recipes that get you laid


12/4/2011

  How To Make Hamburgers

Check out my first youtube video recipe video!



10/20/2011

  Heirloom Vegetable Production

So, I went to the Diggers Club in Western Victoria today and picked up some Heirloom tomato, cucumber and capsicum/pepper seeds along with some seedling starter mix and a mini greenhouse.

Interestingly, the starter mix for the seedlings doesn't actually contain any soil, apparently soil can contain potentially bad stuff that can interfere with the seed germination. Also, on the seed packs they contain a ton of detail such as the chance, in percentage, of the likelyhood a seed will germinate.



The heirloom seeds don't seem particularly different from what a regular seed should look like. However, these seeds come from old school varieties that haven't made it into modern commercial production. Apparently these days fruit and vegetables have been bred into a few varieties that are best suited to large scale production, transport and supermarket shelf life. Whereas heirloom varieties are supposed to be a more natural and flavourful alternative. According to the seed packages, it will take about 3 months to find out how different they are. :)

 

Not surprisingly, sowing seeds into seedlings is a pretty sensitive affair and along with the specialist non-soil seedling mix, they'll need to pampered in a mini greenhouse that provides greater control over temperature and humidity. With any luck, these will fair better than my actual garden full of struggling seedlings purchase from the local DYI center...

 

UPDATE #1: 21/10/2011
Just after 5 days I've got the first seedling and a few more pushing through!

3/21/2011

  Agar Agar

I picked up a few sachets of agar agar the other day from an Asian grocery store after reading about it on a website. It’s basically a gelling agent, similar to gelatin yet with some big differences.

Agar Agar is derived from seaweed (Vegan Friendly), gelatine is derived from animals. Agar Agar will remain firm up to 85C while gelatin will begin to melt at 37C, meaning agar agar creations such as agar agar pasta can be mixed with hot sauces.

The food industry uses agar agar for an amazing variety of products such as jams, pie fillings and dairy products such as ice cream, yoghurt and cream cheese.

However, my interest is in the field of molecular gastronomy! From what I’ve read, using some interesting techniques you can use agar agar to form liquids into a variety of shapes from little beads to spaghetti.

My first attempt with agar agar was quite basic, simply boiled some orange juice (1.5kg), added agar agar powder (12.5g) then let cool in mini muffin moulds. It was amazingly easy to work with and I’m excited to get a bit more creative and I’m especially keen to try out the agar agar spaghetti technique!



Learn more here:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar

And an example of the spaghetti method:http://www.molecularrecipes.com/gelification/parmesan-spaghetto/

2/24/2011

  Sodium alginate & Calcium chloride

So I've been reading about this 'molecular gastronomy' stuff and I'm very very interested. I had a go of it the other night using the spherification technique!

There are a few ways to attempt this technique, agar agar and cold olive oil, but the one I tried was using sodium alginate and calcium chloride. Don't worry, it's all perfectly safe stuff. In fact, it's in most processed foods already.

Sodium Alginate is basically a gum extracted from brown algae that can hold 200-300 times its weight in water! Dissolve a bit of this in a liquid and drop it in a calcium chloride bath, causing the sodium alginate to rapidly gel from the outside in. Below I've created two things, caviar and ravioli. The caviar is created by dropping small drops of melon from an syringe and allowing to 'cook' for a minute. The result is a caviar or fish egg like texture when you bite into it! The ravioli is created by a similar process while using a larger amount of the fruit juice and sodium alginate mixture and letting it 'cook' a little longer. This gives you the texture of ravioli but the flavor of melon. A real trip and something you've got to try!

I'll post some recipes in the future with some serious detail on how to create these. 

The slice of prosciutto with the mellon caviar was a big hit with my wife, I highly recommend it!

I learned about this process from http://www.molecularrecipes.com/spherification/melon-cantaloupe-caviar/

Below is an example of Melon Caviar on Prosciutto.


Below is an example of Melon Ravioli
 

Learn more here:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alginic_acid#Sodium_alginate
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_chloride

2/23/2011

  Umami & MSG

Recently I’ve heard a few TV chefs mention a flavour called Umami during their shows, and I must admit I had no idea what they were talking about. Salty, Sweet, Sour and Bitter are pretty well known, but Umami?

After some research I’ve discovered that Umami (or savouriness) is said to be the 5th flavour, along with Salty, Sweet, Sour and Bitter. Discovered by some Japanese dude way back in the day, it’s basically a type of amino acid called glutamate. And foods heavy in glutamate have the Umami flavour. Foods like mushrooms, tomatoes, soya sauce, seaweed, wine and some cheeses have the most Umami flavour.

Not long after the discovery of Umami, MSG (monosodium glutamate) was created as a way to isolate Umami. MSG is similar to salt in that it is a tastant, and adding small amounts can add flavour to food, but not tasty at all by itself.

In this instance, MSG has taken away a bit of the flavour of Umami for me but hasn’t discouraged me from trying to make some MSG-Free, Umami intense recipes. J

If you’re interested in learning more, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate.

2/18/2011

  Pancakes

Hi!

recipesthatgetyoulaid.com is a personal blog and recipe site by me, Chachie.

I'm just a regular dude with a keen interest in learning how to cook, and this is the place I document the results.

If you like what you see I'd be glad to hear from you, or even share it on facebook or twitter to spread the word.

Cheers,
Chachie chachie@recipesthatgetyoulaid.com