crankyoldman: "Hermann, you don't have to salute, man." [Pacific Rim] (sommerset)
[personal profile] crankyoldman
More stuff. Some of my favorites. And yes beer is suitable cooking ingredient.



Cheap & Cranky Carbonara

Traditional Carbonara involves much more expensive ingredients and is actually one of my favorite Italian dishes around. It's probably all the fat, which I love (won't lie, it's going to be hilarious when my metabolism catches up). So this is my best approximation considering I just use a rice cooker and a microwave.

Ingredients:

1/2 clove of garlic (or a small clove)
Several slices of thin Cooked Deli Ham (like for sandwiches)
Butter
Olive Oil
Parmesan cheese (yes, the kind you shake on spaghetti works fine)
Ramen or Angel Hair Pasta (or even spaghetti)
Optional, Mayonnaise and Black Pepper

Directions:

Cook noodles, while preparing your sauce. You want warm noodles. (In my first attempt, I cooked unflavored ramen in the microwave).

Put olive oil (and butter if you're me) in a pan (or bottom of your rice cooker bowl) and put some minced garlic in there. Toss in cut up bits of your ham and brown it up a little. Mostly you want it to be less floppy and watery and harden up a little and take on the lovely garlic flavoring a bit. Once you've gotten those where you want them toss in butter, some olive oil (your measure of each depends on how much fat you like and of what kind). Turn off heat. Drain and throw in noodles, parmesan, and in my case mayonnaise (it acts like the egg does in the traditional recipe... I usually have mayo around, but not always have eggs). Measure isn't exact, so do it to taste.

Mix it all up good and enjoy the calories. Top with black pepper if you're feeling pretentious.

Waste Not Flat Beer Stew

Sometimes you wake up and realize there is a half a beer sitting on your counter that you didn't drink last night (likely because of the several empty beer bottles next to that one...). And it's flat. Don't toss it, use it to make stew.

Ingredients:

Flat Beer (or not flat if you're not going to drink it)
Beef Stock or Broth (they are your best friend, these things. yes)
Small Potatoes of any variety
Sweet Vegetables like vidala onions, carrots, corn, whatever you have on hand or in cans
Orzo (or rice or barley)
Salt and other seasonings

Directions

Microwave potatoes to get them softer. Once this is done, chop them up. Whether you keep the skin or not is up to you (I don't), but you have to microwave them with the skin on. Make sure to poke them first, or they might explode (been there).

Combine beer and beef stock and spices you want (I tend to use seasoning salt, a black/red pepper combo, garlic, and ginger... yes ginger). Toss in orzo and harder veggies (like vidala onions). Heat covered to make sure orzo cooks. Add in softer vegetables and potatoes when onions start to look less solid or when the orzo is starting to get a bit less firm. Simmer. Eat whenever it all looks done enough.

A note: beer will make things more bitter the longer you cook it. To counteract this, I used sweeter veggies, and made sure the potato was a little cooked beforehand, as it is a SPONGE to bitter. Worst comes to worst you can toss a little sugar in (I did the first time I made it) or make sure you have more stock than beer. Experiment.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-11-18 05:18 pm (UTC)
wandererriha: Art by Mercer Mayer (Default)
From: [personal profile] wandererriha
Microwave potatoes to get them softer.

This is why I <3 my pressure cooker TO DEATH. Mashed potatoes in FIVE MINUTES. Oh yeah.

Do not fear the pressure cooker. If you can find a decent one (ie: NOT aluminum and larger than 6qts) BUY IT. It is worth every penny.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-11-18 10:14 pm (UTC)
whitemage: (butterfly)
From: [personal profile] whitemage
Noooooooo waaaaay! =O

Real mashed potatoes in FIVE MINUTES????

I want.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-11-18 10:34 pm (UTC)
wandererriha: Art by Mercer Mayer (Default)
From: [personal profile] wandererriha
For srs.

Pressure cookers are made to cook stuff that usually takes forevar in just minutes. This includes things like mashed potatoes and sides of meat. Mom always pc's meat for about 10min before she throws it in stew/soup/whatever. It's a great way to thaw and tenderize at the same time.

Also, if you've got an Oshawa pot, you can make your own sticky rice in 50min. The danged things are expensive, but again, totally worth the money. And due to the cooking technique, you totally don't need to add any extra sauce to make onigiri. ^^

A pressure cooker is at the top of my list of "Things You MUST HAVE in a Kitchen" followed closely by a santuku carving knife and a good sturdy KitchenAid can opener.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-11-19 01:37 am (UTC)
whitemage: (cute)
From: [personal profile] whitemage
=O Holy cow. Now I REALLY want! I've also heard it's used to render strong teas for herbal decoctions and the like.

And the Oshawa pot, too. Want.

I HAVE the KitchenAid can opener...KitchenAid is Win.

The knife, I have no idea what my hubby uses, but he's a butcher and brings his work knives home for us. The quality of the knife definitely matters. =)

(no subject)

Date: 2009-11-19 01:56 am (UTC)
wandererriha: Art by Mercer Mayer (Default)
From: [personal profile] wandererriha
Santoku (spelled it wrong above- d'oh!) is my new fav kitchen gadget. It is sooooooooooo many kinds of useful and so very VERY much lurve. You will never use another carving/chopping knife again. Seriously.

Yes, do not fear the pressure cooker! It's funny, a lot of my friends are scared to death of knives and pressure cookers. :P PC's are actually quite idiot-proof anymore and do not involve all the scary valves and dials anymore. Heck, you can't even get them OPEN until the pressure goes down (they're built with little locks on the handles that won't release until the pressure is low enough- I think this is ingenious, btw, mine has this and mom's does not and we once got mashed potatoes on the ceiling because of this...).

But yes. I would totally pimp pressure cookers and Oshawa pots to anyone!
And KitchenAid mixers. But those are expensive. My old Sunbeam is still chugging along reasonably well, tho. ^^;

A baking MUST HAVE: a baking stone, now with nifty built-in handles! Mom and I each broke one of these from excessive use- tho to be fair, the stones were over 15yrs old, each. ^^;; These are ESSENTIAL for pizza/cookie making. When combined with a sheet of parchment paper, you will reach new levels of cookie-baking ecstasy.

FYI: I'm the chef/baker at a local coffee shop, so feel free to tell me to stop geeking about kitchen implements. ^^;

(no subject)

Date: 2009-11-19 02:42 am (UTC)
whitemage: (Default)
From: [personal profile] whitemage
Oooh....I will have to check that out.

I...don't fear anything because I can cause relatively harmless objects to become blowing up projectiles of doom. So, me in the kitchen period is dangerous. ^^;

Knives, yes, I'm a little afraid, but I learned the hard way (see scar on hand some time) that a good quality, sharp knife used carefully is far safer than hacking with a dull, cheap knife.

I have a KitchenAid mixer, but ONLY because it was a wedding gift from my mummy. =)

Also have a baking stone...yes, stone FTW!!! And, oh, PARCHMENT PAPER!!!!

XD It's okay...I come from a long line of bakers and have an adorable Iffy muse in my head so while I'm not the most domestic, I can listen to kitchen geeking all day. ;D

BTW, cool job: I <3 my local coffee house baked goods like nobody's business.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-11-18 11:56 pm (UTC)
novel_machinist: (Default)
From: [personal profile] novel_machinist
Oh I LOVE beer stew with tofu in it!!

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crankyoldman: "Hermann, you don't have to salute, man." [Pacific Rim] (Default)
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