Gochujang Mushroom Ragu Pasta
Gochujang Mushroom Ragu Pasta
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- 3
- Comments
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- Joined
- 3 yr. ago
- Posts
- 3
- Comments
- 15
- Joined
- 3 yr. ago
Cooking @lemmy.world Knowing the Western bias against short-grain rice, I made an interesting experiment once. I had invited the chef from Harry’s Bar in Venice to Japan, and I asked him to make a risotto. I told him we had many varieties and grades of short-grain rice in Japan and asked him to select the one best for his recipe from a large variety of samples from all over Japan. I had simply numbered each one, so he had no idea of how they were rated here. He boiled the different kinds and sampled each one, and finally said, without any hesitation at all, “This is it!” It was sasa-nishiki, the rice we rate the very highest quality of all! We may not be far wrong in considering Japan a rice paradise.
I vividly remember reading this part of Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art (10/10 cookbook) and being enamored with the idea of risotto from rice grown outside Italy. High end Japanese rice works wonderfully, as does Carolina Gold.
I haven’t written anything like this down, but this would be a close approximation.
Fruit Mousse
Yield approximately 20 fl oz
- 1 can evaporated milk
- 6 fl oz sweetened condensed milk
- Fruit, to taste
- Egg whites, as needed
Freeze the evaporated milk in a mixing bowl. Once frozen, whip to stiff peaks. Fold in condensed milk.
Blend the fruit to very smooth. Fold into milk mixture.
This mixture won’t set with time, so if you want more body whip egg whites to stiff peaks and fold in as needed.
Evaporated milk does whip beautifully if it’s cold enough. The condensed milk could be subbed out for 10x sugar, but it will add richness beyond the sugar.
Bird’s Milk cake with layers of shaved shingled pineapple. I’d want a really pretty top layer dressed with apricot glaze, which I don’t keep on hand but occasionally buy. It might be pretty difficult to cut even with a sharp knife, but I’d be willing to try.
Quick alternative: Pineapple mousse, salted peanuts, maybe a little shaved chocolate. Sincerely tempted to make that tomorrow.
Split poached shrimp/pepper coulis/barley crumble/basil/a good oil.
I think peppers and barley are rough. The lob is to puree the peppers or bake the barley into something… or both. Like me. To be honest I’m probably adding corn to that crumble.
Egg wash for presentation, but taste buds for reality, is it not?
Vrai! We eat first with our eyes… but we really eat with our mouths.
I have an affinity, really a longing, for foraged greens. Dandelion is up there, as are fiddlehead ferns, ramps, and wild onions. Number one is definitely morels, and the next time I go morel hunting I’ll definitely post whatever I cook.
I bought these, sadly. City living has its perks, but I wouldn’t trust the local dandelions either.
Cooking @lemmy.world Mushroom Galette
I think the cream, here, is an optical illusion. It’s two parts skyr and one part heavy cream, shaken with dill and a little salt, so thinner than actual sour cream, and it melted into the broth as I plated it. It’s probably only 30-40ml of dairy.
I would plate it with a shameful amount of sour cream, though. Next time for sure.
Unfortunately, while I enjoy regional breakdowns using cabbage or meat, or how the beets are cut or grated, this is mostly just me, so generic Eastern Europe filtered through Alice Waters’ sensibilities.
Any visual allure is a testament to beets.
I cooked this based on vibes using what I had on hand, I only bought the beets and the dill, but here’s the gist.
- 3 parts beets, peeled and julienned
- 1 part carrot, peeled and fine julienned
- 1 part parsnip, peeled and julienned
- 1 part yellow onion, julienned
- 1 part Yukon gold potato, cut into thin wedges, skin on, not much thicker at their widest point than the matchstick cuts
- Butter
Vegetable stock
Red wine vinegar, to taste
——
In a thick bottomed pot on medium heat, sweat the beets, carrots, parsnips, onion, and potato in butter until the onions are translucent. A little color is okay, but they don’t need to brown.
Barely cover with stock, simmer, and cover. Simmer until the veg is soft and the broth has taken on the color of the beets, stirring occasionally, some ten to fifteen minutes.
Finish with a splash of vinegar. Portion and garnish as desired.
——
I used four small-ish beets, three quarters of a pretty big onion, one average carrot, two small parsnips, and five small thin skinned potatoes. Probably a liter of stock. Even if my average and your average don’t match, the ratios are after the knife work, so more or less by weight. I finished with about 20ml of vinegar for the whole pot. The acidity helps the sweetness of the beets pop. It yielded around two liters.
To me only the beets and potato are strictly necessary. Throw in other vegetable and, in a fight, the beets will win.
The carrot being cut thinner is not a typo, I like how they cook down when they’re a bit thinner.
Cooking @lemmy.world Borscht!
I’m also worried about online recipes. Decent cookbooks routinely have recipes that benefit from adjustments or lack good instructions. Online recipes are already worse than that and AI is going to make them much worse. Sometimes you want a known good recipe.
In my experience the recipes in these seven books are particularly trustworthy. They deliver what they say on the tin, the listed quantities are good, and they’re well written.
- The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
- Bravetart by Stella Parks
- Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
- Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop
- Victuals by Ronni Lundy
- Mooncakes and Milkbread by Kristina Cho
- Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji
I wish I could add Mexican and maybe regional Indian cookbooks of this caliber, but I haven’t read any I liked this much. All the classic French books are also excellent and very reliable (Larousse, Bocuse, etc.), that’s kind of their thing. Joy of Cooking does cover similar ground.
I recommend two plant focused books, both deeper cuts.
- Vedge by Richard Landau and Kate Jacoby
- From the Earth by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo
I cooked through Vedge with a few skips during COVID and it’s haymaker after haymaker, I can’t heap enough praise on it. From the Earth is pretty dated, and sometimes that shows in the ingredients, but also shockingly solid.
To learn to cook from the ground up, I’d favor YouTube over books. The books work, but video simply conveys more information. And as lists of recipes I don’t find those books particularly useful.
Ruhlman’s Ratios is an extremely versatile cookbook for soups, sauces, batters, and doughs that walks through a mindset that will let someone easily overhaul recipes to fit their vision or what’s on hand. You can find it very cheap and I think it can help most okay to even amazing cooks improve.
I recommend looking for many of these used, online or in person, or skimming them in a library. The Joy of Cooking in particular is practically falling out of trees they’ve printed so many of them.
I had it as a textbook in culinary school, as do many people, and it’s the one I still routinely use. The recipes are rock solid. I use it mostly for very basic things, but I routinely get requests for those recipes, sometimes even from other chefs.
I also have a copy of an old King Arthur’s cookbook from the 80s that I find similarly useful and robust. Very seldom do I need a staple baking recipe that I can’t find from those two.
I’ve worn glasses about sixteen hours a day my entire adult life. Got my first pair around 10. Acclimating took maybe four or five days of minor discomfort. The improved vision was incredible and as a child I had child durability, so I didn’t mind the discomfort. I vividly remember how strange it felt for air to hit my face with glasses on while walking or running.
Every time I get a major prescription update it takes two or three days to feel “right”. Until then I have some disorientation. I would expect an adult who hasn’t consistently worn glasses to feel that more keenly.
If I had continued eye strain after three days of constant and consistent wear, I would call the optometrist. If it lasted a week and the optometrist was blowing me off I’d consider my options. Some prescriptions are better than others. I could tell you exactly when I got my best prescription, it was life changing. I didn’t know people could see like that. I’ve never had a “bad” prescription to the best of my knowledge, every time I’ve updated it has been an improvement.
Why would China be desperate?
China offers the cheapest high spec manufacturing in the world. If the US doesn’t buy that manufacturing, that leaves the rest of the world. Of course China wants American money, but it’s not going to devastate their economy in the short term. It’s a reasonable cost for providing China with so many opportunities, which they are aggressively pursuing, to cultivate deep seated international power.
The prevalence of Chinese manufacturing actually is a national problem for the US. While China has its pick of buyers, the US is stuck with one seller. The US should have been working for twenty years with India, Pakistan, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and maybe even some counties in Africa to create access to alternatives. It didn’t.
Weaning the US off Chinese manufacturing would take decades of elegant economic policy and diplomacy featuring several countries. China knows this is where it actually has power over the US.
The type of dice used can meaningfully impact this. The chance of a 2 or 12 rolling 2d6 is 1/36, the chance rolling 1d8+1d4 is 1/32. The chance of rolling 7 on 2d6, the most common result, is 1/6. The chance of rolling a 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 on a 1d8+1d4, all equally likely, is 1/8 each.
Unlike you I can’t begin to remember the elegant way to find this. I also assume Randall would have it at least close to right.
Tools are a good idea. Probably should follow your lead on that…
I’m mostly looking at whether I would have made any medium sized purchases in the next two yearsl. I might buy some little things in bulk, too, but if there’s any one time purchase where the price is going to jump $200, $300, $500, it’s time to make a decision.
For me that mostly means furniture. I already bought a pair of commodity IKEA bookshelves I’d been considering buying vs building. I might still build replacements, but I would still use what I just bought and domestic lumber won’t be directly subject to a tariff. I’m looking at buying a papasan chair and a mattress as well, probably in the next week or two.
I’ve also considered electronics, but there’s nothing I would buy in the next two years short of some PC components that I’m sure I’ll want. I bought a Quest 3 a while back and it’s been a great purchase.
I did go back through some of my online buying this year to see what I used. I’ll probably buy a few pairs of work shoes and some good soap.
The front facing sides of the pan manufacturers don’t know thickness because it impacts but isn’t performance. Steel mix of the cladding layers, thickness, and 3/5/7 layer construction inform the real performance factors: heat distribution, rate of heating, weight, and tendency to warp. ATK measures most of those things fairly well. I just skimmed a review on YouTube from Prudent Reviews that looks valuable, too.
You may be undervaluing the lid. There is a practical difference between a perfectly fitted lipped lid and a compatible lid that’s close.
You are correctly valuing the hole in the handle and the helper handle. Past a certain point of performance convenience is more important than better performance. If it’s hard to lift or stuck in a drawer you won’t use it as much. Same goes for weight, I have a cheap Yoshikawa saucier that I use constantly because it’s extremely light and good enough.
I would be more worried about warping on an induction cooktop than about riveted vs welded construction, or even a pan’s finish. My Matfer carbon steel frying pan has a welded handle that I think would survive use as a war club, but the cooking surface is warped. I’m not careful with it, but your peers might be no better.
In general All Clad deserves its strong reputation. Made In is also good, but I’ve used less of their stuff. I’ve tried a few stainless pans from other higher end brands and I don’t think they’re appreciably better. All on gas, sadly for this discussion.
If it isn’t already your plan, consider buying different tiers of pans based on your needs. Were I starting from scratch at home I’d skimp as mercilessly as necessary on everything else to afford one great frying pan. It does 90% of the work, it should get most of the budget.