A Cook's Diary

Share recipes and tips, or memorable restaurant experiences here.
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drmoss_ca
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

Made a dozen traditional English-style cream buns instead of a birthday cake for Pippa:

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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by CMur12 »

This one is new to me, but it looks very good.

A Happy Birthday to Pippa!

- Murray
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fallingwickets
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by fallingwickets »

A) happy birthday Pippa

b) fedex leftovers asap :D :D

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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

Second batch of basil harvested this morning, and a whole armful of fragrant stalks and leaves turned into 2 bottles of pesto. We'll let the plants grow up again and re-harvest, often getting three or four batches in the season. The canning craze has left the shops bereft of 250ml bottles, so these are 500ml.
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Super easy to make. Place leaves in food processor with olive oil, pine nuts, salt, black pepper, garlic powder, pine nuts and grated parmesan. Blitz till it looks like pesto. Add more of each and blitz again till all leaves are used. Place in sterilized, cooled bottles, top up with oil, then seal and freeze till required (will keep 2-3 years in freezer). My favourite use is to spread on a pizza base before the tomatoes, but it's good with crusty bread, tomatoes and red wine too.
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by fallingwickets »

i made pesto a few weeks ago and used a mortar and pestle. fantastic. Definitely need to make it more often because its soooooo tasty. Wish i had known it's easy to freeze leftovers

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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

Third and final crop for 2020 harvested today. A month of growth, and two hours of leaf-picking results in six little bottles of the finest pesto you could desire:

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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by highpeers »

drmoss_ca wrote: Thu Aug 20, 2020 12:09 pm I made a couple of these today:

Blueberry Tart.jpg

But to explain how and why, I must tell you about Dewey and his brother, who are a pair of bachelors who live at the end of the road (an increasingly unrepaired dirt road that gets less and less like a road as you go along) up the local mountain. Almost all their lives they have had no running water and no electricity, although maybe they now have electricity - it's been a couple of years since I last was up there. Probably the happiest and most contented people I know, they seem to come to town (Ahem! 600 souls is certainly a town!) once a week or so by hitching a ride from neighbours they must walk down to. You know when they are coming, much as with a bear or a skunk, and that's all I need say about that. Lovely, kind, generous guys. Each summer, Dewey goes across his lane to the enormous blueberry fields (not his, as he openly admits) and spends a few minutes raking and brings me the results. So I make two pies, or this year, two tarts. One for me, and one for him. One of these days I should go and claim back the nice non-stick pie dishes that he has acquired from me over the years; I've only one left. So these were made in disposable tin trays.

Crust is my standard short crust pastry, with a tablespoon of sugar added since it's not a savoury pie we're making.

1⅓ cups white flour
¼ tsp salt
1 TBSP sugar
4oz shortening (I use Parkay brand veg. shortening, because of SWMBO), COLD, cut into tiny cubes

Place all in a food processor and pulse until the resulting crumb is like breadcrumbs. Maybe 30 seconds in all. Open the lid and start to add ice cold water I TBSP at a time while you pulse. Somewhere between 4 and 6 TBSP the pastry will form into a ball and then you stop. Whether it's 4 or 6 depends on the brand of shortening: Parkay is 4, and Imperial is 6, depends on the water content in the grease. Either way, you add until it goes into a ball. Scoop out your pastry, divide into two equal halves, and wrap each in clingwrap and place in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes. Wash the food processor and grease a couple of pie dishes. The paper wrapper the shortening came in will do for this.
After 30 minutes or longer, take out the pastry and roll out on a floured surface until it has a diameter of 9-10" (pie dishes are usually 9" diameter). Place pastry on dish, press down into the base, and trim off excess. Prick the pastry in the bottom with a fork in five or six places, as this lets out steam and stops the pastry rising off the bottom. Now we blind bake them, that is to say, we cook the pastry and the filling separately, unlike the way your mom made apple pie.
Cover each dish with aluminum foil, shiny side down, folding the edge down around the edge of the dish and pastry. We have to weight down the foil, and I have a large canister of old pennies for this, but you could use rice or beans. Just keep them for repeat use in the future, as you won't want to make chili with them after they have been baked. My oven will bake these pie crusts at 350ºF in 30 minutes, but you may need to take one out and look under the foil at 20, 25 minutes; ovens are all different. When done, let them cool a bit and then carefully separate the foil and its load of old coins/beans or rice. Leave the crusts to cool down while you make the filling.

Filling is 3 cups of blueberries per crust, 2 TBSP cornflour (or cornstarch depending on where you live) per crust, ¼ cup sugar per crust and 1 tsp lemon juice per crust. So I put twice of all those in a pan since I have just made two piecrusts. Shake or stir it a bit to coat the blueberries in the cornflour and sugar. Put it on medium heat, put a lid on it, and stir gently every few minutes. Once it simmers, the filling will thicken and be ready in 5-8 minutes. Pour into the pie crusts when it has cooled a little, then leave them to cool completely.

I've wrapped one in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer for the next time Dewey comes to town. The other will be served tonight after a curry. It will go nicely with cream, ice cream, or custard.
Hello. I'm new here and wanted to chat about shaving and similar topics, but for the sake of interest, I decided to go to this thread. Now I know what I want to cook for the family during the holidays :D
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by fallingwickets »

thanks for taking the time to share your recipes.....welcome to smf

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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by Pauldog »

A friend went last summer to a pick-your-own blueberry farm, and got way too many blueberries before figuring out that freezing them is not nearly as easy as she thought. I've made a Japanese cheesecake recipe a couple of times recently, and the other morning I woke up with the idea of throwing lots of blueberries into my next Japanese cheesecake. It's easier to make than regular cheesecake, and doesn't even need a crust. The hardest part is beating the egg whites long enough and folding them back into the rest of the ingredients.

I didn't post the recipe because I'm assuming it's easy to find.
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

I made mulligatawny soup for the first time this week. Very good and spicy. Pippa was away so we could do it with chicken. Could be done, I think with vegetable stock and a fine grained fish that could stand stewing without disintegrating.

Ingredients
Yield: 6 servings

¼cup vegetable oil (I used ghee)
8 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped (I used tube garlic)
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 large apple, preferably Granny Smith, peeled, cored and chopped (I'm afraid it was a Honeycrisp or Gala or something akin)
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size chunks (I'm a breast man, rather than a thigh man, so you know what I did)
1 cup masoor dal (split red lentils)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons minced ginger (from about 2 inches of peeled ginger) (tube stuff too!)
2 teaspoons black or brown mustard seeds
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon ground cayenne, plus more to taste
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt, plus more to taste (sorry, non-kosher, with iodine)
4c ups chicken broth or stock (from concentrate)
1(5-ounce) can coconut cream (about ⅔ cup)
Juice of 1 lime (about 1½ tablespoons)

Preparation
Combine all the ingredients except the coconut cream and lime juice in a 6- to 8-quart slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. (I did this on the stovetop, with the lowest setting).

Stir in the coconut cream and lime juice. Taste and add more salt if necessary (I didn't find it necessary). Serve in bowls topped with a dusting of cayenne, if desired.

I didn't find it needed any extra cayenne, as it was pretty hot already. Some fresh cilantro looked nice on top, though.

Chris
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Re: A Cook's Diary

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I believe I'm a week early for you pumpkin pie addicts in America, but I did find myself making a pie today. A few days after Halloween we had a pumpkin to process. Not one of the squat sugar pumpkins, just a plain ordinary one. I cut it in half, scooped out the seeds and stringy bits, and placed the halves in the oven on a tray, open side down and cooked them for around 40 minutes at 400ºF. Once cooled, the flesh was scraped out and put through a food processor. It sat in the fridge for a few days and maybe 80% of it went into making pumpkin soup. Rather a waste, as the soup was pretty awful. It happens.
The remainder was mixed with a can of condensed milk, a tsp of cinnamon and a tsp of nutmeg and two eggs. I poured it into a pre-baked cheating pie crust* and cooked it at 350º for about an hour until the filling had set.

It was good enough that I wished I had gone to the bother of making proper shortcrust pastry. I won't do it again, as a can of pumpkin pie filling is cheap and easy. Maybe after The Bomb falls. Served with homemade ginger ice cream wasn't bad. Sorry, but I won't be doing it again while you folks do something like it for your Thanksgiving.

*cheating pie crust: not like real pastry, but better than a bought pie or pie shell.
1½ cups AP flour
2 TBSP milk
½ cup oil (I use olive)
½ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar (savory) or 2 tsp sugar (dessert) - depends on filling and purpose

Dump all ingredients into a 9" pie dish and mix until you have incorporated all the flour. Spread it out and form it into a base and sidewalls with your fingers. Try to get the dough evenly thick everywhere. Bake for 15 minutes at 400ºF. Now you have a pastry shell to pour the pumpkin mixture into (or any other pie filling you can imagine if you aren't particular about the quality of your pastry!)
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Re: A Cook's Diary

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I've always been a fan of bread and butter pudding (butter stale bread, sugar, raisins, spices and an egg custard poured over and baked in the oven) but never quite found it's drier cousin, bread pudding, as attractive. But I came across an article about it and had an idea to make it more interesting: use pumpernickel or rye breadcrumbs instead of boring white bread. There's usually a 50% off stale loaf or two of pumpernickel at the grocery store so I bought one. I cut off about just under half of the loaf and made breadcrumbs in the food processor. It goes like this:

350g breadcrumbs
100g brown sugar
1 pint whole milk
75g melted butter
2 eggs
1 TBSP mixed spice (you might find on Amazon. It's a British mix a bit like pumpkin spice blend. I substituted 1tsp cinammon, 1tsp nutmeg, 1tsp allspice)
A cup of raisins, mixed fruit, dried peel, whatever you have

Put the breadcrumbs in a bowl and pour on the milk. Let it all get sopped up.
Mix the melted butter, eggs, spice and brown sugar in a jug, pour onto the breadcrumbs and milk and mix in. Fold in the dried fruit or peel. pour mixture into a greased 8" square tin or equivalent. Sprinkle the top with a little nutmeg and some brown sugar.
Bake at 350ºF for 30-45 minutes, till it feels firm and a skewer comes out dry.
Serve hot or cold, with custard, ice cream or whipped cream.

It has much more flavour than the usual bread pudding, and isn't as sweet. Put brandy sauce on it and it would make a decent fake-Christmas pudding! It's good!
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

Made some bannocks stuffed with strong cheddar cheese to go with the soup tonight. That smell of toasted flour and cheese is driving me mad - but I have to wait till suppertime!
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by Pauldog »

Cheese!



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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by Pauldog »

drmoss_ca wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 9:53 am
1(5-ounce) can coconut cream (about ⅔ cup)

I keep a box of coconut cream powder on hand for that sort of thing. I can just spoon out the amount I need.

I've made a pureed lentil soup with similar spices, more or less Middle Eastern, but haven't tried coconut before.
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

Moussaka
This is a kind of Greek lasagna, using vegetable layers instead of pasta, with a béchamel sauce on top (don't be scared, it is easy!) Preparation takes a couple of hours, cooking around 45 minutes.

Grease an oven pan or casserole dish.
Thinly slice enough eggplant/aubergine to make two layers in the dish you have chosen. Also, thinly slice enough potato for one such layer. Set the slices of eggplant and potato on oven trays or something similar. Sprinkle them with salt on both sides and leave for an hour,
Meanwhile, make the meaty sauce, by frying two finely chopped onions at a low temp. Sweating rather than browning, like making a mirepoix. Add your minced meat or fake soy meat. Season with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a pinch of thyme. Add 2 TBSP tomato paste and half a cup of tomato sauce (not ketchup, the stuff you might put on a pizza). Add 1/2 a cup of red wine, and 1 cup broth (beef,chicken or vegetable). Simmer until it reduces and becomes thick.
By now, you can wash off the eggplant and potato slices in cold water. Get rid of all that salt, which has done its job taking water out of the vegetables. Pat them dry with kitchen towels and set aside.
Once your meaty mixture has reduced until it is in a thick sauce, take it off the heat and get your greased casserole. Layer the potato slices in the bottom, trying to cover all the base. Then do the same with about half the eggplant slices on top of the potato slices. Pour the meaty sauce on top and spread it evenly. Add the rest of the eggplant slices as a second layer.
Now we make the béchamel, which is fun. Start with a simple roux. Equal weights of butter and flour, say 100g of each. Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan. Dump in the flour and stir. It will quickly make a thick and lumpy mixture. Don't panic! this is normal. Add about one pint of whole milk and whisk (I alternate use of a whisk and a spatula, depending on whether I'm wanting to mix in lumps, or keep it from sticking on the pan). Over medium heat it will soon start to thicken. We are looking for a final product that is both thickened yet smoothly pours, so as you go you may need to add more milk. It must not be too thin, as we want it to set when cold. You can thin the roux this way, but you cannot go backwards and thicken it by adding more flour, so be careful. Aim for it to be just a bit thicker than heavy cream, and get it to boiling point with a very gentle simmer. Keep stirring continuously, and after three minutes of simmering taste it. We need to cook the flour, and keep checking for whether it tastes of uncooked flour. It takes as long as it takes, so keep stirring and tasting until it is no longer floury. Once it has lost the floury taste, you need to season it with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Add and taste until you think it is right. For the amounts above, we are looking at about 1tsp salt, 1/2tsp pepper and 1tsp nutmeg, but go by taste rather than by numbers.
Béchamel sauce will make a skin very quickly when not being stirred, which you can prevent by excluding air with clingfilm. The skin will NOT dissolve back in with stirring, so do this: add enough of the sauce you have made to make a 1cm thick layer on the top of the upper layer of eggplant, then put the remainder of the sauce, if there is any, in a plastic container and freeze it. It will reheat very well and can have cheese added to make an exquisite cheese sauce. Sprinkle the béchamel that tops your casserole dish with parmesan cheese.
At this point you can cook it or store it. Closely applied clingfilm will let it wait until you want to cook, or even freeze the casserole dish and contents. If you want to cook it straight away, heat an oven to 350ºF (180ºC) and cook till the cheese browns, which should be 40-45 minutes. When you take it out of the oven, let it stand 45 minutes, so that when you cut and serve, it stays in shape and doesn't ooze everywhere.

Serve in cut out squares with vegetables of choice. Maybe a bottle of retsina will help, but dancing on your chairs is optional.
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

Possible new world record. Crumpet rings delivered by Amazon at 11am. First dozen crumpets devoured by testers by 1pm.

Image

Image

Recipe:
Ingredients
180g / 6.3oz Plain or All-purpose flour
235g / 235mls Lukewarm water / 40°C / 104°F
4g / 1tsp Instant or active dried yeast
4g / ½tsp Salt
4g / 1tsp Baking powder
6g / 1tsp Sugar
1tbls Olive oil & 30g / 1oz soft butter, for greasing the crumpet rings
You will need 4 to 6 crumpet rings/moulds for this recipe.

Method
Add the sugar and yeast to the warm water, mix well and allow the yeast to activate for 10 minutes until it foams up.
Add the now active yeast mixture to a bowl.
Add the flour and salt to the bowl, and sift in the baking powder, push any lumps through with your fingers.
Using a hand whisk, beat the mixture together for 2 minutes.
Halfway through the whisking, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then continue whisking for the rest of the 2 minutes.
If you are using an electric whisk, beat for only 1 minute.
Scrape down the sides of the again, cover the bowl, and rest it in a warm spot for 45 minutes.
Near the end of the 45 minutes, heat up a large non stick frying pan to a temperature of 190°C that’s 375°F.
Add the olive oil and soft butter to a bowl.
Using a pastry brush, coat the inside of one of the rings with the butter and oil mixture.
Place the ring into the hot pan.
Your crumpet mix should now be active and bubbly.
Spoon the mixture into the hot ring to about halfway up.
Do the same for 3 more rings, don’t overcrowd the pan, you need space to move the rings around.
It is very important to keep the temperature correct and constant at 190°C that’s 375°F, any hotter the bottoms will burn before the tops are cooked. Use an IR thermometer and check every few minutes to adjust temperature.
After 5 minutes the classic crumpet bubbles will start to appear from the edges of the crumpets.
You can use a small pointy knife to pop any stubborn bubbles.
Once the mixture has dried out around the edges, use your oven mitts to lift off the rings.
Once you see that the middles are less gooey, you can carefully turn them over to brown off the tops.
Once golden brown, remove them from the pan and onto a wire rack to cool.
Once completely cool, you can freeze these or keep them in your fridge until needed.

To Serve

Toast crumpets to slightly darken and crisp outsides, not too much. Spread with butter, and either jam or honey as well if desired. Best served with strong Indian tea (English Breakfast will do, I suppose).
"Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse."
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EL Alamein
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by EL Alamein »

Gosh those look yummy!

The one time I made crumpets my wife and I enjoyed them and thought they were a cross between a pancake and an English muffin. Good stuff, goes well with butter and preserves.

Bon Appetite!

Chris
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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by brothers »

Thanks for the recipe. I can do this!
Gary

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Re: A Cook's Diary

Post by drmoss_ca »

brothers wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:20 am Thanks for the recipe. I can do this!
I stole the recipe from John Lockwood, who has an excellent YT channel. Here he is cooking crumpets using the recipe:

https://youtu.be/ganHDnSz3yw
"Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse."
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