Y'all might bang on me for this but...

[Dilligaf]

here goes anyway... What about a thread, maybe even a sticky, with recipe's from members. I know I love to cook... white bean chicken chili tonight (with a leftover's turkey from the other night twist), and I thought everyone's getting a little older and wiser here and might want to share what they're scarfing on a particular night... just a thought... whatta ya think? Doesn't even all have to be food... Alcohol recipe's, which spurred my post of this, could be included as well.

[MadGypsy]

I tried something like this for a minute. It didn't last. Personally, I like the idea. I am constantly cooking and baking. I also know ways to get around missing ingredients to where you wouldn't even be able to tell.

One time, I made a roux with the powder at the bottom of a non sugary cereal bag cause I was out of flour. My gumbo was awesome and nobody had a clue.

Actually, I never have flour. You can stick damn near anything in a spice grinder and make flour... seeds, nuts, grains, rice... you can even turn REAL bread back into flour if you are totally desperate and too lazy to go to the store. I made flour once out of some really dry raisins.

I recently and finally perfected a chocolate chip cookie recipe that is actually good for you. 29g of protein per cookie plus Omega3s and a bunch of other stuff. Instead of flour I use ground pumpkin and flax seeds. The perfection part came in getting the ratios just right so that the cookie is chewy. There is no butter at all in my recipe so making them chewy was a challenge. You could probably exist on nothing but my cookies for a very long time... and probably not get fat. They taste identical to high-end chocolate chunk cookies and almost the same texture.

However, there is one drawback to never using regular old flour for baking. It is really expensive to use pumpkin/flax/others as a flour source. A pound of regular flour is like 2$ or summin. A pound of pumpkin seeds is 8$ and you have to grind it yourself which costs something. Also ex: chocolate chip cookies call for 2.25 cups of flour. Using pumpkin/flax/others you will actually have to use almost 3 whole cups. It doesn't absorb the same as regular flour.

[Focalor]

The complexity or simplicity of the recipe kinda depends on what kind of alcohol you're looking to produce. Any type of "wine" is gonna be a lot simpler to produce than spirits because spirits must be distilled. And making spirits is really the same process as making any kind of wine with the added step of distillation.

With any type of wine, you'll want to start with a base of either a fresh squeezed juice from whatever fruit you pick, or some NOT FROM CONCENTRATE store bought juice. Juices from concentrate have preservatives which can hinder fermentation and do not have enough natural fruit starch in them alone to facilitate the fermentation process.

I make a cran-grape wine that uses from concentrate cran-grape juice, but the base is red grapes (making white grape juice) that I press fresh by hand. I'll take a clean 1 gallon milk jug, add about a pint of fresh pressed grape juice at room temp, about 1 1/2 pints of cran-grape juice at room temp, 3 to 4 cups of sugar, fill the jug to between 3/4 to 7/8 full with warm (not scalding hot) water (to dissolve the sugar thoroughly). Screw on the cap, shake the living piss out of it to mix it up until the sugar is completely dissolved. Next, dump in a couple tablespoons of brewers yeast (Fleischmann's ActiveDry yeast will work too if you have to), screw the cap back on, shake the jug 3 or 4 times, unscrew the cap, cover the mouth of the jug with a balloon that you have poked several holes in with a sewing needle. When fermentation begins, the yeast will consume the starches and sugars and convert them into ethyl alcohol which will give off carbon dioxide. The balloon airlock allows this carbon dioxide to escape while not allowing outside air to get in and set up mold and bacteria. HOWEVER... and I have found this to be very important... you must remove the balloon airlock every day or two, and squeeze the sides of the jug until the liquid level pushes all the air out of the mouth of the jug. Unsqueeze it, let the jug go back to it's natural form, and stretch the balloon back over the mouth again. It's important to evacuate the carbon dioxide from the batch every day or two otherwise the gas will remain inside the fermenting jug and "skunk" the batch when it's done leaving a horrible smell and taste. After about 4 weeks, the batch will significantly slow with it's fizzing and fermenting. If it's still fizzing, wait until it stops, otherwise when you go to bottle it, it could keep giving off gas and explode the bottle. When it stops, pour it through a really fine filter like a cheese cloth. Coffee filters won't work and will get clogged. Bottle it, store it someplace for 6 months to a year, then open and enjoy.

With the cran grape juice in it, it makes the end result slightly sweet and tart, and adding as much sugar as I do brings the alcohol content up to probably somewhere between 15% and 21% making this more of a desert style wine.

I also make a pretty decent bottle of 90-proof whiskey from sweet corn that I grow myself and grind into meal. It's a little more expensive to make though. First of all, you need a still to distill it, which can be pricey even if you make one yourself. When I started out, I used a half-assed homemade kitchen setup with a pressure cooker, some copper refrigerant tubing and a styrofoam minnow bait bucket, haha. These days, I use a REAL still. The most expensive part is really the oak casks you have to buy to store and age the whiskey. The oak cask you store it in is probably more important than the quality of the corn meal in the mash. Aging it in oak gives it that dark golden color. Without it, you're just drinking clear hillbilly shine.

[MadGypsy]

I knew a guy that brewed beer in his bathtub and took showers in the yard with a hose for the days or whatever that it takes to complete the process.

[Adam]

Ok, passing the kb over to my better-half, I love this recipe so I want to share:

Chicken Curry (it's actually a Chana Marsala with chicken and some other things)

500 g chicken, cut into small cubes (thigh fillets are tastier than breast, also cheaper, usually)
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 cm piece of ginger, grated (optional)
2 tsp cumin powder
2 tsp ground coriander (I think the USicans among you call it cilantro?)
1 tsp garam marsala
chilli flakes (or fresh chilli) to taste
salt to taste (you can use vegetable stock, instead)
2 small sweet potatoes, diced
1/4 cauliflower, cut into florets
2 400g cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
a couple of small bunches English spinach leaves (or any other leafy green that takes your fancy), rinsed

Saute onion and garlic until soft, add chilli, salt, and all spices except for garam marsala. Stir until the spices become fragrant, then add chicken. You can brown this a bit if you like, it adds a bit more flavour. After a few minutes, add sweet potato, cauliflower, chickpeas and about 2 cups of water... just enough so that it barely covers your ingredients.

Allow to simmer, covered, until the chicken is cooked and the sweet potato is starting to mushify, about 20 minutes. The sweet potato acts as a thickener, to give the curry a stewy consistency. I'm totally making words up here.

Add garam marsala and spinach and stir in. Pop the lid back on for a minute or two until the spinach has wilted. Taste for seasoning, add more chilli or salt if needed. Ta da! Serve with paratha or naan, or rice if you really have to. Even normal bread tastes pretty good, too.

So this is the legit version. But since an Indian grocery shop moved to our town I often cheat and use a curry mix. My favourite is MDH Chana Dal Masala, and I used about 1/3 packet for this amount of ingredients. If you do use a curry mix like this, omit all the spices but you might still need some stock or salt, depending on your own tastes. I usually put a stock cube in for ours.

Naan recipe to follow...

Cheers,
Bec.

[Adam]

Right. Naan. Damn, this is good. (This is still Bec, by the way. I've sent Adam off to make me a cup of tea)

450 g plain flour
150 g plain yoghurt
1/2 tsp bicarb (baking) soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tblsp oil (don't use olive oil unless you really have to, it's a bit heavy. Some other kind of vege oil would be better)
4 tbsp milk
1 egg, lightly beaten

Sift flour into a medium bowl and add yoghurt. Stir gently and then add all other ingredients. Stir until combined and then turn onto a clean surface to knead lightly to a soft dough. Put the ball of dough back into the bowl and cover. Leave to sit for 15 minutes.

Separate the dough into 10-12 balls. Roll each out to about 1/2 cm thickness. In a heavy-bottomed frying pan, melt a little butter and fry the naan on both sides until golden. You'll need to add more butter every time. Apparently so it doesn't stick, but let's face it, things just taste great, fried in butter, right?

Serve with curry. Or you can just eat it on its own. If you like it garlicky, add a couple of crushed cloves of garlic into the dough, or you can mix up a garlic butter and spread it over the hot naan when it comes straight out of the pan.

If you're in a hurry and don't have time to cook them all (eg you have a curry and an impatient Adam waiting), you can keep the rest of the dough in the fridge for a day. But I like to cook them all up at once, and then you can freeze your extras and just defrost them in the microwave as needed.

[Adam]

Gingernuts (this is the last one, I promise. For now.)

90 g butter
90 g brown sugar
3 tbs golden syrup*
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1 tbsp ground ginger (or more, if you like ginger a lot)
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp bicarb (baking) soda
1 tbsp hot water

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.

Heat together butter, sugar and syrup in a small saucepan or in the microwave until melted. While you're waiting, sift together flour and spices into a medium sized mixing bowl, and mix well.

When the butter mixture is completely melted and simmering just in the slightest, remove from heat. (Don't panic if it boils, just make sure you don't leave it too long, or you'll end up with sticky burnt toffee mess.)

In a cup, mix together the bicarb soda and the water, and then tip straight into the butter mixture. It will foam up. Stir well, and then pour into the dry ingredients and mix. Allow to sit for a few minutes (you've just put a hot fatty-sugary liquid in there, you don't want to burn your hands) and then roll into about 30 small balls.

Place onto baking sheets and press the balls down flat with your fingers or the back of a fork. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, depending on how efficient your oven is. The biscuits/cookies will be a lovely warm nutty brown when they're done. Allow them to cool on the tray for a few minutes to harden up and then serve with a piping hot cup of Earl Grey tea. YUM.

*I understand this is not that common outside of Aus, so you can use treacle--basically the same thing--or perhaps maple syrup, I guess. Honey would work as well. Anything other than a cane sugar-based syrup is going to change the taste, unfortunately, although the consistency will be fine.

[H1CC]

Those all sound wonderful, Bec (Adam's wife?), but I tend to like to try out new recipes one at a time.
So, while these are great, I don't think I've quite found one yet (in this thread, I mean) that I actually want to try.


My older biological sibling/brother once baked an apple pie out of ritz crackers. No lie. It was something did in High School, as part of a demo for his chemistry class or whatever, but basically, it was to show that the same basic hydrocarbons that go into ritz crackers could be procedurally extracted & reformed into something that looks, and tastes, exactly the same as a standard Apple Pie.
Come to think of it I never thought to ask him whether or not it worked, but from the way he and others were talking about it at the time, they were talking about it in a manner that implies that he had done it succesfully.


Anyone have a Pie Recipe?
I want to make a pie-- preferably something smaller, considering I don't really have anyone else to bake for...

[Mugwump]

Eat your pie!

WHAT?!? Geeks eat things other than junk food? OK then, H1CC wanted a pie, let's give him (her?) a pie...

In France, this delicious pie is called "tarte amandine aux poires", which translates to pear almond tart. French version is more poetic.

1 short pastry (either homemade or bought)
1 can of pears in syrup*
100g butter
100g sugar
2 eggs
100g powdered almonds
25g flour
1 pinch salt
1 tea spoon almond extract
*I'm not sure about the standards in other countries. Here in France, I use cans called 4/4 containing about 800g of product.

Leave the butter at room temperature to soften it (or microwave it using the defrost setting if you're in a hurry). In a jar, mix it with the sugar until you get a homogeneous paste. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the almonds and the sieved flour. Finish with the salt and almond extract. Do I need to make it clear that you have to stir after adding each new ingredient?

Line a pie dish with the pastry, prick it all over with a fork, evenly place 6-8 half-pears in a flower shape (I add one, cut in a round shape, to make the central "pistil") and pour the almond preparation in between the pears. Don't worry if it's not evenly poured, it will even out when cooking.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees (Celsius) for 30 minutes. Let it cool down before eating.

Note: I haven't made this recipe yet but it seems very similar to the one I used to make, which I can't seem to find anymore. Some adjustments might be necessary.

@H1CC If you don't wish to make a big pie (though I pretty much guarantee that you'll devour the whole thing in no time), you can make individual portions with only one half-pear in the middle, using appropriate dishes.

Bon app�tit!

[Sgt-PieFace]

H1CC wanted a pie, let's give him (her?) a pie...

Hey! You can't just go around offering me up like its a satanic ritual! Lol.

For real though, this thread is awesome. I'll see what recipes I can come up wit hand post 'em!

[Mugwump]

Satanic ritual? Nah, more like a gangbang. The Cthulhu cult doesn't believe in Satan and other recent man-made deities.