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[Blargityblarg]

I fancy myself a bit of a cook, and as such:

BlargityBlarg's Thinly Veiled Excuse To Jam Vegetables Into People!

No, not like that.

Anyhow:

You'll want a big onion, preferably red.

You'll want 300-500gm (1/2-1lb) lamb mince (It's that much cheaper than beef, at least in Australia, and there's almost no difference)

You'll want an insane amount of various root vegetables, tubers and squashes: I personally use sweet potato and carrot preferentially, but you can use normal potato, pumpkin or even zucchini if you have them. All grated. I'm think 1-1 1/2 kg (2-3lb) in total, more if you want. For me, that means a sweet potato and a half, and maybe three carrots.

You'll want some shredded, and I mean SHREDDED, spinach. Doesn't have to be particularly much, but a good way to get vegetable into people.

You'll want a good big jar of pureed tomatoes, a can of diced, and a couple tablespoons of tomato paste.

Garlic, naturally.

Dried basil and 'mixed herbs' are good too.

Anyhow.

Dice up the onion, and fry off both it and the garlic until browned and a bit caramelised.

When browned, toss in the mince, brown it too.

After that, toss in your GIGANTIC PILE OF GRATED VEGIES for a little while to soften them, then add your various tomato extracts. Splash in some red wine if you have it handy at this point: I don't notice the flavour, but it makes you look Pro At Cooking.

Once that's bubbling away, toss in your shredded spinach. I get the stuff frozen in a bag in little lozenges, so i toss a few of those in. They basically disintegrate throughout the sauce and become invisible. Jam in your dried herbs too.

Cook for a while until the diced tomatoes have broken down somewhat, and the grated vegetables are falling apart.

Feed it to people.

[SirHoneyBadger]

That sounds great to me.

Lamb in America is embarassingly expensive. A leg of lamb will set you back over 30$, easily. Too bad, too. For many dishes, I prefer it to beef.


That said, here's a really simple recipe for roasted leg of lamb. My own invention, by the way--kind of my uninformed take on Middle Eastern cuisine:


1 leg of lamb
1/4 cup of clover honey
1/4 cup of good olive oil
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp sea salt
3 or 4 cloves of garlic

Mince and crush the garlic. Mix with remaining ingredients and rub thoroughly into the leg of lamb. Let the lamb sit at room temperature for half an hour (put it in your microwave or something--don't turn the microwave on, and don't forget about the lamb!).

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (177 C). Put the lamb in there and immediately reduce the temperature to 325 (163 C). Every 15 minutes, baste the lamb in it's own juices and the remaining marinade. Roast for one hour.

Carve into thin slices and serve with pita bread, hummus, smoked almonds, cashews, rice (cooked until tender and then simmered with coconut milk and fresh ground nutmeg), plain yogurt mixed with more garlic and lemon juice, dates, sliced raw sweet onions, and fresh limes.

[Blargityblarg]

I suppose it's only cheap here because we have a much higher proportion of sheep farming than the US. I assume so, anyway. You hear about big cattle ranches, but not about gigantic sheep ranches. Oh well. Use beef, then. Works just as well.

[Svampapa]

I do realize this is a bit of an epic gravedig, but jebus crikey!

PROTIP OF THE DAY: If you ever use Habaņeros in your cooking, be pretty damn sure you wont need to rub your eyes or pick your nose in the next 48 hours. DAMN this shit stings!

Rubbed my eyes during dinner and immediately regretted it. Couldn't see straight for ten minutes, and I even used saline solution to wash the horror out of my eyes!

[Caz]

Can anyone tell me what the hell to do with squash? I bought a couple last week just because they looked so damn cool. I have no idea what to actually do with them though, except for an ingredient in maybe curry or soup.

[ISP]

Squash, well you could slice it down the middle rub it with butter and bake it... some of them are pretty tasty on their own... otherwise using it in stuff it depends what kind of squash you have.

[Svampapa]

Squash is oo spongy for my taste, but I've seen some recepies where you slice them thinly lengthwise with a cheese slicer and cook em like pasta. Could be something I guess?

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Cooking is something I can technically do. I just don't ever really get a chance to do it as my dad likes cooking and he makes all the meals. About the only thing I have actually cooked more than once would be scrambled eggs but I can do that quite well. I add a little bit of warm water to the eggs before mixing the eggs because it helps the yolk and white mix and it seems to result in a more fluffy end result. One other thing I do is when I add chopped onions I put half in the pan to cook first then once translucent add the eggs and the rest of the onions so I get the cooked onion flavor while still having the crunchy texture because of the ones added later.

   Also a note on squash, while I don't personally like the things my dad does and one of the ways he fixes them is with yellow squash he slices them longways a little bit more than a quarter inch thick then apply some oil and salt and pepper and then grills them. I don't know the timing though.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Don't worry about Necroing this thread: as far as I'm concerned, Necroing doesn't apply to any of my threads. It saves space on the Forum, while reducing confusion.

There are two types of squash: Summer squashes are things like zucchini and yellow squash. There aren't that many types of them, but they're really versatile. You can stir-fry, boil, steam, bake, whatever.

Winter squashes, on the other hand, are more problematic to cook because of their toughness, but they often look amazingly weird, and there are dozens and dozens of different kinds.

For winter squash, baking it is always a great place to start figuring out what to do with it. If you don't want to use butter, I've used oil before, although yes, melted butter works great. It's good to rub it with a little salt, too, and you can bake it with things like herbs, spices, onions, celery, whatever you want to flavor the squash with--just don't overdo it, and keep in mind that the more additions you bake the squash with, the more that can burn before your squash is baked through.

They do take flavors well, though, and you can always add more flavor after baking, from hot sauce to soy sauce to maple syrup.

I'd set the oven to 325 degrees F (162 C) and bake the squash in a pie plate or baking dish for 40 minutes to start, and then check it to see if it's soft. Keep checking every 20 minutes after that, and don't cook it longer than an hour and 20 minutes--if it's not cooked yet, I'll need more information on what kind of titanium super-squash you're working with. 

Once you bake them, you can then turn them into soups and stews, you can mash them, bake them into other recipes, and even eat them like you would a baked potato (I grow these tiny pumpkins that taste more or less the same as a baked potato-not sweet, but with a nuttier flavor, and nice texture. They're really good!).

They can also be boiled or steamed, and that can sometimes work better, depending on the squash, or the recipe you're using it for.

A lot depends on the type of squash, though. Those big, funky-looking winter squashes can sometimes be great, but some varieties are tough, kind of bland, and are grown more for looks than edibility, although it's surprising how many of them are really tasty. The smaller they are, the better the flavor tends to be--although that's a big generalization. 

Do you have any idea what type of squash it is? If not, can you tell us what it looks like?

 

[Svampapa]

@ akhier: Throw your dad out the kitchen and get stuck in. Cooking is one of those hobbies that just keeps on getting more interesting the more experienced you get. Especially if you are lucky enough to have some schooling in the natural sciences and can theorize about what happens, on a cellular/chemical level, to that bit of squash when you apply your mad experiments to the poor thing. 

[Caz]

Wow, thanks for the great advice. Forgot I posted on this thread... ended up making them into 'pumpkin' pies.

Pretty sure they were winter squash. A deep orange 'bulb' shaped one, yellow/cream stripey one and more pumpkin-shaped green+orange one.



Lately I've been making tarka dal. It's stupidly simple and tastes amazing using bread as a spoon.

[goblolo]

Lately I've been making tarka dal. It's stupidly simple and tastes amazing using bread as a spoon.

I've found a recipe of tarka dal in the net and it looks cool! Gonna try it.

Can I ask you to post here where you from and what meals do you eat? Each region have it's common food and I found it difficult to decide what to cook today other than mashed/roasted potatoes or pasta/rice/buckwheat with roasted chicken/fish/beef/meatballs. I ate it 1000 times before and want something new, but don't know what to cook. There are many internet recources with recipes, but most of them are very specific and require lots of rare ingridients or takes several hours to make.

[Caz]

Lately I've been making tarka dal. It's stupidly simple and tastes amazing using bread as a spoon.

I've found a recipe of tarka dal in the net and it looks cool! Gonna try it.

Can I ask you to post here where you from and what meals do you eat? Each region have it's common food and I found it difficult to decide what to cook today other than mashed/roasted potatoes or pasta/rice/buckwheat with roasted chicken/fish/beef/meatballs. I ate it 1000 times before and want something new, but don't know what to cook. There are many internet recources with recipes, but most of them are very specific and require lots of rare ingridients or takes several hours to make.

I'm just Scot person that takes an interest in cooking really, try finding a type of cooking that you like and then start learning a few basic meals you can make and build your way up. Before I was on a Mexican kick which basically devolved into chilli soup and fajitas all the days, (you can make a week's worth of moyettes at a time and freeze them, so good) with other stuff thrown in. Then I got into making curries and a lot of dal lately, pakora, samosas etc. Simpler to choose one type of cooking you want to learn as use the same kind of staples (eg. for indian it's rice, dal and flat bread) and spices so you don't go out buying lemongrass and coconut milk to make one dish.  Then if you get used to making and liking the food you can keep your cupboards stocked with that sort of thing and it just becomes another thing to make instead of chicken and mash.

Also ameri-chinese food. Fry everything. It is glorious. (probably not everyday though)

[FearfulJesuit]

For those of you who are really cheap, here is the cheapest and simplest complete diet known to man:

Cow's milk and potatoes.

Bland? Sure. But if it worked for the Irish, up 'till 1845, it'll work for you, too. The Irish before the famine were about the poorest peasants in Europe- but because they were so poor, and this was all they had to eat, they were also among the healthiest. Season as you wish, since, beyond these two, it's all seasoning.

(You can replace the potatoes for rice and beans, as one does in Brazil, for a bit of variety).

[Caz]

Cow's milk and potatoes.

That sounds fun.