What Have You Cooked Recently?

  • 🔧 At about Midnight EST I am going to completely fuck up the site trying to fix something.
I did a beef shank tonight on a bed of mash. Probably the best I've done so far. I'm going to save the remaining roasting liquid for something later. Either a gravy or an extra meaty braising liquid for a pot roast. Just have to make sure I get all the marrow mixed in and it doesn't get tossed out.
 
I'm trying to think of anything I've ever cooked that I feel would have been better with only a light dusting of salt, and I'm coming up empty.
I'd say really good cuts of steak and that's about it. Even steak can do with a touch of pepper and a kiss of garlic. It's generally best lightly seasoned though. As flavorful as duck is on its own though why not add seasoning? I like smoked paprika. Although any other traditional way of preparing it is also great. Just nothing though? Why? Fuck the British.
 
20201119_044932.jpg


Last night's dinner was Baked Ocean Trout with baby potatoes and a grilled peach salad.
I'd never done the salad before but I had a craving for peaches. Since they're not in season, it wasn't as good as it could be, but still really nice.
 
Depends on the Brits. Half of us don't season anything beyond salt and pepper, the other half loves nothing more than to go to the local Indian curry house and loudly order THE HOTTEST THING ON THE MENU as a flex.
The two world wars, and the subsequent post-war rationing, did an absolute number on our ability to cook decent food. Everyone collectively forgot that you make gravy with the water you use to boil the veg, for instance, and they forgot how to properly spice a roast pork joint. English cooking used to be about bringing the flavours of the ingredients out with careful preparation, but after the 50s it had been reduced to boiling shit until it was white, then covering it in salt and pepper to give it some sort of semblance of a flavour. Blegh. Being the son of a london chef is suffering, when I go to eat meals with other people.

Anyway...

Rib-eye steak with seasonal veg and roast taters, and an (if I might say so) amazing stilton and peppercorn sauce.
 
If you don't have a pressure cooker you are a fool. It is the absolute best implement of dish creation.
I suspect that instant pots don't do anything that a pressure cooker and getting good doesn't also do.

Got another batch going similar to the last, this one with a mess of small tomatoes I need to burn through, also I made the beef broth from bouillon cubes because I had to haul ingredients home on my bike in a backpack so it was an easy place to save inventory space
 
  • Like
Reactions: Haram Exercise
Two weeks ago, I smoked a Boston butt for 16 hours. It came out just right. Dark bark, red smoke ring, ultra tender, perfect amount of fat.

I made paneer tikka masala last week. Today, I made mutton keema with green peas, and now I'm putting it on tortillas to make an Indian burrito. So good.

Also I just love onions, I will sometimes even just bake an onion and eat it like a potato.

Thinly cut off the root and paper ends of a large Vidalia onion. Peel off the paper. Cut a cone-shaped hole in the top about halfway through the thickness. Cut a pad of salted butter about 1/2" thick and stuff it into the hole. Shove a beef bouillon cube into the butter. Douse generously with black pepper. Wrap airtight in a loose aluminum foil packet. Put it in the oven at 325° or away from the coals on a grill for about an hour. I won't spoil the result.
 
I haven't done anywhere near as much cooking as I'd like lately. Lots of fast food, and surprise surprise, it's made me feel shitty. A few cooked meals later and I'm doing significantly better.

The first one is beef pasta goulash stuff, which was nice. Second one was chicken tacos with Mexican spice sauce, which you can't go wrong with.

Looking forward to having more to show in due time!
 

Attachments

  • IMG20201117225142.jpg
    IMG20201117225142.jpg
    2.3 MB · Views: 38
  • IMG20201118215228.jpg
    IMG20201118215228.jpg
    2.2 MB · Views: 72
My new favourite thing: Brussels sprouts, baby potatoes and chorizo, smeared with pesto and baked to death, served with a blob of low fat soft cheese. Not particularly healthy but a nice way use up those last 3 potatoes sat in the fridge.
20201119_184057.jpg
 
Rib-eye steak with seasonal veg and roast taters, and an (if I might say so) amazing stilton and peppercorn sauce.
Stilton is one of the saving graces of English food. It is actually sad how much credit England does not get for cheese. Wensleydale, Cotswold, Double Gloucester, obviously Cheddar, but the vastly underrated Stilton, perhaps the best cheese in the world. I absolutely adore Huntsman, which is basically Double Gloucester layered with Stilton. It combines the mildness of Double Gloucester with the intense flavor of blue Stilton, and is unbelievably good. Fuck you, French people, you could be obliterated tomorrow and cheese would still be delicious.
 
My new favourite thing: Brussels sprouts, baby potatoes and chorizo, smeared with pesto and baked to death, served with a blob of low fat soft cheese. Not particularly healthy but a nice way use up those last 3 potatoes sat in the fridge.
View attachment 1737590
I highly recommend Brussels sprouts with bacon jam. Find a good recipe and make it. It'll make you cream your pants.
 
Back