Idle Tongues (food before your mind goes elsewhere)

[TychoCelchuuu]

Cool! I have sourdough rising right now. Making bread is awesome and it makes your kitchen/apartment/house smell so great.

[Colourful Stuff]

It makes your kitchen/apartment/house a bloody mess as well, which I take satisfaction in.

Home made flatbread and curry for dinner tonight, best winter food in my opinion.

[Colourful Stuff]

My seasonal triumph this year was a buche de noel complete with marzipan fungi (I'm a biologist). The sponge is unbelievably delicate, consisting of mostly egg, no flour and only 50g of coco. The icing was basically just butter, dark chocolate and icing sugar. It is the sort of cake you don't want to cut but it's worth it when you do.

[dibs]

I'd make bread a lot but I hate the taste of it, hatefu bread. That all looks awesome.

[Colourful Stuff]

Hmmm, anti-bread? In all its forms?

Tycho; I've never worked with a living yeast. There was a culture of Herman cake circulating my friend group but never bothered taking any because it's a bit horrible. Can you direct me to a good sourdough recipe?

[TychoCelchuuu]

I made a sourdough starter a little more than a year ago and now I just wing it. I put starter, flour, and salt together, knead, let rise, etc. So unfortunately the answer is no I don't have a recipe I've heard good stuff about no knead bread though. It's not sourdough but it's bread.

[dibs]

Hmmm, anti-bread? In all its forms?

Pretty much! Every so often I come across one that is ok, like my brothers homemade flatbreads or seedy brown bread my friends aunt made us when I visited him over Christmas. I can tolerate the taste of most breads (which is handy, as sandwiches are rather ubiquitous) but if I eat too much the taste will eventually make me feel nauseous, even if it is over a few days. This also extends to a lot of pastry types. Don't know what it is, but I never liked bread as a child either.

[Thrik]

Just making some meatballs by hand and spaghetti. Had a good mouthful of a sample ball and they taste fantastic, so much better when it's your own concoction.

Unfortunately I just realised I'm out of tomato sauce. FFS! So I'm currently attempting a ghetto meatball sauce comprised of tomato ketchup, milk, pepper, and oil.

[Thrik]

The tomato sauce worked great, surprisingly nice once cooked in a saucepan for a while. Not enough of it though, very inefficient method I dare say.

In other news, been looking forward to having bacon sandwiches for lunch, after getting a great deal on two big packs of bacon yesterday. Even skipped breakfast to save room for them. Just checked my fridge, no bacon. Wat.

After tearing through every cupboard and bag I eventually found them right at the bottom of a bin since filled with disgusting shit, must have thrown them straight in after work because I was so tired.

FFS man. Got to go out for lunch and everything now.

[toblix]

I was able to stock up on breakfast sausage, which means I'll be having awesome Sunday breakfasts for months!

[Grufff]

Can you direct me to a good sourdough recipe?

Sourdough is easy to do but takes a bit of time to get started. I've got a starter that's about 3 weeks old but it's producing some lovely bread!

The basics for getting a starter going are as follows:

1kg strong white bread flour

360ml tepid water

1 organic apple (grated, with skin, avoiding the core)

1. Mix 500g of the flour with the water and apple. Tip into an airtight container and mark the level on the outside (so you can tell if it's risen or not). Cover and leave for 3 days.
   
2. After 3 days, the mix should smell sweet, look darker in colour and have started to rise. Discard half of this mix and add another 250g flour & 170ml water. Mix it thoroughly. Tip back into the container, seal and leave for a further 2 days.
   
3. After 2 days, check the dough. There should now be plenty of activity and lots of bubbles in it. Check to see if the dough has risen & fallen - you'll be able to see smearing on the side of the container. If it's risen & fallen, it is active.
   
4. If the dough is active, discard half of it again, and mix in another 250g flour and enough water to return it to a sloppy consistency. Tip back into the container, seal and leave for 24 hours. If the starter begins to bubble during this time, then it is ready to use. Ideally, when you come to use it, you want your starter to be thick and bubbly.
   

Tips for using the starter - If you're using it regularly, you can keep it at room temperature, feeding it at least every 3 days and whenever you make some bread. If you're using it less regularly, then keep the starter, covered, in the fridge. It will preserve it almost indefinitely, but bring it back up to room temperature before using it.

As for a recipe, this is the oneI use. It makes 2 'cob' loaves but you can shape them however you want.

750g strong white bread flour

500g sourdough starter

15g salt

350-450ml tepid water

1. Combine flour, starter and salt in a mixing bowl. Add 350ml water and begin mixing, adding more water if necessary, until you have a soft, rough dough and have picked up all the flour from the sides of the bowl.
   
2. Coat a work surfade with a little olive oil, then tip the dough onto it and begin kneading. Knead the dough for about 5-10mins. The dough will seem quite wet initially but work through this until it starts to form a soft, smooth skin.
   
3. Once it feel smooth and silky, place in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel. Leave to rise for 5 hours or until it's doubled in size.
   
4. Tip the risen dough on a lightly floured work surface and fold inwards repeatedly until you've knocked all the air out and the dough is smooth.
   
5. Divide the dough in half and shape each piece into a smooth ball. Place each ball onto a tray that's been covered with a heavily floured cloth (or into a proving basket).
   
6. Put each tray inside a clean plastic bag and leave to rise for approx 10-12 hours (or until they've at least doubled in size and spring back when lightly prodded)
   
7. Turn the dough upside down onto a baking tray and cut a heavy slash in the top.
   
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees C for 30-40 minutes until the loaf is golden brown and the base sound hollow when tapped.
   

At step 4/5, you can add different ingredients to turn them into flavoured sourdough loaves. I'm quite fond of adding apple & cheddar and doing it as a flat loaf. If you do any other ingredients, it may take a bit longer to rise the second time though (12-14hrs).

[tegan]

So I've been considering buying a deep fryer. I made potato croquettes one time last year and loved them, and I really want to nail that recipe, but never again am I going to fry something using a cooking pot full of boiling canola oil. I'm just worried about the two most likely outcomes:

1. Buy an expensive and large piece of kitchen tech and then use it to make only one food, only on certain occasions.
   
2. FRY EVERYTHING and gain a ton of weight.
   

I need to do more cooking in general. I'm good at cooking and get a lot of enjoyment from it, but I have a very limited pool of recipes and find it difficult to get invested in learning more; so I end up making a handful of dishes over and over. Recently I've been making some pretty stellar chicken a la king.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I too would be worried about dropping into "fry everything" mode if I had a giant machine that existed only to fry everything. There are so many more options than frying stuff - if you have a limited repertoire I would suggest focusing on expanding that to healthier stuff before setting yourself down on the road to continual deep frying.

[Colourful Stuff]

My god, your food is levitating!

[dibs]

I made baked eggs for long weekend brunch. Nomnom. I don't like bread, so I had some tasty crackers with.

[Skalpadda]

I love making pancakes in various forms, favourite for desert is traditional Swedish pancakes (large and flat, so not like the American variant) with vanilla icecream and cloudberry jam.

 

A variant that doesn't seem to be common outside Scandinavia is "oven pancake" or "fat pancake". It's yummy, cheap, easy to make and any leftovers will keep fine in the fridge for a day or two and can be re-heated or eaten cold. Perfect student food, and it even involves bacon!

 

Here's how you make some:

 

6 eggs

1 litre milk

5 dl flour

1 teaspoon salt

A wee bit of butter to butter up your pan.

Bacon! (optional)

 

Set your oven to 225 degrees (Celcius).

Mix eggs, milk, flour and salt like a demon.

Lightly butter up a large pan.

Go read some forums while the oven gets hot.

Pour the batter into your pan.

Generously apply bacon on top (optional)

Bake in the middle of the oven for 20-30 minutes.

 

When it's done it should rise to the edge of (if not over) the pan and be a goldeny-brown pancake colour. Most Swedes will serve it with lingonberry jam (if your country is cruelly lacking in lingonberry goodness you might find some at IKEA) but some like sweeter jam, honey or fresh berries.

 

OMNOMNOM

[tegan]

I have never ever seen decilitres used as a measurement in real life before.

[Skalpadda]

I have never ever seen decilitres used as a measurement in real life before.

 

I am dangerously foreign. Please don't eat me.

[osmosisch]

I have never ever seen decilitres used as a measurement in real life before.

They make everything decilicious!

[Lu]

My elementary school self was so impressed that  1x1x1 decimeter cube filled with water was exactly 1 liter. Yo, conversions, Mr. White!

[Geremy Tibbles]

I don't know if super long posts are frowned upon, but here goes... 

 

Pork Belly

 

 

Most people only ever get pork belly in it's cured or smoked state in the form of bacon, pancetta, and other cured, sliced strips of the delicious, fatty piece of pig. It's a shame, honestly, because if you follow this recipe you will get one big piece of pork that will taste better than any piece of bacon you've ever gotten.

 

What you will need, first and foremost, is a piece of pork belly around 2 pounds in weight. You'll need to remove the skin (that pink bit in the above picture), with a very sharp knife. I suggest getting a flap of it peeled away from the fat in the corer, then put some tension on it and trace the tip of the blade along where the subcutaneous fat connects with the skin. It should get you to the middle of the belly pretty quickly, and then you can just sort of continue along from one side to the other.

 

Once it's deskinned the pork, put it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and get together a third of a cup of salt, a third of a cup of light brown sugar, and a quarter teaspoon (roughly) of dried red pepper flakes.  You'll want to mix all that together and then rub the belly down. Really work it into the flesh and make sure you lightly pack it on to it. 

 

When you're through with that and gotten as much of it on as you can, wrap it in plastic wrap, and let it sit at least 8 hours in in the fridge. Preferably, you'll let it sit 48 hours, however. It's almost like a mild curing, so the longer you go the better (within reason of course). 

 

When you take it out, wipe it down with a paper towel good. Don't rinse it, but be sure to get off the majority of that sugar and salt, because otherwise it'll be nearly inedible. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees, place the belly in a baking dish or something to catch the juices. Put the timer on for an hour. After 20 minutes or so, you'll see a ton of fat rendered out. Get a baster and baste this back onto the belly. Repeat this every 10 minutes until your hour is up. Then, drop the temperature down to 250, and roast for another hour, or until the pork is tender, but not falling apart.

 

When it comes out it should be looking like...

This. A thing of beauty.

 

Once it's cooled, wrap it again and stick it in the fridge. This will keep it from losing all it's juices after cutting, and the colder pork will be a little easier to cut. During this time you can get to work on your steamed buns and slaw.

 

-

The buns are a bit of a pain in the ass to make, but I love them so much it'd be criminal not to share. I'm basically going to just copy and paste the recipe for those, because as far as I'm concerned it works via some kind of witchcraft.

 

3. To prepare dough, combine 1 cup warm water, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl; let stand 5 minutes.

4. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Add flour, oil, and 1/4 teaspoon salt to yeast mixture; stir until a soft dough forms. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes). Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray, turning to coat top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85°), free from drafts, 1 hour or until doubled in size. (Gently press two fingers into dough. If indentation remains, dough has risen enough.)

5. Punch dough down; let rest 5 minutes. Turn dough out onto a clean surface; knead in  baking powder. Let dough rest 5 minutes.

 

With that sorcery complete, divide it into 10 pieces, and then roll them flat, retaining a bit of thickness to them. Then cut a piece of parchment paper about half the size of the dough, and place it into the center before folding the dough over. Make sure the two halves of the dough are only touching the paper, otherwise they'll stick and you'll have to cut them after your through steaming them.

 

Next you'll have to steam the buns. Any way you do it you'll need about 15 minutes, but here's how I did it:

I took a cookie cutter shape and placed it in the bottom of a wok, and filled it with enough water to go almost to the tip of the cutter. Then I placed a plate over that, and put it on high heat with the cover on. Once it was at a boil and I was getting some nice steam, I put the 5 buns on and let it go for 15 minutes. Make sure you don't run out of water, otherwise you'll get burnt buns pretty quickly. 

 

-

 

Okay, back to the pork. Take it out of the fridge, and get another sharp knife, and a skillet. If you get your pork belly in one big chunk, I'd suggest cutting into three "columns" of pork before cutting bite sized pieces off of them. 

 

 

While technically still a little raw, they will still taste amazing and I encourage you to consume one. Toss these into the skillet on high heat and get them nice and crispy on each side so they're looking like chunks of bacon.

 

 

Now you're ready to make yourself a pork bun. For toppings I suggest shredded radish and carrot, along with a little diced jalapeno tossed in rice wine vinegar and left to pickle a little, shredded bok choy and some diced scallions for greenery.

 

 

Some people say this needs a little hoisin across the top, but then again some people dip their fries in frosties.

[dibs]

Nomnom. My bro went the Asian route too with this stew a few weeks back. The pork was ridiculously soft. Nomnom.

[dibs]

This is he best I could muster this week! It looked nicer on the plate the might before. Spicy meatballs with guacamole, and homemade oven wedges and (good shop bought) hummus with sumac pitta crisps. I also had salad whilst my housemates polished off the wedges. Remains for lunch:

[Geremy Tibbles]

Nomnom. My bro went the Asian route too with this stew a few weeks back. The pork was ridiculously soft. Nomnom.

[picture of the best thing ever]

 

 

Oh god, I love it.

[dibs]

So, I was too lazy to make a paella and my brothers is always better so I made something similar to throw in the oven.

Here is chicken stuffed with chorizo, roast with chick peas, onions, peppers and lemon - here ready to go in the oven after the addition of the veggies.

Holy crap it turned out tasty! Nicer than my paella and definitely the best thrown together recipe I've made in many a moon. And I have enough for lunch tomorrow. Nom.

Next time less oil and more roasted lemon as slight adjustments. Ill be making this for people for sure too as it was so easy.