Well shit. I was warming up a taco salad crunchy taco style bowl in the toaster oven, a feat I have done on multiple occasions when disaster struck. I set it for the low setting and shortest timer like I usually do and turn around to wash some dishes. About a minute later I hear the ding turn around and see some smoke coming out of the toaster oven. I am thinking, oops I pushed it too far in and the edge got burned by the heating element. Nope.

As I opened the door to the small toaster oven my appliance had transformed from one our favored appliances into the gate way to Hell. A gout of fire flared up immediately from the back of the taco bowl and flashed briefly out of the toaster oven. Thankfully my hand and arm were protected by the insulated glass of the door. The taco shell begins to rapidly burn dripping some viscous substance to the floor of the new passage into the depths of Hades and pouring out billowing clouds of grey and black smoke. Thinking quickly I shut the door and make sure the unit is unplugged. I let it sit for a bit and see the smoke build up inside but the flames die out. While we open the windows and turn on the kitchen fan I give it a slow count of 15 seconds and when I believed I had starved it of enough free oxygen I opened it back up.

I was wrong. So very wrong. I had once again apparently opened a door to the inferno of damnation. A flame from under the charred shell I couldn't see greedily sucked in more air and turned what was now a disturbingly melting taco bowl into a puddle of oily kitchen napalm. I watched as the shell dripped fire all over the inside of the toaster oven which is thankfully metal and insulated.

Knowing I can't put this out with water I wind up grabbing up our small kitchen fire extinguisher I open up the door the Devil's Demesne one last time and douse the flames with the chemical agent fire extinguisher. The dry chemical agent has a tendency to cling to hot surfaces like paint to properly prepared primer coat. So now we need a fire extinguisher and a new toaster oven.

edited 2nd Nov '17 8:20:11 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

After randomly encountering the recipe I decided to try my hand at shahi tukda. I had my reservations at first as I do not enjoy rabri, but I was very surprised that the ingredients blended together pretty amazingly. From my American perspective I could probably best describe the taste and textures as an extremely rich deconstruction of french toast, minus the eggs.

The masala dudh itself is pretty good too. I might commit some cross-cultural heresy and utilize it in some pancakes or muffins, or maybe even introduce it to chocolate.

edited 2nd Nov '17 5:38:34 PM by carbon-mantis

Well, if we can create sag tikka paneer pies and pasties, you're good to go.

Tried to make French Puffs (kinda sorta like nutmeg & cinnamon cake doughnuts but they're baked in a muffin tin) but realised I was out of milk after I had mixed everything else.

So I figure "Eh, I have some whipping cream here, how different can it be?"

They came out fluffy. Too fluffy. So fluffy that the first crumbled away as I tried to remove it, and the second fell to fluffy, cakey, crumbly dust like a 5-second time lapse of a million-year erosion process.

'least they taste delicious. Might have held better if I had used cupcake papers to hold them better.

Was this heavy cream? or aerosol whipped cream?

either way, too much fat, not enough protein.

Doodles

The former. If I ever needed a recipe that called for crumbs I know what to make them with at least

My next project for Christmas was Rugelach, which came out much better than my previous experiments. Dough was painfully easy to make (equal weights flour, cold butter and cream cheese kneaded together with your hand until well incorporated together) and I made up one batch with an apple filling ^note using some finely diced sour granny smiths spiced with cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, green cardamom, a wee bit of black pepper, and some cinnamon scented honey gifted to me by a friend and another with a drier honey-walnut filling.

Only disaster came when I had a bit of dough left and tried to see how an orange marmalade filling would do in one or two. Marmalade liquefied and burned within minutes and my little curls turned into something that looked like barrels leaking black and red toxic waste. My sisters were assembling a gingerbread house and joked that they could use them to make a gingerbread slum.

edited 16th Dec '17 6:03:51 AM by carbon-mantis

Marmalde is temperamental in jam tarts, let alone anything else, mate. It's why strawberry or raspberry jams and apple, pear or quince butters are primarily chosen for baking purposes.

Lesson learned, eh? (Although: if you try to cook ham over Christmas, going with a spiced marmalade rather than a honey glaze is a valid option.)

Ha! I did similar with marmalade and pastry dough. wanted to make jelly rolls. It was orange tartlet mush. Still very tasty!

Doodles

I need ideas for the most chocolate-packed chocolate confection possible. I owe a friend for acting as my test subject for all my previous baked horrors.

On a scale of chocolate chip easy to profiterole pyramid hard mode... what scale of bakery are we talking?

(My impulse is to suggest Guinness and chocolate muffins/ cupcakes with ginger/ chilli/ black pepper spiced chocolate icing.)

edited 18th Dec '17 9:04:14 AM by Euodiachloris

Look up "Death By Chocolate" cake recipes.

Fresh-eyed movie blog

Here is an interesting youtube channel called Townsends I like this channel because it combines both history and cooking in one fell swoop. Some of the recipes are interesting to say the least and even tasty.

Who watches the watchmen?

Well, there goes my spare time for the next few days

I picked up a translation of the Kitab al Tabikh recently and there are a few dishes in there I'd like to take a crack at if I ever get the time. Some of the ingredients are probably close to impossible to find in the USA, like rendered sheep tail oil. Or deadly poisonous. One of the dishes calls for powdered cinnabar as a coloring agent x_x

---

Anyone here have any personal experience with making dairy free hot cocoa/chocolate? Was thinking about whipping some up since quite a few friends and family have milk allergies, but I personally detest dairy substitutes so I wouldn't know if almond, soy, or coconut milk might be an acceptable alternative?

Coconut might make a pretty tasty concoction but I have no idea how it would blend or come out texture-wise.

edited 21st Dec '17 7:56:18 AM by carbon-mantis

I think substituting any nontoxic food colouring for the Red Incoming Madness is not only doable, but quite OK... o.O

About the non-dairy cocoa: be careful. If in doubt, Google specific recipes for the brand you go for, not just the milk substitute. Bad Things happen when you try a straight swap.

I find rice milk tolerable (but it doesn't particularly sing with cocoa), soya has a habit of heating strangely (it works, but the taste is acquired) and oat milk can get very thick, but actually tastes OK. Never tried almond.

Don't coconut: my experiments there for hot beverages turned into vile way too often, even when following the instruction to the letter.

edited 21st Dec '17 8:10:49 AM by Euodiachloris

‘Tis the night for wassail! Wish me luck tempering the eggs. I don’t want scrambled eggs in my spiced apple brandy.

i. hear. a. sound.

Good luck! Remember, lowest possible heat! Even if it takes quadruple as long as you thought, it's still way better than quick and curdled.

SUCCESS! My wassail was super tasty and had solid two inch cap of egg foam. TO HEALTH, ON THIS LONGEST NIGHT!

i. hear. a. sound.

I agree with Euo on the non-dairy ideas. Soy milk does actually work, but it's best if you make a paste with the cocoa powder (read the label CAREFULLY there are a lot of hidden dairy stuff) and the sugar and soy, then put that paste in the rest of the warmed soy milk.

Coconut milk just turns watery, almond milk doesn't mix well with other things.

if you have a whole foods near you they may have a vegan hot cocoa mix. I intend to raid my whole foods pretty soon here and see what i find.

Doodles

As I start to become a real adult, I'm realizing more and more what an asset having learned how to cook as a kid is. I've known for years where to get the best cheap ingredients and use them in a way as make them last the longest, so I'm never stuck with microwave ramen or whatever other college students eat, finding a roommate is incredibly easy (What wonders a "Will cook for you" on a roommate app can do), and since I'm the only one who cooks I can get everyone else to do all the other, less fun chores while I play around in the kitchen.

All these years of level grinding are really paying off now that I'm facing the boss of adulthood

Caill: Cooking is one of those skills that all kids should learn. I am grateful that I took home economics when I was in school. It helped me learn to operate sewing machines, sew by hand, and to cook and set a table. My parents also taught me some things by having us help them cook in the kitchen.

The power of the internet helps a lot with online access to terminology, cooking lessons, and of course an amazing abundance of recipes often with several variations of each helps make it easier still.

Who watches the watchmen?

Going through my parent's pantry and finding stuff to utilize before it goes bad.

I've ended up with some sort of sangria themed fruit compote of craneberies, oranges, and apples marinating in sugar and old dornfelder. Guess I'll see how it turns out tomorrow.

For what it's worth, it sounds like something I'd consume.

i. hear. a. sound.

Millership's culinary experiments, vol. 2: Spigola al Sale^note European bass baked in salt

I live in the center of a landlocked country^note like, really landlocked◊, the closest open sea is the Black Sea, thousands of kilometers away from where I live. There's also the Caspian Sea, but it's more of a large-ass lake, so having sea fish in my menu is rather expensive, due to logistical reasons^note for comparison, a kilo of beef costs about 7 US dollars, a whole gilt-head bream of the same weight costs twice as much, and eating river fish is dangerous due to our fucked up ecology. So I was reluctant to try this recipe for a rather long time due to wallet pains. There's also the fact that you should use chilled fish^note or, preferably, fresh fish, but that was unattainable in my circumstances for this recipe, not frozen, so I had to cook the fish on the day I bought it.

Ingredients:

1. Whole sea bass^note with head and fins, gutted and cleaned of scales, 1.5 kg.
2. Salt, 1.5 kg^note It's actually sea salt, but regular one is fine, too, as long as its grains are large. I didn't use sea salt for the aforementioned financial reasons.
3. Four eggs.
4. 100 ml of water.
5. Olive oil.
6. A lemon.
7. Various herbs.

The cooking process:

First thing to do is to check whether the fish started to rot. I've read earlier that there are three signs of fresh sea fish:

1. Its eyes are clear,
2. Its gills are pink,
3. It doesn't smell of fish.

The caterer already gutted and cleaned mine, so I couldn't check the fish's gills, but it didn't smell at all and the accusative look it was giving me was rather clear, so I thought that two out of three is good enough.

Next, prepare the salt casing: mix the egg whites, the water and the salt. It should be "of wet snow consistence", as the recipe said. Put the baking foil on the tray, then put a 1 cm layer of casing in the shape of the fish on top of it.

Then, put the lemon lobes and herbs into the fish's cavity and cover the fish with olive oil. Put it on the salt casing on the tray. Cover the fish with the rest of salt. Make sure salt doesn't come in contact with the actual meat! Only skin. Some bits of casing entered the fish's cavity and I was forced to throw out a lot of meat since it was too salty.

Wrap the casing in foil and put the fish into the oven. Bake it under 180 degrees Celsius for 30-40 minutes (my oven is not powerful, so I baked it for 50).

The results:

Taking the fish out of its casing is tricky, since you have to make sure it doesn't fall apart and/or mix with the salt.

Besides the parts that were thrown out, the fish took the exact amount of salt as needed. It was also really, really juicy (a problem with baked fish in general is that it's too dry) and full of flavor. The European bass is a tasty fish by itself, but here it soaked in all the aromas and citrus taste. I also like that its bones are large and easy to spot and remove. I also peeled the skin off the fish before eating^note not sure if it's the proper way to eat it., if you move from its head towards its tail, the skin comes off easily.

Conclusion:

It's definitely not an everyday meal. Too much money and effort spent, but it's worth it if you do things right. Cooked it for my Mom's birthday, the guests were pleased.

edited 13th Jan '18 2:07:14 AM by Millership

Spiral out, keep going.

My girlfriend and I tried to make guacamole today. I bought all the ingredients, and I didn't know the avocados needed to be more ripe than fresh, so they were very firm and we couldn't mash them up very well, so we called it avocado salad. Also I think there might have been too much lime juice (used two small limes and two large avocados), but that might have been because it wasn't mixed very well and/or it was a bad idea to use lime-infused tortilla chips, but it was those or unsalted chips.

Edited by TParadox on Jul 15th 2018 at 11:57:37 AM

Fresh-eyed movie blog

Para: I made the same mistake when I made my first guac.

My knew favorite method of cooking is steaming everything. Now that I have found an easy way to balance my steam baskets over the pot I can readily and easily steam damn near anything.

I am thinking of doing a foil steamed dish. That is you make a sort of bowl out of foil, put your meat, onions, carrots, and maybe some taters in there. You then top it off with melted seasoned butter. You twist it shut and lay it in the steam basket. You then cook it with the steam as it heats up the foil and voila moist and succulent edibles.

Who watches the watchmen?