Cooking with HoL

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Jojobobo, Jul 14, 2019.

Remove all ads!
Support Terra-Arcanum:

GOG.com

PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!
  1. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,796
    Media:
    34
    Likes Received:
    164
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2002
  2. Ruda

    Ruda Active Member

    Messages:
    445
    Likes Received:
    42
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2013
    SHOW ME! SHOW YOU! KIKKOMAN!
    ----
    Is this right?
    [​IMG]
     
    Dark Elf likes this.
  3. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,796
    Media:
    34
    Likes Received:
    164
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2002
    You obviously know nothing about cooking. Let me break it down for you:

    1) Heat goes under pan.
    2) Pan handle goes out in front of the stove.
    3) Kitchen is left unattended with equally unattended toddler.
     
  4. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,403
    Media:
    1
    Likes Received:
    271
    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2011
    The yolk is still intact. This means you could serve Smuel's Egg Yolk Spooned Directly Into Your Mouth.
     
  5. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,403
    Media:
    1
    Likes Received:
    271
    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2011
    Smuel's Nourishing Slurry

    Ingredients
    • 1 large or 2 small onions
    • 3 or 4 cloves of garlic
    • 1 whole broccoli
    • 3 large or 4 medium carrots
    • Half a small cabbage, or a third of a medium one
    • 4 large or 6 medium tomatoes
    • 6 to 8 large chicken thighs or drumsticks
    • 6 to 8 cups cooked rice
    • Salt

    Method

    Lay the chicken in a oven-proof tray or dish, and roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until crispy and cooked through. You may want to line the dish with aluminium foil to make clean-up easier.

    While the chicken is cooking, prepare the vegetables. The onion and garlic should be peeled, and sliced or diced. The tomatoes should be cut in half and have their inedible green stem-contact-point removed (that small tough bit where the tomato was attached to the vine). The carrots, brocolli and cabbage may need to be washed, and/or cut up into bits to make the next part easier.

    Once the chicken is done, remove it from the oven. The chicken pieces will probably be swimming in liquid, which is part oil and part water, with the oil on top. Spoon as much of the oil as you can into the largest saucepan that you have, then use it to fry the garlic and onion. Once the onion is soft and lightly golden, add the rest of the chicken liquid (think of it as stock, if that helps), all the vegetables, and enough water to come about half-way up the vegetables. Add a large spoonful of salt. Bring it all to the boil, then leave to simmer for an hour or so, until the thickest part of the broccoli is soft.

    Once cooked, take the lid off, and leave to cool for a bit. There will be more liquid than you started with, because the tomatoes will have partly disintegrated. Pour the contents of the saucepan into a blender, and blend. You may have to do this in stages if your blender isn't big enough. If you don't have a blender, then I guess you could cut up all the vegetables into tiny pieces before cooking.

    Once blended, add the rice, and stir. Add the chicken. You can either leave the chicken pieces whole, or tear them up into little bits, discarding the bones and skin.

    You now have 4 to 8 servings of a complete meal, depending on your appetite. The slurry will last a week or so in the refrigerator. To serve, pour a serving-sized portion into a bowl, cover with a plate, and microwave until hot throughout.

    Notes

    For people who don't like cabbage, or broccoli, well it's a slurry so you won't necessarily be able to taste anything specific, but fine, use a different set of vegetables as the mood takes you.

    The blending stage can be difficult if you only have an average sized blender, because it probably won't all fit. I usually blend half, and then pour it into a Tupperware container that I'm going to store it in. Then I blend the other half, and pour both halves back into the saucepan to mix together, this way I don't have to worry about getting a fair share of each vegetable into each blending half. It's also easier to mix the rice in when it's all in the large saucepan, rather than proportionally in containers.

    For people who don't like eating the same thing for dinner for an entire week, don't make this.
     
    Jojobobo, Jungle Japes and Dark Elf like this.
  6. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,796
    Media:
    34
    Likes Received:
    164
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2002


    EDIT (longer answer):

    Looks delicious, filling and healthy - and I definitely belong to the crowd that can eat the same dinner for a week, and often do. When I come home from work, I tend to be famished, and microwaving a pre-cooked meal is what I tend to default to, so I may give this a try.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2019
  7. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    3,029
    Likes Received:
    122
    Joined:
    May 29, 2011
    Someone Else's Slightly Modified Braised Red Cabbage

    Background: So I know I said try and post up your own recipes, but with my monumental change I think I made it truly my own (original recipe here). The background is I wanted a more interesting low maintenance side for a roast dinner that wasn't honey roast carrots and parsnips. Here it is...

    Serves: 4, though it freezes well so can be made for 2 with more for another day

    Ingredients:
    • 1 small red cabbage (about 900g)
    • 1 sliced red onion
    • 70g soft light brown sugar
    • 70ml cider vinegar
    • 150ml red wine (or 1 miniature bottle, whatever is easier)
    • a large knob of butter
    • 1 finely grated nutmeg (this was a cinnamon stick; I know I know it's a massive change. I was going to go for a playful strikethrough but the forum doesn't allow for it, which makes me very sad)
    Method:
    1. Quarter the red cabbage and remove the core, then finely shred.
    2. Add all ingredients to a saucepan and season. Bring to the boil and then cover with a lid, reduce heat and allow to simmer for 1 and 1/2 hours.
    3. Remove lid and reduce for 1/2 hour until only a little liquid remains. Add more vinegar/sugar to taste as its reducing. Serve.

    This recipe tastes good and doesn't require much micro-managing when cooking other elements of a roast dinner. My partner doesn't like cinnamon in savoury dishes, and honestly I'm inclined to agree - so nutmeg I fine to be a better tweak.

    I cooked this Sunday with a roast leg of lamb (following this and using a vegetable trivet, when in doubt stud any meat for a roast with rosemary and garlic. A meat thermometer is advisable as prescribed cooking times aren't perfect). In addition was roast potatoes (King Edwards and duck fat for me are the best after trying several other combos. I usually cook them early and reheat them in the oven prior to serving as it doesn't negatively effect taste/crunchiness and timings are easier), as well as a red wine jus with the lamb juices and a bottle of red wine (like a gravy but without the ball-ache of making any stock). It was good, and reasonably easy if you're willing to give it a go.

    I do keep meaning to post up a recipe of my own creation but I'm still not getting round to it. For the time being knock-offs will have to do!
     
  8. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,403
    Media:
    1
    Likes Received:
    271
    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2011
    Well that rules me out.
     
  9. Zanza

    Zanza Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    3,296
    Likes Received:
    61
    Joined:
    Apr 20, 2009
    Don't sell yourself short buddy. You know the old saying "you are what you eat."
     
    Smuel likes this.
  10. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,796
    Media:
    34
    Likes Received:
    164
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2002
  11. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,403
    Media:
    1
    Likes Received:
    271
    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2011
    Smuel's Nourishing Slurry of Haste (+1 SPD, -1 CON)

    For those who like Smuel's Nourishing Slurry, but find it a chore to spend two hours cooking each batch, here is a super optimized preparation method.

    Ingredients
    • Vegetable powders
    • Rice flour
    • Meat or fish
    • Olive oil
    • Salt

    Method (performed in advance)

    Obtain an assortment of raw vegetable powders. I bought the following from Amazon in 500g bags: Tomato, Carrot, Spinach, and Broccoli. Your goal is to get a mix of colours, not for aesthetic reasons, but because green vegetables are good for you in a different way from red/orange vegetables.

    Pour all the powders into a container. I used a plastic cylindrical whey protein container. Using a round container is good because actually smoothly blending 2kg of vegetable powder is quite difficult, but you can roll a round container back and forth across the floor for a few minutes and that does it nicely. You can also add garlic powder or onion powder to the mix, if you want.

    Method (when you're ready to eat)

    Get a microwavable container. Add one scoop of mixed vegetable powder (as prepared above). Add one scoop of rice flour. Add one large spoonful of olive oil. Add one small spoonful of salt. Add one or two scoops of cold water, and mix to a smooth paste. Add some more water. The amount of more water to add depends on how runny you like your slurry - but don't forget it will thicken when it cooks. One and a half cups is probably about right.

    Stick that sucker in the microwave and set it to full blast. You want to get it to the point where it's bubbling, though you'll need to stir it a few times to make sure the whole thing is evenly heated. It doesn't need to be bubbling for very long, because the rice and vegetable particles are tiny, so cook very quickly.

    You now have a container of cooked rice and vegetables. Add a chunk of protein. My favourite choices are a salmon fillet, or a few hundred grams of beef mince.

    Give it a few minutes to cool, and your meal is now ready to consume.

    "Wait, wait," I hear you cry. "Smuel, you idiot, you forgot to cook the meat or fish!"

    Okay, punks, it's time for a science lesson. Cooking meat has two purposes - one is to denature the proteins so that you can digest them more easily. This is what causes the colour change. The second is to kill any bacteria that may have started eating the meat before you did. Now you don't actually _have_ to denature the proteins, your stomach can handle them just fine. And in fact if your goal is to lose weight, then it's better not to. Furthermore, modern butchering techniques are super clean and any contamination by micro-organisms will be so rare that your constitution can deal with them fine too. As long as you're not an infant, a geriatric, or a pregnant woman, you're quite safe. So really it's all down to taste and convenience.

    "But Smuel, waaah!" Look, you can whack the container back in the microwave for another couple of minutes if you want. Then the meat/fish will be cooked.

    ANYWAY, your meal is ready to consume. Total preparation time: about 10 minutes, most of which is waiting for the microwave.

    Notes

    Vegetable powders are a mixed bag, as it were. When I first came up with this idea I was expecting the resulting slurry to taste pretty similar to the long-winded "natural" version in my previous post, since the ingredients were mostly the same. Newsflash: it did not taste similar. It tasted more like a bunch of dubious powders bought from random sellers on Amazon and mixed together. If this bothers you, then you should have stopped reading quite a while ago.

    The mixed powder lasts for ages, as does the rice flour, as long as they are kept dry. You could add the rice flour in with the vegetable powder, but I don't do that because getting the ratio right is probably more trouble than just doing a scoop of each at the point of cooking.

    If you're a vegetarian, you can add a scoop of bean flour, instead of adding meat/fish. You'll need a bit more water though, in that case. I've never tried it with tofu, but I expect that works too.

    You could just buy Soylent or Huel instead of doing this, but this is probably cheaper, is closer to a normal diet, and has the added bonus of letting you vary the ingredients. One time I used swordfish steaks instead of salmon fillets. Worked out great. Tuna is good too. Sometimes I crack a couple of eggs into the mix instead of using meat or fish. The possibilities are... well, they're not endless, I have basically just enumerated them all. But that's still a fair number of possibilities.

    For added flavour, have the chorus to Limp Bizkit's "Rollin'" playing in the background while you roll the vegetable powder container around on your floor. This doesn't add flavour to the food, but it adds flavour to your rockin' lifestyle.
     
    Jojobobo and Dark Elf like this.
  12. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    3,029
    Likes Received:
    122
    Joined:
    May 29, 2011
    With regards to the Nourishing Slurry of Haste, all I could think of was this:

     
  13. Vorak

    Vorak Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    5,828
    Likes Received:
    21
    Joined:
    Sep 15, 2003
  14. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,796
    Media:
    34
    Likes Received:
    164
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2002
    It's definitely delicious, but the chocolate chip cookies from ToEE are even better (then again, I admit to never having found Cattanese bananas):

    upload_2019-9-4_17-26-48.png


    Boyarsky called Troika's failure to include a recipe in VtM:B a horrible oversight on their part.
     
  15. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,403
    Media:
    1
    Likes Received:
    271
    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2011
    I actually made that banana bread recipe a couple of times, although I didn't bother with the three bowls and thirds nonsense, I mixed everything together in one bowl. I mean, really, sometimes I think chefs just like making extra washing up for themselves. It turned out fine.
     
    Dark Elf likes this.
  16. Vorak

    Vorak Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    5,828
    Likes Received:
    21
    Joined:
    Sep 15, 2003
    Made the bread this morning.

    May have eaten all of the bread already
     
    Dark Elf likes this.
  17. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,796
    Media:
    34
    Likes Received:
    164
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2002
    upload_2019-9-21_8-44-57.png

    i'll come by some other time, then.
     

    Attached Files:

  18. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,403
    Media:
    1
    Likes Received:
    271
    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2011
  19. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,796
    Media:
    34
    Likes Received:
    164
    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2002
    When Aragorn gives you apples make three bowl bread?
     
  20. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    2,403
    Media:
    1
    Likes Received:
    271
    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2011
    Smuel's Quadruple Chocolate Potion Of Strength (+1 LIFT, +1 BRO)

    This recipe doesn't require any specific measurements, and is hard to get wrong.

    Ingredients

    Dark chocolate
    Whey protein powder
    Cocoa powder
    Powdered oats
    Sugar
    Milk

    Method

    Put about 25g of dark chocolate into a large mug. I use four squares, or one row, of a Cadbury's Bourneville bar, which is 40% cocoa solids. Add a splash of milk, and microwave for around 20 seconds. This should be enough to start melting the chocolate and heat up the milk, so that you can melt the rest of the chocolate by mixing it into the milk with a spoon.

    Add a teaspoon of cocoa powder, a teaspoon of sugar, and a scoop of whey protein powder. If you use double chocolate flavoured whey protein, then the result is a quadruple chocolate mix (double chocolate whey + melted dark chocolate + cocoa powder), and you know you want to make something that is quadruple chocolate. Stir to a smoothish paste.

    Add a scoop of powdered oats and stir. At this stage, you may also need to add a bit more milk, otherwise the mixture will be too dry to stir. If you add too much milk then it's not a disaster, but it will be more difficult to mix everything together because you get lumps.

    Fill the rest of the mug with milk, and stir some more until it's all reasonably well mixed. You can then microwave it for a minute or so, or not, depending on whether you prefer your strength potion served warm or cold.

    Drink.

    Notes

    This is best consumed within 24 hours of a weightlifting session. If you drink it without having done a weightlifting session, then it loses its magical strength properties and becomes a potion of girth (+1 rotundity) instead.

    As written above, the potion has about 500 calories, equivalent to a light meal. If you don't like cooking, or food in general, it makes a handy meal substitute. If you're using it as a meal substitute for weight loss purposes, you can optionally skip the sugar and maybe only use half the oats. You might also want to add a pinch of salt, since meals should contain salt.

    Whole fat milk is best, especially if you're using it as a meal substitute, because fat stops you feeling hungry for longer, but other types of milk probably work fine. You could theoretically make this with soy protein powder, vegan chocolate, and almond milk, or some other non-dairy ingredients, if that's your thing. I have never tried that though, because that's not my thing.

    The taste may be more disappointing than you were led to believe from the "quadruple chocolate" part of the name, and you will need to keep stirring it if you drink it slowly, otherwise the oat powder settles at the bottom of the mug. However, this is an effective way of getting an additional 500 calories into your system, if that's your thing.

    Make it your thing, go forth, and lift, my fellow bros. Lift like your mental wellbeing, and your sex lives, depended on it. With this potion of strength I bless thee.
     
Our Host!