But it does go great with soft breads!
I'm scheduled for another surgery in March so any other soft food ideas would be appreciated!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baozhong_tea using small https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongfu_tea set. Fantastic, for now I'm thinking about extending my set and buying more tea varieties.
Duuuude, mindfully brewing tea and just drinking in the moment is pretty fuckin great. I haven't bought a gong fu style pot/cup yet, or a tea tray with water reservoir, but I do lazy gong fu brewing (using a Kamjove brand tea brewer, all leaves are able to open up and steep, but tea pours out the bottom into a pitcher, which I them pout into my cup).
Not sure if you have one yet, but for teas try out a Japanese sencha or gyokuro. They are very rich greens (steamed leaves in processing, as opposed to roasted like Chinese greens). It may seem a bit weird to brew Japanese style tea in a gong fu, but I find you can really enjoy all the multiple steepings of a gyokuro that way (steep a ridiculous amount of times, sometimes I got up to 10)
I'm on a pretty beginning stage regarding tea drinking, however I can tell for sure that since the first time using this small Gong Fu set (a month ago) it's incredibly fun and calming experience, whether alone or with a friend. I loooove these ultra tiny tea cups, getting small sips and enjoying every moment with them. Now I understand why I didn't like drinking tea. Using ordinary bigger mugs without any care for the process made drinking tea not very appealing. This mindful approach makes everything much more fun and tasty!
So far I have beforementioned baozhong tea and Oriental Beauty oolong tea, both given me by a friend who visited Taiwan recently. Thanks for recommendation, I'll definitely try gyokuro! I steep tea in a pretty traditional clay teapot, however I see that Kamjove brewer looks very handy!
I need to get a book about tea to slowly read and learn more about it. And a tea tray with water reservoir :D Cheers, tea friend!