Cooking

Jag älskar struvor! Been a while since I made them for Christmas, though, deep-frying scares me a bit.

Anyway, I did figure that a sweet noodle dish would work, but I'm thinking whether the noodle dough should be sweetened or not. I'm leaning towards no because the sweetness is going to come from everything else, but what if one were to make the noodles taste like chocolate?

Edited by MagmaTeaMerry on Sep 23rd 2020 at 10:44:10 AM

How about noodles made from gingerbread dough?

Oooh, that could work!

Dessert noodles sound like an unorthodox yet very fun dish. In fact, this is the first time learning about this.

I made tomato soup for dinner with salt, pepper, paprika, basil and a few other spices. It was better than I thought it would be

I'm thinking about the possibilities of making a sweet pizza. Like a sweet pie, sure, but with a thin crust.

The last time I cooked a huge dish by myself is baking a whole salmon with lemon juice and Old Bay seasoning with homemade fries over 2 years ago. I learned the former from my mom and the latter from my sister.

Dessert pizza definitely sounds good! I'm thinking a gino pizza would make sense. Ricotta or mascarpone on the bottom, then berries and white chocolate. Yum!

Sounds delicious! Hm, the last huge meal I cooked by myself might be the menu I made for Mother's Day in May.

There was karaage with three different dip sauces for an appetizer^note Only about 3 pieces per person, it was an appetizer, after all., homemade truffle ravioli for the main course and choux pastry with lemon curd for dessert.

I know it sounds like an odd mix, but I gave Mom a menu where she would decide what she wanted from about 4 dishes, and those are the ones she picked.

Edited by MagmaTeaMerry on Sep 24th 2020 at 10:02:34 AM

Uh, does this count as a bump? I'm not sure if bumping is allowed, I'm sorry.

But I just really wanna talk about sourdough.

Anyone else bake with it? Just like everyone else these days, I decided to actually get to making some sourdough. This is the recipe I followed.

My first batch didn't work, probably because it was made with cold water and not lukewarm water. So that was dumb.

But I made a new batch, and I figured taking proper care of it would be easier if I named it. So I named mine Ulf.

Ulf turned four months yesterday, and I'm proud of him because he's so bubbly and produces such great results. He consists of rye dough and water, and I keep him in the fridge and feed him once per week.

Though it feels like rye sourdough requires a bit more water than wheat sourdough, doesn't it? I've added more water to it than I did to the wheat sourdough. Anyway, the recipe I use works great with strong bread flour and rye sourdough, even though I know you should use rye flour breads with rye sourdough. But Ulf has produced such great results despite that. Cinnamon rolls, leváin, crépes suzette... All of it, delicious!

... Sorry about that wall of text, cooking does that to me. Anyone else bake with sourdough?

Funny thing: if you don't have the specific flavor of cake mix you want, you can add pudding or gelatin powder and it will give the same flavor.

I was hoping to save this for later in the month and when the season got really underway, but dang it, all the talk about Halloween in the Trash Heap put me in the mood for it. ^_^;;

I had this idea for what to cook for dinner on Halloween night. I was thinking of making spaghetti and meat sauce. And in keeping with the theme of the holiday, I'm going to put a lot of red food coloring in the water so that the noodles will look like flesh-eating worms.

Have you heard of a book called Zombie Cupcakes? There are several Halloween-themed cupcakes in it that look really interesting. Graveyeard cupcakes, T-Virus, brains, undead bride...

If you want inspiration for dessert, maybe you should check it out! I used the recipes in there once as inspiration for an art assignment when I was 18. (I made a graveyard out of cake with a lot of common fears strewn out in it)

To change the topic:

I invented a pie a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't be arsed to look up a recipe, so I used my previous cooking knowledge to create it.

It was a pie filled with baked custard, blueberries and raspberries, and a blueberry-raspberry jelly on top. I called it a "Queen's Pie" because blueberry-raspberry jam is called Queen's Jam here... for some reason. Does it have a name in English?

Sorry it took my this long to get back to you. :( I got a bit busy. x_x ^_^;;

I don't think I've heard of that one, but I think I still have a Halloween-themed cookbook lying around somewhere. Thanks for the tip. :)

I got a whipping siphon for my birthday, and I've been thinking of ways to use it.

One idea I had was to make a foam with chanterelles, onions, thyme, garlic and cream, puréed and sprayed on top of or alongside some butter-fried sourdough bread. Maybe some bacon as well, for saltiness? I feel like some acidity would be missing, though. I wonder what I could add to it - A balsamic reduction? Something forest-y would probably fit nicely, since chanterelles are mushrooms.

... OK, I also feel a bit inspired because I had some really gourmet food last week. The dessert in particular was made by a celebrity chef, the types of people who could make the world's weirdest dish and you'd just sit there and nod along. She'd made fermented cloudberries, porcini ice cream and candied wild celery, served with a slice of sourdough bread with sugar and cinnamon. It was wonderful.

I actually asked her how she got the smoky flavor on the bread, because it suited the rest of the dish so well. The answer? Pure coincidence. She'd prepared the bread on a charcoal grill outside, and a gust of wind blew smoke all over the bread. A happy little accident.

A smoke oven seems like a good investment to get food with smoky flavour.

I bought recently the book An Early Meal-A Viking Age Cookbook & Culinary Odyssey, which is about food and drink among the Norse. I bought it because of my interest in Medieval and Viking Age life, which is why I want to try out some of the dishes in the book. I especially look forward to cooking over a fire at a Medieval event, like a market.

Edited by Mara999 on Oct 10th 2020 at 11:15:34 AM

We made a banging lasagna today!

Beef chuck that was slow-cooked for several hours, bechamél sauce, two types of cheese, homemade pasta. Delicious.

I was a bit unsure about the pasta dough first because it was just so crumbly and dry, moreso than any other time I've made pasta before, so I added an extra egg. I suppose the lesson here is that if you've measured the flour by weight, you should probably measure the eggs by weight, as well. And Mom accidentally used corn flour in the bechamél instead of regular flour and didn't realize it until she looked at the jar and noticed the four being way too yellow.

Anyway, it all worked out in the end.

Made pad Thai for dinner tonight. Had to go out of my way (the store I normally shop at was out of rice noodles, so went to the Asian grocery instead). On the plus side, I was able to nab a tub of red bean ice cream for dessert...yum.

Fun thing that I came up with yesterday that I intend to carry out in the near future: vanilla cupcakes + hundreds and thousands (you know, those little round ball sprinkles you get here in Australia?) = fairy bread cupcakes!

Sounds delicious!

I made some cannoli-inspired cupcakes a while back. I made almond muffins with chocolate pieces in them (I know almond isn't an ingredient in cannoli, but I thought it'd fit well) and a mascarpone frosting. It was super-tasty. And I bet some more chocolate shavings on top would be great!

I'm trying my hand at making beer can chicken. It's about halfway done cooking by now, give or take a few minutes. Wish me luck!

I love to experiment with pizza toppings.

I once made a "kroppkaka"-pizza. "Kroppkaka" is just a type of Swedish potato dumpling, usually filled with bacon and onions and eaten with lingonberry jam and skimmed butter. So, I put that on pizza; I used lingonberry jam as the base and put potato pieces,fried onions, bacon and cheese on top. It was so good!

Another time, I made a gyro-inspired pizza. (I call it the "gyzza")

I used créme fraiche as the base, making it a pizza blanco. Then, I put cheese and beef marinated in a Greek-style marinade on top.^note I know it's not supposed to be beef in gyros, but that was all I had, hence why it's a "gyro-inspired" pizza. After it came out of the oven, I put diced cucumbers and tomatoes on top. It was another success.

Both sound good and interesting.

Today's dinner just pulled out of the oven, enchiladas! I make em "gringo style" in that I use flour tortilla instead of corn (though I know how to make corn ones). Fill em with refried beans, your choice of meat and a sauce or chile, cheese em up interally, wrap em up put em in a glass pan, slather more sauce/chile over it and top with more cheese, bake in a HOT (450F) oven for a maximum of 15 minutes.

Qué magnificos! Siempre!

Speaking of Latin America, I'm now about to prepare a Brazilian dinner to commemorate the completion of the Amazon River chapter of my new book. :) (I chose that style since Brazil has the largest parts of the Amazon Rainforest and River)

Brazilian cooking sounds interesting.

I made homemade bao^note No, I refuse to call them "bao buns", it sounds silly. this weekend. Man, they take a long time to proof!

But the end result was so worth it: They were so soft, fluffy and tasty. We filled them with hoisin chicken, red cabbage coleslaw and some quick pickled carrots.