Cooking thread, anyone?

[kennyp2339]

Here's another favorite of mine - Shrimp linguine with a quick homemade red sauce
Ingredients: 3 cups of large uncooked shrimp - deveined w/ no shell , 1 can of plum tomatoes, fresh minced garlic, fresh basil & itialin parsley, 1/2 cup of white wine, 1/2 a zucchini chopped, & linguine
I use a cast iron dutch oven pot - heat up about a table spoon of olive oil then dump shrimp in (medium heat needed) stir shrimp adding salt and pepper seasoning, after 2 min of cooking add half cup of white wine, let wine boil off, total cook time approx 3 - 3 1/2 min, remove shrimp into separate bowl, lower stove top heat to low setting.
Let pot cool , add another table spoon of olive oil, add table spoon of minced garlic, and the chopped up zucchini, while thats cooking, take a blender or bullet and add can of plum tomatoes, blend it for 15 - 20 seconds - you want the tomatoes chopped, but not blended, some chunks are fine for texture, after the zucchini softens add the tomato, mix, then add a little salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, chopped basil, let this simmer cook for 10min,
At this time also add the linguine to a separate boiling pot since it takes about 10min to cook, after the ten min is up, add the shrimp to the sauce and let it cook for an additional 3 min, drain pasta and add to sauce, turn heat off and serve.
This is a very simple dish to make, it just takes a little bit of learning heat management with cooking, has tons of fresh flavors and is nice during the cooler weather when you want something springy but also filling.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

That sounds truly delicious, Kenny. I used to use frozen shrimp occasionally to add meat to tomato sauce, and it was simple and delicious. Unfortunately two of my children seem to have shellfish allergies, so I've lost that ability now.

I recently acquired a large electric skillet and have been enjoying the ease of cooking meals for my family of six in it. Yesterday it was a curry dish with onions, eggplant, okra, beef and rice.

Today it was chicken thighs with onions and asparagus. We'll have leftover chicken for another meal tomorrow with different vegetables.

 

[kennyp2339]

Zucchini veggie balls (meat balls)
3 medium zucchini's with the ends cut off, with a cheese grater shred them (consistency of ground beef, almost effortlessly to do)
The complicated part: using either a larger clean dish towel or cheese cloth, take the shreaded zucchini and place it in the middle, take the sides of the cloth and bring the ends to your hand, grip tight and start twisting the cloth, essentially your wringing out the water from the zucchini, there's a lot more water then you think, so when your done wringing it out, reset the cloth again and do it again at least 2 or 3 times total, you want as much water out of the zucchini as possible.
After that place in large mixing bowl, in a separate pan, cook up a chopped onion and 3 cloves of minced garlic, low heat for about 7-8 min, or until the onion is translucent (again removing moisture) take off of stove, place in a bowel and let it cool for 20min.
Once thats cooled off place in the mixing bowel.
Add two eggs, 1 cup of bread crumbs, sea salt and black pepper for taste, mix by hand until everything is well combined, you can add freshly chopped parsley to, if the mixture feels to wet keep adding breadcrumbs until you can form a ball with you hands, fyi it will still feel wetter then normal meatballs, you just want the mixture to hold together.
Now make dimples in each ball, place some shredded cheese into the center, then re-roll, after rolling place in a sperate bowl with more breadcrumbs and coat the outside.
Heat up vegetable oil or peanut oil, get it up to 375 and then carefully place in batches the veggi balls in, let them go for 2-3 min, then roll them over and cook for another 2 min or until they look richly brown and crispy, take out and cool off on a plate with a paper towl underneath.
I served mine with a homemade tomato sauce, I prepared that at the same time, (1) 32oz can of plum tomatoes, I crush them by hand until the chunks are small, in a sauce pan I cooked onions w/ garlic until they were translucent, then added 1/2 cup of white wine, let that boil off, some sea salt, black pepper, 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, then added the hand crush tomatoes (with its juice from the can) a table spoon of white sugar, some dried oregano and 8 leaves of chopped fresh basil, simmer or low bubble for an hour, mixing every ten min (low temp is your friend here, no sauce burn)

 

[PaulOinMA]

Nan is taking her parents to OBX for the week. I'm home alone until the 26th.

Going to buy flank steaks and tri-tip at Wegmans on Tuesday morning after I do the blood work for my annual physical Thursday. There's no BBQ in the freezer, so I'll smoke it on Wednesday.

Made Onion & Garlic Dry Rub from Championship Barbeque Secrets for Real Smoked Food by Karen Putman.

 

[kennyp2339]

Simple chicken thighs tonight.
Take chicken out and let it rest / come to room temp, season with a little salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika.
Preheat the oven to 425, also preheat a 12" cast iron pan on the stove top use low to medium heat setting, I add a little oil to the pan once its warmed up
Place chicken skin side down, let it cook for about 5min or until the chicken can be flipped without the skin sticking to the pan (it will release, this also gives the chicken a crispy skin
once the chicken has been flipped, place in preheated oven and back for 20 - 25min or until the internal temp is 175deg f.
Very simple dish, doesn't take a lot of time to make and pretty tasty
FYI on the cast iron pans, I'm big into those, a cast iron pan on low heat makes some of the best dishes, I bought the cheapo cast iron lodge set from walmart years ago, no need to spend a fortune here. The secret is to re-grind the pan after purchasing, take a drill with a good grinding pad and go to work, takes about 20 min of grinding, what your trying to do is take off the microscopic ridges that makes food stick, once the pan is re-ground, clean with soap and water, then coat the inside of the pan with some oil, place pan in the oven and let her rip at 450 deg for 20 min, bam the seasoning is done and you'll have a pan that lasts forever. Care is simple, you can clean with salt if your cooking something greasy, you can soap and water it then recoat with some cooking spray.

 

[PaulOinMA]

Mushroom and garlic pizza the last two nights. A little whole wheat flour added to the AP flour.

 

[fbelec]

I've got a lodge cast iron 12 inch really heavy but live it. You are 100% right kenny I coat it after washing non stick now.

Now if I could master stretching dough my pizza would be much better and half the work

 

[PaulOinMA]

Pizza dough stretches easier after it rests a while.

Here's the Wagner and Griswold Society (WAGS) forum, if you like cast iron cookware. I'm cooking moderator.

Wagner and Griswold Society (WAGS) Forum - Maintenance Mode

 

[DuaeGuttae]

@kennyp2339, @fbelec, @PaulOinMA , I, too, am a fan of cast iron cookware, though at this point we use enameled. I wanted to give a bit of a public service announcement, if I may. If you do regularly cook with cast iron, you should probably make sure that you have an iron test as part of bloodwork when you have it done just to make sure that your levels are normal. One of the more common genetic disorders among Caucasians (particularly those with Northern European ancestry) is Hereditary Hemochromatosis. It's an iron overload disorder, and it is easily treated if you know you have it. The problem is that a lot of people (particularly men) don't get diagnosed until they have some sort of organ failure (heart attack, diabetes) stemming from too much iron being deposited in tissues. My husband and I are both carriers, and at least one of our children inherited both recessive genes. He is too young to have problems, but his doctors do make sure to keep tabs on him, and we don't eat iron-fortified foods or cook in plain cast iron anymore.

 

[fbelec]

thank you for that Duae Guttae the older i get it seems i am getting more side affects and things i never worried about. now diabetic. i will talk with my doc on the next visit.

 

[PaulOinMA]

Men do have a problem getting rid of excess iron, as we don't menstruate. Women are efficient at getting rid of excess iron.

I used to be a regular blood (and platelet) donor. Blood donation help remove iron.

I always joke that men get rid of excess iron by working on cars. My Chilton manual wasn't broken in until it had blood on it.

If you look at assay for multivitamins, men's vitamins might not have iron, whereas women's do. My wife is low iron so she takes a slow-release iron pill daily.

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[PaulOinMA]

... Now if I could master stretching dough my pizza would be much better and half the work ...

King Arthur Flour has a product called Easy Roll Dough Improver.

 

[fbelec]

Thanks Paul

 

[PaulOinMA]

French onion soup last night. Will be dinner for the week.

Onion soup recipe from Joy of Cooking with a couple of changes. More onion. Two quarts beef stock; one quart no salt added vegetable stock. A little red wine added.

Bread recipe was from breadworld.com, the Fleischmann's Yeast web site. The directions for shaping the dough had changed from when I copied it over a decade ago.

Country French Bread

www.fleischmannsyeast.com

Have plain yogurt left, so I'll make two more loaves this morning to bake tomorrow.

My soup just had mozzarella. I was pleased to find Comte in the supermarket when I went to get Gruyere for my wife's crock. She asked in Paris what cheese they use: Comte.

 

[begreen]

Speaking of cast iron skillets, we made this Sticky Onion Tart in a 10" skillet for the first time the other night. It was delicious and will be repeated.

 

[PaulOinMA]

That looks good. Do you have the recipe or a link to the recipe?

 

[begreen]

It tastes good too. There were no leftovers.

Sticky onion tart | Jamie Oliver vegetarian recipes

Slow-cooked sticky onions, crisp puff pastry, garlic and bay. This sticky onion tart is a really brilliant vegetarian main course for a special occasion.

www.jamieoliver.com

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I love caramelized onions!

I had a big cooking day on Friday. I had made bread the night before, so we had "toad in the hole" (fried eggs in toast) for breakfast. I cooked up pumpkin soup with chili cran-apple relish for lunch, while my husband replaced a bake element in our oven. To celebrate that success, I made some oatmeal cranberry cookies to eat with our dinner as a celebration. We had plain burgers and sauteed kale with the cookies.


Last night we had a fire-pit fire with our children and cooked kielbasa and (somewhat pre-cooked) potatoes on long sticks over the coals. We had carrots sticks as our vegetable because I couldn't pull off anything else for a campfire, but it was a big hit. They want to repeat the experience this evening.

 

[PaulOinMA]

My mom always called toad-in-a-hole: Egyptian eggs. Just had one for breakfast this morning.

They are in the Nancy Drew cookbook as Hollow Oak Nest Eggs. My wife has a copy from when she was a kid. I buy additional copies when I see it at library book sales, as it's not that common.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

That Nancy Drew Cookbook looks fun, @PaulOinMA. I was a big Nancy Drew fan many, many years ago.

I made pizza the other day and thought of this thread (@fbelec). I use einkorn wheat which tends to be quite sticky compared to more common modern varieties, and I have trouble rolling out dough and then moving it. I've loved having a bread maker to get me out of a lot of kneading of sandwich loaves, and I use it to mix up my pizza dough as well. My solution to the rolling problem is just to spread the dough directly on the stone on which I plan to cook it after I've put a dab of olive oil on the stone. I'll use my lightly oiled hands at first, let it rest, and then use a rolling pin if necessary. A pizza purist would want the stone to be thoroughly preheated first, but I've decided with cooking not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It's much easier for me to roll my dough right where I plan to cook it. If it's thick dough or heavy toppings, I'll prebake the crust a bit, otherwise everything goes into the oven at once. Here's the bacon and banana pepper pizza I made recently.




We are having some very small harvests from our garden, and I had some okra pods, peppers, and grape tomatoes that needed to be used, but they weren't enough on their own for a side dish. I sauteed them with some frozen corn and garlic, and it made a nice treat.

 

[fbelec]

looks great. i usually make two pizza's so i could make the first pizza on the stone but would be out of luck for the second. my wife said to me that i should cook the dough a few minutes then pull it out and load the toppings. the last time i preheated the oven to 500 with the stone in it. funny how the stone turned black when i heated it.

 

[begreen]

I've got a lodge cast iron 12 inch really heavy but live it. You are 100% right kenny I coat it after washing non stick now.

Now if I could master stretching dough my pizza would be much better and half the work

We use a stone for pizza. No heavy metal for our dough.

 

[fbelec]

i like using my pizza stone duaeGuttae is using a sticky dough i been told make a dry dough so it doesn't stick to anything and to let it rest for 20 minutes before i touch it

 

[DuaeGuttae]

looks great. i usually make two pizza's so i could make the first pizza on the stone but would be out of luck for the second. my wife said to me that i should cook the dough a few minutes then pull it out and load the toppings. the last time i preheated the oven to 500 with the stone in it. funny how the stone turned black when i heated it.

I usually make two pizzas, too, though the one I pictured was a loner. I only had enough tomatoes on the counter to make a small batch of sauce, and we were running low on cheese as well. I actually have two pizza stones, a smaller one received as a wedding present and a larger one we bought once our family grew. I also have two other stone baking sheets, and all get regular use. I find them particularly helpful when I make crackers as I just roll the dough out of the sheets and cut whatever shapes I'm using right on the stone.

 

[begreen]

First time attempt at making bagels. Looking good and the house smells great. Waiting for them to cool down now.