My Cooking Posts

Lokshen kugel -
(לאָקשן קוגל :in Yiddish)

Lokshen kugel is a baked casserole made from lokshen (egg noodles), schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), onions, eggs, and salt. It is an Ashkenazi dish often made for Sabbath dinners, served hot on Friday evening, or cold on Saturday.

I followed the recipe linked below. The only problem I had was that the noodles on top came out crunchy, and not in a good way. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to cover the top of the dish with foil through most of the bake, and then leave it uncovered for only the last few minutes.

Aside from the overdone noodles on the top, the rest of it was delicious, and I would definitely try it again.

Recipe: https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/claudia-roden-lokshen-kugel/

Lobster Thermidor!🦞

For a celebratory dinner, I made Gordon Ramsay's recipe for lobster Thermidor.

This recipe (linked below) calls for whole lobster, but using lobster tails of equivalent weight works just fine. The lobster tails I got were frozen and uncooked, so I thawed them beforehand and put them into a large stock pot with boiling water for 5-6 minutes to cook them thoroughly before cutting them into halves.

I tripled the recipe, so the reduction of the cream sauce took longer than would be expected for the recipe as given. Also, though the recipe called for fish stock, I substituted seafood stock instead, and it worked just fine.

https://ourtableforseven.com/gordon-ramsay-lobster-thermidor-recipe/

Cincinnati chili!

I followed the recipe linked below. I had never had this before, and I didn't really know what to expect, given how people seem to either love or hate this dish. It is definitely not what most Texans think of as chili, especially since it has flavors that would not usually be found in chili, like cloves and allspice and cinnamon. And chocolate. And brown sugar.

Most often it is served as a meat sauce over spaghetti, though some people put it on hot dogs (a "coney"), and that's what I did, making a "five-way", topped with cheese, chopped onions, and kidney beans.

https://www.culinaryhill.com/cincinnati-chili/ -recipe-ingredients

Хреновуха!

(horseradish-infused vodka)

Infusing vodka with grated or peeled horseradish and optionally, with other herbs and spices, is a practice that has been popular in Eastern Europe - especially Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine - for over a hundred years. Many consider it to be medicinal.

I modified a recipe found at https://petersfoodadventures.com/horseradish-vodka/, adding almost three ounces of horseradish to a fifth of vodka, and adding between one and two tablespoons of yellow mustard seeds. After steeping for five or six days, I filtered all of the horseradish and mustard seeds out, squeezing all of the vodka out of the horseradish peelings. Afterwards, I added three tablespoons of honey to the bottle, shook until it was mixed well, and then chilled to 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

It works well in a Bloody Mary, or straight if chilled!

Boston baked beans!

I had made Boston baked beans in a pressure cooker before and was pleased with the results, but I decided to use a traditional bean pot this time to see if there was a difference. I think that the bean pot version is decidedly better, and worth doing if you’ve got the time.

The recipe link is below.

https://www.potshopofboston.com/pages/boston-baked-beans?fbclid=IwAR23GH2qBhWNDR-QY3WCw7orzsrPRMMDsy1nXkZKXeEnrjU2Pu9nCtlXNOU_aem_AV-XvzmW1EWwp4mLuRLSrNw5p99JaBo7fRU7eM3BhUTT8df_ECnl24xhguFauNyIxv8

Pickled herring salad!

Unlike "shuba" ("herring under a fur coat"), which has potatoes and beets, this one is much more keto-friendly, with only a tablespoon of sugar in the entire dish. You could probably swap out the sugar for an erythritol and monk fruit powder without noticeably changing the taste. Doing that would leave onions and apples as the only remaining sources of carbohydrates in the salad.

https://dinneratsheilas.com/post/188508430392/pickled-herring-salad

Okra and tomatoes!

I made this according to the recipe in the "I Heart Soul Food" cookbook. I highly recommend this cookbook if you like Southern food. I could not find a copy of the recipe online, so the link below is a very similar recipe.

The main differences:

1. Instead of 2 cloves of garlic, use 3.
2. If you're using bags of frozen okra, instead of one can of tomatoes for 2 cups of okra, use 3 cans of tomatoes for 2 bags of okra - it will generally be more than a pound.
3. Add at least 1.5 teaspoons of kosher salt, a tablespoon of salted butter, a tablespoon of brown sugar, and 2 sprigs of fresh thyme before simmering.
4. After simmering for 20 minutes, add a tablespoon of cornstarch to a half-cup of vegeatable broth, whisk until dissolved, and add to the pot. Simmer another 5 minutes.

I cheated and used frozen sliced okra rather than fresh. If you do this, add a few minutes to the cook time. I had no fresh thyme, so I used about a half-teaspoon of dried thyme.

For my taste, I thought more salt was needed. Instead of regular salt, I sprinkled on some Captain Coby's Cajun Seasoning. I found that to be ideal for this dish - it added salt, but also more spice, including a little heat from cayenne pepper.

It's recommended that this be served over rice or mashed potatoes, but if you're avoiding carbs, it's great all by itself!

Similar recipe: https://addapinch.com/okra-and-tomatoes-recipe/

H/T:
I Heart Recipes
Captaincobycajuncooking

Smothered chicken!

The original recipe called for one pound of chicken, but as the package of chicken thighs I bought weighed almost three pounds, I decided to triple the recipe when I made this a couple of days ago.

Several lessons learned from this:
1. Browning for only 7 minutes (as suggested in the paperback cookbook) will likely not get the level of brownness shown on the recipe web page. This will likely require eyeballing it rather than timing it, as a specific temperature is not mentioned either.

2. I did not actually need to triple the amount of flour mixture - there was enough left over that I could have doubled it at most, maybe even made only 1.5 times the amount in the recipe.

3. Though I initially intended to use powdered whole milk for the gravy, I decided to switch instead to evaporated milk instead and used a 12 ounce can of PET milk rather than several cups of reconstituted whole milk. I liked this result and would do that again.

4. This amount needs to be stirred frequently rather than just letting it sit for the last 30-35 minutes. Whether tripling the amount made a difference or not I do not know, but a burned layer of gravy formed at the bottom of the pan that would likely not form if the mixture were stirred more during cooking.

Overall, the dish turned out well, and especially for a quick dish, it is certainly worth making again.

https://iheartrecipes.com/southern-smothered-chicken-recipe/

Шуба!

"Shuba" (meaning "fur coat") is the nickname for the dish: its actual name in Russian is usually written as "сельдь под шубой". In Ukrainian, it is "oселедець під шубою". Both mean "herring under a fur coat". In English, it is often listed on the menu as "dressed herring".

This is a multilayered salad that consists of potatoes, onions, pickled herring, carrots, eggs, beets, and lots of mayonnaise. It is often served as an hors d'oeuvre or snack, or as a part of a New Years' Day meal.

I followed the recipe linked below. The recipe leaves out eggs, though does mention that eggs can be used - I used three hard-boiled eggs and put them above the carrot layer. This didn't turn out as pretty as I've seen it before, but it turned out fine for a first attempt.

Herring in oil is the ideal pickled herring to use. Since they didn't have that at Kroger, I bought herring in sour cream and washed the sour cream off in a colander. Often, herring is sold in a wine sauce. This type might have a different flavor, as the wine would likely impart its own flavor to the herring, whereas sour cream is more neutral. Instead of herring, some people use smoked salmon for a different flavor.

For mayonnaise, I used Hellman's. Many salads like this are easier to make if you make Russian-style mayonnaise yourself, or buy it at a market, as it's thinner and easier to spread than American mayonnaise. As for flavor, Hellman's or Duke's should work fine.

https://momsdish.com/recipe/132/shuba-fur-coat-salad

Crawfish bisque! 🦞

I used the recipe linked below, but added about a half-cup of Amontillado, a pinch of saffron, and about a teaspoon of paprika.



https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/213576/crawfish-bisque/

Бородинский хлеб!

(Borodinsky bread!)

This black rye bread is very popular in Russia, and can also be found at many Eastern European markets throughout the United States. The recipe I used is only one form - most versions of Borodinsky bread are rye sourdoughs, requiring a starter. Also, those recipes tend to be much more complicated than this one.

I doubled the recipe, but the baking time remained the same - I checked the interior temperature of the bread and it was over 190F, so it was done earlier than I expected. You can expect that the outside of the loaf will be crispy - that's a feature rather than a bug - however, my loaf was denser than I would have expected. It's possible that the yeast was not fully activated.

This recipe calls for sweetening with a small amount of honey. As most recipes call for molasses, I used a tablespoon of honey and a tablespoon of molasses.

https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/329854-cook-legendary-borodinsky-bread