November 2020 Challenge: One Pot Wonder

[butzy]

Right,
So I am sitting by my lonesome in a house that isn't mine, but with decent internet.
Yes, I'm in quarantaine. Just precaution. I flew from Africa to Europe and they consider me high risk, despite corona-free certificate and the like.
Anyway, there are some dishes to come....

Up now:
My attemp at turning an Indonesian dish into a meal including starch. Don't worry, the easy ones: Nasi goreng and Bami goreng are still to come.

My ingredient:
Onion, garlic, belly pork, leek, potatoes, sambal badjak - extra hot, and ketjap manis (sweet soy)
..

Fried the belly pork in its own fat and removed from the pan.


Peeled and grated the potatoes, then squeezed out the liquid.
I made a mistake here and should have rinsed the potatoes. The idea was to have crispy, almost individual strands. Instead, I now know how to make rosti
Anyway, they were sort of fried in the belly pork fat, then removed.


The potatoes tool up most of the oil, so I had some more. Fried the onion, garlic and leek. Then remembered I had some mushrooms, so added those as well


Fried it all up, added sambal and ketjap and fried till most liquid had evaporated


Bit dark in colour (obviously), so added some tomatoes


And that's it:


Very tasty, a bit rich, so next time I make it or something like it, I will do the potato thing right, and I'll probably have some white rice with it.

 

[harpua]

I think it was maaslander, extra mature, almost like an over-aged one. you can hardly cut it without it crumbling

Reminds me of Beemster. Looks good.

 

[mike9]

Man - almost dropped the ball on this one tonight. I had some leftover mussel meats from the other night and my wife suggested a clam chowder with mussels. Okay - besides I love any recipe that starts with bacon - there I said it - LOL. So - Shell Fish Chowder for 2:

Two slices of bacon fried off in a small pot, remove to drain. Diced onion, celery and garlic in the drippings, add thyme and parsley, a little salt, but a good grind of pepper, cover and let sweat. Add an 8oz. bottle of clam juice, some of the juice of a can of chopped clams (reserve some for slurry), three, or four small canned potatoes diced, one slice of the bacon torn, cover and simmer a bit then turn off the heat and do something else for a while.

OK - time to make the dish! Bring the pot to the simmer and mix a scant teaspoon of corn starch in the reserved clam juice, 1 Tbs of butter, bring to the boil and stir, add 1/4C of heavy cream and reduce the heat. Added the reserved clams and mussels, a pinch of white pepper, a pinch of Hondashi and a splash each of Fish Sauce and Worcestershire. Top with a the reserved bacon and . . . delicious!! Perfect for a Fall day:

 

[butzy]

Another one-vessel meal.
Pretty easy and straight forward.
Heat a cast iron plate over the fire.
Put your potatoes on there (cut, washed, drained and sprinkled with olive oil)
Put them on the hot plate and relax for a while as they need longest


Cut the mushrooms, take the chicken out of the marinade (piri-piri sauce - garlic - lime juice and oil)
Cut the leek and arrange them with the 1/2 to 3/4 done potatoes


And then it's time to eat

 

[millionsknives]

Did you know you don't need Thanksgiving to cook and eat a tray of stuffing by yourself?

Key features
-martins potato bread (less sodium than normal stuffing)
-unsalted chicken stock
-onion
-celery

and the salty parts
-smoked sausage
-oysters and the oyster liquor of course

 

[mike9]

I make stuffing several times a year. Mine differs from yours though. I use a rustic, peasant bread, corn bread, onion, celery, sausage, thyme, sage, stock, and Craisin's.

When it comes to the oysters I make a creamed corn and oyster pudding that came from beyond my Grandmother It's an easy, wonderful recipe and some folks ask me to make it again.

 

[mike9]

I was going to sous vide a piece of beef tenderloin, but decided to sear it off in the same wok I was doing the other ingredients so it would qualify.

Mise en place: onion, red pepper, celery, and garlic. [missing is leftover rice, chicken broth and rice vinegar]

X-tra virgin coconut oil and the contents of that meat bag (garlic and thyme)

Meat comes out and goes takes a nap then the veg goes in. Next we add the Umami - (bottles), then the chicken broth/corn starch slurry and keep that tool moving 'cause it don't take long . . .

Well the loin rested and the chow was excellent.

 

[butzy]

An incredibly simple one-pot dish, though not as easy as the cup-a-noodles .

I peeled and cut the potatoe, and boiled them together with some juniper berries, till they were done. Then added the sauerkraut (bought this time) and put the sausage on top (Veluwse rookworst).
I continued on the stove till everything was heated through properly.
Then drained and eat with some gravy, left over from making baby meatballs earlier in the day.



Simple and tasty!

 

[brianshaw]

Ahem... Mike and Millions... DRESSING. Ha Ha; not intended to start a fist-fight. Whatever it’s called... it’s a meal in itself and always the best part of a holiday feast!

 

[mike9]

Mox nix

 

[harpua]

Chicken herb meatball rice soup. So good. It tastes like stuffing (or DRESSING) in soup form. Delicious.

Meatballs are just ground chicken, parm, dried herbs, breadcrumbs, s&p. Good texture.

 

[phatch]

Ham fried rice has emptied the fridge

 

[teamfat]

It was pretty cold the other morning, making me think of soup. Nice, hot soup. I've not done a french onion for a while, so I did.

The Players

Basically French Onion soup is carmalized onions simmered in beef stock. So you need beef and onions.



Thought I'd give short rib stock a try. And when the pot of soup was done cooking, went for the classic gratinee approach.



Used emmantaler and gruyere for the cheeses.


The Process

First off the beef was roasted in the pot for about an hour or so, 425F, turning once.



Pulled out the ribs, reserved the rendered fat in a bowl. Let the pot cool a bit, sliced off some of the meat and snacked on it. Tasty.

Put the ribs back in the cooled pot and covered with cold water. Onto the little back burner to steep for a couple hours. Sliced off the top 1/4 or so of the onions, added them to the stock, along with black peppercorns, bay leaf, some carrot and celery. Let that all steep for about an hour.



Poured out the stock through a strainer, got a nice batch. During thee steeping of the stock I did the most tedious of the tasks involved - slicing the onions. Of course, thinking of that scene in Julie and Julia.



Poured the beef fat back into the blue pot, added some onions, a sprinkle of salt, some onions, a sprinkle of salt, until I had, oh, 2.4 quarts of onions in the pot.



And put it over low heat to cook a while. The first few stirs, about 10 - 15 minutes apart were a bit tricky. But the onions started cooking down.



And finally after about two hours, had this in the pot. Could have gone a little darker.



Poured in about a half cup of dry vermouth, let it cook until syrupy. Poured in 2 quarts of the beef stock, gave it several grinds of black pepper. Medium low heat for about half an hour.

Odd I don't have a picture of the finished pot of soup. Oh well, so it goes. Ladled some into a bowl, put the baguette slices in the toaster oven. Julia, who was with me in spirit the entire time, reminded me she liked a splash of a little something in the soup before doing the crouton thing. I had some cognac.

Croutons cover the soup, grated cheeses piled on, hit the broiler.

The Product



A basic soup, very few ingredients compared to many, a bit time consuming to do it the classic way. And worth every single second spent on getting it done!

mjb.

ps: I enjoyed my French onion soup, which originated in Italy, with a glass of Spanish tempranillo.

 

[koukouvagia]

@harpua you have my attention!

 

[harpua]

I made French onion soup too, and I even presented the finished soup with croutons and bubbly gruyere in one pot like a casserole, but I was too distracted by the thought of eating it I forgot to snap a photo. Here's what I did get. I even used a loaf of my own sourdough.

Onions, thyme, bay, sherry, beef broth, sourdough, gruyere.

 

[teamfat]

Yikes! Only 5 more days left in November. And I still want to make some crock pot Italian beef sandwiches, some classic beef stew, pozole, Ethiopian doro wat, miso clam soup, red cooked pork belly, ropa vieja, paella, black eye peas and hamhocks, a Jamaican influenced curried goat, a take on ramen, ...

I did get a chicken and noodles dish done, hope to post that when I get home from work later.

But it is Thanksgiving here in the states, working on a small ( 3 pound ) turkey breast for my wife and I. Got home from work about 4 hours ago after a quick stop at the market, got the turkey stock underway.



I got the breast trimmed up and seasoned, now resting in the garage fridge.



The hunk on the left went into the stockpot with some necks, the hunk on the right slathered in herb and garlic butter.



Time for a quick nap, want to eat around 6 pm, so need to wake up around 3:30 to finish up the prep, get the turkey in the oven around 4:30. We'll see how it goes.

mjb.

 

[teamfat]

A take on another comfort classic, 3 pepper chicken and noodles.

The Players



One needs chicken, of course.



And the three peppers as well. I used fresh caribe, a pickled habanero and dried aleppo.

The Process

First off I poached the chicken thighs for about 30 minutes in my trusty blue pot.



Scooped out the chicken, set aside in a bowl to cool. Turned off the heat, went and sat at the computer for a while. Came back when chicken was cool enough to pull off the bone. The thigh meat stayed in the bowl, the bones and skin went back into the pot. Added some of the onion, bay leaf, black peppercorns, carrots. Steeped for about an hour, then strained the broth. Meanwhile diced the caribes and remaining onion. They went into the pot with some butter to saute a bit. They came out, mushrooms went in.



Took a couple batches to do all the shrooms. Then the sauteed veggies, the finely diced habanero, all the mushrooms and some of the broth get added, seasoned a bit and simmered for a while. Meanwhile, the noodles.



A cup of flour, couple pinches of salt get mixed up, two large eggs cracked into the bowl. Dough formed, kneaded, rested, cut into fat little noodles.



Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, add to the pot with the noodles. Simmered for about 10 - 12 minutes, until noodles were done.



The Product

Dished up a bowl of it.



Turned out a bit more soupy, sometimes I forget that fresh home made noodles don't absorb nearly as much liquid as the very dry store bought stuff. But the flavor was spot on, and those fat little noodles were just what I wanted! And in the beginning I pulled two of the pickled habs out of the jar, but decided to use only one. Good choice, the heat as done was just right.


On a technical note of sorts, even though I used the one pot for all the cooking, is it really in the spirit of a one pot dish? You know, you put everything in the pot and let it cook. None of this put something in, take it out, put something else in, take it out, and then at the end put it all back in to finish cooking. Kind of seems like cheating almost. but the end result is some good food!

mjb.

 

[brianshaw]

One pot is one pot... why split hairs?

That dish is what I recall my South Georgia cousins saying was their favorite home cooked meal. Sadly, I never tasted it because my Aunt would never make it for me. She considered it “too humble” for a visitor from the North. I loved visiting my Southern kin but that always made me just a bit sad.

 

[mike9]

Coming down to it - I'm not sure I have another one . . . Hmmm I just remembered I have a rabbit thawing since yesterday. It ought to be ready tomorrow so who knows.

 

[butzy]

Nasi goreng (friied rice - Indonesia)