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2012 Starts With Food: another TIOLI challenge
This topic was continued by 2012 Starts With Food: another TIOLI challenge, Part II.
The 12 in 12 Category Challenge
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Those of us who love cookbooks - but reading rather than cooking - thought it might be fun to challenge ourselves to actually make something out of those books on our shelves.
So the challenge is: At least one recipe per month for 12 months - or whatever you choose. Yes, it does count if you pick the recipe and your other half does the cooking!!!
We expect fun reports on the results, and some encouragement to actually use those books on our shelves. Feel free to plan ahead, or just report as you eat.
Is it okay to use cookbooks you've already reviewed? I received one for Christmas and have already reviewed it, but I haven't had a chance to make a recipe out of it yet? There are other cookbooks on my shelves and on my Kindle which have not yet been utilized for cooking so it's also a question for those.
2> I'd say it definitely counts! Especially if you haven't made anything out of those cookbooks yet!
Yes! for sure it counts. If you haven't cooked from the book, it counts!
Today I worked out of two Emeril Lagasse cookbooks to make gumbo. It has been ages since I made gumbo, and then it was usually seafood. I wanted a more rustic, homestyle type today, so I went to my Louisiana/Cajun/Creole shelf (okay, there are two shelves). I found two very similar recipes that looked like just what I wanted.
First, from Every day's a party: Louisiana recipes for celebrating with family and friends, "Duck and Andouille Sausage Gumbo" (p. 252). Second, in Louisiana real and rustic, "Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo" (p. 67).
I was *really* worried about making the roux (equal parts of oil and flour, stirred constantly for 20-25 minutes -- for a dark brown roux). There is a very small window between perfect and burnt! I stopped short of the darkest brown the recipes both called for, but still have a nice brown gumbo for Christmas Eve supper.
My daughter-in-law does not eat pork, so Andouille or other pork sausage was not an option. Instead, I went to a small local butcher and got some smoked deer sausage. I didn't use duck, since I have roasted chicken on hand.
It's now nicely simmering for the afternoon in my new slow cooker.
(Thanks for starting this thread, mysterymax!)
ETA links to recipes online, 12/27/2011:
Duck and Andouille Sausage Gumbo
Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo
What a fantastic idea! Maybe this will help me actually use some of those fabulous cookbooks I keep buying! First up has definitely got to be from my new Cook Like a Rock Star: 125 Recipes, Lessons, and Culinary Secrets book!
OMG! This is perfect for me and my wife! I'm going to let her choose through my cookbook shelf and I'll do the making (less disasters that way).
How fun! Many of us remember the series published by Time/Life (in the 70s?) which included one hard cover and one wire bound cookbook which came out each couple of months. My mother collected these until they got down to the most bizarre regions. For years my friend and I have scoured library sales and used book stores for the wire bound cookbook from the Time/Life series of cookbooks, for India. I have the hard copy but there was a recipe for a coconut chutney in the wire bound book. She even went on eBay and bid on one that ended up going for over $50.00! She found it at the last library book sale and bound it up with a nice bamboo serving tray, wild blueberry sauce from Maine and other assorted goodies.
My stepmother made the coconut chutney decades ago but the cookbook was lost and I have always wanted to try to make it again. I will be happy to post the results of my attempts.
I've got a few cookbooks on my Kindle that I haven't even read yet, a few books by Jamie Oliver I have read but haven't cooked from, and a few assorted cookbooks with themes or from regions that I haven't cooked from either. Although I'll admit that some of them are actually my mother's and others are library cookbooks on my TBR list.
Still, I'm looking forward to cooking some new recipes in 2012!
mamzel, are you saying you did finally get the India book, or that you are still looking for it? I know I have some of those books you are speaking of; not sure if India is among them.
My friend did find it for me! We have to find another old, rare book to search for now. If you have the Indian one you might put it up for sale on eBay and see how much you can get for it. My friend and I were amazed that it was the one book of the series that was the hardest to find.
This is going to be a fun thread!
I'm a newbie, I don't know the difference between Administrative thread or....
so the rest of you should decide I guess.
If several people participate a new thread each month might help it from becoming overly long, especially if people start posting pictures of their efforts!
I LOVE THIS! I adore cookbooks, read them cover to cover, but the number of them sitting in my kitchen that I haven't actually cooked anything from is shameful. Mysterymax, if I was wearing a hat I'd be doffing to you.
On the admin side of things, what with TIOLIs and group reads and individual threads, there's a LOT to keep up with in this group (I for one am already failing. God help me when I actually start reading). In the interests of simplicity (and the disorganised, ie me), how do people feel about posting here and then linking to a new thread when this one gets too hefty?
This thread can actually be continued with the new continue feature when it gets too big.
>9 mamzel: Well mamzel, I happen to have the whole series which is kind of amazing since I live alone and hardly ever cook except out of a can with frozen vegetables thrown in. Maybe this challenge will encourage me to cook once a month, one recipe out of each of the series (?)
12> Sell one of my cook books????
ETA: I found The Cooking of Italy and The Cooking of the Caribbean Islands so far, but I thought I had one about America, too, but my cookbook shelves are in terrible shape. Husband picks up all kinds of books, including cookbooks, at library sales, used bookstores, salvage/thrift stores *all* the time. So there are bags/boxes of books which haven't been sorted -- I need more bookshelves!!
While looking through Mt. TBR this morning, I saw a book that I think might be interesting to this group: Read it and eat: a month-by-month guide to scintillating book club selections and mouthwatering menus. For each month there is a theme, and four reading selections. For each reading selection there is a discussion section and a menu/recipe section. Menus/recipes are related to either the period or region of the book setting, favorite food(s) of character(s), or a menu/event in the book.
We had our "Christmas" last night, so today will be a quiet day at home -- perfect for browsing this book!
Wow, another TIOLI challenge! I will add it to the info section for the main 12 in 12 page. Happy reading (and cooking)!
Mmmmmm.... I wish there was a way to share all the food with each other.
I love this idea! And I just bought 3 new cookbooks yesterday.
The hubby & I are planning to try one new soup recipe a week this year. They are great for lunches. We have a pressure canner so we can make a big batch and can it. He made some roasted carrot & tomato soup that was really good this month.
And I have a recipe hoard from my two grandmothers that I am trying to organize. Thankfully one of them didn't actually cook so there is less then 300 recipe cards to go through (and a few seem to be duplicates.) I am thinking to combine recipes with genealogy (which my mother does) for X-mas gifts. I even have a recipe from my great-grandfather who was an ENT doctor. It starts out with take 18# grapes, stems removed (no rotten ones!) . . . Of course to me the most important one is Vernie's Rice Pudding. If I have it correct she was my great-grandmothers sister's daughter.
In other words – I am SO doing this challenge!
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
Sounds like your great-grandfather bottled his recipe! Anything that uses that many grapes has to end up as the liquid variety!
>19 CynWetzel: Yes, there are several American cookbooks in the series: New England, Creole & Acadian, Eastern Heartland, and The Melting Pot. I thought there was a Southern one, but I don't see it.
I think I have almost as many cookbooks as garden books. I don't cook much, but at least I garden.
If I can remember to do so, I'll try to keep an eye out at our used bookstore for the wire-bound copy of India. I visit the cookbook aisle every time I go!
This is a great challenge. Is there any plan to share recipes? I would also add that I hope people will post pictures!
>23 bruce_krafft:. Someone mentioned combining genealogy with recipes/cooking. This Sunday is my g-grandmother's birthday, and I plan to remember the day by making real fried chicken (I'm a person who happily makes most recipes from my Cooking Light collection, so this is a serious departure/celebration for me--I doubt that I've made fried chicken twice in 30 years). Grandma Alice Denton (1873-1953) lived in La Junta, Colorado, and of course she raised chickens, and of course when she needed a chicken for Sunday dinner she would go outside and . . . well, you know. I'm buying my chicken from the local Whole Foods (I don't normally shop there, but IMO they have the best chicken in town), but otherwise I'm making it as authentic and close to the way she would make it as I can. Including chicken gravy, mashed potatoes, and homemade biscuits. Woo-hoo!
Sounds yummy! I definitely think pictures are in order for this. There may be some copyright issues with posting the recipes unless it's a cookbook which is now in the public domain.
Well I don't own any cookbooks (and never follow the recipes when I have one in front of me), I will be lurking here for interesting menu ideas - like CynWetzel gumbo post 5 above! Yumm!
>28 labwriter: & 29
Since I'm also in the midst of preparing an faculty development presentation/mini-course on copyright in the face-to-face and online classroom, I did some quick searching about this. Like most other copyright questions, there really isn't a clear answer (though some folks' opinion is that recipes are definitely not copyrightable). Not long ago, I even asked America's Test Kitchen how a blogger posting a recipe was not copyright infringement; unfortunately, I never received a response.
I did find this very interesting article on CNET, which may answer the question: Pirates in the kitchen: Recipe copying 'rampant' online
If attributed to the source, and if it is only one recipe, we should be falling under fair use.
Also, the recipe might already be available online. Bot the recipes I mentioned above (>5) are available on Emeril Lagasse's website. (I've edited that post to link to the recipes.)
Even though there may be question about the recipe itself being copyrighted, any photograph or illustration in the publication is definitely copyrighted and should not be posted without permission (even with attribution).
No - the recipes don't have to be from the same book. My suggestion would be however, that they do come from a book that you haven't cooked from before since the motivating factor was to take us from a 'reading' to a 'doing'! But there aren't really any rules, so do as you wish.
Re Photos: I think your own photos would be far more fun! And at least a blurb on which cookbook, name of recipe, kind of dish, flavors, etc.
I would be very amazed if someone took exception to this in a copyright sense as our raving about the meals we've had might sell more of their books, right? I, personally don't plan on copying out recipes but had planned to give you the cookbook and page number and title...and how yummy (or not) it was, how easy, or not, it was to make, etc.
There's always the public library if you don't want to buy all the cookbooks!
>31 CynWetzel: Thanks for the copyright info! If someone is worried about copyright, maybe just a list of ingredients would be enough to get the gist of the recipe, although it sounds like one recipe from one book would be OK.
As far as photos are concerned, I was definitely thinking along the lines of pictures taken in real time--like, here's my fried chicken, cooking up in the pan. (Or, here's my franticky mess of a kitchen, after making my fried chicken meal.) I love to see photos of other people's kitchens, cooking tools, favorite sauce pots, etc. The kitchen is where I live, when I'm not reading.
I'm a cookbook junkie and will also happily participate in this challenge. As far as posting recipes online, I think if it's one only from a book and you reference the book you would be fine. I follow several food blogs and they are all doing this, sometimes they post a 'tweaked' recipe but still reference the original noting the changes they have made.
The most 'exciting' find I made in a cookbook was Joan Nathan's The Foods of Israel today where I found a recipe by my husband's aunt.
I love finding recipes by relatives in cookbooks. When I'm in used bookstores, I always browse the section of cookbooks with spiral bounds, plastic combs, and so forth that so many communities, churches, etc. used when publishing their cookbooks. Every once in awhile, I'll run across one that has one or more recipes from relatives.
Today, I picked up some new-to-me cookbooks at the Goodwill Bookstore. One was published by Catholic Women in Cincinnati, where I used to live. Another is the Time/Life Germany hardbound cookbook. The third is called The Gourmet Atlas. It appears to be very interesting with maps, food history, and much more!
>35 thornton37814:. What great ideas for finding cookbooks. Another source I've been thinking about would be the genealogical societies of different areas. For example, my g-grandmother lived in La Junta, Colorado, and the Southeastern Genealogical Society covers that area. I've just joined--just today. I'm hoping that someone might know of some recipe books from the Baptist Church where my g-grandmother was a member. It's worth a shot.
>9 mamzel:. Mamzel, I actually had a copy of that Indian cookbook, spiral bound, from Time/Life. Today I looked through my cookbook boxes that live in my basement to find it--no luck so far. It was about 1971-72 and my DH-to-be made a recipe from that book--something like curried yogurt. It was so awful, it's been a joke between us for about 40 years. It's completely possible he didn't follow the recipe correctly. I'll keep looking. If I find it, I'd be happy to send it on to you.
I think that this is a great idea. I love to try out new recipes from my pile of cookbooks on my family (sometimes not very successfully) so seeing what others are trying out and getting some ideas (both good and bad) will be fun.
CynWetzel - I mention to ask you about your gumbo. Did you put okra in it? I have been reluctant to have gumbo as I remember okra being in it and it was really slimmy and I hated it. (I was a kid - it's one of the few things I remember about being a kid LOL)
No, I don't -- and for that reason. I don't like cooked okra, personally (though I do like it fried). Often the okra is used to thicken the gumbo, but you can use filé powder instead, either at the end of the cooking or add it to individual bowls.
I love this idea! I have dozens of cookbooks and continue to buy more every year. I'm embarrassed by how many I've never cooked from. When I was a stay-at-home mom, I used to challenge myself to fix something new every Friday night. It resulted in several new recipes being added to our "repertory". I've been thinking about reviving that practice - maybe 2 times a month or something. This will be a great way to do that.
Just to clarify - the challenge is to try a recipe from a cookbook that's never been used before? Or just from a cookbook I have on the shelf?
From a cookbook that's never been used was the original idea, but hey, no rules - you decide!
What a great idea! And, since I have a books with recipes category this fits right in my 12 in 12 challenge. The first book in Jan will be: Power Foods: 150 Delicious Recipes with the 38 Healthiest Ingredients.
My plan was to do some baking recipes that I have not tried. Either bread or cakes.
>39 mysterymax:. mysterymax, I don't know how old you are (and obviously you don't have to say), but I was a kid in the 1950s and when I was in grade school I remember the public school cafeteria served okra and stewed tomatoes--eeewwww. I remember that the little round seeds (I guess they must have been seeds) from the okra were a disturbing flesh color. I can only imagine how many thousands of pounds of that stuff they threw away every time it was served. And I've never eaten okra--not once. However, I found a recipe for fried okra that I would be willing to try. I will report.
Oh my goodness, this is a wonderful idea! Especially since I got a new cookbook for Christmas, Money Saving Meals and Round 2 Recipes by my fav, Sandra Lee. I'm totally on board with this challenge. The only difficult part will be what to pick. My most used cookbook is Betty Crocker's Cooky Book. I don't know what I'd do without it, especially at Christmas.
Oh my *(&(*&... I was actually going to add a 13th category to my 12 in 12 for cooking out of my cookbooks, then look what I found here!! This is fantastic.. I guess brilliant minds do think alike eh? I am going to challenge myself to cook from the earliest cookbooks added to my library, at least three recipes out of each (From different categories: Meat, carb, veg, dessert, at least 3). I think I have mostly Nigella and Italian towards the back, so it should be fun!! WIll read through this later as I have a few moments to set up my 12 in 12 thread now.. Am thrilled to have found this thread!
#42 Well, I certainly have plenty of those, so I will concentrate there. However, I'll also report any successes I have with first time recipes in my previously used books as well, since they may be new for someone else.
In reading this, I had no idea those time life books were in high demand! I keep seeing them everywhere and have some of them in my library :P
What ones are people still looking for right now? They seem to be common as mud in Canada at least :P
I'm in. I know I'll be buying and reading cookbooks this year. I usually do make one or two recipes out of a cookbook (even fairly accurately) when I first read it.
This is one of my newest cookbooks, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Hertzberg and Francois. I've been baking bread from this cookbook for a couple of months now, but I'm posting this here because I've started branching out a little from the basic recipes and trying new ones. Today I tried a recipe for brioche, a sweet bread that makes a good breakfast pastry. I made a batch of the basic dough, but there are also several good recipes that can be made using this dough. I think later today I'm going to try "Brioche Filled with Chocolate Ganache," a special recipe for today's holiday.
Here's my first try at brioche. The consistency is something like pound cake, but it's not as sweet. I almost didn't get that picture--ha.
I'm not sure I should be following this thread. I manage to buy enough cookbooks without it.
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day made my top 5 non-fiction books of 2011! I really liked it. I borrowed the library's copy and put it on my own wish list. I've been trying to find a copy at our super used bookstore, but I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and purchase one online.
OMG this group sounds awesome!
labwriter et al.
Your photo of partial loaf made me chuckle so! I love homemade bread, but it disappears SO fast! I love to make challah breads, and there's dark, onion bread my family just loves with soup. Fortunately that one makes two huge loaves and it usually lasts more than an afternoon. :D
In the spirit of enabling, er, sharing, there is also a website.
I remember Mother Earth News had an article/recipes about this book/authors this past year or so.
Ah! Found it! And the online article is one of the top five at their website: Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day! The basic recipe and lots of information included.
That is a gorgeous looking loaf! I've got the awful feeling that my waistline is going to expand at the same rate as my wishlist.
So glad I found this thread. I've had Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito for months now. I bought it in order to make Peanut Butter Crispy Bars (page 133) which are basically rice crispy treats with chocolate and peanut butter, but I was held up by the purchase of a candy thermometer and a nonreactive metal bowl. I finally got my act together and made these today. I wasn't going to cut into them until tomorrow at work, but you convinced me to try them so that my feedback to you can be complete.... they are amazing! 10 thumbs up.
Here is the blog that prompted me to buy the book:
And if I can figure out how to post a picture, I'll get that up.
What a fun thread idea! I need to justify the cookbooks that I own, throw out the uninspiring ones (usually the ones I received as a gift), and make room for new ones!
>59 nans:. nans, you make a really good point about the tools needed in cooking and/or baking (candy thermometer and nonreactive metal bowl). The bread recipes from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day are so simple--they're made to be simple so that people will be motivated to bake bread any day of the week. However, it took me MONTHS to gather together the tools that I needed. It wasn't that these tools were difficult to find (in fact I bought all of them online at amazon.com), but as you say, it was a matter of getting my act together. Oh, and I went to the smittenkitchen website. Wow--oh wow!
Here's the best piece of advice I could give if anyone is interested in trying the artisan bread technique: get the tools they recommend. One of the things I like best about the book is the way they assume you know nothing, and then go from there. They don't talk down to the cook/reader, but they do give explicit instructions which are hugely helpful. Be sure to get the kind of bread tubs they recommend--I think they're 5
>56 CynWetzel: "dark onion bread with soup"--oh, that sort of thing is my favorite. I could live on soup & bread.
P.S. I made the brioche filled with chocolate ganache. {{rolls eyes}} It was sort of like the best donut with chocolate icing I've ever had in my life.
Please don't think I eat this way all the time. It was a special holiday thing. Most of my recipes come from the Cooking Light cookbooks, which I absolutely love. I honestly don't think I've ever made a bad recipe from any of them.
P.P.S. CynWetzel, thanks so much for the link to the artisan bread website. Don't they look happy? (and thin--haha--I'm not sure how they do the thin part)
I went to the website and found a link to this YouTube video. It really is as simple as she makes it look.
There are many onion bread recipes online. Here's the basics of the one I use.
Onion Bread Recipe
Stir two packages of active dry yeast (2 tablespoons) in 1/2 cup of lukewarm water. Bubbles should form in 5 to 10 minutes.
Add 1 envelope onion soup mix to 2-1/2 cups water, brought to boil; simmer for 5 minutes.
In large mixing bowl, mix well with a wooden spoon in order:
onion soup mixture
1/3 cup melted butter or canola oil
1/3 cup honey
2 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 cups cold water
5 cups whole wheat flour
Then mix in the yeast mixture.
Mix in another 5 cups of whole wheat flour (or as much as necessary to stop it sticking) while kneading for 10 minutes.
Cover with towel. Let rest for 15 minutes. Knead down dough. Repeat the rest and knead down twice more.
Divide dough in half and shape loaves. Let rise 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 450F. Bake 10 minutes.
Reduce heat to 350F. Bake 35 minutes.
Cool on rack.
Main dishes for busy people
59> smittenkitten! I love that site! And http://thebittenword.typepad.com/
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
Thank you so much for that video about how simple it is to make a basic loaf of bread. I lived in Germany for years and hate spending so much money now on a good loaf in the US. I'm going to request that book from the library and try it out.
Smittenkichen is the best! Love her photos and her humor. @63 thanks for thebittenword. I'm adding that to my faves!
CynWetzel, thanks so much for that recipe.
For the artisan bread, the last thing I would say, particularly if you aren't real experienced with making bread, is don't get discouraged if you flub a few loaves. Just today I decided, for whatever reason I don't know, that the bread was dark enough and done, even though I had about 8 more minutes on the timer. I took it out--and it was doughy in the middle. Dumb, but I just reminded myself that sometimes it's best just to walk away from the kitchen and wait until I hear the timer. I made a second loaf and it turned out great.
>64 nans:. nans, I shop at a regular supermarket and I don't buy in bulk, but even so I figured out that these loaves are costing me about 50 cents per loaf. Not bad. I haven't bought bread for a couple of months now.
Turn the loaf over and knock on it. A loaf that's done through sounds hollow. That is the best test - better than colour, and also better than the time on the timer.
> 16
what with TIOLIs and group reads and individual threads, there's a LOT to keep up with in this group (I for one am already failing. God help me when I actually start reading)
> 1
I was sure I'd not join the 12 in 12 group this year, but it never had anything to do with food before!! I'm a "foodie" as I edit as CSA newsletter --- so, of course I'm in! What a fun idea!!
Thank you, avatiakh! (I found the information about this challenge on her thread)
> 32
personally don't plan on copying out recipes but had planned to give you the cookbook and page number and title
The cookbooker.com website does the same thing!
> 34
The most 'exciting' find I made in a cookbook was Joan Nathan's The Foods of Israel today where I found a recipe by my husband's aunt.
What page is it on? I have that cookbook!
Oh, thanks, SqueakyChu. I had nothing else to do but set up another book site. LOL!
(Always searching for the *perfect* way to catalogue my book collections.)
I'm not sure how you count what you cook. Do you have to have 12 in 12 book categories? Do you set up tickers like in other challenges? Can you set up just a 12 in 12 cookbook thread?
> 69
Cookbookers is really a great website. They often have cookbook "challenges" in which members jointly cook their way through an entire cookbook!
I discovered the founder of that website right here on LT!
Thanks for the heads up about Cookbookers - like I really need another cool site to spend time on! But it looks great and I'll check it out more closely later.
I think I'm going to have to back out of this challenge. When I just joined 12 in 12, there were simply too many threads to deal with. I think I'll pull my head back into my shell and head back into the 75-ers group (where I'm also red x-ing a gazillion names). I think I'll just drop by this thread to see what all of you are making. Have fun cookin' up a storm, everyone!
>72 SqueakyChu:
Don't drop out! It's not that bad. The cooking is a subchallenge and it's a TIOLI (take it or leave it - so can basically choose when you want to do it and just post your success!) - no need for categories in this one....and the challenge is to cook ONE thing from a cookbook that you have not cooked from before each month. Its for those of us that "read" and, for some reason, continue to buy cookbooks that we never get around to cooking from!
Is it okay if I also use cookbooks from the library for your challenge?
How about if I don't actually join the group, but just post from time to time on your main thread? It's a lot easier to just follow your one thread than it is to join the 12 in 12 group and have to deal with everyone else's threads as well.
I did the 10 in 10 and 11 in 11 challenges, but the 12 in 12 just got to be too much for me!
It's great for you to be here and post whenever you want to! Any cookbook you want, from wherever you want - as long as you haven't cooked from it before!!!
For really active groups like this one, I star the topics that I really want to follow. So if I don't have a lot of time to read what everyone is doing, I just look at my star'ed lines and read what's new.
I'll also be doing a recipe or two from library cookbooks. I try to check cookbooks out of the library to page through them at home and try one or two recipes before deciding if I should buy them or not.
#23 Hey DS *The hubby & I are planning to try one new soup recipe a week this year. They are great for lunches. We have a pressure canner so we can make a big batch and can it. He made some roasted carrot & tomato soup that was really good this month.*
My favorite food is soup! Hubby surprised me with the Williams Sanoma Soup maker and I am thrilled-now beyond thrilled with this thread and the soup maker. I'm going to chat with you later on about canning and freezing if you dont mind.
mysterymax: you hit a home run with this thread. Love the picture ideas too.
#74: Madeline - yes, do just follow this thread. When I suggested you visit the challenge I meant for just this thread. I'll have to find my copy of the Joan Nathan cookbook as I moved it a while back and have no idea where it ended up. I'll get back to you on your 75 thread.
I'll be trying my first recipe from a beautiful cookbook, Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews, and for an extra component of challenge, I'll be cooking with an unfamiliar ingredient, tamarind. The book has a website and one of the featured recipes is Bamia b'Mishmosh : okra with prunes and apricots in tamarind sauce. This is not the recipe I'm trying but it does have a few useful sentences about cooking with okra. The book itself has an interesting couple of pages on the preparation of tamarind paste, but I've bought some readymade from a local Asian grocery.
NB: Madeline (squeakychu ) is the mastermind behind the TIOLI challenge which she introduced to the 75 book challenge group back in 2010.
Okay, mysterymax, nans, and Kerry, I've decided to stick around. I think this is such a fun challenge and something I'd be doing anyway. I just put a link from my 75-er thread straight to this thread so I won't lose it. This year I'm going to try to not have more than just my one new thread anywhere on LT. Wish me luck with that!
> 77
Not only have I never tasted a tamarind, I don't even know what one looks like!
I grew okra in my garden last year. It's a beautiful plant, but I don't particularly like eating that vegetable. I know. It's all in how you prepare it. It didn't taste good when I prepared it. Whatever I did with it was quite forgettable. :(
>77 BONS:. I love soup as well, so I'll be watching eagerly for good soup recipe ideas and cookbooks here at this thread.
>72 SqueakyChu:. I second or third or whatever what others have said. Please don't drop out. I think using cookbooks from the library is a really good strategy.
I've never cooked (or eaten) okra and following the posts near the start of the thread it sounds fairly difficult to get right. Regarding tamarind, it seems to add a sour citrus flavour, not that I've cooked with it or eaten any dishes flavoured with it. I bought sugar coated tamarind confectionery a couple of weeks ago - I thought it was awful, but my son loves it.
There's a pic of tamarind here, just scroll down a little.
Okra is great fried. One of my favorite things my grandma made. And my husband had tamarind flavored drinks all the time in Honduras when he was there.
I love fried okra but I've never been able to make it so that it comes out like my grandmother's. However, I often put okra into vegetable soups.
I love fried okra, but I ignore all the recipes and just salt it and roll it around in cornmeal (no flour, no wet bath) and then pan fry in a little oil until it's almost burned. I could never get the traditional okra recipes to work for me. Oh, and I usually use blue corn cornmeal. Looks gross, tastes yummy!
Skipping the okra, thank you. I think maybe that is something you have to grow up eating in order to really love.
And, about okra, I think (and have always heard) stick to the small ones. Once they get big, the seeds are big, and overall, it is just not so good as young tender thangs!
I'm with sjmccreary. Whenever a recipe calls for okra, I always leave it out. I've never tried fried okra, which I suppose I might like, but I don't need to develop a taste for another high calorie, cholesterol-laden food.
>77 BONS: Williams Sanoma Soup maker! How do you like it? I saw that and thought wow - someone figured out a way to improve a blender! But I think that I will have to put off getting one until we need a new blender. Which might be sooner then I think since hubby has taken up making almond milk. Hot chocolate made with almond milk is wonderful BTW and very filling.
Nice thing about the pressure canner is you can store things without worrying about your electricity going out for days. And you know exactly what is in your food. I have several food intolerances (dairy, anything that's a carb - taters, wheat, oatmeal, etc )so it is nice to know what I am eating.
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
DS~I have made one soup with the soup maker. It's actually made by Cuisinart-my error. My recipe was Carrot and Ginger Soup and I was very pleased with the outcome. But odd to look at your blender and it be at a full boil.
I freeze foods during the week but on weekends I would love to can my soups. I have a canner that belonged to my Mom which I've used once. As far as soups, am I clear to can any type? Freezing is better for me with veggies and how nice it would be to have a varity of special soups in your pantry.
The hubby does all the canning, but I believe that with a pressure canner (and not water bath) you can pretty much can anything. He has done milk, cheese and I think butter in the past even. Of course the dairy items change in texture, looks etc, so you need to take that into consideration.
We have canned Kale & Italian Sausage (similar to one at the Olive Garden that has potatoes) in the past and it is pretty yummy after canning. He canned Moroccan Carrot, Roasted Carrot & Tomato, Turkey Ham & Veggie soups before X-mas, which we gave out as gifts.
I hope to try canning some with different kinds of milks this year (almond and coconut) and see how they do.
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
I hope I don't sound like an advertisement but there were a lot of good recipes in the latest Cooking Light magazine. They focused on chicken this month. I didn't have any sticky notes handy but there are a lot of dogears. I really want to try the Thai chicken soup. I really like those flavors. I was also reminded of delicious chicken picata. Garlic and capers - yum!
>91 mamzel:/ mamzel, that's the only magazine that comes to my house that I read. I love it. I hope cooking out of a magazine is OK for this group. Lots of the recipes that start out in the monthly Cooking Light later end up in their cookbooks, which are also wonderful.
Sort of off topic, but we don't really care too much, do we? My 30-year-old son can always be coaxed into coming to dinner when I make his favorite side dish--mac & cheese. The recipe is from Cooking Light and uses 3 or 4 very interesting sort of lower fat cheeses, but the brilliant thing that they do is to include a butternut squash that makes the sauce look like cheddar cheese sauce. I've made this stuff probably 20 times in the past year, and when I don't make it people always seem sort of disappointed--"You mean you didn't make your mac & cheese?" Haha.
OK, after talking it up so much, now it would seem wrong not to include the recipe. Here's a link. Seriously, go ahead and use skim milk and fat free chicken broth, even if you normally hold your nose over such things. You won't notice the difference.
You all have made me want to go out and purchase a pressure canner for my soup.
I just received my newest cookbook, bought because I want to learn to make the best fried chicken evah, and I heard tell that this book has that recipe: My Mother's Southern Kitchen, by James Villas with Martha Pearl Villas. Wonderful book. I was a bit concerned about buying a used cookbook, since I know how my well-loved cookbooks look, but evidently the owner of this book could be a member of this group, since here we are charged with making a recipe from a cookbook we own that has never been used. This "used" cookbook is pristine. I think it's found a happier home.
Now my problem is this: how in the world do I choose ONE recipe? It will probably be the fried chicken, and I'll report on the results. But I want to add that just thumbing through this one I've found maybe 5 or 6 recipes that use OKRA, and even one that is specifically okra and tomatoes. Seriously, the way Martha Pearl writes about her okra and tomatoes, I am definitely going to have to try them, although I think I'll wait until summer.
I can't believe it. After starting this link and picking out my recipe my cooking husband left the recipe book at the other place and we can't try it out this weekend. Humbug.
I spent pretty much all day on the road today driving back home to East Tennessee from my Dad's in Mississippi. I needed to stretch when I got to Chattanooga. What better place to stretch can there be than a used bookstore? (This one has branches in Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville. I visit the Knoxville one quite often, but I enjoy stopping at the others to see what they might have that's different.) I made quite a haul for $15:
Collecting Dead Relatives by Laverne Galeener-Moore
A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony by John Demos
A Little Maine Cookbook by Barbara Karoff
Moon Pie: Biography of an Out-of-This-World Snack by David Magee
Favorite Recipes from Hawaii edited by Barbara B. Gray
Recipes: The Cooking of Germany by Time-Life (I had picked up the hardback one at the Goodwill Bookstore during Christmas; this is the spiral bound one.
Canal House Cooking - This was really cheap; it's probably a promo for the series of cookbooks distributed by Andrews McMeel, but it had some good recipes in it!
In the Kitchen with Rosie: Oprah's Favorite Recipes by Rosie Daley - For $.25, I couldn't pass it up.
Pike Place Market Cookbook by Braiden Rex-Johnson
As you can see, I hit the cookbook aisle first. Then I hit the history aisle. Unfortunately I felt that I needed to get back to my cat so I didn't make it to the bargain fiction aisle.
I'm sure that I'll be able to find a few recipes to cook among this haul!
#95 Ooooh, you reminded me I have the Pike Place cookbook! (Yes, I have so many that I can't remember them all.) I'll have to use that one this year for sure since I've never cooked out of it.
#95: That's an interesting load of cookbooks.
I was browsing the net yesterday and came across this article, I have a lot of cookbooks, I really have too many cookbooks, but I do not, and have never had 10,000 cookbooks!
I'll be reporting back on my cooking with tamarind experience, probably tomorrow. I've made a few recipes out of the cookbook and we tried them last night, but I want to try them again now that the flavours have had a chance to settle in on each dish.
96 - Debbie, that's the one I paid almost $5 for. It was still a bargain. There was another copy that was marked about $5 or $6 higher. I've learned at this store to pick up every copy you see because you may find a different price on each one. I can't wait to look through that one to see if there's something I want to cook. It looked very interesting.
97 - I don't think I'll ever have 10,000 cookbooks. I would have to build a new house just for the kitchen and cookbooks if I did. My cookbook collection expands quite rapidly, but I actually turned a few away. There was a copy of one that is on my wish list there that I really wanted, but I suspect I'll be able to pick it up cheaper than they had it at some point. They were asking $15 which was half the cover price. Once it isn't quite so new, it will be cheaper.
>98 thornton37814: Yes, you definitely got a bargain! I bought mine in Pike Place several years ago and the price tag on it says $18.95. I'm sure that's what I actually paid for it since I was being a tourist. I flipped through it and there's lots of good stuff, but I had it on a high shelf and not within easy reach. I've got it down and ready to cook from now!
I'll be cooking from Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman this sunday. Now I only need to decide whether I'll cook Cauliflower Curry or Pasta with Cauliflower in a Spicy Tomato Sauce.
This guy has my dream job:
Johnathan Milder, Research Librarian, Food Network
Interview here:
"A Bookworm Finds His Place Among the Stars"
Whining over on my thread about the struggle to figure out what I can eat and what I can cook now that I'm off gluten and dairy. Dairy I've already cut back on, but the gluten thing is super hard. I got all the cookbooks they had at the library to look through. Apparently I'm not the only one as they have a bunch already checked out.
It looks so complicated!!! I'm already frustrated. I went to Walmart today - $4.78 for a cake mix? Really? That's nuts! Oh, talk about depressing.
>102 cmbohn: Whole Foods and local co-ops are a good bet if you're looking for gf items. Most of them have the various gf flours in bulk, which is way cheaper. The box mixes are still expensive though.
#102: will this work? http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/13538/orange+almond+cake
>102 cmbohn:
Trying to avoid cross posting , but for the gluten intolerant friend I mentioned on your thread (who is also off dairy and doesn't eat soy by choice, has a wheat intolerant husband and an eight month old who seems to have inherited all of their intolerances plus a few of his own), the major difficulty seems to be processed foods. So many foods we eat everyday have been processed so far beyond their original state that gluten shows up in some really alarming places. She now does a lot more cooking from scratch, but has very few gluten free cookbooks (I've looked at the couple she has, and they do seem to make the whole business very complicated - not the kind of help I'd imagine you need), instead she mainly modifies "normal" recipes.
When I'm cooking for her and her family, I do the same. I'll admit it's challenging, I cooked up a stash of things for her to stock her freezer with after the baby came and I've never studied food labels so hard in all my life. I find the easiest recipes to convert tend to be from Asian or Middle Eastern cuisine. Once you get together a store cupboard of basics, like gluten free soy and a good GF flour, it should be easier to get back into eating food you love. And absolutely find a good health food store or co-op and buy in bulk. GF products are shamefully expensive.
Sorry for the ramble, but I love my food and really do feel for people who suddenly have a whole lot of restrictions put on what they can eat. I'm sure once you get a few successful recipes under your belt, it won't seem as daunting as it does now. And for goodness sake, put brownies back on your list of thing you can eat! Substitute a mixture of GF flour and almond meal (or use straight almond meal) for the flour and a light olive oil for the melted butter (slightly less in quantity as the almonds are much more moist than flour, and beat it up well with the eggs) and you're in business.
97> totally how I look at books, little pieces of history! Tastes really do change over time. 10,000 that's a good start!
101> I want that job too!
102> It is so hard to give up certain foods. you don't realize it until you find that you shouldn't eat it, but wheat seems to be in everything!
The hubby is getting really good at making almond milk. Everyone seems to think that it's crazy; you can buy it already made. Yes, but what is in it? And it doesn't seem to taste nearly as good. He is experimenting, trying to make a good food press using a car jack. I think that the last one involved a plastic pitcher and some pieces of wood. I am guessing that come fall there will be a bigger version so he can make cider out of the apples from my mothers apple tree.
Of course the bonus with making almond milk is almond flour.
Hubby bought what he thought was almond flour and coconut flour off the internet. He forgot to look at the ingredients though, as they were both a mixture of other things (they were listed as gluten free, which doens't really seem to be my 'problem'.) They both contained potato starch. I think learing to make your own is way better.
105> yeah what is 'up with' making going gluten free so hard?? That is like double punishment. I look at some recipes and think, seriously you want me to buy what??
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
>102 cmbohn:. If I were going to do a gluten-free diet, then I think I would stay away from packaged cake mixes, etc., even if they are gluten-free. Seriously, if you're going to make a cake, it doesn't really take much more work to make it from scratch than it does to make it from a box.
I haven't seen this cookbook, but it certainly gets good reviews. Gluten-Free on a Shoestring: 125 Easy Recipes for Eating Well on the Cheap, by Nocole Hunn.
This is from a reader-reviewer at Amazon.com: Nicole understands that people want to be able to cook gf without a hassle, not to mention the cost of baking gf. Someone else says the book is a good turorial to cooking if you're new to being gf.
Good luck!
I did an easy recipe from Cooking Light: Cookbook 1992. It was a quick recipe for Seasoned Broccoli (page 84), a recipe I thought I could use in my CSA newsletter next season. It was good recipe, but I have a better recipe for this that I found last year. This one is lighter on the oil so it's great for my weight reduction diet.
My husband and I just ate some of this broccoli for an afternoon snack. I just called it a "tapa" and he came to eat it with me! :)
I don't have a regular 12 in 12 Challenge Thread. Last year I discovered that I couldn't really keep up with all the 75er threads that I found interesting so I am wary of taking more on, but I love the idea of trying to start cooking out of the cookbooks on my shelf (we won't even mention the boxes and boxes of cookbooks still in the garage awaiting bookshelves to house them).
>102 cmbohn: I love the Cooking with Coconut Flour: A Delicious Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Alternative to Wheat cookbook. I really like the fact that I am not usung what I consider a 'pre-mixed flour' like GF flour which usually has a combo of different flours and things I should avoid. I L-O-V-E the pancakes.
(Bruces' evil twin :-))
>112 BONS: Looks delicious!
#112> That looks wonderful - is it off the website or out of one of their books? (I've subscribed to CL for 20 years and spend too much time looking and not enough time cooking)
Look at this link. We added 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, fresh spinach and deleted balsamic vinegar because we add 2 cans of fire roasted tomatoes for a little kick since it was such miserable weather today. It's nice to do different soups but I can't seem to not tweak a recipe. This was a hit today.
I can't seem to not tweak a recipe
I'm the exact same way. I look at them as templates that need customizing! And it's rare that I ever have exactly the same ingredients that are in a more complicated recipe, so I'm always substituting things. Your version looks and sounds yummy!
Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews
I reviewed this on my thread back in 2009 and then put it way and never did cook from it. So I thought I'd try using tamarind and try a few of the recipes in here as I remembered that there was a good description of preparing tamarind in the book.
So I prepared the paste from a block of tamarind pulp, I followed the recipe but only used about 1/3 of the amount that the recipe called for. It soaks overnight, is squeezed through a cheesecloth/sieve and then boiled down with the addition of sugar & citric acid. The paste keeps in a glass jar for a few months and tastes sweet n sour.
Now I was ready to sample a few of the recipes in the book, I have to admit to slightly tweaking most of them:
Bazargan: Tangy Tamarind Bulghur Salad - definitely an acquired taste, there is just so much tamarind in this, over 8 tablespoons in the recipe for a cup of burghul, I used 4 tablespns and it was still very strongly flavoured. I think it would be ok in small amounts with other salads.
Salat Shwandar Maslook: Tamarind Beetroot onion salad - this was given the thumbs up by most of the family, the flavour got better over the couple of days we were trying it.
Keftes: Tamarind-stewed meatballs - I didn't have matzo meal so used dried breadcrumbs. The tamarind flavoured tomato sauce for the meatballs was not so welcome on the first try. I checked the seasoning and the second time i served them up they met with more approval.
The recipes also called for Aleppo pepper, a mild red pepper from a particular Syrian capsicum. I had dried Turkish capsicum flakes in my pantry so substituted that.
I'll be trying more recipes using tamarind, I'm enjoying the flavour but don't recommend serving up three dishes containing tamarind to your family on the same night!
I love this thread.
>112 BONS:. BONS, that soup looks so good!
>117 avatiakh:. I have to give that tamarind a try. Have you ever tried the tamarind paste that comes in a jar? I'm sure making it in your own kitchen, but I wanted to get a feel for what this tastes like. I didn't know what it was--had to go to Wiki to find out.
don't recommend serving up three dishes containing tamarind to your family on the same night Hilarious!
I can see that I'm going to have to make room on my shelves for more cookbooks--ha.
When I grew up in the Caribbean kids would suck on tamarind seeds straight from the pods. The last time I took my kids down to St. Thomas, we found some on the ground at a beach and I let them try them. The smooth hard seeds are covered with a thin layer of pulp that is intensely both sour and sweet. Since they are commonly found in markets around here as a common Mexican ingredient, they were able to impress their friends by sharing.
Using tamarind from a jar is much more economical as far as time.
I meant to say making it in your own kitchen is best, but I seem to have left out that word.
mamzel, that sounds darned right fascinating. Is tamarind seasonal, or might I be able to find it in my international foods store, where--"If they don't have it, you don't need it"--?
If you can get your hands on it fresh, give it a try. A lovely Thai lady I work with once brought some in for me, and I have to confess, none of it made it into any cooking, I ended up eating the lot straight from the pod.
#115> Thank you for the recipe link and thank you for sharing your tweaks. No one in my family is much for cooked tomatoes so I will probably cut back on that but I am eager to try it!
#115: Yes thanks for linking the recipe, your picture of the soup looks much more appetising than the one on the website. I love cooking with chickpeas so shall be printing out the recipe and adding in your suggested amendments.
#119: Thanks for sharing the tamarind seed story. I'm really glad I tried cooking with it and will be looking for more tamarind recipes.
I cooked Cauliflower Curry, the recipe came from Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman, page 375. It was a big hit with my family and I'll definitely be making it again!
(My food photo skills are non-existent. It tasted much, much better than it looks on the picture!)
It looks wonderfully yummy! Can I come over?
125> Sure! There was plenty, we're not very big eaters here :)
Also, I've now reviewed the cookbook, review can be found here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/129171#3160176
Bought tamarind today. Beet salad soon.
Does it count for the challenge if we have no intention of buying the cookbook? Of course if the recipe is really good...
>124 Samantha_kathy: Looks quite tempting to me, and I'm not crazy about cauliflower.
>124 Samantha_kathy:. I've also found that sometimes it's impossible to make the food look good in a photo. I used to post my Sunday dinners on facebook so that my family could see what I was doing, and sometimes things turned out looking not so great. I guess I'm a better cook than photographer.
That looks very good, and the cookbook looks like a keeper. Nice review! Thumbs-up.
128> My mother isn't crazy about cauliflower either and she really liked it. It's a good way to use this vegetable without it overpowering your tastebuds.
129> Yeah, I've never been able to make food look good in a picture, except for the occasional desert. And this picture was taken in a hurry, because dinner was getting cold :D.
Thanks for the thumbs!
>120 labwriter: Becky,
There probably was a season for tamarinds but being a kid I didn't notice. It was July when we found them on the beach. If you look for it in the store you will see many of the shells broken. That's natural. I wouldn't choose a pod that wasn't since that would mean it wasn't ripe yet.
Breezing through and have now made a mental note to NOTvisit this thread just before dinner when I am hungry..... The Tuscan Chick Pea soup looks really good and the Cauliflower Curry has my stomach growling.
Love this thread!
This thread makes me think we should have a whole group on cooking and food in books! It's not just the cookbooks either. I've actually read several novels that made me crave a certain food. Once I even developed a recipe from scratch when I couldn't find one online to match what the author described. This thread is fabulous!
The Appleton Porter books by Mark Lovell turned me on to tea with toast and lemon shred marmalade. I also learned about peanut butter with 'bread & butter' pickle sandwiches with another detective!
133> And how about those books, like the mysteries of Susan Wittig Albert or Julie Hyzy, that have a few recipes in an appendix that correlate to the story? I love that kind of thing!
*ears perk up* Lemon Shred Marmalade??? *thinking about loaded Meyer Lemon tree at home*
later - Googled and found recipe from Canadian Living Magazine - maybe this weekend?
We have this group here: http://www.librarything.com/groups/theanythingculinaryb. It's pretty slow, I think, I haven't been over lately either, but it would be fun to revive it!
Tried my first gluten free recipe of the year, and it was a disappointment. "Fudgy Chocolate Brownies" is what they were SUPPOSED to be, but what we got was a salty, vaguely chocolatey bar with a strange taste to it. Universal thumbs down, and we love brownies around here. The recipe was from The Food Allergy Cookbook by Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne, and maybe if I'm away from wheat long enough to COMPLETELY forget what brownies are supposed to taste like and I cut back on the salt (but seriously, it was only 1/2 tsp. Why the salty taste?), I *might* be able to choke a couple of these down. But I doubt it.
So dang disappointed. I just bought all this stuff at the health food store too - potato flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour. My daughter practically gagged at the last one, and that is NOT helping my morale.
Oh well. At least I can still eat my Reese's peanut butter cups!
I'm lucky that my local co-op makes amazing gluten-free desserts. I think they mostly use chickpea flour these days (same as garbanzo bean?). Their early attempts weren't fabulous, but whatever they're doing now really tastes yummy. I'm not actually gluten-intolerant, but a ton of my friends and family are and I eat gluten-free a lot. I should ask my co-op to publish a cookbook!
> 137
but what we got was a salty, vaguely chocolatey bar with a strange taste to it.
That's terrible, Cindy! So sorry. I can imagine how disappointing it must have been to await brownies and then be rewarded (?) with what resulted. :(
A shame the brownies didn't turn out for you.
My son gave me a gluten free cookbook for Christmas and I have only made one item (Paella) from it so far which was fantastic.
I have yet to add all my cookbooks to LT, a job I must do soon.
>137 cmbohn: Cindy, they're not brownies, but my daughter's recipe for gluten-free cookies (which she got from a gluten-intolerant friend) is really good, whether you can eat gluten or not. Also really simple:
1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter (or almond butter)
1 egg
chocolate chips if you want (but she says to check the ingredients; some contain gluten)
This recipe and several others -- including gluten-free pizza crust and quinoa salad -- are posted on her blog. Not all the recipes are gluten-free but many are.
Has anyone here made Swedish Rusks? I asked my hubby to find out that shape/size of the pan to use and he keeps giving me recipes where the dough is rolled into balls and flattened, like a cookie. I remember that the rusks that my grandfather had were more like peices of rectangular toast (too bad that bakery is long gone).
The one recipe that I do have says to use a flat bread pan. Admittedly i don't bake much, but I don't think that I have heard of a flat bread pan before. I suppose that they could be shaped like biscoitti. . .
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
In an effort to sort of make this fair and balanced and not allow this thread to go too far down the special diet rabbit hole (and don't take me wrong, I have sympathy for anyone who suffers from celiac disease and needs a gluten-free diet), I'm going to post something from one of my favorite new cookbooks: Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day, by Hertzberg and Francois. This is their second cookbook, the first one being about how to make artisan bread. If you follow their strategies, there really is never a need to eat pizza from a box again--ever.
And I will add that they also have gluten-free and whole grain recipes--it says so in a little green circle on the front of the book--although I personally have no plans to try the gluten-free.
Here's my first try at pizza, using their recipe for Classic Pizza Margherita. It was fast and easy, probably because I've been making bread using their process for about the past 3 months. But it really isn't a bit difficult, as long as you have the right tools (a pizza stone is good, a pizza peel for transferring the pizza into and out of the oven, and a plastic tub for the dough). The dough is homemade, of course, but the sauce is as well, and is a seriously simple process that delivers delicious results. To.Die.For
I served this up to DH for lunch, just a small appetizer-sized pizza, since I don't want to be trying to take off an extra 20 pounds anytime soon. His comment was something I'll cherish forever: "Good Lord, this is Sam & Ray's quality pizza" (Sam & Ray's being the pizza place that was his high school hangout 40 years ago, where they all went after football practice).
Now why in the world did this cookbook sit on my shelf unused for two months?
I love it when you find a treasure like that. Our pizza stone cracked, right in two! We still haven't replaced it and we are missing it.
143> Oh, that looks SO good!
That does look good. I always make my own pizzas from scratch but rarely experiment with different doughs. Might be tempted to give it a try. I'm on my third pizza stone, the others also cracked. I think eventually you end up with a good one.
I made foccacia bread the other day using a biba (starter dough) for the first time.
For gluten-free cooks, my son keeps wanting me to try a cauliflower pizza base and I wonder if anyone has tried this? I can't bring my head around to this idea.
If that cookbook is as good as his one on bread is, you've got yourself a gem of a cookbook!
The planets were wrong - our stone pizza plate broke last week. Go figure! The pizza looks great, one of the major food groups!
149> Oh no - I'd be lost without my Pampered Chef baking stone that I use for my pizza.
I was talking to my sister in law this afternoon. She was making a dish to take to the football game party she was going to (Go Broncos!). It sounded so good: Arroz Con Polo (Rice with Chicken).
Here's the link.
Another Sunday, another new recipe from a book I (think) I never cooked from before. This time I picked up Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver, and I decided to make Steak, Guinness and Chees Pie from page 342. My full review of Jamie at Home is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/129171#3172300
It turned out great, although I replaced Guinness with a local dark, flavourful beer, since Guinness is not readily available here. I also read the recipe wrong and therefore used quiche-dough instead of puff pastry. Still tasty, though, but I think it would have been even better with puff pastry, so that's definitely something to do correctly next time.
For once, my pie actually looked good when it came from the oven!
And here you can see the (very yummy) filling:
That looks really good. I made Beef in Cider this weekend, a Delia Smith recipe from Frugal Cook, the second time I made it and it seems to keep my menfolk happy. I haven't tried cooking with beer though will have to give it a try.
Samantha_Kathy, that look absolutely delicious!
153> Cooking with beer works the same as with cider, but it gives it a more robust flavour. You should definitely try it.
I feel so lame, but we went to the Stillwater Olive Oil Company and bought some amazing balsamic vinegars and olive oils and I wanted to use at least one. The only recipe that I could find that I didn't have to run out to the store to buy something was Raspberries and Cream from A Passion for Protein by Henry Harris. It didn't actually call for the balsamic, I added it.
I put a picture on my blog - http://trufflestriflesandtribbles.blogspot.com/ I am having issues with saving photos on my computer otherwise I would try to post it here.
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
Hadn't planned on doing 12 in 12, but your Cookbook Sub-Challenge drew me in.
From: America's Test Kitchen (Don't have the book; saw the program on TV Saturday, looked up their recipe and cooked it on Sunday. The online recipe.)
Spicy Mexican Shredded Pork Tostadas (Tinga)
Verdict: Excellent! Wonderful flavor!
Changes I would make next time: To get enough for my family, I had to double the recipe. I think this affected the outcome. Having too much meat in the pan didn't allow it to get quite crispy enough. I would divide it into 3 or 4 pans to crisp next time. Also, the amount of liquid specified to add in the last step took too long to reduce, so by the time it was done, the meat's original separate crispiness was more like the steamy burrito meat you find in buffets. (Compare my pic to the recipe's picture to see what I mean.) Next time, do not add all the broth in at once. Use a little and keep checking.
From: A Feast In Eden by The Catholic Women of Cincinnati. (Cincinnati, Ohio: Catholic Women of Cincinnati, 1997), page 170.
Recipe: Chewy Chocolate Cookies
I substituted cherry chips for half the chocolate chips called for in the recipe. (I'd been wanting to make a chocolate cookie using cherry chips that I'd found at Wal-Mart.)
What great food and fun recipes. This is the best thread! I'm going to try them all.
Lori, those look so good! Did you like the combo? What was the verdict?
They were quite good. The ratio of chocolate to cherry chips was just right. The recipe was very similar to a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe, but it replaced about 1/3 of the flour with cocoa powder.
Lori, they look delicious. I want a chocolate cherry cookie!
I love homemade cookies but I rarely make them. I hate having to stand in the kitchen waiting for the next cookie sheet to be done.
#163 I totally agree about baking cookies - I didn't even like making them as a kid. But I love eating them!
They do look delicious. The problem with baking cookies is you want to eat 1 or 2 but not the whole batch and yes, I'm inclined to wander off and burn a tray or two.
When I had kids, that was a problem, because I would double the recipe. Now with just me eating them - and I really shouldn't - I only make half a recipe, and can get them done quickly, and without ending up with mnore than I can eat.
I took most of the batch to work. The student workers make good disposals for the rest of a batch of cookies. I had every cookie pan in the house dirty when I did it, because I was trying to churn them out faster! I have entirely too many cookie pans now because someone gave me some more recently, but they sure did come in handy.
My next try is from My Mother's Southern Kitchen, a book that hasn't been on my shelf all that long, but that I also haven't yet tried anything from. Tomorrow I need a good finger-food football-watching recipe, so I'm going to try her recipe for Paper-Bag Barbecued Chicken. I will report.
The chicken is covered with a to-die-for BBQ sauce and then cooked in a paper bag at a high temp for an hour and a half. I might have to make people draw numbers for this chicken. Haha.
Beef short ribs were on sale so I will be trying a recipe off the Food Network website by Ann Burrell. I know I should be using a recipe from a book but I was at work and my daughter was going to the store and asked for a list of needed ingredients.
Hi. New here. *waves*
I'm a teacher and I made one of my favorite recipes from our cookie cook book with my kids just last week. It's a wonderful way to get them to eat oats! And the adults came back for seconds and thirds too! Of course made with Jelly and chocolate, it's also very sweet. But because of the oats it's filling so you don't want too much...
Very close to this:
Only ours uses chocolate chips and jelly for filling instead of the actual fruit. We don't use the salt either and we put the bottom layer in the pan, then cook it for 10 minutes before putting in the jelly, chocolate and the rest of the crumble on top.
Use Cherry jelly and warm a slice in the microwave before putting vanilla ice cream on top and you have an AWESOME desert.
Don't know how often I'll be able to help share these this year... we don't actually have an oven or anything other than one electric burner at our house. Any time we need to cook we have to do it elsewhere.
I made my first recipe from Power Foods 150 Delicious Recipes With the 38 Healthiest Ingredients. I tagged 27 recipes so I will probably make a few more. I have two more planned to make in the next few days. My first try was Edamame and Butternut Squash Succotash. It was my first time cooking with fresh thyme. (it made the whole apartment smell great) Anyway, it was yummy. I took pictures. If I can figure out how to post them I will.
>170 mirrani:. Hi mirrani. Welcome to our little group. You'll get some great ideas here.
>171 VioletBramble:. Kelly, I bought the Power Foods cookbook last summer and I've made some really good things from it. When berries were in season, I made the berry grunt--oh, it was so good. I also have a new standby side dish that I make quite a bit--quinoa and corn salad. It's a great cookbook that has helped me find a lot of new ways to use good ingredients, especially veggies and grains.
>168 labwriter:. The Paper-Bag BBQ Chicken was a huge hit. If you have teenagers, make this when they have a group of friends over and they will love you for it.
This is from My Mother's Southern Kitchen, by James Villas and his mother, Martha Pearl Villas.
The bbq sauce for this recipe is thick and delicious. The chicken cooks in a paper bag for an hour and a half at 400 degrees. The reason the bag looks so greasy is because she has you literally grease the inside of the bag. If you didn't do that, then the chicken would stick to the bag and all you would have is a mess of chicken bits in a bag.
This was the best food I've had in ages. The only time I shop at Whole Foods is to buy chicken because I can get great produce (and everything else) at a much better price at my International Foods store. But WF does have the best chicken of anyone. The chicken we had yesterday was from an Amish farm, and as I was washing it, I was thinking that it was probably close to the kind of chicken my great-grandmother used to get from her back yard. I am very glad, though, that I don't have to wring the chicken's neck and pluck its feathers. Oh my.
Out of the oven. Make sure you supervise the platter, or the chicken will disappear. Well, it will disappear anyway. I recommend lottery tickets.
Oh my goodness, that chicken looks delicious! I know what I have to make for dinner tonight.
I can just imagine that ooey, sticky delicious chicken melting in my mouth!
Yay! I found the recipe online and can't wait to try it! From Charlotte Magazine Online: http://www.charlottemagazine.com/Charlotte-Magazine/August-2011/Southern-Comfort...
Thanks for the link, Cindy. I am definitely going to try this one!
#172 Becky - I'm planning to make the quinoa and corn dish, and the rice stuffed plum tomatoes, in the next few days. If I can find good yellow bell peppers I want to try to make the golden pepper soup over the weekend. It will be my first attempt at home made soup.
>176 countrylife:. Hi Cindy! I'm so glad you found that link. It's a fun recipe, both to make and to eat.
>178 VioletBramble:. It will be my first attempt at home made soup.
And I know it won't be your last! I haven't made that golden pepper soup recipe, but I've been tempted, because I've had very good luck with making soup from peppers. One of my very favorite soup recipes (and I collect them, so I literally have hundreds) comes from the people at Cooking Light, in one of my favorite cookbooks, Cooking through the Seasons. Fortunately, the recipe for the soup, Pumpkin and Yellow Pepper Soup with Smoked Paprika, is online--here. This soup is so good, and it's definitely worth finding smoked paprika if you've never tried using it. I bought it for this recipe, and now I use it in all kinds of things.
In fact, that soup sounds like a great idea for tonight to go with last night's leftovers.
#179 - I've never heard of smoked paprika. I'll have to look for it. My mother would like that recipe. Do you think changing the chicken broth to vegetable broth would affect the flavor much? I'm a vegetarian.
oh you Soupers! I was going home tonight to have a bowl of Special K, now I find myself looking for a quick soup to put in the new soup maker.
>179 labwriter: & >180 VioletBramble: Violet, labwriter is so right. While visiting the Ozarks we found a most quaint German place. The only soup they served this night in Oct was sauerkraut soup. I love kraut but in a soup? Then my husband wont touch the stuff at all, the waitress asked him to try it as she would delete it from the bill. Over the years of working there she had never had one person not like it. It was a cold, foggy night and he wanted soup with dinner. We ordered it and it was wonderful. Pork based, kraut drained of juice to get rid of the sour, smoked paprika was all the server could recall. I have not been able to duplicate it exactly, but the smoked paprika I use in many dishes. lovely flavor.
off work and off to the grocer.
>180 VioletBramble:. No, I think you'd be fine with vegetable broth. I use that sometimes myself.
>181 BONS:. I love the soup story. I order soup whenever we go out to eat. Sauerkraut soup--I absolutely have to find that recipe somewhere.
Souper--I love it. Ha.
My husband is Slovenian by heritage--Mihelich. He says that every time he visited his grandmother's house, it smelled like cabbage. Seriously, this soup looks To.Die.For. I'm a genealogy buff, and I'm always looking for recipes that my ggrandmothers and gggrandmothers might have made. This looks like something I need to make for the family.
Sauerkraut Soup (Kapustnica).
Oh, my, goodness! That looks delicious! Thank you for the link, Becky!
Tonight I'm making a carrot and lentil thing from Veggiestan. I've not bought it yet, but I'm pretty sure i want it, and this recipe was in the latest BBC Good Food magazine, so this is a test.
It is rather a wierd concept that you might be expected to cook out of the cookbooks. Books are for reading, right?
OK, so I'm sort of into the ethnic thing these days, wanting to find more recipes that my husband's Slovenian grandmother might have made. This recipe was one of the "comments" left on the sauerkraut soup site:
Hello I have a recipe for whole dried peas and sourkraut soup we serve at christmas eve dinner.My mother-in-law made something with the rue that he uses in this soup--the rue plus peas. I can pronounce the name of the dish, but I sure as heck can't spell it. Anyway, I would give this one a try. It's not exactly heart-healthy, but then again, my husband's ggrandmother lived to be 99 years old.
Tonight I am making Coq au Vin from Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I have had this volume, which originally was my mother's, forever. Last night I made another of her recipes, Filets de Poisson à la Bretonne with salmon. This has been a favorite of my family for years. My twist is that I keep the pan that I sautèed the vegetables in and after I remove the fish from the poaching pan I pour the liquid into the pan. I bring it up to the boil, whisk in cold butter and pour that over the fish. Yum!
>187 mamzel:. I have Julia's book, The Way to Cook. This is one of those cookbooks that you can spend a good bit of time with just reading. I adore her writing style. The book is organized using "Master Recipes" in red type. The book must weigh about 30 pounds. I sadly must admit that I haven't made a darned thing from it yet, so this is a good cookbook for our thread here.
The reason I like this book is because she uses tools like the food processor that she wouldn't have used in her old cookbooks. I can't/won't cook without mine.
mamsel, your salmon sounds wonderful.
I've always been proud of my split pea soup. I've been making it for about 20 years, and I think it's the best pea soup I've ever eaten, if I do say so myself. It comes from A Feast of Soups by Jacqueline Heriteau.
So imagine my surprise at being able to improve on this recipe--by a lot! I took one of the recipes from a commenter at the Slovak Cooking website (see the link at #183) and tweaked it a little bit. I made my normal pea soup recipe, then I added the rue this guy made with butter and flour (it needs to be browned almost to the point of being burned to have the right flavor), and then I added 2 cups of sauerkraut. I don't think I'll ever make pea soup any other way.
This soup plus some rye bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day--to me that's a little bit of heaven. Plus, this recipe with the bread will make a great dinner for a family of four for under ten bucks. How can you beat that?
I LOVE split pea soup. Can't imagine it with sauerkraut though, much as I like each of them separately. Looking for that recipe online, the only one I found attributed to A Feast of Soups was called "Meatless Split Pea Soup". (I'd use a ham-bone, anyway.) http://www.recipelink.com/cgi/msgbrd/msg_script.pl?printer=1&board=6&thr... Is that your recipe?
Whilst looking for that one, something called "Garlic Soup", from that same cookbook, showed up. Have you tried that one? It looks a little like French Onion Soup, which hubbs loves, and while he's now looking to eat more garlic, I thought this might be a good choice. It was in the middle of a long online list, so just copying the recipe here:
SOUPE A L'AILLE (Garlic Soup)
From A Feast of Soups by Jacqueline Heriteau. The
garlic is not left whole but is pureed after 30 minutes of gentle
2 large heads garlic
2 cups boiling water
2 quarts cold water
2 tablespoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 large whole cloves
1/4 teaspoon sage
1/4 teaspoon thyme
2 sprigs parsley
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup butter, melted
6-8 pieces French bread, toasted and buttered
1/2 cup shredded Swiss cheese
Separate garlic cloves and scald 1 minute with boiling water. Slip
off and discard the skins and scalding water.
In a kettle over medium heat, combine cold water, garlic cloves,
salt, pepper, cloves, sage, thyme, parsley and oil. Bring to a boil,
cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. Remove from heat.
With slotted spoon, lift out whole cloves, parsley and garlic.
Discard parsley and whole cloves.
Puree garlic with 2 cups broth in a blender or food processor or
press through a sieve.
In a medium bowl, beat egg yolks until thick. Whip in the butter,
then the garlic puree, then 1 cup broth. Whip mixture into kettle.
Reheat to just below boiling but do not boil.
To serve, place a piece of French bread in the bottom of each soup
bowl and sprinkle generously with Swiss cheese. Ladle soup over
bread. Makes 6-8 servings.
Thanks for reminding me! I haven't made split pea soup in a while. I like to add carrots, onions, and celery along with the meat from a smoked turkey leg (less fat, more meat, more economical). I've got tonight planned (breakfast for dinner) so I'll have to find a turkey leg for tomorrow night.
I have a suggestion for another TIOLI challenge you may want to do in the future. For each month, you could announce a dish, and then each of us finds a different cookbook in which to try out the same dish you suggested. It would be interesting to compare notes and see the variations from cookbook to cookbook.
The only down side to this challenge would be that we wouldn't be able to taste each other's cookery.
*still trying to decide what to make for February*
>190 countrylife:. Hi Cindy. Oh, I was so afraid I was going to ruin a good pot of pea soup with that sauerkraut. But it was delicious.
I have a nostalgic feeling for split pea soup, because it was my father's favorite. He was a Dutchman, and hard to please when it came to things like this, but he thought mine was the all-time best split pea soup he'd ever eaten.
No, that's not the recipe I use. I think we decided that it's OK to post one recipe from a book--copyright issues. If I were a cookbook author, I would be fine with someone posting a recipe from my book in hopes of getting people to buy the thing for more of them.
Jacqueline Heriteau has several split pea soup recipes in the book. This one is my favorites and my go-to split pea soup recipe; I always make it after I cook a ham, and because of this soup, I always buy a bone-in ham. The book, which is amazing: A Feast of Soups, and it's still in print, available at Amazon.
Split Pea Soup with a Ham Bone
1 large onion, chopped
2 Tbsp butter
3 quarts water
2 cups split green peas (1 lb.)
4 whole cloves
1 medium bay leaf
2 large sprigs parsley
1 ham bone with scraps of meat, fat, and skin
1 cup minced carrot
1 cup minced celery
1/8 tsp dried savory
1/4 tsp marjoram
1 Tbsp salt (or adjusted to your liking)
8 peppercorns
In a large kettle over medium heat, saute the onion in the butter until transluscent, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients.** Raise heat and bring to a boil, then cover, lower heat, and simmer 3 to 4 hours. Stir now and then toward the end of the cooking, and add more water if the soup thickens too much. It should be as thick as heavy cream whipped several minutes, but not stiff. Remove the ham bone, bay, cloves, and peppercorns. Cut up meat and return to the soup.
This freezes beautifully. You can thin or stretch with broth, milk, or cream.
**For those of you who might wonder, splits require no pre-soaking.
Is anyone making anything special for the Super Bowl? I found a Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest mag all about Mexican food. The recipes all look so good that I decided to have a Mexican themed Super Bowl party. All of these recipes are new to me, and several require ingredients that I had to search for, but they all look absolutely amazing. I bought it just this week at my grocery store, so it should still be on sale.
I'm making conchinita pibil (barbecued pork); meatballs in chipotle sauce; frijoles rancheros--a fabulous-looking dip; a tangy mustard cole slaw that is from another cookbook; Mexican-style twice-baked sweet potatoes with orange crema; and Ancho chile truffles. There will be lots of corn and flour tortillas and all the fixings to make to-die-for tacos using that pork. And of course margaritas and beer. I guess I'd better get busy--ha. We're smoking the pork today out in the back yard, so I'm hoping the rain/snow mix we had yesterday will stay away.
How can no one on this thread have written anything about a new recipe they were trying on Sunday? Seriously?
I paid $5.99 for that Better Homes & Gardens Mexican recipe magazine where I found all of those wonderful recipes. Seriously, it's the best 6 bucks I've spent all year. People absolutely raved over the food. The biggest hit: the twice-baked Mexican sweet potatoes (who knew?), the Mexican crema, and the Ancho chile truffles.
What was yesterday/Sunday?? Ok, I did find out what day it was around 3 o'clock I think. I made cheese quesadillas – no recipe needed.
We bought 5 new cookbooks this last week (3 Martha Stewart Living Magazine ones and 2 for the pressure cooker.) I am trying to get the hubby to make a bunch of the recipes. Hopefully he will take the copy of the Beef with Mango lettuce wraps recipe, and the box of mangos as a hint on what he should make first. . . :-)
Right now he is making rice noodles – from SCRATCH! Who knew they were so easy to make! He got the recipe from Thai Home-Cooking from Kamolmal's Kitchen. Did I mention amazingly easy??
Have to go teach class now. Will try to post a picture later. . .
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
Again, not a cookbook, but from the website, Pinterest, I made a baked potato soup that was incredibly scrumptious. Wish I'd taken a picture - mine turned out prettier than the picture here.
Actually, the recipe is from a blogsite called "Mama Loves Food", pinned by a Pinterest user. The blog author says it "reminds me a lot of Houlihan's Baked Potato Soup".
(For the monthly challenge, though, I still intend to cook something from one of my cookbooks that hasn't been previously used.)
I've been using my instincts instead of cookbooks for most things this month so far. I too, intend to get around to something from an unused cookbook.
Last night I made a southwestern chicken dish. I was going to add cheese to it, but opted to leave off the extra calories.
Earlier today, I made a hot fudge sauce to go on Ghiridelli Double Chocolate Brownies with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream.
........................................Wilted Cabbage and Roasted Walnut Salad
I made this from Master Chefs Cook Kosher (p. 134), a book that my manager at work gave me as a present. This is the first recipe that I've made from this cookbook.
The salad is served warm. It's cabbage cooked in margaine, with salt, pepper, cider vinegar, and soy sauce added. It's then topped with roasted walnuts. Both my husband and I liked it. I'll be using this recipe for my CSA newsletter this coming year as we always have cabbage in the fall boxes.
The reason that margarine (not politically correct!) is used is that this is a kosher cookbook, and the aim is to keep the cabbage parve (that is, neutral) so that it can be served either with meat or dairy meals. In Jewish receipes, milk products and meat products are never mixed.
Rating - 4 stars
Don't forget to also post your cooking results on Cookbooker. You can also get some ideas from that website for which cookbooks to use and which recipes to try!
I made the Chili con Carne recipe from the America's Test Kitchen website for the upteenth time. This time we hosted by daughter's boyfriend. She apparently sends pictures to him of food I make! I sent him off last night with leftovers. The meat was perfectly done, melt-in-one's-mouth without completely dissolving.
>197 countrylife:. I'm so crazy about soup. Thanks for the tip about this recipe.
>198 thornton37814:. Lori, I'm sure anyone who loves chocolate would rather have had those extra calories go to the hot fudge, anyway. The chicken looks scrumptious just as it is! Is your hot fudge a microwave recipe? I've never ventured out of my TnT microwave version to see how others rate. And since I don't care for chocolate, myself, I'm never sure whether it's good or not.
>199 SqueakyChu:. Madeline, we're not Jewish, but that salad looks wonderful! We both love cabbage and walnuts, so I had to go find it. This recipe shows the same ingredients you mentioned, so I'm going to give it a try. http://www.dinnertool.com/recipe/wilted-cabbage-and-roasted-walnut-salad
>201 mamzel:. mamzel, your post reminded me that when I tried to get back on America's Test Kitchen to find that chili recipe, it showed up as ... I don't recall the term, maybe restricted or for full members only, or some such. I wasn't willing to part with money for the privilege, so I'll just salivate from afar while hearing about it online...
#193: Becky - I made your soup and my sons loved it. First I thought I'd never make it as we don't ever have ham on the bone, but our local supermarket deli was selling a bone for stock the day after you posted the recipe, so I grabbed it and some split peas and presto. The only change I made was putting the soup in a slowcooker overnight.
#203: It's amazing how many cookbook recipes show up online in various foodblogs or recipe sites.
I've made a couple of recipes lately from cookbooks I've had from the library, but I'm going to head to my own books for my next challenge. From the library I made the Sour Cream and Lemon cake from Cake Keeper Cakes. Nothing special but the recipe worked fine. They suggest to dress the cake up with Basil blueberries which I didn't do but here's the recipe for that topping. Combine 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup sugar, 5 basil leaves and bring to boil. Remove from heat, stand 15 minutes. Strain and pour over 1 pint of blueberries. (I just served the cake with Greek yoghurt).
Cindy, I just did the hot fudge on the fly - butter, cocoa, sugar, whole milk (would have used cream if I'd had it on hand), and a couple of chocolate squares. I just kind of did it to taste and right on the stovetop. I couldn't give you proportions if I tried.
I haven't made any recipes from my Feb book Everyday Cooking With Dr Dean Ornish yet. I plan to make Chickpea Stew with Couscous and wilted spinach with garlic and lemon.
I did mange to make three more recipes from my Jan book, Power Foods (wrong touchstone). I made quinoa and corn salad with toasted pumpkin seeds, rice stuffed plum tomatoes and the golden pepper soup. The soup was very good. My co-workers were impressed that I had actually made soup. So was my mother.
I'm making a sort of zuchinni pizza from Nature : Simple healthy and good tonight. It uses a zucchinni sauce instead of tomato sauce. Not sure what my husband will say, so I'll make a more normal one as well.
203> Cindy, I'm with you there. I copied this recipe first from the TV series and then downloaded it before they got more demanding. I'll try to remember to PM the recipe to you.
Continuation from 207. Well, I already was unhappy that the ingredients are listed separately (They are printed in a different colour in the body of the recipe.) In trying to use the cookbook I first discovered that there is no index. Then Mom saw this recipe and I decided to try it.
Final verdict: The zucchini sauce as the basis for a pizza worked a lot better than you would think. I would make this again. However the cookbook itself is destined to not stay on my bookcase for long.
Many of the recipes call for rather exclusive ingredients - the 'simple' in the subtitle is as in 'simply the best'. If your local store or your wallet don't run to truffles, wild boar, special cheeses, chestnut flour,... you will find many of the recipes unusable. And because there is no index you can't even use it to look up what to do with them if you do get them.
The directions take a lot for granted, and amounts are somewhat funny. The pizza gets put into the oven, but I didn't find a temperature to heat that oven to. I guess it should have been warmer. This recipe was to serve 4-6. I made double the dough and used more or less the single amounts of everything else. Three of us had plenty to eat, but no leftovers. Another time I would use 3-4 times the amount of dough, double the amounts for the sauce, and the amounts called for for the toppings. That would balance better (I didn't manage to balance all the zucchini rounds on the pizza.) and leave some for breakfast the next morning.
So this is a cookbook to read, and to borrow ideas from, but not really to use, and certainly not for a beginner.
>209 MarthaJeanne: - I suppose for Alain Ducasse is it simple! :-) No index?? As an infomation junkie, I know how important those are!
Have you tried Jamie Oliver? He is usually simple & good. . .
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
Have you seen his new series where he is traveling around the U.S.? I really enjoyed the one on the Indian reservation. It annoys me a little when he calls everyone, "my brotha" but I like how he learns about a regional cuisine and then repays the kindness shown him by cooking for a special event. On this particular program he cooked a traditional Indian meal for young Indians who either prefer American fast food or disdain their origins.
My "cook" (aka my other half) was finally home and ready to cook the dish that started this whole thing. I wanted to get a picture but he had carved it up before I said anything.
We had Georgian Spicy Roast Picnic Shoulder with Pomegranate Sauce out of my Please to the Table cookbook by Anya von Bremzen page 201.
Oh my goodness, the aroma while it was cooking was fantastic.
The pork is spicy and garlicky. It marinates with a rub overnight. Served with a nice rice pilaf and a vegetable. Yum Yum! Anyone with this cookbook should give it a try.
SqueakyChu the idea about us all trying the same dish out of different cookbooks sounds good. Maybe for 2013 - that would give me time to figure out a monthly dish!
Maybe we should have say 4 recipes each month to choose from (since there are 4 weeks in a month.) We have such a diverse group that way someone wouldn't get left out due to dietary or taste issues.
Also, instead of 'making' Mysterymax do all the work we could have a separate topic for picking the recipes for each month. We could have a couple of 'themes' for each month – to inspire people and help it from being completely random.
Then 2 months prior would be when you can submit your ideas for the 4 recipes. Mysterymax can announce the deadline for the month, like the 25th of the month (to give some time to count etc.)
The recipe with the most votes gets picked, with the 4th one being MysteryMax's choice. The other two Mysterymax picks from say the top 10 voted recipes to ensure that we get a good mix. No whining if you disagree with the choices!
Here are some theme ideas:
January –
traditional New Years Food
Oscars – Oscar party food
Hangover food – good to eat when you over-indulged
February –
chocolate (duh)
Super bowl
Mardi Gras
Purim (Jewish)
March –
St Patrick's Day
Other Religious foods
April –
April Fools
Anzac Day
Asian Foods
Foods inspired by Cherry Blossom Festival
May –
Cinco de Mayo
Foods from the America's
Festival of Shavuot
June –
Picnic food
Road food
Foods made without a stove (campfire, engine blocks, etc)
Dragon Boat Festival (China)
July -
Ramadan starts
Foods that are on fire - like Bananas Foster, or birthday cakes
Foods from Islands
August –
Ramadan ends
Cold foods
Foods from the former Soviet Union
September –
State Fair food
Foods on a stick
Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year)
October –
Scary foods
Eid-ul-Adha (Islamic Festival of Sacrifice)
November –
Thanksgiving (USA)
Islamic New Year
Diwali, the festival of lights
Chanukah (Jewish Festival of lights) starts
December –
fruit cake
Foods from Africa
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
I have to ask --what foods are considered traditional for April Fools Day ?
mock chicken?
I saw a recipe for meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potatoes as frosting topped with a cherry tomato. Or there's Kitty Litter Cake, or how about the old British dessert that basically consists of a fruit puree folded into whipped cream called a fool?
I like the idea of mock chicken! Or Angel Food Cake toast, or 'fried eggs' made with marshmallows and apricots. . . .
(Bruce's evil twin :-))
> 214
Great ideas!
Tonight I made the squash gratin with apples and cranberries from Masala Farm. It's good, but I think it needs something sour to offset the sweetness.
I made the Poppy Seed Mandelbrot from the Shabbat section of Hadassah Jewish Holiday Cooking which I borrowed from the library.
For those who are not familiar with mandelbrot, this is a Jewish form of biscotti. :)
I'll try to post a picture of them later, but now they're in the oven crisping. Of course, I already tasted them! :)
I love poppy seed and love biscotti so I am intrigued by your Poppy Seed Mandelbrot!
YUM! It would go so well with this coffee!
I always try to remember to check a mirror after eating something with poppy seeds since they always get caught between my teeth. Those cookies look very tasty.
Like that Mandelbrot, i'll have to look for a recipe.
I am determined to continue to try recipes from my cookbooks, but find that while some books inspire me, others have me looking online for similar, less complicated recipes. I have a few to update but want to mention that last week I went to a booksigning with Gordon Ramsay event at Cook the Books, a specialist cookbook/cooking class venue. I purchased a copy of Gordon Ramsay makes it easy which even comes with a dvd and got a few brief moments with the 'great man' himself.
I haven't cooked from his book yet but will look through for something to try.
Lately I've made dulce de leche cheesecake using an online recipe from Israeli food blogger, Cafe Liz (Kosher vegetarian recipes from my kitchen in Tel Aviv). The highly recommended recipe is here. I re-read David Lebovitz's blog entry on making dulce de leche and the comments section, before boiling a couple of cans of sweetened condensed milk for two hours. Lots of interesting info on his site.
My effort looked similar to Liz's image above, I also made several small cheesecakes rather than one big one. Very yum.
Last night I tried the brownie recipe in Baked: new frontiers in baking which I've had out from the library before, but found the recipe online at the Browneyed Baker blog. Really successful chocolate heaven.
I'm finidng Pinterest a good site to collect my online recipes and other stuff. Spent an initial few days totally absorbed with the site but less so now, I'm usually just going there to look up recipes or other bookmarks.
From my own books, I made a couple of recipes from Ripe recipes - Ripe is a popular deli here in Auckland and they've published a rather great cookbook. I made the Pumpkin Sage Risotto with crispy panchetta, though I didn't add the panchetta. The recipe is here, just scroll down a little. I also made their Pumpkin, Spinach & Olive couscous salad. Both were very well received.
That looks good! I use the sweetened condensed milk boiling routine for the Banoffee that my husband likes: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/banoffee/detail.aspx . It's oft-requested in the summer time, so I usually boil a pot's worth of cans at a time and put them back in the pantry for next time.
> 225
I'm usually just going there to look up recipes
Funny. That's all that has captured my interest in Pinterest as well.
I use Pinterest for recipes a lot, too. I've also come to the conclusion that this little house is just not working for me; we need to add a little cabin on the property. So, I also use Pinterest to gather up all the ideas that I've found throughout the web on how to use that small space best, from bunkhouse to craft room. Two other uses I've found for it: on one of my id's, I gave everyone in the family a separate board, gave 'em all the sign-in info and used it like a wishlist last Christ-mas. Worked wonderfully! Another use is vacation planning, another id, another set of people with that sign-in info, and everyone can pop ideas for the road trip and fun stuff to do at the destination in there. That one's working well too, though early in the planning stages.
This topic was continued by 2012 Starts With Food: another TIOLI challenge, Part II.
Group: The 12 in 12 Category Challenge
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