We should have a "What are you cooking?" thread. Now we do.

[davent]

Freezer clean out tonight. After the burger drought of 2019, the 2020 binge will continue until frost eliminates  the private stock of vine ripened heirloom tomatoes steps from the kitchen door.

The usual 100g lean ground beef patties, toasted slider buns. Top down ↓↓↓ grilled bun, Hellmann's, sweet relish, regular yellow mustard, mixed lettuces, white onion, Lucid Gem tomato slices, home dills, bacon, beef burger, xtra old white cheddar, sauteed mushrooms, grilled bun... small but mighty.








Friday's here, long weekend where i'm at! Take care.
dave

[davent]

Last weekend did pizza on the bbq meaning to use some cordierite tiles but ready to roll get baking and they're too big for my grill, too late to fix that so roll with the usual grilling method. Trimmed them to fit the next day so had to try them out this weekend. Was able to get them heated to 600F which is still a long way from target temperature but about 100F hotter then i can get in the kitchen oven. Really good results, some more tricks to try but for $25cdn invested great deal.

Tiles cut easily with a diamond wheel in an angle grinder.





Pizza for this weekend, dough recipe was the same one i use for oven pizzas with "00" flour, 48 hour rise in the fridge.

#1- tomato sauce, garlic slices, oil cured olives, anchovies, dried oregano, fresh basil, parm, olive oil, Arbol chili flakes.

#2 - oven dried cherry tomatoes, garlic oil and pieces, fontina/provolone mix, basic goodness.









Saturday was a cool grayish day, been a very long time since there was day like that day, called for chicken noodle soup, a staple meal.



Labour day here today, national holiday, take care.
dave

[EBK]

Back when I had time to grill pizza, I would place the stretched dough directly onto an oiled grill grate, brown it up a bit, flip it, add the toppings, and slide it to the (relatively speaking) cool side of the grill to finish baking.  I miss those days... 

[davent]

Back when I had time to grill pizza, I would place the stretched dough directly onto an oiled grill grate, brown it up a bit, flip it, add the toppings, and slide it to the (relatively speaking) cool side of the grill to finish baking.  I miss those days...

Yup, has always been our method as well, these two were our next step in our pizza grilling evolution. The grill has a back horizontal burner for the rotisserie and i was hoping i be able to use that to cook/broil the top while baking but couldn't get it lit for whatever reason, incompetence or maybe locked out while the bottom burners are in use?

In any case just ran the bottom burners fully opened the whole time, worked pretty good, better than our oven though i did end up broiling these in there to get the lacking char i wanted to see.

Still a long way from the 900F plus flash bake i'm looking to try.
dave

[davent]

Today's trials, Saturday's farm box delivery contained zucchinis something i wouldn't normally buy, bonus,  male zucchini flowers which i've never tried before. Have friends that grow zucchini just to harvest and eat the flowers so was anxious to try these.

Lunch, Kimchi/cream cheese toasts, sounded interesting.

Battered and fried and ate the zucchini flowers while prepping dinner. Results, a far tastier way to get the salt/oil fix then popcorn could ever hope for.

Zucchini fritters with lemony yogurt. Batter for these is made from red lentils, turmeric, Aleppo & cayenne peppers.







Have a great week!
dave

[midwayfair]

What the heck? Where did you get squash flowers this time of year?

[davent]

What the heck? Where did you get squash flowers this time of year?

The family farm stand we've been buying most of our vegetables from at the market going back years, shut down their stand at the beginning of Covid (since reopened), started a weekly subscription delivery service of a standardized box of vegetables and fruits they sold at their stand,  always a surprise element tucked in there. Surprise element might be an unusual vegetable, bouquets of flowers, fresh herbs, this week there was a bag of Shishito peppers and a bag of various edible flowers including the squash.

Have never looked for squash flowers before and can't say i've ever noticed them but will keep an eye out for them now. They grow a number of different summer squash varieties,  four distinctly different ones in this box, they grow winter squash of all descriptions to sell through to next summer so it's possible they have a few acres devoted to just squash. Should be no shortage of male flowers available, may just be hard to make/find time get out there and handpick them, be a last minute thing as from what i've read they don't keep well at all.

Tasty and looking 'round a good number of options for prepping experimenting with.
dave

[Scruffie]

Got an abundance of beefsteak tomatoes this year, any suggestions besides slicing 'em for burgers, stuffing them with couscous or tomato salads?

[davent]

Toasted bread of choice, bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwiches with a great extra old cheddar or Shropshire blue cheese, i have to have mayo on there, if i recall correctly vegetarian, still great without bacon.

When we have glut of tomatoes we slice em and dry them in the dehydrator then into the freezer, lots of uses throughout the year.

Gazpacho and other cold tomato soups, endless number of iterations to be toyed with.

Dice/cube the tomatoes for a no cook chunky tomato sauce for pasta, chunks of fresh mozzarella, minced garlic, fresh basil,  olive oil & chili flakes, fresh parm...

No cook pizza sauce, cut off the stem end of the tomato and grate the tomato on a box grater, total separation of pulp from the skin, drain the pulp in a sieve over a bowl, add a of touch salt (hot sauce , pepper...) to the drained juice , drink up.

Happy dilemma, enjoy while you can! Take care!
dave

[midwayfair]

Got an abundance of beefsteak tomatoes this year, any suggestions besides slicing 'em for burgers, stuffing them with couscous or tomato salads?

Can also stuff them with rice and ground beef and topped with parm and breadcrumbs, that's what my dad does (along with peppers).

If you're growing them, fried green tomatoes. I'm not sure I ever let them turn red to be honest ...

Also, just slice them and put salt and pepper on them ... they're a fruit after all, you don't gotta cook em.

[davent]

Cold tomato soup based on a couple cups of V8. Chopped tomatoes of various varieties, chopped cucumber red pepper onion, minced garlic, fresh basil tarragon parsley oregano, lime juice, lemon juice, cider vinegar, olive oil, honey, cumin, Aleppo pepper hot sauce. Blended half and mix back in. My wife made a beer, cheddar cheese quick bread to go with it.








Take care.dave

[alanp]

My neighbour gave us some venison steaks from a friend of his who is keen on hunting. (Deer are something of a pest, in New Zealand, as are wild pigs (known as "Captain Cookers", after Captain Cook who released them initially... yea, thanks for that...) Possums are an even bigger pest, but they usually wind up being used for fur and the like, not their meat.

Venison smells very strange, compared to beef or pork. I was rather dubious as to how good the steak would taste, given how it smelled both raw and in the pan.

I used my cast iron pan (I love this pan, you can use any metal tool you like, unlike nonstick, you can heat it up however you like, unlike nonstick, you can use steel wool with as much elbow grease as you like to clean it up, unlike nonstick, and if you season it properly, things don't stick to the bottom much.) Google recommended frying venison in a mix of oil and butter. I used sunflower seed oil and, since I don't have any butter at the moment, a big dollop of margerine that tastes rather buttery.

I think I had them on the pan for about ten minutes. Testing with the knife showed they were still a bit reddish in the middle, which makes me a bit  worried, but google had dire warnings about not overcooking venison, so I went with that and plated it up. I also did a couple eggs in the pan, after there was lots of meatjuice mixed in the oil. To complement this, some seasoned wedges.

Absolutely lovely meal, washed down with some Boundary Road Brewery 19th Amendment APA.

Venison steaks are very nice, if you can get them!

[TFZ]

Deer is my favorite meat by far. Don't think I've ever eaten it fried in a pan, or actually even cooked it myself. So I can't comment on the smell of it raw  or while cooking. The way you would get it most likely served in Bavaria is like this, as a Ragout:



Or roasted like this.

[davent]

Nice! I can't add to the venison tales but i did have a side of tofu in the freezer, vegetarian shepherds pie, another recipe from a long ago Moosewood book, wee have a good number of those.

First layer is the thawed tofu crumbled and sauteed with onions, carrots and toasted walnut pieces, thyme and powdered coriander, cayenne pepper, soy sauce to taste, this time used Maggi which was good but will go back to Bragg's when this happens to roll around again.

Chopped broccoli, last of what we had on hand. Mushroom gravy, portobellas/shiitakes, black pepper, Maggi, potato water and cornstarch slurry for thickening.

Topped with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, milk and lots of butter in those and more butter added on top along with ground Aleppo pepper.

Garden salad, except for mushrooms all backyard sourced, Lucid Gem tomatoes have been the attention winner this year, must grow again next year.











Have a good week!
dave

[midwayfair]

Had some small spot, croaker, and white perch for dinner along with leftover sushi rice from Friday. I've got fish coming out of my ears though ... went fishing two weeks in a row with my dad and he kept fish he didn't intend to eat. I don't like freezing them but there are definitely too many.

I guess I could salt some of them, but they're not really big enough to filet.