Picture Thread: What's For Dinner?

[stevej37]

^^^ Looks to taste great.
My only question is.....How does a person take a bite of a burger that size?

[Baz]

Originally Posted by stevej37

^^^ Looks to taste great.
My only question is.....How does a person take a bite of a burger that size?

Good "problem" to have though!

[stevej37]

They do look good.

[jyl]

i’ve been experimenting with how much vegetable I can get into pasta.

My first effort, shown here, is
6 oz raw veg (spinach, cauliflower, or chard), cooked and drained, into blender with
2 med eggs, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 1/2 tsp olive oil, and blended to liquid, then into mixer, adding
1 3/4 to 2 cups all purpose white flour, just as much as needed to make a dough after 20 min of kneading to develop lots of gluten, then rolled and cut into flat noodles using a manual pasta maker

I paired this with a beef stroganoff



and the results were excellent. Shown are the spinach and cauliflower pastas, the chard pasta was dark green and perhaps the best. I had some friends who dropped by as testers, and they loved it.

Using the initial (raw) weights, this pasta is about 36% veg, 18% egg, 46% flour. Not exactly like eating vegetables instead of flour, but partway there.

My next effort is to microwave veg (retains the most vitamins and minerals of any cooking method), dehydrate, grind to powder, and sub the resulting dry veg for some part of the flour in the above recipe. Because the veg will lose so much water weight in dehydration, the result should be (using initial raw weights) over 50% veg - potentially well over.

I haven’t yet calculated the nutritional content of the resulting pasta, but am hopeful of creating a pasta that is not too far from eating veggies, while being as tasty as “normal” pasta.

There are “vegetable flours” that hippies use as no-wheat no-gluten substitutes for wheat flour. I am dubious about a 1 for 1 substitution (without gluten, how can the pasta feel right?), and am not sure if the commercial manufacturing process is optimized to retain nutrients (I’m microwaving because many vitamins are water soluble and dehydrating with minimal heat, since some vitamins are heat-sensitive, do the factories take the same care?), but I suppose one could simply buy that stuff and mix it with wheat flour.

[Bill Douglas]

:Looking goof Jyl.

And could try with wholemeal flour to make it even healthier.

[jyl]

This beet pasta was great.

How to make:

Wet stuff

6.0 oz raw beets, diced then cooked in microwave (short cooking w/ no water reduces loss of water-soluble and heat-sensitive vitamins)
3.5 oz eggs (2 med)
0.5 tsp salt
1.5 tsp olive oil

Liquified via 5 sec in blender (Vitamix - short blending reduces oxidation loss of vitamins)

Dry stuff

13.5 oz raw beets (1 jumbo beet), sliced, dehydrated (use low or no heat in the dehydrator for 12-18 hours) then blendered to 1.8 oz beet powder (leave the blender lid on until the beet dust settles down)
8.5 oz white flour, which is 2.25 cup

Knead throughly in mixer, to develop maximum gluten and get dough that while a little soft and on the sticky side, forms a dough ball. Dust with flour and wrap in plastic to refrigerate 1/2 hour.

The resulting dough is 62% beets, by starting raw weight!

It is a little harder to work with than standard pasta dough, being stickier, a little less elastic, and a little more grainy. But with a little flour dusting, it rolled through my pasta machine, requiring just a little more care (I couldn’t skip thickness steps like I do with standard pasta dough), and wide fettucine was easy - thin spaghetti might be harder, and not sure if it will extrude well.



The uncooked noodles are dull dark red-brown, but the cooked noodles are brighter and redder. About 3 minutes cooking at a rolling boil in salted water, using a wooden spoon to gently stir out any clumps.

The 62% beet pasta was very well received. It had the tooth and springyness of fresh pasta, just a bit of sweetness but not a notable ”beety” flavor, held sauce well (here, a garlic-parmesan-olive oil quick sauce), and was just yummy.

Shown here with the 36% spinach pasta from round one of the experiments, and a conventional dry pasta. Looks Italian, no?

It’s cool to stuff your face with pasta and have it actually be > 60% vegetables. I think this process would work with any vegetable - spinach, etc.

[BrakeL8]

A quick stir fry on the Evo grill outside. Beef/onions/shallot/gai lan/rice noodles/shimeji mushrooms.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by BrakeL8

A quick stir fry on the Evo grill outside. Beef/onions/shallot/gai lan/rice noodles/shimeji mushrooms.

Very nice!

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Cassoulet prep. And now we wait. Can't wait for the duck confit to be ready. The legs are gorgeous!

[Shaun @ Tru6]

And done. Well worth the time and effort, nice with a little too young Chateauneuf-du-Pape that required a full hour in the decanter to be drinkable, but one to buy a few bottles for 2026. Yes, it's a study in tan, but mostly one of richness, complexity and layers from the salt pork to the merguez to the duck confit and so on.

[Baz]

Very nice, Shaun!

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Thanks Baz! Proof tonight that not every excellent dinner needs to be a French country classic. Though super tasty, making chili sauce is definitely too much work. And don't use a spice grinder for the ground beef. Just don't. This and a hazy double IPA was so perfect after a long day.

[TimT]

Interesting look at a restaurants service behind the scene.... Oh and they went all in on Induction

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I saw that. I could never use induction. You can't see the temperature (see the flame) and I'm pretty sure you can't aggressive move the pan like you can on a cast iron grate.

Made a ribeye tonight with a pan sauce bordelaise (I'm now addicted to having demi glace onhand). I just don't see doing all of it on induction to say nothing of I don't think you can use cast iron on induction cooktop

[john70t]

Bumper crop of zucchini last year,


Add veggies, garlic, herb de Provence, and mostly dill spices


This was my third or fourth batch. Freezer full.


Bake an hour 250 add sausage baked the same in a smaller cast iron near the end.
I'm a little OCD but it is so good.

[Bill Douglas]

I got given a clump of elephant garlic. So I gave it a quick soak in water then put it on with the (bachelor sized) pork roast on the Weber.

Oh, it was amazing.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Amazingly beautiful day in the 70s all day. Perfect for grilling a ribeye over oak with some garlic potatoes and of course a nice Old Fashioned with Woodford Reserve Double Oaked. Life is good.

[john70t]

Slow cook chicken thighs half an hour or so on low heat.
Introduce to a hot skillet. Turn halfway.

Add pre-cooked wild rice blend with garlic and cranberries to soak up the juices and finish,

[TimT]

No pics recently...

But I did land a reservation at Le Bernadin for my gf and I in two weeks.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by TimT

No pics recently...

But I did land a reservation at Le Bernadin for my gf and I in two weeks.

Very cool. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m a really big fan of Eric and what he’s accomplished there.