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IronGAF Cookoff (hosted by OnkelC) Vol. 2

Sesuadra

Unconfirmed Member
Dark place? You doing okay?

not really. a lot of shit going on/down. doooon't really know what to do now..

but I made matcha waffles..so I got that going for me..
wvENrLr.jpg

which is delicious.

250gr of all purpose flour
250 ml (one cup afaik) of milk
125 gr of butter
125 gr of sugar
3 eggs
two teaspoons of matcha
 

zbarron

Member
I'm back and bring this book to the table:

:)
Welcome back. Awesome book. Not a traditional one. What do you think? Are you a Salvador Dali fan?

Anyone here spatchcock a bird before? I bought a turkey breast which was pretty much a bird minus wings and legs. I tried to remove the spine but one thick bone on either side wouldn't let go and it was in the front area. I'm not sure what I did wrong.

I ended up turning it into boneless skin on turkey breasts that I roasted at 450*F and threw what was left of the bird in the stock pot with some aromatics. This morning I checked on it and it gelled so I am very happy with it, and the turkey was tasty.
 
Anyone here spatchcock a bird before? I bought a turkey breast which was pretty much a bird minus wings and legs. I tried to remove the spine but one thick bone on either side wouldn't let go and it was in the front area. I'm not sure what I did wrong.
I haven't done a turkey, but I do it to chicken all the time. I use a very good pair of kitchen shears to slice out the back bone. If I can't get it through, I move my shears a little further away from the back bone because the bones seem to taper down. My aunt actually has a pair of medical shears used for cutting off casts that slice through bone like butter. I'll have to steal it from her at some point. (Cutting gills out of a salmon fish head is hard).

My grocery store had whole chickens for 79c/lb and I went through four of them. I hate picking out the back bone from my broth, so it's easier to chuck it before I even cook it.

On my own note, I'm on my second real attempt to cook beef broth. I roasted the bones slower and longer than before. I also added less water than the first time. I don't have any giant pieces, but same weight of 5lbs. It's been on almost two days and still light in color.
 
Out in Pittsburgh on business, had the best whiskey sour of my life here:


... although the place is bizarrely setup with the boarded up windows, had a nice varied clientele.

Went next door for dinner and had some stunning cavatelli, and the only tiramisu that holds up to my wife's. The panissa... I could have eaten it in a huge mound for the rest of my life and not complained. Recommended.
 

Mario

Sidhe / PikPok
Came across an interesting idea on Instagram and decided to research and try to make it myself.

Homemade coconut charcoal icecream with pistachios, frozen raspberries, and edible gold accents

 

zbarron

Member
Does anyone have any go to dry rub recipes for a BBQ pork shoulder or chicken?
I've made Meathead's Memphis Dust and Kenji's All Purpose Rub. Both are really good. RIght now I have Kenji's in my rub shaker.
Came across an interesting idea on Instagram and decided to research and try to make it myself.

Homemade coconut charcoal icecream with pistachios, frozen raspberries, and edible gold accents
That looks really interesting. How did it taste?
 

Mario

Sidhe / PikPok
That looks really interesting. How did it taste?

It leaned ever so slightly more icy than creamy but was pretty good. Not overly sweet, but with a solid coconut flavor - there but not overwhelming. The raspberries were a nice contrast as the tartness cut through nicely when you discovered one. The pistachios added a crunch but not much else.

For shock value, it worked well :)
 
not really. a lot of shit going on/down. doooon't really know what to do now..

but I made matcha waffles..so I got that going for me..


which is delicious.

250gr of all purpose flour
250 ml (one cup afaik) of milk
125 gr of butter
125 gr of sugar
3 eggs
two teaspoons of matcha

Message me if you wanna talk about it. I'm here for you, dude :}

Also, im thrilled to see papa cuisine is unbanned once more + there are more desserts being posted in here.

Ive been working on the line a ton so ive been living and breathing pastry lately. We are switching to our fall menu and so its been nonstop recipe testing + trial and error

Oh! And I dont have photographs but for Horse Detective's birthday, i took him to dinner at a very nice fine dining joint called GT Prime. Surprised him by having all his friends there too ;) We ended up buying a 12 year old reserve wine which was fucking outstanding. Tasted like ripe cherries and oak. Ended up ordering several different courses including mushrooms and brie, tuna with fresno chilie and orange, beef cheek tortellini, veal cheeks with lemon grits, beef carpaccio, and several cuts of meat including venison, ribeye, skirt steak, and veal :)

Wasnt too bad on the price end ($600) and it was Horse Detective's first massive fine dining experience. Ultimately it was a huge tasty success !
 

Maiar_m

Member
I have so much resect for people working in this industry. When I was younger I thought if my other plans didn't work out, I'd fall back to cooking school and get a job there...I actually think it motivated me to work harder, as I was so scared of the hardships (working hours, bad pay, cuisine etiquette) of that profession.

Anyways, to contribute a bit, here are the latest things I cooked:

Sugar dough, strawberry jelly with fresh strawberry slices, white chocolate chantilly.

Hazelnut crumble base, hazelnut and almond financier, abricot jelly with dried abricots bits for a better bite, and on this one there's a nutella-flavored chantilly because I can.

Same as above, but with a praliné chantilly and roasted hazelnuts.

Cherry cheesecake rolls.
 

OnkelC

Hail to the Chef
Great pastry work, thank you for sharing!

I made an oldschool lasagna tonight, with bechamel, buffalo mozzarella and a helping of Parmesan on top as well:



 
I have so much resect for people working in this industry. When I was younger I thought if my other plans didn't work out, I'd fall back to cooking school and get a job there...I actually think it motivated me to work harder, as I was so scared of the hardships (working hours, bad pay, cuisine etiquette) of that profession.

Anyways, to contribute a bit, here are the latest things I cooked:


Sugar dough, strawberry jelly with fresh strawberry slices, white chocolate chantilly.


Hazelnut crumble base, hazelnut and almond financier, abricot jelly with dried abricots bits for a better bite, and on this one there's a nutella-flavored chantilly because I can.


Same as above, but with a praliné chantilly and roasted hazelnuts.


Cherry cheesecake rolls.

Do you work in the industry now or just cook for hobby? Those pastries are pretty impressive :}
 

Maiar_m

Member
Do you work in the industry now or just cook for hobby? Those pastries are pretty impressive :}
It's my primary hobby, thank you so much for the praise! I never worked in the industry in the end, despite coming quite close to entering a low level culinary school after a long spell of unemployment... A childhood friend did and went on to work as a pastry chef for Claire Heitzler. Life is weird.
 

thespot84

Member
Made indian for our dinner club. Was quite good: Chicken and Paneer tikka (on a regular gas grill), naan (didn't have the right flour or a tandoor but it tasted good) and some potato/eggplant dish with garam masala.

Pretty sure I'll never make indian again, what a time suck lol.
 
My freezer is stuffed and I still need to put more things in there.

So this summer I started canning tomatoes for a couple that run a produce farm. I canned a little more than two dozen quart jars for them and now they give me all the produce I want. They grew amazing green beans this summer and it's the one veggie my boyfriend eats. I would take home 3-5 pounds every weekend, snap them and bag them in sandwich baggies and then toss them in the freezer. Half my bottom shelf is all green beans.
The other half of the shelf is all jarred stuff (I don't have a pressure canner). My boyfriend is planning on bariatric surgery in the next couple of months, and the diet is very restrictive for about 6 weeks. I barely have enough time to deal with normal meals, that I can't be overwhelmed by his restricted needs when the time comes.

I don't know what to do anymore. I have the whole top shelf of my fridge of more jarred stuff that needs to make it into the freezer before they start to spoil. I have a pot of beef broth on the stove now, and I just bought another 20lbs of apples to make applesauce. My last batch was amazingly good for doing absolutely nothing to it (no sugar, no spices). Plus the store had the big bags of tri tips on sale (like 5 in a pack). I need to open it up, bag them individually and toss them in the freezer.

I would love a deep freezer, but it's out of the question because there's not enough electricity to run one, nor the space to put it.
 
My freezer is stuffed and I still need to put more things in there.

So this summer I started canning tomatoes for a couple that run a produce farm. I canned a little more than two dozen quart jars for them and now they give me all the produce I want. They grew amazing green beans this summer and it's the one veggie my boyfriend eats. I would take home 3-5 pounds every weekend, snap them and bag them in sandwich baggies and then toss them in the freezer. Half my bottom shelf is all green beans.
The other half of the shelf is all jarred stuff (I don't have a pressure canner). My boyfriend is planning on bariatric surgery in the next couple of months, and the diet is very restrictive for about 6 weeks. I barely have enough time to deal with normal meals, that I can't be overwhelmed by his restricted needs when the time comes.

I don't know what to do anymore. I have the whole top shelf of my fridge of more jarred stuff that needs to make it into the freezer before they start to spoil. I have a pot of beef broth on the stove now, and I just bought another 20lbs of apples to make applesauce. My last batch was amazingly good for doing absolutely nothing to it (no sugar, no spices). Plus the store had the big bags of tri tips on sale (like 5 in a pack). I need to open it up, bag them individually and toss them in the freezer.

I would love a deep freezer, but it's out of the question because there's not enough electricity to run one, nor the space to put it.

You should try your hand at making preserves over freezables. Preserves are shelf stable and can stay out of your fridge/freezer. You can use them for gifts on the upcoming holidays too ! Apple butter, apple jam, and so many others would be awesome gifts. You can do the same with tomatos and most soft vegetables that aren't starches. I have a few recipes for jams and such you can use as a basis to get you started if you are interested :)

As for your current situation, you can either give away most of your stock or donate it to the hungry (also a great idea for leftovers) or you can invest in a vacuum sealer and try to compress down the space in your freezer by getting rid of the need to store jars/deli's. Vacuum sealers work for soups, sauces, vegetables, and everything in between + save you a crap ton of space.
 
You should try your hand at making preserves over freezables. Preserves are shelf stable and can stay out of your fridge/freezer. You can use them for gifts on the upcoming holidays too ! Apple butter, apple jam, and so many others would be awesome gifts. You can do the same with tomatos and most soft vegetables that aren't starches. I have a few recipes for jams and such you can use as a basis to get you started if you are interested :)

As for your current situation, you can either give away most of your stock or donate it to the hungry (also a great idea for leftovers) or you can invest in a vacuum sealer and try to compress down the space in your freezer by getting rid of the need to store jars/deli's. Vacuum sealers work for soups, sauces, vegetables, and everything in between + save you a crap ton of space.

It's for my boyfriend after his surgery. It's all broth and pureed foods that are safe to eat. I have them all in 4 & 8oz jars that will be one serving. There's three weeks of a liquid diet. Two weeks prior to reduce the fatty liver and the first week after. Then he can move to pureed foods for a week and then soft foods for a week. Like I said before, I don't have a pressure canner to make them shelf stable because most of them all contain meat. I could with the applesauce but it was so late by the time I got to putting it away that I didn't want to bother with boiling the jars and waiting for a water bath.

As much broth he will be needing, I need to be making as much as possible. I've filled like 6 quart jars of chicken and beef broth.
 

Nikodemos

Member
Holy shit, grinding horseradish in a kitchen helper is such a bad idea. ;_;

Now I understand why most people prefer doing it manually with a microplane grater or a rasper.
 

Silkworm

Member
Holy shit, grinding horseradish in a kitchen helper is such a bad idea. ;_;

Now I understand why most people prefer doing it manually with a microplane grater or a rasper.

Just curious, but are you really grating it rather than grinding it? I'm not familiar with a kitchen helper, but I do like this little tool for grating ginger.


I wonder if it would work well with horseradish? Of course then you would likely need to add it to some sort of food processor to pulverize/grind it. So I'm guessing it's probably not advisable, as it may simply be extra needless work :-D
 
Just made the best Mac&Cheese that I ever made before. Used the America's Test Kitchen recipe for their Best Potluck Mac&Cheese.

iIHTUur.jpg

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j61xpWd.jpg


If I had to pin point it, this tasted like a high class fancy version of Stouffer's Original Mac&Cheese. It was super creamy and cheesy, with just enough spice using some hot sauce and pepperjack cheese.
 

zbarron

Member
I tried making 5 soups today but only managed 4. I made:
Easy Sausage, Kale, and Black-Eyed Pea Soup With Lemon and Rosemary
Spicy Pork, Green Pepper, and Corn Soup
Hearty One-Pot Black-Eyed Pea Stew With Kale and Andouille Recipe
Split Pea Soup With Ham
and I was planning on making Easy Lentil Soup With Lemon Zest, Garlic, and Parsley Recipe.
I mistakenly used my bag of lentils in the split pea soup recipe. It was still tasty but without the lentils I couldn't make the last soup.


Not the greatest pictures but to give you an idea. Keep in mind I didn't add Kale or pasta since I am freezing these so I'll have soups ready when I need them.
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30118936140_776baffb67_c.jpg

29784115363_f7083dbd46_c.jpg
30416017995_d2d42e8a1b_c.jpg
 

Nikodemos

Member
Just curious, but are you really grating it rather than grinding it? I'm not familiar with a kitchen helper, but I do like this little tool for grating ginger.
Doesn't really make any difference (for what it's worth, I usually call 'grinding' the act of using a food processor instead of a manual grater). The biggest problem with putting horseradish in a kitchen aid is that it's too much, too quickly and the oil vapours accumulate. So when you open it, the entire zone around the processor gets tear grenaded. And let me tell you this, horseradish oil burns. And you don't even feel the heat building up, like with chili; it's just instant pain, tears and snot.

(I was using the rasp disc, the one with sharp bumps)
 
That looks really good--I wasn't able to get it to that nice color the couple of times I've tried to make it. Do you have a recipe?

Mostly followed this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a03U45jFxOI

With few changes:
Used some Kashmiri Mirch too along with normal red chili powder
Added Turmeric to chicken marinade
Added both Ginger+Garlic paste to curry sauce.

I did not have malt vinegar which I think would have made it almost perfect by adding some tartness.

The color really comes by sweating the tomatoes for 15+ minutes before grinding and adding of cashewnuts.
 

thespot84

Member
anyone found a reliable sub for mustard oil? I threw colemans' mustard powder into canola, since it's high heat. Not bad, but i'm sure it's not like the real thing.
 

Mario

Sidhe / PikPok
Mostly followed this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a03U45jFxOI

With few changes:
Used some Kashmiri Mirch too along with normal red chili powder
Added Turmeric to chicken marinade
Added both Ginger+Garlic paste to curry sauce.

I did not have malt vinegar which I think would have made it almost perfect by adding some tartness.

The color really comes by sweating the tomatoes for 15+ minutes before grinding and adding of cashewnuts.

I tend to get a nice deep flavour and rich colour by adding tomato paste to this sort of recipe.
 

Nikodemos

Member
Man I fucking hate it when most of the shop-available cream has thickeners in it. Don't those morons realise those aren't heat-stable and will collapse the cream into a milky mess thinning the sauce excessively?

I have to go to some farmer's market and pick up some proper cream (maybe even fermented).
 

thespot84

Member
Man I fucking hate it when most of the shop-available cream has thickeners in it. Don't those morons realise those aren't heat-stable and will collapse the cream into a milky mess thinning the sauce excessively?

I have to go to some farmer's market and pick up some proper cream (maybe even fermented).

Like carrageenan?
 

Nikodemos

Member
Not that the food industry cannot mess up things badly, but I'm pretty sure that cream is liquid in its natural form and needs ferments to thicken.
Traditional cream around here is thick. It doesn't flow out of a jar on its own. It needs to be spooned out.

And yes, it's fermented. Fermented cream is traditional for Eastern Europe. Pasteurised unfermented cooking cream is a recent import.

Though I suspect that, if you go 36+% fat, even unfermented cream can settle, if homogenised sufficiently. Though at that point it's basically a very dense whipped cream.

Problem is, they add thickeners to fermented cream, even though most recipes involving it use high heat. You end up with a runny slurry instead of whatever consistently thick sauce it should've resulted in.
 
I tend to get a nice deep flavour and rich colour by adding tomato paste to this sort of recipe.

Yea, you can use that too.

There are soo many recipe variations for Butter Chicken. After having gone through a lot, this one I found to be closest to the creamy butter chicken output I wanted with the color (and not adding any coloring!).

Now there can be whole another kind of butter chicken that is more messy style where you don't blend everything too.
 
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