Calling all Chefs!!
- Thread starter klmno
- Start date
klmno
Active Member
Donna- I hadn't used my self-cleaning oven either for the same reason but I watched my Mom do it while she was visiting once. It was a good tting I did- it heats up the whole kitchen, can smell and loook like it's getting ready to catch on fire and apparently this is normal. I don't feel so afraid of doing it myself now but if I hadn't known it was supposed to do this, I would have been calling the fire dept.!
Marguerite: Great suggestions!
David: Great to see (read) you! If you get tired of tacos and pepper steak- I have found that any beef (roast, steak, burgers) comes out great on my little charcoal grill if I only dash it with worstecchire sauce. I have the same problem if I try to cook it in the oven- unless it is meatloaf. Yes, I grill in the middle of winter! If the roast isn't done on the inside, stick it in the oven a little longer- it still has great flavor.
Or, get a crock-pot- They come with a recipe book for roast and vegies. All you have to do is throw them in there and turn it on! Or, I buy a bag of frozen meatballs, a jar of spaghetti sauce- brown crumbled ground beef in skillet with a jar of mushrooms, chopped onion or whatever you like, add the meatballs a few minutes, move that to a big pot, pour in jar of sauce and simmer. It's easy and lasts a few days and is next best thing to home-made sauce! Chili: brown ground beef with chopped onion, mix in large pot with pack of chilli spices, large can of kidney beans - liquid and all, small can of tomato sauce, small can of diced tomotes, dash of worstechire sauce. Simmer. We serve with grated cheese on top. Also lasts a few days. If you don't eat it all, put in plastice container and freeze- it can be heated in micro anytime.
As a single working parent myself, I understand the need for quick easy meals! And- when my difficult child went to detention, I didn't eat a bite for 4 days. I think I finally lost the last few remaining pounds I put on while pregnant with him!
Marguerite: Great suggestions!
David: Great to see (read) you! If you get tired of tacos and pepper steak- I have found that any beef (roast, steak, burgers) comes out great on my little charcoal grill if I only dash it with worstecchire sauce. I have the same problem if I try to cook it in the oven- unless it is meatloaf. Yes, I grill in the middle of winter! If the roast isn't done on the inside, stick it in the oven a little longer- it still has great flavor.
Or, get a crock-pot- They come with a recipe book for roast and vegies. All you have to do is throw them in there and turn it on! Or, I buy a bag of frozen meatballs, a jar of spaghetti sauce- brown crumbled ground beef in skillet with a jar of mushrooms, chopped onion or whatever you like, add the meatballs a few minutes, move that to a big pot, pour in jar of sauce and simmer. It's easy and lasts a few days and is next best thing to home-made sauce! Chili: brown ground beef with chopped onion, mix in large pot with pack of chilli spices, large can of kidney beans - liquid and all, small can of tomato sauce, small can of diced tomotes, dash of worstechire sauce. Simmer. We serve with grated cheese on top. Also lasts a few days. If you don't eat it all, put in plastice container and freeze- it can be heated in micro anytime.
As a single working parent myself, I understand the need for quick easy meals! And- when my difficult child went to detention, I didn't eat a bite for 4 days. I think I finally lost the last few remaining pounds I put on while pregnant with him!
Marguerite
Active Member
OK, I'm finally getting back to this thread.
My best friend takes me to a play once a year, a few years ago we saw a play by Peta Murray, it's called "Salt". Absolutely brilliant, but a bit surreal - two main cast members, a mother (who is a lousy cook) and her daughter, who is a gourmet chef in her spare time (plus a third, male, playing all the men in succession).
They cooked onstage as part of the play - the smell of the food was the fourth cast member.
But the first scene - the daughter is cooking a special meal for her mother. Imam Bayildi, a delicious roast aubergine recipe that uses all the lovely fresh herbs and spices to create a wonderful aroma. The daughter is cutting up the aubergine flesh and asks her mother to peel some garlic. The mother then asks, "Why don't you use that garlic in a jar?" The daughter gives the mother a lecture on how the "garlic in a jar" is no more than crushed garlic which has been left to marinate in preservative, vinegar and other chemicals and not only loses its best flavour, it gains some other unsavoury ones.
Now my friend is a marvellous cook. I'm not bad. But we can get each other laughing easily by saying, "Why don't you use that garlic in a jar?"
Now, to the shrimp sauce recipe - the Japanese aren't noted for avoiding chemicals... but I am. I'm a fresh food nut, it keeps me healthy. Or at least, healthy within my limitations.
Sara, the recipe you found online -
"This is the first shrimp sauce recipe that googled up:
INGREDIENTS
1 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons white sugar
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons melted butter
3/4 teaspoon paprika
3/8 teaspoon garlic powder"
The instructions are to mix it all together.
But seriously - garlic powder? I would play with this recipe but substitute a clove of crushed garlic, even if you strain it. You could use a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic with SOME of the sugar and some mild salad oil such as macadamia (instead of the butter) and strain that into the mayonnaise. If you've made the mayonnaise yourself anyway, you've already used oil. Another Tablespoon won't matter, it's a dressing anyway, you're not tucking into a bowl of dressing with no other food.
Rice vinegar - use it if you can, it really needs to be a subtle flavour, so be careful what vinegar you use. Be prepared to use less if you have to substitute, say, cider vinegar.
And I also make my own herb vinegars using cider vinegar, just fill a jar with herbs of my choice and cover with the vinegar. Seal, and wait. For presentation, I pour it into another bottle and shove in another sprig of the herb concerned, for later identification (and it looks good). You can do the same with oil. Specialty shops charge a fortune for this stuff but I know what's gone into mine - and if I choose pretty bottles, mine can look just as good for a hundredth the cost.
Back to cooking - steak.
It all depends on how you intend to cook it, as to what type of steak you buy. The cheapest steak is frankly only worth stewing at a barely moving gentle simmer for several hours. But it can also be the most nourishing - the darker the meat, the higher the iron content (it's all to do with myoglobin, found in the hardest-working muscle). I have some good long simmer recipes if you want. Crockpot is good for holding the temperature just right so it doesn't turn it all into mush, but I always brown the ingredients first, on the stove.
Other steak recipes - unless it's REALLY tender, I don't grill or pan-fry it. A lot of meat gets sold as "barbecue steak" when frankly, it's too tough a cut. People buy blade (even cross-cut blade), round steak or topside and expect it to be deliciously tender right off the barbecue. Not necessarily. And then - people cook it for far too long. Most chefs will refuse to cook a steak to "well done" because they view it as an insult to their art. In Australia, rare steak is perfectly safe to eat but a lot of people who have lived in parts of the world where parasites abound, insist on their steak being brown all the way through. You just can't do that with round or topside. Even cross-cut blade will be like shoe leather.
There is a good test you can do, to test the 'done-ness' of a pan-fried steak - you compare the sponginess of the meat to the round part of your hand, below the thumb. Press that, then press the steak (don't cut it open, you let the juices out and it dries out).
The different degrees of 'done-ness' can be compared to the 'give' of the meaty bit below your thumb, depending on which finger is touching the tip of the thumb. For example, for well done, touch your thumb to your little finger. That meaty bit below your thumb is now very firm indeed. A steak with that amount of firmness is well done indeed. For rare, touch your thumb to your index finger.
And so on. Me - I prefer my steak so rare it's almost mooing. Hot pan, seared on the outside, not quite blue in the middle. Lop off its horns, wipe its rear, whack it on a plate. Nothing worse than rump steak please (we buy a whole rump and get the butcher to slice it for us - it's cheaper than stewing steak that way).
But frankly, if you can afford steak that is good enough to pan-fry and not be like leather, you are lucky (and you shouldn't waste your money by then cooking it until it is dark brown and chewy). You may as well save your money and stew it, or buy hamburger (nothing wrong with hamburger).
An option I heard someone say - he buys good quality minced beef (aka ground beef) and puts it into little square patties which he flattens out between sheets of cling wrap, to the thickness of a steak. He then freezes it. When he's hungry, he gets one of these out and pan-fries it from frozen. He can cook it to well done and it still won't be tough.
And another, more modern way to eat steak - in stir-fries. Here, you CAN use topside or round steak because you're cutting the meat very thin and stir-frying it quickly. Cut it across the grain, not along it. And if you're using a REALLY tough bit of meat, cut it up wafer-thin, and marinate it in the following:
2 Tablespoonsful of warm water and 1 teaspoon full of bicarb soda. Marinate for half an hour, then drain and rinse (to get out the extra sodium). Add your flavour marinade at that point and stir-fry as usual. It is the best, and cheapest, way to tenderise meat for a stir-fry. If you choose not to rise the meat, you will need to use a strongly flavoured sauce to mask the soda.
Cleaning toasters - the reason it's a good idea, is the toaster works best when it can reflect the light and heat onto the food being cooked. A dirty toaster is less able to do that. Most toasters should clean easily with a drop-down hatch underneath. But eventually, they do crud up and not even oven cleaner can get them clean. They will slowly lose efficiency and that's when you buy a new toaster.
And we don't wash brooms either.
Donna, your mother's cooking sounds like mine. We grew up with "Depression-era food" because there were so many of us. We grew most of our own ingredients in our suburban backyard. My mother would buy cheap cuts of steak and pan-fry it, walking away until it was almost cooked through on one side - then turn it and cremate it on the OTHER side. And that salad dressing - we got similar. But I remember her "potato salad dressing" - a tin of sweetened condensed milk, and mustard powder. Why - I don't know. Maybe because it was low fat. But the real mayonnaise would have been cheaper for her (because we HAD eggs, we kept chooks) and healthier too (we now realise). No sugar, for a start.
But the worst culinary experience had to be husband's aunt's garlic bread - she made the garlic butter using cheap margarine and a garlic stock cube. The experience, as w bit into it, was excruciating, even as she was saying excitedly, "Isn't it delicious? And you really can't tell the difference, can you?"
Yep. We could.
Maybe that's why I insist on using natural ingredients in season.
David, if you want some easy family recipes just PM me, I'll send you some. I've written out the kids' favourites for them to take when they leave home.
Marg
My best friend takes me to a play once a year, a few years ago we saw a play by Peta Murray, it's called "Salt". Absolutely brilliant, but a bit surreal - two main cast members, a mother (who is a lousy cook) and her daughter, who is a gourmet chef in her spare time (plus a third, male, playing all the men in succession).
They cooked onstage as part of the play - the smell of the food was the fourth cast member.
But the first scene - the daughter is cooking a special meal for her mother. Imam Bayildi, a delicious roast aubergine recipe that uses all the lovely fresh herbs and spices to create a wonderful aroma. The daughter is cutting up the aubergine flesh and asks her mother to peel some garlic. The mother then asks, "Why don't you use that garlic in a jar?" The daughter gives the mother a lecture on how the "garlic in a jar" is no more than crushed garlic which has been left to marinate in preservative, vinegar and other chemicals and not only loses its best flavour, it gains some other unsavoury ones.
Now my friend is a marvellous cook. I'm not bad. But we can get each other laughing easily by saying, "Why don't you use that garlic in a jar?"
Now, to the shrimp sauce recipe - the Japanese aren't noted for avoiding chemicals... but I am. I'm a fresh food nut, it keeps me healthy. Or at least, healthy within my limitations.
Sara, the recipe you found online -
"This is the first shrimp sauce recipe that googled up:
INGREDIENTS
1 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons white sugar
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons melted butter
3/4 teaspoon paprika
3/8 teaspoon garlic powder"
The instructions are to mix it all together.
But seriously - garlic powder? I would play with this recipe but substitute a clove of crushed garlic, even if you strain it. You could use a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic with SOME of the sugar and some mild salad oil such as macadamia (instead of the butter) and strain that into the mayonnaise. If you've made the mayonnaise yourself anyway, you've already used oil. Another Tablespoon won't matter, it's a dressing anyway, you're not tucking into a bowl of dressing with no other food.
Rice vinegar - use it if you can, it really needs to be a subtle flavour, so be careful what vinegar you use. Be prepared to use less if you have to substitute, say, cider vinegar.
And I also make my own herb vinegars using cider vinegar, just fill a jar with herbs of my choice and cover with the vinegar. Seal, and wait. For presentation, I pour it into another bottle and shove in another sprig of the herb concerned, for later identification (and it looks good). You can do the same with oil. Specialty shops charge a fortune for this stuff but I know what's gone into mine - and if I choose pretty bottles, mine can look just as good for a hundredth the cost.
Back to cooking - steak.
It all depends on how you intend to cook it, as to what type of steak you buy. The cheapest steak is frankly only worth stewing at a barely moving gentle simmer for several hours. But it can also be the most nourishing - the darker the meat, the higher the iron content (it's all to do with myoglobin, found in the hardest-working muscle). I have some good long simmer recipes if you want. Crockpot is good for holding the temperature just right so it doesn't turn it all into mush, but I always brown the ingredients first, on the stove.
Other steak recipes - unless it's REALLY tender, I don't grill or pan-fry it. A lot of meat gets sold as "barbecue steak" when frankly, it's too tough a cut. People buy blade (even cross-cut blade), round steak or topside and expect it to be deliciously tender right off the barbecue. Not necessarily. And then - people cook it for far too long. Most chefs will refuse to cook a steak to "well done" because they view it as an insult to their art. In Australia, rare steak is perfectly safe to eat but a lot of people who have lived in parts of the world where parasites abound, insist on their steak being brown all the way through. You just can't do that with round or topside. Even cross-cut blade will be like shoe leather.
There is a good test you can do, to test the 'done-ness' of a pan-fried steak - you compare the sponginess of the meat to the round part of your hand, below the thumb. Press that, then press the steak (don't cut it open, you let the juices out and it dries out).
The different degrees of 'done-ness' can be compared to the 'give' of the meaty bit below your thumb, depending on which finger is touching the tip of the thumb. For example, for well done, touch your thumb to your little finger. That meaty bit below your thumb is now very firm indeed. A steak with that amount of firmness is well done indeed. For rare, touch your thumb to your index finger.
And so on. Me - I prefer my steak so rare it's almost mooing. Hot pan, seared on the outside, not quite blue in the middle. Lop off its horns, wipe its rear, whack it on a plate. Nothing worse than rump steak please (we buy a whole rump and get the butcher to slice it for us - it's cheaper than stewing steak that way).
But frankly, if you can afford steak that is good enough to pan-fry and not be like leather, you are lucky (and you shouldn't waste your money by then cooking it until it is dark brown and chewy). You may as well save your money and stew it, or buy hamburger (nothing wrong with hamburger).
An option I heard someone say - he buys good quality minced beef (aka ground beef) and puts it into little square patties which he flattens out between sheets of cling wrap, to the thickness of a steak. He then freezes it. When he's hungry, he gets one of these out and pan-fries it from frozen. He can cook it to well done and it still won't be tough.
And another, more modern way to eat steak - in stir-fries. Here, you CAN use topside or round steak because you're cutting the meat very thin and stir-frying it quickly. Cut it across the grain, not along it. And if you're using a REALLY tough bit of meat, cut it up wafer-thin, and marinate it in the following:
2 Tablespoonsful of warm water and 1 teaspoon full of bicarb soda. Marinate for half an hour, then drain and rinse (to get out the extra sodium). Add your flavour marinade at that point and stir-fry as usual. It is the best, and cheapest, way to tenderise meat for a stir-fry. If you choose not to rise the meat, you will need to use a strongly flavoured sauce to mask the soda.
Cleaning toasters - the reason it's a good idea, is the toaster works best when it can reflect the light and heat onto the food being cooked. A dirty toaster is less able to do that. Most toasters should clean easily with a drop-down hatch underneath. But eventually, they do crud up and not even oven cleaner can get them clean. They will slowly lose efficiency and that's when you buy a new toaster.
And we don't wash brooms either.
Donna, your mother's cooking sounds like mine. We grew up with "Depression-era food" because there were so many of us. We grew most of our own ingredients in our suburban backyard. My mother would buy cheap cuts of steak and pan-fry it, walking away until it was almost cooked through on one side - then turn it and cremate it on the OTHER side. And that salad dressing - we got similar. But I remember her "potato salad dressing" - a tin of sweetened condensed milk, and mustard powder. Why - I don't know. Maybe because it was low fat. But the real mayonnaise would have been cheaper for her (because we HAD eggs, we kept chooks) and healthier too (we now realise). No sugar, for a start.
But the worst culinary experience had to be husband's aunt's garlic bread - she made the garlic butter using cheap margarine and a garlic stock cube. The experience, as w bit into it, was excruciating, even as she was saying excitedly, "Isn't it delicious? And you really can't tell the difference, can you?"
Yep. We could.
Maybe that's why I insist on using natural ingredients in season.
David, if you want some easy family recipes just PM me, I'll send you some. I've written out the kids' favourites for them to take when they leave home.
Marg
gottaloveem
Active Member
Somebody mentioned remoulade sauce for the shrimp. That is the sauce I was thinking about, here is a recipe I
found:
REMOULADE SAUCE
1 c. French dressing
1 c. Creole mustard
2 tbsp. paprika
1 tbsp. horseradish
1 tbsp. grated or minced onion
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. celery salt
Juice of one lemon
Combine ingredients. Blend thoroughly. Chill until ready to serve. Excellent for "Shrimp Remoulade" on a bed of lettuce.
Good Luck.
found:
REMOULADE SAUCE
1 c. French dressing
1 c. Creole mustard
2 tbsp. paprika
1 tbsp. horseradish
1 tbsp. grated or minced onion
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. celery salt
Juice of one lemon
Combine ingredients. Blend thoroughly. Chill until ready to serve. Excellent for "Shrimp Remoulade" on a bed of lettuce.
Good Luck.
