Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Carey
I really like the veal and cauliflower stew, chuck wagon beef stew, chicken and couscous. The curries are good too, I just tend to do my own thing with them more than follow her recipes. I often use her books as a guide for liquid/cooking times and then adapt recipes I already like. It is fantastic for stock though, isn't it? I made some chicken stock with a couple of carcasses I had left over from roast chicken so we had dinner yesterday and lunch today for for not much more than the price of picked over bones. More money for shoes.

Mary

Fitzie, the recipe link looks ok, but just in case, here's what I actually do:

EXPORTED FROM LIVING COOKBOOK

<strong>COWBOY BEANS</strong>***** Servings: 4

Adjust the heat, smoke, or salt by stirring in more Tabasco or barbecue sauce at serving time.

Oven Temperature: 300°F

Preparation: 15 minutes Cooking: 4 hours and 30 minutes Inactive: 11 hours and 45 minutes Total Time: 16 hours and 30 minutes

4 qts. cold water
6 TBS. kosher salt
1 4.2 qt. Dutch Oven or larger, heavy bottomed.
1 lb. dried pinto or navy beans , washed, picked, and soaked or quick soaked.
4 slices bacon , chopped fine
1 medium onion , chopped fine
6 medium cloves garlic , minced
4½ cups water
1 cup strong black coffee
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 TBS. Grey Poupon or prepared brown mustard (such as Gulden's)
4 TBS. Splenda
10 TBS. barbecue sauce divided (see recipe below)
4 tsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. Tabasco sauce
5 tsps. kosher salt divided
1 ground black pepper

Wash and clean beans and soak overnight in 6 TBS. kosher salt dissolved in 4 qts. of cold of water.**
Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300°F. Add bacon to pot and cook over medium heat until lightly browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Stir in onion and cook until beginning to brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add drained beans, water, and coffee. Bring to simmer over high heat and cook for 10 minutes. Add brown sugar, mustard, ½ cup barbecue sauce, Tabasco sauce, and 4 tsp. kosher salt. Return to boil over high heat, cover pot, and transfer to oven.

Cook until beans are just tender, 2 to 2½ hours. Remove lid and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid has thickened to syrupy consistency, 1 to 1½ hours. Remove from oven, stir in remaining 2 TBS. barbecue sauce, and season to taste with salt and pepper. (Beans can be refrigerated for several days.)

**If can't soak do this quick soak: place beans and 6 cups water in large Dutch oven. Bring to boil over high heat and cook for 5 minutes. Remove pot from heat, cover, and allow beans to sit for 1 hour. Drain beans. Clean and dry pot.

Recipe Type: Bacon, Beans, BEST, Cooks Country, Onions, Printed, Side Dish, Splenda

Source: COOK'S COUNTRY 4/2005 Web Page: http://www.cookscountry.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=2490

MAMI'S BARBECUE SAUCE***** Servings: 6 Yield: 4 cups

Need 10 TBS. for beans. This recipe makes 6 serving for the beans or enough for one Oven Barbecued Spareribs Recipe with enough left over for one bean recipe. If I am not making the spareribs, I just make the sauce and foodsaver it in 10 TBS. portions and freeze it.

Preparation Time: 15 minutes Cooking Time: 20 minutes Total Time: 35 minutes

1 Large onion or 1½ medium chopped
2 TBS. Olive Oil
6 TBS. Lemon Juice
3 TBS. Vinegar
1½ TBS. Worcestershire Sauce
3 TBS. Brown Sugar (prefer dark)
¾ cup Water
12 oz. Chili Sauce

In a medium saucepot sauté chopped onions until soft and brown. Add lemon juice, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, water and chili sauce and cook slowly for 20 minutes.

Recipe Type: ALINA'S ADAPTATION, Sauces

Author: Alina Source: Adapted from The Pocket Cookbook

Thank you all so much. You're such good cooking friends! This is going on Tuesday's menu.
fitzie

Paul,

If one doesn't happen to have a centrifuge lying around (and I suspect there would be many, many issues that would prevent me from popping over the blood lab next door to have them whiz my carrot juice through theirs, both on their part and on mine), does it make much difference to the soup? (i.e., can I sub commercial carrot juice in the recipe if I can find it? I don't have a juicer either. I know, I'm deprived.) Of course, this might provide me an excuse to buy a juicer...although I'm afraid the centrifuge is still out. Do they even sell culinary centrifuges??? *sigh* and here I thought I was catching up with the pressure cooker.

Edit: oops, I see you can strain the simmered juice through a cheesecloth lined sieve.

I just use commercial carrot juice; one thing to watch out for is that some carrot juice is sweetened, which would through off the dish, and quite a bit is more than carrots, just check the ingredients list. But all in all, bottled juice works just dandy. Let someone else do the juicing

(with the bottled stuff I just pour it in, as it is already strained and pasteurized.)

Last night made the Quinoa salad from Modernist Cuisine at Home. It wasn't particularly "pressure cooker-y" -- you just cook the quinoa in the PC -- but it was quite nice.

Ok...I am determined to use my pressure cooker for an acutal recipe (although I am still enjoying it a ton for stocks). I'm thinking that CI's black bean soup would be good. I was thinking of using the slow cooker version, given that neither the slow cooker nor the pressure cooker allows for evaporation the way that stove top soups do. I'll double check one of the pressure cooker recipe versions first though to make sure that I have enough liquid to solids for the cooking time.

Mary, thanks for the recipe suggestions. I will check them out. I love this thing for stocks. No carcass has been hitting the garbage of late before a stint at making broth. Beef, chicken and turkey have all emerged perfectly clear and ready to go after an hour or two of pressure cooking. It has been soup central at my place now that the weather has turned cold. Speaking of which, does anyone have a borscht recipe that they like better than CI's? I found the grated beets and shredded cabbage a bit weird in the Soups and Stews version (I'm used to a beef based soup with cubes of beet, carrot, and potato with bite-sized pieces of cabbage, and CI's lumps up into a clump of big beet shreds and shreds of purple stained cabbage that are hard to eat with chunks of potato and carrot in it...the seasoning didn't seem quite right either somehow...probably was the lack of tomato now that I think about it; CI's recipe doesn't have any, and I'm sure that it is usually in versions that I have had). A cabbage borscht recipe would be good too. I had one at a Jewish deli in town recenty and it was amazing. No beets, just cabbage, beef, potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes with a little bit of dill. I heard somewhere that this was a Mennonite version (without the beets) rather than a Ukranian one.

The carrot soup looks really good too - glad to hear that one can find commercial (unsweetened) carrot juice and that it works fine in the recipe. Paul, where do you find it? Safeway? Sobeys (which is IGA I think out East)? Superstore? (Winnipeg has all three, so if I knew one typically carried it, I would target that store first).

I love soup season! (and with snow today, it's definitely soup season here! I guess we're not "winterpeg" for nothing.)

Carey, FWIW, the CI Black Bean Soup is fabulous -- it's one of our favorites (although I've only made the stove top version).

I usually buy it at a local health food store; not a place i go a lot (more processed food then a McDonalds....) but good for some stuff like that. I do think I got it at sobeys once too, though Sobeys vary quite a bit in what they carry.

PK