Comments on: Cooking.

By: Sanna

Sanna — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:38:42 +0000

I do deepfry occationall, and mother made doughnuts for “Vappukokko” (1st of May) every year. She made “sima” (mead) too. What I do is heat a large pot of oil or coconutfat and check that the temperature is between 180-230 Celsius. Coconutfat is brilliant for that, if you have no ethical issues with it, the flavourless, bleached, chemically-treated, probably-from-rotten-coconuts-kind.

Just heat about 10cm of it in a large pot, check temperature with digital thermometer (steak thermometers are brill!) and then made the doughnut, toss it in there for a minute or two, and take out with one of those spatulas with holes in it and put on household paper or a rack or something.

Safety: Crack a window if you like to let the fumes out (note that it lets oxygen in too), but don’t turn the kitchen fan on to prefent fan fires. Keep kids and pets out of the room (or at a safe distance), keep a lid at hand as well as some heatproof gloves and possibly a fire extinguisher if you have one. I’ve never come close to starting a fire, not even reached smoking point, because I won’t let the fat/oil get warmer than 200*C. When you get to that point, pull the pot off the heat for a bit. If it DOES start smoking, put the lid on and carry it to a safe spot outdoors untill it’s cooled off. Coconutfat can gett REALLY warm before you need to worry, I think the smoking point for refined coconut oil is somewhere like 235 degrees or so. Unrefined is lower and can’t be deep fried in. Canolia oil has a even higher smoking point.

Enough nerding from me though. Happy deepfrying!

By: Michelle Parker

Michelle Parker — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:23:43 +0000

I love cooking. I just lack time to do it and enjoy it properly. We did however do a whole lot of canning this summer. The goal was to can enough tomatoes to get us through the year. I think we’ll make it to the beginning of summer, so that’s not all bad. Eventually I’d like a pressure canner so I can put away more veggies without pickling them.

By: R.

R. — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:20:05 +0000

No no no! No home made sushi. No.

By: K.

K. — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:32:55 +0000

Funny – I just mentioned to R this week that part of the fun of going out to eat is trying foods I couldn’t make at home. At this point, we’re down to just sushi and elaborate desserts for what I cannot make that we like to eat. I’m OK with that. :)

A friend of mine offered to go take a ‘make your own sushi at home’ class with me and I declined. I need SOMEWHERE to go out!

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:12:48 +0000

Cooking is a blast, isn’t it? I love the way it opens doors to entire worlds. I was in a restaurant this winter and fell in love with lemon mushroom risotto. With a bit of tasting by both of us while I scribbled on a napkin, plus another reading of the dish’s description on the menu, I managed to recreate it later that week at home. How fun it that…being able to have anything you want? You just have to learn how to do it yourself and you can have it at home anytime!

By: michelle

michelle — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:47:53 +0000

my friend down the road has a deep fryer… if you want to get together in the summer and make donuts, i’m a gazillion percent sure that we can borrow it……

i love to cook too, and much like you, i had to learn it all on my own, little by little, and it’s not nearly as intimidating as it seemed in the beginning! (i also love phyllo…)