[Life] Delicious! Savory! Tasty! The Cooking Club! V.1!

Dragon said:

Have you guys from America taken any Thanksgiving food pictures?

Or just in general, I'd love to hear what you guys have made for Thanksgiving. c:

Click to expand...

No pictures but I can tell you what I made! I made lobster bisque and substituted AP for Cup4Cup flour which is an incredible gluten free option (my girlfriend has Hashimotos and can't have gluten). We had grilled cheese with the bisque, roasted corn with Old Bay and cotija, I made myself fruitcake and ice cream for her. 😄

Figure said:

That sounds great! Apples and spice just belong together. Going shopping today for Thanksgiving. My girlfriend is on a really restricted diet so I am going to be making a gluten free lobster bisque and gluten free grilled cheese. We are spending Thanksgiving alone this year because of CoVid so I am just making her favorite foods and I don't like traditional Thanksgiving anyway. I am also using the spiced wine recipe from The Complete Nose To Tail, and I have a lot of King Arthur Flour so I am going to make myself a fruitcake.

Edit: The wine recipe is in The Complete Bocuse a spiced ice cream recipe is in The Complete Nose To Tail.

Click to expand...

You made such an elegant Thanksgiving with bisque and wine. I am coming to your house next year! Putting old bay on your roasted corn on the cob was ingenious. Why have I never thought of that? Probably gives it such a good flavoring. Your not a cook irl are you? That's also so sweet how you were attentive and made sure all the dishes fit her gluten-free diet.

Who needs traditional anyway? *Raises glass in a toast* Here's to trying new things!

Thanksgiving was nice on my end. It was intimate because of the pandemic. Often the holidays are a large gathering in my family where we eat in a potluck style, and every soul brings dishes they make until the kitchen is full of dozens and dozens of entrees. This time my family split into small groups with 4-6 per house eating together, rather than everyone traveling far and wide to converge on one site in a gathering of 50+ people. It was me, parents, my aunt and uncle, and that was all that we needed. It wass a very lovely moment actually. I kinda missed seeing my cousin, because we haven't hooked up in awhile and she makes an amazing Swedish style meatball that's vegan during the holidays. But I know that she was with her parents, and her grandma, having a nice time.

My aunt brought over turkey, macaroni & cheese, collard greens and dinner rolls--we're southern. I added to the table my mashed potatoes that I got a lot of compliments on, and made a tasty vegetable soup and served some sweet potato pie for dessert and poured cups of hot cider. I was happy that my mom is able to eat pie now.

What I had the most fun with was sending everyone home with a candy apple though. The apples I made were dipped in salted caramel-flavored walnut butter from Wellington farms with a shell of Geven semi-sweet dark chocolate that I rolled in pecan nuts and chocolate chips that were also Geven. The chocolate is made with sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, sunflower lecithin and pure vanilla. I used coconut oil when melting the chocolate down to thin it out.

Most of the gourmet candy apples I find use tart green apples like a Granny Smith. I just used the apples I had on hand at home which were were sweet, red-gold toned apples bought fresh from the farmer's market. I think they were gala apples, but they were really good in any case. To me the softer flavor of this apple made the whole snack taste so much better when mixed with the chocolate than the sour apple when you reach the center. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway that was just my twist on the snack. There are all sorts of candy apples and in the world, apples dipped in corn syrup and sugar or peanuts, caramel apples, cinnamon red hots, white chocolate apples covered in marshmallows, oreos m&ms. You can never go wrong with a candy apple.

Here is one of mine.



Here are a few left over that I saved for a rainy, wrapped up and cute.



I loved hearing your Thanksgiving stories Figure!

Thank you! I'm glad that your Thanksgiving went well and that your mother is able to have some more solid food. I have actually worked in the food service industry since I was 16. I have had probably close to a dozen jobs in the industry as it is pretty standard to learn what you can from a place and move on. I went on to Amazon and bought a couple of years old Le Cordon Blue textbook for 10$ and would study on my breaks since I figured I could go to culinary school or learn while I made money. I started out washing dishes but I have done almost everything in restaurants. Worked my way up to a line cook in my first place of work when I was 17 and from there I just kept cooking at various places, I do catering as well, weddings mostly. My girlfriends father is a fantastic chef with his own catering company so I'll drive up north and the two of us will tackle an entire 200 person wedding including setting table with linens and all of the baking (cakes, pasteries, and the like).

I posted in another thread, What you like about yourself, or something like that, that I am very competitive and it has served my well in finding opportunities because no matter where I start, by the time I leave a job I am going to be the best in my position. I went through a string of jobs where I didn't even have to interview I would just get hired off of word of mouth and I ended up at this place called Fleur De Sel in the Highlands in Post Falls, Idaho. They are on Instagram and I recommend checking out some of their food if you can. The Chef/Owner is from France and we did classic French bistro. It was pretty much what you see in movies, if you mess up you get screamed and, I have had pans thrown at me and been pushed from making mistakes and it is such a great adrenaline rush, and you never make those mistakes agian.

I ended up being a Sous Chef at this little gastro pub where we did elevated pub food and the Chef there was actually the old Sous Chef at Fleur De Sel and now he's my bestfriend so that's cool (I had also worked with his wife at one of my first jobs 😆). My last couple of jobs after my girlfriend and I moved to Moscow so she can attend the University have been great as well. I ran the kitchen at the first place, did shopping lists and shopping in the morning and worked through the night, and I ended up getting hired by the old Chef of that place to a brand new restaraunt. This Chef had spent like 15 years working his way through the South basically nomad style living out of his truck just learning everything he could and he ended up having the number one hot chicken spot in Texas, which is super impressive! Sadly though, we had to shut down for good in March due to CoVid and I have yet to get another job.

I have A LOT more stories if they ever come up but I figured I would kind of give you a summary of my experiences since you seemed interseted! My end goal is to open up a food truck once my girlfriend graduates and we move to Oregon! I have part of a menu written already.

Edit: The picture of the pasty I posted was one I made at a restaurant last year too!

Anyone got any tips for really dry, hard brownies? Either tips to salvage the brownies to make them fit to serve , or if there can be no redemption then what about ways to recycle what remains of the brownies into a different dessert so that they don't totally go to waste?

I tried Gemma Stafford's 3 ingredient nutella brownie recipe, and it really turned out awful for me. I'm trying to see what went wrong. This is the cook who I followed.

https://www.biggerbolderbaking.com/3-ingredient-nutella-recipes/

The recipe called for a cup of nutella. I put in a cup of Nutiva, which is an alternative to Nutella for lactose intolerant and vegans. It's the same consistency as nutella, and has all the key ingredients of sugar, hazelnut, cocoa, vanilla, palm oil, just instead of dairy milk I believe it uses coconut milk.

The next ingredient was the chef's choice of either 2 eggs or 1/2 cup of mashed banana or 1/4 cup of apple sauce/ silken tofu or buttermilk. I chose the apple sauce of the options she gave, and it seemed to blend nicely.

Last ingredient called for was 10 tablespoons of flour. This gave me a little pause because it looked like too much flour in proportion to the rest of ingredients when it hit the bowl, and sometimes over packing the recipe with flour will result in dryness. However as I stirred it together a bit more it looked like it was ultimately coming together nicely, and I thought it would be okay.

I was a little surprised that there was no call for butter or cooking oil in this recipe, but that was also the appeal of why I wanted to try it because it had so few ingredients, and I didn't want to alter a recipe significantly that I had never tried and throw everything out of balance--though I seemed to have done that somehow anyway accidentally. Since chocolate spreads are oil-based I figured the oil the palm oil from the Nutiva/Nutella was going to act as the baking agent in this case, so I didn't add anything like coconut oil and just tried to follow the recipe.

She mentioned if desired you could add other things like nuts or candy to the brownies, and I put in a few chocolate chips and walnuts, and thought we were good to go.

I cooked it for the suggested time of 20-25 minutes in the oven on baking parchment in a pan, but it went downhill from there. When I tasted a brownie it was oddly not sweet at all. It was close to bitter. I feel like this recipe needed sugar, but I didn't add any because it wasn't mentioned, besides Nutella/nutiva has some sugar in it, as did the chocolate chips I added. This however was a very unsweet brownie, and it was also really dry oddly. This is curious because this was supposed to be a recipe for a gooey-centered brownie.

I have heard that sometimes with brownies, especially gooey ones they can turn out hard and dry if the pan is too big or and the dough doesn't fill it properly. When I poured the batter into the cooking pan I did think it looked a little flat. The recipe said it would make 12 brownies, but even with the amount of flour recommended it looked as though it was spread thin. However, I proceeded, convincing myself that it would rise as it baked.

Anyway what I ended up with was really dry, unsweetened, tough brownies that just aren't good at all. I'm trying to retrace my steps and find the culprit so I don't make the same mistake again. I'm inclined to think I needed more sugar and oil. I have also considered that I just overcooked them. I used the baking time recommend, but every oven is different, so maybe I should have shortened the time span. Maybe it was the nutiva? I just don't know.

Oddly the brownies don't look that bad in the picture, but the taste isn't there this time, and I want to do better.

What do you guys think the problem was? Also any hacks to save this mess? Or if not, what about ways to cut my losses and make lemonade out of the lemons I have been handed by trying a new recipe that incorporates bits of the unused brownie?

VisionofMilotic said:

Anyone got any tips for really dry, hard brownies? Either tips to salvage the brownies to make them fit to serve , or if there can be no redemption then what about ways to recycle what remains of the brownies into a different dessert so that they don't totally go to waste?

Click to expand...

Perhaps you can turn it into a chocolate bread pudding? My mum would always turn old bread and cakes into pudding so there was never any waste, and it's nice with cream and yoghurt, or for vegans, fruit or vegan ice cream is perfect! With brownies I find being just slightly overcooked makes them dry, especially if it's spread thinly in the pan. With my last attempt I put the brownies in an airtight container with a slice or two of fresh bread for a day and that actually made them softer!

Or you could process them into crumbs to top other desserts, or as a base for something.

I'm surprised there isn't more oil in that recipe, as oil is my magic ingredient for keeping everything moist, especially chocolate! I find butter ends up making chocolate cakes dry compared to oil.

Hyzenthlay said:

Perhaps you can turn it into a chocolate bread pudding? My mum would always turn old bread and cakes into pudding so there was never any waste, and it's nice with cream and yoghurt, or for vegans, fruit or vegan ice cream is perfect! With brownies I find being just slightly overcooked makes them dry, especially if it's spread thinly in the pan. With my last attempt I put the brownies in an airtight container with a slice or two of fresh bread for a day and that actually made them softer!

Or you could process them into crumbs to top other desserts, or as a base for something.

I'm surprised there isn't more oil in that recipe, as oil is my magic ingredient for keeping everything moist, especially chocolate! I find butter ends up making chocolate cakes dry compared to oil.

Click to expand...

I like this, maybe like equal part bread and brownie with some currants.

Thanks for the food hax. Before reading this cool suggestion from the Hyzenthlay family kitchen I had already eaten up the brownies after finding a way to make them edible as brownies, but if ever slip up again I will try to remember this chocolate bread pudding. My godfather loves bread pudding, and I am gaining a new appreciation for it after trying this delicious French toast style bread pudding in a cafe that was made with sweet potatoes and served with warm fruit preserves. It was surprisingly scrumptious.

Because I knew in my heart those brownies needed oil and more sweetness I did something a little unconventional. I melted down coconut oil, and a butter substitute (miyoko's cultured vegan butter, made from cashew milk) and glazed my brownies with it and mixture of white and brown sugar, then popped the brownies in the microwave for a couple of seconds to soften it up and help absorb the oil. This made them taste instantly like 65% better. The flavor was sufficient. As with the oven method, using a bit of heat is a great way to soften brownies. I also found a method online for wrapping each brownie piece into a layer of damp paper towel to add moisture, and microwaving it for a few more seconds. This totally transformed the brownies. They were fine. My mom actually wanted some with morning coffee. So the world is saved.

I have the perfect dairy-free ice cream from SO Delicious to slather on a brownie next time as an experiment, and serve it more like an English Sticky Toffee.

Incidentally, I had an interesting dream last night. I started to share it in the Dream Weavers club, but since it was all about food and cooking I thought maybe I would share it here?

Spoiler includes an amusing dream and a cooking video that I believe inspired the dream. If nothing else you might want to check it out for the food video.

This club looks really cool! I love cooking!

Name: Avery
Specialty: Fried noodles, spaghetti dishes, burgers, sandwiches, enchiladas, chili con carne, curries, pizza, chicken and salads

Name: Spoots
Specialty (what is your favorite dish to make): I have a ton of dishes I love to make, however as of right now I've been making veggie rice/chow mein more frequently...it's Good!
Edit: Also chili, and brownies, I make really good chili and brownies as well!

I cook and bake on a semi-regular basis, and most of my foods mentioned will most likely be gluten-free. Not because I'm celiac, but my sister is, so all the food typically has to be celiac as well!