[food] and now for something completely different

[kaberett]

1. I got to the end of this Graun article on how to make meringue before I clocked the title. (I am having an Erudite Discussion about Meringue on the book of faces, you see, or at least a discussion about whether or not they ought be chewy and how one goes about achieving effects various. It is a source of some frustration to me that Molecular Gastronomy, a copy of which deborah_c gave me for... a birthday Some Time Ago, mentions meringues only in the context of putting them in a bell jar you then PUMP ALL THE AIR OUT OF, because it is fascinating on a great many topics -- how to make pastry with chocolate! the physics of boiling dumplings until they rise to the surface! -- and mysteriously lacking in tedious detail on this one.)

2. I have decided that macaroni cheese is much improved by steaming a head of cauliflower over the top of the pasta water (chopped into florets & the stalk into chunks) and mixing it in. This is perhaps obvious but it had not previously occurred to me, and I am a Fan.

3. Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for roasted sweet potatoes and chickpeas, and linked onward to an article about the perplexing USois use of "yam" and "sweet potato". I am enlightened. (I will promptly forget it again, no doubt, and discover it once more In The Future and be delightened again, but I can't quite see this as a downside.)

4. ... and a bonus, edited in post-facto because my mum just put it on facebook: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's potato peel soup. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

2: ooo.

[kaberett]

all present were fans!

[vass]

1. Oh NO.

3. Why have I never tried roasted chickpeas? I've been aware that this is a thing you can do to chickpeas since before I'd ever encountered a chickpea (because of Madhur Jaffrey's Seasons of Splendour) but I've never gotten around to it. Clearly I should make the experiment sometime soon.

But they're so good soft!

4. Today I learned: some people peel potatoes before roasting them, for reasons other than "the potatoes would have otherwise needed scrubbing." The recipe sounds delicious, but I will probably never have occasion to make it, because I never peel potatoes, even when I'm mashing them.

[kaberett]

1. ahahahaha glad you appreciated.

2. They ARE so good soft. This is probably Saturday dinner, however, and I shall report back.

4. Oh I don't peel potatoes when I'm mashing them (except for Very Specific purposes, viz, potato doughs for dumplings/gnocchi/etc), but I kind of like to when I'm roasting because if you've got an adequately floury potato and you fluff it up you get more of the delicious crunchy bits. (I also like delicious crunchy skin! But tend to achieve *that* by frying smol potatoes.)

[kaberett]

... I missed a fairly substantive trick with the icon for this post but I have at least given it an outing in this comment.

[wildeabandon]

Weird syncronicity there - I just made the same realisation as 2 but with broccoli.

[kaberett]

Ha! Broccoli I am much more prone to treating more like asparagus than perhaps it deserves (i.e. steaming it very lightly and then serving it with lemon juice and butter, or frying it and ditto), but yes, it is also A Good Time :-)

[ewt]

2. To each their own; I am definitely Not A Fan. My reaction goes roughly "Oh hell, another perfectly good macaroni cheese ruined by adding evil brassicas to it." (Along with hops and coffee, brassicas are in the category of things that are too bitter for me to eat comfortably, though they're the mildest in that category. Rapeseed oil is okay but it's so heavily processed it hardly counts; and I can manage wasabi and other sufficiently spicy horseradishes, and very small amounts of mustard powder, and very occasionally bits of very fresh raw salad radish/rocket/watercress/hedge garlic or cauliflower or broccoli, but not cooked cabbage, "spring greens", "Chinese leaves", kale, broccoli, cauliflower and so on. The way the latter two keep turning up unannounced in otherwise perfectly good macaroni cheese essentially turns it from one of my favourite foods to one of penance, i.e. I'll eat it if it's put in front of me and it would be rude not to, but I will probably spend the rest of the evening tasting nothing but cabbage.) I hope that you enjoy it, though.

Now, peas in macaroni cheese are another matter. Or sauteed mushrooms or leeks, though they aren't anywhere near as convenient.

[ewt]

The weird thing is that I like gin, tonic water (as long as it doesn't have aspartame in it), and dark chocolate, all of which are bitter. It clearly isn't that I don't tolerate bitter tastes, so much as that some bitter things taste extraordinarily bitter to me.

[kaberett]

Super-tasting is totally a thing! At the risk of being Really Patronising, have you come across super-tasting? My (vague, handwavey) understanding is that it's super common for vegetal and specifically brassica bitter to set off the NO THAT IS POISON response in a way that lots of other foods don't.

[ewt]

I've come across it, but tend to avoid using the term when explaining my dietary preferences as I have had responses along the lines of "oh stop being such a snowflake" in the past.

[kaberett]

... well you won't get any of that round here, but understood.

[ewt]

Thank you. :-)

[kaberett]

I tend to sautee allium (usually onion, leek if I have it in; on this occasion I did, so I did) in butter in a pan until I get bored, then add some more butter and use that as the base for the cheese sauce, which makes sauteeing the leek a little less faff! So this macaroni cheese in fact contained sauteed leek and onion and a tin of sweetcorn (and nutmeg and mustard and pepper) as well as the hated brassica.

I enjoyed it greatly, but shall remember that you are not a fan, should I end up cooking for you :-)

(Mushrooms hadn't really ever occurred to me at least in part because the parner who is Fondest of macaroni cheese is also the partner who will very quietly and politely leave a small pile of mushroom on the side of his plate if it is anything other than Very Smol and Very Not Dominant Flavour, except now we all know he does that so the small polite pile of mushroom tends to vanish as quickly as it is generated and, er, sometimes more quickly.)

[stephdairy]

The recipe for lemon meringue pie I use has me make the meringue over a pan of simmering water. I like the (soft, fluffy) results, so I have never deviated from this, but I would be fascinated to know why I'm doing this!

(S)

[kaberett]

... huh. That might be on the principle of heating the sugar (per the Graun suggesting that you roast one third of it), but I haven't bothered with that yet so don't know what relative effect it has on the stuff I make. (I am contemplating the merits of having a go at making meringue using the hot syrup method, where you melt the sugar and use the heat of it to cook the meringue as you're beating it, but it sounds like Quite A Lot Of Faff so I have... definitely not got around to it yet.)

Perhaps I shall poke the internet more for more information! But probably not right now.

[ewt]

When I made meringue using the hot syrup method (several years ago now) it was more like folding the hot syrup into the already-beaten egg whites.

I think the result was pretty tasty, and it seemed less faff than trying to get the oven Just Right, so I may do it again sometime, particularly as the oven in the current place is not really being truthful about temperatures these days.

[redsixwing]

1. Wait, pavlovas are supposed to be chewy?

2. Yumm. Yes please. Also good is a little green onion or leek, chopped on top right before serving. Or do it with ricotta instead of cheese sauce and add spinach and garlic. <3

Macaroni and cheese is a canvas, for making art with savory vegetables.

3. That sounds delicious.

3a. The usage of "sweet potato" and "yam" is particularly entertaining given the existence of a family member who likes the white kind, but not the orange kind, and will carefully pick through the mislabeled potato section looking for the proper kind.

[kaberett]

1. I... actually have no idea.

2. :D Yes, sauteed leek was included in this one (as was a tin of sweetcorn, and nutmeg and black pepper and mustard). I am still intending to get around to trying an over-enthusiastic goat-based variant I've had sketched out for... wow, years now.

3a. heeeee.

[pipisafoat]

2. it wasn't until you clarified the chopping that my brain decided to picture someone steaming a full intact cauliflower head, and now I am incredibly amused (and wondering how horribly that would turn out).

[kaberett]

It actually works just fine and is much less faff if you're going to be serving it immediately and don't mind the process taking fifteen minutes! But if I'm going to be using the florets in something else I'd rather chop them first, while they're cold.