If you do like to cook, what do you cook?
I'm also drawn to "project" cooking, stuff that involves aging and/or fermentation. Making cheese, various kinds of pickles, growing tempeh and yogurt, sourdough, etc. I also homebrew (beer and mead). If you like being a mad scientist in the kitchen, _Wild Fermentation_ (http://www.wildfermentation.com/) has a lot of recipes and techniques.
I'm working my way through Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", but I keep getting drawn back to the very early chapters on cheese and dairy, even though it isn't particularly specific.
Any tips?
For cheese-making, I recommend starting with paneer / farmer's cheese, rather than aged cheeses. Gradually heat milk in a big pot, stir in a curdling agent (such as lemon juice), let it separate, then wrap the curds in cheesecloth and let them drip, maybe press them after. Real directions will be more specific (the book I linked has a great intro!), but that's the gist. Paneer is great fried with spinach and/or scrambled eggs. Also, try making bread with the whey.
Homemade yogurt is also good, particularly if you strain it a bit to thicken it ("labneh", among many other names). Buttermilk is even easier, since it's less finicky about being kept warm, and it's fantastic for baking - soda bread with lots of rolled oats, pancakes, etc. Having a lot of large jars helps; I've accumulated a bunch of half-gallon (~2L) jars from honey used for meadmaking. They're incredibly versatile.
I really like _On Food and Cooking_ as a reference, though it doesn't inspire me the way _Wild Fermentation_ does. I also wholeheartedly recommend John Thorne's books, particularly _Pot on the Fire_ and _Outlaw Cook_. The newsletter is good, too, if a bit sporadic these days.
On Saturday I did a slow-roasted lamb shoulder with roasted dates, a garlic and white wine sauce and lemon and mint couscous on the side. At the moment I'm massively into slow cooking and fusion, particularly sweet and spices. I do a traditional lamb shank in a red wine sauce with various veg, but also Moroccan spices, apricots and figs, roasted for between 12 and 18 hours. Has to be experienced to be understood. If anyone wants recipes I'm happy to post them.
My one word of advice to any hacker that wants incredible meat dishes, get a crock pot. You can use the cheapest, roughest cuts of meat and with very little effort get incredible results.
You will need:
* 4 lamb shanks (you can use about 1.5lb - 3lb leg or shoulder instead, but it's not a shank then)
* 2tsp cumin seeds
* Just over 1inch of fresh ginger, chopped
* 4 garlic cloves, chopped
* 1tsp salt
* 2 tbsp olive oil
* 2 large red onions, cut into wedges
* 1 and 1/2 tbsp Harissa Paste
* Small can of chopped tomatoes
* 1 pint (about 568-600ml chicken stock, hot - use beef stock if you haven't any chicken)
* 1 cinnamon stick
* 4oz halved dried ready-to-eat apricots
* 4oz halved dried figs
* A reasonable sized crock pot
Protip: if you have a very large crockpot you can add a couple of potatoes cut into larger wedges, the odd carrot or half a swede will work but don't put too much in or you're overpower the flavour. Note, by swede I mean vegetable, not someone from Sweden.
I've put the measures in US imperial as the majority of the site have it - I cook metrically, but roughly so you'll be fine with these or converting back to metric.
Bash the cumin and coriander in a pestle and mortar for a while, then add the ginger and salt and keep bashing till you have a nice paste. It doesn't need to be perfect - a rough paste is fine, but it needs to be fairly mashed and mixed up.
Heat some oil in a pan (I use sunflower or olive) and brown the shank off in the pan - this is purely for aesthetic purposes, you don't have to do this but your lamb might look a bit grey otherwise. If you do this, just brown it for a minute or two and put it in the pot.
Add your onions to the pot, along with the spice paste (you might want to rub it onto the lamb, maybe not), harissa (I generally smear this over the lamb but it doesn't affect the taste much), tomatoes, cinammon stick and stock.
Put the crockpot on low for 8 hours or high for 4. I cannot stress this enough - your meat will be so much better the longer you cook it. My record is 16 hours for lamb, you'll reach the point where the shank just falls apart and the meat falls off the bone around the 7 hour mark on low. Cooking it on high is fine, but it affects the meat more and more importantly sends the stock over boiling point. You won't lose too much but you will lose some. If you put it on low it really doesn't matter how long you cook it for, it simply will not burn, so feel free to put this on the night before if you really want to, all you'll do is get even more tenderness from the meat.
Ok, now between an hour to half an hour beforehand (closer to an hour) add the apricots and figs, make sure they're in the sauce and put up on high if the lid's off for a while or you only have half an hour, low if you barely took the lid off and you have an hour.
About 15 minutes beforehand, it's time to make the accompanying lemon and mint couscous if you want. Get a bowl and add some couscous (bear in mind that it will swell to between two and three times it's size). Bulgur wheat or quinoa are fine as alternatives (and may be cheaper depending on where you are).
Add 4 tablespoons of olive oil to the couscous along with the juice of half to a whole mid-sized lemon (depending on how much you like lemon). Add a cup of chicken stock, roughly enough to cover the couscous along with some salt and pepper, cover the bowl and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes. If you run out of water add some more. It's ok to stir it up as well. After 10 minutes drain off the excess couscous, add 3 tablespoons of freshly chopped mint (you can use parsley instead if you want) and optionally add another two teaspoons of coriander and mix it in with a fork. Using the fork is important as this 'fluffs up the couscous. Bring the couscous to the table with a nice big spoon as the smell of the lamb will be driving anyone else at home wild, then serve the lamb individually, with enough sauce, figs and apricots to get the balance.
The thing I really love about the recipe is how the spicy heat from the harissa complements the sweetness of the apricots and figs. The lamb acts as a neutral balancer, but the texture is just incredible. It's an amazing modern and exotic take on a great classical dish. Please do try it if you have a slow cooker.
Protips for the not yet ramen profitable: Looking to do this on the cheap? Then bear these tips in mind.
1. Shanks are normally quite cheap, but you can get away with the cheapest possible cuts of lamb you can find. You can also use beef if that works for you. This dish was designed for low quality cuts - the key thing is giving it enough time. If you cook it for 12 hours on low and use a shank I pretty much guarantee that when you lift it up out of the crockpot by the bone the meat will fall off and back in. It's that tender.
2. Don't be afraid to use apricots or figs near their sell by date. If it's cheaper to get fresh or on the turn, just dry them out in the sun for about 6 hours beforehand. Apricots get squishy before going off, figs get sweaty. They're still good for this dish.
3. You can keep the dish in the cooker and reheat it the next day - you should get about 3-4 days worth of shank on your own. To reheat just give yourself an hour or two, alternatively top up the harissa, add another cinnamon stick, put it on low in the morning before work and come home to an even better tasting lamb shank in the evening. You can also pad it out with vegetables like potatoes cut into large chunks on days two and three. You can also top the sauce up with a little red wine if you want on days 2 and 3, but don't overdo it and chicken stop is cheaper.
4. If you're going to make this dish for someone you're having over for dinner (such as a significant other) then it's probably best to make the dish beforehand once. It is really really easy though, very hard to get wrong (given that you have about 8 hours to fix anything that pops up) and is pretty much a one pot recipe so there's less washing up. This is definitely a hacker and newb-cook friendly dish.
5. Most importantly if an ingredient costs a load then ditch it. Use dates instead of figs if they're cheaper, just use less of them because they're sweeter. Use the cheapest onions you can find, use dried herbs instead of fresh if you don't grow your own etc. - chilli paste will taste slightly different compared to harissa paste but if it's cheaper and cash is tight then go for it.
I hope you enjoy that recipe, if you don't mind this took a while, I'll do my roast lamb with slow-roasted dates in white wine and garlic.
Watching the common cooking shows are good, but stay away from shows like Top Chef (at least while you're learning) as they are well advanced, and you're not going to learn much.
On the flip side, Jamie Oliver used to have a brilliant show wherein he focused on simple recipes that were easy to put together and tasted amazingly.
One of the shows I've been watching recently is "Worst Cooks in America" which, while the show itself sucks, actually goes through and shows some practical cooking basics.
I loosely copied a pork paillard recipe with a sundried-tomato herb butter, and it was phenomenal. I tend to eat well when I eat out, and have eaten at some very nice establishments, and can honestly say that I've never had a better piece of pork anywhere.
Of course, the real learning is in actually cooking. Watching shows and reading books (I recommend Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", or Alton Brown's books) might teach you the theory of cooking, but actually DOING is still the best way to learn.
I have a friend of mine who had literally never cooked a meal in his life that didn't come from a box or can, and he was talking about making something nice for his fiancee for Valentine's Day. I gave him a foolproof recipe for filet mignon, honey glazed carrots and asparagus, and now he's begging me for more recipes to wow her with.
Simply put, it's a great hobby and, if you have kids, a great way to get them involved and have some easy family time.
Maybe I'm an overly intuitive cook, but I feel recipes are just snapshots* , and once you have a feel for the rough proportions + know how your ingredients behave, largely unnecessary. A good recipe won't always work (maybe it's really humid, the eggs are unusually small, etc.), and IMHO cooking is about sensing and adjusting.
* Outside of baking or a few other niches, which depend on carefully executed chemical reactions etc.
Cooking is my form of artistic expression and a perfect outlet for nearly every aspect of my personality and work experience combined.
I've been cooking seriously for years, even going so far as to have trained formally in commercial kitchens from commis to chef as a form of vacations from the IT world. Adding to that over 15 years of constant travel; I've eaten just about everything and everywhere in thousands of restaurants and food stalls. I have incredibly high standards and test myself against them constantly.
It keeps me grounded in all things I do and gives me a way to directly please others and gratify my own need to test for success or failure. (Try cooking for a nationally renown chef and his girlfriend in your home several times. No excuses and the pressure is intense, no matter how gracious the guest.)
Order, discipline, attention and eye for detail, intuition, physical sciences and chemistry, good taste, a rock solid internal clock and ability to spin dozens of plates with one hand - all of these skills help in many ways outside the kitchen.
My favorites foods are too many to list, but I'm a big fan of making house pate and terrine. Duck and rabbit rillettes. You work with me, you'll need to watch your waist line. I'm hoping to have a full-scale commercial kitchen in our next office location and I intend to use it daily.
How many bosses do you know want to run their own brasserie style cafeteria? I may be totally nuts, but I have confidence I can get the job done in the kitchen.
Simple delicious dish: carnitas. Use cheap pork shoulder (incidentally, the cheaper the cut of pork, the tastier!). Cut into 1" cubes and drop into a pot and add enough water to cover. Squeeze half a lime and add some salt to taste. Bring to boil and skim off the yucky stuff floating on top. Partly cover and reduce to SLOW simmer and let all water boil off. You are causing most of the fat to render out of the meat. It should cook for at least an hour. When water's all gone and pork is starting to fry in it's own fat, add chilies, garlic, onion and maybe more lime juice. The meat will be falling-apart tender by this time and now crispy outside since it's been frying.
Eat as is, or add a cup of rice and let the rice partly fry in the oil, then add 2 cups water or veggie broth, achiote (cooked, crushed annato seeds), more onions and peas & carrots and cook until rice is done. Enjoy.
Delicioso one-pot meal! Much easier to do than to read about it. Should not take more than 5 minutes preparation time.
Aside: in my single days, I quickly learned that one of the easiest ways to impress women was to cook for them. Following JWZ's philosophy of doing what gets you laid...
I cook Indian dishes such as Dal, Rice, Vegetable Curry, Egg Curry, Chicken Curry, Chapati, Pulao, Biryani etc.
Sometimes I like cooking chinese dishes such as noodles.
I like to cook just about anything. My taste prefernece has always been more to Latino style foods, so I tend to cook a lot fresh vegetables and such. I've really only started to enjoy cooking (used to hate it actually), so I'm still learning a lot.
Here's what I've cooked recently, plus other recipes I've saved:
http://yumtab.com/sarah-justin
(I actually created YumTab specifically to keep track of this stuff.)
I cook whatever satisfies my palate, which primarily revolves around meat and veggies. But how can you pass on a good cheesecake or burger recipe?
I got a copy the other day and it is a fun read so far.
http://www.pathelectronica.com/journal/public/2010/05/02/dea...
