Cooking tips and wonderful flavour combinations

luka

Well-known member
it was a minimal recipe.

mix fish sauce with half its amount of tamarind juice, add cut lemongrass, chilli and mint to taste. combine with roasted beef, sliced green apple eggplants and eschallots.

eschallots means spring onions in this context. its the bloke behind the best thai place in sydney. its so far ahead of anything in london it would blow your mind. london doesnt have thai food. i didnt realise that until i came over here.
 

andrea128

New member
Um, no explanation needed for this one. Fire at will!

On the flavour front I'll proffer -

- courgettes w/lemon (from inspiration on another thread);
- rice w/ sumac and butter;
- obvious, but chili with chocolate and cherry;
- Roquefort (or Dolcelatte/Gorgonzola/Saint Agur etc) and Parmesan and spinach (on gnocchi);
- parsley/anchovy/garlic/olive oil/balsamic (w/old bread for pesto)

Will post others this afternoon as and when they pop into my hungry head...


This really looks complicated to me but I think it's exciting and interesting to try them all.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Buy some Roquefort and parmesan, grate/crumble into some milk while heating it up gently, it'll thicken gradually. Then wilt some spinach in a frying pan with a bit of water, and add. Pour over pasta - easy!
 

Numbers

Well-known member
Not to be pedantic, but pouring any sauce over cooked and served pasta is good for adverts and phony cook shows. What you really should try to do, is to cook the pasta one minute less than indicated on the box and then -here it comes- toss it in the sauce pan and stir it together with your sauce on a wide fire for just a minute. The result is pasta cooked perfectly al dente and a much richer taste.

Maybe it won't look like the pasta in those glossy gourmet magazines, but that's only because those compositions are meant for photographing, not for eating.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
? Um, try not missing the point of the post, which was the recipe and not the final line?! Thanks for the mindblowing tip which i was previously unaware of, anyways.
 

Numbers

Well-known member
? Um, try not missing the point of the post, which was the recipe and not the final line?! Thanks for the mindblowing tip which i was previously unaware of, anyways.

Sorry, I didn't mean to come off harsh. The recipe sounds absolutely good. Very close to the classic, Italian side-dish of stirred spinach with garlic and finished off with parmesan, by the way. The addition of blue cheese should be good.
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
can someone tell me the secret(s) of making great gnocchi please? i want light fluffy gnocchi, not the gluey dumplings that i am prone to making...
 

you

Well-known member
Buy some Roquefort and parmesan, grate/crumble into some milk while heating it up gently, it'll thicken gradually. Then wilt some spinach in a frying pan with a bit of water, and add. Pour over pasta - easy!

Not to be pedantic, but pouring any sauce over cooked and served pasta is good for adverts and phony cook shows. What you really should try to do, is to cook the pasta one minute less than indicated on the box and then -here it comes- toss it in the sauce pan and stir it together with your sauce on a wide fire for just a minute. The result is pasta cooked perfectly al dente and a much richer taste.

Maybe it won't look like the pasta in those glossy gourmet magazines, but that's only because those compositions are meant for photographing, not for eating.

I love spinach and often make blue cheese + spinach concoctions. I never add water to spinach, I feel it's got enough in it already to wilt its-bad-self on it's own, I wilt it with loads of butter and nutmeg, nutmeg seems to really bring out the spinachy flavour well and goes with blue cheese too! Blue cheese and spinach in pasta is great though isn't it!

As for pasta, i'm a pleb, I don't like al dente pasta, I like it over cooked and mushy and slippery, I want a pacifying, mushy mouthful to comfort/nourish me none of this uptight al dente shite, save that for greens.....
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Top tips this week for pretending you've made more effort than you really have:
Landcress and parmesan go really nicely. I suspect the same would be true of watercress. Straight salad of watercress, maybe a few neutral leaves (we have radish leaves from the garden), walnut oil / lemon juice dressing, curls of shaved parmesan on top = posh looking starter for very little effort.

Also you can posh up bananas and cream by adding a couple of tsps of decent scotch and a few drops of vanilla essence to some whipped cream, piling that on top of a bowl of sliced banana and then scattering toasted almonds and a few drops of maple syrup on top.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
try this motherfucker:

fry an onion till soft in a frying pan, and then add chunks of cooking chorizo and chopped garlic. fry for a few minutes, and then add potatoes sliced thinly (like 5mm thick). add enough boiling water to cover the potatoes by about a centimeter. When the water is mostly boiled off so you have a thick sauce, the potatoes will be done.

add a bit of lemon juice and some chopped parsley. it's lovely and it's getting me through winter. eating this, i can pretend it's sunny outside but it's also a really hearty meal.
 

luka

Well-known member
add some pear to that salad big brother slothrop.

oatcakes and stilton. thats a good recipe.
 

muser

Well-known member
made some lush scrambled eggs today, roasted a decent pinch of whole cumin & corriander seeds in a pan till you can smell/see a bit of smoke, take them out and grind up, then heat up some butter put the ground mixture back in for a bit before adding eggs & chopped parlsey.

Its all about the roasted cumin/corriander combo basicslly though roasting completely changes the flavour, worth trying just for the aroma you get even.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
lemon (rind and juice) and parmesan is the nicest food combination ever...

with the scrambled eggs/omelette, try chili/garlic/root ginger/buttery onions. you could doubtless add either cumin or coriander to that too. The ginger in partic lifts it amazingly.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
try this motherfucker:

fry an onion till soft in a frying pan, and then add chunks of cooking chorizo and chopped garlic. fry for a few minutes, and then add potatoes sliced thinly (like 5mm thick). add enough boiling water to cover the potatoes by about a centimeter. When the water is mostly boiled off so you have a thick sauce, the potatoes will be done.

add a bit of lemon juice and some chopped parsley. it's lovely and it's getting me through winter. eating this, i can pretend it's sunny outside but it's also a really hearty meal.

Slater has a recipe very similar to this, except he adds dry sherry (or white wine, I guess). Really good, made it years ago a few times but should do it again, thanks for reminding! Nice with a couple of bay leaves, too.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
lemon (rind and juice) and parmesan is the nicest food combination ever...

with the scrambled eggs/omelette, try chili/garlic/root ginger/buttery onions. you could doubtless add either cumin or coriander to that too. The ginger in partic lifts it amazingly.
Yeah, when I read musers post my first thought was that some onions would go in there nicely.

Chilli / spring onion / fresh coriander also goes well in scrambled egg. Although smoked fish (salmon or mackerel), dill and black pepper is the unassailable champion.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
sounds big. do you parboil the beans or anything, or just roast them?

no, didn't need to (i'm sure you could, but only takes 12-15 mins anyways). Idea is that while beans don't have much sugar so there's not much caramelisation, they have (lots of?) protein and so you get Maillard reactions. I'd never thought of it til I read something on the 'net eulogising about Maillard. Did the same side-dish two nights running, first with parboiled beans and then with roasted. The first was okay, perfectly pleasant, the second just killed it, esp with balsamic too.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/vegetables-high-in-protein.html - quite useful in deciding which other unlikely veg to roast

@Slothrop - will give the mackerel one a go, never done it. Still meaning to try the classic French sweet omelette with banana, but I'm too scared it will go hideously wrong...
 
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