[The Ghetto Cook] XVI: Pan Fried Noodles - Page 2

On January 31 2012 03:59 Hawk wrote:
also, why add the onions and pepper after the meat is added? you either get veggies that are still green, or overcooked meat a bit, do you not? Unless you like those greens rawish? I always thought you don't put the meat back in until you've got you veggies cooked for that reason

On January 30 2012 21:33 Newbistic wrote:


Honestly, I've been waiting ages for someone to make a comment like this. But in my dreams it was followed by some form of constructive criticism that would allow me to improve.

Either that or I really need a better camera. I took 6 different pictures of the final dish but it turned out they all looked pretty bad. Will probably update with better pictures in the future.

On January 31 2012 06:11 Newbistic wrote:


I put in the regular onions first along with carrots and bamboo shoots. The green onions (scallions) and green peppers go in during the last minute or so of cooking since they become done very fast. This allows all the vegetables to remain at roughly the same level of crispiness. I do prefer certain vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, bean sprouts, and snap peas "rawish" in stir fries, as in they're done as soon as their raw flavor has disappeared.

The meat can really go in whenever so that it'll be done when the vegetables are. I think I put the meat in about a minute too early, but I did hold off on putting it in for about five minutes.

Thanks for all the replies btw. I love discussing food and food related things.

On January 31 2012 06:37 r.Evo wrote:



Here you go, took me about 30 seconds after I remembered where the damn buttons where:
+ Show Spoiler +

...that's what you were thinking about, right?

Your camera most likely does the pictures by using some kind of "Auto White Balance". Since you are not manually adjusting it the camera tries to determine itself what actually IS white and what not. Most of those auto-balance thingies in cameras are adjusted to work well under outdoor conditions (Color temperature ~6000K) and therefor it fails horribly when it applies the same mechanism to your average artificial indoor light (~3000K).

When that happens the whole picture looks "too warm" and has this "reddish touch" as if stuff would look during sunset or similar conditions.



How to fix:

a) find the manual option in your camera for it. If it's a somewhat okayish camera you can adjust the colortemperature somewhere (check for some xxxxK value as above) and play around with it till you find the correct setting for your lighting conditions (I'm assuming it's around ~2700-3500K at your place).

b) Photoshop -> Image -> Adjustments -> Levels. Find a black and a white spot to auto-adjust it to, finetune it manually a bit.

What I did on top of that was slightly up the green/red saturation and then I ran a default sharpen mask over it so it looks more crisp and "glossy".


In case you're like "Oh fuck this crap I hate photoshop" feel free to PM me before you release the next series and I'll do the adjustment for you. <3 ghetto cook.



Edit: I just doublechecked, the sharpening could be done better via manual masks but I was too lazy for that. =P ... Getting a sharper picture in the first place should be your duty anyway. Low light means longer exposure time means you need to hold the camera verrrry still to avoid blurry stuff. Hold your breath, keep the camera close to your body (press it against your chest e.g.), stuff like that should help.

Edit 2: If your camera is REALLY crappy it should still have some kind of "indoors/outdoors" option. Try that. :>