Search Results for '("C'

[Mike Nolan]

No, this was a pretty basic black bean soup: Black beans, onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, oregano and sherry. (I'd have added thyme and maybe a little rosemary, I think both pair well with legumes.)

She was trying to stay away from the 'Southwest' flavor profile, so no cumin and, obviously, no garlic.

[Mike Nolan]

ATK did a test of beans soaked in water, water with baking soda (alkali solution) and water with citric acid (acetic solution), the ones in the baking soda were the softest and cooked faster, the ones in the acid didn't soften much and took much longer to cook. I don't think they tried salt water, but it would also be mildly alkali.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife's black bean soup was a good first try, she thinks it needs more carrot next time around.

I think the beans needed to soak longer (She tried the 'fast soak' method, I think an overnight soak would have been better.)

[Mike Nolan]

They had real (Italian registered and stamped) parm reg at Costco the last time I was there.

We had some hard cheese at a farmer's market when we were in Torino that wasn't parm reg (wrong region) but was incredible. I wish I knew what it was.

[cwcdesign]

On Thursday, I made Ina's tomato soup from Foolproof. Only changes were Italian Herbs instead of saffron and I could not see adding orzo to tomato soup. I also added a pinch of sugar to cut the acidity of the canned tomatoes. It's really good and fast. We had it for two nights with the Maple Oat Soda Bread and have a pint in the freezer.

Last night I made a hamburger noodle bake from Southern Living. It was good, but a little bland - there was not enough of the cheese mixture to toss with the noodles (it called for sour cream and I used whole milk yogurt). We'll have that for leftovers tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

The original alfredo sauce was just melted parmesan cheese, that's REALLY a slow process. Adding cream speeds things up quite a bit and probably lowers the cost a lot, too. (Adding garlic to an alfredo sauce should be
against the law.)

[BakerAunt]

I had a late lunch on Friday because I decided to bake Butternut Squash, Kale, and Cheddar Savory Tart, a recipe that I developed from an ATK recipe for a galette, when I needed to replace the heavily butter crust with my much lower in saturated fat oil crust. I bake mine in an Emile Henry 8 ½-inch ceramic tart pan after par-baking the crust. I also replace the spinach with kale since spinach hangs onto its calcium. I also replace the luscious gruyere cheese with 2% pre-grated (only low-fat I can find) cheddar. I had three cute little honey nut butternut squash that I bought earlier this fall at the farmers’ market; the total weight of 1.4 lbs. was enough. I will have lunches from it for the next few days.

[Mike Nolan]

The standard ratio for reconstituting dry milk is 3 TB plus a cup of water to make a cup of milk.

I prefer baker's dry milk (King Arthur sells it, among others), it has been heated to make sure the protease enzymes have been disabled. You can accomplish the same thing with milk by heating it to at least 170 degrees. (I usually allow it to cool back to room temperature before using it.)

[BakerAunt]

We had leftover turkey, microwaved fresh broccoli, and a Queen squash, halved, roasted in the oven, then filled with bulgur and roasted a little longer.

Some of our Queen squashes were sweet, and we liked those a lot. However, we have also had some bitter ones. Does anyone know why there might be a difference? While these are getting old (we have one left), we had an older one that was sweet.

[Mike Nolan]

Regarding your solid syrup, add a little hot water and let it sit for a few days. I do this with barley syrup and molasses when they get too thick to use.

I've got a refractometer (under $20 at Amazon) that I could probably use to measure the sugar content of a syrup as I reduce it, but I sometimes do it by weight.

I've never been very good at eyeballing how much something reduces.

I put a cork pad on the scale, weigh it and the empty pan, then weigh it again after adding the liquid to be reduced. I compute what I want it reduce to (including the weight of the pan), it only takes a couple of seconds to turn on the scale, move the pan over to weigh it, and then move it back to the burner.

I use the back page of one of my cooking notebooks to write down the empty (tare) weight of pans. The only problem is if you have more than one pan in the same size, there can still be a bit of difference in their weight. I have a few pans where I've written A or B on the sides with a permanent marker so I know which one I'm using.

[Mike Nolan]

I write notes on recipes all the time. I've taken to using post-it notes in cookbooks rather than writing in the book itself, the post-it notes also act as bookmarks.

They make some smaller post-it notes where instead of a small strip of adhesive the adhesive covers most of the back. These make pretty good freezer labels as long as you don't get them damp. (Tupperware has apparently discontinued making their labels, so I'm looking for alternatives.)

[cwcdesign]

BA, Will is actually teaching himself since we communicate and learn so differently from each other - he watches a lot of videos (he's dyslexic), I read a lot of recipes and watch some videos.

He does ask questions and I'm learning how to answer to be helpful, sometimes I'll just remind him to research it if he doesn't like my answer 😁 But, at least he's learning because he wants to. I'm sure he'll become better than me at some point.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the tip, Len. And thank you to Italian Cook for starting this discussion. Sometimes the simple things--a pastry brush to brush off excess flour--is the very thing we overlook. I once remarked to Cass that it is hard to turn over stamped buns. Use a spatula, he told me. Oh. Of, course.

I recall a thread from the now defunct King Arthur Backing Circle (another KABC) in which a member--was it Karen Noll?--commented on a snowman bread that she makes and sprinkles before baking with flour in order to give the look of snow.

[RiversideLen]

Italiancook wrote:

Len, you’ve posted a few times about making mushroom gravy. How do you do that? Is it the same as making giblet gravy only with mushrooms? I can see where gravy would be “healthy” if it had mushrooms in it.

Italian Cook, the first thing I do is cook the mushrooms. I saw on ATK that mushrooms have open cells that soak up oil like a sponge, so they suggested that you cook the mushrooms a little before sauteing them as that makes the cells collapse and thus won't soak up all the oil. They used a microwave I use a covered non stick fry pan. After I do that, I add some oil (use butter if you prefer) and I lightly brown the mushrooms (fresh or frozen) as that develops flavor. Then I put the mushrooms in a bowl with any liquid there might be. Then I add oil to the pan and flour and make the roux, slowly add any pan drippings that I have available and chicken stock (I use low or reduced sodium), get it to the consistency that I want and then add the mushrooms with any mushroom liquid there might be. Of course, season to taste.

[cwcdesign]

Early in the week, I made a penne pasta with asparagus and lemon sauce - we had it for a couple of days. Work was crazy with long hours. We had 100 orders for take n bake Thanksgiving dinners - we were all glad when Wednesday was over. It was nice to be able to spend Thursday hanging out, resting and reading. I made scalloped potatoes, Pepperidge Farm (blue) “dressing,” and roasted the little Butterball breast on a bed of vegetables. I made turkey gravy from a Knorr packet I had on hand using chicken stock cuz there were no juices from the turkey - it was surprisingly good. Will made the green beans and we had canned cranberry sauce - we’re from the land of Ocean Spray. Then we had Will’s pumpkin pie for dessert.
Turkey sandwiches for dinner last night, tonight and probably tomorrow as well.