Bay 12 Games Forum

man I forgot Bay12 even existed. And by extension this thread

So here, have a list of the things i've cooked recently (within the last few years) that were notable for whatever reason.

- Cooked hunter's stew (bigos) in 2020 during lockdown. Had a bunch of sauerkraut saved up plus some cabbage in the fridge, as well as a fair few cured/longlife meats so figured i'd go for it.
Very rustic, smokey, meaty flavour but i made so much of it (and my fussy housemates refused to try it) that i was eating it on my own for a straight week. I used mushroom, paprika, sauerkraut, cabbage, tomato, csabai, bacon, krakowska, stewed for hours.


- Don't have a photo, but cooked a turkish camel stew, called "Sucuklu yohut yemeği". No photo, but recipe here https://exploringtheturkishkitchen.com/index.php/recipe-database/recipe/5-Turkish-chickpeas-and-sucuk-recipe It was very simple to make but extremely tasty. Camel was surprisingly easy to source (probably because Australia has a pretty significant feral camel population). Would happily make again. Only wrinkle was sourcing a substitute for the turkish fermented pepper flavouring biber salcasi - ended up substituting a bit of soy sauce + chili flakes

- spaghetti bolognese (here in aus it's Spag Bol or Spag Bog) made with ingredients (almost) exclusively sourced from local farmers. Added milk, bit of red wine to add some interesting things to the sauce, pasta was squid ink spaghetti with a bit of chili oil tossed in it. shaved a bit of pecorino pepato on top of the bolognese. It ended up being a little bit oily but absolutely delightful It's funny how this fairly basic budget meal is so extensible


- confit chicken - this was for a family christmas. I'd originally intended to smoke the chicken fillets prior to confit, but inclement weather prevented that from happening. Pretty simple to make. Peppercorn, chicken breast, whole garlic cloves, thyme and shitloads of duck fat (about $24 AUD worth, but luckily it's reusable). Cooked for 3 hours @ 135C (275F)

Something like that! And I probably stopped posting frequently five years ago or something.

It's pretty incredible how much went into this thread once upon a time. It's nice to look back on, so I think it's served its purpose.

Classic strife moment

My fort has had two siege announcements recently with no units show up.

Instead, these usually spawn one or two snatchers who book it the moment they're detected. Enemy war population is certainly not an issue, the two goblin (and one human) civilisation i'm at war with have healthy populations. What's happening?

4/10 - Not familiar but clearly been around and doing things on the forums.

Awww hell yeah this thread is 100% my jam. I'm a huge coffee nerd, love me some wacky coffees. It's part of living in Melbourne, Australia, I guess.

Anyone know the trick to making good cappuccino foam?  Watching online videos doesn't help. At first I thought it was because I was using 1% milk, so I went up to 2% and still seemed no good.  Do I need to use whole milk? Cream?

Do I just have terrible technique?

When using non-whole milk - frothing milk relies on protein and fat content. The less casein that is present in the milk, the poorer quality the frothed milk will come out as heated casein stabilises the air bubbles introduced by steaming. Most typical full cream or skim milk has enough protein content to stabilise the milk foam. Some "barista quality" milk is sold with added casein to improve the texture of the milk when it is heated.

As to fat content -

Fat content in milk also can cause impacts to frothing quality. Above 40C heat (usually you want to aim to get milk to about 60-65C) the lipids in milk melt. It's thought that the fat content helps act as a barrier between the stabilised protein-air bubbles and the milk liquid itself; otherwise you'd end up with coalesced milk bubbles (and therefore, no foam).

If you're learning how to froth milk for the first time, it is probably easiest to start with high fat content milk like full cream milk, or skim milk. 1-2% fat content milk will probably foam somewhat, assuming it has normal protein quantity, but the mouthfeel will be worse due to the fat content not preventing bubbles in the foam from coalescing.

Let's talk about technique. Using a typical steam wand, there is something of an art to foaming milk properly.

Like Nenjin said - start low in the milk jug and slowly work your way up into the top of the milk. Don't contact the bottom of the milk jug - this doesn't do much for the milk and might just scorch the milk surrounding the contact point rather than making steam bubbles.

Lattes have less foam than a cappucino, so you don't want to send your wand as far down to the bottom. The more volume of milk that is exposed to the steam wand, the more foam will be produced.
A good ratio to keep in mind is that a cappucino is roughly 30:40:30 espresso:heated milk:milk foam, while lattes (at least, not american lattes) are more like 30:55:15 espresso:heated milk:milk foam.

I have tonnes of coffee equipment, love making all sorts of stuff. Had a shot at making nitro cold brew a few months back, but it stalled as my shitty housemate stole my nitrous canisters to huff instead. That's another story.

After much joyous slaughter involving split second parries and nasty feints, carving my way through the enemy team, I got my skull caved in by a midget with a maul.

Holy necro, how's life everyone?

Oh, I forgot to tell about this, but we made our own messmör earlier this week (just cow milk though, since that is what we make cheese from).

Spoiler: Messmör! (click to show/hide)

It's very salty and tastes almost like liquorice. Maybe tangentially similar to marmite and/or aussmite? They're all made by caramelising leftovers I believe? Messmör is caramelized whey.

I didn't link the the linked English will article on it because it was about some weird distasteful Norwegian kind of cheesebutter and thus claimed messmör is a Norwegian cheesebutter and that's just not right.

Similar - vegemite is a somewhat caramelised beer extract - primarily made from waste yeast, onion and celery extract and some spices.