What's for Dinner?

[Didymus]

See these are the ingredients I use - and I will be a monkeys goddamn aunt if the difference in quality is down to my fucking roux.

There are even recipes that use okra instead of roux. They have to be at least as good.

I mean seriously. What the fuck is cooks illustrated doing attributing the success of a dish to the roux? That is terrible.

Nevertheless, I'm gonna give that exact recipe a shot, because I have to recapture the awesomeness of that first time I had it. This may become a lifelong quest.

[Didymus]

Does anyone here happen to come from Louisiana?

[Legs]

* Legs is not from Louisiana

Tonights dinner, cheese plate for appetizer and I have a rack of ribs in the oven to be served with a baked potato and some kind of vegetable still to be determined.

[wildernesse]

I think gumbo without okra is kind of a sin. But I'm not from Louisiana.

Tonight we are having eggs, bacon, country ham, fresh squeezed orange juice, and homemade biscuits. And applesauce, if it thaws out enough.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

Gawd DAMN, liv. I've never used some of those things.

I just made skillet spaghetti.

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by Didymus

See these are the ingredients I use - and I will be a monkeys goddamn aunt if the difference in quality is down to my fucking roux.

Stranger things have happened. I've made delicious carbonara and truly horrendous carbonara without changing a single ingredient. The difference between soaring success and abject (not to mention potentially fatal) failure was the temperature of the mixing bowl. So ya never know.

There are even recipes that use okra instead of roux. They have to be at least as good.

Sure. There are ones that use file' as a thickener too, but I don't know how much ground sassafras makes it to the supermarket shelves over where you are.

CI has two other recipes in the article, one with okra, one with file'. They both use roux as well, though.

I mean seriously. What the fuck is cooks illustrated doing attributing the success of a dish to the roux? That is terrible.

Get a hold of yourself man! No wait. Not there. Higher up.

Srsly, the recipes they advise use the methods that worked best in their test kitchen. Their aim was to consistently achieve a quality gumbo with as little time and effort as possible, and without common problems like separation.

That's not to say that it's impossible to make a fantastic gumbo without roux. Just that in their 75 attempts at gumbo, this is the approach that produced the best results.

Nevertheless, I'm gonna give that exact recipe a shot, because I have to recapture the awesomeness of that first time I had it. This may become a lifelong quest.

Truly a worthwhile dragon to slay, sir knight. Oo! You should make it a blog! mysearchfortheperfectgumbo.blogspot.com

[lisarea]

My brother in law is from Nawleans, and I've been meaning to start fucking around with gumbo since we got that new sausage-making grocery store, so I emailed him. I'll let you know if he answers.

Anyway, I don't know what's for dinner tonight. I have some wasabi green peas and apple candy ropes at my desk, so that's my green vegetable. That's all I've got so far, though.

[S.Vashti]

A bowl of popcorn and an avocado.

[biochemgirl]

I microwaved a single serve pizza. Only a week or so until Malloch is home and I'll have time and the motivation to cook some real food.

[JoeP]

I'm not from Louisiana, but I have made a gumbo. I adhere to the belief that you need a dark roux - and I wasn't aware that it could even be gumbo without okra. Gotta have both.

[Master Taran]

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by Master Taran

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Yum. I think we will be having "bbq" next week, because we haven't done that in a while.

Tonight is chicken and cabbage soup.

[Garnet]

Originally Posted by Master Taran

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

OMG, y'all! That was the best pulled pork I've ever had.

NUMMY!

[Master Taran]

I used

[Zehava]

Liv mentioned a potatoes and kale dish in the bountiful harvest thread and that got me thinking of Colcannon. So I'm going to give that a go tonight. Should be good on what is expected to be a pretty cold evening.

ETA: It was good, maybe a bit too much pepper, but it got even better once it got cold.

[Ymir's blood]

Tunafish salad sammich and Woffles brand* potato chips.

Here is a picture of a moose:



*all brand names are impersonated.

[S.Vashti]

Pumpkin bread.

[Legs]

Tonight I made Oysters Rockefeller & crab legs for dinner.

[wildernesse]

We had penne with a simple mushroom and tomato sauce and garlic toast.

Popcorn and a piece of cheese.

[ms_ann_thrope]

I tried making pho. It disappointed.

[Didymus]

I was in way too deep in the philosophy of making complicated meals, especially asian ones.

It was after I bought the achewood cookbook that I realised how fucking awesome meals can be that you make with a tiny handful of ordinary everyday inexpensive ingredients. After that I made livs bolognese and realised that if you take said ordinary ingredients and cook them for a really fucking long time then you achieve extreme levels of flavour and awesomeness.

Speaking of simple meals, I just ate bubble and squeak for the first time from livs "recipe" some posts back. This is an awesome thing to eat with TWO ingredients.

Actually speaking of asian meals, once I started living here in japan, I realised that half the time, ordinary people don't eat that complicated stuff. They eat basic meat'n'veg in curry sauce, or a vast bowl of noodles in weak broth with a piece of pork on top. When they get fancy, its shaved meat and cabbage and veggies in a big bowl of storebought soup.

Actually, let me tell you about a recipe I encountered on a trip up to hokkaido. They call it 'chanchan yaki' and its considered an awesome treat of specialness.

ALL it it is veggies and seafood. Potatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, and a big couple fistfulls of those white sprouts. Its all stuck in a big pan in butter, and you pile tonnes of seafood on it. Lots of squid involved. and some pieces of salmon on top covering the whole thing. On that goes a miso sauce, very liberally, which is just sake, mirin, and white miso paste. You whack a lid on it and cook it slow for a while till the salmon is half cooked. then you flip over the salmon and sauce and press it down into the mass of other stuff. THATS IT.

It's fucking delicious and the point is this: While to some of us (certainly me back in australia) lowgrade seafood and the japanese ingredients are expensive and exotic. but to THEM, its the equivalent of a piece of cheap steak and some tomato sauce. they are making the best they can with some cheap, easily available ingredients. And its awesome. I make it here because seafood is far far cheaper than meat. When I'm back home I will stop because seafood is costly.

I wanted to emulate these recipes because they seemed exotic and I laboured still under the misapprehension that rare and expensive was more likely to be good. I've come to realise thats not what they are. I stopped trying to find things that seemed cool and unusual and made a goddamn stew. I baked a potato. I made a fucking bacon sandwich. I learned that with care and experimentation you can make more of a piece of tough beef than you can with all the saffron in the universe.

It's no small thing to happen to your life either. Food is one of the greatest pleasures that can be enjoyed in the ever-shrinking gap between this moment and the shrieking howl of the coming fear of death.

So ignore everything you ever learned about cooking from every TV chef ever. Throw out all cookbooks that were like the ones I had, anything with more than five or six main ingredients and any more than four numbered steps.

[Didymus]

make stew.

[inland wave]

Can't make up my mind -- chili, chicken noodle soup, or spaghetti. it's got to be something warm, its damn cold outside.

[Master Taran]

I love the taste of pulled pork in the morning.