I have Black Sea by Caroline Eden. It’s as much of a travelogue as a cookbook, so it does make for an entertaining read. You might guess that it doesn’t cover the entire Balkan region…just the parts around the Black Sea.
It’s certainly not grandmas secret, but everything I’ve made from there has at least been well received by Romanians. Then again, it’s as good of a starting point as an American BBQ cookbook if you read it with the understanding that similar ingredients might yield quite different results regionally.
Not Balkan specific but ‘The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean’ by Paula Wolfert is great. It’s older though so it isn’t Instagram worthy photos, just great recipes, and commentary about how things are done. Like baking/ cooking in large Tandoor in Georgia.
There is also ‘Croatia at Table’ by Ivanka Bilus. This does have the photos and explains about different regions, things like butter/ cream in the north, olive oil in the south etc. The recipes are fine, but no standouts to me at least.
When this guy* made clear ketchup, he used egg whites to separate remaining solid tomato matter out from the liquid tomato umami. Wonder if that would work for oil at all.
Both methods just use protein to trap large particles. The difference is that with gelatin, the process is reversible with heat. Magnesium silicate is just really pure talcum powder and it’s widely used in food service to clean oil.
Cold proofing is a great way to develop flavor, but the down side is that it’s hard to tell if something is ready to bake. It’s also easy to overproof for the same reason. It just requires baking the same recipe multiple times using the same fridge until you get a handle on the proper amount of proofing time. Another way you could develop the flavor is by using a preferment like a bigga.
Undercooking can be avoided by taking the temp of the bread using a thermometer. It should be 200F inside, minimum.
But yes, you can def save a bread that hasn’t come out quite right! Toasting is a great way to do that.
I’m saying that I do all those things on purpose when I am baking a sandwich loaf. I always will toast the bread first unless I’m making grilled cheese.
Any other type of bread is baked the way it should be, proper rise times, etc. The exception to that is when I am playing around with very long cold ferments (5+ days), or alternative leaveners like rice, chillies, beans, whatever. They’re much more unpredictable in behavior.
We mostly use them in beef stews and tomato sauces. We dice them up as fine as possible and add them. They seem to disintegrate into the sauces and just add nice umami.
Personally, I use anchovy paste a lot. It comes in a tube like toothpaste. I never need that many, so it’s nice to not have to open a whole can. It does really dissolve in pasta sauce. I also use it for caesar salad dressing. I think every culture has a way of adding MSG to things, whether it’s pure powdered msg, miso, vegemite, soy sauce, fish sauce, parmesan, mushrooms, or anchovies. For me, it’s really just an msg source with a little extra flavor of its own. I never really use enough that something tastes like anchovy.
Yeah, I use MSG and soy sauce in almost everything, but I cook a lot of Asian foods. I didn’t even think about anchovy paste. That’s something I keep forgetting to do with tomato paste as well instead of buying cans. But I don’t really make a lot of tomato based stuff, and when I do I use homegrown tomatoes. Mushrooms I use a lot as well. Thanks for the tip!
Pizza! We make a “Dragon Breath” pizza that has mushrooms, anchovies, garlic, and onion (alternative would be green onions or shallots). It’s delicious! We’ve also made variations with spinach, feta cheese, or anything that’s available. We use the full anchovies on top of the pizza.
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