Jensen
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Posts posted by Jensen
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I'm making Meyer lemon confit as I write this; it should be ready for tomorrow night's dessert. Will report back...
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I was intrigued by the video as well and might be trying it with some Meyer lemons tomorrow. No idea re: the storage question but he did say that the blanching was to remove the bitterness from the pith. I didn't think they were double-blanched though, just that you needed to bring the water to boil again before blanching the next batch.
I guess I'll have to watch the video again <!!!>.
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Croquettes.
Hmmppphhhh.
When this topic first came up, I sniffed.
I made croquettes in Grade 8 Home Ec, along with Spanish rice and cinnamon toast. Oh, and tea. Must not forget the "how to brew tea" lesson!
So, my first swipe at the croquette pinata was an attempt at making fresh corn croquettes. I thought these would be a great riff on corn fritters. <ahem> And they very well might have been, had they not melted away into crepe-like tentacles in the pan.
Tonight I thought I'd take another kick at the can. (Hey, I'm nothing if not a great source for folksy clichés.) I tried for some chicken croquettes, using tinned chicken, sautéed onions, and peas.
I made my white sauce using 4 T of butter, 6 T of flour, and 1.5 cups of milk. Then I chilled it. After chilling, I put the other ingredients (chicken, onions, and peas) in a bowl with some seasonings and then added in only enough of the white sauce until it was a thick mixture. Back into the fridge for some more chilling.
Before frying, I formed the croquettes, coated them in panko, and then put them back in the fridge for more chilling.
Despite all this care and chilling, some of the damn things STILL fell apart in the pan. This never happened in Grade 8.
Oh what I would give for that Grade 8 Home Ec recipe....
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A few comments before my "I will"s ...
Prasantin...convenience store nachos? you mean the ones in the heated incubator with the cheese sauce? For shame, girl! (Ignore this if those particular nachos weren't available in your part of Canada)
Daniel Rogov...I think the 18 oyster limit is extreme. Why not ease into this thing and go with 24?
Teri Everitt...you are my hero. Wow. I'm humbled by your post but I'd like to suggest trying lemon or maybe cucumber slices in Gordie's water.
GordonCooks...PM me.
(Okay, just kidding with that one.)
C. sapidus...might I suggest either of Jonathan Safran Foer's novels?
And now my "I will's"...
I will eat more reasonable portion sizes.
I will make bread more often.
I will find a job. Hey, I got my work permit!
I will learn how to "hold my tongue" in email. (Okay, not food related but very important nonetheless.)
I will teach some cooking basics to the Spawn.
I will read "The River Cottage Meat Book" (especially if Santa brings it, as I've asked him to do).
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Our plated dinner from our Christmas meal yesterday. I'll try to get the rest of the pics up later, but they're all up on my website.
My god, Marlene...that pud is AMAZING!!!!!
I'm thinking I should have packed myself in Mr. B's luggage!
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We'll probably get country of origin labeling in the farm bill, but all the possibilities I've heard of for reform - the media lauding the fact that this is the first time the public has taken a stand about what is included, and might impact it for the better - seem to have fallen to the wayside.
I read a headline yesterday that the farm bill had passed. I'll have to check it out (my connection was intermittent yesterday so not much surfing got done at all).
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Wow. Just seeing the pictures make me feel good...like there is hope.
Thanks for sharing them.
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I have a few questions for you...
* Is Mark a Gemini? I only ask because his chili ingredient layout was so symmetrical.
* What street is the Philly cheesesteak place on?
Riley sent me some doggy ESP messages; he thinks he looks quite dapper in his smoking jacket.
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Woo-hoo! A local blog!
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These are old photos but it just occurred to me that these are a sort of "cabbage roll":
And inside the cabbage:
To make them, I lined custard cups with lightly-steamed savoy cabbage, then filled with minced chicken breast meat mixed with chopped water chestnuts and seasoned with white pepper and sesame oil. The cups were then steamed until done.
Asian cabbage rolls?
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I think satsumas are a type of mandarin orange. Tangerines are always labelled as 'tangerines' and never as a type of orange so maybe it's a different species of citrus tree?
I did some taste comparisons last year at Auburn's Mountain Mandarin Festival (oh look, it's this weekend!).
The farms contributing to the festival are located at different elevations in the foothills, with associated soil differences and temperature differences. It was interesting to note the differences in taste; I found my favourites all came from around Newcastle (lower elevation and slightly warmer).
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Well, having just yesterday received Mr. Baggins in the mail, I could make an educated guess but I think that might be cheating a wee bit.
I really had to ponder where to take Mr. B for his photo shoot. There are several landmarks in Sacramento which would make for nice pictures...the Capitol, the Tower Bridge, the Governator.
Then I considered that I don't really live in Sacramento; I live in a small, unincorporated area of Sacramento County called Fair Oaks. Those who live in the area know what Fair Oaks is famous for...
Feral chickens!!!
Yes, those are probably two words you never expected to see together but Fair Oaks Village is home to a large community of feral chickens. We even have an annual Chicken Festival.
And so yesterday afternoon, Mr. B, the Spawn, and I went off to the Village park for our photo opportunity...
There were many more chickens in the field when we were there, one of which chased the Spawn around for a wee bit. There's nothing quite as humourous as seeing a five pound chicken chasing a 5'10" Amazon...
This handsome lad was particularly amenable to having his picture taken.
And so, after his brief visit to sunny California, Mr. B will be winging his way to the true north, strong and free!
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Oh, I like eating adobo with slices of tomatoes and cucumbers. The veggies clean your mouth for the next adobo spoonful.
You need to warn people that chicken adobo is like crack. Once you've tasted it, you're hooked...
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Klary, what additional ingredients to you put in your farrotto?
Farro is one of my favourite grains and I've got about 300g in the cupboard at this very moment (it's not easy to find here). Usually, I cook it in chicken broth and add sauteed onions, chopped spinach, and oregano.
Tracey, I feel your pain. We had to turn on the furnace this morning.
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Thanks for the heads up...I've just bookmarked the feed!
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For me, one of the key characteristics of heirloom fruits/vegetables is their ability to propogate. If I were to save the seeds from an heirloom tomato, I should be able to plant them and grow a plant which would produce the same fruit.
Heritage? That term doesn't really mean much to me. Having read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", I did immediately wonder if "heritage turkeys" were able to have sex though.
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I tired to look at the links, but I couldn't get them to work. I'm sure they looked great, though! Anything with bechamel sauce is good--that's my rule! (one of them, anyway)
Here are the links:
I'm inspired by them to a) try to save some braised short ribs from tonight's dinner, and b) make cannelloni out of said leftovers.
They look great!
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Vanilla chicken? Is the vanilla in a sauce? How does it work?
My "full" name for the recipe is "Chicken Scallopine with Vanilla and Garlic Veloute". (But we just call it vanilla chicken around the house)
The veloute is made with a vanilla bean; I haven't tried it with vanilla extract yet. I'm not sure how it would work out.
Recipe is here.
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Vanilla chicken with mashed potatoes:
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David Ross posted a meal not too long ago that sounds remarkably similar to what you want to do.
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The similarity of East v West coast is interesting. One might expect that as the West Coast is obviously much closer to China then the local American-Chinese cuisine would be more heavily influenced by migration in the last few decades. That fact that this isn't the case, suggests to me that American-Chinese cuisine is a pretty solid entity in its own right.
Well, that's true until you consider the reversion of Hong Kong to China in the 90s and the related immigration to western Canada. I don't think you can say that it is fact that the "local American-Chinese cuisine [is not] more heavily influenced by migration." Assuming of course that we are considering "American" as "North American" and thus including Canada. If not, ignore this.
I'll confess that the 70s are a remote memory for me (I was born in 1964)...I recall some typically "westernised Chinese" dishes from restaurants (mostly chop suey and chow mein) but also the butcher in Victoria's Chinatown that sold barbecued pork and duck and all sorts of other meats. My dad would buy strips of char sui at the butcher and bring it home to the 'burbs. That same butcher is still in business today (smoke pit in the courtyard and all); one of my sisters buys her barbecue duck there for her Christmas Eve dinner. My dad was not an epicure by any stretch of the imagination...he worked in the shipyard!
As Vancouver had a similar influence in immigration, I can only surmise that the influx of people to Canada's west coast from Hong Kong in the 90s affected a food scene that was initially established in the late 19th century.
Oddly enough, before we left Vancouver, the "exotic" Chinese food was found in one of two restaurants...both were "Shanghai" style places and very different from the Cantonese food we were used to.
Hmmm. Could it be that "Chinese-American" food is more complex than what we'd initially thought?
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We had a simple, yet very comforting dish of spinach and ricotta-stuffed shells for our dinner tonight.
Joe, you can comfort my stomach with that ANY TIME.
Wow!
j
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Ditto on the request for the artichoke square recipe. It looks like it would make a good vegetarian offering.
Last night's dinner was inspired by the Filipino cuisine thread. (Well, inspired by the subject header...I didn't actually read through the entire thread.
)Chicken adobo:
Recipe is here.
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This has evolved into a really fascinating discussion. Thank you to all the contributors so far for giving my brain something to chew on.
This particular tangent of the discussion started, I believe, in response to a distinction that was being drawn by a couple of people (yourself included). As I understand it, that distinction was between "a cuisine when adapted by and for the members of the parent culture" and "a cuisine when adapted by members of the parent culture in response to the tastes of an alien culture." I believe this is a distinction without a difference, at least insofar as questions of authenticity and legitimacy are concerned.I can't agree more with this. While the cuisines resulting from those two different paths of culinary evolution may differ (maybe even significantly), they are both equally "authentic" and "legitimate".
I think Chinese-American cuisine, with respect to Canada as a separate nation, nonetheless covers the US and Canada. I'm not aware of major differences between Chinese-American and Chinese-Canadian cuisines (which I've also seen referred to as Can/Chinese), either in the in-home or restaurant-adapted forms. If you list out the 20 or so most popular dishes, the lists mostly overlap for China and the US, with just a couple of items that seem to have emerged in Canada but not the US.Without disputing anything further (or necessarily this quote), I will say that, after moving from Canada to the States, I found a number of American Chinese restaurant foods that I'd never heard of. I don't know whether this is because of where I moved from or where I moved to but, aside from some common types of dishes (e.g., chop suey, chow mein), there are a fair number of differences.
Off the top of my head: foil-wrapped chicken, General Whoever's Chicken, Orange Chicken, (can you tell I mostly eat chicken when I'm out? LOL), crystal shrimp (or whatever it's called). Things I can't get here that are readily available at any level of Chinese restaurant: twice-fried green beans, congee (hell, I can get that on BC Ferries!), breaded almond chicken, Singapore noodles, spicy squid (sometimes I can get that here as "salt and pepper" shrimp, with squid substituted).
Again, this is a fascinating topic and I thank all who have participated.
NYT's video – Orange Confit
in Cooking
Posted
The texture is surprising; they're very soft to chew but still firm enough that they don't feel slimy in the mouth. I did two eight hour poaches and I could still taste a hint of bitterness in the rind. I'm not sure whether it's enough to make me want to poach them for another 8 hours though.
They didn't get served as dessert because they look a little dodgy. They're just not attractive.
My big question though is what am I going to do with the syrup. What a great bonus to making this recipe!