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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 12, 2021 8:48:00 GMT -5
Weather permitting, dinner tonight will be thick-cut pork chops cooked in the sous vide and seared on the grill. The chops are marinating now - I just hope the rain holds off!
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Post by brownrexx on May 12, 2021 11:35:31 GMT -5
We have been eating a lot of stir fry type dishes lately so tonight will be some comfort food that DH rally likes. Salisbury steaks with mashed potatoes and gravy and steamed baby bok choy.
We have been eating a lot of bok choy lately too but it is starting to bolt and will be gone soon so we have been eating a lot of bok choy as well as asparagus.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 14, 2021 12:09:57 GMT -5
(Technically, this is a "What's for Lunch?" post.) So I just made two of these, intending one for DH: Suddenly sharing doesn't seem like such a virtue!
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Post by brownrexx on May 14, 2021 17:11:01 GMT -5
Laura_in_FL, beautiful sandwiches like that will not be served at my house for a while. I just planted my tomato seedlings in the garden today. I did see a flower on one plant and I did not pull it off. Maybe I will have a Cherokee Purple tomato soon?
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 22, 2021 22:12:22 GMT -5
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Post by brownrexx on May 23, 2021 16:43:39 GMT -5
Big salads from my garden lettuce with hard boiled eggs from our chickens and chopped carrots, cucumbers, hydroponic tomato from a local farm and diced chicken breast.
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 23, 2021 19:05:07 GMT -5
I got out a loaf of rye bread to thaw last night, and had a liverwurst sandwich on that for lunch, and in a while I'll have another one. I also had some of that leftover gazpacho, and I'll finish that off later. I really didn't want to turn on a burner today!
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 26, 2021 16:48:16 GMT -5
Spaghetti with sauce made from my homegrown tomatoes! The big question is what time dinner will be. I was hoping for 6pm, but the sauce might need a little longer to cook down. It's going to be tasty, though! Well, I hope it will be tasty, anyway. Cross your fingers that I don't mess it up somehow between now and when it gets done. The tomatoes I had ready on the counter were enough for a big batch, so I will be freezing a bunch of leftovers. Well, it's a big batch by dinner standards, but not quite enough to get the canner out for. I guess it has been a few years since I used my Italian tomato press: At least, judging by the dust that had accumulated on it before I washed it. I guess that's not surprising given how awful the last two years have been for growing tomatoes. But it still worked great and I got a little arm workout. (P.S., that's a photo from Williams-Sonoma, not my photo. But mine looks exactly like that, except mine's not shiny and new any more.)
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Post by brownrexx on May 26, 2021 20:16:27 GMT -5
Laura_in_FL, home made sauce from home grown tomatoes is the best! I make big batches every year and freeze it in quart jars and it freezes quite well. Last year DH asked me to buy a jar of sauce at the store to see what it tasted like. We both thought that it was yucky and tasted like it had thickeners in it. I never did that again. We are too used to the good stuff now.
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 26, 2021 20:53:37 GMT -5
I had some creminis I had to use up, so I made up a delicious porridge like mix of these in the Instant Pot, with some barley, chana dal, frozen Thai red beans, and some frozen cooked turkey. I started by sautéing some chopped onion in a little olive oil, adding 6 minced cloves of garlic and a couple tablespoons of gochujang, plus some rosemary and sage minced up (2/3 added here, 1/3 at the end), to sauté for the last two minutes. Then I added the water, salt, and barley, and cooked for 12 minutes, let the pressure reduce naturally, then removed the lid. While cooking the barley, I soaked 3/4 c chana dal in 3 c water. Then I cleaned, cut, and cooked the mushrooms - steamed with a little water in a wok, then sautéed them in a little oil. This way, little oil is absorbed, as with fresh mushrooms. The cooked mushrooms and the cooked turkey were added to the barley, along with the drained chana dal covered again, then set to pressure cook for 8 minutes. After letting the pressure reduce naturally, and removing the lid, I corrected the seasoning, then I stirred a couple spoonfuls of red lentil flour (something that I make to thicken things like this with), stirred the thawed beans in, along with the end of the rosemary and sage, and let it sit for 7 or 8 minutes, in the warm mode. A porridge like dish, with mushrooms, barley, chana dal, and frozen beans and turkey. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
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Post by september on May 27, 2021 8:22:02 GMT -5
In the past, I've made this in the oven, but no one wanted to wait that long, so I made a version of skillet shepherd's pie. Fried up hamburger with onions, mushrooms, sliced carrots and a bit of celery, salt and pepper, drained fat, added enough water to barely cover and a couple tsp of beef bouillon powder, and simmered for 10 minutes to soften the carrots. Added frozen peas, made a mix of milk and flour to thicken the gravy, season to taste. Topped skillet contents with Idahoan brand instant garlic mashed potatoes made in the microwave with a shake of paprika on top. Fast and satisfying meal for a cool evening. Overnight temps dipped down to 38F here.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 27, 2021 10:34:35 GMT -5
So...back to homemade tomato sauce. Mine was very delicious and enjoyed by all, but I have a question: does anyone know why my homemade tomato sauce always separates?
Even after cooking for a few hours, most of the sauce will be thick but there will be some red water in it still. You can stir everything together, but the sauce separates back out within moments. So when you plate, a puddle forms under your pasta. The water is tasty, and I sop it up with garlic bread. But a puddle under your pasta isn't appetizing to look at.
Do I need to cook it for a few more hours, or is there something else I should be doing?
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 27, 2021 10:56:08 GMT -5
Sounds like just too much water in it, Laura_in_FL! Maybe cook it down quickly, over high heat, stirring and scraping the pan constantly, until it doesn't separate? That's what I would try, but then, I'm impatient.
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Post by brownrexx on May 27, 2021 13:26:34 GMT -5
Laura_in_FL , I struggled with this problem for years and was quite frustrated with it. I tried a lot of different thigs. Some people like to cook their sauce for hours to evaporate water but I feel that this deteriorates the quality of the tomatoes too much so I hit on a solution that actually works. I peel, chop and gently cook my tomatoes for about 20 minutes and then drain them in a colander for an hour. All of the pale red watery stuff drains out. I would rather do this that use heat to drive off the water. Before I started doing this my sauce always separated and it really bugged me. If you can tomatoes you will often see that straw colored liquid in the jar separate from the red part. I think that this is what is separating in the tomato sauce and I am draining that off before I finish my sauce. Here is the recipe that I use and it has nice chunks of tomatoes and does not separate when added to pasta as long as the pasta is drained well, not rinsed, just drained. Italian Sausage Spaghetti Sauce1 large onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 1 lb. bulk Italian sausage 4 c. fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped & drained. 12 oz tomato paste 1 -14 oz can beef broth 1 -14 oz can vegetable broth 1 tbsp. brown sugar 2 tsp. Italian seasoning 1 tsp. salt Peel tomatoes, chop and cook down for about 20 minutes. Drain in a strainer for 1 hour. Sauté onion, garlic and sausage until sausage is no longer pink. Add remaining ingredients and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer 20-30 minutes until tomato chunks have broken down and sauce is smooth and thick. Makes 3 quarts
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 28, 2021 11:23:41 GMT -5
pepperhead212 and brownrexx, those are both good ideas for smaller batches of sauce. But when I have a bunch of tomatoes to process like I did this week, either of these suggestions would be really slow because I would have to split the sauce into multiple batches for either fast reduction or draining. I only have one high-capacity burner on my stove and only one full-size colander. It would actually be faster to simmer the big pot of sauce another couple of hours. One thing I have done that reduces sauce cook time is freezing the tomatoes whole and then thawing in a colander. A LOT of water drains out while they are thawing. But here again I am stuck at the one good colander limitation (because frozen tomatoes shrink so much as they thaw, it takes several colander loads for a big batch of sauce). Also, thawing at room temperature takes several hours. I could buy more colanders (and bowls to go under them) but the bigger problem is the space that lots of whole tomatoes take in the freezer. I don't have a pressure canner to do the "exploding tomatoes" method, either. So for now I think I am stuck with cooking the sauce down more. However, it just occurred to me that since a scoop of the sauce would sit on top of a pile of spaghetti while the water drained out through and under the spaghetti, I might be able to drain the finished sauce in my fine metal strainer. I wouldn't press it through at all, just use gravity and a short draining time to see if the excess water will drain out while retaining the rest of the sauce. I'll report back how that works for this batch that I have already made. Another thought I had was to squeeze the tomatoes as through I were extracting seeds for seed saving before putting them in the Italian tomato press. I should mostly lose seeds and gel doing that. Losing the gel would leave a lot less liquid in the tomatoes to be cooked out. Hopefully losing the gel won't affect the flavor of the sauce too much.
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 28, 2021 14:12:15 GMT -5
Laura_in_FL You're probably right on about cooking it down, for larger amounts. I remember a show in which Rick Bayless was explaining how the method of "frying" the blended ingredients in a Mexican sauce for several minutes, then adding the water or broth, and simmering just 20 minutes or so, makes them as if they had been simmered for several hours. And since they make large quantities of many of those sauces in the restaurants, that's what they have to do - simmer large stockpots of them for several hours over low heat, so not much attention needed, until it cooks way down, and the thickness and flavors are about the same. So what's the sizes of your stockpots?
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 30, 2021 10:15:55 GMT -5
pepperhead212, I have 5 quart and 8 quart stockpots. I also have a 20 quart water bath canner that I can use as a stockpot if I take the canning rack out. Of course, when I use the canner as a stockpot, I have to transfer the contents to other stock pots and wash the canner before I can do any canning. The batch of spaghetti sauce that I made last week filled the 8 quart stockpot nearly to the top (stirring required care not to slosh sauce out) before the sauce cooked down.
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Post by brownrexx on May 30, 2021 15:44:18 GMT -5
Chicken in a white wine sauce with asparagus and onions. Was supposed to also have mushrooms but I don't have any but it will still be good. I also whipped up a dessert of Small Batch Brownies which is made in a loaf pan and only makes about 6 brownies. This is necessary since we have little to no self control when brownies are in the house. Here is a pic from the last time I made them. 20200429_173540 (2) by Brownrexx, on Flickr
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on May 30, 2021 16:25:28 GMT -5
brownrexx, Brownies are my weakness. I can eat the whole darn pan in one setting. I like mine with pecans. Great! Now I’m hungry!
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 30, 2021 21:26:36 GMT -5
Brownies are my downfall, and I don't bake those unless I am taking them somewhere, or having others helping me eat them. I wanted to bake something, since it is so cool, so I made some butternut squash bread today, using a pumpkin bread recipe, and some dried apricots, for the fruit, and pecans, for the nuts. I actually ground up 1.25 oz of dehydrated butternuts in the Vitamix, and added water to make 16 oz, and mixed it into the butternut flour. The texture was almost exactly what canned pumpkin would be. I wanted to bake something, before it gets hot again, and I don't want to turn on the oven! Pumpkin bread, actually made with butternut squash. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
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Post by september on May 31, 2021 9:49:20 GMT -5
pepperhead212, I never thought of dried apricots! Sounds yummy, could replace my standard raisins for "sweet" breads.
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 31, 2021 12:01:50 GMT -5
september I also use prunes for these sweet breads - my favorite dried fruit, but I only had 6 oz, so I used the apricots, which I had 8 oz of. I'll have to stock up on the prunes next trip to Aldi. I cut the apricots in half, the prunes maybe into thirds, and I like these larger pieces better than raisins in breads and muffins.
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 31, 2021 22:10:33 GMT -5
Today I threw together a dish in the Instant Pot, not a one dish meal, but much of it done in there. I first cooked a cup of sorghum berries under pressure, then drained them. Meanwhile, I made a sauce in a sauté pan, starting with browning some onions in olive oil, then some crushed garlic, along with some gochujang for 2 minutes, then I added a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes. I stirred in about 2 tb of minced fresh marjoram, 2 tb chopped anchovies, plus 2 fresh bay leaves, and a quarter cup of dry vermouth. I also stirred in about 2 cups of some large radishes that I had peeled, and cut into bite sized pieces - sort of like adding turnips to the dish. I simmered this on very low, while doing the rest of the dish. I drained the sorghum (still chewy), then added that to the tomato sauce, with a cup of the cooking water, to simmer. Then I cooked 1 lb of sweet Italian sausage in the IP, on high sauté, and at the end (very little fat cooked out, surprisingly), I cooked up a diced up green bell pepper. When the sauce was pretty much finished, I dumped it in the IP, added 3 c water, brought it to a boil on high sauté, turned it off, added 1 lb bow tie pasta, stirred it well, and pressed it all under the surface. I set it for 5 min manual, and when finished, released the pressure. I stirred it up, and served some, with a little grated pecorino. Italian style pasta dish, made in the Instant Pot. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
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Post by paquebot on Jun 2, 2021 22:03:16 GMT -5
Little appetite while worrying about my missing cat. Wife made a simple potatoes and ground venison hash and said "EAT!"". I ate!
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 3, 2021 8:08:33 GMT -5
paquebot, we no longer have outdoor cats. We have 2 cats and they are totally indoor cats. I can't stand the anguish of having a cat go missing outside and after we lost one many years ago I never wanted an outside cat again. I sure hope that Shadow comes home.
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Post by paquebot on Jun 3, 2021 11:28:19 GMT -5
Siamese are one-man cats and will follow that person like a dog. When outside, they will constantly keep in close touch with their master. There are outside cats on two sides of me. She was last seen heading in the direction of the west one. That other cat is very friendly and they got along well. Being very afraid of strangers, something or someone spooked her and she probably ended up in strange territory and could not find her way back.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 3, 2021 17:37:19 GMT -5
We grilled hot dogs and had grilled asparagus, sautéed white button mushrooms and a fresh fruit salad that I learned to make in my monthly cooking class. DH said "this tastes like something from a fancy restaurant." I cut up a peach, halved some Bing cherries and green grapes, blueberries, fresh raspberries and fresh blackberries. The dressing was 1/4 c. honey with 2 tbsp. fresh lime juice and 1 tbsp. of fresh chopped mint. The dressing really gives it an interesting and nice taste. Fresh Fruit Salad by Brownrexx, on Flickr
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 3, 2021 19:07:25 GMT -5
Last night, friend brought me over some nice looking tomatoes - something that I never buy, but he couldn't wait, and had to have "one of those things I make" with them. Today, I saw that Israeli feta in the fridge that I hadn't tried yet, so I made a favorite of mine, that he also likes - the lentil salad, with the tomatoes and feta, plus a lot of cilantro and garlic chives. The different thing I used in it was really good - some toasted whole oats. It got a little overcooked, but next time I'll know to put it in for less time at the end. The tomatoes weren't bad, for store-bought, and he was surprised to hear me say that! Lentil salad by pepperhead212, on Flickr
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Post by paquebot on Jun 3, 2021 23:06:38 GMT -5
We had tacos, second time this week. Also store-bought tomatoes which aren't bad. They are Cluster which one can also buy seed for. Usually sold in clusters of 4. Great improvement over something that we bought a month ago.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by paquebot on Jun 4, 2021 17:08:53 GMT -5
No appetite but hard to turn down a salmon fillet. Only thing with it was canned snap beans. Washed down with a mystery gardeen juice. Code on the 2-quart jar was H/N 11 and thus was from 2011. But I have no clue what the H/N was. Tasted like many other V-8 juices that I've canned.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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