Cooking a Good Everything Else

by thethethe P

Nothing exciting or pretty, but my brother got me a couple of proper fermentation jars, so thought I make some sauerkraut.

I'd like to have said it's super simple as all you need for a basic batch is cabbage, salt, and a container. However, I was at someone else's house, not paying attention, and when I tasted a bit while jarring realised I'd sugared rather than salted, so had to fix that mess 😊

Will see what they're like in about a week.

That looks pretty cool. But the cabbage looks like you didnt mash it enough.

The classic technique when you do a large batch is to put it in a tub and stomp on it with your feet. If you just make a small batches mash it real good with your hands after you salted it.

I think I've found a recipe that pretty much nails Hillstones (AKA Houstons) Apple Walnut Cobbler and might even be better because I boil the walnuts in sugar water for 5 minutes, let them steep for 20, drain and toss with butter and then bake at 350 until crispy. And its made with store bought Marie Calendars pie crust (which is awesome imo)

What a post combo! BDVO's General Tso's with yim's cobbler for dessert, wow. I would pay good money for that meal.

I said last year I was going to go through this thread, there are so many good things to copy in here, and make one thing a week from each page. A sort of Best Of. I'm a little behind as I had totally forgotten about it until recently. Hopefully there are some pages I can skip or it will take me 5 years to catch up, lol. I've looked through most of the first page and there are a ton of pictures missing, so there should be some skippable pages.

Looks great Yim. I still make Hillstones cornbread per your recommendation in this thread. So good.

hopefully we can get a group discount

We may have to reserve the largest hall in town.

you cant lose with anything Hillstone/Houstons

I've never had a bad meal there in 30+ years

i don't know who kenji is, is he a poster here?

He runs seriouseats.com but he did register an account to comment in the steak thread I believe

This book and The Food Lab are both incredible.

He doesn't own serious eats, but he wrote the food lab which was previously a long form recipe development series on the site, before he developed a cookbook with the same name.

https://www.kenjilopezalt.com/bio

He also alludes to starting his career in high end restaurants in Boston, and has apparently worked for gordon ramsay whom he is outspoken against.

Opened one earlier today and it was really good.

That's an interesting technique but unfortunately my feet are pretty gnarly so don't think I'll be attempting it anytime soon!

I know he worked under Barbara Lynch at No. 9 Park in his early years.

Yeah i also feel a bit weird about it but pre industrial revolution you had to do what you had to do.

It will just have a more crunchy texture than i am used too but hey if thats what you are after thats obviously cool too.

Speaking of using your feet to process food and beverage, this video never gets old.

just ordered 40 pounds of raw peanuts, going to turn it all into this

Someone gave me a can of nuts that looked like this and they were fantastic. Super light & crispy with Szechuan peppercorns in it.

Can you tell what the ingredients are and the procedure because there’s no subtitles and I don’t speaks Chinese. I’m guessing it was chili oil and Szechuan peppercorns and some type of red peppers (dried), but I can’t tell what the spices were that were added to the water soaking the peanuts.

good luck and let us know how it turns out

Yimyammer, have you been using your Creami recently? I just bought one finally.

yes you were correct on all accounts - the 3 ingredients at the beginning were salt, msg, & chicken bullion

i did a terrible job giving basic gyst in a huge text wall below if you dare

each video i've watched has different methodology (which tracks for China as dishes with the same name will vary wildly from locale to locale ie kung pao chicken ordered in the south could have carrots and be rather sweet and tangy whereas a northern one would be more cucumber and spicy)

so far that video appears to be the winner because it looks the most like what I'm used to and the dude's accent sounds like the beijing accent to me (and that's where i was so it'll be the style i'm used to)

basic gyst is: (and chinese recipes never have exact figures, they are very much in the "wtf is wrong with you, why don't you know how much salt you prefer to have? why would i need to tell you that?" school of thought - they are all about general instructions only - again why two restaurants across the street can have identical menus but very different takes on each dish

terrible transcript:

sunglasses monologue - hi I'm eastern bro, i'm going to teach you how to make these peanuts - oh these are good but so spicy

add warm water to the peanuts

then add salt, msg, & chicken powder (99.9% sure that's chicken bullion)

taste it and modify as needed

let it sit for 2 hours (other recipes usually say 30 min) and drain

if peanuts have shells then deshell them but not one by one like an idiot, look at how i do it

let them sit overnight for this super grateful he specified "you can start the next morning" because he mainly uses “let them dry for a while” but i previously hadn't run into that phrase before and it sounds a lot like "let them dry for a week"

chop up those peppers (remove seeds) and the add/subtract for varying spiciness

put the peanuts in oil while it's still cold - very important

cook on low heat - this is super subjective as they usually cook everything on much higher heat settings, one thing i've found about us kitchens is our max is equivalent to the medium high they have (also learned most chinese restaurants in the us have specialized stoves as a result to get around our cold cooking style) but fact you don't see any flames under the wok would confirm this would also be considered low heat under our standards as well

he says you can bake them instead if you like but offers no instructions (other videos have baking instructions)

he says the peanuts are ready very fast and in typical chinese cookbook style he says if you're unsure if they're ready just try one

allow excess oil to drain off

then for the peppers he says he uses a little bit of chili oil (remember the peanuts are going to retain a ton of oil and this will be a paper towel food like chicken wings if eaten by hand - that's not in the recipe, just my own input that limiting oil is best whenever possible because the oil is the major downside of this, hence why i'll also try baking and see if that's as good - my guess is no though because in the baking videos the color looks like the lesser version of it)

add sichuan peppercorns (don't skip this ingredient if you don't need to, these give the mouth numbing aspect which is fun) & the peppers and then add the peanuts

Good stuff, Thanks rickroll

My diet is doomed cracking codes like this

Hey amigo, I have not

I came out hot with it but it’s been gathering dust since

Please post some recipes of how you use it so I can be reinspired

Can’t wait to see Rick’s nuts. I think they’ll look great!

Asia #1

Another great and fast peanut recipe, especially to eat with some beers is Peanut Chaat. An Indian bar snack.

https://www.thefieryvegetarian.com/quick...

Made this potato and cauliflower soup, and I took one of the russets and shredded it on the mandoline, then fried in extra slutty olive oil for a topping

High marks on this one

this looks really interesting, will give a try