Liveblogging another no recipe cookbook
Jul. 17th, 2022 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutStrategies for dealing with things that are on their last legs.
Lots of freezer strategies, with some interesting angles. I have a corn share coming up, and she says: “If I overbuy fresh corn in summer, I channel my grandma: boil all the corn, shave it off the cob, and freeze it.”
Others are absolutely normal (make sauce from extra tomatoes, freeze blueberries) or mild modifications: “I puree fresh peaches, put them in the freezer, and add them to my yogurt in fall and winter”. I would probably slice and freeze and make crisp later, but the puree is an interesting twist.
Eugene puts frozen grapes in a glass of wine. Ha!
Jay makes zucchini lasagna and freezes the 2nd and later batches. “You’ll be ready for more of the big Z by December.” He also sautes small tomatoes in oil and freezes. This seems interesting “spread over toast”, but also in other dishes.
Gini: “I don’t force myself to use all of the dandelion greens if I get an unmanageable amount in my CSA box.” Omelettes! *sigh* Fine, whatever. She also advocates: “Shop three or four times a week for only the items you’ve planned for.” I have posted here before what I think of this strategy.
Also: “Find others who share your commitment and practice. Then get together now and then to make and share good food.” Not opposed! But you know, here is a _great_ place to suggest having a place to let local folks know your CSA had some stuff you really are not going to use so if you want it, I’ll bring it over. Beets, for example. My whole family hates them. The neighbors love them. I get beets; I text them. Unless they are (about to be) out of town, they are ecstatic. If they are out of town, I have a more distant friend they can go to. CSA boxes can occasionally produce a wild excess of something — radishes, can be a problem, and she mentioned dandelion greens altho honestly, I don’t think I could get too much of those to go through but maybe she got an entire box stuffed full. Having someone who will take them off your hands _unmodified_ is awesome.
There’s a chart with veg on one axis, and saute roast/bake, stirfry, braise on the other, with x’s per veg to represent best cooking methods. It is deeply hilarious. Some things make sense — I would not braise asparagus. I think the broccoli no-braise is a little weird; you wouldn’t braise the florets, but if you had stocks, braising is utterly plausible. Whatever. LOTS of people saute or stirfry beets. There are weird choices in greens, where you can saute but not stirfry. But the funniest stuff is the Don’t Roast/Bake mushrooms or peppers. I kinda get what is meant, but they clearly are not thinking of the stuffed and roasted/baked options, or, for that matter, roasting peppers in general. Oh, and no braising on corn, very hilarious, given the number of people who love butter braised corn on the cob.
Second chart, steam/microwave/grill. Again, hilarious. Yes, people steam beets. Yes, people grill kale (I do! Altho usually, I top pizzas with kale and let it crisp up that way, but same basic idea. Crispy, snack greens!).
These are stupid charts. Why are they here. They are mostly filled with x’s, and the blanks should have x’s in them. You can cook any vegetable any way you like, but a whole bunch of veg will disappear into the stock if you braise certain things. Which might be what you want!
Hands down the best thing to do with any veg that is kinda bitter and you are going to saute it (all of brassica, for example, any dark leafy green which will often but not always be brassica) is to add vinegar, a fat (Gini likes butter, but I would go with an oil, or bacon fat, but honestly, if you have chicken fat, that’s amazing, too), and some kind of sweetener. They get the vinegar but tell you to avoid balsamic, which would add the sweetener. Gini says salt and pepper ; no one says red pepper. No one suggests sugar. This is a crowd of people that are supposedly all over honoring ancient cooking and wtf, and yet they can’t even get greens right. It’s sad. It’s just sad.
Also, most greens and other bitter veg do better sauted then covered for a couple minutes, which is going to be pretty close to the braise they tell you not to do — altho you wouldn’t add liquid, because what comes out of the greens / veg and the acid you added will be plenty, and instead of 2-3 hours, it’s gonna be more like a few minutes.
They seriously do NOT believe in adding any amount of sweetener to greens. Sad sad sad.
Their roast/bake is sheet pan cooking. That’s fine, but it is all salt and pepper, olive oil, maybe some vinegar. There’s no red peppers, no cumin, no cinnamon, no ginger, no garlic, no onion, no nothing. Boring. Also, it’s kind of like they arrived in 2021 without any knowledge of an air fryer.
There is a caption that notices that if you put bell pepper in with root veg, the bell pepper will dump its liquid and you’ll get some sauce. Finally. They do finally ad some seasoning at the very end: rosemary, additional acid (lemon, lime or vinegar). STILL NOTHING INTERESTING. Fuck.
“Always roast four or five extra potatoes.” !!! Beth presumably is cooking for a crowd. These are to fry the next morning or evening. This is fine, but again, it’s like no one here has heard of an air fryer.
Lindsey does finally pop in with some seasoning for the sheet pan veg: cumin chili powder cilantro, curry powder and red pepper, dill and lemon juice, basil oregano garlic powder. This is a good starter strategy. I’m sort of horrified that the base strategy is literally a salt pepper fat maybe acid approach.
List of best veg for stir frying, with parenthetical remarks for how to cut that can best be described as … limited.
Stir fry directions are a little weak. Skillet is assumed, which is fine, because if you don’t have the right setup, woks are pretty sketch anyway. But while the list supplied is roughly correct in order, there is nothing about how to line up your heat source with your cooking area, and either removing or parking stuff that is cooked and waiting. In conjunction with eggs and sauce last, this is a problem. If you add sprouts, fresh herbs, and then add egg and sauce, I don’t see how the sprouts are not overcooked.
The complete absence of garlic and ginger from the stir fry description is astonishing.
Gini told us to honor ancient ways of cooking. Also Gini: “Use sliced sweet potatoes … in place of noodles when making lasagna”. I do understand the nutritional argument for this, and I can see that on the internet, other people are also advocating for this. Whatever.
Lorre has some of the Use Cauliflower Instead Of tips from the low-carb community.
For stir fry sauce (I don’t even know why I’m still reading this book):
“Pour lightly flavorful sesame oil or avocado oil into a small skillet. Stir in pressed fresh ginger”
Wait, what is pressed fresh ginger? *googles* You have _got_ to be kidding me. They grate it, squeeze the juice out, and then just use the juice? Whyyyyyyyy. I mean, in a bartending context, love to know this. But WTF. Or maybe they use the grated part as well as the juice? I can’t tell? “Then stir in pressed garlic to soften, too.” Every time a garlic press enters the house, I do everything in my power to get it back the fuck out again. These are an immoral item. Absolutely not. However, I see that this is how they have a stir fry sauce without overcooking the sprouts. I’m starting to suspect that the egg thing is some weirdo approximation of carbonara in the stir fry, also. Where did this technique come from and who uses it? Probably don’t answer that.
Anyway. We have fat — either boring, or okay — ginger juice, pressed garlic, then they add OJ or coconut water, soy sauce and honey. Stir get it up to simmering at the edges. Yeah, you can’t cook this or the garlic juice will be awful. And you know they add arrowroot, because if you got the temp up to what corn starch would involve, this thing would be vile. You know, if you _started_ with _minced_ gigi like a normal person, you wouldn’t have to engage in this bullshit. Honestly, might as well just do all this in a microwave. You really don’t need a pan for it, it’ll be faster and easier to clean up after because you can do it in a custard dish or ramekin or small bowl or whatever.
This whole sauce thing reminds me of when a smallish group of us used to go out to lunch. I don’t recall the restaurant any more — it could have been a thai place, or it could have been a panasian place, as those were common in Seattle at the time. It definite was not Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese. Anyway. H.J., whose first language was French, liked a particular stir fry on the menu, and he’d always meticulously ask for extra sauce when ordering, then, after it arrived the way it always arrived — this restaurant had great food and it was absolutely repeatable, same way every single time, subject only to requests to leave something out, or spice levels or whatever — he’d request more sauce. The server would always explain to him that was not possible, and I’d try not to laugh, because I knew that what he thought was a sauce added at the end was in fact the results of the cooking process that started with aromatics, proceeded through various other items, etc. No way to get “extra sauce”. He just never seemed to grasp that. I liked to eat at Asian places, because so many of the fine dining places at the time were just modified French cuisine of the Nouvelle and later sort — the sauces were all tricks involving butter, cream and/or egg, and so if you asked to have it without any milk products, they just really had no idea what to do instead. I _still_ don’t much care for that style of cookery, because when they try to sub oil, they don’t get the same texture for reasons well laid out in McGee. Also, all of the flavor balance revolves around those milk products, so you remove that leg and the stool just falls over.
This approach to stir fry is like if a french person was trying to do stir fry in a skillet. Whatever. You do you.
Lots of freezer strategies, with some interesting angles. I have a corn share coming up, and she says: “If I overbuy fresh corn in summer, I channel my grandma: boil all the corn, shave it off the cob, and freeze it.”
Others are absolutely normal (make sauce from extra tomatoes, freeze blueberries) or mild modifications: “I puree fresh peaches, put them in the freezer, and add them to my yogurt in fall and winter”. I would probably slice and freeze and make crisp later, but the puree is an interesting twist.
Eugene puts frozen grapes in a glass of wine. Ha!
Jay makes zucchini lasagna and freezes the 2nd and later batches. “You’ll be ready for more of the big Z by December.” He also sautes small tomatoes in oil and freezes. This seems interesting “spread over toast”, but also in other dishes.
Gini: “I don’t force myself to use all of the dandelion greens if I get an unmanageable amount in my CSA box.” Omelettes! *sigh* Fine, whatever. She also advocates: “Shop three or four times a week for only the items you’ve planned for.” I have posted here before what I think of this strategy.
Also: “Find others who share your commitment and practice. Then get together now and then to make and share good food.” Not opposed! But you know, here is a _great_ place to suggest having a place to let local folks know your CSA had some stuff you really are not going to use so if you want it, I’ll bring it over. Beets, for example. My whole family hates them. The neighbors love them. I get beets; I text them. Unless they are (about to be) out of town, they are ecstatic. If they are out of town, I have a more distant friend they can go to. CSA boxes can occasionally produce a wild excess of something — radishes, can be a problem, and she mentioned dandelion greens altho honestly, I don’t think I could get too much of those to go through but maybe she got an entire box stuffed full. Having someone who will take them off your hands _unmodified_ is awesome.
There’s a chart with veg on one axis, and saute roast/bake, stirfry, braise on the other, with x’s per veg to represent best cooking methods. It is deeply hilarious. Some things make sense — I would not braise asparagus. I think the broccoli no-braise is a little weird; you wouldn’t braise the florets, but if you had stocks, braising is utterly plausible. Whatever. LOTS of people saute or stirfry beets. There are weird choices in greens, where you can saute but not stirfry. But the funniest stuff is the Don’t Roast/Bake mushrooms or peppers. I kinda get what is meant, but they clearly are not thinking of the stuffed and roasted/baked options, or, for that matter, roasting peppers in general. Oh, and no braising on corn, very hilarious, given the number of people who love butter braised corn on the cob.
Second chart, steam/microwave/grill. Again, hilarious. Yes, people steam beets. Yes, people grill kale (I do! Altho usually, I top pizzas with kale and let it crisp up that way, but same basic idea. Crispy, snack greens!).
These are stupid charts. Why are they here. They are mostly filled with x’s, and the blanks should have x’s in them. You can cook any vegetable any way you like, but a whole bunch of veg will disappear into the stock if you braise certain things. Which might be what you want!
Hands down the best thing to do with any veg that is kinda bitter and you are going to saute it (all of brassica, for example, any dark leafy green which will often but not always be brassica) is to add vinegar, a fat (Gini likes butter, but I would go with an oil, or bacon fat, but honestly, if you have chicken fat, that’s amazing, too), and some kind of sweetener. They get the vinegar but tell you to avoid balsamic, which would add the sweetener. Gini says salt and pepper ; no one says red pepper. No one suggests sugar. This is a crowd of people that are supposedly all over honoring ancient cooking and wtf, and yet they can’t even get greens right. It’s sad. It’s just sad.
Also, most greens and other bitter veg do better sauted then covered for a couple minutes, which is going to be pretty close to the braise they tell you not to do — altho you wouldn’t add liquid, because what comes out of the greens / veg and the acid you added will be plenty, and instead of 2-3 hours, it’s gonna be more like a few minutes.
They seriously do NOT believe in adding any amount of sweetener to greens. Sad sad sad.
Their roast/bake is sheet pan cooking. That’s fine, but it is all salt and pepper, olive oil, maybe some vinegar. There’s no red peppers, no cumin, no cinnamon, no ginger, no garlic, no onion, no nothing. Boring. Also, it’s kind of like they arrived in 2021 without any knowledge of an air fryer.
There is a caption that notices that if you put bell pepper in with root veg, the bell pepper will dump its liquid and you’ll get some sauce. Finally. They do finally ad some seasoning at the very end: rosemary, additional acid (lemon, lime or vinegar). STILL NOTHING INTERESTING. Fuck.
“Always roast four or five extra potatoes.” !!! Beth presumably is cooking for a crowd. These are to fry the next morning or evening. This is fine, but again, it’s like no one here has heard of an air fryer.
Lindsey does finally pop in with some seasoning for the sheet pan veg: cumin chili powder cilantro, curry powder and red pepper, dill and lemon juice, basil oregano garlic powder. This is a good starter strategy. I’m sort of horrified that the base strategy is literally a salt pepper fat maybe acid approach.
List of best veg for stir frying, with parenthetical remarks for how to cut that can best be described as … limited.
Stir fry directions are a little weak. Skillet is assumed, which is fine, because if you don’t have the right setup, woks are pretty sketch anyway. But while the list supplied is roughly correct in order, there is nothing about how to line up your heat source with your cooking area, and either removing or parking stuff that is cooked and waiting. In conjunction with eggs and sauce last, this is a problem. If you add sprouts, fresh herbs, and then add egg and sauce, I don’t see how the sprouts are not overcooked.
The complete absence of garlic and ginger from the stir fry description is astonishing.
Gini told us to honor ancient ways of cooking. Also Gini: “Use sliced sweet potatoes … in place of noodles when making lasagna”. I do understand the nutritional argument for this, and I can see that on the internet, other people are also advocating for this. Whatever.
Lorre has some of the Use Cauliflower Instead Of tips from the low-carb community.
For stir fry sauce (I don’t even know why I’m still reading this book):
“Pour lightly flavorful sesame oil or avocado oil into a small skillet. Stir in pressed fresh ginger”
Wait, what is pressed fresh ginger? *googles* You have _got_ to be kidding me. They grate it, squeeze the juice out, and then just use the juice? Whyyyyyyyy. I mean, in a bartending context, love to know this. But WTF. Or maybe they use the grated part as well as the juice? I can’t tell? “Then stir in pressed garlic to soften, too.” Every time a garlic press enters the house, I do everything in my power to get it back the fuck out again. These are an immoral item. Absolutely not. However, I see that this is how they have a stir fry sauce without overcooking the sprouts. I’m starting to suspect that the egg thing is some weirdo approximation of carbonara in the stir fry, also. Where did this technique come from and who uses it? Probably don’t answer that.
Anyway. We have fat — either boring, or okay — ginger juice, pressed garlic, then they add OJ or coconut water, soy sauce and honey. Stir get it up to simmering at the edges. Yeah, you can’t cook this or the garlic juice will be awful. And you know they add arrowroot, because if you got the temp up to what corn starch would involve, this thing would be vile. You know, if you _started_ with _minced_ gigi like a normal person, you wouldn’t have to engage in this bullshit. Honestly, might as well just do all this in a microwave. You really don’t need a pan for it, it’ll be faster and easier to clean up after because you can do it in a custard dish or ramekin or small bowl or whatever.
This whole sauce thing reminds me of when a smallish group of us used to go out to lunch. I don’t recall the restaurant any more — it could have been a thai place, or it could have been a panasian place, as those were common in Seattle at the time. It definite was not Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese. Anyway. H.J., whose first language was French, liked a particular stir fry on the menu, and he’d always meticulously ask for extra sauce when ordering, then, after it arrived the way it always arrived — this restaurant had great food and it was absolutely repeatable, same way every single time, subject only to requests to leave something out, or spice levels or whatever — he’d request more sauce. The server would always explain to him that was not possible, and I’d try not to laugh, because I knew that what he thought was a sauce added at the end was in fact the results of the cooking process that started with aromatics, proceeded through various other items, etc. No way to get “extra sauce”. He just never seemed to grasp that. I liked to eat at Asian places, because so many of the fine dining places at the time were just modified French cuisine of the Nouvelle and later sort — the sauces were all tricks involving butter, cream and/or egg, and so if you asked to have it without any milk products, they just really had no idea what to do instead. I _still_ don’t much care for that style of cookery, because when they try to sub oil, they don’t get the same texture for reasons well laid out in McGee. Also, all of the flavor balance revolves around those milk products, so you remove that leg and the stool just falls over.
This approach to stir fry is like if a french person was trying to do stir fry in a skillet. Whatever. You do you.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 02:57 am (UTC)There are applications where I care whether the garlic is sliced, minced, pressed, whatever. Not in the kind of peanut sauce I make.