the Old Granny thread

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the Old Granny thread

Post by Radius Solis »

Cooking With Radius!
(and anyone else who cares to share personal or family recipes)

This last year or so I've learned to cook - pretty much on my own, but starting with some principles picked up long ago in childhood (helping my mother out in the kitchen). There's a great deal more I could really stand to learn, but experimental cooking is fun, and some of the things I've worked out largely for myself I consider good enough to call original recipes.

I'll start with a couple, and gradually/eventually add more as I get around to typing them up. Feel free to post your own - if they sound like something I might like, I'll probably try them.



Theme One: Things You Can Do With Grated Cheddar


Chicken Cheddar Dumplings

1 cup flour (either use "self-rising" flour, or else stir in a teaspoon of baking powder)
about 1/3 cup milk
1 - 1.5 cups grated cheddar cheese
1 can Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup


In a medium saucepan stir together Campbell's soup and half a can-full of water or milk. Bring to a slow boil. Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, stir flour and milk together to make a loose dough. Stir grated cheese into dough until thoroughly mixed. Drop the cheesy-dough into the soup in large spoonfuls. Cover and cook on medium heat for 10 - 15 minutes. If desired, chicken and/or your choice of vegetables can be added to the soup before the dough (either pre-cook chicken or else cut it into very small pieces). Makes a big meal for one or a side dish for two or three.

Vegetarian option: use Cream of Mushroom soup instead.



Homestyle Mac & Cheese

10 oz. or 2/3 lb of pasta (rotini/fusili holds the sauce best, but macaroni will do)
1/2 lb Italian or generic pork sausagemeat (for example, Jimmy Dean)
6 to 8 oz. cheddar cheese, grated
1 can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup
milk


Boil pasta in a large pot or suacepan. Meanwhile, brown sausage in a small or medium skillet, keeping it well separated and/or cut into lots of small pieces. When pasta is cooked (al dente is best), pour it into a strainer to drain, and leave it there while you return the pot to the stovetop. Add sausage and Cream of Mushroom Soup to the pot, plus about half a can of milk. Stir in cheese until it has fully melted into the soup mixture. Remove from heat and thoroughly mix the pasta in. Makes a full meal for two hungry people or three polite people.

Vegetarian option: omit sausage.



Super-Simple Taco Salad

1/2 to 1 head of lettuce (any kind will do, but personally I use Boston lettuce)
1 15 oz. can chili. Get the sort that does
not have beans (yes, it exists)
grated cheddar cheese, to taste
salsa, to taste


Heat chili according to can instructions. Meanwhile shred lettuce or cut it finely. When chili is hot, spread it onto plates. Sprinkle a goodly layer of lettuce on top. Use a spoon to sprinkle salsa onto the lettuce - I find a little goes a long way, but it's good even if there's too much. Finally, sprinkle cheese over the lot; I tend to use so much that everything's covered in an orange blanket, but suit yourself. Serve with tortilla chips or tamales or anything else you like. Feeds two.

Vegetarian option: none. Sorry. Taco salad without the meat wouldn't be remotely the same thing.




These three recipes can easily be scaled up if you want to feed more people - just use more of the ingredients to your best judgement. The exact proportion of them isn't critical.

I probably have ten or a dozen more recipes I could share, but well do I know that the longer the post, the less likely anyone is to read it. So I'll hold off on others until the next time I feel motivated to try typing them up.

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Post by chris_notts »

Funnily enough, I was just thinking about learning to cook more recently. I've grown a bit tired of preprocessed food, and over the last few weeks I've gone through my limited number of from-scratch recipes enough times to be sick of them.
I've been thinking of buying a "Cooking for Retards" book or something.
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Post by Radius Solis »

chris_notts wrote:Funnily enough, I was just thinking about learning to cook more recently. I've grown a bit tired of preprocessed food, and over the last few weeks I've gone through my limited number of from-scratch recipes enough times to be sick of them.
I've been thinking of buying a "Cooking for Retards" book or something.
Funnily enough, "Cooking For Utter Dolts" is a theme I was hoping to explore later in this thread. These days far fewer of us grow up with enough knowledge to feed ourselves from raw ingredients or any other source but a box with an internal plastic bag.

Someone, possibly Arthur C. Clarke, stated once something to the effect of 'any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic'. To far too many of my generation, cooking has receded into those murky realms. Because we all expect food to be pre-made for us. We grew up with it being cooked for us....
but if you want to eat well, and at your own full discretion instead of being at the mercy of food manufacturers, eventually one must either learn to cook for real or marry someone else who has done so. And guess what: it's not rocket science. Billions of women and men have managed quite well, through the millennia. There's no reason you can't do the same. It takes little more work than passing any single college-level class.

The biggest single obstacle for a lot of us is simply motivation. When you have only yourself to feed, it's so very easy to be lazy and eat whatever's easiest. But when somebody else is relying on you to feed them well, the mental responsibility circuits start kicking in and making you want to do right by them. Thus have I been pressed to learn. And thus have I found, as many (but not all) do, that it can be a lot of fun.

...more on this later. ^_^

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Post by Izambri »

I agree with Radius. Cooking is not only a thing everybody should know but an exercise of imaginative creation. It's very funny, and, at least, you know what you're eating.
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Post by Wycoval »

Having been a single adult for the better part of 15 years, I have learned a thing or two about cooking and I enjoy it for the most part. I cook creatively, largely without written recipes, and am a pretty decent cook overall if I do say so myself. Cooking creatively can have a down side though, I have created some delicious meals that I could never duplicate, and I have had to eat some meals that I wished I had done differently. In my opinion, though, cooking and eating good food is one thing that can really add enjoyment to our lives.

"Bad foods make bad moods." - Myself just now.

Learning a few priciples of cooking is relatively easy, and the more creative you are, the more exciting it is. Try adding paprika to your pancakes. Put cinnamon on your chicken. You'd be surprised at the new tastes to be found.

"Recipies are just suggestions." - Myself to my wife many times.

My basic, guiding philosophy of cooking is this: Remember that sour adds savour, and don't cook anything a second longer than necessary, unless you want it to be good and brown. And if you're in a hurry, adding a little Italian salad dressing can work miracles.
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Post by Rory »

I enjoy cooking. Well, when I'm not tired or rushed, I enjoy cooking.

Things that I find invaluable when cooking:

Cheese - it is the ultimate topping. It goes with anything, just sprinkle some grated cheese on. Or put it in halfway through. Instant protein.

Vinegar - I find vinegar useful in so many ways just around the house, not just cooking. You can use vinegar to moisten cakes, eliminate grease, remove stains, kill weeks, clean pots and pans, soften laundry, unclog drains, control dandruff, season salads, make pies, and so much more.

Soy Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce - these two buddies don't go well together, but you have to have one of them in a meal. Not only do they add their own flavour, they also bring out the flavour in everything else. Meals would be boring without them. (Note: Worcestershire is pronounced /wustEr/.)

Anyway, I would post some recipes, but I'm quite terrible with measures (I'm of the "however much feels right" school of cooking), which isn't very useful for you guys. Soups are very easy to make and keep for a long time, take advantage of that.
The man of science is perceiving and endowed with vision whereas he who is ignorant and neglectful of this development is blind. The investigating mind is attentive, alive; the mind callous and indifferent is deaf and dead. - 'Abdu'l-Bahá

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Post by Radius Solis »

Rory wrote:Cheese
absolutely.
Vinegar - I find vinegar useful in so many ways just around the house, not just cooking. You can use vinegar to moisten cakes, eliminate grease, remove stains, kill weeks, clean pots and pans, soften laundry, unclog drains, control dandruff, season salads, make pies, and so much more.
Maybe someday I should get around to buying some.... I've never had any real idea what vinegar is for.
Soy Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce
I don't know about the wooster sauce. My few experiences with it have been at my mother's ruthless hands. I haven't liked most of them. But SOY SAUCE, yes. My god is it the seasoning and cooking aide of all that's good in the world. Admittedly, half its effect comes from its being a rich source of natural MSG, a substance that all living organisms need and make (despite its bad press, which stems from the tiny handful of folks that have bad reactions to more-than-usual amounts of it) that has amazing properties of flavor enhancement. It's helpful, delicious, and for 99.7% of people, utterly harmless.

Take that how you will.
Anyway, I would post some recipes, but I'm quite terrible with measures (I'm of the "however much feels right" school of cooking), which isn't very useful for you guys..
You wanna bet? You wanna bet? Take another look at what I just posted. Do you see a lot of strict adherence to measurements there? No, I don't think so. It's all in how you phrase things. You can guide people to do well without needing straight-laced "do what I say, not what I do" recipes. Good-sense guidelines are ultimately a lot more useful. Admittedly it's hard to direct people about it when your judgement of something revolves around something like "when it smells slightly less salty than it did that one time..." but still, there's a great deal you can transmit to people without measuring spoons.

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Post by Radius Solis »

Alpaca Sandwich wrote:Cooking creatively can have a down side though, I have created some delicious meals that I could never duplicate, and I have had to eat some meals that I wished I had done differently. In my opinion, though, cooking and eating good food is one thing that can really add enjoyment to our lives.

[[ snip... ]]

Learning a few priciples of cooking is relatively easy, and the more creative you are, the more exciting it is. Try adding paprika to your pancakes. Put cinnamon on your chicken. You'd be surprised at the new tastes to be found.

"Recipies are just suggestions." - Myself to my wife many times.
Here here, brother.

Though I haven't yet failed to duplicate anything I happened upon that I loved - though a few times it's taken multiple re-tries before I've hit upon it again - I can definitely sympathize with the sad fact that sometimes you're forced to eat...... crap. It happens. Every time it does, which is perhaps once every couple months for me, I chalk it up to learning experience and go on from there.


But truly, cooking is like conlanging. A lot of initial efforts may be inedible, especially if you've never done anything like them before. Once the dozen or so most fundamental principles have been absorbed, though (for instance, check things while they're cooking to make sure they're not burning), the sky's the limit... so long as you continue to be willing to learn and experiment and build on the things you've found to be good.

The cook that stagnates produces a limited range of adequate food. The conlanger that stagnates produces a limited range of adequate languages.

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Post by zompist »

I put a delicious Virginia Fudge recipe on the Almeopedia, for those who know Verdurian.

Every Sunday I make Dutch Baby pancakes; it's been years, and we haven't got tired of the recipe yet.

Whisk together in a bowl:
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
A dash of salt (1/8 tsp if you need to measure)

Add 4 eggs and 1/2 cup egg substitute, and whisk till smooth. (Or just 6 eggs, if you're not worried about cholesterol.) (For beginning cooks: Remove the eggshells.)

Pour into a pie pan or something and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. (I use two nested pie pans and cover the inner one with aluminum foil-- Brits can use aluminium foil-- since this keeps it from burning in our toaster oven. Probably unnecessary in a regular oven.)

Serve with powdered sugar and maple syrup. And coffee.

When we're feeling energetic, my wife cuts up apples and fries them in sugar for a bit, creating a caramel sauce; then we put the apples in the bottom of the pan before pouring in the pancake batter.

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Post by Dewrad »

I've been cooking for myself since I was around thirteen or so (I came from a semi-broken home). I learnt first from my mother and then later I expanded my repertoire somewhat while I was in Italy. So I basically cook either good Welsh stodge or good Italian food (which some claim is pretentious food :evil:).

This is one of my favourite recipes, the ragù alla bolognese I learnt to make. It looks quite complex, but is actually dead easy and it's cheap to make, too.

You will need:

1 large carrot, grated
about 8 closed-cup mushrooms, thinly sliced
half a kilo of beef mince
handful of diced pancetta
half a litre of beef stock (you can get away with chicken, really)
one 400g tin of chopped tomatoes (don't bother skinning and chopping your own, really. It may be more "authentic", but it's a hassle)
about 250g passata
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 shallots, finely chopped
1/2 glass of a decent red wine
oregano, cinnamon, fennel and rosemary.

Fry the garlic and shallots in olive oil over a medium heat for about five minutes or so, until they go soft and a bit brown. If they go black, start over. Add the minced beef and pancetta and fry unil browned. Turn the heat up high and add the wine- cook quickly until the liquid is absorbed. Then stir in a teaspoon of dried oregano, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of dried rosemary and about a quarter of a teaspoon of fennel. Then chuck in the rest of the ingredients, turn down the heat to low and cook slowly for an hour. Stir it occassionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and top up with a little water if it gets too dry.

The end result should be relatively dry and sticky. Serve it with tagliatelle and with grated parmesan on top. If you have a lot left over, use it for lasagne or something. It's not bad in jacket potatoes, either.
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Post by TzirTzi »

I generally cook without a recipe - and I've found it quite a nice conlanging exercise - Writing down what I'm doing in the current conlang, increasing the vocab and saving the recipe for another time if it turns out to be any good. Being vege also means you have to cook moderately creatively, or you end up going mad at the monotony of carbohydrate...
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Post by linguoboy »

Dewrad wrote:I've been cooking for myself since I was around thirteen or so (I came from a semi-broken home). I learnt first from my mother and then later I expanded my repertoire somewhat while I was in Italy. So I basically cook either good Welsh stodge or good Italian food (which some claim is pretentious food
I was expected to cook for the family from at least the age of eleven, years before my home got broken. There were four children, so the household chores were divided into three areas: Cooking, Clean-Up, and Dishes. We rotated on a weekly basis so everyone had a chance to do everything. (Originally, the fourth rotation was Off, but eventually it became Laundry.) Cooking included not only preparing the food, but also planning the meals for the week and helping to do the shopping.

Unfortunately, most of the recipes I learned from my mother were mediocre. My father made great food--pizza, chili, fresh pasta, donuts, waffles, etc.--but he was a lousy teacher and couldn't stand to have anyone else in the kitchen helping him. But I mastered the basics, so it wasn't too hard to begin teaching myself more interesting and ambitions dishes as I went along.

My sister-in-law (who is one of the best cooks I know) is fond of saying, "Cooking is an art, but baking, baking is a science." A substitution here, an extra cup of oil there, slightly drier ingredients yonder--these won't make a great deal of difference in most dishes, but they can completely ruin a bread, cake, or cookie. Yeast baking is the worst of all; some people have a knack for it, and some are like witches in their ability to prevent dough from rising.

I've gotten lazy of late (largely because my boyfriend is a much better chef than I am and gets home earlier) and have fallen back on the simplest techniques. This is something we call "Vecmamas Schinken" (Lativan for "grandma" + German for "ham"); it's dead easy, but my family almost always requests it for Christmastime. All you need is huge stewpot.

Buy a cheap bone-in ham. Cover with water and boil on the range for at least an hour. [This will get out all the nasty brine they inject the ham with to make it seem plump.] Pour off water, place on a roasting rack, score skin, and cook in a very hot oven for 45 minutes or so to dry out the meat and turn the skin into the yummiest crackling imaginable. Slice and serve; eat leftovers for a week.

BTW, if you want a tastier, more sophisticated version of Radius' cheddar dumplings, look up a recipe for "gougères". You don't have to get top-of-the-line Gruyère, but do use a good cheese (i.e. one you wouldn't be ashamed to give as a gift to someone). Ignore anything you read about putting the batter through a pastry tube; using spoons or rolling it with floured hands works fine. For only a tad more work, you get something you can serve to company.

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Post by Dewrad »

linguoboy wrote:Buy a cheap bone-in ham. Cover with water and boil on the range for at least an hour. [This will get out all the nasty brine they inject the ham with to make it seem plump.] Pour off water, place on a roasting rack, score skin, and cook in a very hot oven for 45 minutes or so to dry out the meat and turn the skin into the yummiest crackling imaginable. Slice and serve; eat leftovers for a week.
Sounds remarkably like my father's only contribution at Christmastime, although he'd glaze it in honey before baking it.
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Post by linguoboy »

Dewrad wrote:one 400g tin of chopped tomatoes (don't bother skinning and chopping your own, really. It may be more "authentic", but it's a hassle)
I try not to handle raw tomatoes because something about the smell always makes me want to toss my cookies. (When my parents grew them, I would start retching if one of them sliced a tomato in the same room as me.) But when I need them for a sauce, I use a Catalan technique: Slice the tomato in half and force it through a medium-fine sieve. The skin and seeds stay behind and the pulp is close enough to a puree for government work. If you're not using that many, you can do this right into the pan.

This is one half of my basic tomato sauce recipe. The other half is: Coarsely chop a Spanish onion. (Sweet onions, preferrably Vidalias, work beautifully.) Put in a saucepan, cover with olive oil, and simmer for as long as you can stand. (Seriously: In the best Catalan restaurants, they'll simmer the onions for days until they blacken and melt into a rich paste.) I generally don't get beyond forty minutes until I grow impatient and sieve the tomatoes in. Season with some Italian spices (e.g. oregano, rosemary, sage, etc.), add and cook off a little red wine, and it's ready.

Put it in a small earthen casserole, plop a round of chèvre on top, bake in a moderately hot oven until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese melty, and you have an easy appetiser that people go absolutely crazy for at expensive tapas restaurants.

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Post by linguoboy »

Dewrad wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Buy a cheap bone-in ham. Cover with water and boil on the range for at least an hour. [This will get out all the nasty brine they inject the ham with to make it seem plump.] Pour off water, place on a roasting rack, score skin, and cook in a very hot oven for 45 minutes or so to dry out the meat and turn the skin into the yummiest crackling imaginable. Slice and serve; eat leftovers for a week.
Sounds remarkably like my father's only contribution at Christmastime, although he'd glaze it in honey before baking it.
If you boil it, it's generally sweet enough without a glaze and anything sticky inhibits the all-important process of crackling formation.

I prefer doing something a tad more ambitious and festive, like Sauerbraten or Nuremberg-style pork roast (both finished with Lebkuchen), but it's my sister's house so I generally let her call the tune.

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Post by Salmoneus »

Rory wrote: Soy Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce - these two buddies don't go well together
HERESY!!!!

Also, note that real men call it /wUst@ sOs/
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Post by Hokulani »

Aw cool! A cooking thread

I've never really been one for cooking, but I have been meaning to write down some of my mom's Asian recipies. My mom is such an excellent cook that I've constantly been suffering from overeating.

At least my recent abdominal problems have stemed my appetite somewhat.

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Post by Twpsyn Pentref »

Ooh, I love cooking. Not having much of an experience of it, and hardly ever doing it though, my skills thus being lacking, mostly I use other people's recipes. I'm trying to practise for when I know I shall have to live on my own creations; I like trying food that people ate at times in the past, so that when I go off to college I'll eat a slapdash mix of Victorian-era British food and ancient Roman food and who knows what. I haven't got around to making anything but kedgeree yet, though (which was good). I do bake a good cake and assemble a lovely trifle, though (though it isn't hard to make trifle taste good. Mmmnnngh!).
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Post by Madrigal »

Salmon (can also be used for any other fish, with varying results)
Take some tinfoil and grease with butter.
ake some salt, pepper and garlic and dust onto the fish to taste (Old Bay/Chef Paul’s Seafood Magic work great, but can be hard to find in some parts of the country).
Place thin pats of butter on top of the fish and wrap in tinfoil.
Bake at 450F until done (test periodically).
Serve with lemon juice and butter.

Serves as many as you make pieces for.

Miso soup (this one's watertoiceXI's)
Take 2 ½ tbs. miso, one tsp. dashi stock (these ingredients take a lot of looking, but you can eventually find them anywhere.), and three cups of water.
Bring the water to a boil and add the dashi—it should dissolve instantly. Take the water down from a boil and add miso.
Serve.
You can also add vegetables, tofu, etc. to taste.

Serves three-six comfortably, depending on bowl size and how hungry they are...

That one's a big favorite for us--both miso and dashi are very cheap for the amount of soup you can get out of them.

Rice & Chicken (also my lovely boyfriend's... and another easy, healthy, yummy dorm favorite)
Prepare rice (any kind works. Use a rice cooker, boil-in-bag... whatever. They all have pretty simple instructions).
Shred some cooked chicken.
Mix together.
Douse liberally in soy sauce.

(You can also soak the chicken shreds in anything lemon-flavored... some people like that, some people don't. We've tried adding soybeans, but that usually doesn't turn out well.)

(More to be added as I think of them.)
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Post by Corumayas »

My mom's macaroni and cheese is a bit different from Radius's version. It's slightly time-consuming but not difficult, and the basic technique is used in a lot of European-style sauces.

~1 1/2 cups uncooked macaroni
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
1/4-1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
2 cups milk
~8 oz or 2 cups cheddar cheese (preferably sharp), grated or cut into small pieces

Cook the macaroni according to the directions on the package, then drain and set aside.

In a largeish saucepan (I use the same pan I cooked the macaroni in), melt the butter. Stir in the flour & seasonings-- it should form a kind of paste with the butter. (This is what's called a roux, and is the basis of lots of sauces.)

Then pour in the milk, stirring constantly so the butter-flour clumps get broken up and completely dissolved (I really mean constantly: if you stop it'll clump up again). Continue to cook and stir until it gets all thick and bubbly (this is "white sauce" or béchamel); then dump in the cheese and stir until it's melted and blended in.

Add the macaroni and stir it around so it's all coated in the sauce; then pour everything into a baking pan and bake until it starts to brown on top. I usually bake it at 350°F for 30-40 minutes, then turn up the heat for another 5-10 minutes because it isn't browned yet and I'm impatient. Next time I think I'll try a higher temperature from the start.

Let it cool and congeal a little before serving. It should feed 4-6 people, depending on how hungry they are and what else you have with it (it goes nicely with pork chops or smoked sausage).
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Post by Nuntarin »

I've been cooking for myself (and friends when I have them round) quite a lot recently; it's a big confidence boost as well as fun. Maybe I'll try some of the ideas in this thread out some time....
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Post by Dexboy »

I'm generally a pretty mediocre cook, but my parents are away most weekends, so me and my sister generally manage to survive. Like TzirTzi said, being vegetarian really does expand your horizons, and of course it means you have to take some initiative in the kitchen if you happen to have less understanding people doing the cooking who think that vegetarian cooking means just leaving out the meat (luckily that's not the case with me).
Vegetarian option: none. Sorry. Taco salad without the meat wouldn't be remotely the same thing.
Tofu, soya, tempeh, seitan. Ok, so it's not meat but I'm pretty sure you can make a pretty decent taco salad without meat. All you need is a bit of creativity.
Vegetarian option: omit sausage.
Again. This can be substituted rather then omitted. They do actually make sausages out of tofu or weat.
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alice
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Post by alice »

Cooking is something I can't do. My attempts have, for the most part, resulted in something inedible.
Zompist's Markov generator wrote:it was labelled" orange marmalade," but that is unutterably hideous.

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Dewrad
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Post by Dewrad »

Corumayas wrote:(this is "white sauce" or béchamel)
Strictly speaking, it's just white sauce, not Béchamel. Sauce Béchamel is technically made with milk which has first been heated with onion and cloves in it and then strained, and it should also lack mustard.

But your mother's recipe is similar to how I make the dish myself, although I tend to use three cheeses- emmenthal and parmesan for the sauce and a layer of mozzarella to brown on top.
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Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

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Dewrad
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Post by Dewrad »

Dexboy wrote:
Vegetarian option: omit sausage.
Again. This can be substituted rather then omitted. They do actually make sausages out of tofu or weat.
Urgh. I'm sorry, but meat substitute is just wrong. While I'm not a strict vegetarian, I do eat more vegetarian food than non-vegetarian because of its economy, and I am a firm believer that vegetables taste good by themselves and have no need to masquerade as meat. For one, the taste and texture is never right. For two, if you're trying to fool yourself into thinking you have meat on your plate, you might want to re-think the whole vegetarian thing.

As an example, I love veggieburgers. Adore them. But the kind I like is the sort that actually taste of the vegetables they're made of, not something which is trying its hardest to be be something it's not. We don't try to disguise meat as vegetables, so why on earth do vegetarians think it's a good idea to disguise tofu as meat?
Some useful Dravian links: Grammar - Lexicon - Ask a Dravian
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

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