What are you having for dinner? (wanna share your recipe?)

@Friday and anyone else… basil and saffron? I will look it up… Well, turns out basil saffron risotto is a thing so maybe I’ll top mine with just Thai basil because I have plenty of it.

How would you (anyone) season the ground chicken for this dish? Was thinking of chili, garlic, onion—but maybe ginger? Star anise? (Thinking of that Thai dish Pad Ka Praow which has ground meat, basil and chili) 🧐 I welcome your suggestions.
 
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Still in the throes of laziness… but I owe a friend a soup they can dunk cheesy toast into, who has a madness for mushrooms, and they’re calling in their chit. Because they’re off work in 2 hours and have had a lousy day. So it needs to be a fast one. Roughly an hour from start to finish, most of it me not doing anything? I can live with that. Up, up, up off my arse it is. For at least a few minutes.

Mushroom Soup W/ Wine

A few pounds of baby bellas
A bottle of dry red -or white*- wine -or- a few shots of Sherry
Mire Poix
Rosemary
Beef Stock or Better than Bouillon Beef Base
Salt&Pepper
Olive oil
(Optional) Flour to dust Veg as sautéing, for thicker soup
(Optional) Beef or Venison or Lamb Stew Meat, browned before veg
(*Optional*) Cream = use *white wine* or *sherry* …or… your cream of mushroom? Will be purple/grey/gross. Been there, done that! (I eat poi, I eat lentils. Purple can be good! Grey can be good! I can… oh. Oh, that is just repulsive. Ahhhhh no.)

Sauté MP in olive oil on medium, add mushrooms to get a smidge of golden on them, turn the burner on high add wine and cook off excess booze for a minute of three (they’ve had a rough day, Imma leave the alcohol content of this particular soup on the high side), turn heat back down & add beef stock & rosemary. Simmer for 30-60 minutes. Season with salt & pepper.

^^^ Peeling off some for me’lazy’self, and box the rest up for them ^^^



ETA… Bwaaahahahaha! The Church of the Holy Mattress has sent their minions to Earth to enact their will!!! 🤣 2 minutes after writing this, and about 10 seconds before dragging my arse up? Text came through, with a stay of execution. My old coworker, rather than stopping by after work, is going out for drinks. I’ll still make the soup. Just… not tonight!!! 😎

I made brownies for the house, for breakfast, instead.

Nothing better than brownies for breakfast.

Also a bit of an offering to Fortuna. 🍀
 
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OliveJewel said:
@Friday can you share your brownie recipe? Having bad luck with brownie-making lately.
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Sorry! The only kind I make from scratch starts wih 10kg of chocolate melted over a double boiler. I haven’t been able to make it work “right” in personal quantities. Yet. (I AM on a mission, though.). Prolly because it includes like 3 drops of orange oil, and $40 worth of Madagascar bourbon vanilla. So I’m burning the vexation candle at both ends with food costs & ratios not behaving.

Last night was Pillsbury fudgy chocolate chunk.

Last time before this was Duncan Heinz devil food brownie I added chocolate syrup & caramel to.

My best TRICK with out of the box brownies, cakes, etc.? Corn oil. It keeps cakes moist for 7-10 days (instead of 2), and has this richness to it that no other oil or blend I’ve tried or played with does. Straight up sweet/thick/syrupy Mazola Corn Oil. Both in the batter, and to grease the pan, with.
 
Ok thanks!
Friday said:
Duncan Heinz devil food brownie
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The best bake-at-home brownies I’ve had have been these. Maybe I’ll just concede that they win on this one thing.
Friday said:
Corn oil. It keeps cakes moist
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Interesting. Was talking to someone today about my recent brownie fail and she said that the olive oil was the culprit, that it tends to turn any baked good really dense. Which makes me especially curious about olive oil cake, I don’t mean substituting olive oil in a cake recipe, I mean the specific Italian olive oil cake recipe which I think is usually lemon flavored? Can’t remember off the top of my head but it’s been on my “to try” list.
 
OliveJewel said:
Was talking to someone today about my recent brownie fail and she said that the olive oil was the culprit, that it tends to turn any baked good really dense.
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Agreed. Except in very few and very specific things, olive oil doesn’t play well with pastry.

For one thing? It smokes at only 200 degrees, but most pastry cooks at over 300. So you’ll be carbonising/burning/dense-ify-ing/gritty-ing up anything you want smooth, light, deep, or luscious. Plus the briny quality of olives & sweet things? Is dicey. Calvestrano olive oil (near impossible to get in the states, although you could press your own?) can pair with strawberry cream, or anything acid sweet quite nicely. But? It’s honestly a pain. And “should” really be blended with other oils, anyway, and XP. Helluva lotta work. For no discernible reward.

You can BLEND olive oil into other heavier fats to slow the smoke & lighten the overall oil base, but really? Meh. You can get the same health qualities, with better flavor (for sweet things) & higher smoke points with a few dozen other kinds of oils.

If corn oil is undesireable? A ground nut oil, or sunflower oil, is a good base.

We use butter (or complex vegan butters) in the scratch recipes rather than oil. Melting it right into the chips over the double boiler… although it has to melt for a looooong time, to steam off all the water. Even so? animal fats and chocolates are… quirky. Whether butter, lard, or suet… Often creating very FLAT things, or 6x as long as it “should” take to bake things, or broken if there’s too much water/starch subbed in. From what I understand? It has to do with the way the proteins wrap around the complex carbs, simple carbs, other proteins, and lipids, emulsifying into something new (like mayonnaise from eggs & oil).

Too much chem for me! I strongly prefer cooking over baking. Molecular gastronomy is cool as f*ck, and baking is the OG of that, but it’s something I prefer others to do for me 9/10.
 
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Two of my Pizza-Substitutions

1 - Italian Chicken Sausage stuffed Green Bell Pepper Petals
2 - Nan-e Barbari (Persian flatbread) with tomatoes/basil/mushrooms/onion

1. Cut the bottoms off of bell peppers and follow along the natural seam lines to create 3-5 little bowls, to put in a dollup / roughly meatball sized amount of raw sausage. Bake until pork reaches 150F or chicken reaches 180F I sometimes dunk these in marinara, or arrabiata, sometimes not.

2. Hot Bread Kitchen's Nan-e Barbari (Persian Flatbread)

^^^ Then just french bread pizza, or pizza bagel, style : Top & Toast.
^^^ Or? After it’s baked enough to firm up, but hasn’t gotten glossy & crisp across the top, add tomatoes/onions/etc., but save basil until after it’s out & cooled.

It’s basically a question of “will my toppings stick on their own, or do they need wet dough to stick them” & “how close do I want to be paying attention to the oven -vs- how much do I really care about toppings staying put?”

IE 6 of 1, half a dozen of another. Either way works fine. In the winter I tend to enjoy reading a book by the oven. In the summer? Not so much!
 
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Festival Turkey Legs (2 Day Recipe)

- Marinate in (pick one) Coke/Pepsi/Rootbeer overnight for small legs, 24hrs for big ones.
- Season with your favorite rub-for-ribs or steak seasoning
- Cook (smoke, reverse sear, bbq, or all 3!)

I’m putting these TRex sized legs in coke tonight, to spice & bake tomorrow night (225F until internal temp is 180, a few hours) when it’s cooled off, to smokey BBQ (make tinfoil pouch of soaked wood chips, place in grill directly on coals, with vents mostly closed) the next day.

I may or may not baste/Mop these as I BBQ, with honey water, or honey cider, or BBQ sauce + Honey + Water (like with Ribs).
 
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OliveJewel said:
Interesting. Was talking to someone today about my recent brownie fail and she said that the olive oil was the culprit, that it tends to turn any baked good really dense. Which makes me especially curious about olive oil cake, I don’t mean substituting olive oil in a cake recipe, I mean the specific Italian olive oil cake recipe which I think is usually lemon flavored? Can’t remember off the top of my head but it’s been on my “to try” list.
Click to expand...
You guys put olive oil in brownie/baking? 🤯

The only time I use olive oil is on a surface if I have bread dough that needs to stay sticky while kneaded 😁

I don’t know how I’ve only just discovered this thread but I am having a lot of fun googling the different names for things over here 😅😂
 
No More said:
You guys put olive oil in brownie/baking? 🤯
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Lol—when that’s the only oil you have? Yeah. A work friend says she uses it to make popcorn and I was like NO WAY—but it works decently!

In regards to the brownies I bought three mixes: Betty, Duncan, and Doughboy—we’re going to have a taste test. Those mixes are cheap! I’m sold on brownie mixes going forward. Mine were always too dense, even when I followed the recipe to a T. Oh wait, I use a blend of 50/50 whole wheat flour and AP. That *might* be related as well! 😂
 

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