COMMENT
Greek 'donuts' turned out really yummy -- recipe here.
Weird thing is, I strained the falafel oil and used the same oil to fry these up. Although there was a smell of spices, the donuts didn't taste like falafel. Maybe it was the cinnamon sauce that saved the day?
Next lot I do will be the Somalian ones. Cardamom sauce and a yoghurt based dough sounds good. Some of the other recipes on this site look good: the spice mix and the chutney look appealing, although the chutney looks like a bit more work than I'd like to do.
Still have half the Greek donut dough in the refrigerator to fry up tomorrow. After that, I might have to lay off the donuts for a while. I've scoffed almost this entire bowl on my own. Mouth's sort of numb from all the sugar I've consumed.
Main meal was French style chicken in white wine stew with vegetables. No photo because it wasn't visually appealing. Sort of looked like spew. lol
Bit rattled at the moment. Heap of screaming and carrying on down the street freaked me. Sounded like someone was being attacked. Didn't know what they were going to do. Half expected someone to come charging in here, or to have my car damaged again. It's died down now, but I'm on still on edge. Neighbourhood's gone down the tubes. A**holes.
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Showing posts with label Off Topic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Off Topic. Show all posts
March 05, 2016
Greek Donuts
March 02, 2016
Falafel
COMMENT
Resetting the body-clock was a disaster so far ... woke at 3am, was up until 11pm. Crashed.
But then I slept for 13 hours straight. WTF? Who sleeps that long??? And who gets up after 13 hours of sleep, feeling sleepy and tired??
Think I liked it better when I as semi 'manic' or something, poring over the news obsessively. lol
Falafel cooking went somewhat better than the planned body-clock reset. But it began as a disaster.
Rolled home-made falafel mix into small dessert-spoon sized balls, flattened them a little, & arranged them on a tray for a quick chill before frying. Easier for the inexperienced falafel cook without the requisite falafel scooping gadget.
All good ... until I threw some falafel into the oil. Not hot enough, even after something like 8 minutes heating. Had to fish it out.
Might need some wooden skewers for oil testing. Apparently, if the oil bubbles around skewer, it's good to go. Got that off watching what I call 'food porn,' recently.
Falafel frying attempt in hot oil: bubbling. Bubbling big time. Seemed OK. Bubbling's good, right?
Well, it looked like it was all good ... until I tried to fish out a falafel balls to see how the frying process was going.
The f*%$ing falafel balls DISINTEGRATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fished out a couple of remaining 'stumps' of falafel and got to quickly remixing and reforming the balls, with a small amount of plain flour.
The balls that incorporated some flour didn't fall apart and fried up OK. But I'm not entirely happy with the texture.
The mix I made is just a little too mushy for my taste and needs to be a little more coarse next time. As I don't really know what I'm doing, how coarse/textured will depend on experimenting to see what I can get away with in terms of falafel balls that don't fall apart.
I'm working with tinned chickpeas, so maybe that's where the problem lies. As in, the chickpeas would probably be waterlogged compared to those traditionally used, starting from scratch with dried chickpeas and soaking them overnight or whatever they do.
The lot I mixed up didn't need additional water for the same reason, so that was pointless and counter-productive for me.
After frying off a trial batch of falafel balls remixed with flour, I've had to then drain the oil through a fine sieve to fish out the residue. Annoying. Should have only tested with one, instead of tossing in several.
General falafel mix:
The spices were on a 'whatever' basis ... whatever I think will taste good. Can taste the mix to make sure there's enough salt & spices. Other spices can go in there, as well. But the above is enough for me.
Think I might need to prepare this on a few consecutive days to get the feel for what will work best.
Final result wasn't too bad, but I need to maybe take it easy with the degree of food-processing next time.
Update Made up a batch of dry chickpeas, soaked overnight. The texture is very nice. Much better than the canned chickpeas version.
Falafel - Version #2
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February 22, 2016
Off Topic - Latest
Still depressed.
Forcing myself to cook more than I otherwise would cook these days, just to try to get back into a more functional mode.
Not a success so far.
Body clock is COMPLETELY out of whack.
It's getting to be a huge problem, because I cannot tend to some of the things I really do have to see to (like follow-up medical etc).
Success rate in kitchen an all-time low. Run of cooking disasters:
General Tso Chicken - horrible and nothing like it tastes like from the take-away.
Bread & Butter Pudding with Banana - Yuk. Conclusion: not into banana unless its fresh and on the unripe side.
Also burnt the pudding this time around, trying to toast the top. Forgot about it. Memory's not good for practical things, but I can remember weird facts OK ... lol.
Fried Rice - more improvised than usual / too much sauce. Yuk again.
Spaghetti Carbonara - that also went wrong. Not completely, but I did waaaaaaaay more pasta than needed for amount of sauce. It was edible, but still a disaster.
Just baked an improvised Buttermilk Coffee Cake, using this recipe as a base. It smells beautiful, although it hasn't risen much for me. Maybe I shouldn't have tampered with this recipe -- here.
Recipe calls for 'cake four'. I used plain flour. Next time it might be an idea to use Nigella's method to reduce the protein -- substitute 2 Tbsp per cup with cornflour -- here? That's if I could be bothered doing this again and if I could be bothered messing around while doing it.
Buttermilk Coffee Cake
The mix I've made up has dissolved instant coffee in it (x4 dessert spoons dissolved in x6 dessert spoons of boiling water; abt 1 tsp set aside for the cream I'll whip up later). Added some extra buttermilk because it seemed too dry a mix.*
I can't cook without stuffing my face as well, so if I keep cooking as an 'antidote' to apathy and depression, I'm going to wind up depressed, fat and apathetic. Great.
Might have to substitute cleaning for cooking.
Finally did some cleaning the other day and it just about killed me. Sweat pouring off me, couldn't breathe, skin must be paper-thin because I've got hand injuries even through rubber gloves.
Wish I was one of those people obsessed about cleaning. The things I like doing are useless ... like, lists of Roman emperors ... lol.
I'll never remember all those Roman emperors and I'm not sure I'll get around to looking up all their bios -- never enough time, even when you've got all the time in the world.
Was wondering if Rome began to go down the tubes once they started appointing foreign emperors from the provinces, followed by the divisions of empire etc?
So, is power-sharing and dilution of ethnic bonds the beginning of the end?
Don't know the answer to that, it was just a thought while I was skimming Roman emperors.
------- YUK *
Noticed the stick blender cord had been dangling in a plastic container of water by the side of the sink as I whipped the cream. Yikes. I could have been zapped. Maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad thing if it was instant. For those that don't fancy a zapping, might be best not to have containers of water resting in kitchen areas electrical cords are likely to cross. It was a f*cking mistake to try to kick-start energy by turning to cooking. I'm now being pressured to cook regardless of my disinterest in reverting to kitchen slavery and getting f*cking fat.
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February 12, 2016
Off Topic - Bears & people
Off Topic Bears & people
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February 08, 2016
Off Topic - Onion, Bacon, Potato Hotpot
Food Onion, Bacon, Potato (& Bean) Hotpot
Hotpot in the Making
[CLICK on IMAGE to ENLARGE]
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February 07, 2016
Off Topic - Mee Goreng
Off Topic Mee Goreng
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February 05, 2016
Off Topic
January 29, 2016
Off Topic Unicode & Murdoch
Off Topic *post title header
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January 21, 2016
Off Topic - Hair GIF
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January 16, 2016
Off Topic - Welcome to My Laundry
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December 20, 2015
Off-Topic - Time
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During the Stanford University (California, USA) experiment: "On the eleventh day, when [the subject, Randy Gardner] was asked to subtract seven repeatedly, starting with 100, he stopped at 65. When asked why he had stopped, he replied that he had forgotten what he was doing" [as above] LOL ... I'm forever forgetting what I'm doing, even with regular sleep. And I'd have no hope with the backwards count, even with sleep. The other record (almost 19 days awake in rocking chair marathon) sounds positively crazy ... and maybe fun:
More 'sleep walls' or 'sleep dips' recur, but can be bypassed for those that want to, I guess. LOL
The other side-effect is a sore, cramping 'mouse-hand'.
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August 03, 2015
July 08, 2015
Forest Project
Forest Project
[ partial - clip ]
Maybe my string gif will turn up in some porno. ;)* Having trouble converting my string of gifs ... & some Netherlands site ate my file. |
July 07, 2015
Play Button in Constant Motion
Been listening to this over and over again for at least the last 2 hrs, but I'm getting sick of pressing the play button. |
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