Workday Gourmet

Gourmet food on a budget, that is easy enough to make after a long workday :)

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Easiest Thai Curry Ever

on October 05, 2018

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Workday Gourmet: Hi, my name's Cheryl. I'm a software engineer with a full time corporate job, a part time app dev side gig, an enthusiasm for good food, and not a ton of time or patience.

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Easy Nacho with DIY Sodium Citrate!

If you're a fan of melted cheese, in the form of nacho, chili cheese fries, or movie theatre pretzels with cheese dips, you've probably heard of Sodium Citrate , the emulsifier that makes American cheese melt so wonderfully. If you haven't heard of it, don't get scared away by the "chemical" name. If table salt doesn't worry you, swapping out the chloride for citrate really shouldn't make the salt more alarming. If you ever buy the product in its purified powdered form, it just tastes like sour salt. The downside of this trendy kitchen helper is it's near impossible to find in regular grocery stores. As always, buying on amazon can cost a premium, and if you're like me, you had your doubts on whether you want to commit to a 2lb bag of this stuff when you already know how to make a roux. I have good news for you. You can make your own sodium citrate with ingredients you can find in any ordinary chain grocery. Combine baking soda (sodium bica...

Caneles made easy, relatively - no beeswax, no copper mold, no 48hr resting!

Caneles are little rum cakes with a crunchy caramelized exterior and a custardy center. Commonly known as Caneles de Bordeaux , they were a wine-country specialty, to use up all the leftover egg yolks, as egg whites are frequently used as a "fining" agent in wine production. You can learn more about the fining process here . In a nutshell, the albumin in egg whites binds to hydroxyl groups found in tannin, causing the particles to settle; the sediments are then removed by racking . As a byproduct to fine wine, we got some fine custard-based desserts. Traditionally, caneles are made in copper molds that are coated with beeswax - both can be a challenge for casual home cooks. Food-grade beeswax is genuinely difficult to find in the US. I couldn't even find any reliable source on Amazon, as most products are labeled "cosmetic-grade". Copper molds are crazy expensive to buy - authentic French-made ones cost ~$30 each . Unless you can write off a set of 12 as a...

Neapolitan Pizza Experiment: 00 Flour vs Bread Flour vs All-Purpose Flour

Neapolitan pizza is a truly unique dish that demands (and deserves) its own cookware. Authentic recipe requires wood-fire for the smokey flavor, and 00 flour for the one-of-a-kind crust. Baked in a high temperature oven (~500C/900F), a 12 inch pizza cooks in under 2minutes. The result is a light, airy, bubbly crust that is unlike any US-style pizza. Though increasingly popular in the US, 00 flour isn't exactly commonplace in grocery stores yet, especially outside big cities and yuppie suburbs. You can find them in Wegman's or Whole Foods, but probably not every budget grocery. They are also quite a bit pricier than regular all-purpose or bread flour, which I'm sure begs the question among newbie pizza makers: are they worth it? Will I be able to tell the difference? And also, what is the best substitute in lieu of the real deal? I tested out the 00 flour alongside all-purpose and bread flour to find out. The obvious difference in the results prompted me to do more resea...

School Lunch Cheese Sticks - You know you miss them!

School lunch cheese sticks were such childhood favorite, I still remember them all these years later, and the fact that we apparently can't buy them easily just makes me want them more. FYI, you can apparently buy max pizza sticks from amazon in bulk - but pack of 192 is bit too much for my freezer. As much as the serving size of 2 sticks at a time in school never felt enough, baking them half a dozen at a time is plenty for my household. My recipe will make at least 6 pizza sticks, with extra dough, that you can trim and make more cheese sticks or mini pizza. Additionally, I'd like to share a few hacks for minimum-knead, easy same-day pizza dough. No sticky mess, no planning ahead required! First of all, let autolyse take care of most of the kneading for you. Resting a rough dough for at least 20 minutes will yield a dough that is softer, less sticky, and easier to knead to smooth stage, by allowing flour enzyme to work on the protein bond for you. One thing to keep i...

Ahi Tuna Poke! Such Fad, Much Ease

I was square in the poke-trend-hating squad for the past decade. It was to me the embodiment of everything annoying about the hipster culture - overpriced low-effort product that people rave nonstop because it's cool. It was the culinary modern art. At last my inner cheapo finally resolved to do something about this ripoff trend that I so resented: by making my own, and urging everyone to make their own. Disclaimer: consumption of raw or under-cooked seafood may increase risk of foodborne illness. Now, if you're reading this you're probably both aware & willing to take your chances. You can minimize your risk by: 1) purchase "sushi grade" tuna that were previously frozen and processed with likely higher hygienic standards, but cost something like $36/lb & require a trip to specialty stores, or 2) purchase the much cheaper, more ubiquitous, previously (or still) frozen tuna steak & then salt-cure it before using. In a nutshell, freezing kil...

No-Lump Cacio e Pepe - Explaining Common Failures and the Fix

If you've been to Rome, and came back and tried this out based on the instruction you've heard from Rome, odds are you've had a couple batches that looked nothing like the creamy, smooth, luscious goodness that allegedly was achievable with just cheese and pasta water, with no cream or butter. Nothing says "simple does not equal easy" as loudly as Cacio e Pepe. Not even the infamously temperamental soft scrambled eggs, because honestly, slightly over cooked eggs are still pretty tasty if you're not being snooty, but lumpy, unemulsified Cacio e Pepe is genuinely not enjoyable, aside from being entirely not presentable. To avoid wasting food, I've "cheated" with butter, oil, cream, even a béchamel sauce to salvage the lumpy pasta. But a tasty mac and cheese is no Cacio e Pepe. The taste of Rome can only be achieved with the traditional simple ingredients the recipe calls for: pecorino, pepper, pasta, plus salt & water that the pasta is co...

Sweet Rice Wine for Newbies - Easy Variations from Traditions, & Chemistry Explained!

Sweet rice wine is a young, low-alcohol dessert wine that is remarkably sweet and fruity in flavor, for something that's derived purely from rice, with no added sugar or juice. Almost anyone who tried sweet rice wine for the first time will tell you they would not have imagined this is made from just rice. The flavor is akin to lychee juice, or lightly fermented yogurt drinks (think Calpico or Yakult) . This flavor resemblance was recorded as early as 800AD, by the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi in his Introduction to Lychee. Before the age of mass produced table sugar or modern transportation for fresh fruits, being able to get something this sweet and flavorful from the humble starchy grains was something to treasure. The mechanism is simple - cooked rice is introduced to rice wine yeast, which contains strands of oryzae fungi, which secretes the enzyme amylase that breaks down the starchy polysaccharide into shorter disaccharide (maltose) or monosaccharide (glu...

Copycat Trader Joe's Sweet Corn Arepa (Arepas de Choclo)

The most typical arepa that you will find on the back of commercial masarepa packages and from top search results, is a three-ingredient cornbread. You mix masarepa (precooked cornmeal), water, and salt. Grill the cornbread on a griddle, slices it up like an english muffin, and stuff it with various meats and veggies. This classic savory sandwich is absolutely delicious in its own way, yet will not hit the spot if the Trader Joe's version is what you're trying to replicate at home. Turns out, there are many styles and variations of arepas. The TJ's version is closer to Arepas de Choclo , sweet corn cakes served with cheese. The sweetness is largely imparted by grounded sweet corn in place of cornmeal. While both varieties are basically ground up corn made into patties, timing of the grounds makes a big difference. When corns reach peak sugar development, or are picked off the plant, enzymes in the corn immediately begins to convert sugar in the kern...

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