the Old Granny thread

[Jipí]

Mmm.

No, that's Frankfurter green sauce. The stuff described above looks more like this, except my family uses a bit less herbs.

[Wycoval]

Still looks yummy. I'll bet it's pretty nutritious with all those fresh herbs (even if it's a little high in fat). Do you just eat it like that with the potatoes or do you also eat it with bread or something else?

[Jipí]

Do you just eat it like that with the potatoes or do you also eat it with bread or something else?

You can eat it with or on bread as well, yes.

[Gulliver]

Magical Delightful Beanburgers that I just made up because I felt like cooking

1 tin of chick peas
1 tin of cannellini beans
1 large/2 small onions
3/4 cloves of garlic
1-2 tsp paprika
1-2 tsp sage
1-2 tsp cayenne pepper
1-2 tsp salt (I keep my salt in a big pot and just grab little handfuls, but I used about that much)
2 Weetabix (breadcrumbs are probably fine, but I bake my own bread and it was in the oven… baking)

Mush up the chick peas
Mush up the beans
Finely chop the onion & garlic
Crumble the weetabix
Mush it all together

It'll probably be a bit on the moist side, but never mind. Fry in burger shapes/blobs. I don't know if you can bake or grill them, because I made them up as I went along about half an hour ago.

They are amazing.

[TomHChappell]

..

[brandrinn]

My old stand-by:

1) one can spam
2) three small potatoes
3) onion and garlic (optional)
4) one pan of friedness
5) one packet "scurvy medication"

[Miekko]

This recipe is for five; it gets pretty good if you heat leftovers in a frying pan.

Fried cabbage can be a bit of an acquired taste; I never ate it before I got sick with diabetes, actually (after having been at the hospital two days without food, only on intravenous nourishment, and the first thing I got to eat after that was cabbage rolls; after that, I've liked them)

2.5 dl rice (dry) (either pudding rice or long rice; barley might also be a good substitute, tho' I'd prefer to mix it 50/50 with rice if I ever used barley for this)
half a kg ground meat
a cabbage head
0.5 dl breadcrumbs
white pepper
salt
(optional) a bit of syrup

cook the rice

chop the cabbage, and fry it (not all at once) in butter; when it's lightly browned, add water and salt, and let steam under a lid.

mix the rice and the meat and the breadcrumbs and the spices, add about half a dl water into the mixture.

Smear a casserole pan with butter; put layers of the meat-rice mixture and cabbage into it. Put a layer of cabbage on top (the syrup can be poured over the topmost cabbage, but *very* little of it - it's mostly for colour, but partially for taste). After about one hour in 200 C it should be ready to eat.

Serve with potatoes, lingonberry/cranberry jam, possibly a somewhat mustard-flavoured brown gravy.

[Dewrad]

This recipe is my general standby for when I come home drunk. When I'm drunk, I generally crave pizza. I don't mean "ooh, I could really fancy a pizza," I actually have a craving, in the same way that I do if I don't smoke for a whole day, or if I go a few hours without alcohol. However, decent pizza delivery firms are normally shut by the time I get home so I am left to my ingenuity. While I have been known to get home ratarsed and make pizza from scratch at 5am, more often I'm too impatient to wait for dough to rise etc and make this instead.

Croque Durotrigues

You will need:

two slices of white bread (don't use brown for this, it's horrible)
sandwich filling of your choice (e.g. gruyere and ham, or cheddar and fried sausages. Just nothing salady.)
two eggs
a dash milk
lots of mozzarella

Make your sandwich. Mix together the eggs and milk, season and pour into a receptacle big enough for your sandwich. Place sandwich in egg mixture and allow it to soak up the milk, turning it carefully so it doesn't fall apart. Fry in a hot frying pan on both sides until go a nice light gold colour. Then bung it under a hot grill with lots of mozzarella cheese on top. Once the cheese has melted, eat and feel the greasy calories add inches to your waistline even as it soaks up the alcohol.

[Radius Solis]

That definitely sounds like the sort of food that is exquisite cuisine when drunk and unfit for human consumption in any other circumstance. Send me a bottle of vodka and I'll try it, and the recipe too.

[Dewrad]

That definitely sounds like the sort of food that is exquisite cuisine when drunk and unfit for human consumption in any other circumstance. Send me a bottle of vodka and I'll try it, and the recipe too.

It is. While I like eggy bread* when I'm sober, adding cheese to it is just too much. After six or seven pints, however, it seems perfectly natural.

*Eggy bread is what Americans term "French Toast" and the French call "Pain perdu". Only it's savoury, not sweet. I remember when I first went to France and was offered pain perdu with strawberries as a dessert. It was lovely, but I just couldn't get my head around the fact that I was eating something sweet that should really be savoury and served with bacon. It was almost like eating potato chips sprinkled with sugar: palatable, but somehow wrong.

[Radius Solis]

Mmm.

Incidentally I tried a variation on your bolognese recipe from page one last night, albeit two years after you posted it. You know, the sauce was shaping up really nicely and smelling wonderful right up until I added the cinnamon; then it just smelled awful. Something about the way it combined with the onion flavor just made me want to barf. I'm afraid I wasn't able to eat much of it before relegating the rest to the trash.

I will try it again sometime without the cinnamon, though, because it seemed like it could have been really good without it.

[Dewrad]

Mmm.

Incidentally I tried a variation on your bolognese recipe from page one last night, albeit two years after you posted it. You know, the sauce was shaping up really nicely and smelling wonderful right up until I added the cinnamon; then it just smelled awful. Something about the way it combined with the onion flavor just made me want to barf. I'm afraid I wasn't able to eat much of it before relegating the rest to the trash.

I will try it again sometime without the cinnamon, though, because it seemed like it could have been really good without it.

That's because cinnamon is a spice to be used either with sweet things or meaty things- it doesn't particularly compliment tomatoes on their own. A very good tomato sauce can be made quite simply, however, using:

2 kilos tomatoes
1 medium-sized carrot
1 stick celery
1 medium onion
5 cloves of garlic
250ml veal stock
a generous squirt of tomato paste

First, roast the tomatoes. Cut them in half, sprinkle them with salt and place them cut side up on a baking sheet. Cook in a very slow oven for about three or so hours. Then take the tomatoes and stick them in a blender.

Chop the celery, onion and carrots finely. In a saucepan over a low heat, heat some oil and slowly fry the veg together for at least 15 minutes. Crush the garlic and add to the pan, fry for a further five or so minutes. Then pour in the stock, tomatoes and tomato paste and simmer very gently for at least half an hour. Or longer. Stick it through a blender once you're done if you want a smooth sauce.

The result will be richly flavoured and pretty tomatoey. This basic sauce can form the basis of a number of dishes. Adding oregano and thyme really improves the flavour and gives it more of an Italian kick- this is good for just pouring on pasta or using on pizzas. Or try adding paprika and some rounds of fried chorizo, and then poaching eggs in it. Or again, stick a bouquet garni in it when you begin to simmer, reduce it and then serve over roasted chicken. The basic technique is absurdly versatile.

[Gulliver]

I would agree, cinnamon has the unique ability to render all flavour useless. Cocoa is a good addition to any bolognaise, though.

[schwhatever]

Onions are almost salty in their flavor. And I don't think salty tastes and cinnamon at all go together.

So, at least to me, it's not as simple as cinnamon going with anything that's sweet or "meaty". I love cinnamon on (unsweetened) peanut butter (but then again, peanut butter does lend itself to sweet flavors, so maybe this isn't fair...?)

Anyway.

Chop up some strawberries.
Melt some chocolate.
Mix the chocolate with some unsweetened organic peanut butter (salted or unsalted, both are fine).
Mix all together.
Sprinkle in nutmeg, cinnamon, other spices on hand, to taste.
Heat slightly.

Enjoy it.

[Tarasoriku]

I use cinnamon frequently in Indian cooking (like in tikka masala or certain curries), which frequently have a can of crushed tomatoes in it and it's fine. Of course, there's just a pinch, it's well-mixed with the aromatics (onions, garlic, ginger if it's there) before the tomatoes are added, and 5-6 other spices typically accompany it (coriander, fennugreek, cumin, black pepper, perhaps some tumeric or lemmongrass). It's an important component in garam masala, which is the Indian equivalent of Chinese five-spice. (Come to think of it, isn't it in five-spice?)

One spice that subdues a stew or sauce that's too cinnamony is ground cardamom, or ginger. Or replace some of the cinnamon with cardamom. Substituting cloves for cinnamon can also be a good idea - but it'll be more savory than sweet.

Cardamom in general is a good thing to have around. You can add it to coffee or tea instead of cinnamon, for something different and a little more flowery. Anise and cardamom is a nice combination for hot beverages.

[Radius Solis]

Dew, that recipe there is pretty much what I did, save for the cinnamon and that I did not add any manner of stock, and that I made rather less of it than those ingredient amounts would. And I will no doubt do it again, just as I said before, without the cinnamon. One thing though... linguoboy's tip on page one is a good one and you should follow it too: forgo the blender on the tomatoes, use a sieve instead.

[Dewrad]

More than two months recipe free? Shocking. I will confess that I've been thinking about sharing a couple of recipes for bread, but am reluctant to do so as yeast tends to scare people off- I like to think that people might actually give some of the recipes in this thread a go.

As such, here is my recipe for Vaguely Asian Chicken.

You will need:

2 cooked chicken breasts.[1]
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
about a 1cm cube of root ginger, also crushed
2 small red chillies, de-seeded and chopped up fine
2 spring onions, sliced thinly.
about two tablespoons of chopped fresh coriander.
1 lime
1 tablespoon of garum-equivalent[2]
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
1/8 cup brown sugar

Notes:

[1] Roast them or poach them or something. Use your initiative. Just don't use leftover KFC.
[2] Worcestershire Sauce, Thai fish sauce, mushroom ketchup, whatever.

This recipe calls for a wok. Woks are cool. Heavy-based frying pans aren't cool, but work just as well.

In a small saucepan, heat together the rice wine vinegar, sugar and water over a gentle heat, until the sugar has completely dissolved and the resultant syrup has reduced a bit.

Meanwhile, heat your wok until it is very hot. Then add a small amount of vegetable oil and swirl it around to coat the inside of the wok. Add the garlic, chillies, ginger and spring onions until fragrant, about two minutes or so. Add the sugar syrup and cook over a low heat for about five minutes, so the syrup reduces yet more.

Remove the lime's zest and keep it in a small decorative pot. Ditto the lime's juice. Stir both in to the syrup-and-aromatics mix in the wok, along with the coriander and garum-equivalent. By this point your sauce should have reduced quite considerably. Having already sliced your cooked chicken attractively, add it to the sauce and allow to heat through.

Serve the glistening, spicy chunks of be-asianned chicken in chinese pancakes (recipe available on request, should they not be available in supermarkets near you) with cucumber and spring onions. Maybe also rice?

I assume that this technique will also work with tofu, although I have never tried it. If you prefer pork, I'd probably jack up the sauce a bit with five-spice powder or something.

[Radius Solis]

Variety is the spice of life, so what I'm currently finishing a bowl of is Vaguely Mediterranean Salad.

* Half a pound or so of pasta, preferably tricolor salad rotini (a.k.a fusilli), cooked, then rinsed with cold water until it becomes cold, and thoroughly drained (and preferably set aside for five minutes to dry out a bit more).

* The green parts of 8-10 or so green onions (Brits can use spring onions), chopped into roughly inch-long pieces.

* Around half of a red bell pepper, sliced such that pieces are about an inch long and approach paper-thin.

* A bunch of feta cheese. How much is up to you! I used somewhere around six ounces. Put it in the bowl first, then crumble it with a fork after adding the following herbs/spices, such that they are well mixed into the cheese:
** A pinch or two or five of dried basil.
** A quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper, or more if you like.
** One or two good fat cloves of garlic that have been thoroughly pressed/crushed.



Mix all ingredients, dress with olive oil and paprika, serve.

Optionally it can be dressed with vinegar too, but try it without first - it's pretty strong as it is.

Possible ingredients I haven't tried yet but sound good: olives; sun-dried tomatoes; fresh basil

------

Edit: adding sun-dried tomatoes is excellent.

[Gulliver]

Banana-chocolate thing

You will need one banana, chocolate (darker than hell and twice as bitter), agave nectar (or maple syrup, honey, etc), and some crushed peanuts.

Cut a v-shape along the length of the banana, making a valley. A cross-section of the banana should look like Pac-man looking upwards, if this helps.

Sprinkle liberally with chocolate, broken into chips (I usually do this by taking it out of the fridge and slicing it; it shatters), then a squirt of agave.

Replace the top part of the banana, creating a lid of sorts.

Microwave it for one minute (less, if your microwave is more powerful, obviously).

Sprinkle with the nuts.

Eat with a spoon.

(Coincidentally) vegan and totally sexwee-tastic.

[Jipí]

Cut a v-shape along the length of the banana, making a valley. [...] Sprinkle liberally with chocolate [...] Replace the top part of the banana, creating a lid of sorts.

We did that once with a Snickers instead of dark chocolate and grilled (i.e. like in a barbeque) the banana. It looked absolutely awful, but it was a nice thing. Almost too sweet for my taste.

[vampireshark]

Here's a personal favorite of mine:

Asiago-Italian Herb Risotto
(Measurements are given in US units... sorry!)
Total Preparation Time: approximately 30-40 minutes
Makes about two servings as a meal for very hungry people or six people as a side dish to a more filling meal (such as steak)

Ingredients:
5 cups chicken or vegetable broth (chicken preferred)
6 tablespoons real butter (margarine doesn't work as well)
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
4 to 5 cloves garlic, minced
1½ cups arborio or canaroli rice
5 to 7 freshly chopped basil leaves (optional)
about ¼ cup freshly chopped parsley
¼ to ½ cup asiago cheese (according to taste)

First, heat the broth in a saucepan to boiling. Once it boils, turn the heat down to the lowest setting and allow it to stay warm. Keeping the broth hot is extremely important if you don't want mushy risotto.
Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a frypan over medium-high heat. Once the butter has melted, add onion and sauté for about 7 minutes. Afterwards, add garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Now, add the rice and coat as much of it as possible in the oil that's been created, letting it warm for about one minute.
Add about 1½ cups of broth and begin stirring the rice until all the broth has absorbed. Once it's absorbed, add a small amount of broth (about ½ cup) at a time, stirring until it is completely absorbed before adding the next bit of broth. Before the addition of the final amount of broth, add the basil and parsley.
Once all the broth has been used up, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cheese and the remainder of the butter, letting the butter melt and allowing an even creamier texture to develop. Serve warm.

[Pthagnar]

Spaghetti Man I Bet some Europeans Eat This Somewhere

MATERIALS:

Noodles (to taste)

dried vegetables
STARRING:
dried peppers
AND FEATURING
dried onions
WITH
hot sauce
AND
whatever other kind of herbs and spices and condiments you like -- if you use basil and chives or something, it is Some Europeans but you can make it like Some Chinks or woteva by doing the obvious

DIRECTOR
olive oil - or uh man whatever chinese people use, sesame, groundnut fuck you i don't care

PRODUCER
Salt (enough to serve two)

PROTOCOL:

leave the dried vegetables to steep in some warm water while the noodles cook
when the noodles cook, dump the conents of the vegetable-bowl without draining it into the pot
add like the herbs and condiments and oil and shit into the pot
reduce the contents of the pot down so there's no liquid sloshing about
toss the two together or just dump it on top or something else

NOTES
it is surprisingly edible
even cold
contains no tomatoes unless you put them in -- a novelty, astound your friends

CITATIONS
actually this was kind an attempt to halfheartedly reverse engineer this brand of noodles which claims to be "chow mein" but is really delicious -- that has, like, textured vegetable protein mince in it, so that would probably be super added to this

[Dewrad]

Salt (enough to serve two)

Given that it's highly unlikely that anyone would ever like to share this with you, are we to assume that you have a severe sodium deficit?

[Pthagnar]

Salt (enough to serve two)

Given that it's highly unlikely that anyone would ever like to share this with you, are we to assume that you have a severe sodium deficit?

it would be an excellent side dish
are you sure there aren't any europeans eating this right now?

[jlyne]

Jlyne's Most Favourite Brownies

2.5 large eggs (yeah ... I know ... it's a bit of a bitch to halve an egg, but you'll survive)
1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 medium sized banana, very ripe (if you really like banana, use a larger one)
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
2/3 cup flour (I use all purpose white or whole wheat, the recipe isn't picky)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

Beat the egg, oil, banana, honey, and vanilla until smooth. Beat in both sugars and cocoa. Beat in flour, baking powder, and salt until everything is nice and smooth. Pour into a greased 8"x8" pan, back for 30-35 minutes at 325F.

The Awesome Icing for the Awesome Brownie

All measurements here are guesses, I've never actually measured anything for it.

1 milk chocolate bar - I used a regular sized Jersey Milk last time.
1/8 cup cream cheese
1/8 cup whatever kind of coffee you like, very concentrated (i.e. espresso). I like french vanilla, personally.

Melt everything together in a pan or in the microwave, whatever. Pour over the still warm brownie.

The brownie is moist and lovely and thick, and not too rich. It's fine with nothing on it at all, or just a simple cocoa/icing sugar/liquid glaze. But I love the chocolate/cream cheese/coffee mix. It's gorgeous. I've used a variety of different chocolate (and different amounts of it) in it - milk, varying levels of dark, and even white. It's pretty much amazing no matter what you do. Add some vanilla and cinnamon too if you want.

The brownie recipe comes from a diabetic cooking recipe book that my mom had around years ago. I don't quite know how that much sugar makes it diabetic-safe, but whatever. It actually calls for a far of baby food strained prunes instead of banana and honey. But ... that's gross, so I use banana and honey. It gives it, unsurprisingly, a slight banana-y taste.