CraigC
Master Chef
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2011
- Messages
- 6,486
We are making some fresh mozzarella and ricotta. First time I've ever bought raw milk. Man the cream floating on top! So dinner will be eggplant using the fresh mozzarella.
Saturday's House Special 1-11-14
- Thread starter CraigC
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Addie
Chef Extraordinaire
We are making some fresh mozzarella and ricotta. First time I've ever bought raw milk. Man the cream floating on top! So dinner will be eggplant using the fresh mozzarella.
As many of my generation will remember, that is how we always got our milk. It wasn't homogenized then. Your mother did the homogenizing by shaking it before she opened the glass bottle.
Aunt Bea
Master Chef
Vegetable beef with barley soup and a handful of peanuts!
Addie
Chef Extraordinaire
Aunt Bea
Master Chef
Mine too!My favorite soup. Even above clam or corn chowder.
Steve Kroll
Wine Guy
We're meeting with our dinner group tonight. Usually we do some sort of foodie theme, but tonight the theme is "old school" foods. The couple that's hosting is making beef tenderloin with baked potato. I'm in charge of the salad, so I'm bringing a wedge salad with bacon, tomatoes, and homemade buttermilk blue cheese dressing.
jabbur
Master Chef
I've got some bacon wrapped pork tenderloins that I'll broil with mashed potatoes and broccoli.
CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
I've got a 12-lb turkey roasting in the oven, wild rice stuffing ready to go in, two types of coleslaw (special request by one of the guests and the DH's favorite coleslaw), relish tray, dinner rolls, steamed green beans, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, rutabaga-carrot mash (another must have for one of the guests), cranberry sauce, and relish tray. Dessert is my grandma's fudge cake with candy cane ice cream.
Rocklobster
Master Chef
Old skool here tonight. Surf and Turf....tenderloins with scallops and shrimp fried in garlic butter, potatoes au gratin and some kind of veggie.
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Dawgluver
Chef Extraordinaire
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2011
- Messages
- 25,033
Was going to make egg foo yung, but we're out of bean sprouts and the roads are still really slippery. So a stir fry of some sort.
Addie
Chef Extraordinaire
I haven't eaten anything today. So I really do need to cook up something for supper. But after reading what all of you are having, what I should do is pick one house and head there.
All the holiday leftovers and dishes made with leftovers are now history, so we're back to the norm.
Tonight we'll have country-fried steak with gravy, mashed taters, some of the last canned green beans from our garden, iced tea and, happily, more holiday cookies and candies for dessert.
Tonight we'll have country-fried steak with gravy, mashed taters, some of the last canned green beans from our garden, iced tea and, happily, more holiday cookies and candies for dessert.
Jing
Cook
Very simple here: roast chicken quarters with braised celery and carrots, roast taties, brussel sprouts and sage and onion stuffing.
Somebunny
Executive Chef
We were going to have Kayelle's Perfect Grilled Pork Chops.....but my anchovy paste didn't look so good, it was kind of green instead of brown. I usually have it on hand for my Caesar Salad dressing, I guess it's been around too long. So.....it's pan fried pork chops, fluffy white rice and gravy and since we are out of all fresh veggies except turnip, rutabaga and carrots we will have canned green beans on the side. 
. It all sounds like comfort food to me
. It all sounds like comfort food to me
Addie
Chef Extraordinaire
We were going to have Kayelle's Perfect Grilled Pork Chops.....but my anchovy paste didn't look so good, it was kind of green instead of brown. I usually have it on hand for my Caesar Salad dressing, I guess it's been around too long. So.....it's pan fried pork chops, fluffy white rice and gravy and since we are out of all fresh veggies except turnip, rutabaga and carrots we will have canned green beans on the side.
You could make those carrots creamed carrots. A quick béchamel sauce and toss in some cooked carrot medallions.
Greg Who Cooks
Executive Chef
I had Thai barbecued chicken tonight, making it three nights in a row for my cooking Thai food at home for dinner. Thursday was Pad Krapow Moo, last night was Panang Shrimp Curry (improvised, using Mae Ploy Panang Curry Paste, an authentic Thai product) augmented by my own intuitive ideas of what goes into a curry. Didn't have the Kaffir lime leaves, did have the Thai chilis, and unfortunately over-did the chilis. It tasted good (and hot!!!) for dinner. I love Thai food when it makes my forehead sweat. (Sorry for being indelicate but you know you used too much chili peppers about 3 a.m.)
Tonight I had my Gai Yang = Thai style barbecued chicken, with a marinade I have developed and also a dipping sauce same thing, my own invention. Unfortunately my recipe has not risen high enough in Google page ranks that you could find it. (Unlike the Pad Krapow Moo which is kind of freaky because my PKM recipe gets lots of page hits from Thailand!!! -- I wrote my own website software and can analyze page hits, where they came from, etc.)
So tonight I marinated my chicken in a marinade primarily made of coconut milk and tumeric (and couldn't resist hitting it a bit with the panang paste) and garlic, salt and pepper. I usually do it on a barbecue but I was lazy so I started it on convection bake and when the top started looking good I switched to plain bake.
I served it with a dipping sauce of my own concoction (similar to that served in Thai restaurants) and Mahatma (brand) yellow rice -- this is really good stuff -- topped with chopped cilantro and chopped green onions.
So Greg is on a roll, three nights in a row for home cooked Thai food. Will Greg cook Thai tomorrow night? Alas I think the odds are more likely than not. Will it be Gai Pad Pak? (There's another one that is too popular for my site to make the Google page ranks.) Will it be Curried Chicken in Coconut Milk with Holy Basil Leaves? There's another one that I make the ranks, but only with that exact search term + "recipe" which is kind of cheating. (You could make a page with "asddf f3eror rwoer" as the title and you'd always show up as #1 in the page ranks if a search engine saw your page.)
The page rank thing is kind of flattering in some respects but only if you use enough of a generic title that you didn't create your own niche. Anyway my Curried Chicken recipe requires making your own paste which is a lot of extra steps, but worth it.
As I said on my web page for the Curried Chicken, "Credit: Adapted from Easy Thai-style Cookery (Series: Australian Women's Weekly Home Library)." The recipe is my own version (and in my own words) but I started with a pretty good recipe. The original recipe was duck, and it tasted fantastic!, but I chose to present it on my own page as a chicken recipe.
Folks, I think I might be starting another month of cooking nothing but Thai. Call it an inspiration, call it an obsession, call it a disease, call it whatever you want. I just love Thai food!
I may take a few days off and cook Chinese. I'm working on a few Chinese recipes that I hope to perfect enough to be good enough to post on the Internet and as long as I'm in an Asian mood I might as well take a few more shots at them. One of them is Walnut Chicken (or Shrimp) in Creamy Sauce. It's a good candidate since it's almost there, almost good enough to post on my site. I don't post any recipes until I've developed and perfected my own version of the recipe. I always cite my source even if it's just a restaurant that inspired me to copy their recipe as best as I could. The Walnut Chicken for example is inspired by my favorite Chinese restaurant, the best Chinese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley: The Great Wall (in Reseda on Sherman Way near Reseda Blvd.).
Not that they give me their recipes. When I copycat recipes I'm on my own.
Actually when I develop a recipe I research the Internet and come up with about 20-30 versions, then use my instinct to single out aspects of each of the recipes, then I cook it perhaps a couple dozen times changing ingredients and amounts before I come up with my own distinctive version. When I can't find any way to improve it and it reaches my standard I post it on my recipe website.
I probably type too much. Sorry 'bout that. You can always skip over my long winded posts and I won't be offended.
Tonight I had my Gai Yang = Thai style barbecued chicken, with a marinade I have developed and also a dipping sauce same thing, my own invention. Unfortunately my recipe has not risen high enough in Google page ranks that you could find it. (Unlike the Pad Krapow Moo which is kind of freaky because my PKM recipe gets lots of page hits from Thailand!!! -- I wrote my own website software and can analyze page hits, where they came from, etc.)
So tonight I marinated my chicken in a marinade primarily made of coconut milk and tumeric (and couldn't resist hitting it a bit with the panang paste) and garlic, salt and pepper. I usually do it on a barbecue but I was lazy so I started it on convection bake and when the top started looking good I switched to plain bake.
I served it with a dipping sauce of my own concoction (similar to that served in Thai restaurants) and Mahatma (brand) yellow rice -- this is really good stuff -- topped with chopped cilantro and chopped green onions.
So Greg is on a roll, three nights in a row for home cooked Thai food. Will Greg cook Thai tomorrow night? Alas I think the odds are more likely than not. Will it be Gai Pad Pak? (There's another one that is too popular for my site to make the Google page ranks.) Will it be Curried Chicken in Coconut Milk with Holy Basil Leaves? There's another one that I make the ranks, but only with that exact search term + "recipe" which is kind of cheating. (You could make a page with "asddf f3eror rwoer" as the title and you'd always show up as #1 in the page ranks if a search engine saw your page.)
The page rank thing is kind of flattering in some respects but only if you use enough of a generic title that you didn't create your own niche. Anyway my Curried Chicken recipe requires making your own paste which is a lot of extra steps, but worth it.
As I said on my web page for the Curried Chicken, "Credit: Adapted from Easy Thai-style Cookery (Series: Australian Women's Weekly Home Library)." The recipe is my own version (and in my own words) but I started with a pretty good recipe. The original recipe was duck, and it tasted fantastic!, but I chose to present it on my own page as a chicken recipe.
Folks, I think I might be starting another month of cooking nothing but Thai. Call it an inspiration, call it an obsession, call it a disease, call it whatever you want. I just love Thai food!
I may take a few days off and cook Chinese. I'm working on a few Chinese recipes that I hope to perfect enough to be good enough to post on the Internet and as long as I'm in an Asian mood I might as well take a few more shots at them. One of them is Walnut Chicken (or Shrimp) in Creamy Sauce. It's a good candidate since it's almost there, almost good enough to post on my site. I don't post any recipes until I've developed and perfected my own version of the recipe. I always cite my source even if it's just a restaurant that inspired me to copy their recipe as best as I could. The Walnut Chicken for example is inspired by my favorite Chinese restaurant, the best Chinese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley: The Great Wall (in Reseda on Sherman Way near Reseda Blvd.).
Not that they give me their recipes. When I copycat recipes I'm on my own.
Actually when I develop a recipe I research the Internet and come up with about 20-30 versions, then use my instinct to single out aspects of each of the recipes, then I cook it perhaps a couple dozen times changing ingredients and amounts before I come up with my own distinctive version. When I can't find any way to improve it and it reaches my standard I post it on my recipe website.
I probably type too much. Sorry 'bout that. You can always skip over my long winded posts and I won't be offended.
Addie
Chef Extraordinaire
No need to apologize. There are several of us who get chatty. Glad to see you here. You don't stop by often enough. How is the house coming along?
I was feeling pretty good today so got into the mood to cook. I put on a pot of ragu to use up some veggies. I roasted tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms and onions and added some ground turkey (still getting used to cooking mostly with it thanks to my gallbladder), sundried tomatoes, garlic and at the end fresh herbs. It was really good.
It was served over rice spaghetti with salad and gluten-free garlic toast.
It was served over rice spaghetti with salad and gluten-free garlic toast.
Greg Who Cooks
Executive Chef
No need to apologize. There are several of us who get chatty. Glad to see you here. You don't stop by often enough. How is the house coming along?
House = a mess. Life = really good! I love my new neighborhood and my new community. I've gotten bogged down in a lot of stuff but my increased posts at DC indicates a positive increase in my cooking (vs. subsistence cooking like hamburgers etc.) so it's quite possible you may see increased posts from me here on the forum.
What I really want to get into is shooting my food! It sounds funny but I need food shots for my website in order to move up to the next level. That's one reason Chez Pim (and others) always trump my Thai recipes, because they have the photography and I don't.
Now Pioneer Woman... She has a TV program. She has a production staff. I'll never be in her class... but I can buy her books!!!
BTW I recommend just buy anything she wrote. There's great stuff in her every book. That's one thing that could get me off my Thai kick, if I start cooking Country food.Maybe one day I'll do a whole month of cooking only Country. I know I sound crazy, but trust me, if you cook one kind of cuisine for a whole month, day in day out, you will develop an intuition for that cuisine. Then next time you feel like eating that cuisine you can just grab ingredients and throw together something that works!
[ETA: After my whole month of Thai cooking I've ended up that I can always cook something Thai style just by raiding my refrigerator. (I keep lots of Thai non-perishables.) I need a Thai recipe if I want to cook something with a name, but I gained the ability to cook something, anything, Thai style after my Thai month. It always tastes good even if it doesn't have a Thai name and even if nobody in Thailand ever cooked exactly that recipe. That's what I mean about learning an intuition for a cooking style. I've done the same thing with the French mother sauces, thanks to Julia Child's books.]
I am particularly coveting Pioneer Woman's country fried chicken recipe and the sauce and potatoes that goes with it. Lucky me I already own two of her cookbooks. When I read fiction I read ebooks, but when I find a good cookbook I want dead trees!!!
Maybe I'll make February "Greg cooks only Country food" month... You can be sure I'll be cooking mostly Ree Drummond's recipes. I could easily do 3 months just from the two of her books I bought.
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