World food and recipe thread

[Your Mom]

I've always found the typical British meat and three veg to be somewhat ho hum and I guess the popularity of Indian, Chinese and kebabs shows that I'm not alone. I think this, and the fact my mum was a lousy cook, fueled my desire to become a chef, but there's still much cuisine I'm not too familiar with such as Egyptian. So here I post the "A cook abroad" series, but please feel free to add your own.

[Tude]

Mmmmm good. And some canned tuna for protein.



:D

hehe - didn't know you a chef. Yay!! I used to run the catering end of a cajun bbq restaurant. And also helped out on the line when someone didn't show.

Ha - I should show you some of the way travelers eat/cook (ok maybe a little dumpstering for some of the ingredients). Best one though when a friend videotaped himself making hobo chili (out of the can of course) - but his stove was out of fuel so he cooked it with a ....... wait for it .... road flare. hehe Asked him if it tasted funny - he said it was just fine ...

[Your Mom]

Philistine!

I gave up being a chef years ago, but still have a passion for food and a profound dislike of artificial flavourings. Having said that, I wouldn't call myself a food snob and have no problem eating simple, rustic food, however I have never dumpster dived. I love the smokey flavour from a campfire.

If an open fire is not an option, I'd recommend a little homemade rocket stove as you need minimum fuel and it's simple and easily made and the materials can be found in dumpsters and are lightweight enough to carry on the road.

[Your Mom]

This one is a bit different. It's a Scottish Sikh investigating his Punjabi ancestry. I would prefer if there was more attention to the food and ingredients in this series.

[Tude]

We've been eating a lot more Ethiopian and Indian food here. Took us a few tries to find some decent restaurants (hehe - nothing like walking into an old place - where there is one other couple, bar shut down and quiet and almost dusty, some rotten (I mean deteriorating) curtains in the windows - but we're troopers. Trying my hand at some Indian foods too - I like that. I'm vegetarian - he's all meat. Interesting couple hehe - he's on a couple CT sites.

Moving into new apartment was a chore. Parted with a few cookbooks that I rarely perused - but most of the weight I moved was <cough> many storage containers of cookbooks.

And yeah - the artificial flavorings and the fake stuff bad. Prefer fresh and locally grown. Will try and put up some of my tried and true recipes. LOL - I just made for dinner party a favorite of my Grandmother's - get ready for grease - but really it does taste good ---

Not even German either (which she was)

Chicken parts (thighs, breasts - skin on mind you), slather with mayo (gotta be Hellman''s although S. Carolina has a good one too) then roll in Italian breadcrumbs and parm cheese. Bake. Easy, greasy and good. hehe - favorite of us kids at picnics.

Will post some of my tried and true good things.

[Your Mom]

Here is a very special recipe of my own creation, based on the classical French cooking style

Langoustine (you can use lobster (saltwater or fresh) or prawns) in a Langoustine broth, white wine and cream reduction served with rice cooked in Langoustine broth with red and green capsicum, garlic, onion and coriander (really, I must invent a better name for this recipe. Can you help?)

Serves 4 as an entree or 2 as a main

Firstly, cook 1 kg of raw Langoustine (or lobster or prawn)

To cook:
Place a large pot with a teaspoon of salt and water (2 litres or so) on a high heat and allow to boil.
When boiling, add 1 kg of crustaceans and cook for 2 minutes only. (4 minutes for lobster). Most people overcook their crustaceans, but they should be almost crunchy.

Remove the crustaceans from the water and let cool, but keep the water in the same pot and return to the stove and maintain at slow, rolling boil.

When cool, peel the crustaceans and the put the shells and heads back into the broth. Reserve the tails.

Broth:
1 large unpeeled onion, cut into quarters (with skin - seriously, the skin also has flavour and adds a nice golden colour).
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled and crushed
1 bunch of spring onions
1 bunch of parsley (Italian flat leaf or curly)
1 bunch of coriander (cilantro)
6 peppercorns
2 bay leaves

Add all ingredients to the crustacean shells and bring to a boil then lower the heat to minimum and cook with a lid on for 30 minutes (high heat will destroy the nutrients and flavour). Strain and put the broth back onto a medium heat to reduce. When reduced by half, remove 3 cups of this broth (600 ml or a little over a pint) for the rice. Continue reducing the broth until you’re left with about 1 cup.

Rice
1 large onion (peeled) finely chopped
3 cloves garlic (peeled) crushed
1 small or half a large green capsicum (bell pepper) diced into 5mm cubes.
1 small or half a large red capsicum diced into 5mm cubes.
If you want you can add half a teacup of sliced mushrooms.
1 cup rice
½ bunch of finely chopped coriander
½ bunch of chopped spring onions
Olive oil

It’s best to start cooking the rice when the broth still has almost reduced to 1 cup
Put the onion, garlic and little olive in a medium pan and sauté until it translucent. Add the capsicum (and mushrooms) and sauté a little more. Add rice and sauté for a few minutes, stirring with wooden spoon continuously. Do not let it burn!
Add ¼ teaspoon salt, 3 cups of broth and bring to the boil. When boiling, lower the heat to the very lowest on your smallest burner, cover tightly and cook for 11 minutes completely sealed and unstirred. After 11 minutes, turn off the heat and leave without touching (the trapped steam will continue cooking the rice).
A few minutes before serving, add the coriander and spring onions , mix through and cover again.The rice should be quite moist.

Sauce
200 ml broth
1 cup of dry white wine (I suggest a good chardonnay)
1 cup cream
½ bunch of finely chopped coriander
½ bunch of fine chopped spring onions
¼ teaspoon salt
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Once you’ve started cooking the rice, add the broth to a medium pan with the white wine and start reducing on a medium high heat. When reduced by at least half, add the cream and continue reducing until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Turn off heat and add the coriander, spring onions, salt and pepper and langoustine tails and combine well. You do not want to cook it further, merely warm the tails. If you’re using lobster, slice the tails into 3 cm (1 inch) medallions)

To serve
For a special touch, you can use a cup to form the rice on the plate and put the tails on top and pour the sauce over everything. The lobster medallions would need to be arranged around the rice.

You can serve with a rocket (arugula) and sundried tomato salad but I would recommend against vinaigrette as the langoustine has a light and delicate flavour. As another special touch, you can also serve with some nice crusty bread and herb butter. (Best with subtle herb, like chives, but I think lemon grass (only the white bottom, not the green leaf) will give a tasty surprise.)

And thinking about it, lemon grass will go very well in the broth too, but you can use the green leaves as well.

This is a very special dish and is perfect for romantic evenings as well as birthdays and Valentine's Day.
Goes very well with a crisp, dry white wine and you should serve the same wine as you used in the sauce.

Bom appetite.

[Tude]

/00\ That sounds yummy!!! I just ran into some langostinos last week - don't see them to cook with that often so I would aim at a lobster. Might try this this weekend ... and think of a name but it's supposed to be nice out so grilling might be cool. Actually grilled lobster in there might be nice ....

[Your Mom]

The shells are an essential ingredient for the broth. If you're going to grill them, would you slice them in half from head to tail before grilling or leave them whole? You could make the broth after grilling, but I would recommend leaving the shells in the broth until it's reduced to about 1 litre. I would recommend not adding the claws to the broth and serve them on the plate.

Although I have never made this with lemon grass (It's very difficult to find in Rio), the subtle lemon flavour would combine with the wine flavour excellently. I've never made lemon grass butter either, but know it would be awesome, adding a bit of sharpness to contrast the sweetness of this dish.

[That Lady is a Scamp]

Norvegicus Num nums!  

[Tude]

Don't care for lemon grass. Was in Toronto and waiting at bus station to head out to a 5k and got a smoothie - and they had this lemon grass shot there - and after reading about all the benefits of it earlier, I asked can you add it into the smoothie. No they say - it would oxidize, better advised to drink as a shot. OK, so I did. OH GAWD - I wanted to wipe my tongue!!! Tasted like I just mowed my lawn goat style. blech. hehe since then no lemon grass - lemon (fruit) it is.

[Your Mom]

Surprisingly, it's always available at my local supermarket and quite cheap and often on special. Last time I bought some I paid US$6 per kilo (2.2 lbs).

I say surprisingly as it's a cold water crustacean and could only be farmed here under such conditions that it would not be cost effective.

very clever user name, btw. Shows knowledge of the Latin name and the common British name; however, search engines do exist.

[Your Mom]

Don't care for lemon grass.  Was in Toronto and waiting at bus station to head out to a 5k and got a smoothie - and they had this lemon grass shot there - and after reading about all the benefits of it earlier, I asked can you add it into the smoothie.  No they say - it would oxidize, better advised to drink as a shot.  OK, so I did.  OH GAWD - I wanted to wipe my tongue!!!  Tasted like I just mowed my lawn goat style.  blech.  hehe since then no lemon grass - lemon (fruit) it is.  

I wouldn't care for it as a shot either, but for a lemon grass butter, you'd only need a very small amount. It's very  common in Thai food and is very subtle when cooked, trust me.
I should add that I'd sauté the lemon grass in butter before adding it to soft butter to spread on bread and then toast the bread as in garlic bread.

[WOW]

YM is the only foodie that exist within the world... I'm sure of it now.

[Your Mom]

YM is the only foodie that exist within the world... I'm sure of it now.

Thank you guest,

It's great to see you posting. I'm sorry about the hassle of having to enter a user name, but I've yet to find out how to change that (the admin panel is not exactly user friendly and it took me ages to discover how to even allow guests) but will investigate further.

[Oh My..]

Well.. lol. I could just sign in, but that takes all the fun out of it...right? Hehehe. Love you Mom, very much.

[Your Mom]

Ooh, an internet crush

I love the fun and the mystery

er, you are female, right?

[aussie]

Ooh, an internet crush

I love the fun and the mystery

er, you are female, right?

Mom? You askin' you are female?

What about me? It isn't fair. La la la etc.

[Your Mom]

Ooh, an internet crush

I love the fun and the mystery

er, you are female, right?

 Mom?  You askin' you are female?

What about me? It isn't fair. La la la etc.

I was referring to this poster, and yes, I love you too, dear

Well.. lol. I could just sign in, but that takes all the fun out of it...right? Hehehe. Love you Mom, very much.

[Your Mom]

This is one of my favourite dishes and I have always put it on my menus since discovering it in an Italian restaurant in Bali of places, housed in a beautiful building made from wood, bamboo and thatch with unglazed windows. It is a simple dish and was easy to recreate.
Serve as an entré.

Italian warm beef salad

Serves 2

Ingredients
500gms (1lb) tail end tenderloin
4 ripe Italian tomatoes
1 small red onion
1 small red capsicum (bell pepper)
½ Bunch Basil
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil

Method
Preheat oven to 230° C (440°F)
While the oven is heating, prepare heavy bottom frying pan preferably oven proof. Most cheap aluminium frying pans are rubbish for cooking steak as they do not hold their heat and quickly cool when you add the meat, which ends up boiling in its own juices instead of frying. Add a generous amount of olive oil to your pan and set on a high heat. When the oil begins to smoke, add your meat and let cook on high heat for 2 minutes (DO NOT Lower the heat), then turn the steak and leave for a further 2 minutes. After this, turn to one of the sides that has not received heat for 1 minute and then do the same for the opposite side, then transfer to oven for 15 minutes. If you don’t have an oven-proof frying pan, place an oven proof dish into the oven while the steak is frying.

Slice the tomatoes into wedges. You should try for 4-6 wedges per tomato
Halve the onion and slice from top to bottom into 5mm slices ( 3/16 “)
Remove the stalk end of the capsicum, remove the seeds and cut in half. Turn it each half 90° and cut in two, then slice these four pieces into strips about the same width as the onion
Place tomato, onion and capsicum into a bowl large enough to allow you to mix well, then tear the basil leaves as finely as you can into the bowl.
Drizzle a generous amount of olive oil over the tomatoes and ¼ cup of balsamic vinegar and mix well.
When the steak is ready, remove from oven and leave to rest for 5-8 minutes to rest.
Arrange the tomato mixture in the centre of each plate. I use my hands both because it’s easy and you leave the excess balsamic vinegar and olive oil in the bowl.
Slice the steak as thinly as you can and fan over the tomato mounds.
Pour the balsamic and oil into the frying pan and incorporate the meat juices then drizzle over the steak.
Garnish with rocket/roquette/arugula leaves and serve.

The balsamic goes superbly with the steak and basil adds a great bouquet to round it off

[Carbon]

Nice thread, Mom.

You know I love food threads... Here is one of my latest inventions, well... the sauce is anywho. I learned the cut technique from a YT vid.  Here is a pic of the actual dish I made:

Cherry Chicken Lollies



 Well... lol, I  didn't measure the ingredients, just threw them in to taste: Honey, brown sugar, soy sauce, cayenne, garlic, ketchup, maraschino cherry juice, rice wine vinegar, sriracha sauce, thickened with cornstarch and heat on the stove in a saucepan till thickened.  The cornstarch gives that extra umph of cohesion and forms lovey thick glaze.

I trimmed the legs, baked them in the oven and sauced them 5 min before removal.  I'll post the vid for the cutting technique. I didn't bother to foil the exposed bone, leaving it exposed makes for a beautiful golden color.

I do hope you try it sometime. The sauce is simply amazing with the marriage of those ingredients. It's a showy dish for special occasions, and it's super easy and fun.



So sorry I don't have the specific measurements for this sauce.... I'm usually cooking just for myself which means, throw it in and taste. Ha! I'm sure you can relate. I am quite looking very forward to trying some of these recipes you have loaded.

Thank ya, Sir!

[Your Mom]

Sounds good, Carbs; I love chilli

Whilst not a recipe per se, I've just had toasted ciabatta filled with brie and fruits of the forest jam; what a great combination.

I should add that a slice of good smoked ham would also go very nicely in it.

[Your Mom]

[Tude]

The edamame version looks interesting. Need to do something with the tahini too.

[Your Mom]

My standard is like a cross between the classic and southwestern using chickpeas

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