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The Gastronomicon II: Barbechef Free For All Go!!

22:20 / 23.06.03

I remain poor, and while I have macaroni products in a variety of shapes, they all taste just about the same. I implore you to share your culinary knowledge with me, the owner of two small pans and one large as well as a variety of nicked forks, spoons and knives. I am your humble, mouthwatering servant. And as soon as I figure out something tasty to post that I haven't posted in a previous one of these, I will. For now, teach me?

22:38 / 23.06.03

Pot noodles?

22:39 / 23.06.03

Can you narrow the field a bit? What's in your fridge/larder? Do you prefer recipes that lean toward Italian, French, Thai, or?

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:03 / 23.06.03

Fred: nope. It's a recipe book because the original went tits-up in an earlier board incarnation. Anything goes. Post away.

07:39 / 24.06.03

Hoping you're not veggies:

Roast some Garlic inna de oven for half hour or so, a head per person, peel, pull the skin of a couple of nice herby sausauges and chop 'em up, cook this lot together till it's nice and golden. Add some thyme or rosemary towards end of cooking time, then add some cream. Reduce a bit, chuck in your macaroni. Luvverly.

09:38 / 24.06.03

Cheap noodles:

Fry some garlic and ginger in some butter.
Slap in some fresh (or cheaper frozen) spinach.
Stir a lot so it doesn't burn.
Pour in a little boiling water.
Sprinkle o' chilli flakes.
Slap in the noodles with some sweetcorn and broccolli.
If you live near a market get some crab sticks & prawns and some cashew nuts cheaply, throw a few in. If not pick up some kind've fish sauce.
Put in some:
- dark soy sauce (tiny amount)
- grapefruit juice (tiny tiny amount)
- diced apple/pear (tiny tiny tiny amount)
- some odd Chinese sauce that you picked up in China town and didn't know what it'd taste like
...according to taste.

Tasty, cheap and ready in 10 minutes.

If you want to spend a bit more time, put some fried potato and yam on the side. Fry in butter and that "Cajun Seasoning" stuff that Sharwoods make.

Or go for the 'ole reliable tuna & pasta bake. Can of tuna, load of pasta, spring onions, garlic, cheese, mayonaisse, parsely. Slap in the oven and you're fed for the week.

No star here laces

09:43 / 24.06.03

Leftover rice.

Take whatever veg you have and chop into small pieces. Fry. Add garlic and ginger and spring onion if you have, random spices if you don't. Add cold, cooked rice. Fry. Add egg. Fry quickly. Cover in chilli sauce. Eat while hot (cos it tastes like shit when it's cold).

Was my student staple...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

10:01 / 24.06.03

You need:

Rice
Raisins (which you can always eat by themselves as a snack)
Garlic
Bacon
Meat or Veg Stock - these days you can buy it in tubs (you can miss this out, but it makes a huge difference)
Onions
Soy (optional, yummy)

chop onions, place in pan with oil
ditto garlic and bacon, to taste, and fry
add dry rice and raisins & mix it up
add stock (or stock and water, or just water) to normal quantity of liquid for your rice (a bit more than double, usually)
cook until little or no liquid remains
add soy

Now this is the cool part. What you've just made is a decent rice dish, and you can stuff peppers with it, add whatever else you want and fry it up, whatever. But the other thing is to keep it till you need it, then shove it in the oven for half an hour. It gets nutty and dry, which is lovely. You can eat it by itself whenever you need a snack. The portugese do this for seaside barbeque, and it goes in a metal pot and sits on the fire.

The thing is, it's a reasonably healthy thing which turns boring food into meal.

10:51 / 24.06.03

Put some couscous in a bowl with some cumin powder and a bit of olive oil. Mix so that the couscous grain are moistened by the spicy oil. Pour boiling water over and put a plate over the bowl. Leave for a about 5 minutes. At the same time plump up some sultanas by pouring a bit of boiling water over them. Fluff the couscous with a fork and leave to cool. Drain the sultanas and add them to the couscous together with some chopped fresh coriander leaves and some very finely chopped red and yellow pepper (optional.)

This is probably not a meal in its own right. I like to serve it with Merguez sausages.

12:07 / 24.06.03

Oh I can't cook either but make some pancakes roll a block of icecream in melted mars bars, cover said icecream with pancakes and shove it in your MOUTH!!! (cutlery optional)

17:31 / 24.06.03

If you’ll eat fish, Maz, and your taste buds are courageous, here is my recipe for Puttanesca Sauce which will turn the dullest macaroni into a jaded Neapolitan working girl’s pick-me-up.

You need
a little (olive) oil
1 (little) can of anchovies
(at least) a couple of garlic cloves, crushed (or thinly slices with a razor blade as Paul Sorvino demonstrated in Goodfellas)
2 tablespoons of capers (well drained and rinsed if they’re pickled in vinegar)
1 can crushed tomatoes (or passata if you’re in funds), including juice
handful of pitted olives (I think black is traditional but I don’t care)
some chilli (I would crumble one dried chilli and throw it in, seeds and all. Or you might slice up a fresh one. I do like it hot, so maybe best to use just half till you’re sure. Some people use those little jars of chilli flakes, pah!)
good helping of basil
good speckling of black pepper
and about 250g pasta

The Method
Heat oil in your broadest, thickest bottomed pan, then
add garlic and sauté for a couple of minutes on medium heat, then
add anchovies and attack them aggressively so they have begun to break up, then
add tomatoes, olives, capers, basil and black pepper, stir them all together, then
leave to cook on a medium heat and stir occasionally while you
put the salted water on to boil for the macaroni, then
boil the macaroni mercilessly for 12-15 minutes (longer if wholemeal, it will tell you on the packet), then
drain macaroni well and add to sauce (or vice versa, depending upon relative sizes of pans), then
consume with glee (and pad out with nice bread and /or salad for posh meals)

If you’re on a dairy and wheat free Hunter-Gatherer diet, you can forget the bread and substitute rice flour pasta. Shouldn't need salt with the salty anchovies in it.

This dish lives at the very extreme of the taste spectrum from "bland" macaroni.

Hungry now...

22:21 / 25.06.03

Do they have to be your own recipes, or can they be favorites (properly attributed)?

20:59 / 26.06.03

Anybodys.

21:31 / 26.06.03

Two easy-peasy pasta sauces which take about 3 minutes to make - neat, but not gaudy.

1. Fry pancetta (or bacon if you must, in which case you might add a wee bit of garlic I suppose) in a small amount of oil - the amount you need depends on how fatty the pancetta is, as it will fry in that as well. After a couple of minutes, plonk in some grated nutmeg - not too much thoughm it tastes odd if you put more than a teaspoon or so in. Add a big splosh of cream (double/cooking), and cook for a bit without letting it boil. That's it.

2. Heat a small amount of oil in the bottom of a saucepan - some pretentious recipes use walnut oil, but it doesn't make enough difference to be worth using if you don't have it hanging around, and who does? Fry a chopped clove or two of garlic, but don't burn it. Add a tin of anchovies (drained). Keep the heat low, and keep stirring, and they will dissolve into the oil. If you do not watch it, it will burn, but the process takes about two minutes so it's not a huge imposition... Now add some passata - I usually stick in about half of a carton, then decide that it's not enough and add a bit more. Cook for a while - say five minutes or so - but don't let it boil. Do not consume before hot date.

The Return Of Rothkoid

02:47 / 27.06.03

Do not consume before hot date.
Dang. I need date dinners!

08:27 / 27.06.03

Well, it's all right if both of you eat it...

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:15 / 27.06.03

Alas, dinner's fallen through. But I'll give you the sterling dessert that I've just finished making.

You need:
3 punnets strawberries
12 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
5 tablespoons sugar
500g marscarpone
1 vanilla pod
mint leaves for garnish.

Stalk and slice the strawberries.
Put them in a large bowl, and add sugar and balsamic vinegar.
Mix, and stick it in the fridge. Allow to macerate for a couple of hours - days works, even. Stir occasionally. No less than 2 hrs.
Slice vanilla pod and add vanilla to marscarpone. Whip it in. I add sugar, also.

Dish up strawbs and juice - which will be very strawberry-vs-bitter-in-fight-to-the-death. Add mint leaves to garnish, and serve with the marscarpone.

Spell? Me? Nah.

15:51 / 29.06.03

Peanut Butter Noodles

Okay, this is cheap to make and can feed about four. It does however take alot of peanut butter and it is incredibly fattening...loads fattening!

1 package of Ramen noodles
1/2 lbs of ground meat (beef, chicken, pork...or you could go veg only)
Hot chillies
2 green onions
broccolli or bok choy (or both)
1/2 cup to a cup of peanut butter - smooth or crunchy, your choice

First, cook up your meat and season with chillies - set aside

Take the package of Ramen noodles and wash under hot water. Make sure you do this whenever you cook Ramen noodles because they are held together by wax, and wax is not very friendly to the intestinal tract.

After the noodles are washed you can then cook normally, but use a little less water than is required according to the package. Once the noodles are done, add the meat - drained of any fat of course - and stir into the noodles.

Next, add the peanut butter and stir until it covers all the noodles.

Add broccoli now and cover pot for a few minutes to tenderize the veggies.

Add diced green onion to garnish after broccoli is tender and serve.

**This recipe can can be improvised to suit personal tastes by using different vegetables or different spices. I find it works best if the ingredients are keep along a thai or shezchuan type flavour, however. Be creative though! I personally like to put coriander in mine, if I can get my hands on it in this backwater town.**