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You are here: Home / Archives for Food & Recipes / Food

Food

Recipe Exchange: Spicy Lime Cilantro Chicken

by TaMara (HFG)|  October 9, 20207:12 pm| 53 Comments

This post is in: Food, Food & Recipes, Recipe Exchange, yes, I know your recipe is always better than mine

Recipe Exchange: Lim

It’s been unseasonably warm here after our early snow in September, so grilling is on the menu.

On the board:

  1. Spicy Lime Cilantro Chicken
  2. Mexican Rice Medley
  3. Green Beans
  4. Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies (recipe here)

Spicy Lime Cilantro Chicken:

  • 4 boneless chicken breasts
  • ½ cup lime juice
  • ¼ cup chopped cilantro
  • ¼ cup sliced pickled jalapenos and juice

Place ingredients in a zip-lock bag and marinate 1 hour or overnight.  Broil or grill for 15 minutes, turning every 5 minutes, until breasts are cooked to 165 degrees.

Mexican Rice Medley:

  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • ½ small yellow onion, chopped
  • 6 oz can chopped green chilies
  • ½ tsp crushed garlic
  • 1 small tomato, chopped
  • 1 cup Jasmine rice
  • 1 ¼ cup water
  • 1 cup tomato sauce
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

large saucepan and bowl

In saucepan, heat oil, add onion, chilies, garlic and tomatoes, sauté until onions are golden.  Remove to bowl.  In the saucepan add rice, water, tomato sauce and chili powder, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to low and let simmer 20 minutes until all liquid is absorbed.  Add onion mixture.  Finish with salt and pepper to taste and cilantro.  Fluff with a fork and serve.

Dinner menu serves 4

Cooking Tips:  If a recipe has meat or poultry that is marinated, a great timesaver is to make the marinades when you purchase the meats.  Mix meat and marinades together into a freezer bag and freeze.  All that’s left to do is thaw and cook.  10-minute meals are easy with a variety of marinades and meats or poultry, then stir-fry, grill or broil and serve.

=========================

What’s on your menu this weekend?

Recipe Exchange: Spicy Lime Cilantro ChickenPost + Comments (53)

Late Night Respite Munchies Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  August 23, 202012:28 am| 72 Comments

This post is in: Food, Nature & Respite, Open Threads

VIDEO: Squinting in concentration, Vietnamese artist Nguyen Thi Ha An drops a bright red chili into a bowl of pho barely bigger than a coin — the finishing touch to a miniature model that's eaten up days of her time pic.twitter.com/HUZ6lXkKWj

— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 20, 2020

Food lover knits her favorite snacks out of wool pic.twitter.com/eN2PcsecEV

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 22, 2020

Influencers around the world are amassing millions of followers by presenting and eating beautifully arranged plates of food

But now the Chinese government is waging war on the trend, with food shortages becoming a rising concernhttps://t.co/9IRPhyAx9c

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) August 20, 2020

… ‘Muk Sna’ is one of a growing number of stars who straddle two huge internet trends called Mukbang and ASMR:

– Mukbang originated in Korea and loosely translates as “eating broadcast”

– Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a category of video aimed at creating noises and sounds that elicit a physical response

For some, the idea of watching and hearing someone eat piles of food on camera is not appealing.

But the trend, started about 10 years ago, has become extremely popular in Asia.

Now, though, the Chinese government is cracking down on the videos, which soon may be banned altogether in the country…

Anyone searching for terms such as “eating show” or “eating livestream” is now being served with warning notices.

Users on popular app Kuaishou are being warned to “save food; eat properly” and on Douyin, the Chinese sister app to TikTok, a warning pops up saying: “Cherish food, refuse to waste, eat properly and have a healthy life.”…

Most of ‘Muk Sna’s’ followers are in Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.

But she worries for her 50,000 Chinese fans, many of whom are thought to be lonely people seeking a shared experience when eating their own dinner in front of their phones or computers.

“I’m hoping that only the worst channels will be affected by this to allow for the beneficial and good channels to remain open,” she says.

“I don’t eat much in my videos and try to eat healthy food.”

If we’re being honest, what proportion of Western ‘cooking show/video’ viewers ever make, or even attempt to make, the various dishes we spend hours admiring on YouTube or Hulu?

Late Night <del>Respite</del> Munchies Open ThreadPost + Comments (72)

Sunday Night Recipes

by Adam L Silverman|  August 9, 20209:06 pm| 101 Comments

This post is in: Cooking, Food, Food & Recipes, Open Threads, Recipe Exchange, Recipes

Tamara has asked that I fill in for her this evening, and I did myself no favors by texting her all afternoon about all the food I was preparing today. I have no one to blame but myself. So I have broken out the emergency tiara and let’s get to work!

I did several different food/recipe preparations today. The first was making condensed milk so I can make a simple, two ingredient ice cream base tomorrow. Since I really can’t process a lot of refined sugar or refined/processed carbohydrates, I substituted monk fruit crystals* for the sugar. It is in the fridge now, but since I’m not sure this is going to set up and I am likely to have to put it back on heat tomorrow to actually reduce enough liquid so that I have condensed milk and not sweetened milk, we’ll leave that one for another day. I’m pretty sure there was a problem in the way the recipe I used was written up. I really don’t understand how you can start out on low and then, once the sugar dissolves into the milk, turn the heat down to a medium-low simmer. I watched the video and it wasn’t much help either. More on this project at a later date.

The second thing I did was bake a batch of the Palmer House brownies. I’ve posted about these here before,  including the recipe, but since I’m making these for me and I’m not interested in having both the cake flour and the sugar make me sick, I made a few tweaks. The first is that I substituted 8 ounces of almond flour for the 8 ounces of cake flour. The second is that I substituted 1 lbs of monk fruit crystals for the sugar in the recipe. I also used Guittard dark chocolate chips, which don’t have a lot of sugar in them, so overall there isn’t a lot of refined sugar in these brownies. They’re not low calorie; they still get a pound of butter and 1 pound 2 ounces of dark chocolate, but without the cake flour and the refined sugar I can eat them without getting sick. I’ve made them this way three times now since I’ve gone into lockdown. So if you want to give this a try, with the substitutions I’ve used, just one important thing to note: until you add the eggs into the brownie batter, the melted chocolate-butter combination will not combine smoothly with the almond flour. Basically it starts okay, but after a minute or two it starts to look very grainy and the almond flour releases the butter. The batter quickly returns to normal once you add the eggs.

The recipe for tonight, however, is chicken-cheese enchiladas.

Sunday Night Recipes

Ingredients:

Chicken:

2 boneless chicken breasts and 4 boneless chicken thighs or any combination of chicken you like. This was enough for 18 enchiladas. You could substitute beef or pork or even shrimp for the chicken if you prefer.

1/2 cup of salsa verde for the marinade

Place the chicken in a large bowl, pour the salsa verde over it, mix the salsa verde around to make sure the chicken is covered, and marinate for at least five hours.

Set your burner to just below medium-high. In a large skillet or saute pan, heat up just enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Once the oil is hot add the chicken and cook until the chicken is cooked all the way through and each side is turning golden brown. Remove the chicken from the heat, chop or shred, and set aside

Sunday Night Recipes 3

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Quick queso blanco:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of heavy cream

4 to 6 ounces of shredded cheese – I used the four cheese Mexican blend because I had it on hand and it meant I didn’t have to sacrifice a knuckle to the box grater!

Heat the cream in a saute pan over medium heat. As the cream begins to get warm add the cheese, then thoroughly combine as it melts. Add salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat down to as low as possible.

Sunday Night Recipes 4

Enchiladas:

Ingredients:

18 corn tortillas

Grated or shredded cheese – I used the Four Cheese Mexican blend because it meant I didn’t have to do any extra work

Chopped chicken

Enchiladas Assemble!!!!!

To assemble the enchiladas, take a corn tortillas sprinkle some shredded cheese into the center in a strip running from side to side, cover that with the chopped or shredded chicken, roll the tortilla around the chicken and cheese, and place in the bottom of a greased/kitchen sprayed baking dish. Repeat until you’ve got all the enchiladas rolled and sitting in the dish. Cover with the queso blanco and then more shredded cheese. Place in the oven at 350 degrees until the shredded cheese melts and is just on the edge of browning.

Sunday Night Recipes 1

Sides:

I went very easy here. I bought a can of black beans – NOT GOYA – and a package of Vigo low sodium yellow rice. I made the beans and rice while I was assembling and baking the enchiladas. If you’re really particular and want to use dry beans and make your yellow rice from scratch, that’s great. Feel free to tell me in the comments, because you’re going to do it anyway, why I’m a horrible human being who has destroyed your heritage by not making these from scratch.

Plating:

On your plate, put a serving of the yellow rice and then top with as much or as little of the black beans as you like. This can then be topped with chopped onion if you like or not if you don’t. Then place as many enchiladas as you think you’re going to eat on the rest of the plate. I did these New Mexico Christmas style. Cover one third of each enchilada with salsa verde, leave a 1/3 gap in the middle, and then cover the remaining third with salsa rojo. In that center third place a spoonful of sour cream with a spoonful of guacamole. Then serve and eat.

Sunday Night Recipes 2

If you prefer all salsa verde or salsa rojo or no sour cream or only sour cream or no guacamole or only guacamole, serve it however is appetizing to you.

Bon appétit!

Open thread!

* I use a monk fruit crystal that do not have sugar alcohols added to them. You could also use agave crystals, honey, maple syrup, or pretty much any other sweetener that will caramelize.

 

Sunday Night RecipesPost + Comments (101)

A Saucy Diversion

by Major Major Major Major|  August 5, 20203:25 pm| 180 Comments

This post is in: Food, Food & Recipes, Nature & Respite, Open Threads

Ketchup has a long history. Its distant ancestor hailed from Fujian, China–a fermented fish sauce known as kê-tsiap. Later innovators like Mary Randolph would popularize a tomato version. By 1896 it was the “national sauce of America”. For whatever reason, I find this all fascinating.

I was very happy to learn that Science Friday had a segment on this last week: Ketchup: A Fishy History. It’s just under twenty minutes long, and–joy of joys–that link even includes a transcript. If this sort of thing is up your alley, why not treat yourself to a little bit of respite? It looks like we could use a thread for it, at any rate.

What’s your favorite Fun Fact about food?

A Saucy DiversionPost + Comments (180)

Food Fallacies (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  August 1, 20201:16 pm| 167 Comments

This post is in: Food, Food & Recipes, Open Threads

Several years ago in Slate, Tom Scocca sliced Big Onion wide open with an exposé of a damnable lie replicated in innumerable published recipes:

Layers of Deceit
Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions?

Browning onions is a matter of patience. My own patience ran out earlier this year while leafing through the New York Times food section. There, in the newspaper of record, was a recipe for savory scones with onions, currants, and caraway. Though I wasn’t particularly interested in making savory scones, one passage caught my eye:

Add the onions to the skillet and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook until they begin to turn dark brown and somewhat soft, about 5 minutes. Add the oil and a pinch of the fine sea salt; continue cooking until the onions are soft and caramelized, about 5 minutes longer.

Soft, dark brown onions in five minutes. That is a lie. Fully caramelized onions in five minutes more. Also a lie.

There is no other word for it. Onions do not caramelize in five or 10 minutes. They never have, they never will—yet recipe writers have never stopped pretending that they will.

I remember reading this and thinking, “YES! Stop fucking lying about the onions!” I know why they do it. Scocca explained. They want you to try their recipe — and even better, tweet and like it on social media — so they shorten the total cooking time so you won’t think it’s too hard and move on to something easier.

Recipe Gripes (Open Thread)

Recipe editors mostly got the message, I think. I baked bread earlier today and was browsing souped-up grilled cheese recipes when I spotted a recipe for caramelized onion grilled cheese sandwiches with miso butter in The Post. Here’s how that recipe treats the caramelized onions:

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the onion and salt and cook, stirring often, until the onions start to soften and brown, 5 to 6 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are deeply browned and sticky, 30 to 45 minutes.

That’s more like it.

I have another recipe gripe, but the motivations behind it aren’t as clear to me, unless recipe writers are in league with the fossil fuel industry. I’m referring to the tradition of starting the instructions section of every recipe with “Preheat over to X.” In some cases, yeah, it makes sense to do that. By the time you get the simple ingredients assembled, the oven will be at the correct temperature, and you can pop the dish in.

But virtually ALL recipes start with the “preheat oven” instructions, no matter how much time will elapse between turning the oven on and placing the item into it. Martha Stewart’s rustic Meyer lemon tart recipe is a particularly egregious example:

Step 1
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Make the crust: Whisk together flour, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and the lemon zest in a large bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry cutter or your fingers until dough begins to hold together.

Step 2
Stir together 1 tablespoon water and vanilla, then mix into dough. Shape dough into a disk, and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Step 3
Using your fingers, press dough evenly into bottom and up sides of a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Freeze for 30 minutes.

Step 4
Bake tart shell until golden, about 25 minutes. Let cool completely.

Emphasis mine. Why would I stand next to a hot stove while preparing the dough, chilling it for half an hour, taking it out of the fridge, rolling it out, placing it into the tart pan and freezing it for another 30 minutes before putting it in the oven? This makes no fucking sense, unless I planned to cook a damned meatloaf while waiting out crust-chilling sessions.

We need to know what temperature to set the oven to, obviously, but do recipes really need to tell us WHEN to turn the oven on? I don’t think so. It’s not blatantly deceptive like the 5-minute caramelized onion fallacy. But they should just tell us the baking temperature — maybe below the ingredients but before the instructions? — and let us figure out for ourselves when to turn the oven on.

Open thread.

Food Fallacies (Open Thread)Post + Comments (167)

If I May Have Your Attention: An Important Message From the Current President of the United States

by Adam L Silverman|  July 30, 20202:29 pm| 217 Comments

This post is in: Election 2020, Food, Humorous, Open Threads, Racial Justice

Support Patio Pizza and its wonderful owner, Guy Caligiuri, in St. James, Long Island (N.Y.). Great Pizza!!! @Varneyco

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020

Everybody move out sharply!

Break

For those of you unable to watch (and if you are not watching it, what is wrong with you?!?!?!?!), President Obama just leveraged both Presidents Bush to smack Chief Justice Roberts, as well as Senator McConnell and his current Republican majority in the Senate on the former’s gutting the Voting Rights Act and the latter’s failure to fix it. And challenging the latter to now pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020.

Open thread!

If I May Have Your Attention: An Important Message From the Current President of the United StatesPost + Comments (217)

Official Start of the Season

by John Cole|  July 18, 20201:17 pm| 37 Comments

This post is in: Food, Garden Chats

It has begun. Getting the first run of pickles down today, first run of kraut, tomorrow.

Official Start of the Season

Game on.

Official Start of the SeasonPost + Comments (37)

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