Cooking: Difference between revisions

= Dinner History =

* 2017-08-08 [https://cookieandkate.com/2015/vegan-lentil-soup-recipe/ Spicy Lentil Soup] 4x a favorite repeat, and [http://www.food.com/recipe/vegan-brownies-19282 Vegan Brownies] and garlic bread.  The soup was great as always.  The brownies, sadly we forgot to put in the baking powder, and so it came out as "Nutty Poop Treats", oddly mishapen and very dark brown.  But tasted ok.  The garlic bread, made with fresh garlic from my garden, was awesome.

* 2017-07-25 [http://www.bakergal.com/2014/04/bengali-bottle-gourd-curry-recipe.html Bengali Bottle Gourd Curry] 4x and [http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/restaurant-style-garlic-naan/ Restaurant Style Garlic Naan] 2x.  Curry, I added long beans, and used half/half spinach and bokchoi.  Plus 2 blocks of tofu, pressed and fried till crisp with some improvised sauce.  The curry was the blandest, most boring thing I've made in years (but the tofu was good!).  Panter and I hacked it for about 10 minutes at the end and managed to bring it up to "good", here's what I remember of that hack: enormous amounts of garlic powder (something like 3 Tbsp), even more of lemon juice (maybe 6 Tbsp?), which I only added after dumping at least 4 cups of water (bland green veggie juice) from the pot; we ground up some cumin (perhaps 1 Tbsp); also perhaps a tsp of our crazy hot ground chillies.  We talked a lot about herbs, I think I did end up adding perhaps 1 Tbsp of dried parsley.  2 tsp of ground black pepper.  1 Tbsp of salt.  Probably some other things I forgot?  Anyway, certainly woulnd't make that again, though quite a few people told me the final product was tasty.  The naan was great, would make again, though next time I would splurge for proper vegan butter instead of using the cheap vegan margarine, which has a very strange white colour and is a bit off in taste too.  We made it using the oven/broiler technique, which seemed to work really well!

* 2017-07-18 [https://minimalistbaker.com/thai-yellow-coconut-curry-mango/ thai yellow coconut mango curry] 6x and [https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2015/04/09/rastafarian-restaurant-in-scarborough-offers-vegan-meals-from-scratch.html Ital Vital’s Ginger-Carrot Rice] 3x a repeat and [https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/chewy-ginger-molasses-cookies/ chewy ginger molasses cookies].  The mango curry was amazing, super sweet and lots of flavor, would make again.  Next time I think I would try to pick riper mangoes in general.  6x filled the pot right to the brim, even though I only used 10 cans of coconut milk - I think actually given how watery it was, 8 cans would be sufficient.  Also, I cut the sugar a bit, but I would cut it even more next time - I think half of what they call for would be sufficient.  The rice, we made with this crazy "red cargo" rice that I found at a Korean grocery store, but it did not improve the rice - in fact I think it killed the taste a bit, the rice dish was unremarkable, whereas last time we made it it was incredible.  The cookies, delicious and incredible but also SUPER RICH, it's actually hard to eat more than one!  We made them with demerara sugar, using less molasses, including demerara sugar for the final coating, I think that contributed to the richness.