In Summer, most of the innovative or new things I try tend to be grilling or BBQ-related. If I’m cooking indoors in the summertime, I tend to keep things pretty light, quick and easy. Fall and Winter are when I do longer, more complicated indoor meals.
This Fall / Winter I want to try making Beef Wellington.
I’ve also wanted to try making Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon recipe, though I think I’ve held off on that because in the back of my mind I suspect all that work will just result in an outcome that’s tasty, but not really too different than an ordinary beef stew.
What new things are you planning on trying this indoor cooking season? Also, If you’ve ever attempted making Beet Wellington at home, I’d love to hear your stories about how it turned out.
It’s on the list of things I’ve never tried, but would like to some time.
I’ve never played around with a smoker, but my gf’s one brother got involved big-time with smoking and he’s enjoying it. I love visiting him when he has the smoker going.
I’m usually most intrigued by the idea of making/growing as much of a dish as possible myself. So one thing I’d like to do one of these days is grow my own tomatoes, basil, oregano, and garlic, make my own crust, make my own mozzarella, and make my own pepperoni/salami to make a pizza that’s as homemade as possible.
I’ve done pieces of that before - grown tomatoes and made sauce, grown basil, oregano, and garlic at various times (although not all at once), and made my own crust. I have yet to make my own mozzarella or my own salami, although we have made paneer, and I’ve cured/smoked a fair number of other charcuterie type items (bacon, pancetta, canadian bacon). I’ve just got to set myself a goal to do it all at once.
Or maybe do a bit more of a garden-centric thing and plant some grapevines, make some wine, turn it into vinegar, and combine it with oil and homegrown greens and vegetables for a salad might be cool.
Otherwise, just making dishes out of cookbooks isn’t terribly daunting- I’ve attempted pretty much everything I’ve been curious about thus far.
From what-- did you use beets instead of mushrooms or something? Or, from the red wine sauce, assuming you made Gordon Ramsey’s recipe? Or am I getting whooshed somehow?
Oh yeah, I love smoking. If you decide to get into smoking yourself, there’s a lot of Doper BBQers and smokers here with a lot of great advice.
If you want to try smoking, don’t want to invest in a smoker, but do own a kettle-style grill, I put together a thread a couple Summers ago about smoking a whole beef brisket in a kettle grill, which turned out fan-freakin’-tastic.
Great idea! I read or saw a feature on the news a couple years ago about a local farm that did this-- they cooked and served their own pizzas on-site with as many ingredients they grew and made themselves as possible (not sure if they actually grew and milled the grain for the crust, or made their own cheese).
I’ve made my own pasta sauce from scratch using Roma tomatoes and fresh basil I grew. It was outstanding. I don’t do a vegetable garden anymore, but sometimes I’ll go to a Farmer’s Market and buy a big bunch of Romas and fresh basil. Fresh-made red sauce from fresh ingredients is miles better than anything out of a jar or a can.
A few xmases ago we bought some chestnut knives and roasted chestnuts in our fireplace. They weren’t bad, but we haven’t repeated the experience.
On another xmas I made some eggnog, which my daughter sort of enjoyed. I told her it was difficult to make because I used a fresh nog and had to gut it in the sink. Months later my daughter confronted me about the nog tale.
There was an episode of (I think) “America’s Test Kitchen” where they made pumpkin pie from scratch (using an actual pumpkin) and using canned pumpkin pie filling. The result was no one could tell the difference (both were equally yummy). Their conclusion was to save yourself a lot of time and effort and just use the canned stuff for pumpkin pie.
Of course, if you have some pumpkins lying about and are bored and like cooking then sure…make it all from scratch.
I would challenge them to repeat this experiment a dozen times. My gf makes all her pumpkin pies from pumpkins she roasts herself. I like that each years’ pies taste subtly different, depending on growing conditions and strain of pumpkin she uses. Canned pumpkin pies taste the same, year after year.
I’ve wanted for years to learn how to make a proper American brisket. But I’ve discovered a major problem — the specific cut of meat is very difficult to get in Europe, as butchers here don’t consider it valuable and send it to be ground. Many don’t even know it by name.
Here’s a food blog (in French) discussing the problem.
So if anyone wants to deliver one to me, I promise to cook it “soon.”
P.S. edit to add, the Julia Child boeuf bourguignon is absolutely worth the effort.
I read that, and there’s nothing wrong with canned pumpkin (which is made from a kind of squash, not pumpkin). The pie my friend made was lighter, fresher, not too sweet. There was a definite though subtle difference. Every commercially made or home baked pumpkin pie tastes the same, all good. Sweet potato pie looks like pumpkin pie, but again, there’s a subtle difference.
Butchers at supermarkets just churn out product. They almost never have a few cow carcasses in the back where they can carve off whatever you want. Indeed, I am finding more and more that meat is butchered by some large company, packaged and sold in the store. The person behind the counter likely is just some drone and not an actual butcher in the sense of the skill/profession.
In the US, some actual butchers do still exist. They tend to be pricey but you can go there, tell them what cuts you want and they will make it happen (you may need to call ahead…they don’t have that many cow carcasses on hand to do whatever).
But if you let the butcher know that you’re seeking that cut of beef, they can set it aside for you before sending it out to be ground. Presumably they will make more money from selling the cut to you whole.
My BIL drives about 90 minutes specifically to shop at a “real” butcher shop for meat that he eventually smokes. He makes the drive when he has extra cash and room in his freezer. He tells me that the difference in product is definitely noticeable, plus he enjoys talking meat with the guy.
