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[Sappho]

I made gulas! Been living in the CZR for 6.5 years and never tried. I didn't realize how easy it is. The main ingredient is time.

1. Sautee a large onion, sliced thin, in a few spoonfuls of lard.
2. Add the meat - about 500g of beef shin, with most of the fat removed and cut into roughly equally-sized pieces (about 3-5 cm on a side is typical). In this country you can buy the meat pre-cut in the supermarket, but in the US or UK you probably have to cut it yourself. Brown the meat slightly on all sides.
3. Add 1 small can of tomato paste, 1 spoon of ground caraway, 2 spoons of paprika (I prefer spicy but sweet is fine too), and 2-3 cloves of minced garlic. Mix it all around and let the garlic cook for half a minute or so.
4. Add enough water to just cover the meat. Boil, cover, and simmer on the lowest possible temperature for at least 1.5-2 hours. Stir occasionally and make sure the meat doesn't dry out.
5. The liquid should thicken from the ingredients, but if you find it too thin, you can add a little bit of bread crumbs or heavy flour. Don't overdo it.
6. When the meat is fully tender, add a spoon of dried marjoram and simmer for a final 10 minutes.

Best served with Czech dumplings, but I don't know how to make those yet so I just ate it with potatoes. It was divine. Just like the gulas I order in pubs and restaurants! Next conquest: dumplings and bramboracky...

[Jopax]

That's slightly different from our variety, well, at least the one my folks make. We treat is a broth of sorts and generally don't eat it with anything. But that's offset by the fact you dump in potatoes as well. They add a nice bit of volume and also serve to thicken it very nicely in the process. Also consider adding diced carrots, additional volume and texture as well as a nice taste

[Bauglir]

Sweet and Limey Pork

3 pounds pork (I used shoulder blade steaks; use what you like)
   Trim the fat if you don't like greasy meat. I leave it in, though.
1 large yellow onion
1 tbsp lard
4 tbsp lime juice
4 tbsp honey and/or dark corn syrup (whatever proportion you'd like)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp black pepper
Dried red chili pepper to taste

Dice the onion and cook it in the lard. Keep the temperature low - it should be just starting to sweat when you add the meat.
Cut the meat into strips. Add it to the onions, and turn the heat to medium-high. Add salt and half the black pepper.
Brown the meat, stirring occasionally. Letting it crisp on the surface in contact with the pan is good. Enough juices should leave the meat to nearly cover it. If the meat is brown and this hasn't happened, add some water until most of the pieces of meat are just a bit above liquid.
After about half the liquid has boiled off, add the lime juice, honey, the rest of the black pepper, and the red pepper. Lower the heat slightly and let cook until the liquid is thick. It should be thick enough to emulsify the fat, but not so dry that the grease separates again - if it does, add some more water.

The meat should be on heat for between an hour and an hour and a half.

Goes well in rice and nachos so far. Probably an amazing burrito filling, too.

[Loud Whispers]

Food critic orders a well done steak from Gordon Ramsay, complains cos he doesn't know what a well done steak is, the look of sheer disbelief on Gordon's face is priceless

[Yoink]

Dry as in not runny? Or literally dry to the touch? Because I like my scrambled eggs solid, but I've never had an unburnt egg that wasn't a little moist. They're full of fat and water, after all.

I dunno, I cook them 'til they're pretty dry. Maybe still slightly moist, but not noticeable.

Food critic orders a well done steak from Gordon Ramsay, complains cos he doesn't know what a well done steak is, the look of sheer disbelief on Gordon's face is priceless

Gramzy is the best.

In other news, I am cooking pasta with mashed kidney beans again! Chuck it in an empty Skittles container with sauce, put the lid on, shake it up and bam! All done, and delicious. Kidney beans with pasta is becoming I thing I do regularly.
Hmm I should probably go stir it...

[Frumple]

Pecan milk get!

It...

... is not all that good. Drinkable, you can definitely tell it's pecan, but. At least without additives (since making it I've added some honey and am letting it sit for a while -- it probably would have turned out better if I added that during the blending process), I won't be making it again. Somewhat on the objectionable side of bland. I wouldn't really call it bad, exactly, just very definitely not good.

Process tested, though, which was the main point of the exercise (actually tasting pecan milk was secondary, though I know why it's not commonly sold, now ). Definitely going to be trying it with different nuts in the near future, to see if I can find something really pleasing. Cashews are next, methinks, probably followed by peanuts.

For the curious, it's actually silly easy to make nut-based/non-lactose milk. You basically just need a blender and a fairly fine strainer, outside of day-to-day kitchen stuff. Base for about a cup of nuts (which seems to make about a half-quart of milk), apparently pretty easy to scale in whatever direction:

• Soak overnight (8+ hours, basically, with longer roughly correlating to better, or at least smoother. 12-15 hour seem to be the recommend optimal point, I did ~12). This is the most time consuming part of it, technically.
• Drain water. Probably run some water over your nuts to make sure they're well rinsed.
• Put nuts into blender. Add 2-3 cups of water (I went with ~2 1/3, though I had a bit more than a cup of pecans, and I've seen as many as four recommended), and any additives you want (general recommendations seem to be a little bit of salt and a sweetener, usually honey).
• Blend until the nuts are well pulped.
• Strain the nut pulp into your container of choice (I started with a plain bowl, then put it into a quart jar), pressing on the pulp to make sure as much of the milk is out as possible.
• You're done! Maybe put the pulp into another container (ziplock bag, whatever) to use in later cooking (this pile will probably go into muffins, eventually.).

[penguinofhonor]

How do you fit nut pulp into a recipe? That sounds like a pretty cool reason to make your own nut milk.

I have a couple food pictures!

Spoiler: spaghetti with russian marinara (click to show/hide)

I made that Russian marinara Knit tie posted, though I added some extra tomato paste because I like tomatoes. It probably turned out a good bit redder than it's supposed to, but I liked the result. I mainly spiced it with black pepper, oregano, and lots of smoked paprika. Definitely tasted kind of barbecuey, which is great because that's what drew me to this in the first place.

Spoiler: various non-American snacks! (click to show/hide)

Okay so I didn't cook these, but I went to an international market recently and got some cool stuff I have never had before.

Lime Potato Chips (Mexico): These were good but really acidic, noticeably more than any salt and vinegar chips I've had. Avoid them if you have any sort of cut in your mouth.
Blue Raspberry Bon bons (France): These were chewy, but not a consistency I'm used to - I was sure they were gum at first, but I was wrong. Once I got past that they tasted great, and I will try other flavors if I see these things again.
Blackcurrant Chewits (UK): Very similar to Now and Laters. They start out hard enough that you can break them by biting them, but after a couple seconds in your mouth they're chewy like taffy. Also, blackcurrant candy tastes disappointingly similar to grape candy. Enjoyable overall, but nothing unique really.
Fruit Pastilles (UK): These seemed to be gumdrops that weren't shaped like gumdrops, which also was not particularly unique. That said, these tasted a lot better than any gumdrops I've ever had, so they're doing something well.
Vanilla Halva (Greece): It tasted okay, but man, the texture was strange. It was soft and chewy, but also kind of crispy, and chewing it just didn't feel right. I believe there's a ton of variety in Halva though so I'll probably try it if I see another brand.
Sesame Snack (Greece): A few little bars of sesame seeds stuck together by honey or syrup or something. These were really great, which I didn't expect. They pretty much taste like sweetened sesame seeds, and have a very satisfying crunchy texture. I may actively seek these out in the future. Unfortunately, this is the one thing that I couldn't even convince any of my friends to try so I'm not sure if there's any demand for it around here.

[Jopax]

As far as halva goes, it's pretty much a base for anything else you might want to make with it, since it's essentially flour, sugar and butter, or if you want to go fancier tahini and sugar (which is probably what you had).

It's biggest boon is that it's really simple and bland like that, so you can put pretty much anything sweet you can think of in there, from dried fruits, nuts, cinnamon, honey, cocoa or whatever else you think of.

If you really want diabeetus tho you need to get or make baklava, which is pretty much 90% sugar with some nuts in there, also really damn good, but few people I know can eat more than one serving because it's so god damn strong and sweet.

[penguinofhonor]

Oh, baklava is pretty popular around here. And I could eat way more than serving if I could afford it...

[GiglameshDespair]

How do you fit nut pulp into a recipe? That sounds like a pretty cool reason to make your own nut milk.

I have a couple food pictures!

Spoiler: spaghetti with russian marinara (click to show/hide)

I made that Russian marinara Knit tie posted, though I added some extra tomato paste because I like tomatoes. It probably turned out a good bit redder than it's supposed to, but I liked the result. I mainly spiced it with black pepper, oregano, and lots of smoked paprika. Definitely tasted kind of barbecuey, which is great because that's what drew me to this in the first place.

Spoiler: various non-American snacks! (click to show/hide)

Okay so I didn't cook these, but I went to an international market recently and got some cool stuff I have never had before.

Lime Potato Chips (Mexico): These were good but really acidic, noticeably more than any salt and vinegar chips I've had. Avoid them if you have any sort of cut in your mouth.
Blue Raspberry Bon bons (France): These were chewy, but not a consistency I'm used to - I was sure they were gum at first, but I was wrong. Once I got past that they tasted great, and I will try other flavors if I see these things again.
Blackcurrant Chewits (UK): Very similar to Now and Laters. They start out hard enough that you can break them by biting them, but after a couple seconds in your mouth they're chewy like taffy. Also, blackcurrant candy tastes disappointingly similar to grape candy. Enjoyable overall, but nothing unique really.
Fruit Pastilles (UK): These seemed to be gumdrops that weren't shaped like gumdrops, which also was not particularly unique. That said, these tasted a lot better than any gumdrops I've ever had, so they're doing something well.
Vanilla Halva (Greece): It tasted okay, but man, the texture was strange. It was soft and chewy, but also kind of crispy, and chewing it just didn't feel right. I believe there's a ton of variety in Halva though so I'll probably try it if I see another brand.
Sesame Snack (Greece): A few little bars of sesame seeds stuck together by honey or syrup or something. These were really great, which I didn't expect. They pretty much taste like sweetened sesame seeds, and have a very satisfying crunchy texture. I may actively seek these out in the future. Unfortunately, this is the one thing that I couldn't even convince any of my friends to try so I'm not sure if there's any demand for it around here.

Blackcurrant? Argh, the worst flavour!

[Frumple]

How do you fit nut pulp into a recipe? That sounds like a pretty cool reason to make your own nut milk.

Far as I'm aware you basically just stick some in the batter mix, when it comes to stuff that uses a batter mix. Could probably bake it on to things or use it as some kind of breading, too. Not even sure if pulp is precisely the right word, but it's close enough -- s'basically just really finely ground (blended, in this case) and somewhat mushy nut. Haven't really done much with it, this is the first time I've ever actually had any on hand :V

[timferius]

I've got some farmers sausage defrosting for tonight, and not sure what to do with them. Any suggestions?

[Sirus]

I would say throw it out, unless it is made with genuine free-range farmer.

[scrdest]

I would say throw it out, unless it is made with genuine free-range farmer.

Still a cleaner joke than what I restrained myself from making here.

[Corselet]

Cool thread! I can't wait to learn some new recipes.

Spoiler: Yesterday's dinner (click to show/hide)

Stir-fried bok choy and miso yakionigiri with pickled scallion inside; custard pudding and blackberries for dessert.

Spoiler: Today's dinner (click to show/hide)

Bell pepper and zucchini frittata with leftover bok choy; half a sliced pear for dessert.

I'm trying to learn better plating skills...

Do any of you, like me, prefer your scrambled eggs dry rather than moist?
I've always much preferred them dry and fluffy, but apparently some people like them moist. That seems a bit gross to me personally.
Which is the more common way to have them?

I like them dry, myself.