I'm a little proud of this shortcut I've come up with for mimicking roasted carrots. Start by microwaving covered carrots with some water to steam them until starting to become soft, then sautéing with generous amount of oil until charred. Finally toss with some powdered spices (cumin and coriander is very good, garam masala and turmeric is nice too).
I've been eating a lot of carrots since they're super cheap and I suppose nutritious? Never been a fan of them raw (unless shaved into thin ribbons) so trying to expand my repertoire beyond braising and other time consuming ways to make them sweet and soft. The carrot salad is not bad, good enough to eat again for sure, but not amazing. I do very much like the spice mixture of smoked paprika, chilli powder (both to substitute for the namesake aleppo pepper), lemon zest, ground cumin and sugar; the mix is good for dipping bread in with some olive oil.
The hot honeycomb candy was pretty much a failure since I didn't mix in the baking soda very well. The texture was not as airy / crunchy as it could've been, and storing it for a week in UK's humidity just killed it even more. But mixing it into ice cream did help revive the crunch (not sure why).
Dad's meatball soup / more quick roasted carrots with daal / homemade ricotta
My dad's been boasting to me about his meatball soup for a while now, so I've faithfully followed his (vague) instructions to recreate it. The meatballs do turn out light and airy.
For 1lb meat, add:
~50ml oil
minced ginger and some liaojiu /shaoxin wine
2 big spoon (a regular eating sized spoon) corn starch
season with proportion of ⅓ salt ⅓ soy sauce
enough water to make half dry half wet consistency
Stir all together until air has been whipped into the meat mixture
Cook (a lot of) tomato in water over medium low heat until fallen apart
Add meatballs, turn heat to high and check for doneness after 5 mins
Add in chopped green onion and serve
I've taken the liberties of sauteing some leeks at the beginning of making the soup and adding some iceberg lettuce (it's unexpectedly wonderful in soup as it retains some crunch) at the end.
Same carrots again, the daal makes a nice dip for the carrots.
So I've tried making cheese, although ricotta which is the easiest cheese to make. I scaled down the recipe by 10 since I didn't want to risk messing up a whole batch. For my specific milk (whole milk from co-op) and vinegar (apple cider, 5% acetic acid), the amount of vinegar was too much, just a tablespoon was enough to coagulate the curds. Might try a ratio of 1000:25ml milk to vinegar for my next batch. My cheese was also very dry and crumbly without much draining, it was never really a spreadable texture. To be honest the taste is not intensely milky as I expected, but not sure if that's because of unrealistic expectations or poor execution. Going to try Sainsbury's ricotta (and mascarpone) to see if homemade is actually better.
...
I've started on my second pu-er sample: 2009 Nan Mu Chun "Wu Liang Mountain Blue Label" raw pu-erh tea and it's a good drink. Very reasonably priced too. But then again I've actually liked all of the wu liang samples I've tried from YS...am I uncritical or got lucky and found my favourite region?
Same carrots again, the daal makes a nice dip for the carrots.
So I've tried making cheese, although ricotta which is the easiest cheese to make. I scaled down the recipe by 10 since I didn't want to risk messing up a whole batch. For my specific milk (whole milk from co-op) and vinegar (apple cider, 5% acetic acid), the amount of vinegar was too much, just a tablespoon was enough to coagulate the curds. Might try a ratio of 1000:25ml milk to vinegar for my next batch. My cheese was also very dry and crumbly without much draining, it was never really a spreadable texture. To be honest the taste is not intensely milky as I expected, but not sure if that's because of unrealistic expectations or poor execution. Going to try Sainsbury's ricotta (and mascarpone) to see if homemade is actually better.
...
I've started on my second pu-er sample: 2009 Nan Mu Chun "Wu Liang Mountain Blue Label" raw pu-erh tea and it's a good drink. Very reasonably priced too. But then again I've actually liked all of the wu liang samples I've tried from YS...am I uncritical or got lucky and found my favourite region?
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