Note to self: make ginger beer
This is easy to do, so I should do it.
This is easy to do, so I should do it.
I’d also like to point out that Google is now useless for information about cooking, because almost all Google search results now point to vacuous sites that offer mundane, simplified recipes – often the same recipe endlessly repackaged. Bing is no better. It’s cooks.com and the Food Network ’til the cows come home.
My recent strategy has been to fool Google by combining the information I want with the name of a serious cook – Ruhlman or Keller or Bourdain – and then to look for results that are not written by that cook. This often gets you results from food blogs and other serious writers, not retreads from 1990’s supermarket magazines.
I'd really really like to take this on. I've been dreaming about "the perfect recipe website" for many years. Hint: it involves APIs.
Now that the Olympics are over, Oyama again has guanciale. I picked some up to cook while on Bowen.
The "traditional" recipes for guanciale are all pasta dishes (Bucatini alla Amatriciana, Spaghetti alla Gricia, Spaghetti alla Carbonara - here are recipes for all three plus instructions on how to cure your own guanciale).
Here are some non-traditional recipes I found online:
My recipe? I'm doing pasta with a bunch of Red Boar Kale.
I had a large kuri squash, and used it over several days. The small amount of cubed squash that I had leftover ended up being this single serving soup.
Monsoon Coast Spices on Salt Spring Island makes a wonderful Berbere: http://www.monsooncoast.com/spices/ethiopian_berbere.html
Storing this recipe link so I can find it again. Someone else on Twitter pointed out that it was my recommendation for the best recipe for refrigerator pickles :P
Cider Vinegar Barbecue Sauce:
- 1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
- 1 cup yellow or brown mustard
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 garlic cloves, smashed
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cayenne
This is a good basic recipe for pulled pork made in the oven. I pretty much wing the dry rub these days, but the cider vinegar BBQ sauce ingredients above are good proportions that I always forget.
1
cup chopped onions
½
cup finely chopped celery
1
tablespoon olive oil
28
ounces cans of canned tomatoes
14
ounces can of coconut milk
1
1
cup water
1
stalk of fresh rosemary
1
tablespoon brown sugar
salt
pepper
edit Preparation
Step 1
Pour olive oil in a large soup pot and saute onions and celery until onions become translucent.
Step 2
Pour in tomatoes and coconut milk, dissolve the chicken bouillon cube in the cup of water and add it as well. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat.
Step 3
Add the stalk of rosemary and let simmer for 30 - 45 minutes.
Step 4
Remove the rosemary stalk and use a hand blender to puree the soup.
Step 5
edit Tools
edit About Rosemary Tomato Soup
This was a very on-the-spot made up recipe. I was thinking that the stalk of rosemary would add some rosemary flavour, but I ended up simmering it quite a long time, so the resulting soup was
If you substituted vegetable stock for the chicken stock, this would actually be a vegan recipe.
I was configuring servers and it simmered a LOT longer than 30 minutes.
Parsnip and apple coleslaw
Serves 2 as a main meal, 4 as a small side dish2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp good olive oil
1 tsp clear honey
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
175g parsnips
100g carrots
100g red cabbage
1 Cox’s apple, or your preferred eating apple, weighing approximately 150g
Handful of fresh parsley leaves, roughly chopped
25g walnuts, roughly chopped1 Place the vinegar, oil, honey and mustard in a small jar and season with a small pinch of salt and a good grinding of black pepper. Screw on the lid and give it a shake until it’s pale and combined. Taste, adjust the seasoning if necessary, and set aside.
2 Peel the parsnip(s) and slice out the woody core – you’ll end up with about 100g parsnip. Coarsely grate and place in a large bowl. Peel and coarsely grate the carrot(s) and add to the parsnip. Very finely slice the red cabbage and add to the bowl.
3 Quarter the apple and slice out the core. Coarsely grate the apple, discarding any large pieces of skin. Add to the vegetables with the parsley leaves and half the walnuts.
4 If the dressing has started to separate, give it a shake again, then pour over the coleslaw. Toss the salad to coat in the dressing and then divide between two plates. Scatter over the remaining walnuts and serve. For a more filling meal, serve it with a chunk of blue cheese and warm crusty bread (it’s also good with a greasy pork chop and apple sauce if you’re not vegetarian).
Used 2 parsnips and 4 small carrots. 1/4 of a small / medium head of green cabbage. 1 Tbsp honey, 1 Tbsp dijon, only a splash of cider vinegar. Zest from one lemon, plus used the fresh lemon juice from the whole lemon. No parsley, no walnuts (so it's very plain and orange / green looking).
My version is definitely more of a side dish version.
½
package of spaghetti
½
cup of bacon, chopped
1
tablespoon olive oil
⅓
cup of minced shallots
1
clove minced garlic
1
cup diced cooked turkey
½
cup sour cream
½
cup water
½
cup of grated cheese
black pepper
2
egg yolks
2
tablespoons cream
½
cup minced fresh parsley
Preparation
Step 1
Cook about half a package of spaghetti until al dente, drain the water and set aside. If you have the pasta water boiling and add the spaghetti as you do the next steps, it should be ready at about the right time.
Step 2
Cook the bacon in a large saucepan (will need to fit all of the cooked spaghetti). Cook it over medium heat until it just starts to brown.
Step 3
Add the olive oil, shallots, garlic and turkey and continue to cook on medium until the shallots are translucent.
Step 4
Reduce heat to low and stir in the sour cream and water until evenly mixed. Add the grated cheese and stir until evenly melted. Add fresh cracked black pepper to taste (at least 1 tsp).
Step 5
Add the cooked spaghetti to sauce mixture and toss thoroughly.
Step 6
Beat the egg yolks with the cream and pour on top of the spaghetti, again mixing thoroughly. Now mix in the fresh parsley and serve immediately.
As I saw in the comments on the recipe, I didn't like any of the carbonara recipes I saw, so I made my own. R doesn't like peas, but they would have gone well with this.
We had this with the slaw on the side, which cut the heavyness of this dish.
Ingredients
2
cups shredded coconut
1 ½
cups rolled oats
1 ½
cups raisins
2
cups sunflower seeds
½
cup sesame seeds
¾
cup chopped peanuts
½
¼
½
teaspoon salt
1
cup honey
1
teaspoon vanilla
1
cup peanut butter
Preparation
Step 1
Mix all the dry ingredients well in a large bowl. Blend honey, peanut butter and vanilla until smooth. Add to dry ingredients. Mix with your hands (grease hands first).
Step 2
Press firmly into a greased 9 x 13" pan. Bake at 275 F until golden brown. Time varies but anywhere from 8-16 minutes. Cool on a rack. Cut when cool.
Ending up making these tonight. I've had oats and shredded coconut haunting the cupboards for a while, and have been thinking about an on-the-go eat in the morning sort of thing. The Orange Ginger Granola bars look good, too.
When I went to look for recipes, they're all very similar, and in fact don't seem to matter *what* you put in them.
I left out sunflower and sesame seeds, and did crystallized ginger and some candied lemon peel for the fruit. The chocolate chips were white chocolate chunks. No honey, but half a cup of turbinado sugar and dark molasses. I like the dark, slightly bitter flavour of molasses, so we'll so how that turns out.
The peanut butter was aged and sticky, so I added a bit of water to dissolve the sugar / molasses / peanut butter. No salt because I forgot about it.
Needed to bake much longer (~30 minutes) and a little hotter than listed. Didn't stick together as well as I had hoped, but did end up being tasty.
Yield: 24Preparation
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
Step 2
Get out a mini-cupcake pan with 24 cups
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Place a bit of crab / lobster in each cup
Step 6
Step 7
Pour the egg into each cup until it reaches the rim of each cup. It doesn't matter if the crab / lobster pokes out a bit
Step 8
Bake for 10 - 15 minutes or until the eggs are set
This is Evan's recipe - he'll need to edit to correct. Ben asked about it today, and I hadn't uploaded my picture yet, so I thought I'd add it.
On Foodista, anyone can edit / improve the recipe, so go ahead and change it if you have improvements.
- 1 1/2 cups All purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 teaspoon Baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking soda
- 6 fluid oz Buttermilk
- 3 tablespoon Butter room temp
Preparation
Oven temp: 425F / 220C / Gas Mark 7
1. Preheat the oven to 425. Grease a baking sheet.
2. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Rub in the butter or margarine with your fingertips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
3. Gradually pour in the buttermilk, stirring with a fork to form a soft dough.
4. Roll out the dough until 1/2 inch thick. (I often make mine thicker and roll it into one large circle). Cut into wedges with a sharp knife.
5. Place on the baking sheet and bake until golden, 12-15 minutes.
One of the things I've been on a roll with over the holidays is baking. I do lots of cooking, but generally little baking. Oh-ten will contain more baking.
UPDATE: this is very much a savoury recipe -- mine ended up being a bit salty / soda-y because I wasn't very careful at measuring. The texture was very nice and flaky, not sure what adding sugar would do.
Posted on Foodists: Much Ado About Recipes - http://foodists.ca/2009/12/29/much-ado-about-recipes.html
Chicken Marsala Recipe from Rouxbe.com
I’m facing a dilemma I’ve faced several times before. What to do about recipes?
I'm facing a dilemma I've faced several times before. What to do about recipes? We don't focus on churning out lots of start-to-finish recipes here on Foodists, mainly because it's more about sharing food experiences rather than "just" recipes. But we do share our recipes, and try and tag the blog entries with ingredient hints to help find them. Still, it's not ideal for sharing lots of recipes.
Most of my cooking using recipes falls into the "inspired by", "adapted from", or "I'm sure it'll be fine if I substitute half the ingredients" categories. But I'd like to keep track of those sources, whether it be from just the right Google search or from a physical cookbook.
And yes, I've got lots of cookbooks. At the one end I've got basics like Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer, and at the other end I've got various cookbooks from second hand or thrift stores, plus a smattering of regional cuisines purchased while traveling. While I like nothing better to sit down with piles of cookbooks all around me, engrossed in reading and dreaming of food, it's not very practical to a) easily find a recipe amongst dozens of cookbooks or b) to share that recipe. Where's my digital index for my physical cookbooks?!
I tried to solve my dilemma a while back by building my own recipe website. It does a passable of sharing links to recipes I've found elsewhere, and a pretty terrible job at inputting recipes with full ingredients and instructions. And, I really don't need to be maintaining yet-another-website.
So over the holidays, I again began looking for a great place to make my "digital recipe home".
My first stop was at Foodista. It's a startup out of Seattle that's just barely a year old, run by a friend of a friend. Foodista is unique in being a kind of Wikipedia of cooking. You can set recipes to be public, which means that anyone can edit and evolve them, whether that means fixing mistakes, clarifying the directions, or adding a note that Brand X flour needs to be used differently. I love this feature, and I love the concept of seeing the history or changes of recipes over time.
They also have a widget that links blogs to recipes and vice versa (similar to Urbanspoon). Here's an example of a Foodista widget for my favourite Czechoslovakian Cabbage Soup recipe:
Foodista is still relatively new and will be evolving more features (check out my taste profile). I've already left a comment about making it easy to link in my own photos from Flickr.
Next stop was our own local recipe / learning website, Rouxbe. I've got an account from ages ago, and couldn't recall if they actually let you enter in your own recipes. They do, so I started work on entering in Shredded Short Ribs with BBQ sauce that I made over the holidays. At first, I was excited by the interface, which lets you upload a photo for each step. Ultimately, I gave up before completing and publishing the recipe, because there were too many fields and too much to fill out.
I think Rouxbe has a great interface for longer recipes, especially those with unfamiliar or complicated techniques (many of which they have video tutorials for that you can link in), and I would definitely use it for that kind of recipe. They even have a "Save as Draft" feature to make it easier to finish inputting those long recipes. Here's the embed for the Chicken Marsala that I used a screenshot of at the beginning of this post - the embed is gorgeous, but at the same time doesn't show the ingredients (which is what *I* would want out of a widget) and busts out of this blog layout: http://rouxbe.com/embedded_player.swf
Rouxbe Online Cooking School & Video Recipes
So, Foodists, help me with my recipe dilemma: What recipe sites do you frequent? How do you share / keep track of recipes that you find online? What features do you want out of an ultimate recipe website? And yes, I'm still contemplating building my own -- recipes.foodists.ca anyone? :P