What have you been eating?

[dubsartur]

I had some pork that needed eating. 



Because of some life circumstances, I decided to try out the sauce where the cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and almond are in a pommegranite base (Santich's The Original Mediterranean Cuisine p. 57).  Make sure that the cinnamon dominates, saith Mestre Robert!

[Jubal]

I recently finally went and found a Russian supermarket, which had been recommended to me by a colleague a while back, and sells a decent array of foods from former USSR countries. Unfortunately it doesn't have some of the things I'd most like, like Sulguni cheese, but it does have a comparatively very reasonably priced Georgian wine selection and some mini khinkali which turned out more edible than I'd expected (though one can't eat them in the proper way for khinkali, they're too small to hold by the twist of the dough).

[Jubal]

The aforementioned mini khinkali:


Also some other recent meals. A simple salad & bread dinner when I ran out of other stuff:


And tonight's meal which was roasted garden vegetables (see the kitchen gardening thread for why I suddenly had to eat the veg) and garlic with toasted nuts in a pasta, which was very nice:

[dubsartur]

Had fried chicken in butter-lemon-pepper sauce on rice and boiled vegetables, main dish after https://littlespicejar.com/skillet-garlic-lemon-butter-chicken/ 

[Jubal]

This thread definitely needs some more going on with it again. One of my recent experiments - making flammkuchen, an Alsatian recipe similar to pizza. I got a pack of bases from a supermarket. All that's then needed is creme fraiche spread right across it and some toppings added - traditionally bacon and onion but there are many other possibilities. It's then cooked at a high heat (200+ degrees ideally) for 15-20 mins.

Here's the base, and what it looks like with the creme fraiche added.


Topping possibilities: pine nuts, rosemary and red onion, and white onion, bacon and dill.


Here's one result. Not getting the edges very very burned is difficult, but also not hugely important as one can just hold the outside by the burned edge and eat the middle which is absolutely fine. Definitely tastes nice, quick to make, and will be trying it again  

[Jubal]

I ran out of bread during my Covid lockdown so I made some more (this was Friday so I had passed my weakest point health-wise by then, there was no way I'd have been baking at the start of the week). The results aren't spectacular, it's wholemeal because that was the flour I had and it's a bit too dense, but it's Definitely Bread. It's something I should really make more often.

[Jubal]

Another take on flammkuchen - this time with a topping of apples, bacon, and some bits of camember, with oregano on top

Before cooking:


Fully cooked:

[Glaurung]

Oh wow - bacon/cheese/appley goodness all in one mouthful!

[Jubal]

I don't usually do much meat cooking, but I did a simple chicken recipe tonight (just cooking it in oil for an hour really, with garlic/herbs and occasional basting, adding pine nuts at the 45min mark). And it worked well, I think, I had it with rice and it was very nice

[Jubal]

This one was a bit experimental: it's a pastry base, then I made a sort of binding + glaze with egg and a bit of lime juice and honey, then put red cabbage on the base poured most of the egg mix over that, then put the turnip slices on and painted them with the rest of the egg mix, and then added herbs. I cooked it for about 25 mins with a foil lid over it to help give the cabbage time to cook properly as it likes a fairly long, slow cooking process, then for another 20-25 with the lid off until the turnips were browning. It tasted pretty nice!

[Jubal]

Further recent food notes! Mostly things I've eaten rather than made this time:

This was shrove Tuesday for me - from the nearby bakery, the 'waldvierteler krapfen' (jam doughnuts being the Austrian pancake equivalent for the day). This one, unlike the classic apricot jam versions, had a filling of powidl, a thick jam-like plum mix (unlike a traditional jam, no sugar is added to powidl, it's just cooked down for far longer than a jam would be and stirred constantly, giving it a heavy, thick texture compared to jams). And on top there's mohn (poppyseed) as well as the sugar.


Also from the nearby bakery, a Fastenbrot. I'm not sure why it's that shape! These seem to be a lent special, hence the name, and contain onion and sauerkraut which gives the bread a pretty distinctive flavour:


At the end of Coding Medieval Worlds I got a turkish takeaway where they seem to have accidentally given me the bread art asset from a standard fantasy computer game, it was practically half a loaf:


And one thing I did make, this was a sort of savoury strudel attempt - sour cream, mixed with onion and red pepper and herbs, spread on a flat sheet of premade pastry which was then rolled round and baked. I brushed a bit of milke on top to give it a little bit of a glaze. Simple but worked well.

[Jubal]

Another recent khachapuri:

[Jubal]

Check what you're buying from markets folks - recent enjoyable embarrassment of mine was this purchase, which I'd assumed was an early rhubarb variety on account of the pink and white stems. It isn't, it's chard, chard tastes like cabbage and does not work well when the stems are cooked down in sugar.
 


Also some salads and bread, it's getting to that time of year. Things like halloumi, olives, and jonjoli are nice, and there's a good range of breads available here (the left hand one is a cheese and bacon bread which I don't get often but is very good).
 

And some recent badrijani, they're never the best thing for my digestion because of all the raw garlic and nuts, but they are very nice. I should do the traditional thing and top them with pomegranate seeds more often.
 

[Jubal]

A recent chaos meal: a semmelknodel with a salad of, uh, boiled asparagus, nasturtium leaves, serrano ham, and jonjoli. Actually worked surprisingly well?

[Tusky]

Looks nice!