Author Topic: Food thoughts  (Read 14096 times)

Lady Grey

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #15 on: November 05, 2014, 06:05:05 PM »
^ how did the cake turn out? :)

Cuddly Khan

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #16 on: November 05, 2014, 07:27:47 PM »
I made.... Pasta.

Had it with cheese.

And Tomato Sauce (Ketchup).
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Pentagathus

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #17 on: November 05, 2014, 09:13:27 PM »
Cake turned out very badly, so I decided to make beetroot and chocolate cake today. This went very well. Also had pasta earlier with broccoli and pork  in a thick coconut and stuff sauce and it was amazing. And I've just finished eating egg fried rice.
I love food.

Flamekebab

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #18 on: November 15, 2014, 12:11:17 PM »
I'm not a bad cook but I'm virtually incapable of reading recipes. Presumably it's something to do with a lack of connections between the relevant parts of my brain. Abstract instructions don't translate to actions or ideas related to the emotional artwork that food is for me. My gods that sounded pretentious.

On the plus side I've found a few recipe books that have extensive sections describing what a dish should be and the kinds of things involved. They also have recipes, true, but the descriptive sections are what help me.

At the moment I'm trying to master culturing yoghurt. I think I've got the basics nailed down now after a great many failed attempts!

Lady Grey

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #19 on: November 15, 2014, 03:04:41 PM »
I'm not a bad cook but I'm virtually incapable of reading recipes. Presumably it's something to do with a lack of connections between the relevant parts of my brain. Abstract instructions don't translate to actions or ideas related to the emotional artwork that food is for me. My gods that sounded pretentious.
 
On the plus side I've found a few recipe books that have extensive sections describing what a dish should be and the kinds of things involved. They also have recipes, true, but the descriptive sections are what help me.
At the moment I'm trying to master culturing yoghurt. I think I've got the basics nailed down now after a great many failed attempts!

I know what you mean, following recipes used to annoy me because it never seemed to turn out as it should, and I had no measure of what was right, but I think I'm doing alright now :)

Those books sound great though :)
The yoghurt sounds really cool :D

Flamekebab

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #20 on: November 15, 2014, 04:11:39 PM »
I'm pleased to say that I successfully made soy yoghurt (for the missus). Now to have another go at normal whole milk. I expect it'll turn out okay but I'm figuring this stuff out still. Heating the milk up to boil for a while seems to be the key to avoiding contamination.

Pentagathus

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #21 on: November 15, 2014, 08:34:00 PM »
I'm pleased to say that I successfully made soy yoghurt (for the missus)
You cruel man, what did she do to deserve such punishment?

I made pizza porridge for breakfast, thought I'd share my recipe.
Its not really porridge but pizza porridge sounds better than pizza-something that is like skirlie. Skirlie is a kind of stuffing thing made from oats.

So I fried half an onion in some oil (need a decent amount of oil for this, more is better but if you don't want the calories then you can use a lot less and just use more water later, but it won't be as good) and threw in some mushrooms too. When the onions were pretty much cooked I turned the heat down a bit and threw in some oats. Normally I would just toast them for a little while and then add a bit of water and soy sauce/salt and herbs and stuff and this makes a pretty awesome breakfast (especially with eggs) but today I was making pizza porridge. So I added the last of my homemade tomato pizza sauce (made by cooking onion and garlic with tinned tomatoes and some beans and lots of basil and then blending the result) and some cheese. And then a some salad.
It was good. Very good. Exceedingly good. Even more exceedingly good than the works of Mr Kipling.

Lady Grey

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #22 on: November 15, 2014, 09:27:58 PM »
^ That sounds strangely tasty :)

Flamekebab

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #23 on: November 16, 2014, 01:11:09 AM »
I'm pleased to say that I successfully made soy yoghurt (for the missus)
You cruel man, what did she do to deserve such punishment?
It's to punish her for her prejudiced beliefs. She's lactose intolerant, you see.

On the plus side the soy stuff was tasty. Furthermore it looks like my whole milk stuff behaved much better than before (and it was fairly well behaved before). I made a bit of a mess of it whilst trying to skim off the whey but I'll give it another go in the morning.

Pentagathus

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #24 on: November 16, 2014, 11:28:10 AM »
^ That sounds strangely tasty :)
Nothing strange about it, but it was very much tasty.

Keep fighting the good fight flame, one day we will beat such prejudices and every disaccharide shall be free to be digested equally by all.
Is making soy yoghurt a complicated process?

I'm roasting a roast. Omnomnom.

Flamekebab

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #25 on: November 16, 2014, 03:14:31 PM »
Keep fighting the good fight flame, one day we will beat such prejudices and every disaccharide shall be free to be digested equally by all.
Is making soy yoghurt a complicated process?
You made her laugh  :D

To be honest it wasn't more complicated than making the other kinds of yoghurt. We have an Easiyo yoghurt maker (although a wide-necked thermos works too I'm told) that we got for a few quid on eBay. Easiyo sell sachets of yoghurt mixes but we wanted to figure out how to make our own.

The way that works for us is to use about a teaspoon or so of "starter"* in the prepared milk (soy or whole).
To prepare it I take a litre or so of milk and put it in a bowl and microwave it for about quarter of an hour or so. Long enough for it to boil for a bit. If I don't then other things tend to grow along with the yoghurt. Mmmmm yeasty, fermented yoghurt  :-X

Once that has cooled down to a fairly sensible temperature (I haven't used a thermometer - maybe 40 - 50ºC or so. Slightly warm to the touch but not warm enough to kill bacteria) in goes the starter.

The container then goes in the hot water bath for anywhere from 6 - 20 hours. I'm still figuring out the timing. The previous batch of whole milk took a long time whereas last night's took six hours or so. I was surprised to see it was already ready.

Depending on how much whey has separated from the curds I either drain some of it off or leave it. Once it's not too liquidy I whisk it a bit to get a nice texture.


*"starter" - originally we bought a small pot of natural yoghurt (with "live!" and similar written on it) for about 59p from Tesco. Since then we've just used a spoonful from previous batches. More seems to actually have worse results. I'm still figuring out the quantities.


At some point I plan on making a video of the process. Not until I've got it better figured out, admittedly.

I'm roasting a roast. Omnomnom.
Jealous over here.

We're having meaty pierogies though so it's not all bad.

Pentagathus

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #26 on: November 18, 2014, 10:12:31 PM »
We're having meaty pierogies though so it's not all bad.
Oooh are those them thar polish dumplingy things that look a bit like large fan shaped ravioli and taste weirdly awesome? Homemade? And if so how does one make such a thing?
Yogurts sounds like a bit of a bitch to make. Not a big ole bitch but still I could not be bothering with that. Particularly since I don't eat a lot of it. A quarter of an hour seems a very long time for something to be in a microwave.

I know I should be putting this in the other thread but portugal it, I'm going to be a maverick.
Cereal, I've been eating cereal. An entire box of sainsburys own brand maple and pecan crunch. It was hugely disappointing, I do not recommend. The nuts were old and bitter and the crunchy oat stuff was not all that flavoursome.

Flamekebab

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #27 on: November 19, 2014, 10:43:30 AM »
Oooh are those them thar polish dumplingy things that look a bit like large fan shaped ravioli and taste weirdly awesome?
Indeedy do!
Homemade?
Nah. Bought them in ASDA for less than £1.50 per pack (£1.29 maybe?).

Yogurts sounds like a bit of a bitch to make. Not a big ole bitch but still I could not be bothering with that. Particularly since I don't eat a lot of it. A quarter of an hour seems a very long time for something to be in a microwave.
It doesn't need to be on full power the whole time and it should be noted that our microwave was the cheapest one in Wilkinsons back in 2012. It's not great...

One can cook it on the stove too but that requires supervision. It probably doesn't need 15 minutes either but I'm not about to lower the time and risk having more dodgy yoghurt!

comrade_general

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #28 on: November 19, 2014, 02:15:11 PM »
pierogies
Hopefully this will be a somewhat common item in my future. :)

Lady Grey

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Re: Food thoughts
« Reply #29 on: November 20, 2014, 03:59:43 PM »
I'm making Spaghetti alla Puttanesca for tea (or dinner, if that's what you call it :P )

Not that I knew it was puttanesca when I found the recipe, but oh well, I'm sort of affectionately attached to the name now :P