Moopheus
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Posts posted by Moopheus
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Shoot, now when I go into the drugstore, I'll be confused. I'll pick up a bag of Hershey's kisses and be afraid I might accidentally be buying a bag of Jacques Torres's chocolates. And I surely wouldn't want that to happen!
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In some ways, the name of the recipe builds a level of excitement and expectation of the dish that can improve the experience of enjoying it...
Or, more likely, set you up for disappointment, or turn you right off to begin with. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've never had cake I would compare to hot sex. And I really, really, like cake. So right away I know the chef is promising something he can't really deliver: a hard sell. In fact, names like that have become such a cliché now that I'd have to assume it's compensation for mediocrity. In fact, the best cakes I can remember having, at least in a restaurant or cafe, were just labeled "chocolate layer cake" on the menu.
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When we think of eggs for breakfast they're accompanied by bacon, sausage, ham, maybe a beef steak, but NEVER chicken. Why's that so in the diner world?
As a guess, I'd say it has to do with the way eggs are usually cooked in a diner: on a big steel griddle. The stuff sharing space on the griddle is often starchy (potatoes, pancakes) or fatty (sausage, etc.). Chicken isn't enough of either. Note that some relatively fatty fish (salmon, trout) also go well with eggs for breakfast.
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Anything with enough butter and/or whipped cream and/or chocolate is going to work for me. But you can't assume that something that is a "no-brainer" for you is universal: when it comes to taste, almost nothing is universal. You might think bacon is the ultimate, but personally I find it easy to live without. For me, I'd say cheese: good cheese, and you don't even have to cook. See, I'd make almost the same comment: most things can be improved by adding some cheese. For just about everything, there's a cheese out there that it can go with.
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I once described my dietary preference as "dessertarian," however my wife insists that we also have some vegetables.
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I don't know how much titles "matter" but they might, in a cookbook, be revealing of the attitude of the author. Overly cutesy names are definitely suspect. As noted above, seems to suggest an overly hard sell of the recipe, in an annoyingly paternal/maternal way. Like we're children who wouldn't be interested in the recipe unless it's dressed up somehow. At the other end of the scale is the title that mentions practically the whole ingredient list down to the last spice: suggests overly fussy control freak. You wouldn't dare alter this, would you? I'm okay with short descriptive titles like "Chicken with Yogurt," or maybe "chicken with spiced yogurt," something that just gives the main points, in executive summary fashion, on the assumption that more details will follow in the recipe itself.
If the word "chocolate" is in there somewhere, that's good too.
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Classic Home Desserts, by Richard Sax.
If I have to be stuck on an island, at least let it be a desserted one.
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I did the side-by-side comparison. Both bars are easily available here--they're often right next to each other at the counter.
I have to go with the general run of the comments here--the Skor had a noticeably more salty and buttery taste than the Heath. I didn't notice much difference in crunchiness. In fact, I'd say the overall difference was not that dramatic. The Skor was a little bit tastier but still obviously a mass-market candy.
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Oh, yes. In fact, I think at one point he had some stuff up from the same book we have.
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It's sort of frightening to contemplate that there was a time when people willingly inflicted this sort of thing on themselves and others. I tell you, tomatoes and Jell-O are like the proton beams in Ghostbusters--should never cross paths.
MarkInHouston--at least in my school district, by the early 70s we'd pretty much given up on duck-and-cover and resigned ourselves to instant obliteration. Maybe that's why we thought we had nothing to lose with the Jell-O. And the clothes.
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Well, if you really want pictures, they're all here.
Taste-wise they range from merely inoffensive to bioweapon-level threats against humanity (stewed tomatoes in lime Jell-O).
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A while back, the wife and I went to see the film Julie and Julia. Afterward, the wife looked up Julie's blog, read some of it, decided she was unimpressed, and thought why not do it too. So we went to the kitchen, and I, being generally a silly person, picked out the most un-Julia-like book in the collection: The New Joys of Jell-O, from 1974. This is a book we'd never actually used, but purchased for the amusement of the illustrations. So the wife decided to, uh, cook her way through the book over the course of the year. This seemed like an amusing idea, except for one snag: it would involve actually eating the Jell-O. Some of the recipes in this book are quite, well, beyond unappetizing. Really.
So fast forward a while and the wife is still at it. Blogging away about the Jell-O. Months to go. Last night was Waldorf salad. In Jell-O. Now, I want to be supportive and all that, but I don't want to eat any more damn Jell-O. Some real horrors await--Jell-O with tuna, Jell-O with ham. Jell-O gazpacho. I've come to believe that this book is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
I want to know, who came up with these things? Did the food scientists in the labs at General Foods actually try these concoctions before deciding to put them in the book? Did they giggle and smirk? Have competitions to try to find the most ingeniously horrific combinations?
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Where do these books come from? Is there some vast store of corporate recipes out there that publishers pick and choose and combine into big flashy books for the bargain shelves of bookstores around the world?
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It's called "value publishing" or "direct to remainder." A number of publishers basically specialize in this sort of thing; I think Random House has a separate division for it. Yes, basically quickly assemble books from materials that can be acquired cheap or free, and fast, to keep royalty expenses down. As you noted, usually revolving around simple concepts, sometimes reprinting older public domain material.
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I was wondering if anyone had a good way to prepare them other than the old green bean casserole.
This green beans and coconut stir-fryfrom Suvir Saran's Indian Home Cooking makes a fairly regular appearance at my house, usually served over some basmati rice.
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Is a refurb Baratza Maestro the best way to go? How durable are they?
I've had a Maestro Plus for about five years now, I use it pretty much every day, no problems, though it's getting about time to replace the burrs (Baratza sells replacement parts). For drip and french press it works very well. My only complaint is that it is a bit of a pain to clean out, but I think that is generally a problem with grinders.
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When I use non-trimmed beans (yes, I'll cop to the truth, I often buy the pre-trimmed, packaged beans, I'm sorry), I usually put a handful down on the board, and use the back of my chef's knife to get all the ends evenly lined up. The I whack off however much I think is appropriate.
That's basically what I do. I haven't come up with a better way to trim them.
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Wow, that's just fascinating to me. In winter, when I see berries in the local supers in my part of SoCal (not that far from Shamanjoe), they're all from South America, as are the stone fruits and melons. I won't buy them. They're truly hideous...no fruit flavor whatsoever, no matter how long you let them sit on the counter. They will dissolve into a pool of ooze before they'd ever ripen.
After seeing your post, I happened to have to stop in a store tonight, and looked at the berry boxes they had. The address of the packager was California, but the berries themselves were marked as product of Mexico, so you were right, they weren't local to you.
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The reality is that for most home cooks, you're never going to make something that would be served at The French Laundry, but that you might put together a really good roast chicken for your friends.
Is that a bad thing? If you can read a book and make a nice dinner for friends, what's wrong with that? Gopnick makes it sounds like we should be disappointed even when we have in fact gained something. It still sounds to me like he's projecting his own problems onto the cookbooks; it may not the cookbooks' fault that he's not satisfied with them.
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Is our stuff really that bad when it gets to you? I would think things like blackberries and rasberries would do well in some of the warmer parts of New England (in winter), or at least do well in an area closer to you than California.
Yes, it generally is not good. In winter, I might be better off buying one of the better brands of frozen berries than what passes for fresh. Part of the problem is that the shops around here only stock berries from one or two producers, who send unripe fruit that tastes like packing material; you see the same packages everywhere. What's really bad is that even in the summer the regular supermarkets often have only the stuff from California, you have to go to a good produce market to get the local fresh stuff. There are no "warmer parts" of New England in winter.
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Though when I read
"Anyone who cooks knows that it is in following recipes that one first learns the anticlimax of the actual, the perpetual disappointment of the thing achieved."
my thought was: maybe in your kitchen, buddy.
So Mr. Gopnik came from a family of not very good cooks, didn't really learn how to cook very well, and now blames cookbooks for this. Or at least, that's impression one gets from the article.
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I try to support local farmers as much as I can, knowing full well that some things, as JAZ says, such as citrus, coffee, chocolate, and so on are never likely to be local produce in New England. On the other hand, there are local coffee roasters and other processors whose products at least mean jobs in the region. Heck, there's a peanut-butter factory less than half a mile from here. I'd rather skip berries in the winter than buy the crappy stuff from California. I don't eat meat and only occasionally fish, so those are not big issues for me. Eggs from a small producer in western MA.
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Anyway, was just an idea. I'm sure if the book would come out today it would be full of photos.
But probably also less text. The book as it is 700 pages just for vol. 1. It has a $40 list price. To do the same book, with photos, you'd be looking at a massive, expensive book. 65, 70 bucks, easy. If that book were getting done today, it would be cut.
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I am making some progress. With a little digging on the intertubes, I was able to figure out what sort of flour I had (Caputo pizza flour), find a good recipe for it, and make some manageable dough. In fact, the dough itself seemed to come out well and I was able to form nice dough balls. I decided to make two small pizzas and use parchment (I have a metal paddle). I think I made a mistake in that I decided to parbake the dough, and then put the toppings on. When I served the pizza, the bottom of the crust was hard (but not charred or even much browned) and the top was a bit soggy and underbaked. Also, I wasn't able to get the crust as evenly thin as I would like--there were spots that were too thick and some too thin. So I still have some work to do there.
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You could just get "The Way to Cook" and stick them on the shelf together.
Sharp knives in the sink
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Neither the my knives or my cutting board gets left in the sink. Whisks and strainers also get cleaned up more or less right away. I always wash them and put them away after use. Since I usually do the cooking, my wife ends up doing the washing up. I'd say I'd never put a good knife in the dishwasher, but our new house is the first place we've lived in in many years that actually has a dishwasher, but in four months we haven't actually used it yet. I think we'd run out of dishes before we filled it up.