Cooking, Recipes, and Fire Alarms

Jensen

I kinda eyeball everything, so sorry if you're a technical chef and need precision. Also just improv'd this dish on friday for the first time, I'm sure it has room for improvement.

Pancetta Gorgonzola Mac 'n Cheese

What you'll need:
2 small packages of diced pancetta (I think they're 4oz?)
1 large tub of crumbled gorgonzola (usually for salads)
Shredded Parmesian/Asiago/ or similar
1 large box of medium shells pasta
small container of heavy cream
pepper and salt to taste
4 cloves of garlic (I use purple, but w/e you like)
Panko


Heat up a medium saucepan then adding the pancetta so it sizzles, reduce to like a "5" setting.

While that is cooking, mash 4 cloves of garlic with a little salt to make a paste. (I Use a tenderizing hammer, but w/e works)

Cook evenly and separate out the meat, leaving the oil.

Add the garlic to the oil, once softened add in the package of cheese and some cream (Eyeball it and taste to be sure, if the cheese won't separate into the cream then add a little more.) Allow to simmer and reduce for 20-30 mins.

Cook the shells a little al dente while you stir the sauce.

When there's about 5 mins left, add the pancetta back to the sauce. Salt and pepper to taste.

Pour the pasta in a colander and rinse with cool water to stop it from cooking more.

Mix the sauce and the pasta in a large bowl and pour into a baking dish. Coat the top with panko and parm. Cook in the oven on 350, then broil toward the end to brown the top. No time just keep an eye on it.

Aishia

That's a hell of a lot more blue cheese than I'd be brave enough to put in anything.

Hadrak

Aishia said:

That's a hell of a lot more blue cheese than I'd be brave enough to put in anything.

Your cowardice has been noted and remembered, cheese pleb.

Aishia

I feel like it would be overbearing. I like blue cheese, don't get me wrong, but it makes a better accent, in such amounts it's like "Hello mouth this is vomit."

Aishia

ALSO YOU DONT EVEN KNOW HOW TO EAT BRIE STEP OFF..

Jensen

Some of us were born to eat cheese and some of cant hang

Aishia

I ain't buying it!!

Jensen

I've eaten a bowl of blue cheese in spiced port wine sauce with garlic crostini. It's sooo good

Moirean

I'm lactose intolerant. (I STILL KNOW HOW TO EAT BRIE THO)

Hadrak

I am too. I eat through the pain.

Jensen

Not my fault your tummies can't handle that spicy milk

Teani

There are these small pills they sell over here in Sweden for people who are lactose intolerant, so they can eat (a moderate portion of) dairy products without all the pain that comes with it normally. I have quite a few friends who keep those with them just in case they're offered it so they can enjoy whatever the rest of the guests are having.

So, I was handed a recipe for an apple cake that is delicious. It's really not a diet kind of cake, but hngh... so good!

1 egg
2 dl sugar
2 dl flour
1 tsp baking powder
75 g melted butter
1 small apple

Set oven to approx 150-175 Celsius.
Prepare a flat, round pan with a coat of breadcrumbs.
Mix egg and sugar well.
Turn in baking powder and flour, then poir mixture in the pan.
Flatten it out and add thin slices of apple on top as garnish.
Put in the oven for around 30 minutes (depending on oven).

What you'll get is a very hard, but tasty crust along the edge and a chewy, almost toffee-flavored bottom, in the middle.

Meyvitch

Here in the US it's called Lactaid. My sis and I went through a period of on-again off-again on-again to milk and dairy products. I can tolerate milk again in large amounts, but only if I pick a dairy category and stick with it for a few days. Milk OR cheese not both.

Ashmer

Jensen said:

Some of us were born to eat cheese and some of cant hang

Translation: some of us cook drunk on the weekends, and some of us are like the rest of us

Jensen

I threw a craft booze/meat/cheese party on sunday.... sooooooooo good

Volka

Oh, brie. First time I had brie, I didn't know the rind was so ...strong. never eating that part again. lol

I adore bleu cheese. We have a wedge made in amish pennsylvania, and the strain of mold is so strong it jumped to my huge block of plebleian cheddar and is currently making bleu cheddar, which I tried a bit of a few weeks ago and it was amazeballs.

Jensen

Jensen's fly by wire black bean burgers

2x 28 ounce cans of black beans
1 cup of fresh bread crumbs
1 red onion
4 cloves of garlic
1 egg
<1/2 cup of flour
1 can of sweet corn
Cumin
Chipotle powder
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Salt


Finely dice the onion and if you have one, press the cloves of garlic and sautée with EVOO or w/e oil you prefer on low heat until soft. Meanwhile I used a blender to crumb 2 pieces of bread into roughly 1 cup of fresh crumbs. Open one of the black beans cans and rinse in a collander to get the juice off and mush it in a bowl with a potato masher (or fingers). Add half the bread crumbs and keep mashing, then rinse and drain the corn and mash that in too. Season generously with the spices (use your judgement but beans and bread soak up a lot of flavors) and then add the onions/garlic to your mash. Rinse and drain the rest of the beans and add with an egg. Add the remaining bread crumbs

Mash and stir till mixed, and dust with flour until sticky yet firm (I measure out a half cup and just dust here and there, probably use under a 1/4 cup). Dip your hands in water and form a small patty, then cook in a little oil or butter. Check consistency and flavor, add spices or flour as needed. Patties should hold together in the pan and be crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. Serves well with garlic aoli and blue cheese. I had mine tonight with cheddar and sriacha aoili. Makes about 14 big patties which I freeze for later.

Aishia

But where is the meat?

Jensen

gone

Aishia

What did u do to it? (((

Jensen

Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to

Meyvitch

my most-often used cheat recipe is cake-mix cookie batch. Take a box of any flavor cake mix (not TOO moist), 1/2 cup oil, 2 eggs, drop in the oven on 350 for nine minutes. Just utterly ignore the cake recipe on the back of box. Makes most excellent cookies. Oddly enough, the leadership team goes bananas for the strawberry cookies. One of the supervisors WILL and has tried to go after someone with a plastic fork.

Aishia

I make this one a lot lately, take some chicken wings, salt+pepper, put them in a pan lined with tinfoil, GREASE IT a bit. (Butter or pam or whatever u prefer I guess) Cook them pre-crispy. I find the best point for me is when whatever juices cooked off them are dry, but before they start to brown. Then toss them in a mix of melted butter/buffalo/franks red hot. The ratio is probably something like 30/70 butter hot sauce but you can tweak the ratio as you like. Put them back in the oven and cook them until they are all crispy and browned and reddish looking.(Don't get freaked out when all the butter separates from your sauce it's ok it only is for the best!) I like to conserve some of the butter sauce to toss them again in when they are cooked but also just plain buffalo at the end works good to make them saucier again. (Most of the sauce cooks into the meat so u know how that goes)

Ashmer

Not really a recipe, but I just started off two steaks by poaching them in equal parts New Belgium Rampant IPA (substitute a sharp, dry beer of your choice) and you can literally taste it in the meat. Soooo good.

Not recommended for fine cuts of meat, but for the cheap chuck you bought at Kroger it works wonders.

Aishia

ah I saw a cool thing the other day where you can do a sous vide in a beer cooler full of hot water with ziploc bags.

Irruel

Prawn-rocket-white wine pasta:

A recent fav, takes as long as it takes to cook the pasta:

• 1/2 kg prawns (shrimp) already cooked is fine, just shell them. If not cooked, then fry slightly longer at the beginning. I use medium-large.
  
• plenty of fresh rocket
  
• small, decently hot red chillies (I put two in, with seeds)
  
• sun dried tomatoes (chop them really small - I do about 5-6 of them)
  
• a juiced lemon
  
• glass of white wine (Semillon-whateveritis, sorry, not a wine buff)
  
• garlic
  

1. start the pasta (i.e. boil the water, put in pasta when ready)
   
2. fry the prawns for a couple of minutes in butter, olive oil, garlic and chillies
   (mixing oil and butter stops the butter burning as easily)
   
3. add the tomatoes and wine, simmer
   
4. A minute before the pasta is done, add half the rocket and the lemon juice. Stir through.
   
5. Stir the pasta through the sauce
   
6. season to taste
   
7. serve with fresh rocket piled on top, or quickly stirred through.
   

Aishia

Is rocket like American for roquette?

Hadrak

We call it arugula, but it's the same leafy green.

Aishia

OH

Aishia

OK I GOT A NEW ONE for potential leftover steak which is barely a real thing in sane households but lets call it theoretical or a "I bought 100 steaks and cooked them all at once" situation. Slice it against the grain thin as you please. Lay it sort of slightly fanned out on a baking sheet. Take a suitable amount of cream cheese, and a dash of cream, heat like 30s in the microwave to soften it up. SKIP BACK A STEP. Slice green peppers and possibly onions. (You can saute these first OR not.) Smear cream cheese paste across the surface of the steak, cover in peppers and or onions. Cover the whole mess in grated cheese. Provolone or cheddar or something is probably the best or most ostensibly classical choice. OK FINE THIS IS JUST CHEESESTEAK YOU FIGURED ME OUT but it's not on a sandwich so there. But yeah it's almost too delicious to deal with who needs a bun.