Takeaway@Home
Posted: June 23rd, 2011, 18:01
Now I like takeaway food and partake of it perhaps once a week, though actually considerably less these days as befits my financial situation. Once a month, if I'm lucky.
It is not supposed to be especially healthy, but once in a while can't do that much harm, right?
So what makes it so appealing? Apart from the obvious laziness factor. Is it the MSG, or the comforting flavours that like tomato soup and banana Nesquik bear no actual relation to their supposed real-life counterparts?
Like me, I'm sure you've narrowed down your local suppliers of easy-to-get grub to ones you really like the taste of (or are cheap). I've had more than a few dirty burgers, iffy kebabs and downright nasty curries in my time, but I'm talking about stuff you'd actually eat when sober.
I've settled on a local pizza house, which is a small, family-run affair, whose thin-crust pizzas have a lovely bubbly texture. Unfortunately for them, this of all the takeaway options is the easiest to recreate at home. Using berk's pizza recipe pretty much, though with a spatula and a bowl rather than a mixer as it's a damn sight quicker to wash up, and sneaking some pecorino in with the flour, last night I created something that exceeded my expectations. Not that won't buy takeaway again, it took a couple of hours and (gah) effort to make, but the price (all things considered) was on a level with buying a supermarket pizza and putting it in the oven, of course the taste being far superior to that option, plus there's plenty of room for a few tweaks.
Now though, I've drawn a blank. I regularly stir-fry, make curries and stuff and just generally improvise - but they're just my recipes. There's nothing that stands out as being a clone of what you'd get as a take-out. Supermarket efforts at doing this universally disappoint, so I don't imagine it's easy to do. I suppose my food is most likely healthier, and perhaps better since I'm choosy about ingredients, but that's not the overall effect I'm talking about here.
One trick I'm close to is the "Chinese curry". It's basically a curry paste (doesn't seem to matter particularly which one) with a tin of coconut milk added to the mix after the initial fry-up - it goes kind of brown and curry...ish. That was never a particular favourite of mine though, and my experimentation with different staring ingredients all seems to fall into blandness once the milk goes in. I suppose it's kind of the old-school "curry" recipe that grandads and Uncle Ben might remember, particularly if you chucked a few raisins in, but it's not for me.
So, what else? Burgers are a bit of a minefield - as you'd likely want to avoid some of the nasties that go in the "real" ones, but I find slowly frying a couple of OK-quality ones in a paddling-pool of ghee (clarified butter) makes them tasty enough to slap between some bread rolls with some plastic cheese - which is of course the only cheese which should ever go near a burger. It follows therefore that any patties you ham-fist together with your own meat would equally benefit from the same cooking method - but it won't taste like Burger King. Curiously, the best plastic cheese I have discovered is the Polish-originated Tenery "Cheddar", with an absolutely astounding shelf-life (tested by me in practice) - and curious because usually the Polish version of everything is gash.
Um, that's all I can think of for what I do. I tool about with the ingredients I love, which are big fat Udon noodles, miso paste and Kikkoman soy sauce and can probably list a dozen quick-fry mashups I do with those when I can't be arsed with much, but that's another post.
Need to end with a question. So, what are your takeaway favourites, and have you ever attempted, or want to attempt your own versions of them?
It is not supposed to be especially healthy, but once in a while can't do that much harm, right?
So what makes it so appealing? Apart from the obvious laziness factor. Is it the MSG, or the comforting flavours that like tomato soup and banana Nesquik bear no actual relation to their supposed real-life counterparts?
Like me, I'm sure you've narrowed down your local suppliers of easy-to-get grub to ones you really like the taste of (or are cheap). I've had more than a few dirty burgers, iffy kebabs and downright nasty curries in my time, but I'm talking about stuff you'd actually eat when sober.
I've settled on a local pizza house, which is a small, family-run affair, whose thin-crust pizzas have a lovely bubbly texture. Unfortunately for them, this of all the takeaway options is the easiest to recreate at home. Using berk's pizza recipe pretty much, though with a spatula and a bowl rather than a mixer as it's a damn sight quicker to wash up, and sneaking some pecorino in with the flour, last night I created something that exceeded my expectations. Not that won't buy takeaway again, it took a couple of hours and (gah) effort to make, but the price (all things considered) was on a level with buying a supermarket pizza and putting it in the oven, of course the taste being far superior to that option, plus there's plenty of room for a few tweaks.
Now though, I've drawn a blank. I regularly stir-fry, make curries and stuff and just generally improvise - but they're just my recipes. There's nothing that stands out as being a clone of what you'd get as a take-out. Supermarket efforts at doing this universally disappoint, so I don't imagine it's easy to do. I suppose my food is most likely healthier, and perhaps better since I'm choosy about ingredients, but that's not the overall effect I'm talking about here.
One trick I'm close to is the "Chinese curry". It's basically a curry paste (doesn't seem to matter particularly which one) with a tin of coconut milk added to the mix after the initial fry-up - it goes kind of brown and curry...ish. That was never a particular favourite of mine though, and my experimentation with different staring ingredients all seems to fall into blandness once the milk goes in. I suppose it's kind of the old-school "curry" recipe that grandads and Uncle Ben might remember, particularly if you chucked a few raisins in, but it's not for me.
So, what else? Burgers are a bit of a minefield - as you'd likely want to avoid some of the nasties that go in the "real" ones, but I find slowly frying a couple of OK-quality ones in a paddling-pool of ghee (clarified butter) makes them tasty enough to slap between some bread rolls with some plastic cheese - which is of course the only cheese which should ever go near a burger. It follows therefore that any patties you ham-fist together with your own meat would equally benefit from the same cooking method - but it won't taste like Burger King. Curiously, the best plastic cheese I have discovered is the Polish-originated Tenery "Cheddar", with an absolutely astounding shelf-life (tested by me in practice) - and curious because usually the Polish version of everything is gash.
Um, that's all I can think of for what I do. I tool about with the ingredients I love, which are big fat Udon noodles, miso paste and Kikkoman soy sauce and can probably list a dozen quick-fry mashups I do with those when I can't be arsed with much, but that's another post.
Need to end with a question. So, what are your takeaway favourites, and have you ever attempted, or want to attempt your own versions of them?
