nanila | Entries tagged with cooking

(not a snappy title)

1. Do you cook regularly or does someone else cook for you?

I cook regularly because I have to - if I didn't, the family wouldn't eat sometimes. I have never really enjoyed it though, and I have a limited repertoire of dishes. If I were on my own I'd probably live on ramen, grilled cheese sandwiches, and fruit. The bloke is a much better cook than me, but he can't do it all the time.

2. Which are you better at making: sweet or savory foods?

Er, see above. I like baking more than cooking. I probably make sweet things a bit better.

3. If you had to work as a chef in a restaurant of your choice, which restaurant would best complement your current culinary skills?

The grilled cheese sandwich restaurant.

4. What is a cooking tip that you know, but other people generally aren’t aware of?

Get rich, hire a personal chef. Honestly, I have no idea, I don't talk to other people about cooking.

5. Do you have a recipe you would like to share?

I think my slow cooker chilli from this post is pretty good.

tags:

This is my list for keeping track of the recipes I try out from my slow cooker Christmas present recipe books. We'll see how long I can keep this up next year once I'm not on holiday!

BBC goodfood "Slow Cooker Favourites"
NB: This book is a little annoying because quite a few of the recipes only seem to involve the slow cooker as an afterthought and suggest a considerable amount of prep either prior to, or after, putting the ingredients in the slow cooker. I plan to largely ignore such instructions so my versions of these are going to be modified.

Recipes tried:

Better-than-baked beans, p. 10. Made on 26 December 2021. This called for cooking most of the short ingredient list in a pan on the hob before putting it in the slow cooker, which I found ridiculous, so I just browned the onions and bacon and dumped everything else in straight from the can/chopping board. Made it with butter beans, ate it for breakfast with fresh bread. It was great. Next time I will crumble in the stock cube instead of dissolving it in 200 mL of water, to make the sauce thicker.
Herby bean-sausage stew, p. 22. Made on 08 January 2022. This was a very simple recipe so I added some stuff to it, including a crumbled stock cube, garlic granules, thyme, salt and pepper (!!), and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. I suspect it would have been quite bland otherwise as the only herbs were basil and oregano. It was pretty tasty. Humuhumu ate one of the chipolatas as well, which I count as a win because normally she won't touch anything that's been in homemade tomato sauce.
Goulash in a dash, p. 112. Made on 10 January 2022, 08 February 2022 and 04 March 2022. This was awesome. The first time, I had no potatoes and a larger quantity of stewing beef than the recipe called for, so while I mostly followed the ingredient list, I deviated on quantities. I also added caraway seeds, chilli powder and a spoonful of corn flour on the advice of a different recipe. Served with couscous. Keiki yummed it up, as did the adults.
Big batch bolognese, p. 80. Made on 13 January 2022 and 26 March 2022. Left out the bacon, mushrooms and glass of red wine (dry January), and two-thirds'd the recipe because of the amount of mince we had to hand. It was really good, we ate it over rice rather than pasta.
One-pan chicken couscous, p. 46. Made on 23 January 2022. I tripled this recipe because I had 700g of chicken. This meant using 3 tablespoons of smoked harissa paste, which felt like a lot and as turned out, was. It was very spicy and even the bloke needed to add buttermilk to it when eating it. I didn't add the couscous directly to the slow cooker as the children would never have eaten that if I did. Very tasty though, will make this again. Possibly with a little less harissa paste, and a tub of natural yoghurt for serving, so we don't have to use the buttermilk that we normally keep on hand for soda bread.

Recipe planning:

Spiced carrot & lentil soup, p. 26.
Mexican chicken stew, p. 48.
Five-a-day tagine, p. 144.

Miss South "Slow Cooked"
Miss South takes the view that most prep is unnecessary apart from caramelising onions or garlic. She is also very keen on using the cheapest ingredients, especially meat, because everything gets tender in the slow cooker, and takes the trouble to describe where it should be possible to obtain those ingredients. She's fortunate enough to live in London where she can easily acquire unusual ingredients, herbs, and spices, but recognises that not everyone does and suggests alternatives. I like this positioning.

Recipes tried:

Macaroni Cheese, p.107. Made on 27 December 2021, 15 January 2022, 29 January 2022. This was really good. Even Humuhumu liked it without dumping an inordinate quantity of ketchup on it, and it involves mustard powder and white pepper. She asked me what was in it and I told her I had made it "as simply as possible". (Muahaha) It calls for evaporated milk, which I didn't have, so I substituted double cream that was left over from making Christmas trifle and that was fine. I also love that it didn't require doing anything to the 500g of dried macaroni other than coating it in corn flour prior to putting it in the slow cooker. The crunchy bits at the bottom of the cooker went down well with Keiki and me. I may butter the slow cooker next time as it did require some elbow grease to remove.
Tarka Dal, p 102. Made on 03 January 2022, January 2023. This is AWESOME (capslock fully merited). I doubled the recipe apart from the caramelised onions (I used 2 instead of 4), and I didn't have fenugreek seeds so I used ground fenugreek and didn't double the amount of that either. It was absolutely delicious and I will make this regularly. Additional: I'm finding that I don't seem to have to cook things for nearly as long as Miss South recommends. She said to put the slow cooker on high for 8 hours. I put mine on low for 5.5 hours and that was plenty. I turned it off and let it sit (another 2 hours) until dinner time, and it was just the right temperature for eating with fresh basmati rice and steamed mangetout. Perhaps I have an overpowered slow cooker?
Spiced Carrot and Parsnip Soup p. 151. Made on 16 January 2022. I'm not very enamoured of this. It is quite a healthy recipe. Possibly too healthy. It needed a lot of salt to make it palatable (to me, anyway), and I ended up dumping in the leftover sauce from making chicken adobo, which gave it chicken fat, soy sauce, and sesame oil, all of which helped. It was a little weird, ultimately, as the adobo flavours didn't quite match the Indian spices from the recipe, but at least I enjoyed eating it. I won't make this again.
Saag Aloo, p. 180. Made on 22 January 2022, 07 February 2022, 04 June 2022, 21 October 2022, 20 December 2022. This was so easy, I actually bothered to caramelise the onions, just because I like caramelised onions. The recipe didn't call for this. I didn't add the grated coconut because I didn't have any (!) but I did add a leftover half of an avocado. It's super tasty, but this is the second of Miss South's recipes that would benefit from a good deal more salt. I didn't add it to the pot directly this time but sprinkled it on top in the form of adjika spice mix.

Recipe planning:

French onion soup, p. 142.
Cuban style black beans, p. 88.

My recipes

My usual chilli. Made on 04 January, 27 February, 2 May, 5 June 2022, 28 October, 19 November, 3 December 2022, 5 February 2023, 11 February 2023.This consists of browning a 500g packet of mince (either beef or vegetarian depending on what I have to hand) in a pan on the hob, then dumping it into the slow cooker with the following. I use a teaspoon to scoop out the spices from their jars but I would hesitate to be accurate about the actual quantities.
- ( Ingredient list )

the weather today is determined
Crossposts: https://nanila.livejournal.com/1377274.html

tags:

cooking,
lists

Not posting anything substantial for a couple of months has left me with that paralysis you get from not writing, when there’s too much to say and it’s difficult to coordinate. I’m getting round this by slapping together some headings and pasting in content. Please do not feel obliged to respond to any or all of this. Not that you ever should, but in this particular instance it really is all over the place. Sorry.

Coping mechanisms + pet ownership
Dealing with the grief of losing Telstar was tough over the past month. My workload was absolutely bonkers for the last four weeks of term, with the actual lecturing compounded by marking, transition to online delivery and assessment as the impact of Omicron became clearer, colleagues being off sick, and the level of demand for my admin duties and fellowship (more on this another time). I reinstalled “Neko Atsume” on my phone, which I haven’t played in years, and for some reason the daily check on my cat garden and appearance of adorable cartoon cats helped me to process his loss. I don’t know why and am not sure I want to dwell on it too much; the point is that it worked at a time when I had to have my emotions pretty firmly compartmentalised to get through the end of the semester.

Now that we’re getting a little distance from his sudden departure, I’m more willing to entertain conversations with the children about what pets we’ll get in the new year. There are discussions about stick insects, reptiles, birds, and small mammals, none of which I’ve ever kept before myself. None of them were options when we had a feline with prodigious hunting prowess; he would doubtless have killed them within 24 hours of their arrival. So although kittens are also under consideration, it seems like it would be a good moment perhaps to take a break from cat ownership and try out some pets that the children would like to have.

Cooking
As I’ve doubtless mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of cooking. I do like the slow cooker, although I came to realise after making my umpteenth tinned-bean-based stew that I should probably add some more recipes to my repertoire. I asked for a slow cooker recipe book for Christmas and got a great one (“Slow Cooked” by Miss South), which I’m now planning my way through. Earlier in the month I checked out the new Great British Bake Off “A Bake for All Seasons” and we made a few things from that which turned out very well, including the Pecan Pie, Winter No-Knead Loaf (wholemeal bread) and Prue’s Malt Loaf (extremely good for the digestion).

Film & Television
While the children have been off school, we’ve taken to watching films together. We watched all of the Jumanji films completely out of order. The bloke and I had never seen any of them, including the original 1990s Robin Williams version. First we watched the third film: “Jumanji: The Next Level”, which was quite confusing when you didn’t know any of the back story, though it did have some funny bits. Then we watched the original, which was Keiki’s favourite because it was actually a board game and according to him that made a lot more sense. Finally, we watched “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”, which was Humuhumu’s favourite because of the slapstick humour, dad jokes, and most of all, Bethany and Martha. I’m with her there.

We’ve ~~fallen asleep in front of~~ (re-)watched several Disney films with them. I also highly recommend the series of Olaf shorts in which he parodies quite a few of them.

The bloke and I watched “Hawkeye” which we both enjoyed despite our very patchy knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. ( Possible spoilers ) Anyway, my primary point here is YELENA FOREVER and when do we get another Black Widow film that is just Yelena being sarcastic about everything? Yes, yes, I know the first film featured a lot of that and so did Hawkeye but I really cannot see myself getting tired of it.

I need to go and make mac n’ cheese in the slow cooker so it is ready for supper. To be continued tomorrow.

Crossposts: https://nanila.livejournal.com/1376811.html

tags:

Sauntering Vaguely Downward

Into the land of lowered expectations

The Friday Five from two weeks ago on a Tuesday

Slow cooker recipes and commentary

Core dump

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