bunsen_h

This is a "pot-in-pot" recipe, requiring a cooking pot inside the Instant Pot. This is functionally similar to a double boiler; the food is heated by steam, rather than directly by the Instant Pot's heating element. This is necessary to allow the gooey dairy mixture to be cooked without burning. (I use a thin-walled stainless-steel inner pot. A heavier inner pot, or one made from non-metallic materials, might affect the cooking time.) Further, it's necessary to put some kind of lid on that inner pot, to prevent the pudding from absorbing the steam and leaving no water to do the cooking with. I do this by putting an appropriately-sized plate on top of the inner pot.

The addition of skim milk powder gives the final result 50% more protein, by volume, than plain milk has.

4½ c (1 L) milk
1 c (100 g, 225 mL) skim milk powder
Spices to taste. This is highly variable. I usually use something like 2 tsp ginger and 1 tsp cinnamon, with a dash of nutmeg.
1 c (155 g, 225 mL) fine cornmeal

First, it's necessary to get the milk almost to the boiling point. I do this in a microwave oven, in the container I'll be using to store the finished pudding, stirring every few minutes. It could also be done on the stove (medium heat with stirring), or even in the Instant Pot: in the inner pot, on the trivet with 1 cup of water in the Instant Pot, bring it up to a low pressure, then let it cool.

While the milk is heating, mix the dry ingredients. When the milk is ready, pour the dry mixture into it, stirring quickly. The mixture should thicken rapidly. When it's thick enough that the solids won't settle out, pour it into the inner pot (if it isn't there already).

Add 1 cup of water to the Instant Pot, then place the inner pot on the trivet in the Pot. Cover the inner pot with whatever lid you have for it. Cook on the "Pressure Cook" setting for 15 minutes. Wait until the pressure drops naturally, then open.

Makes about 5½ cups (1300 mL).

Crossposts: https://bunsen-h.livejournal.com/157386.html

4½ c (1 L) milk
1 c (100 g, 225 mL) skim milk powder
Spices to taste. This is highly variable. When my wife is feeling very nauseated, I use 4 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, and ¼ tsp each of ground allspice and nutmeg, which gives a result that for me is too strongly spiced to be palatable. For myself, I use about one quarter to one half of those amounts. Sometimes for variety I will also add a dash of cloves or coriander, or a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Adding ¼ c of cocoa or carob powder makes for a pleasant change.
1 c (200 g, 225 mL) regular rice (I use jasmine)
¼ c (50 g, 50 mL) sugar (I use equal amounts brown and white sugar) or equivalent in calorie-free sweetener

Pour the milk into the inner pot. Combine the milk powder and spices to give a homogeneous mixture. Add this to the milk, slowly to avoid getting lumps -- I find that by sprinkling the mixture gradually over the milk, it mixes in fairly readily, and in the long run this saves me the trouble of having to break up the lumps. Stir in the rice and sweetener.

Add 1 cup of water to the Instant Pot, then place the inner pot on the trivet in the Pot. Cook on the "Pressure Cook" setting for 4 minutes. Wait until the pressure drops naturally, then open, remove the inner pot, and stir the pudding to break up the lumps. (You can also run this over night, and mix the next morning; if you do this, you may want to add a bit more milk at that time.)

Makes about 5½ cups (1300 mL).

Crossposts: https://bunsen-h.livejournal.com/156938.html

It would not have occurred to me that one might create permanganate at home by dissolving steel wool in bleach. Nevertheless: I've got that distinctive grape-juice colour that first-year chem students at Queen's used to ask me "is this a purple solution?" about.

I probably won't bother to try to save and purify it; it's likely to be much more fuss than it's worth, I don't need it, it's relatively chemically unstable and would probably decompose before I got to play with it. My intended product is the rust, ferric oxide. With which I will make ferric chloride, by dissolving it in hydrochloric acid. With which I will make jelly.

I have also made some cupric (copper⁺²) chloride by dissolving fine copper wire in hydrochloric acid with hydrogen peroxide. Combined with ascorbic acid extracted from vitamin C tablets, I'll be making copper nanoparticle jelly. The two jellies combined can be used to copper-plate stainless steel so it can be soldered onto.

From there, I hope to be able to build a light-up propeller for my bike helmet. I'm having some trouble sourcing some of the stainless steel bits, not to mention having to revise my designs as I discover that some items simply aren't available. I've already gone through a fair bit of hassle getting some T-pins that were supposed to be stainless steel, only to discover (on prior testing, because I'm suspicious) that they were just ordinary nickel-plated regular steel and rusted rapidly when scratched. (The seller tried to insist that their product was stainless and that I must have switched the pins. Then that, well, yes, their stuff rusted, but it was still stainless, just really low-quality stainless. "Of course if you scratch off the protective layer it rusts!")

Experiment: large-flake oats cooked by steam alone in a pressure cooker for about 25 minutes + cool-down time.

Result: the oats were dry, slightly darker than before, not much moisture seemed to have been absorbed. When the oats were subsequently cooked with water as usual, they absorbed less water than usual and "fluffed up" noticeably. Apparently the structure of the flakes was "loosened" by the steam, and/or more moisture had been absorbed than was apparent. This is more or less what the "modified" means in phrases such as "modified starch".

Conclusion: this does not appear to be a very useful way of cooking rolled oats.

Oh well, not all experiments are "successful", and my curiosity has been relieved.

Friday is "Pi day", March 14th AKA 3/14.

I'm trying but failing to think of a way of baking a Klein pie. I think one would need to find a way of supporting the empty crust/shell while it's being baked, remove the support, then add the filling. The only real alternative would be to use a semi-solid filling and shape it with the crust for baking, which might actually be easier if an appropriate filling is available.

I've been playing around with a tortilla press I bought a few weeks ago,

mentisiterinvit had been missing the soft corn tortillas she had grown up with, and it wasn't until after I ordered it that I found a local store that sold the tortillas (La Tiendita, on Merivale just south of Carling).

My first couple of tries weren't very successful. I didn't have the right materials — I had regular corn flour, instead of masa harina (which is made from corn that has been treated with lime) — and I was unsure of my techniques. I didn't know the proper consistency for the dough, and I didn't know how to stop things from sticking together. My first batch were too thick; I think that was partly because I was making the dough too rigid, in an attempt to get it to hold together.

My second batch of tortillas were done with chick pea flour... because tortillas can be made with many different kinds of flour, not just corn. But again, the tortillas were coming out of the press thicker than they should have been. They don't taste very nice, either — not cooked properly. They're okay when eaten with lentil dishes.

But this evening, I was finally getting close. I was following a recipe on a package of masa harina, so I was at least starting with the right consistency for the dough. A few notes:

The dough should be rather soft, like cookie dough.

Use a ball of dough about the size of a golf ball, to make a 6" tortilla.

Press the dough between two sheets of heavy plastic film, such as an opened-up clear milk bag.

Peel the top sheet off the dough. Flip the dough and remaining sheet over, onto one's "off" hand. Then, using that hand to support the tortilla, peel the remaining sheet off it. Then flip the tortilla onto the griddle.

I'm going to keep playing with this. There are many other kinds of flour to try, now that I know better what I'm doing.

A little while ago, I posted about my experience with President's Choice soba noodles, which seemed to be of inferior quality and had wheat flour listed first in its ingredients, ahead of buckwheat.

Yesterday evening, we stopped at the T&T supermarket to stock up on more genuine soba noodles. We were surprised to discover that all of the soba noodles on sale seemed to have wheat flour listed first. We eventually bought packages of noodles that at least didn't have other things listed ahead of buckwheat, such as tapioca starch, and had a darker colour.

Muffin batter can be cooked in waffle irons.

You'd probably want to avoid recipes that have large lumps or solid bits. For example, for something like carrot muffins with walnut pieces, the nuts should be well-chopped.

ETA: "Muffles"? "Waffins"?

Höon der böon de bakin de babee

The doll was sitting out in the car on a cold afternoon of Christmas eve, and needed to be wrapped. But water kept condensing on it, dampening the wrappings. Solution: a few minutes in a preheated warm oven.

Höon der böon der cöokin de cøøws

Ginger snaps, shaped with a cookie cutter from "La Vache que Rit".

One of these cows is not like the others. Can you spot the difference?

The Japanese word "soba" means "buckwheat". Most Westerners, if they know the word at all, know it in the context of "soba noodles". Real soba noodles are made with buckwheat alone, or in some cases about up to about 20% wheat.

It appears that the folks at Loblaws product development are among those who don't know it. President's Choice "soba noodles" have wheat flour first in their ingredients list, followed by buckwheat.

I've noticed that a lot of the ready-to-cook food items now carry warnings about how well-cooked the food has to be to be safe.

But how do I measure the internal temperature of, say, ravioli immersed in boiling water, to make sure that it's at least 74°C? (Just 73° wouldn't be safe. Or just waiting until it floats and has a reasonable texture for eating.) Or the internal temperature of a pizza in the oven? These would be tricky to measure even with the resources of a well-equipped lab.

All day, Jane had been wandering around in a gloom, ever since Mary Poppins had stopped her from making the cupcake full of solid nitroglycerine. Not actually crying, but depressed, her mouth set in a bit of a frown.

Suddenly, an idea came to Michael. He found Jane, who just looked at him — she was upset that he hadn't taken her side.

"D'you think..." he started. "Do you think, if we put fins on it, it would fly?"

After a moment, she smiled, just a bit.

Sometimes the dreams are weird. And sometimes they wake me up, because... hmm.

An ice-cream cone cup, classic truncated-cone shape. Filled with meringue with a conical peak. Three or four fins at the bottom, made of vanilla wafer, glued on with royal icing. And a type-D model rocket engine inserted through a hole in the bottom. It would work. Probably.

"Cake Canaveral".

Edible rocketry. This is definitely Muppet Labs material.

(Solid nitroglycerine is not very safe, if it's actually crystalline nitro. When it's solid because it's adsorbed onto an inert material such as clay, that's dynamite, which is somewhat less unsafe; thank you, Mr. Nobel. What my dream was calling "solid nitroglycerine" was actually some kind of black-powder substance. It would burn quickly, but not detonate.)

I have a serious allergy to sesame. (Mostly, it seems, to the seeds rather than to the oil; as with many allergies, it's the proteins that cause the problem.) I'm careful to check ingredient lists for sesame, and also for tahini (which is just sesame paste).

A few weeks ago, I bought a stack of heat-and-serve Indian food packets. At 300g apiece, one of them makes a decent meal when combined with pasta or rice. They're convenient to bring along to places where I can't get a good meal at a reasonable price, such as visiting a friend in the hospital, and have good flavour and reasonable nutritional value. They're not very expensive, usually between $1.50 and $2, and have an unrefrigerated shelf life of a year or two. And though sesame doesn't seem to be used much in Indian cookery (according to staff at Indian restaurants I've been to), I did check the ingredients before I bought them.

This evening, I was heating up the contents of a packet of a pineapple sweet and sour curry in the microwave oven. Sounded yummy; I'd been looking forward to trying that one. While I was waiting for the food to finish heating, for lack of anything else to read (and needing to be reading something, as usual), I was looking over the food package again. And the word "sesame" caught my eye in the French ingredients list... as in, "Graines de sesame hydrogenee", between "Piment rouge" and "Moutarde". I went back to the English version: "Red chilli, Gingelly, Mustard". Then the German version: "Cayennepfeffer, Til, Senf".

It never occurred to me that "gingelly" wasn't... well, just some kind of spice I'd never heard of. I thought it might be a misspelling of "galingale". If anything, it reminds me of Allan McFee and "Mom Nifkin's jellied gin". Who knew that it meant sesame? Apart from everyone who speaks... Hindi, I suppose.

That "hydrogenated sesame seeds" in French just sounds weird. But I don't know if they mean the oil instead of the seed, or if there was some other kind of translating error. I decided that it wasn't safe for me to eat that dish — sure, a hospital is the best place to be when you're having an anaphylactic attack, but really, it's better just not to go there. Instead, I got an overpriced slice of wilted substandard vegetarian pizza from the cafeteria and picked out as much of the onion and olives as I could.

Now I think I need to find all the possible translations of "sesame" in current use, so I can be more careful to avoid them. I learned two more this evening: "gingelly" (and several spelling variants) and "til". (I note that my German dictionary translates "sesame" to "Indischer Sesam", i.e., "Indian sesame", which is doubly weird.)

beable wondered if the flour scattered on my kitchen counter was because I'd been doing baking or divination.

Baking, actually. But we discussed what divination-by-flour would be called. My first suggestion was "farinomancy". Beable then checked on the Greek root, and suggested "aleuromancy".

It turns out that "aleuromancy" is the correct name and is a classic historic method of divination. Go figure.

It should not be confused with "ailuromancy".

Aside: Another phone spammer this morning, trying to sell me a promotional cell phone system, via a pair of phone calls full of garble and dropouts and cut-offs. The first call was so bad that I was getting working sound less than 10% of the time. Why do they bother?

A weird dream this morning ended with my discovering that an unbroken puff pastry contained small custard-filled puff pastries, sort of like the miniature cream puffs that one can buy.

This leads me to wonder if it might actually be feasible? Freeze the little custard-filled things solid, put them inside puff pastry dough, bake quickly? As with Baked Alaska and deep-fried ice cream, rely on the freezing of the centre to keep it from change while the outside is cooked?

My best-guess recollection of what went into the chick pea stew I served last night:

3 cups dried chick peas (garbanzo beans)
1 cup dried white beans (navy beans)
½ cup peanut butter
¼ cup vegetable oil (I used canola)
1 tbsp whole mustard seed
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp ground ginger
3 tbsp crushed chilis
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp soy sauce
1½ cup diced carrots
¼ cup chick pea flour

Soak the beans in water overnight, drain, then cook in 8 cups water in slow cooker — on high to bring to a boil, then 4 hours on high, then simmer on low. Once water comes to a boil, skim off foam, and add peanut butter, oil, and spices. After reducing heat to low, add lemon juice, salt, soy sauce, and carrots. After another couple of hours, if the liquid is too thin, thicken with chick pea flour mixed with a bit of water.

After slightly less than a day, my Hallowe'en jack o'lantern was converted to a nice rich soup. Ars brevis, arse longa.

Ginger Pumpkin Soup

1 medium pumpkin (will not all be used; or, 12 cups pumpkin pulp)
water
2 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp powdered mustard
1½ tsp salt
2 tsp freshly-ground pepper
250 mL table cream (18% milk fat)
4 eggs

Halve pumpkin; remove seeds. Place halves cut-side down in shallow baking dishes or on cookie sheets with rims; bake for 1 hour at 350°F. Rotate pumpkin halves so cut sides are upward; bake for another ½ hour.

Scoop pumpkin flesh from the rind. Run about ²/₃ of it -- this should be about 12 cups, packed -- through a blender or food processor, adding enough water that the result can flow slowly. (The remaining pumpkin is not needed for this recipe.) Put the result in a large slow cooker; mix in spices and bring to a simmer. If necessary, add more water to give a thick soup. Mix in the cream.

Beat 2 of the eggs, and mix in about the same volume of hot soup, then add the mixture back to the crock put with good stirring. Repeat for the other 2 eggs. Bring back to a simmer.

Serve as-is or over chunks of bread.

1½ c uncooked white rice
7 c milk
1 c sugar (half white, half brown)
½ c raisins
1½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp salt

Combine in slow cooker. Cook on high for 2½ - 3 hours. The pudding should be quite thick, and slightly caramelized at the bottom closest to the heating element in the cooker. Note that this could burn if left too long, since the pudding is immobile in its later stages. (For more animated puddings, see: Shoggoths, Calvin and Hobbes.)

Probably doesn't need to be stirred, but I did stir it a couple of times. It came out a bit sweeter than I like; next time I'll reduce the sugar.

The recipes that I adapted this from included a lot of butter, and suggested serving with cream or whipped cream. The originals were also for much smaller quantities, which to me seemed a waste of effort and energy. My slow cooker could probably have handled double these amounts, but there's only so much rice pudding I can eat.

Every time I see the word "prorogue" I think of Ukrainian/Russian dumplings stuffed with mashed potatoes and cheese or mushrooms.

I'm not sure what prorogi should be stuffed with, though.

The evolution of the edible googly eyes:

Edible googly eyes for uneven non-soft foods.

(I left a bunch of an earlier version for the post-

farthingparty "Survivors' Party".)

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Entries tagged with cooking

Instant Pot Cornmeal Pudding

Instant Pot Rice Pudding

Home cooking

Steamed oats

Pi filling

Gluten-free options: soft tortillas

Soba second thought

The global muffin-industrial complex does not want you to know...

Swedish cookery

Soba reflection

Food prep

To the MOON, Mary Poppins

Dodged a bullet

Divination

Nested

Chick pea stew

Ginger Pumpkin Soup

Slow-cooker Rice Pudding

Prorogi

Not your usual google