Whatcha Cooking today?

[Danny]

Almost pretty enough to roll!!

[Danny]

Green chicken soup base last night made up and probably will have with udon noodles today.

[Sue_CT]

The last of this years garden tomatoes. But I didn enjoy it, lol! They sat on counter until fully ripe. Pulled the plants a while ago.





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[bower]

That is so pretty with the fresh basil.

I roasted a pan of chicken thighs carrots and parsnips tonight, with olive oil, garlic, salt pepper summer savory, thyme, balsamic vinegar mixed and applied. And when they were done, I roasted a beef roast with onions, similar olive oil, garlic, salt pepper, fresh rosemary and a bit of red wine. While I was waiting for the beef I took the chicken out of the pan and put some hot water in with the drippings which I scrubbed off the pan with a wooden spoon until all dissolved, then used that to cook rice, which I'll later use as a basis for some fried rice dish. It's just a way to eat up those good drippings without making soup. The beef drippings became gravy of course!
And so, for all that cooking, my pans are just about clean.

[worth1]

This is a large corn grown in Mexico or farther south.
Takes months to mature and the corn is turned into what we call hominy.
Here it is in the dried form.
Known as giant white corn or Maiz Mote Pelado.
Not for sure what on earth I'm going to do with it but chicken will be involved somehow.
I'm also heating up some homemade tamales over a soup I made with my homemade hominy with chili powder.
Mexican oregano.
Chopped onion.
Ground cumin.
Ground celery seed.
Knorr tomato chicken bullion.
And ancho powder.
It's a Meatless soup to go with the tamales for breakfast.

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[MissS]

So that's what hominy looks like. When I got married my husband asked me to make hominy and pork chops and gave me a can. I had never heard of hominy. I called his mom and she said it was a dish from the south and that hominy was corn soaked in lye. She told me to just fry it up in the fat from the pork until it was soft and nicely browned. I did and it made my husband happy. I have never seen dried hominy before and wonder if this was already soaked in the lye.

[worth1]

So that's what hominy looks like. When I got married my husband asked me to make hominy and pork chops and gave me a can. I had never heard of hominy. I called his mom and she said it was a dish from the south and that hominy was corn soaked in lye. She told me to just fry it up in the fat from the pork until it was soft and nicely browned. I did and it made my husband happy. I have never seen dried hominy before and wonder if this was already soaked in the lye.

I take that back this stuff still has the outer skin on it so it's just dried giant white corn.
I've got it in a bath of water and baking soda now heating on to stove.
No idea how this will turn out.
I've always just cooked it before.

[worth1]

Here it is simmering in baking soda and water.
You can see the skin turned yellow.

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[pepperhead212]

@worth1 Have you ever used that cal from one of your many local Mexican markets? That's the alkali - calcium hydroxide - that Mexicans use for nixtamalization. Safer than lye (which is probably cheaper, thus the chemical of choice in commercial places), and I have seen it in all the Markets around here. If you have used it, how did baking soda compare, using that as the alkali?

I have been able to get dried, but already treated corn - has the aroma of the masa, but the resulting product is not as strong as when I treated plain, dried corn, that I treated myself. Never made the dough products from the nixtamal, however; just the pizole, and similar dishes, where it's left whole.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

The lovely and long-suffering Mrs. Gotch secured a coupla MARVELOUS Garnet Sweet Spuds; showing great restraint, her adoring husband chose not to inquire the price:

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If there's anything more impervious to sawing through a raw Sweet Spud, it's escaped me. Anywho, the Parmesan-Crusted-Sweet-Spud-STEAKS result:

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Then there were them there Mini-Golds:

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The Gotch

[worth1]

Succulent and tasty chicken.
Breast never got past 158F and it was blasted at the very last.

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[Tormahto]

So that's what hominy looks like. When I got married my husband asked me to make hominy and pork chops and gave me a can. I had never heard of hominy. I called his mom and she said it was a dish from the south and that hominy was corn soaked in lye. She told me to just fry it up in the fat from the pork until it was soft and nicely browned. I did and it made my husband happy. I have never seen dried hominy before and wonder if this was already soaked in the lye.

I take that back this stuff still has the outer skin on it so it's just dried giant white corn.
I've got it in a bath of water and baking soda now heating on to stove.
No idea how this will turn out.
I've always just cooked it before.

Goya packages the dried giant white corn in 14 oz bags, a few years ago it was in 16 oz bags. Some WalMart stores carry it, many do not. And, that was pre-covid days. I don't know if any of the WalMart stores in my area still have it. I bought one bag a few years ago. My plans were to germinate a few kernels indoors very early, and then plant out to see if it would make any ears. Then I would attempt some kind of Mexican recipe with the nearly one pound bag. I never got around to either, so I threw it into some corn chowder. Maybe I'll go looking for it again before next planting season.

[rxkeith]

rained ALL day today, so stayed inside, and cooked. a coupla shorts walks with the dog got us pretty wet.
i made a big pot of turkey soup with garden garlic, onions, and carrots, and added a few leaves freshly picked of curly kale
for color. also made two loaves of english muffin bread. i massage the recipe a bit using yogurt instead of milk,
and i added a little rye, and barley flour to the mix.
my bride said i did it again.


keith

[worth1]

@Tormato
The giant white corn is one of the oldest varieties out there.
The plants get to be 25 feet tall.
My hominy made from it came out pretty good using baking soda.
Now I have to make something with it.
I have read some hominy is mechanically processed the get the pericarp off.
Meaning it isn't real nixtamal by going through the process of nixtamalization.
This means you won't get the niacin from the corn.

I always get excited discussing nixtamal AKA hominy.
I was raised in a family that made it from field corn and canned it in jars for the winter.
It's part of my heritage and culture.

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[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

GREAT lookin' bark on that bird, @worth1

@rxkeith; "rained ALL day today,"

Same here; we needed it after a very dry October.

Sheesh; can you's even imagine what you'd be facing today had it been ~25°F/13.9°C colder yesterday?

The Gotch

[worth1]

The bird had Mexican oregano stuffed under the skin.
Kosher salt pepper and garlic powder on top.
Placed in oven at 300F with probe put in breast.
Basted with.
Vinegar.
Cane syrup.
Hosin sauce.
Cumin.
And chili powder.
Temperature gets to 140F
Oven turned up to 375 until temperature gets to 145.
Open door slide out turn oven off and let coast until it starts going back down.
It got to 158F on its own.
Slice at anything below 130F.
Perfectly tender juicy breast.
The thighs got to the right temperature too because the bird was in a rack on a cast iron skillet.
My hypothesis is an aluminum pan sucks away the heat like a big heat sink.
Because it is shiny it also reflects heat.
No Science involved to prove it but it makes sense.
Also lower cooking temperature allows the bird to heat up more evenly.
In my opinion and I've done both.
Brining a bird makes it salty and doesn't really do anything to make it any more moist.

In closing now that the USDA has admitted that over cooking a bird isn't necessary we have to come up with better ways to do it.
I personally stopped over cooking bird years before they came up with it.
Even then 165F is too hot for breast.

[worth1]

Here you'll see a goodly amount of Mexican oregano ground up with a handful of tortilla chips in the molcajete.
Yes I tried the oregano I purchased the other day and yes it is Mexican oregano.
Distinct citrus notes in the smell.
This is why you need molcajete.
Next is the giant corn hominy I made.
Its in water.
San Antonio chili powder.
Hot smoked Spanish paprika.
Cumin.
Knorr tomato chicken bullion.
Salt.
And the tortilla oregano mix.
Also I took the drippings from the bird cooked yesterday and put it in there.
It was mostly gelatin.
This is going to make a tasty Not Not pozole.
But it ain't over yet.

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[worth1]

I decided I needed sage so I ground some whole sage in the molcajete.
Plus fresh garlic.
I buy it whole at the Mexican market.
The bird had the last breast removed for later eating the rest was put in the soup.
The back.
One leg I ate the other one.
The wings.
Both thighs.
Basically the whole bird minus the breast.
It'll sit on a low warm/simmer covered for awhile.
Right now it's tasting pretty good.

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[worth1]

I also added 2 chopped Morita chilies.

[Tormahto]

For roasting birds, I pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees, put in the bird, and immediately reduce the temp. The initial high temp seers the skin better than lower temps.

For a (25+ pound) turkey, it's 4 hours and 45 minutes at 325 degrees.

For a (6 pound) chicken, 2 hours at 350 degrees.

For a (2 pound) Rock Cornish game hen, 55 minutes at 350 degrees. I wish the game hens weren't so expensive, as they are my year-round favorite, except at Thanksgiving.

And, I think I mentioned last year that there are some hilarious youtube videos about "pregnant" turkeys served at Thanksgiving.