#kitchen experiments

[perfectlyvalid49]

Today in the Bad Ideas in the Kitchen dept:

Can we make caramels out of eggnog or am I about to make some very sweet scrambled eggs?

[chelseaschatterbox]

So recently I learned how to make my own soy milk. It's great! I've made it a few times now and think I've gotten the hang of it.

And recently my pigeon pea bush has been producing many beans. I have so many beans. (Pigeon peas are also known as gandules in Puerto Rico or toor dal in India) So I thought, can you make pea milk out of pigeon peas? It's just like any other bean or nut milk, right? I couldn't find anything on the Internet saying yay or nay. Let's try it!

This is not good. There is a reason people do not use pigeon peas to make pea milk. It's like if you boiled some beans and just drank the water from the pan. Maybe the pulp could be used to make something savory, idk. I documented my journey to find out if it could be done, in case others were wondering the same thing. Verdict: don't

[mangosensei]

Garlic Bread

Wohoo! I love garlic bread!

Naturally, I did try to make it at home!

The oven instructions below are based on the generic recipe but were modified as I tried to recreate them myself. The pan and the air fryer instructions, on the other hand, are solely based on the oven instructions and modified to fit the new cooking method... if that makes sense? lol aka the pan and air fryer instructions are recipes off the top of my head and not very thought out!

Ingredients:

bread butter garlic (cloves, minced, or powder will do) parmesan cheese parsley seasoning (whatever you want to put)

Instructions (oven):

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice the bread lengthwise and place it on top of a baking sheet.

In a small bowl, combine the butter, garlic, seasoning, and cheese. Spread evenly on each side of the garlic bread.

Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until butter is melted/simmering.

Garnish with parsley. Serve.

Instructions (pan):

Place the butter, garlic, cheese, seasoning, and parsley on a pan.

After mixing thoroughly, place the bread face down on top of the mixture.

Check every few minutes for the desired appearance, or until the bread is golden brown. The mixture should stick onto the bread, et voilà, serve!

Instructions (air fyer):

Evenly place the butter, garlic, cheese, seasoning, and parsley on the bread.

Heat on the air fyer at 300F for 4-5 minutes. Adjust the heat and/or time according to your preferred texture and appearance. The higher the heat and the longer the time, the crispier the bread becomes.

Serve.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Chicken, bacon, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, alfredo sauce, garlic Parmesan sauce, and penne pasta :)

Dinner tonight turned out ~*tasty*~ :)

[clatterbane]

Latest little kitchen experiment finally gotten around to! 👍

For whatever reason, Splenda is just not readily available in stores here. (Though it does show up in some commercial foods.) And it's the least nasty artificial sweetener to my taste that I have tried. I end up using it a lot in drinks, especially.

So, since the tablets I carried from the UK were getting low? I ended up just ordering a bag of pure sucralose powder pretty cheap, pulled out my trusty diabetic drug dealer scales and a tiny funnel, and diluted some of that into water to make my own liquid sweetener.

Using somebody else's reckoning as a guideline, I decided to try 1.25g of sweet stuff in a 10mL bottle. Starting with a smallish quantity to test it out, and also for freshness since I just used tap water.

That did give me something totally acceptable, which does taste like the rough equivalent of two drops per teaspoon of sugar. (Or per commercial Splenda tablet, more like!) Which was what I was aiming for.

And that leaves 98g+ of powder left in the bag! Also short the little bit I spilled on the counter. For under $10 for the whole thing, plus a little fiddling.

[gleefully-macabre]

The bowl of my $5 food processor cracked! I got one last mega-batch of hummus out of it, at least. 2 dozen servings I’m freezing so they last longer. I’d say it was worth the 5 bucks.

Mr Glee told me to “just get a real food processor”, so I’m Shopping.

I can’t imagine needing 12 cups of ANYTHING.

[phlegm-the-alcoholic-dreg]

So I decided to channel my inner iron chef, and try making sushi...

Not a horrible first attempt. The prep was a little out of my comfort zone, but they held together at least!

[js589]

When the Joy of Cooking is like, “you can add lemon zest to your chocolate swirl banana bread to make it a little more fancy!” and I’m like, “or I could add passionfruit/citrus syrup and vanilla...”

It was a very good idea. Highly recommended.