ramonasaur's Profile
When yogurt separates - mix it in or drain it?
when I make yogurt I let it drain in the fridge and then drink the 12 oz or so of clear greenish yellow whey as a treat. when it's cold and there's enough to gulp down, instead of the cloudy little pools that spoil the texture of your yogurt, it's super refreshing and supposedly has a lot of riboflavin (tho I am boyfacting the nutritional part -- it just tastes bracingly good, with that kind of slippery texture that coconut water has, only sour instead of sweet).
using cooked fish bones/heads for stock?
ive been freezing the piles of spiky slop left over from whole fried porgies to make stock -- spines, tails, scraps of skin, and whatever mush and jaws are left of the heads after we are done with them. do you think it would work to make fish stock from this cooked material? or must the heads and bones be raw for good stock?
advice much appreciated.
toor dal recipes?
thanks jungmann -- i just did. i used too much water (4:1) but the split dal cooked quickly and i ended up pureeing it into a soup with coconut oil and some chicken fat, and ginger and garlic and a hot green pepper and tomatoes and lime... pretty good.
uses for small dried fish
these are all good ideas! thank you! i was thinking too of that moist little mound of dried fish (or shrimp?) that is part of malaysian nasi lemak...
i ate some (pretty good but i think these are maybe for cooking) and tried rehydrating in cold water for a few minutes before draining and mixing into a pan of fried kale and tomatoes. they made the water bright yellow.
toor dal recipes?
what recipes do you like? i want to cook some plain comforting toor dal too, but i don't have a pressure cooker. what are your favorite methods?
uses for small dried fish
hey you guys, how do you use/prepare dried fish, the small anchovy-ish kind?
and can you just snack on them? i'm really hungry, so please say yes.
i have a big bag of sea king brand little guys from the desi supermarket (anchovies/ kiski / corica soborna), about an inch and a half long.
How do you keep your schmaltz?
What else do you guys do with chicken fat ? I've only really used it to reheat cooked rice and to melt a bit on top of a bowl of chicken soup (delicious). Potatoes and liver sound amazing. But what else?
why are some cheeses wrapped in plantain leaves?
thimes, thanks! that's so interesting.
why are some cheeses wrapped in plantain leaves?
(and it's a plastic clamshell package, so it doesn't seem like the leaf has a handling or insulation or moisture-retention purpose, like with those little sticky rice snack bundles you can buy in chinatown)
why are some cheeses wrapped in plantain leaves?
does anyone know if the plantain leaf that came draped over the mexican farmer's cheese i just bought serves a function, or if it's just decoration?
the package says "with plantain leaf" on it, so it seems like a thing.
thanks!
using an already boiled carcass for stock?
i just made chicken stock, or maybe it's soup -- either way my g will be eating it with noodles tomorrow night -- using a 3-lb whole chicken, the usual vegetables browned in a little bacon fat, and a piece of kombu. i simmered it until it fell apart, more than an hour, then pulled the bird out and shredded the meat.
my question is: may i freeze the already boiled bones and/or skin for future stock, or throw them back into the strained liquid and cook them for a million more hours to release the jello, or have they already given me all they can? i've only read about using roasted or raw carcasses.
commence getting bossy about stock, soup, the distinctions between them, the insults i am committing against chicken, etc. i know i'm probably doing it wrong, and i love to be schooled about cooking. (for real.)
Best Brooklyn Frozen Dumplings?
if dumplings may be interpreted to include pelmeni, pierogis, etc, the golden farm on church ave and e 4th st (off of the church ave F/G stop in kensington) has a good frozen and refrigerated selection -- pork, pork/beef combo, veal, sauerkraut, potato/cheese -- some of them made just down the block at church & e 5th. $3-5 for a sack of pelmeni or a dozen pierogies. the delis nearby on church do too, but golden farm is 24 hours.
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Golden Farm
329 Church Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11218
reveal the identity of these meaty uzbek strips
no rind, just dark red/brown meat. that sounds good, though!
kavkaz (kavkaze / kavkazi) food in kensington/ditmas/midwood?
thanks all. if anyone eats at these spots, report back!
reveal the identity of these meaty uzbek strips
thanks pbsf! i wiki'd basturma in my initial post-meaty strip research phase and it seemed like a possibility.
reveal the identity of these meaty uzbek strips
my g and i sometimes go to this really sweet uzbek (possibly merely russian and uzbek-themed) place in northeast philadelphia, where everything is super cheap and delicious.
one time, out of recklessness, contrariness, or lagman fatigue, we ordered their greek salad. it was not greek salad, but a pile of shredded lettuce, tomato wedges, and crumbled mild farmer's cheese. but it was really good. scattered all over it were these small, chewy, almost hard little cured meat strips. they were dark dark red, smooth, and funky/salty, more like a very dense prosciutto than like a flaky thready beef jerky. what are these things? does anyone know? i want to order them in bulk and put them on everything.
thank you !!
kavkaz (kavkaze / kavkazi) food in kensington/ditmas/midwood?
has anyone tried the kavkaze spots on ditmas near mcdonald ave? (one had a star of david, an american flag, and a flag i didn't recognize in the window.) what's kavkaz(i/e) cuisine like? where are some good places to sample it?
thanks!
favorite brooklyn butchers
oh man, i wish i knew which one you meant -- i live right off of church. i'll look for the sign you mentioned. there's one butcher on the strip -- might be the albanian one, but i don't want to talk smack because i'm not sure, since there's a bunch of them close together -- where i've seen the guys that work there pull carcasses with like soggy paper towels and bits of trash stuck to them off of the bare floor of a van (sometimes with pieces of cardboard box kinda unevenly covering the floor), put them in bare shopping carts and wheel them into the store. this one goat's head was jammed up against a parking meter while they pulled out the other carcasses. maybe afterward they somehow clean the carcasses (and the shopping carts, and the floor of the van). i'm sure most supermarket meat is processed just as haphazardly or worse, and maybe it doesn't really matter, since you're cooking it anyway. anyway. i'll look for that sign!
edited to add that i actually don't know how butchers usually handle whole carcasses -- i guess you gotta get a giant dead animal from wherever it's slaughtered to your store somehow.
favorite brooklyn butchers
i haven't cooked much meat at home and i want to start. what are your favorite brooklyn butchers? i live in south brooklyn but have a car. i'd be especially grateful for suggestions about where to buy organic chicken (besides whole foods) -- but mainly i want to know your favorites.
freekeh freekeh freekeh
i just got some & the instructions on the back are minimal -- what freekeh preparations do you like best? any tips are welcome. thanks!
why does my sauerkraut smell like farts?
thanks maria & firefly!
what's an airlock? i used a big wide-mouth jar. i weighted the cabbage down with a sterilized glass bottle filled with water -- it fit pretty snugly in the mouth of the jar, but there was a little space around it (like enough to slide a butterknife into). and the cabbage juice didn't come all the way up to the mouth of the jar, so there was some air in there. there was lots of foam from the bubbles that escaped the fermenting kraut, but i didn't see any green or red streaks.
my friend just uses a plate weighted with a rock on top of her cabbage, and her kraut smells nice. i'm so mad!
why does my sauerkraut smell like farts?
other people's homemade kraut is tart and delicious. why does my first batch smell like farts? i know the fermentation process is smelly, but the end product isn't supposed to be. maybe i should have let it ferment longer -- i couldn't wait more than a week. the only other things in there are kosher salt, nigella seeds and mustard seeds. it tastes good but smells so yucky. why why why why why?
what *is* that foamy scum on chicken soup?
the foam/scum that rises to the top when you make meat broth -- first feathery, then white and foamy -- what is it? where does it come from? why does it have to be skimmed off?
seasoning cast iron: contradictory methods, and which is best?
thanks, todao! that site looks good.
seasoning cast iron: contradictory methods, and which is best?
i love cooking in and maintaining my housemates' cast irons. so when i moved to my new apartment, i bought a new lodge pan and a bunch of old nasty rusty mysterious-goo-covered ones off of craigslist that someone had been using as country kitsch wall decoration. i want to clean and season them properly, but the methods i've found online contradict each other wildly -- some say to clean the crud off with soap, others forbid any soap even for the initial cleaning. some recommend steel wool, others frown on it. vinegar soaks? baking the rust and goo off? what to do? some seasoning methods require a lot of oil at very high heat, others a tiny bit at 200 degrees. the times vary too.
so, do all of these particulars of temperature, heating time, and cleaning method actually affect the pan, or would basically any combination of scrubbing, oil, and heat do the trick? what do you all swear by?
thanks, you guys!
why do so many vietnamese restaurants have numbers in their names?
ewsflash, i'm with you.
