Photos of what you cook and bake

[Izzy]

oh well, that’s a definitely no for me… fresh raspberries only with a hint of 19% cream to enhance the flavour…

[Axa]

@Refugee

I like how 50% cream retains some lightness, 100% cream is too rich for me…In the end it’s all about personal tastes isn’t it, there’s no wrong answer.

Or a matter of seasons. Right now we have “summer”.

During the winter, I come back home after spending a couple hours outside and I happily take a bite of the butter bar. No such thing as “too rich flavor” when I’m shivering.

[bossybaby]

Schizoid cooking–It’s warm enough to want light summery fare, yet the rain, wind, and gray skies call for comforting food. Here’s the compromise: zucchini “ravioli.” Seriously degorged zucchini slices are arranged in a lattice to hold a vegetarian filling of well-drained ricotta. The trick is to dry the ingredients out so you don’t end up with soup. The ricotta is mixed with sautéed scallions and arugula (or you can use spinach), one egg yolk for binding, parmesan, garlic, and a dollop of pesto (in this case bärlauch/hazelnut), seasoned with salt and pepper. Fold into a packet.

On top go my previously-made marinara sauce,

slices of mozzarella, and a dusting of parmesan.

It bakes for about 40 minutes at 180C until it puffs and browns.

Each “raviolo” lifts out with a broad spatula to sit neatly on a plate. A delicious use of what will soon become an avalanche of zucchini.

[bossybaby]

Can we pretend it’s summer? After all, it is June. Rich prawn bisque with coconut milk, shallot, carrot, red curry paste, and coriander provides warmth.

Then the oddest but one of the better things I’ve tasted lately: marinated watermelon with whipped feta. I had bought a small round seedless melon, not with high hopes for its ripeness, but it’s been hot in Spain and the flesh was sweet and ridiculously juicy. Slabs of melon are marinated for 30 minutes in a dressing of lime juice, ginger juice, shallot, Greek olive oil, and shreds of mint. The Greek feta is whipped with yoghurt to lighten it. Once on the plate, I scattered more basil and the mint which is threatening world domination from its pot on the terrace, and ground toasted pink and black peppercorns got flung about. The tiny flowers are from the Black Lace elderflower that is now in perfumed bloom. It was delightfully tasty, light, and yet satisfying.

.

[Refugee]

@bossybaby

Greek feta

I legitimately and without exaggeration have only missed adding feta to sex, everything else involving taste is better off with it.

[Edot]

Have made a similar salad with watermelon, feta (not whippedj, black olives, mint and a lime dressing with a little sweetness.

[bossybaby]

I do, too, picked up in our days in Dubai. But I’d never seen melon marinated, and it really makes a difference. Also ginger and so much pepper, especially pink peppercorns, make it more interesting.

[Refugee]

Attempted a supposed unicorn: three different proteins to come out equally correctly cooked, at the same time:

Ribeye for the wife, ribs for me and daughter #1, salmon for daughter #2 who doesn’t like meat much. I dropped my universe-sized ego and consulted with chatGPT, it spewed out a load of crap. It all came out on time and tasting delicious.

Weber Spirit E-310, heated up well, chucked the ribeye with burner at full blast, mid burner in the middle, salmon burner at low. Flipped the ribeye just before taking the pic and then turned burner to low. Closed lid, naturally, as “lookin’ ain’t cookin’”, about 15 mins, medium rare ribeye, fall off the bone ribs, moist salmon.

[Slammer]

Here is a nice sourdough recipe I found.
Seems that scientists were able to cultivate yeast found in Ötzi’s, the 5300 year old icemans’ intestine and make bread from it.
Seems that they are going to try and make brewskies next…
Anybody up for a culinary adventure?

[Refugee]

@gaburko

one of the most underestimated cuisines out there.

Yeah, there are several issues: we don’t market it well, the memes about lambs on a spit, idiotic kitschy restaurants with plastic columns, plate smashing and “opa!”are still a thing, lack of adaptation to something less rustic (it’s a trend in GR for many years now, but unsure if outside of it).

@Ace

It’s as interesting in its variability as anything else. Cheese, onion and meat pies are found throughout the Aegean, for example, but pretty much every island has it’s own version which it will proudly proclaim to be better than anyone else’s. And pretty much every taverna has a different take on such staples as Moussaka, always good in every version we’ve tried.

Yeah, I love that! A happy result of being a geography where nearly no place is far from both the sea and mountains, poor connections between settlements meaning regional variations took root and developed, vertical climate variability allowing several different types of plants to flourish, largely limited and poor soil and poor population - but love of food! - meaning people made an effort to make something tasty with everything they had available, strict religious rules imposing fasts (and hence, need to eat creative to eat something tasty) and last but not least a long history and being at a crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa. I can make pork in wine with quinces for Christmas and think it’s possible that Socrates enjoyed that dish too

But, again, I need to hand it to the Italians, they bring finesse along with rustic.

Edit: not to be even more memeworthy myself!

I don’t claim there’s no seasonality and regionality elsewhere. Japan comes to mind for “sea and mountain, separated communities”, but that’d apply to several other places.

Even maligned English cooking is really pretty good and reflective of the place, if you manage to find it! Dorothy Hartley’s Food in England and its spiritual child, Marwood Yeatman’s The Last Food of England are borderline ethnographic, and record the richness of the food of broadly the UK. Sadly, the Brits went the way of quantity over quality, something other Europeans never surrendered to. I learnt to bake bread when living in the UK because while there were many high quality flours there, even the best bread you could buy was substandard. That said, London is a food capital for at least 100 years. Escoffier was there, and many more chefs came out of the UK, the Roux family, White, Ramsay, Blanc, Blumenthal and many others. And let’s not forget, it’s a city where you can get any cuisine cooked by real locals who learnt on their grandmas’ knees. Sometimes the grandma is still there herself! You want [insert country] cooked by [insert country]? There’d be at least a handful of restaurants even for the most obscure culture.

[bossybaby]

Norwegian scientific article on rancid oils–fish, olive, butter.

Why you should store olive oil in the fridge

[Refugee]

Pick an answer:

1. Very authoritative given Norway’s millennia old tradition of olive farming!

2. If it has time to go rancid you ain’t doin’ it right!

Granted, agree with the point about having it in green or brown glass bottles, or stainless steel for real user quantities. Fancy oils sold in clear glass bottles more fitting perfumes are for posers

My grandma used to store her locally-produced olive oil in a 150L steel barrel in her cellar, used to pump it out with a funny hand pump for use in the kitchen, the barrel also had a tap at the bottom to drain out the dregs, which she’d mix into chicken feed (a random mash of mostly wheat chaff and whatever vegetable peels she had that day). I think that barrel had never been washed for 50 years, it was sticky with thousands of oil microspills that had plasticised, crusted dust and trapped insects.
Me and my cousins were afraid of this barrel, but were even more afraid of the STINKY barrel of salted cod a local general store kept, especially after a kid in the village told us it had a human body at the bottom.

[bossybaby]

@Refugee

1. Very authoritative given Norway’s millennia old tradition of olive farming!
2. f it has time to go rancid you ain’t doin’ it right!

1. Well, science is science, whatever country it comes from. This was meant as a reminder to those who buy giant supermarket “olive oil” and keep it in the pantry for months.
2. I buy artisan oil in small amounts and use it up quickly, so I keep it in the cool kitchen at around 16C.

[Refugee]

Agreed, scientist by training here, that’s why I said pick an answer, sort of like the devil on one side of the head, and maybe leprechaun on the other

[bossybaby]

I’ve had enough drizzle! Got started on tomorrow’s dinner, based on Spanish ingredients, in order to let it develop. Seared coins of hot chorizo, then added 2 cloves of minced garlic, a bay leaf, two big sprigs of thyme, a teaspoon of pimentón, and cooked gently. Tipped in a tin of tomatoes and a cup of chicken stock and 50ml of fino Sherry. Rinsed a jar of garbanzo beans from León and added them too. Cooked it down lidless for 30 minutes, adding a little tomato paste to thicken, and some Jerez vinegar along the way. Found it was too acid and needed a tablespoon of brown sugar. Yummy.

[rainer_d]

That’ll do

[bossybaby]

We love turkey–it’s reasonably priced, tender, juicy, no-waste, easy to cook for a quick dinner. Tonight, a takeoff on poulet a l’estragon. Rather messy presentation, I must say, but very tasty. I sliced a turkey inner filet crosswise and then into 1cm collops against the grain. Trimmed and pounded them all to the same thickness, seared almost done in EVOO (only takes a couple of minutes), removed to rest. Sautéed shallot and garlic until transparent, then poured in white wine and reduced. I find Vermouth too strong, so I mix a bit into the wine. Anyway, I had no choice: Some mouse had gotten to the bottle, and there were only a couple of tablespoons left. In go chopped fresh tarragon from the now-thriving French plant given me by the Lovely Ursula, grindings of black pepper, lemon zest, a touch of Maille Dijon mustard, any juices from the resting turkey. Fierce reduction, then add just a touch of rich local cream; the kind where you have to scrape off the underside of the lid. (Potato starch to thicken only if you don’t have the patience for reduction.) Add back the turkey and warm in the sauce. Top with lots of fresh tarragon and black pepper and serve with steamed zucchini. Perfect for a spring evening.

[Slammer]

Ok, send some over.

[Refugee]

Oof, I’ll replicate this at some point, sounds amazing - if heavy for summer.

Norther Greece has more of a tradition of adding sausage/smoked meat to legumes (I’m from Athens/south) but I do it too from time to time.

[bossybaby]

@Refugee

if heavy for summer.

Haha…you don’t know “summer” here–it can snow in July. In fact, we had a dusting to 1800m the other night. Hence my mixing of winter and summer foods. One day we have 28C, the next half that.