Fried Oatmeal with Oranges

The randomly-generated list of ingredients is:
oats
orange
gin

Dessert time!

Although all the flavors were great, the textures were a bit off. However, this is entirely due to my putting only two minutes between recipe generation and execution. The orange slices should have been added at the very end just to heat them through, rather than turning them into a pulpy mess.

Forethought, forethought, forethought.


Ingredients

oats, uncooked
sugar

green cardamom
oranges, sliced
1.5 oz gin, per serving
cornstarch, slurried
honey


Method

Make oatmeal. Add sugar, depending on how sweet you like dessert. Let the oatmeal cool and congeal.

Infuse a few cardamom pods in some oil. Fish out the cardamom and fry the oatmeal cake until caramelized on both sides. Remove from pan.

Caramelize the oranges. Add one shot of gin, flame it, and repeat until all the gin is used. Add cornstarch, and stir until thickened.

Pour oranges over the fried oatmeal cake and drizzle everything with liberal amounts of honey.

Popcorn-Soynut-Carrot Snack

The randomly-generated list of ingredients is:
popcorn
soybean
carrot

I'll admit that is not the most inspired thing I've ever made. At its core, it's downright mundane. Really, it's just popcorn and soynuts.

Ingredients

popcorn
soynuts (yes, I made them myself)
carrot, grated, dried
sage leaves


Method

Fry the sage leaves in oil until crispy. Don't wear your best shirt.

Remove the sage leaves and cook the popcorn in the oil as appropriate.

Mix popcorn with soynuts, dried carrot, and crumbled sage leaves.

Tempeh Stir-fry with Curry Rice and Chana Dal

 

The randomly-generated list of ingredients is: 

dal

tempeh

bamboo shoots

sun-dried tomato

It didn't seem too difficult of a task. These are all fairly familiar ingredients without any apparent clashes. Tie it all together with some curry spices. Easy.

Not surprisingly, it turned out pretty good. The crunchiness of the dal nicely balanced the chewiness of the tempeh and tomato. Also, not surprisingly, this dish tasted nutty. Severely nutty. Fortunately, copious amounts of cilantro kept that in check.

Unexpected lesson of the day: add sun-dried tomato to all future stir-fries.

Recipe for 2 or 3:

Ingredients

0.25 cup chana dal, soaked for at least 4 hours

8 oz tempeh, sliced

5 oz bamboo shoots, sliced

7 oz sun-dried tomato, sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tsp cumin seeds

2 tbsp cashews

2 tsp curry powder

1.5 cup basmati rice, cooked

cilantro, as much as you can stand

lime wedges, for garnish

Method

Deep-fry the chana dal in a wok. Fish out the dal. Eat approximately one third of it while cooking the rest of the meal.

Pour off all the oil except what's needed to stir-fry. Brown the tempeh on both sides. Add the bamboo, tomato, and garlic. This doesn't need to cooked at Wokmaster heat, so the rice can be prepared in between stirs.

In another pan, fry the cumin seeds and cashews in a bit of olive oil. Add the curry powder when the cashews are almost browned. Mix in the rice. Add the lion's share of the dal.

When the stir-fry is almost done, throw in a splash of water or stock to soften up the tempeh and tomatoes.

Plate, sprinkle over the remaining dal, drown in cilantro, garnish with lime wedges, and serve with your favorite $3 white wine.

Beet Chips with Amaretto-Lime Sauce

The culinary gods have spoken.

beet

amaretto

lime

Unfortunately, I did not get this list of ingredients from pressing the “dessert” button on my fancy random-ingredient-list-generating program. This was supposed to be an appetizer, so I tried to take a savory approach to it. Big mistake.

Since I wanted to make this quickly, I decided to make some form of deep-fried beets and a dipping sauce. Initially, I wanted to make bright-red beet French fries, but given the limiting geometry of the roots, chips had to suffice. They were good, like beet-flavored potato chips. It was nothing outstanding however, unless you really like beets.

The sauce. The first attempt was a mayonnaise. It was like eating an Amaretto Sour, and that's not as good as you might think. The second attempt was an Asian-inspired sweet-and-sour sauce built upon cornstarch, Sriracha, and the two impossible ingredients. I wish I could describe the taste, but my brain has repressed those particular memories. That is the sauce I put in the photo purely for aesthetics.

I won't bother with a recipe here. Search for other deep-fried beet recipes. They can describe the process far better than I can.

Sweet Potato Hash Browns, Smoked Herring, and Celery-Pear Salsa

The randomly-generated list of ingredients is:
sweet potato
herring
pear
celery

There is one extremely important observation to be gathered from today:

Sweet potatoes make regular potatoes look like incompetent tubers that only have a job because their uncle works for the company. The potato company. This is exemplified most clearly in the art of the hash brown. Here, the two rest on entirely different realms of existence. It is almost disrespectful to even call this majesty a "hash brown".

As you can see, the sweet potato hash browns were great. The herring was, well, herring. It was canned, but it's a good canning fish. It worked out. I also included a fried egg merely for added decadence. The pear wasn't too much of a troublemaker, and the salsa as a whole seemed to function the same way as sweet pickle relish. Maybe serve some with hot dogs at your next cookout. No one will give you any strange looks.

This would make a good, non-routine brunch, maybe with green apple instead of pear if keeping with the spirit of the dish. And since this is a herring dish, it is mandatory that it be served with aquavit. Skål.


Recipe for 1:

Ingredients

smoked herring, however much you feel like eating
1 egg, fried

Hash browns:
one half sweet potato, grated
1 tsp cornstarch
pinch allspice powder

Salsa:
2 tbsp pear, diced
2 tbsp celery, diced
1 tbsp red onion, diced
0.5 tsp capers, minced
0.5 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp dill, chopped


Method

You can take it from here. No fancy tricks involved.