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[martinuzz]

Just made an experimental courgette soup, and it worked out awesome! Great refreshing summer soup, great both hot as well as cold.

To make a big pan of soup, for about 4-6 people you need:
- half a bulb of garlic (about 5-6 cloves)
- 1 large onion
- 2 tomatoes
- 3 courgettes
- a small cup (125g) of sour cream
- a couple of branches of fresh lemon thyme
- italian herbs (oregano, basil, thyme, savory)
- white pepper
- black pepper
- cumin seed powder
- salt
- olive oil
- one huge frying pan, or wok
- one soup pan
- a blender (hand-held works best)

First, cut the onion, clean the garlic, and chop the tomatoes into parts (gently, don't squeeze out all the fluid, use a serrated knife, steak knives are awesome for tomato cutting). Slice the courgettes in half, then chop them into about 1cm thick slices.

Put some olive oil in a frying pan or wok, once it's hot, put in the onions. When the onions start smelling nice and sweet, add tomatoes and a good whiff of italian herbs.
Once the tomatoes are starting to smell sweet from frying, add garlic, fry for another half minute, then take it off the fire.
Put this mix in a bowl, or in the pan you are going to make the soup in.
Now add some more olive oil to the wok, heat it up again, and add all the courgette slices.

Spice those with some cumin seed powder (not too much or it will dominate the soup and ruin the sour cream's freshness), a lot of white pepper, and some black pepper.
Stirfry the courgettes on a high flame until they are done (but not well-done and slimey). You have to keep stirring / wok-throwing them so the don't burn. Once they are done, you can smell them becoming slightly sweet flavoured.
Boil 1.5 liters of water. I use a water cooker, it's nice and fast, but you can just as well use a pan or kettle.
Now put the stirfried courgettes in your soup pan, put it on the fire, and mix the tomato/onion/garlic with it. Add 125g of sour cream, 1.5l of boiling water, and use a blender to turn the whole mess into a smooth creamy soup.
Add salt according to your own personal taste.

Serve with a few branches of fresh lemon-thyme. Enjoy.

[Mephisto]

gently, don't squeeze out all the fluid, use a serrated knife, steak knives are awesome for tomato cutting

You need to sharpen your straight knives.

[Sheb]

gently, don't squeeze out all the fluid, use a serrated knife, steak knives are awesome for tomato cutting

You need to sharpen your straight knives.

I didn't want to be that guy who blabber about sharp knives, so it's good that Mephisto took the fall, but yeah.

[Mephisto]

We made almost-vegan puttanesca last week.

Saute garlic and onion in olive oil. Add tomato (note to self: "crushed tomato" has no solids; next time use stewed tomato and crush it yourself). Simmer for a while. Toss in chopped black olives, finely-chopped capers (I didn't do a good enough job; periodically I'll get an overwhelming caper taste), and choppedmushed anchovies. Dump in an irresponsible amount of oregano, parsley, basil, and pepper. You won't need salt. Cook until tasty, then throw in spiralized butternut squash, cooking until it's done. Don't cook it until it's got the mouthfeel of pasta or you'll just turn it to mush.

It was great the day of. It's still pretty amazing two days later.

[Yoink]

My impromptu pre-dawn stir-fry adventure was pleasant enough, but now it's time for the even wilder RICE SANDWICH RAMPAGE! Weeeeew!

[TD1]

Any recommendations for simple food to make the night before and bring into work? Preferably cheap.

[Kagus]

Brown rice, potentially a can of tuna if you're into that or some chicken if you're not, sesame (why the fuck was "sesame" not a recognized word? This phone dictionary is awful) seeds, dress lightly with soy sauce and toasted sesame oil, and maybe a pinch of salt if the soy sauce didn't already do it for you.

This used to be my dad's go-to for simple, effective eats. It keeps reasonably well, can be eaten hot or cold, provides a good, steady blood sugar level and is filling.

There was a time when some health professionals came to his office building to have a demonstration about blood fat content (this was back when cholesterol was actually Satan), and showed a sample of "ideal blood" before comparing it microscopically with samples taken from some of the employees.

When they got to my dad and compared his blood to the ideal control sample, they said "huh... yours actually has less fat in it than the control. That's impressive".

[Rolan7]

I put a heaping serving of noodles in my rice cooker while I cooked a plate of eggs from my housemate's family farm.  As I ate the eggs, I microwaved a styrofoam plate of tater tots for one minute, then canceled the rice cooker, drained the noodles, and dumped them on the unevenly-thawed tots.
Then I poured the last of the probably-should-have-been refrigerated Texas Pete all over the noodles.

The frozen taters help with the spicy burn.  Aw yeah, haute cuisine righte here 

Housemate came home and asked what I was doing.  "Runk!"  "Right on!" he replied, and offered me something smokeable.

[WealthyRadish]

I tried a "no-knead" bread recipe that someone recommended, and it turned out well (even without making adjustments for high elevation). I would have never thought of baking a loaf in a pot, but it does actually work better than a pan or sheet in my opinion. Not having to knead isn't that big of a deal, but it saves a bit of time.

[Kagus]

"Runk!"

As an aside, this is the slang word for masturbation in Norwegian.

[Trekkin]

I tried making ship's biscuit with soy sauce instead of the water and salt and I'm amazed at how tangy and chewy they are.

[nenjin]

Made the best Chicken Fried Rice ever, using a youtube video tutorial.

And I did it without a wok in a regular non-stick pan on an electric stove!

PREP: It really, really helps with this dish if you prep all your ingredients ahead of time. Stir fry cooking is on a timer of sorts, you can't leave the pan alone for more than 30 seconds without something burning. So prep all your veggies, chicken, seasonings and liquid portions ahead of time!

You cook your rice first (making sure to wash the excess starch off before you do) and set it aside to cool. Use medium or short grain rices as they retain moisture much better than long grain rice, which tends to give you the dry middle eastern/indian style of rice.

While the rice is cooking and cooling is the ideal time to prep the rest of your ingredients.

Once your rice is at the cooling stage, get a pan hot on the stove. I'd say just a notch below "high" on an electric stove. Make sure your pan is actually hot before adding oil.

Start with oil. (Can be olive oil, vegetable, coconut. Most kinds will work.) If your oil isn't sliding around the pan with the consistency of almost water, your pan isn't hot enough yet.

Crack 1 or 2 eggs in the pan, start scrambling. The key to stir fry is to keep the shit in the pan moving around while on as high a heat as you can manage without stuff sticking or burning.

Once the yokes are cooking in, you throw in your very fine diced skinless chicken (diced fine for fast cooking times.)

Toss that around and get the chicken 80% cooked (or when you see the egg starting to brown.)

Then toss in your onion, your chopped garlic. Let that saute a minute. Keep tossing it around in the pan.

Then toss in your green onion. Mushrooms, carrot, water chestnut, peas if you're using them as well. Keep moving it around the pan and cook until most of these ingredients are soft and starting to sweat. In the case of mushrooms, they will continue to reduce in size throughout the cooking process.

Now add your mostly cool, cooked rice. It's going to be sticky so break up the chunks in the pan.

Now is the time when you have to move the fastest because that rice will start to brown and eventually burn after too long.

If you're on an electric stove, you can reduce the heat a little bit. (But only a little!)

Immediately after the rice goes in, add some sesame oil. This is to replenish the oil in the pan that everything else has soaked up.

Add your dry seasoning at this time. Garlic powder, salt, a little black pepper, maybe some onion powder, maybe some ginger powder.

IMPORTANT FLAVOR STEP #1: Crush up a chicken bouillon cube and season the stir fry with it. Seriously, this one ingredient has made my fried rice taste more like restaurant fried rice than anything else I've tried!

At this point, you're going to start having rice stick to the pan no matter what you do. DO NOT REDUCE HEAT! You may have to "scrape" the bottom of the pan to get the rice sticking to the bottom up. It won't be burned per se....unless you let it sit for 45 seconds or more. So you do this constant pattern of scrape/flip/scrape/flip as you're cooking through this section. If you were using a wok you'd be tossing and flipping the ingredients around like a crazy person and wouldn't have to be as deliberate. But if you're making due with just a regular non-stick pan you have to exercise a little more control.

After you've gotten the seasonings in the rice, and have tossed it around so it's all evenly coated in the sesame oil.....

Add soy sauce. Don't use too much! Believe me, when it comes to the flavor, less is absolutely more! For an average serving of this dish (say 1/2 cup of rice) use no more than 1 tablespoon of soy sauce. Too much won't ruin it but the color will be off and it will be hella salty. (For reference, between the chicken bouillon cube and 1 tbsp of soy sauce, this dish alone has like 110% of your daily recommended dose of salt!)

Toss and mix the rice with the soy sauce until it's evenly coated. Continue to scrape/flip the rice. Let it cook for another oh 30 seconds to a minute.

FINAL FINISHING FLAVOR STEP: Cut a square of butter off the stick and slap it right on top of the rice and toss it around until it's melted. This gives the rice its final, buttery richness that really makes it come alive. And because you do it only a minute or so before serving, the butter flavor really sits on top of everything.

Takes about 10 to 15 minutes total cooking time. When you add the prep and rice cooking time, the whole meal takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour 15 minutes depending on how fast you move.

I loved this recepie so much I made it for a week straight.

[Caz]

I have created a surprisingly tasty wallpaper paste from mung dal, tomatoes, garlic, salt and spices.

Actually makes a good dip to go with crackers.

[Rose]

That just sounds like you didn't add enough water to a standard dal recipe.

[Caz]

That just sounds like you didn't add enough water to a standard dal recipe.

I think I cooked it too long. Still getting the hang of this pressure cooker.