I cooked this yesterday, just a little to late to make it into the current build of the app. Either way no photos here just the basic ingredients and steps, after entering everything into the app the easiest way to just post the recipe here was to cut and paste from an app generated PDF:
Nom nom nom
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So many changes have been made, which doesn’t always feel like you’re getting anywhere. I’ve made it so that Recipes sent in any form are transmitted as JPEG’s at 50% quality, it seems you can set the quality level of JPEG but not PNG. This should help mitigate the possibility of a recipe being 20-30MB of data if somebody decides to create one for a cooking lesson. E.g. lots of small steps, each one illustrated.
The iPhone application has been changed into a tabbar/navbar app allowing for a permanent and separate recipe view. This meant that a lot of iPad specific code was no longer specific and could be moved to the shared classes. It also acted as an impetus to solve some of the pettier iPad specific bugs relating to that view. I also decided to adopt the iPad unified view rather than the iPhone versions recipe summary/ingredient and method split.
Many things to fix still such as image zoom, pdf generation, preview images in emailed content, ingredient/step management, category combining, whole category emailing? etc.
It also heralded the first time I’ve used the app start to finish to write in a recipe then add photographs to the steps later on. It worked fine. I also used it to record recipes from Fallout New Vegas so I could scavenge the right stuff for them in my wasteland wanderings.
A surfeit of Pumkin/Apple provided by my sister and the garden trees respectively prompted a baking of Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie and Blackberry and Apple Pie. Lamb and Pumpkin Tagine was also cooked. Sadly time got the better of me and a lot of the pumpkin has since decided that it’s cellulose based cell walls are not, anymore. Shame, I was hoping to make a pumpkin chutney.
This is another dish made without any formal recipe, and what was to hand, so here goes. All quantities mentioned are what I ended up using. The dish was about 8×11 so almost the size of a sheet of A4 and 4″ deep.
Bolognaise
12 x Lasagne Sheets
12oz Minced Beef
12oz Mushed Tomatoes + Basil + Oregano (These were in a cardboard carton)
2 x Tablespoons Tomato Puree
1 x Diced Medium White Onion
8-10 Diced Chestnut Mushrooms
3-4 Cloves Crushed or Finely Diced Garlic
1 x Beef Stock Cube
White Sauce
2oz Plain White Flour
2oz Butter
1½pints Milk
Grated Parmesan/Chedder
Firstly turn on your oven to 180ºC. In a pan over medium heat melt the butter. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the flour a bit at a time. You should end up with a v. soft shiny dough, a roux. Slowly add the milk stirring constantly and return to the heat. Add the grated cheese. Take off the heat when the cheese has melted. Don’t worry too much about small lumps. You’ll be warming it up again later and it’ll form a skin and go a bit lumpy now anyhow.
In a large flat sided pan warm some olive oil. When it’s hot but not smoking add the garlic, onion and mince. Stir occasionally until the mince has browned off. Add the mushrooms, salt, pepper, dried basil, crushed stock cube, tomatoes, tomato puree and stir well. At this point I added ½ pint of water as well as it looked very dry. Wait until it simmers, stirring occasionally, and then turn down the heat a bit so it can be left to reduce.
When it has reduced sufficiently reheat the white sauce stirring constantly.
In your dish layer your bolognaise sauce (yes I’m using the french name, deal with it), white sauce and pasta sheets however you want. I didn’t have much in the way of white sauce, in fact the recipe above has the quantities adjusted from 1pt to 1½pt because of that, so I layered it, top to bottom:
More Grated Parmesan and a bit of Chedder
—-
White Sauce
—-
Pasta
—-
Bolognaise
—-
Pasta
—-
White Sauce
—-
Pasta
—-
Bolognese
Cook in the oven for 45 minutes. I turned the dish around after 30 minutes to brown it a bit more evenly. Serve it with a few green veg or salad. Especially good with a mixed green leaf salad and some garlic bread.
Lasagne
Ingredients
2 x Spare Egg Whites
2oz. Caster Sugar
2oz. Icing Sugar
Pre-heat the oven to 100ºc.
A few pointers first of all. You must use a glass or metal bowl, it needs to be completely grease free. You should use a metal whisk and metal spoons. The spatula can be plastic as most people won’t have a metal one. The reasoning here is that with metal/glass the bubbles stay in better.
Also this recipe is very ad hoc. and was simply cooked because I had some egg white and wanted dessert.
Seeing as, more than likely, you have the egg whites left over from something else you’ve probably got them in a cup. Because of this I’d measure out the sugars into another two cups, once you get used to this you can stop measuring stuff and just have them in two separate cups to add then tip the rest back in the bag.
Pour the egg whites into your bowl and whisk until the whites are white and fluffy. You should be able to raise peaks with the whisk that don’t flop over. Add the caster sugar bit by bit (1 or 2 dessert spoons at a time if you have to measure it) whisking each successive lot in. The mixture should look glossy now and still hold a peak. You don’t want to over whisk it, this not a real danger if you do it by hand with a ballon whisk like I did. Now you should add the icing sugar a bit at a time however this time you want to fold in the sugar. Do this with the spatula, scooping it flat underneath half the mixture and tipping it over onto the rest. Do this from the other side. Then you can run the spatular down the middle like a knife and repeat the process. The idea here is to combine the icing sugar without knocking air out of the mixture. Just as a note don’t feel you need to add all the icing sugar, if you don’t want to because it won’t mix in or you think you might have knocked too much air out stop. Do add at least 3/4′s if you can.
Now get your baking tray and line with grease proof paper. Using one of your two metal spoons get a nice (up to you) dollop of the mixture and use the other spoon to scoop it onto the paper. I got 5 fist sized meringues from my two egg whites.
Place in the oven for anywhere between 1hr 15mins to 1hr 45mins. Turn after an hour if they’re going brown unevenly.
I cooked mine for 1hr 15m, they were quite large and finished the cooking time crunchy on the outside and really chewy inside. I served lightly smashed on top with whipped double cream, another spare from the previous dish, and blueberries.
A quick note about meringues for the curious, you’re not so much cooking them as drying them out. After I’d grabbed the ones I wanted for dessert I left the others in the oven with the oven turned off. By tomorrow they should be crunchy all the way through. It’s up to you how you like your meringue. They’ll keep in an air tight box for a few weeks I expect.
Two Meringues
Not too bad. Of course you could make them flatter in which case they’ll get crunchy quicker or mould them with something so they make little cases etc. etc.
On Tuesday I found myself wanting dinner and after a weekend of a rather meat heavy diet fancied fish. This is roughly what I ended up cooking. I don’t have measurements for most of the ingredients. Also, as you’ll see in the post that follows this, what you don’t use…. makes dessert! The most important part of a meal. This served three but you can figure it out depending on how hungry your family is.
Ingredients:
6 Scallops
12 Large Tiger Prawns*
3 Squid*
Large Handful Cooked Mussels*
150ml Double Cream
2 Large Egg Yolks
2 Cloves Garlic
Flat Leaf (normal) Parsley
Oyster Mushrooms
Small Onion**
Spring Onion**
300g Linguine (Don’t buy cheap pasta)
Olive Oil
1/2 Lemon
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
* The measurements here aren’t available as I was plucking things from the fish counter having bought the scallops. The prawns I got came uncooked with tails on skewers. I got two skewers worth. The squid was well prepared ready to slice and about 5-6″ long. The mussels were bought as though you cupped both hands and filled them. Primary to bulk the rest of the dish out.
** I didn’t put onion in, I mention it here because you can. Cook the Small Onion finely chopped with the garlic. Finely chop 2 spring onions and add whilst reducing the cream.
Bring a large saucepan of water, with some salt to the boil. Check the cooking time of your pasta, mine was 11minutes.
Heat some olive oil in a decent sized pan, when hot but not smoking add the crushed garlic and scallops. Whilst the garlics browns slightly turn the scallops regularly. Turn the heart down to a medium temperature. Slice the squid into 1/4-1/2″ strips and add to the pan along with the tiger prawns and oyster mushrooms. When the scallops have cooked through add the double cream. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Now is probably a good time to throw the pasta into your boiling water and set the timer on the oven appropriately.
Return your attention to the seafood and cream. You should be stirring this often. It should be bubbling gently and reducing, not boiling away. Add a good handful of finely chopped parsley and stir in, add the cooked mussels at this point. If you don’t have enough sauce for your taste by all means add a dash more cream.
When the cream has reduced to your satisfaction squeeze the half lemon juice into the pan and stir in swiftly. When the pasta is ready you should quickly stir in the 2 large egg yolks, keep the whites for dessert. You can either serve this on the pasta or drain and stir the pasta into the seafood. Decorate with some more finely chopped parsely. You could even offer some freshly grated parmesan.
The above recipe was adapted from one that used onions, only used cooked prawns and didn’t use mushrooms so feel free to use the seafood you want and leave out mushrooms if you don’t like them… etc. etc.
Next a hackish desert!
