I love perpetual/random stew!
Feb. 4th, 2012 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susan8020I probably wouldn't offer this batch to anyone else, but I'm really liking it. Surprising tastes in it!
I think this was a mostly fresh batch. As usual, I just put in stuff that needed using. Chard, eggplant, asparagus stalks. Water. Some chunks of ginger root. Maybe some green onion tops from the last batch; anyway they're pretty unrecognizable now.
Let it cook for a day or so, then got very disorganized for a few days. Luckily the porch where the slow cooker lives and cooks, was at near refrigerator temperatures for those days. (I'm still scared to leave an unfamiliar old Goodwill slow cooker plugged in for hours unattended.)
Then I heated it once more, then tried my experiment of 'putting the crock stew on hold', by dropping in a big 'ice cube' frozen inside a container, so it could be taken out without diluting the stew. That worked, it took the pot and contents down to lukewarm so I could put it in the fridge for a couple of days. (A second 'ice cube' might have brought it down faster.) Today finally dared dipping some out to heat in microwave and eat.
Well, nothing nice has any texture left except the chard. The liquid mostly tastes of ginger, very mild, like a Chinese or Thai veg broth. The eggplant has lost everything, dunno where its taste went -- but it picked up strong ginger! The nice parts of the asparagus still taste like asparagus, rather boringly. ;-)
Before tasting this I was so pessimistic that I didn't have any contrasting starchy thing ready to balance it. But it was so good that I wanted to finish it right then! The only thing in reach was some roasted pine nuts that were too salty for normal use, but they were great floating on this soup!
Some pinot noir helped too. ;-)
Anyway I love the ease and surprise of this method!
I think this was a mostly fresh batch. As usual, I just put in stuff that needed using. Chard, eggplant, asparagus stalks. Water. Some chunks of ginger root. Maybe some green onion tops from the last batch; anyway they're pretty unrecognizable now.
Let it cook for a day or so, then got very disorganized for a few days. Luckily the porch where the slow cooker lives and cooks, was at near refrigerator temperatures for those days. (I'm still scared to leave an unfamiliar old Goodwill slow cooker plugged in for hours unattended.)
Then I heated it once more, then tried my experiment of 'putting the crock stew on hold', by dropping in a big 'ice cube' frozen inside a container, so it could be taken out without diluting the stew. That worked, it took the pot and contents down to lukewarm so I could put it in the fridge for a couple of days. (A second 'ice cube' might have brought it down faster.) Today finally dared dipping some out to heat in microwave and eat.
Well, nothing nice has any texture left except the chard. The liquid mostly tastes of ginger, very mild, like a Chinese or Thai veg broth. The eggplant has lost everything, dunno where its taste went -- but it picked up strong ginger! The nice parts of the asparagus still taste like asparagus, rather boringly. ;-)
Before tasting this I was so pessimistic that I didn't have any contrasting starchy thing ready to balance it. But it was so good that I wanted to finish it right then! The only thing in reach was some roasted pine nuts that were too salty for normal use, but they were great floating on this soup!
Some pinot noir helped too. ;-)
Anyway I love the ease and surprise of this method!
