View Full Version : Try a New Ingredient Challenge
Amaranth
12-11-12, 11:06am
For a food challenge for 2013, Peggy suggested trying a new ingredient each week--choosing from reasonable available items. That sounds like fun to me too. For the fruits and vegetables, it would be fun to do them when they are in season at the farmer's market or in the garden. We could fill in with pantry items at other times.
Some items I'd like to propose for the list are:
Bok Choy
Celery Root
Amaranth Grain/Flour
Chickpea beans/Flour
A new variety of melon
A new variety of winter squash
I think I'm in for this one! Sounds fun! Will watch the thread for suggestions. Right now I'm drawing a blank, but I know I'll think of some.
ApatheticNoMore
12-11-12, 2:18pm
Yea this sounds good. I tried cooking with winter squash for the first time pretty much this week, a butternut squash, haven't got one of those before I don't think (don't really buy winter squash at all, but love the summer variety). Thumbs down I think. I used ginger and made soup, the ginger squash combo even though it had no added sweetners and had cream was *WAY* too sweet (fresh ginger suggests sweetness). May your experiments work better than this :0!
It's no accident that butternut is usually what's in a pumpkin pie. If you have some left, consider adding sauteed onions to the soup. If that's not appealing, you might be able to use the soup to make a banana bread-like bread. Use the soup in place of the bananas and perhaps a bit less depending on how liquid the soup is.
OK I'm in. I think I will start with the amaranth and chickpea.
Sounds like fun. I have been working on trying stuff with quinoa. Amaranth will be next.
Had a wonderful spinach salad earlier this week that had little squares of roasted/baked butternut squash on it. I'd never thought of doing that but it was a sweetness I love in salads as if I'd thrown some berries on my salad.
I also had a great little quiche/frittata thing with squash or sweet potato in it. And a wonderful sandwich with slices of sweet potato!
The Aussies seem to use a LOT of pumpkin/squash/sweet potato in various yummy recipes. I absolutely love this type of vegetable but I have never found a squash soup I like. All that sweetness a bit yucky :P
My new ingredients will be some of the mysterious oyster mushrooms, and other fruits & vegets at my local grocer.
If the squash is too sweet for you on its own, cube it and add to other dishes. It's good in veg soups/stews. I like to eat it for breakfast, when its sweetness isn't so unexpected. Or make a pudding from its puree (sort of like pumpkin pie filling). Also, squash/black beans is a great combo.
Neat-O thread! Neat-O ideas!
I've been wanting to add bok choy to the dinner table, and this challenge is a superb occasion for me to give it a try!
Check out this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpc_KGmE5vY) recipe! Amazing!!!
Had a wonderful spinach salad earlier this week that had little squares of roasted/baked butternut squash on it. I'd never thought of doing that but it was a sweetness I love in salads as if I'd thrown some berries on my salad.
I also had a great little quiche/frittata thing with squash or sweet potato in it. And a wonderful sandwich with slices of sweet potato!
The Aussies seem to use a LOT of pumpkin/squash/sweet potato in various yummy recipes. I absolutely love this type of vegetable but I have never found a squash soup I like. All that sweetness a bit yucky :P
My new ingredients will be some of the mysterious oyster mushrooms, and other fruits & vegets at my local grocer.
How about some of those little dried fish about the size of minnows? ;) Or squid on a stick? The street vendors squid smells so good, there simply must be a way to serve them that isn't like chewing fishy rubber bands!
Filipino banana sauce is mine for this week. Found it in the Asian market. It looks like ketsup and was $.79 for a bottle so I had to grab one to try it. Apparently it is used much like ketsup as well, but it's sweeter. Going to slow roast a pork butt that has been marinating in sour orange this weekend so I'm thinking this might work to give the mojo sauce a little bit of a bbq sauce twinge.
Float On
12-13-12, 11:09am
Very good idea.
I am so bored with food right now and we've been eatting out way too much.
Now that I'm up and about and not trying to cook while sitting on an office chair I'm ready to get back to kitchen adventures.
Will start with the new year and try something new every week.
How about some of those little dried fish about the size of minnows? ;) Or squid on a stick? The street vendors squid smells so good, there simply must be a way to serve them that isn't like chewing fishy rubber bands!
I love those little dried minnows! A little soy sauce, a little sweetener and a little mirin (japanese vinegar) in a small pan makes a great flavored glaze for these yummy little fish.
Dried squid on a stick is for when you are drinking lots of sake...it's supposed to soak up the alcohol. My cooking skills are not good enough to ever make a squid on a stick taste good :P
I'm wondering how everyone is doing on this challenge. This may sound incredible, but until today I had never eaten a papaya. Finally bought one the other day. I have to confess...I'm a bit disappointed. It didn't have the flavor I expected, but was rather blah. I do believe it was ripe, as it was soft. Not too soft tho.
I'm wondering how everyone is doing on this challenge. This may sound incredible, but until today I had never eaten a papaya. Finally bought one the other day. I have to confess...I'm a bit disappointed.
I'm sort of late to this thread -- though I've cooked with all of the ingredients in the original post except the amaranth flour -- though I have cooked the leaves of the amaranth plant (it's very much like spinach).
I've never been a fan of ripe papaya. In fact, when I was wearing contact lenses, I didn't like the smell of the disinfecting solution, which used the papaya-based enzyme papain. But a couple of years ago, I had a papaya salad, which is made from shredded unripe papaya, chilis, garlic, and a fish sauce/lime juice/sugar dressing. You wouldn't know it was the same fruit. I'm a fan.
I've cooked squid before; the key for squid is either to barely cook it or to stew it for a very long time. One of my favorite squid dishes is to serve squid rings with fresh or frozen peas and a cooked-down can of diced tomatoes. I haven't made that in a long time. I'm not sure I can sneak it past the other folks in the house, though. :-)
I love celeriac/celery root, but it's often rather expensive and the yield on it is low; quite a bit is pared away because it's hard to clean out all the nooks and crannies.
So I suppose I should find an ingredient I haven't used before. I am trying to clean out the freezer, though, so I'll have to figure out what new ingredient I can add to something I pull out of the icebox.
Well, cooking the amaranth was not such a good idea - or I did something wrong. It got somewhat slimy. So scrap that.
I like my quinoa experiments so far and also made bread. Turned out pretty heavy but tasty.
Now I have coconut flour and have to figure out what to do with it.
On my shopping list are now shirataki noodles. I read somewhere they are good for you.
Anybody have a clue to fill me in on the details.?
xmas, I didn't know they were supposed to be good for you, but I put shirataki noodles into my chicken soup this week and it was awesome. They smell hideous (to me) before you rinse and cook them -- like they've gone bad. But once cooked in the soup they were stellar.
I'd like to try celery root in the roasted vegetables recipe from this month's Cooks illustrated. That will be my first time.
They look pretty imposing in the produce aisle -- big and knotty and ungainly. I've never been tempted until this thread.
xmas, shirataki noodles are made from a yam found in Japan called konjac (or, in Japanese, konnyaku). Konnyaku is gluten-free. It has a very low glycemic index -- it doesn't spike blood sugar like refined grains and even some whole grains do. It contains a lot of fiber, too. As puglogic mentioned, they do have an unappealing aroma fresh out of the package, but rinsing or parboiling them eliminates that. Shirataki noodles aren't going to fool most people who've eaten real noodles. But if you're trying to diet low-carb, they at least let you have a reasonable portion of a noodle-based dish you otherwise would not be able to eat.
puglogic, celery root looks imposing, but it's really not. You do end up cutting off the ugly part. But the remainder is quite tasty. My experience is that celery root doesn't get tough when big, the way, say, parsnips and turnips do. So it's worth choosing a larger celery root -- better yield. I'm interested to know if you like the recipe once you try it.
AmeliaJane
1-2-13, 11:53pm
I find the shirataki noodles work better in Asian-type dishes than in pastas. They have a soft texture that reminds me of rice noodles. I really do not like overcooked pasta so they weren't appealing to me in western preparations. But I made some great stirfrys using them (I LOVE Asian sauteed noodles).
The new ingredient I chose was the King Trumpet mushroom or Eringi in Japanese. My grocer was having a big sale on them, 100yen or about $1.30 for a total of 3 large mushrooms.
I prepared them by sauteeing them just a short bit with just a little soy sauce and added some to a pizza. The rest I added into a vegetable & seafood pasta dish. Both of the dishes were better for the added trumpet mushroom but I think for my money shiitake mushrooms will continue to be my choice.
Pictures & info I found about Eringi: http://steamykitchen.com/3019-japanese-mushrooms.html
I like papayas a lot, but some varieties taste better than others (unless you know what to do with them, I'd avoid the big pale ones.) I even like papaya seeds, which remind me of nasturtium seeds.
Thank you for the info all. Now I have to find those shirataki noodles.
The regular super markets, checked two, didn't have any.
Will try an asian food store next.
How is it going for everyone on this challenge?
Last night I bought some chayote squash. Have never used them before. Anyone?
I read that when you pare them, they are quite sticky and the goo is tough to wash off. But they seem really versatile, kind of like zucchini.
Well...I'd never seen blood oranges in our local grocery stores before so that was my 'new item to try' this week. I chopped up a few to add to a salad (so pretty!!!) but that's all I've done with them so far, beside eatting them as a snack and taking photos of them for 365project.
I still don't have any shirataki noodles - I do feel like I live in the woods.
Anyway, I bought a persimmon (sp?) at the store last week. Hmm, how to put it poitely?
Thank you but no thank you. Do not recommend.
SO and I gleaned a neighborhood persimmon tree a while back and I made 4 pt. of persimmon butter...it turned out really yummy. Maybe your persimmon wasn't ripe? They need to be rather soft, but even at that, they are kind of a mild-tasting fruit. If they're not ripe...whew, they will pucker you up!!!
I finally tried the shirataki noodles. i had trouble finding them at first but finally found them hidden by the tofu. I wasn't crazy about them, especially the texture but could see them being a substitute for someone sensitive to gluten or just to cut down on calories.
I'm trying to learn to cook a few Indian dishes. I've hardly ever eaten any in my life, much less cook any. However, my coworkers have been dragging me out to Indian and Ethiopian places for lunch and I'm getting hooked on the exotic (to me) tastes. So, Sunday I cooked up some dal with cauliflower. It used a mix of spices called panch phoran (phoron?). I ended up ordering it from Amazon rather than running all over town looking for it. It was really, really good. This weekend I'm going to try another dish that uses another blend called garam masala.
My husband and son (who won't touch any of it) are still complaining 2 days later that they can still smell it in the kitchen. I think it smells delicious!
Gardenarian
1-29-13, 2:01pm
My neighbor gave me a recipe for bread made with almond flour, which I've never used. Has anyone tried it? I like the idea of a high-protein bread I could make myself, though my first thoughts are that it would be pretty heavy.
I finally tried the shirataki noodles. i had trouble finding them at first but finally found them hidden by the tofu. I was crazy about them, especially the texture but could see them being a substitute for someone sensitive to gluten or just to cut down on calories.
I'm glad you finally got to try them. Yeah, they won't fool anyone who can eat regular flour noodles. But if you can't, they can scratch the itch.
ApatheticNoMore
1-29-13, 4:47pm
Anyway, I bought a persimmon (sp?) at the store last week. Hmm, how to put it poitely?
Thank you but no thank you. Do not recommend.
haha, yea are you sure it was ripe? I'm not a big fan of them even when ripe, the hard ones (fuyu) are too bland in my opinion (though they are described as being like apples), and the sweet ones (Hachiya) way too sweet to eat plain (though they make good desserts). But the unripe Hichiya are supposed to be completely inedible "unpalatably astringent".
Yup. Ripe and soft and yuck.
Next time I go to the farmers market I will get another strange fruit. LOL
Got coconut flour now, will see what I do with it.
I love persimmons with a white-hot passion. They're usually only in stores for a few weeks. I must look for some.
Blackdog Lin
1-29-13, 7:11pm
I finally got around to trying kale chips for a snack for DH. I ruined the first batch with oversaltiness, and last night's batch.....no go. We both agreed they're edible, but not something we would really want to eat. (and they stink up the kitchen.)
Might try kale one more time in a soup application - it's such a superfood, I'd like to have a way to eat it at least occasionally.
I'm pretty sure soup is the best I can do with kale. Maybe a chiffonade in salad. It seems to prove the old rule of thumb that health food tastes like ****.
Blackdog Lin
2-11-13, 9:13pm
A little bump to report: I have been trying not necessarily new ingredients, but new vegetables, as that is where I'm trying to take our menu-planning and cooking. We need to have more (especially in the winter) healthy vegetables in our diet.
Had a success today. Our first bok choy, it was on sale in the grocery ad. I had planned a garlic-ginger-saute'd-bok-choy thing along with a meat choice, but the menu-planning evolved in a different direction (as it always does), I needed to use it today before it got too soft, and ended up adding it to our old-favorite hamburger-ramen-veggie skillet. I could tell even smelling the finished dish that it was (different, maybe not quite as good as I thought it should be), but DH not only ate it but had seconds. So success.
Good enough that I am encouraged to try my saute'd side-dish idea, and possibly others.
Finally, some success. Edamame: fail. Kale: fail. Roasted chickpeas: fail. Bok choy: finally, something I can work with!
This winter I've been incorporating more root veggies. I've found that things I might not eat regularly on their own, are good when mixed with others. For example, turnips. They are ok, but not something I would clamor for. But combined with parsnips and carrots, either roasted or shredded and sauteed in butter, are pretty good. Maybe some celery root in there too, and definitely leeks. Leeks make everything edible.
Getting in veggies the rest of the year is easy, as stuff is fresh and appealing, but its hard for me to get enough veggies in the winter outside of onions and potatoes. A good cookbook for this is "Cooking from the Root Cellar" which focuses on winter greens and root vegetables.
For the kale conversation, DW puts it in smoothies every morning. Enough to turn them green, but not enough to taste like a salad. It's good and its healthy. Our only problem is she only works off variations of one recipe. Every single day....
So how is everybodies new food tasting going?
I have been on a backing spree. This time I tried tapioka flour in some stuff - not the dream result but interesting.
Now I work with substitutes to get the backed goods less fatty and less sweet.
Made cookies without butter, used apple sauce instead. My family loves them. Nice and chewy just have to be kept in the fridge.Now I will next use stevia for the sugar. My goal is to make the cookies as low calorie as possible and still enjoyable. I should not eat cookies at all but --- well.
I also tried guava - hmm was interesting
Oat groats. We cook these on the weekend when we have time. Basically whole oats from which come the chopped or rolled oats. Very nutty flavor. We have been trying different additions like shredded coconut and misc berries but no sweetener. Makes regular oatmeal taste like shredded cardboard.
Something new we tried: roasted turnips. I was really hesitant, because I remembered hating them as a child. But then again, my Mom cooked most everything to death. These were baby turnips given to me by a friend. Roasted, they were SO sweet--I actually purchased some to have later.
Fun thread. I have never eaten any kind of squash. What is the best kind to start with please?
My best kale recipe is to slice it very very thinly, melt a small blob of fat in a frying pan , mix the kale shreds and cook on the very lowest heat for about half an hour. Sit it occasionally - you're really just drying it out. It goes wonderfully crispy - very like the crispy seaweed you get in Chinese restaurants. Serve with a sprinkle of salt and a pinch of sugar.
..I forgot to say cut out the big veins in the kale leaf - they're horrible. Only use the soft green bits of the leaf.
I tried papaya last month... and just did not like it, which really, really surprised me, as I didn't think there were any fruits I did not like. I've had it before but always assumed it just wasn't the correct ripeness... but this time my friend and daughter absolutely loved it, and to me it had a really off flavor.
Squash! I love squash. There are summer squash (yellow crookneck, zucchini, pattypan, etc) and winter squash (pumpkins, acorn, butternut, etc).
This time of year, there are still some winter squash hanging around, and summer squash are available from Mexico. So neither is really in season at the moment.
They have very different uses. I use summer squash in anything with mixed veggies - soups, salads, etc - and i prefer them sauteed or roasted, even when using in salads. Winter squash are sweeter and starchier, delicious stuffed, in soups, roasted on salads, etc. I roast them whole, then peel and seed, and just keep the squash in the fridge to use as I wish during the week. Usually I eat it for breakfast with 1/2 avocado, or a sprinkling of walnuts and some cinnamon.
Winter squash (cooked and pureed, or canned pumpkin) also makes an excellent ingredient for brownies, cakes, breads, cookies, etc.
I tried papaya last month... and just did not like it, which really, really surprised me, as I didn't think there were any fruits I did not like. I've had it before but always assumed it just wasn't the correct ripeness... but this time my friend and daughter absolutely loved it, and to me it had a really off flavor.
I've never been a fan of papaya; when it's ripe, I also think it tastes "off". When I wore contact lenses, some of the enzymatic lens cleaners contained papain, which is derived from papayas, and I disliked that smell, too. So I think it's the papain in ripe papayas that I dislike.
However, one time I had an Asian salad made from shredded green papaya and I loved it! It's a Thai/Cambodian/Laotian/Hmong dish and therefore a little sweet and a lot hot, but I have enjoyed green papaya salads many times since. A tribute to never saying never, I guess. :)
..I forgot to say cut out the big veins in the kale leaf - they're horrible. Only use the soft green bits of the leaf.
For your dish and what is usually referred to as "kale chips", this is great advice.
In the interest of using all of the kale plant, though, I've learned to cut the ribs longitudinally and freeze them for soups or stews. They cook up much softer after the thaw and long-cooking cycle and add green leafy nutrients and fiber to your dish.
Thanks for the squash info Rosemary - and the recipe suggestions.
Last night I used farro for the first time. Anyone? It has a nice texture, and very mild-tasting. I had made a lamb stew and served it on the farro.
Bought the lamb at a local farmers' market--also bought watercress from a guy who forages up here along the Columbia River. Made a spinach-watercress salad to go along with the stew.
Steve mentioned using kale ribs differently from the leaves to be able to use the whole plant. A whole book of strategies like this is Kansha by Elizabeth Andoh. You can see some of the book at the link.
http://www.amazon.com/Kansha-Celebrating-Japans-Vegetarian-Traditions/dp/1580089550
I especially learned some new things about fully using the large daikon type radishes.
I found some whole wheat gnocchi in the store - it attracted me because it did not have the multitude of ingredients and chemicals the others had (I wasn't up to doing it from scratch). Sauteed onion and mushroom and then let asparagus steam on top on that while preparing the gnocchi. Then added the gnocchi, salt, pepper. Simple, but very good.
Last night I used farro for the first time. Anyone? It has a nice texture, and very mild-tasting.
I love farro - I made this dish once with roasted golden beets and onions and kale (the kale gets mixed in toward the end) - and then mixed cooked farro into that.
I want to try it in a cold salad this summer.
i bought hydroponic baby cucumbers today--they're delightful, with tender edible skin.
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