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The Imperian Cookbook
Ahkan
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Aleutia mentioned this idea on ring the other day and I figured we'd go for it. I also believe Gurn attempted something like this a while back so....here we go.
In an effort to cease being toxic pooheads and build a sense of community, feel free to provide your most delectable recipes to your fellow Imperianites.
That is my contribution right now.
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I like to mix in the pecans, and then drop a few on top for extra pecan goodness.
This makes a tangy cheesecake. It's not super sweet, but it's what I grew up with!
Pumpkin biscuits. Very simple but highly appealing to small children.
1 1/2 cups Bisquick mix
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup skim milk (ish - start with less and add as needed)
Extra Bisquick for rolling
Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl, then mix in vanilla, pumpkin puree, and milk until the dough just barely comes together.
2. Turn out dough onto a board floured with bisquick mix and knead 4-5 times, then roll out slightly; the dough should be very thick.
3. Use a floured biscuit or cookie cutter to cut each biscuit. (Cut as close together as possible to get as many biscuits from the first roll-out as you can)
4. Place cut biscuits on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 375F until lightly browned on top, about 10-12 minutes.
Ingredients
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine BBQ sauce, peach preserves, garlic, and hot sauce if you add it in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat for 5-10 minutes, or until nice and hot. Stir occasionally, you want it to thicken up and start coating your spoon. Set aside.
Drizzle olive oil on rimmed baking sheets and place chicken thighs skin side down in the pans. Roast for 25 minutes. Remove from oven briefly, brush sauce all over the thighs, then use a spatula to flip them over to the other side. Brush the tops with more sauce and return to the oven for 7 minutes. Remove from oven, brush on more sauce, and return to the oven for another 7 minutes. Remove from oven, brush on sauce, and turn up the temperature to 425 degrees.
Continue roasting for another 5 to 7 minutes, or until the sauce is starting to brown around the edges and the thighs are totally cooked through. Remove from the oven and let sit for at least 10 minutes before serving.
Directions
Peanut butter cookies:
1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter
1 Tbsp Vanilla extract
1 egg
-preheat oven to 375
-mix ingredients thoroughly
-roll dough into small balls thrice the size of your thumb. (these will flatten into cookie shapes as they bake)
- lightly dust sheet with flour
-make light criss-crosses on the top of each cookie.
-LIGHTLY coat top of cookies in confectioners sugar
-bake 10-15 minutes
I've been told it's more like baked peanut butter than cookies, but it's delicious.
My grandparents like crunchy cookies, so you can probably mess around with the bake time.
Okay, since it's pumpkin season I'll share my favorite pumpkin recipe.
Sour Cream Pumpkin Coffee Cake
Kind of a terrible picture, but here you go.
Crockpot bbq pulled pork
Ingredients:
2 pound pork shoulder*Salt
Pepper
Garlic (powder or cloves, your choice)
1 onion
1 small can of chicken broth
Any other seasonings you want to use
1 bottle of your favorite bbq sauce (I prefer KC Masterpiece!)
Kaiser rolls
*You can use any amount of pork for this as long as if fits in your crockpot. I know Ahkan recently made this out of roughly 7lbs of pork for 10-12 people. If you use a larger cut of meat, BE SURE to cut it into smaller pieces! If it’s too thick, it won’t cook through properly. Aim for roughly 2lbs – 3lbs pieces of meat to cook with.
Equipment:
Crockpot
Crockpot liners for easy cleanup
2 forks
Food tongs
Knife
Wooden spoon
Find your crockpot and place a liner in it, these are a godsend for cleanup, and totally worth buying a box of these at the grocery store. Take your onion and chop it finely, your goal here is to line the bottom of the crock pot with onion. Once that’s done, season your meat! I prefer using a simple salt, pepper, and garlic powder mixture, but you can add anything you want to this! Remember to season both sides.
Next comes adding liquid to the crockpot. I use chicken broth if it I have it on hand to give a bit more flavor (I add just enough to cover the bed of onions and then about a quarter inch or so of the bottom of the meat, but you really can’t go wrong with adding more). If you don’t have any broth handy, you can use water. You WILL need liquid in your crockpot, whether broth or water, so the meat doesn’t dry out.
Now just put on the lid and set it for 8-10 hours! Depending on how thick your meat cut is, it might actually go into a 12 hour cook. You’ll know when your meat is done when you take a fork and gently scrape it atop the meat – if it starts to shred, you’re good to pull it from the crockpot. If it doesn’t shred easily, cook it longer.
Once your meat is done, use tongs to put it on a platter to shred. BE SURE TO REMOVE ANY FAT. You don’t want fat in your shredded pork, trust me. It’s nasty. Just take a knife and cut it off to discard in the trash. Using your forks, shred your meat! When that’s done, you have two options. You can either place a new liner in your crockpot and discard the one filled with juices and onion, or empty the bag and reuse it for this next step. Your call.
Take your shredded meat and put it BACK in the lined crockpot. Your crockpot should be done with its ‘cooking’ phase, and sitting on ‘warm’. Now you take your bbq sauce and add as much as you like. This is where your wooden spoon comes in! Once it’s mixed well and coated to your liking, put the lid back on to cook for 20 more minutes, and you’re done! Just open up a kaiser roll and slather it with bbq pulled pork goodness!This recipe makes five small cakes, you can double the recipe for really big ones if you have a big enough pan/wok and enough oil. You can also fool around with how much sugar you add if you like sweeter cakes, though the less sugar you use the more they taste like pancakes.
-1 egg
-2/3 Cup of milk (I use whole milk but 2% doesn't make a huge difference)
-1/4tsp salt
-3Tbsp Sugar
-1 cup powdered sugar for dusting
-1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
-3/4tsp baking powder
Directions:
Beat the egg, add milk. Sift in flour, sugar, baking powder, salt; beat until batter is smooth.
Fill your pan until the oil is at least an inch deep (my pan takes at least two quarts for this) Heat the oil to 375 degrees (try not to get it hotter because I've burned a lot of these when the oil is too hot)
scrape the batter into a disposable funnel and pour it over the oil in squiggly patterns (cakes cook one at a time unless you have a bigger pan than mine.) They'll take up to a minute each, flipping a few times.
cover a plate in powdered sugar, brush a -tinsy- bit of water over the funnel cake then flip it a few times in the sugar.
Top with:
-maraschino cherries (with sauce)
-fresh strawberries (and strawberry syrup if not sweet enough for you)
-whipped cream
-fried apples.
My grandmother (and me) do the fried apples. (1/2 cup butter, melt it on medium, stir in 2Tbsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 cup of sugar, peel/slice/core four apples, cook for about eight minutes until they get soft.)
Cut at least one boneless chicken breast into bite sized chunks - not big, not tiny. I wouldn't use more than 1 and a half breasts though, unless they're pretty small ones.
Put some cooking oil in the pot, then turn the heat up to slightly higher than medium - it should be hot, but not so hot that you're going to immediately burn the paste.
After a minute or two put 1-3 generous tablespoons of curry paste. 1 is going to be pretty weak, but you could try it if you're really worried about it being too hot - I like it at about 3 and I think most times I knew I was making curry for you I used 2. Stir with the oil for a minute or so until you really smell the curry. If needed, you can add little more oil to the paste. The point is you don't want to burn the paste, although really, even if you do burn it a bit, it's not going to really ruin anything.
Then, add the chicken and any juices on the plate. Stir for a minute or two in the oily paste. Have all your cans open/drained, shake the coconut milk before you open it so you don't have to worry so much about all of the cream sticking to the lid (try not let that happen though). Scrape everything you can out of the coconut milk cans. Add about half of the chicken broth (again, try to get the greasy stuff sitting on top into the curry, but don't worry too much if some of it sticks to the lid). Put in the fish oil, squeeze the juice from half a lime (or you can just use lime juice).
Add the cans of bamboo shoots, and break or cut the baby corn in half. Bring to a very low boil, then turn the heat way down and simmer for about 20-22 minutes. In the last five minutes of cooking add a few sprigs of fresh basil, try not to break the sprigs because eventually you'll want to pull them out, but do stir them around gently from time to time, so that the juices get mixed in.
Serve... When you put the curry away for the night (if there's any left), pull out all of the basil you can.
Rice:
Always use double the amount of water for the amount of dry rice you're going to cook. Two good sized coffee cups of dry rice usually makes a good amount for the amount of curry the above recipe makes (so that's 4 of those coffee cups' worth of water). Put a few good shakes of salt in the water, and dump a little oil in. Bring to a boil, then add the rice and start stirring. Turn the heat down, and stir until no pieces of rice stick to your spoon/spatula (you'll have to pick off the ones that stick at first and then stir more). This takes about a minute. Cover the rice and cook for at least 16 minutes. You may have to adjust the heat. It should simmer. When it looks cooked, turn the heat off and leave covered until the curry is ready and the rice will continue to fluff up.
-one quarter ounce packet of unflavored gelatin
-Four Tablespoons of sugar (he said powdered but regular works fine)
-Three Tablespoons of boiling water
-Two cups (measured) of hot, freshly brewed Coffee. (darker is better to retain flavor)
-Half and Half or Heavy Whipped Cream
boil water, empty packet of gelatin into small bowl for mixing, add two tablespoons of boiling water to bowl, stir until dissolved.
In a medium saucepan add hot coffee and sugar mix in gelatin (will require a bit of scraping >.>), bring pot to a hard boil.
Pour coffee into serving dishes or larger pan for cubing. Chill 4-6 hours (4 worked in my fridge).
When serving break up jello with spoon into smaller chunks, add half and half or wihpped cream liberally. We served ours with those little rolled wafer sticks, and it works with decaf and sweeter (my grandpa is diabetic and allergic to caffeine) though it takes a bit more sweetener if you substitute.
Toast it somehow.