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plonqOne of the things that drives me up the wall about many of the recipes I find on the Internet is how their authors blithely assume that everyone has access to the kind of rare ingredients you would find if you live in a very large metropolis. Often one can find suitable substitutes for the pretentious ingredients they list.
A recent example was a recipe I followed to make some lobster mushroom bisque last week. I looked up a few recipes, but settled on a vegan one that looked promising. It called for me to make my own cashew milk by soaking raw cashews overnight and blending them into a thick milk. I gave that a pass and just bought some almond/cashew/hazelnut milk into which I blended a few toasted cashews to give it some body. Further down in the recipe it called for a spoon full of kelp powder. I did a bit of research, and while it looked like a couple of local health food stores might carry it, I decided to look for substitutes. One site recommended substituting dashi.
I have lots of dashi, so that was an easy replacement. As I thought about it, the dashi sounded like a good match for this soup anyway (and the soup was very good, so I think I made the right call).
Today I was looking at a recipe for grilled eggplant with a tahini-based sauce. I read through the list of ingredients for the sauce, and it was all good until I got to date syrup.
Date syrup.
I think the author had enough self-awareness to know that it might be a tough ingredient to find, so they suggested pomegranate molasses/honey as an alternative.
Pomegranate molasses.
This is another ingredient that I can't just drive up to the local grocer to procure. It would be nice if there was a recipe search feature where you could specify, "List only recipes for people living in the relative food desert of the Midwest."
I may still try this recipe because it looks pretty good. I have access to pomegranate juice, and my understanding is that you just have to reduce it to get molasses.
A recent example was a recipe I followed to make some lobster mushroom bisque last week. I looked up a few recipes, but settled on a vegan one that looked promising. It called for me to make my own cashew milk by soaking raw cashews overnight and blending them into a thick milk. I gave that a pass and just bought some almond/cashew/hazelnut milk into which I blended a few toasted cashews to give it some body. Further down in the recipe it called for a spoon full of kelp powder. I did a bit of research, and while it looked like a couple of local health food stores might carry it, I decided to look for substitutes. One site recommended substituting dashi.
I have lots of dashi, so that was an easy replacement. As I thought about it, the dashi sounded like a good match for this soup anyway (and the soup was very good, so I think I made the right call).
Today I was looking at a recipe for grilled eggplant with a tahini-based sauce. I read through the list of ingredients for the sauce, and it was all good until I got to date syrup.
Date syrup.
I think the author had enough self-awareness to know that it might be a tough ingredient to find, so they suggested pomegranate molasses/honey as an alternative.
Pomegranate molasses.
This is another ingredient that I can't just drive up to the local grocer to procure. It would be nice if there was a recipe search feature where you could specify, "List only recipes for people living in the relative food desert of the Midwest."
I may still try this recipe because it looks pretty good. I have access to pomegranate juice, and my understanding is that you just have to reduce it to get molasses.
