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General food and cooking questions, discussion, and recipes. To blog your food or to create (or post in) a community food thread, please post in Post Your Eats!
contest BEGIN! Stop SmokenFire!
- Thread starter The Hot Pepper
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Excellent start here!
But I am wondering, what is up with hot stuff's upside-down pic? I made a post, not too long ago, in which one of the pics is displaying upside-down. Never mind the real pic isn't - when I navigate to it on my website it displays the right way, it's just here that it doesn't. So is the pic in hot stuff's post another anomaly, or was it taken that way? Inquiring minds want to know!
But I am wondering, what is up with hot stuff's upside-down pic? I made a post, not too long ago, in which one of the pics is displaying upside-down. Never mind the real pic isn't - when I navigate to it on my website it displays the right way, it's just here that it doesn't. So is the pic in hot stuff's post another anomaly, or was it taken that way? Inquiring minds want to know!
Hey guys, first time TDer here, as you may have noticed. This one plate took approximately 2 days of preparation so I don't think you'll be hearing from me again next month. Here's what the finished product looked like:
That's two tacos, one rich and dark in mexican imported 100% corn tortilla (because why settle for less) and one in wheat, filled with icecream and fruit. Then, because the competition required it, they were plated with beans and rice.
Not just any beans and rice, though. No, that would be boring. I decided to continue the theme of richness vs fruitiness by setting an apple and pear risotto adapted heavily from my favourite anime alongside what is essentially refried red beans. A heated mix of sweet red bean paste and the aduki/azuki beans it was made from for texture.
Indeed, it is the rich bean paste that is sweet here, with the moroccan spiced fruit rice providing the more savoury side, in direct contradiction of how the tacos themselves were paired off.
And, speaking of those tacos, let's take a look at what went into them:
The savoury one contains three fillings. A base layer of crispy tofu pieces, a middle section of butter-sautéd button mushrooms for texture contrast and the top layer, the salsa substitute, a beanless chilli con carne with a dash of my favourite Naga Viper sauce (review to come).
This sauce was chosen specifically for the dish because it's basically just liquid Naga Viper as far as flavour goes and the fresh notes in the chilli are uniquely suited to balancing out the richness of the taco. Also, its Ghost Pepper side fits nicely with the rich, red con carne.
The fruit taco, on the other hand, contains a whopping five things.
Now, this was my mild taco. My “cool the mouth down at the end” piece of dessert. Unfortunately, though, not everything goes to plan. As you can see in my pictures, it melted a little faster than expected, so was difficult to get proper photographs of and had to be eaten first.
It was, however, still absolutely excellent, with just a little kick from the pairing of kashmiri chilli powder and home made ginger and caramelised white chocolate icecream.
This icecream was then topped with sweet mango pulp as its salsa substitute and layered with peaches, both of which went great with the creamy, slightly caramel and unmistakeably ginger icecream. Then, finally, these were topped with fresh spanish raspberries for tartness and a bit of colour, really bringing the whole thing to life.
But, before I move on to what went into the rice, you're probably wondering why I needed a mouth cooling taco. Just a dash of Viper sauce shouldn't be enough to set me alight.
Indeed, it wasn't. It was the crispy tofu bits.
After being fried for optimum crispiness, they were drained of any oil and put into a tupperware container to sit for 2 days, marinading in my home made maple teriyaki sauce. Those other flakes you see? The remnants of my very own, self made, oak smoked Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.
I sieved the liquid away before these pieces went into the taco but all the solids made it in, including the entirety of a shredded pod.
So that's why. Now what went into that rice?
It started out with my own spice blend, containing cloves, peppercorns, cumin, nutmeg, cinnamon and Aji Lemon Drop powder. These were fried briefly in an even mix of butter and olive oil, before adding garlic, onion and arborio rice.
Then, once the rice started to brown, I slowly added an entire bottle of apple juice bit by bit, stirring with each addition and not adding the rest until it had all been absorbed.
With the final one, I added my fruit, fresh pears and braeburn apples, and placed a lid on the pan to let them steam for 5 minutes before simmering the dish down again to serve.
But let's go back a day or two to the creation of the icecream.
This started out when I stumbled across instructions online for caramelised white chocolate. They seemed simple enough and I new white chocolate and cream were a perfect match for many red chillies from my past Reaper experiments. What could go wrong?
A couple of things, actually.
First was the timeframe. After melting the chocolate, baking on a low heat (130°C) was supposed to caramelise it within half an hour. The guy I got the recipe from said that this was a lie and it actually took about double that. Both were wrong.
I found that it took me over three hours, stirring every fifteen minutes, to get it to the stage I wanted.
Fortunately, at that point, it could be combined with single cream to keep it from hardening, allowing me to come back to it later and giving it a wonderful golden brown colour.
But I wasn't in the clear just yet. After warming it up again, I added an entire pot of double cream and then, because my ginger syrup had mysteriously vanished, a tablespoon of my favourite non-alcoholic ginger wine.
Had I not been working my ass off recently and had I not spent almost a full day cooking it and the tofu by this point, I would probably have realised the impending disaster. The cream curdled.
But, with careful cooking with milk, sugar, egg yolks and just a pinch of salt, not to mention the use of a sieve, I managed to salvage it.
I chilled the mixture down and froze it in my icecream maker, adding fresh root ginger as I went. And it turned out amazing.
Now here's my list of ingredients:
For the teriyaki tofu:
-25ml maple syrup
-25ml light soy
-25ml water
-10g brown sugar
-half a tablespoon rice wine vinegar
-1 shredded, oak smoked Moruga Scorpion
-a handful of finely chopped pre-fried tofu, fried further for crispiness
For the icecream:
-200g high cocoa butter (>30%) white chocolate
-1 teaspoon extra cocoa butter (increase if chocolate is poor)
-100ml single cream
-300ml double cream
-1 tablespoon ginger wine (non-alcoholic)
-500ml whole milk
-100g white sugar
-pinch of salt
-5 egg yolks
-2 teaspoons ginger root, finely chopped
For the con carne:
-1 red onion
-1 clove of garlic
-1 tin of tomatos
-enough olive pomace oil to fry in
-a dash of chilli con carne spice mix (I know, it feels like cheating)
-a dash of Viper sauce
-2 handfuls of frozen mince
-2 squares of the darkest chocolate around (I use montezuma's 100% absolute black)
For the beans:
-125g red bean paste
-50g thoroughly rinsed aduki/azuki beans
For the mushrooms:
-50g rinsed and sliced button mushrooms
-enough butter to sauté
For the risotto spice mix:
-1 teaspoon cinnamon
-1 teaspoon cumin
-1 teaspoon Lemon Drop powder
-5 black peppercorns
-7 cloves
-a dash of nutmeg
all finely ground
For the risotto:
-the above spices
-2 tablespoons of olive pomace oil
-2 tablespoons of butter
-1.5L heated apple juice (not concentrate)
-2 pears
-2 apples (dice fruit into a water bath to avoid browning, no citrus needed)
-2 small onions (not red)
-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
-250g arborio rice
Other Ingredients:
-1 wheat tortilla
-1 mexican 100% corn tortilla
-2 tablespoons sweetened kesar mango pulp
-a sprinkling of kashmiri chilli powder
-3 peach slices
-several fresh raspberries
P.S. Sorry if some of the pics are bad, it was nearly 11pm by the time I'd finished cooking.
That's two tacos, one rich and dark in mexican imported 100% corn tortilla (because why settle for less) and one in wheat, filled with icecream and fruit. Then, because the competition required it, they were plated with beans and rice.
Not just any beans and rice, though. No, that would be boring. I decided to continue the theme of richness vs fruitiness by setting an apple and pear risotto adapted heavily from my favourite anime alongside what is essentially refried red beans. A heated mix of sweet red bean paste and the aduki/azuki beans it was made from for texture.
Indeed, it is the rich bean paste that is sweet here, with the moroccan spiced fruit rice providing the more savoury side, in direct contradiction of how the tacos themselves were paired off.
And, speaking of those tacos, let's take a look at what went into them:
The savoury one contains three fillings. A base layer of crispy tofu pieces, a middle section of butter-sautéd button mushrooms for texture contrast and the top layer, the salsa substitute, a beanless chilli con carne with a dash of my favourite Naga Viper sauce (review to come).
This sauce was chosen specifically for the dish because it's basically just liquid Naga Viper as far as flavour goes and the fresh notes in the chilli are uniquely suited to balancing out the richness of the taco. Also, its Ghost Pepper side fits nicely with the rich, red con carne.
The fruit taco, on the other hand, contains a whopping five things.
Now, this was my mild taco. My “cool the mouth down at the end” piece of dessert. Unfortunately, though, not everything goes to plan. As you can see in my pictures, it melted a little faster than expected, so was difficult to get proper photographs of and had to be eaten first.
It was, however, still absolutely excellent, with just a little kick from the pairing of kashmiri chilli powder and home made ginger and caramelised white chocolate icecream.
This icecream was then topped with sweet mango pulp as its salsa substitute and layered with peaches, both of which went great with the creamy, slightly caramel and unmistakeably ginger icecream. Then, finally, these were topped with fresh spanish raspberries for tartness and a bit of colour, really bringing the whole thing to life.
But, before I move on to what went into the rice, you're probably wondering why I needed a mouth cooling taco. Just a dash of Viper sauce shouldn't be enough to set me alight.
Indeed, it wasn't. It was the crispy tofu bits.
After being fried for optimum crispiness, they were drained of any oil and put into a tupperware container to sit for 2 days, marinading in my home made maple teriyaki sauce. Those other flakes you see? The remnants of my very own, self made, oak smoked Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.
I sieved the liquid away before these pieces went into the taco but all the solids made it in, including the entirety of a shredded pod.
So that's why. Now what went into that rice?
It started out with my own spice blend, containing cloves, peppercorns, cumin, nutmeg, cinnamon and Aji Lemon Drop powder. These were fried briefly in an even mix of butter and olive oil, before adding garlic, onion and arborio rice.
Then, once the rice started to brown, I slowly added an entire bottle of apple juice bit by bit, stirring with each addition and not adding the rest until it had all been absorbed.
With the final one, I added my fruit, fresh pears and braeburn apples, and placed a lid on the pan to let them steam for 5 minutes before simmering the dish down again to serve.
But let's go back a day or two to the creation of the icecream.
This started out when I stumbled across instructions online for caramelised white chocolate. They seemed simple enough and I new white chocolate and cream were a perfect match for many red chillies from my past Reaper experiments. What could go wrong?
A couple of things, actually.
First was the timeframe. After melting the chocolate, baking on a low heat (130°C) was supposed to caramelise it within half an hour. The guy I got the recipe from said that this was a lie and it actually took about double that. Both were wrong.
I found that it took me over three hours, stirring every fifteen minutes, to get it to the stage I wanted.
Fortunately, at that point, it could be combined with single cream to keep it from hardening, allowing me to come back to it later and giving it a wonderful golden brown colour.
But I wasn't in the clear just yet. After warming it up again, I added an entire pot of double cream and then, because my ginger syrup had mysteriously vanished, a tablespoon of my favourite non-alcoholic ginger wine.
Had I not been working my ass off recently and had I not spent almost a full day cooking it and the tofu by this point, I would probably have realised the impending disaster. The cream curdled.
But, with careful cooking with milk, sugar, egg yolks and just a pinch of salt, not to mention the use of a sieve, I managed to salvage it.
I chilled the mixture down and froze it in my icecream maker, adding fresh root ginger as I went. And it turned out amazing.
Now here's my list of ingredients:
For the teriyaki tofu:
-25ml maple syrup
-25ml light soy
-25ml water
-10g brown sugar
-half a tablespoon rice wine vinegar
-1 shredded, oak smoked Moruga Scorpion
-a handful of finely chopped pre-fried tofu, fried further for crispiness
For the icecream:
-200g high cocoa butter (>30%) white chocolate
-1 teaspoon extra cocoa butter (increase if chocolate is poor)
-100ml single cream
-300ml double cream
-1 tablespoon ginger wine (non-alcoholic)
-500ml whole milk
-100g white sugar
-pinch of salt
-5 egg yolks
-2 teaspoons ginger root, finely chopped
For the con carne:
-1 red onion
-1 clove of garlic
-1 tin of tomatos
-enough olive pomace oil to fry in
-a dash of chilli con carne spice mix (I know, it feels like cheating)
-a dash of Viper sauce
-2 handfuls of frozen mince
-2 squares of the darkest chocolate around (I use montezuma's 100% absolute black)
For the beans:
-125g red bean paste
-50g thoroughly rinsed aduki/azuki beans
For the mushrooms:
-50g rinsed and sliced button mushrooms
-enough butter to sauté
For the risotto spice mix:
-1 teaspoon cinnamon
-1 teaspoon cumin
-1 teaspoon Lemon Drop powder
-5 black peppercorns
-7 cloves
-a dash of nutmeg
all finely ground
For the risotto:
-the above spices
-2 tablespoons of olive pomace oil
-2 tablespoons of butter
-1.5L heated apple juice (not concentrate)
-2 pears
-2 apples (dice fruit into a water bath to avoid browning, no citrus needed)
-2 small onions (not red)
-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
-250g arborio rice
Other Ingredients:
-1 wheat tortilla
-1 mexican 100% corn tortilla
-2 tablespoons sweetened kesar mango pulp
-a sprinkling of kashmiri chilli powder
-3 peach slices
-several fresh raspberries
P.S. Sorry if some of the pics are bad, it was nearly 11pm by the time I'd finished cooking.
J.e.e.z.u.s.spicefreak said:Hey guys, first time TDer here, as you may have noticed. This one plate took approximately 2 days of preparation so I don't think you'll be hearing from me again next month. Here's what the finished product looked like:
That's two tacos, one rich and dark in mexican imported 100% corn tortilla (because why settle for less) and one in wheat, filled with icecream and fruit. Then, because the competition required it, they were plated with beans and rice.
Not just any beans and rice, though. No, that would be boring. I decided to continue the theme of richness vs fruitiness by setting an apple and pear risotto adapted heavily from my favourite anime alongside what is essentially refried red beans. A heated mix of sweet red bean paste and the aduki/azuki beans it was made from for texture.
Indeed, it is the rich bean paste that is sweet here, with the moroccan spiced fruit rice providing the more savoury side, in direct contradiction of how the tacos themselves were paired off.
And, speaking of those tacos, let's take a look at what went into them:
The savoury one contains three fillings. A base layer of crispy tofu pieces, a middle section of butter-sautéd button mushrooms for texture contrast and the top layer, the salsa substitute, a beanless chilli con carne with a dash of my favourite Naga Viper sauce (review to come).
This sauce was chosen specifically for the dish because it's basically just liquid Naga Viper as far as flavour goes and the fresh notes in the chilli are uniquely suited to balancing out the richness of the taco. Also, its Ghost Pepper side fits nicely with the rich, red con carne.
The fruit taco, on the other hand, contains a whopping five things.
Now, this was my mild taco. My cool the mouth down at the end piece of dessert. Unfortunately, though, not everything goes to plan. As you can see in my pictures, it melted a little faster than expected, so was difficult to get proper photographs of and had to be eaten first.
It was, however, still absolutely excellent, with just a little kick from the pairing of kashmiri chilli powder and home made ginger and caramelised white chocolate icecream.
This icecream was then topped with sweet mango pulp as its salsa substitute and layered with peaches, both of which went great with the creamy, slightly caramel and unmistakeably ginger icecream. Then, finally, these were topped with fresh spanish raspberries for tartness and a bit of colour, really bringing the whole thing to life.
But, before I move on to what went into the rice, you're probably wondering why I needed a mouth cooling taco. Just a dash of Viper sauce shouldn't be enough to set me alight.
Indeed, it wasn't. It was the crispy tofu bits.
After being fried for optimum crispiness, they were drained of any oil and put into a tupperware container to sit for 2 days, marinading in my home made maple teriyaki sauce. Those other flakes you see? The remnants of my very own, self made, oak smoked Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.
I sieved the liquid away before these pieces went into the taco but all the solids made it in, including the entirety of a shredded pod.
So that's why. Now what went into that rice?
It started out with my own spice blend, containing cloves, peppercorns, cumin, nutmeg, cinnamon and Aji Lemon Drop powder. These were fried briefly in an even mix of butter and olive oil, before adding garlic, onion and arborio rice.
Then, once the rice started to brown, I slowly added an entire bottle of apple juice bit by bit, stirring with each addition and not adding the rest until it had all been absorbed.
With the final one, I added my fruit, fresh pears and braeburn apples, and placed a lid on the pan to let them steam for 5 minutes before simmering the dish down again to serve.
But let's go back a day or two to the creation of the icecream.
This started out when I stumbled across instructions online for caramelised white chocolate. They seemed simple enough and I new white chocolate and cream were a perfect match for many red chillies from my past Reaper experiments. What could go wrong?
A couple of things, actually.
First was the timeframe. After melting the chocolate, baking on a low heat (130°C) was supposed to caramelise it within half an hour. The guy I got the recipe from said that this was a lie and it actually took about double that. Both were wrong.
I found that it took me over three hours, stirring every fifteen minutes, to get it to the stage I wanted.
Fortunately, at that point, it could be combined with single cream to keep it from hardening, allowing me to come back to it later and giving it a wonderful golden brown colour.
But I wasn't in the clear just yet. After warming it up again, I added an entire pot of double cream and then, because my ginger syrup had mysteriously vanished, a tablespoon of my favourite non-alcoholic ginger wine.
Had I not been working my ass off recently and had I not spent almost a full day cooking it and the tofu by this point, I would probably have realised the impending disaster. The cream curdled.
But, with careful cooking with milk, sugar, egg yolks and just a pinch of salt, not to mention the use of a sieve, I managed to salvage it.
I chilled the mixture down and froze it in my icecream maker, adding fresh root ginger as I went. And it turned out amazing.
Now here's my list of ingredients:
For the teriyaki tofu:
-25ml maple syrup
-25ml light soy
-25ml water
-10g brown sugar
-half a tablespoon rice wine vinegar
-1 shredded, oak smoked Moruga Scorpion
-a handful of finely chopped pre-fried tofu, fried further for crispiness
For the icecream:
-200g high cocoa butter (>30%) white chocolate
-1 teaspoon extra cocoa butter (increase if chocolate is poor)
-100ml single cream
-300ml double cream
-1 tablespoon ginger wine (non-alcoholic)
-500ml whole milk
-100g white sugar
-pinch of salt
-5 egg yolks
-2 teaspoons ginger root, finely chopped
For the con carne:
-1 red onion
-1 clove of garlic
-1 tin of tomatos
-enough olive pomace oil to fry in
-a dash of chilli con carne spice mix (I know, it feels like cheating)
-a dash of Viper sauce
-2 handfuls of frozen mince
-2 squares of the darkest chocolate around (I use montezuma's 100% absolute black)
For the beans:
-125g red bean paste
-50g thoroughly rinsed aduki/azuki beans
For the mushrooms:
-50g rinsed and sliced button mushrooms
-enough butter to sauté
For the risotto spice mix:
-1 teaspoon cinnamon
-1 teaspoon cumin
-1 teaspoon Lemon Drop powder
-5 black peppercorns
-7 cloves
-a dash of nutmeg
all finely ground
For the risotto:
-the above spices
-2 tablespoons of olive pomace oil
-2 tablespoons of butter
-1.5L heated apple juice (not concentrate)
-2 pears
-2 apples (dice fruit into a water bath to avoid browning, no citrus needed)
-2 small onions (not red)
-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
-250g arborio rice
Other Ingredients:
-1 wheat tortilla
-1 mexican 100% corn tortilla
-2 tablespoons sweetened kesar mango pulp
-a sprinkling of kashmiri chilli powder
-3 peach slices
-several fresh raspberries
P.S. Sorry if some of the pics are bad, it was nearly 11pm by the time I'd finished cooking.
That's fukcing incredible. Hat off to you good sir.
sirex said:
This who?
Apparently I missed a stipulation in the rules that stated that I need not just good food but also five cents. I don't have five cents.
I do, however, have internet access and a currency conversion site of choice so here goes:
Proof of creation (my excess apple risotto, my hand and some lose change I had to beg off my family):
And proof that this does, in fact, equate to five cents worth (I rounded up because coin fragments are technically treason):
I shall be calling this dish "Spicefreak's Scorpion Smoke and Fiery Fruit Taco Platter", because it's the most concise name I can currently come up with that truly describes the majority of what it has going on. Thanks for the unusual number of likes everyone.
I do, however, have internet access and a currency conversion site of choice so here goes:
Proof of creation (my excess apple risotto, my hand and some lose change I had to beg off my family):
And proof that this does, in fact, equate to five cents worth (I rounded up because coin fragments are technically treason):
I shall be calling this dish "Spicefreak's Scorpion Smoke and Fiery Fruit Taco Platter", because it's the most concise name I can currently come up with that truly describes the majority of what it has going on. Thanks for the unusual number of likes everyone.
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