tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-02:212372tyliktyliktylik2020-07-25T20:01:45Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-02:212372:1025627Yum Woon Sen, Mousaka, Bread Salad2020-07-25T20:00:59Z2020-07-25T20:01:45Zpublic0I just posted a bunch of recipes on my friend Cindy's page, so I'm going to re-post them here. (The first and last are summer favorites, they're all garden themed, and bread salad is a great thing for folks who have been baking and done make it all the way through their bread.) I'm being super undisciplined about amounts but if you have questions, ask?<br /><br /><b>Yum Woon Sen</b><br />(from memory, used to make this all the time...)<br /><br />- Soak your glass noodles<br />- Cook your protein of choice (finely cut chicken or beef is most common (I used to use lentils and quinoa when vegetarian) with onions and garlic, and some minced lemon grass and galangal if you have it handy.<br />- Add noodles, and soy sauce and/or fish sauce to taste (and a little extra water or broth if the noodles need it) cook until tender, adding chopped green onion partly through<br />- Remove from heat, and add handfuls of coarsely chopped basil, cilantro, mint and lime juice.<br />- Correct seasonings, and then dress with a bit of toasted rice powder and a sprig of fresh herbs on top<br />Can be served warm, or cold.<br /><br /><b>Mousaka</b> (okay, a bit more of a winter thing, maybe?)<br /><br />- Chop and cook an onion. Saute ground lamb (or beef...) in the same pan.<br />- Add garlic, paprika (a minced red pepper won't be amiss, either), oregan, a touch of cinnamon, a bunch of chopped tomatoes, and a few glugs of red wine. Let it simmer to make a nice sauce.<br />- Now, you basically build a lasagne with the above sauce and long strips of veggies. Eggplants are a must, and if you're being a purist, just use eggplants. But you can work some layers of summer squash, jerusalem artichokes, potatoes - whatevs. It's super flexible. A little sauce on the bottom (just so things don't stick, a layer of eggplant, a layer of sauce, rinse, repeat.<br />- (Often, if I'm not using any starchy veggies, I'll mix a bunch of rice into the sauce.)<br />- Top with bechamel, stick it in the oven. (45 minutes at 375, maybe? It depends on how much you make. I often made this in my brick oven...)<br />...and, not only is it dinner with just a salad, but it makes great leftovers.<br />- Do not undercook the eggplant. If in doubt, cook it some more. Millions of the children of hippies were traumatized by undercooked eggplant, which is an abomination against nature!<br /><br /><b>Bread salad</b><br /><br />Have you been baking? Do you not always finish your bread? This is one of the classic ways of coping. Look, the idea of bread salad is pretty much like a pasta salad, in that it's really about theme and variations, rather than specific ingredients.<br /><br />Except, I almost don't want to say that because there are so many really gross pasta salads in the world. So, here's a basic one.<br /><br />-Take some chunks of dried out bread. Not only dried out bread, but a good sturdy peasant bread, dried out. (A nice dense sourdough works great. Keep in mind that traditionally there's a whole cuisine around stale bread.) Soak it in water. Then wring it out to get most of the water out. (This is why you need it to be bread of substance. Light puffy white bread will just fall apart.) Pull apart into bite sized chunks.<br />- Meanwhile chop up a bunch of pepperoncinis. Grab some marinated artichoke hearts (slice them finer if needed). Throw some capers in there. Chop up an onion. If you the sharpness of fresh onion isn't your thing, put it with the other sour things, and add some balsamic vinegar - it will tame the onion. (If you like your onions fresh and sharp, keep them to the side.) Be generous!<br />- Mix the above stuff together with the bread chunks. Keep mixing, while drizzling with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and salt (if you haven't already added it.) Throw in a big handful of coarsely chopped basil and fresh ground black pepper. Sample as you do this - It should be flavorful, but not a sodden mess.<br />For a cold lunch, this mixes very well with canned tuna or salmon. (Though if I'm making a bunch, I never add the fish until right before I eat it.)<br />...sun dried tomatoes are also great. Or grilled red peppers. Or... well, you get the idea. And you can take this is so many directions - I had an autumnal bread salad with winter squash and green olives, years back, that was particularly memorable.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=tylik&ditemid=1025627" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-02:212372:35004Potato Leek Soup (soymilk maker edition)2015-11-12T03:00:50Z2015-11-12T03:00:50Zpublic0<img src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/tylik/492442/30917/30917_900.png" alt="PotatoLeekSoup" title="PotatoLeekSoup"><br /><br />So since last time around I was just playing and having fun (the soup was awesome, and I enjoyed cups of it for the next few days, but it was composed, and not the most minimalist version of itself) I decided to focus on two things: getting a somewhat thicker consistency, and going for simple.<br /><br />If you can chop vegetables, and have a soy milk maker, you can make this soup, and it is fabulous.<br /><br />What I did:<br /><br />Chop up two medium leeks<sup>1</sup><br />Chop 6 smallish yellow finn potatoes<sup>2</sup><br /><br />Okay, really, I chopped up the leeks, and then I added potatoes until the chopped veggies filled the soy milk maker more or less to the water line.<br /><br />Pour a generous amount of olive oil over the whole thing (1-2 T?)<br /><br />Fill with water to the higher water line. Put on the cover/grinder piece, and start on the porridge setting.<br /><br />When it beeps, add salt and lemon to taste, and garnish with fresh herbs if you're feeling fancy. (I add salt and lemon right before I eat it, not to the quantity, the rest of which is now in my refrigerator. Except I think I need a second bowl. Ah, bliss.)<br /><br /><sup>1</sup> Usually after I remove the rooty bits on the bottoms and the tough upper leaves, I'll cut them open lengthwise to see if any dirt has gotten inside, and then wash them further if needed.<br /><sup>2</sup> I didn't remove the skins. Flavor and vitamins, I say! Also, laziness!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=tylik&ditemid=35004" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-02:212372:34192More Soup2015-11-09T01:58:27Z2015-11-09T01:58:39Zpublic0I have a serious case of Autumn. By which I mostly mean nesting instinct. This is turning into all kinds of useful things like getting one of those portable radiator space heaters for the library (it's the room I work in the most, is kind of underheated anyway, and this is a good excuse to keep the rest of the house cooler, which I prefer for training) and proper curtains for my bedroom, and putting the air conditioners away for the year. <br /><br />I decided to play more with soy milk maker as soup maker, this time seeing how far one could push a non porridge style soup. This was my first attempt at anything like this, but then I knew the device pretty well (well, and it's certainly not my first squash soup.)<br /><br />Squash Fennel Soup<br /><br />500 ml (2 and a bit c) uncooked butternut squash, cut in small cubes*<br />3 10 cm (4 in) fennel stalks, chopped<br />5 large cloves garlic.<br />2 walnut sized scoops almond butter (okay, I used peanut butter, but I would have used almond butter if I could) <br />1/4 t fenugreek seeds<br />1/8 t corriander seeds<br />pinch vietnamese cinnamon<br />some aleppo pepper<br /><br />Water to water line, hit porridge button, go do useful things until it beeps at you. <br /><br />Salt to taste, garnish with a decent olive oil and a bit of lemon (if I hadn't been in a hurry to eat, there are a number of green herbs that would have both tasted lovely and provided pleasant visual contrast.)<br /><br />I was a little worried about the correct mix between water and vegetables. This was a little more like a very rich broth rather than my usual thick soup - like, it was elegant and such. The kind of thing that gets you ready for a meal. (I can build absolutely lovely broths. I just happen to have peasant tastes. I could have added a bit of rice... but I might see how much more veggies I can get in there, because the brightness of the flavor is intriguing.)<br /><br />Potato leek would seem like the obvious place to go next... though there were these sweet potatoes...<br /><br />* A sturdy potato peeler will take the rind off of a butternut squash, or many other squashes of sufficiently smooth surface.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=tylik&ditemid=34192" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-02:212372:33215tylik @ 2015-11-05T14:24:002015-11-05T19:26:38Z2015-11-05T19:26:38Zpublic0<img src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/tylik/492442/30663/30663_900.png" alt="Juk" title="Juk"><br /><br />A couple of days ago a friend posted about making juk (or jook, or congee - savory rice porridge goes by many names.) And I was reminded that my soy milk maker makes any entirely decent juk within its limitations, and its limitations work very well for me. It will not support all varieties of juk - it's probably best to think of it as a cooking blender. But as I'm making vegetarian versions anyway, and I'm just cooking for me, it's wonderful. I just finished a bowl made with this recipe: <br /><br />Into the soymilk maker went<br /><br />1.5 cups uncooked rice (brown basmati, because it was on hand)<br />a few cloves garlic<br />a couple of slices ginger<br />a couple of walnut sized chunks of miso<br />several fresh shiitake mushrooms.<br /><br />Water was added to the marked line (About 1.5 liters total?) and the porridge setting on the machine punched. <br /><br />When it came out, I added a handful of chopped jiucai, a bit of salt, a bit of lemon, and some pepper oil. <br /><br />The big limitation is that you can't simmer things that you don't want pulverized (or, as in the case of ham bones, that the machine can't pulverize). And the texture of the rice is much smoother - you don't get that halfway dissolved texture that I so lovingly recall. I can imagine that a crafty person who lived alone could make stock some yummy broths, and then use them in place of water to make a nice fresh bowl of juk as needed, though. ...that it's so little work when I'm not feeling so great, or am short on time is just wonderful.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=tylik&ditemid=33215" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments