This lunch is 500 yen ($4.80) at Sukiya, a Japanese fast food restaurant which belongs to a category with about three big competitors.

I love the aesthetics of this category and they’re under remarked upon.

I think people underestimate QSRs in terms of social utility, but Sukiya et al describe themselves as mission-oriented enterprises. I believe this is largely sincere, and goes back to the 60s and 70s, when the clientele was primarily manual laborers who had migrated to work.

Japan was not a rich nation at the time, and day laborers in particular were both unlikely to be able to cook for themselves and unlikely to have much of a food budget, and so the chains sprung up offering an honest-to-goodness cooked meal delivered in under a minute for cheap.

This heritage continued over the years, even after Japan became a much more wealthy nation, and these chains function as social support and dignity for folks in diminished circumstances.

They also are a wee bit of a cartel, and I appreciate the aesthetics of the cartel:

Back when I was first in Japan, in the mid 2000s, there was an increase in the price of beef.

And the heads of the three chains got together, and decided that the price of the basic beef bowl needed to increase, but given the economic circumstances how could they hold the line.

So - #HerrDingsKocht heute Abend wieder. Was wird das wohl? Ideen?

Step 1.

Step 2.

Röstaromen sind das A und O ! Merkt auch das ☝🏻😅

Immer Rösten Rösten Rösten ☝🏻

Mini Hungarian language lesson: the secret dish.

"What's a dish universally known and eaten in your country but virtually unheard of outside it?" is a question that makes the rounds on Twitter every few months but I can't be bothered waiting for the next one.

It's "főzelék".

The word itself looks as simple as the dish: "főz" is "to cook" and "-elék" is a suffix roughly meaning "the result of", so "the result of cooking".

Thanks for nothing.

The official definition is "any kind of boiled or parboiled vegetable"; closer, but still a load of bollocks.

So here's mine: "főzelék is made of vegetables and it has a thick sauce".

What kind of vegetables?

Practically any: potato, cabbage, bean, pea, chickpea, spinach, squash, carrot, but usually only one veg at a time.

There is a mixed abomination called "finomfőzelék" but we don't talk about it.

Most of us have been scarred for life by school dinners featuring the pallid little harbingers of death suspended in a beige gel of doom.

In all honesty though, főzelék in general doesn't look very appetising: it has its roots in that old peasant staple of gruel and it has a serious image problem as a result.

Which is why, even in Hungary, you won't see many on restaurant menus, except in specialist outlets.

10 Manfaat Baking Soda untuk tanaman.

Ternyata selain untuk bahan pengembang roti. Baking soda juga bisa bermanfaat untuk tanaman.

Apa aja manfaatnya?

Lanjut....

1. Baking soda digunakan utk mengetes tingkat keasaman (Ph) tanah. Ambil sesendok tanah dr kebun dan basahi dengan air minum dan percikkan segenggam baking soda ke bagian tanah yang basah. Jika tanah mulai berbuih, artinya tingkat keasaman tanah kebun Anda lebih rendah dari 5.

2. Lenyapkan hama siput dari kebun dengan menaburkan baking soda. Siput akan mengering dan mati.

3.Jamur di tanaman juga bisa diusir dengan baking soda. Cukup campurkan 4 sendok makan baking soda ke dalam 1 galon air yang akan digunakan untuk menyiram tanaman. Lebih murah dan kandungan zat kimianya lebih rendah ketimbang pembasmi jamur yang lain.

4/ Untuk Anda yang suka membuat kompos dari sampah basah, masukkan baking soda ke dalam wadah kompos Anda untuk mengurangi baunya.

#IsolationBaking recipe for #Christmas is a scrumptious

Apple-Cranberry Coffee Cake Wreath

I’m not an expert at shaping dough into wreaths or much of anything else but this is a wonderfully delicious & rather festive wintry coffee cake.

A great weekend baking project.

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1/

INGREDIENTS for dough

¾ cup (200 ml) milk
¼ cup (50 ml) water
2 ¼ teaspoons (8 grams) active dry yeast
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
¼ cup (60 grams) unsalted butter, softened to room temp
1 egg
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon salt
3 ¼ - 3 ½ cups (485 – 520 grams) flour

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2/

INGREDIENTS for the filling *
4 pie apples, like Reine de Reinette or Golden, peeled, cored & cubed
1 cup fresh cranberries
2 tablespoons (30 grams) unsalted butter
6 tablespoons brown sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cardamom

MORE

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3/

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp finely grated orange zest

Egg wash: I egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water

You can increase the filling by using 5 apples and 1-½ cups cranberries; just be careful rolling it up to keep the filling inside the dough.

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4/

Make the dough:

Mix the water & milk together in a small saucepan & heat gently until warm, not hot. It should be the temperature of your hand when you test it.

Put the yeast in a large mixing bowl. Pour about ¼ cup (65 ml) of the warm liquid over the yeast and stir

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First broccoli cheese soup of the new year. I’ve made a pot almost every week since the pandemic started. Maximum comfort food.

I don't follow a recipe, I'll try to recreate what I do here.

3 heads of broccoli
1 onion
1 box container of chicken stock
1 cup of milk
2 tbls flour
block of sharp cheddar
salt/pepper/tsp mustard powder

Chunk up the cheddar and whiz it in the food processor. You want it to be little bits that will melt fast. I've tried using pre-shredded, but I think they put something in it to prevent caking and it makes a grainy cheese sauce.

Chunk up one of the broccoli heads and whiz it up.

Rough chop the remaining broccoli into bite size pieces.

Chop up the onion.

Prep the ingredients for the cheese sauce (two tablespoons flour, salt & pepper, mustard powder) in a little bowl so you can dump them in when needed.

OK, you want everything prepped ahead of time because the timing here is a little tricky (for me).

Sauté the onion in olive oil in a large pot. Once it's softened add your whizzed up broccoli (I like it to get a little toasted, I think it adds a nice flavor).

We all need a lift & a distraction. This calls for a recipe.

Chicken with Preserved Lemon and Olives

Few ingredients, easy to throw together, this flavorful dish tastes as good as it looks.

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1/

INGREDIENTS

1 preserved lemon
1 fresh lemon for finely grated zest (optional) & 2 tablespoons juice
@ 6 tablespoons (40 grams) flour seasoned with salt & pepper
1 chicken cut in pieces or 2 leg/thigh sections & 2 breasts
A few tablespoons olive oil

MORE

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2/

1 onion, trimmed, peeled, chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled & chopped
½ cup green olives, soaked in cold water for about an hour
½ cup (125 ml) water
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Cut the preserved lemon in half & then each half in 2 or 4 wedges. Set aside.

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3/

Finely grate the zest from the fresh lemon, if using (the zest is optional for a more lemony flavor) & then squeeze the lemon for 2 tablespoons juice. Set aside.

The olives should be soaking in water.

Place the seasoned flour in a plate or wide shallow soup bowl.

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4/

Pat the chicken pieces clean & dry.

Place a few tablespoons olive oil in a large, heavy pot with a lid & heat over medium to medium-high heat. When the oil is hot and a few drops of water spritzed onto the oil sizzle, dredge the chicken pieces in the seasoned flour,

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Let's talk about nuts. It's #LesFoodFacts time

Ok, let's start at the most obvious question. Why are nuts so bloody expensive? You need to understand what nuts are and how they grow and how they're processed.

The price is based on processing and also on market demand. Let me explain those 2 points first #LesFoodFacts

Let me start with the most expensive nut in the world. The Macadamia nut.

Origin? Queensland, Australia. Eaten by Aborigines for centuries and called "Kindal Kindal" until the colonisers landed and renamed them after one of themselves. Some dude called Macadam #LesFoodFacts

Macadamia trees need to grow for around 10 years before they start producing fruit.
The fruit then needs to be harvested by hand, not machine, as they are so varied only a human eye (and hand) can sort them out.

They also only thrive in tropical places. #LesFoodFacts

Macadamia nuts also contain the highest fat content of all nuts. They're on average 80% fat.
The fat in them is good for you though, like olive oil. So the health market is one of the aspects that has driven the demand up. #LesFoodFacts

Today I made garlic bread.

You add flour, water, salt, and most importantly, yeast. When baking bread, you have to let the dough rise.

No reasonable intervention will significantly increase the speed the dough rises for really good bread, possibly the best bread in the world.

No matter how much you yell at the bread, the dough will only rise to the sufficient amount after a given amount of time.

If you go to the store for the mass distributed stuff, the copy pasted churned brand, whatever it is, will never compare to homemade bread.

If you get the store bought stuff, it’s optimized for shelf life, which always detracts from the quality of the immediacy of the homemade stuff.

If you go to a bakery, it’s better, but never as good as the manual kneading you can do for yourself for what you want.

Bread making is simple, and world-class bread making is even simpler than what you may think. Mostly because humans converge on the flavors, texture, and content of their perfect bread.

But world-class bread does have shared constants of quality you can get only from the best.

Flavorless bread is bland. I’m a huge fan of personal choices I get with the categorization one has under the term “garlic bread.”

“Garlic bread” gives me flexibility to experiment with some wild ingredients, knowing it’s always going to be delicious, just in different ways.

Most popular dishes of lockdown 2020

Street food lovers were the most distraught ones during the lockdown, especially those who are hardcore pani puri lovers. Many people satiated their gol gappa cravings by making them at home.

With all our go-to pizza joints closed, homemade pizza was the only solution to our cravings.

Another street food that most of us missed was the crispy hot samosa. So, why not try them at home? Just prepare some potato stuffing, roll out the dough, fill the stuffing, give the shape of a samosa and fry.

The combo of Samosa and Jalebi makes the perfect pair. Hot and syrup loaded jalebis were another dish that most people tried at their homes

#Turkish traditional food 🇹🇷 😍⬇️

I’m clearly feeling slightly better as I’ve just spent a good ten minutes being furious about all the wrong trifles on the internet.

Excuse me, BBC Good Food?

This is an abomination.

There should be trials at The Hague for these.

*shakes head*

Okay, last night’s gnocchi recipe in one single Instant pot:
You’re gonna need gnocchi. I happened to have some that I rolled a while back, hanging out in the freezer. It’s cold mashed potatoes, flour, egg. Simple. But also, store bought is FINE!

Boil them JUST until they float. That’s, like, long enough to get out the rest of what you’ll need.

When the little potato dumplins float, scoop then out gently with a wire strainer like this one, and place them in a colander you’ve sprayed with cooking spray. They are sticky.

Pour out the gnocchi water except dor about the last cup and a half, the really cloudy bit. Set it aside. I use a yeti tumbler so it stays hot. You’ll need it later.

Don’t mistake ‘tater water for a hot beverage, though.

Get your instant pot back on the low-low setting, and put in a goodly-but-not-scary amount of butter. In this case, a teaspoon. Then another teaspoon of duck fat. (Or just a bigger scoop of butter if you don’t have duck fat).

The duck fat I used is from Fatworks:

To that, add a cup of whole milk, or if you’re me, a cup of 2%, and a hearty splash of half and half otherwise intended for your coffee creamer.

Now comes the thawed drained spinach. You want to press out all the green-brown water, and plop that whole block in:

UP food thread-

Tundey kebab

Lucknowi biryani

Tehri - awadhi cuisine

Nargisi kofta- awadhi cuisine

I’m getting individual permission from everyone sending me pics of their food boxes in my DMs to repost them here but without identifying information because I try to be responsible with this large platform and there are ~children~ involved here.

Disclaimer done, now get angry.

Bexleyheath.

Kent.

No location given for this one, but the contractor is Harrison in this case, not Chartwells.

2 slices of ham, three slices of cheese, one pear, one apple, two bags of crisps. For one child, for a WEEK. Are they meant to only eat on Tuesdays and Thursdays or something?!!! Also pictured, the Govt legislation on Free School Meals for comparison.