8
votes
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 made an atypical tahini-less hummus the other day. I was grilling something else on my barbecue, so I put some chickpeas, sesame oil, garlic, shallots, a garden jalapeno, half of a small carrot in a foil packet, then squeezed a lime in as well, and then put the packet on the barbecue to roast for about 25 minutes. When it was done, I put the roasted veg in a blender and blended it smooth; I had to add a bit of olive oil to get the right consistency. Added a bit of salt & black pepper to taste.
It is maybe the best hummus I've ever had.
I prepared some dough and alternated between making calzones and pizza. The calzones were shaped a bit ugly but it's pretty easy to prepare and infinitely versatile since you can add anything you want.
One of the standout ingredients was baked tomato strips. I took half a roma tomato, removed the core and seeds, sliced it into strips, and baked it with oil and a bit of light seasoning. When you bite into the strips you get a way more concentrated blast of tomato-y flavor.
The other standout ingredient was using sliced Castelvetrano olives! I'm used to black olives on pizza, which taste fine and are usually chosen as a cost-saving measure. But using better olives definitely elevates the meal.
Experimented with ground chicken recently.
First, I tried making some chicken kofta kebabs, basically spiced ground chicken patties. I'd classify my attempt as a failure but not because they were inedible. The spices were just right but I unfortunately added way too much grated onion (or I didn't wring them out enough), resulting in the onion flavor kind of overpowering everything else which was a shame. It came out great otherwise. Need to try again with much less onion and much more spices.
Second, I made a Japanese keema curry. I had a packet of premade Japanese curry sauce with vegetables that I needed to use up and 1lb of ground chicken that was about to turn so I thought I'd combine the two. I cooked the chicken until it was cooked through, poured in the curry sauce and then mixed it all together and had it with rice. Overall, very flavorful and a success. I could've browned the ground chicken way more, I basically just cooked it until it was cooked through but didn't get a lot of color on it. The final product was also quite thick, I should've added some water to loosen it up but yeah. I was under the weather and just wanted something to eat so I ate it haha.
What kind of onion did you use? I have sometimes used shallots instead of white or yellow onions. It avoids the sharpness and almost never overwhelms other flavours, but still gives you that good oniony taste.
I used half a large white onion, which matched the random recipe I was following. I think part of my problem was that I wasn't able to fully squeeze out the extra moisture from the onion too, which probably added to the strong onion taste in my final product. I tried using just paper towels but the towels ripped as I squeezed so I hurriedly dumped the half-squeezed onions into my meat. All avoidable mistakes but part of the learning process haha.
I found out a trick that makes chicken really tender: mix some baking soda into the marinad and let it simmer there for half an hour before washing/drying and frying. Really transformed how chicken turns out.
Unfortunately (for them) the kids hate the texture.
I find a yogurt based marinade does wonders.
The acidity of the yogurt helps tenderize the chicken, and the yogurt itself helps seal in more of the chicken's moisture.
Was going to write this as a seperate comment, but i have been brining chicken breasts and it makes them really moist. I have been mainly chopping it into bite and seasoning before putting in the air frier to snack.
I also put it into a curry last night and it was noticible there as well
A local store started selling “Q dougan”. Dougan is a spicy dried tofu snack. It’s a hard chewy treat that is kind of like a (often but not always) vegan version of beef jerky. This kind is “Q” because it’s soft, which is a very odd thing for this to be, but I find it to be really great textural variation that makes it really hard to stop eating.