chromedome

I just weigh the damned things... Seriously, though, the 45-55g range is about right. Just use your best judgement, and add a bit more flour if necessary. Or beat the eggs first so that they're pourable, and add slowly until you've got the right texture (the rest becomes part of breakfast, or eggwash on another product). Of course if you haven't made this particular recipe before, the "right" texture might be difficult to guess...

When I was still crawling, I used to filch the pickled onions out of the jars of mixed. Does that count? Oh, and I tried to eat a frog that made the mistake of taking a shortcut across my blanket. The first thing I can recall cooking for myself was a trout that I'd just caught in a brook near the house. I breaded and panfried it. I didn't know to use milk and flour as well, just went right to the crumbs, so that part didn't work so well, but it tasted damned good. By the time I was eight I could skin a rabbit with a jacknife (but I didn't cook the rabbit stew, that was Dad's job). In grade six, on of my homework assignments was to make a classic French dish from one of the recipes in our textbook. I made a caramel mousse and a salade Nicoise. I can still remember watching the caramel melt, and thinking how bizarre and wonderful it was.

I spend a whole hell of a lot of time on the 'web, checking out sites of every kind imaginable. I have to say, the complaints above are all hot buttons of mine, too; this site has a lot of the bells and whistles I detest. Having said that... DAMN!...Content covers a multitude of design sins (okay, sources of divergent opinion), and the content here is friggin' amazing. I plan on sending the link to several of my former classmates, and at least one of my current bakers (the boy's got ambitions...).

ROI=Return on Investment My former pastry instructor goes down every summer to take a master class from Notter. My impression is that this primarily what his classes are aimed at, established pros looking to push back the corners of their own personal "envelope." I guess that would get you to the same place eventually. Just a question of whether you want to get your upgrade all in one go, or on the "installment plan." And of course, you'd be wanting to answer the sort of questions chefette's been asking, just for your own satisfaction.

...and let's not forget Ben Heppner, the heldentenor's heldentenor. A real quandary for me, since I love his voice and singing but detest most of the German repertoire.

Kind of an odd one...I downloaded Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management from Project Gutenberg. It's not just a cookbook, there's a lot about dealing with servants and suchlike (a big part of my day, for sure....) but there are a ton of vintage recipes. I was amused to note that she even costed them out! For those who aren't familiar with it, this is one of the great Victorian best-sellers. Isabel Beeton wrote it when she was 22, and she died at 29 or thereabouts, but the book continued to sell in a great many editions through the second half of the nineteenth century. FWIW, Project Gutenburg also has a church cookbook from 1894 available for download. I might go back for that.

Uhhhh....yeah. Duh. One of my hot buttons, and I've vented here before about gloves once or twice. They're only cleaner than my hand when I take 'em out of the box. And that's assuming that some half-trained part-timer hasn't spilled half the box onto the floor, and put them all back in (I've caught that one happening a couple of times at different places). After that, they're *exactly* as clean as my hand, and for the same reason: that I've got the training and attitude to work in a clean and hygienic fashion. We've all been in chains where they issue one pair per staffer per shift...don't kid yourself.

Haggis is just blood pudding. Nothing special, lots of places have their own version. A good stout, a haggis, some neeps and taties...nothing wrong with that. I dunno about fur seal, but harp seal is fair-to-middlin'. I'm not as keen on flipper pie as the old-timers, and I'll confess the meat is dark and gamey (I still like it), but the liver is absolutely wonderful. Far and away the best part of the seal. Haven't had that in years, it's just about impossible to get outside of Newfoundland.

I don't know anyone who's acquired a taste for Marmite or Vegemite as an adult, having grown up without exposure to it. But that's an easy one. Coming from the east coast, I'd say that the glory of fish 'n' brewis eludes most "come from aways." Salt cod, poached hardtack, rendered pork fat, and maybe some raw onion and a drizzle of vinegar. Cod cheeks and tongues won't usually have outsiders slavering, either. Present company probably excepted.

I actually got a whole long weekend, which never happens. Neither job needed me for the whole three days. My big plan for the weekend? Sleep. Lots. Yesterday I did barbecue, after a fashion. I've recently been given a gas barbecue but didn't have a tank for it (and too broke to buy one, this week) so I went looking for a bag of charcoal. Nobody had that, either, within my immediate area. So I came home and broke up a bunch of dry hardwood limbs that'd been cluttering up the back corner of my yard, and built a small fire in a broken terracotta flower pot. Whizzed ginger, onions and garlic to a paste with my immersion blender, spread that on skewers of pork shoulder, and grilled them one at a time over the tiny fire in the flowerpot. I could only get about 2 skewers done before refreshing my bed of coals with new twigs, so I spent a lot of time hunched over puffing the fire back into life. As a consequence, I have a few new burns on my hands today and had to trim my beard to get rid of the scorched whiskers (I was due for a trim anyway, mind you). When all was said and done I had fun, provided the wife with some head-shaking amusement, and the pork tasted great. How bad can that be?

Got back to the thrift store, and picked up the five remaining Time-Life books: Italy, Middle East, Caribbean, Latin America, and China. My total expenditure for the seven volumes? $14 Canadian.

I've recently bought A Drizzle of Honey by Gitlitz and Davidson. Although it's primarily focused on the cooking of the "converso" community (Sephardic Jews converted to Catholicism) in the 15th/16th centuries, there is a lot of background information on the Moorish influence. You may find some useful tidbits there, and as a multi-award winner it shouldn't be hard to find.

American recipes that called for "sticks" of butter irritated the hell out of me when I first started cooking. I'd never seen that, so it was like German recipes calling for "one envelope" of vanilla sugar. Fortunately, I had German friends who'd lived in the US, so they were able to clear up both mysteries for me.

Two more for me, this weekend. I was at my local thrift store and spotted a dozen or so of the old Time-Life books on one of the shelves. I grabbed the French Provincial and Spain/Portugal volumes, and will be back for the others within the next day or two.

I could second just about everything that's been said. I love to cook; really, really love to cook (and bake). I graduated cooking school at 40 with an entry-level job and student loans, 'cause that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my working days. When I come home, after cooking and baking at two different jobs for umpteen highly-stressed hours a week, what do I do to relax? I cook and bake, of course, what else? Okay, I'm a freak. But it's a very deep, primeval thing. I've always loved to eat, from earliest childhood (when, of course, my tastes were rather less developed...I thought Cheez Whiz and Velveeta were pretty damn good, back then). My father has always dreamed about self-sufficiency, and subscribed to Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News since my early childhood; so I've always known where my food came from. At various times we raised pigs, rabbits, ducks, and chickens, and I participated in the cycle of raising and slaughtering the animals from about the time I started school. My father also took me hunting and fishing when he was home from sea. The first thing I can reliably remember cooking for myself was a trout that I'd caught myself in a nearby stream. It's rather "old-school" for one of my generation (very tail-end of the Boom, or very beginning of Gen X, depending on how one measures...I don't think I fit either group, but whattaya do...), but I remember as a teenager bitching my way through the annual berry-picking marathon, with my father snarling at me that if I wanted jam through the winter I could damn' well shut up and pick. I knew he was right, but I sure wanted to grumble, just the same... I guess it all comes from that same sense of urgency that makes me haul out the Mason jars come fall; even though I can usually buy jam as cheaply as I can make it. It's not the same, and at some level I guess I'm impelled by the notion that I can feed my family regardless of how tough things get. If push comes to shove, I know how to snare rabbits (and could skin and joint one, unaided, by eight). I can make preserves, or pickles. I can dry or preserve berries and wild fruits. I can be inventive about making meals from almost nothing...during one especially tough stretch a few years back I fed my tribe for over a week on a pumpkin, a cabbage, a dozen eggs, a sack of flour, and the various seasonings and such in my cupboard. I was pretty happy to get a part-time job that paid me in organic vegetables; we were still broke, but we weren't going to be hungry. That's a pretty visceral thing. We've lived an unsettled life this last several years. Every time we move, no matter how all-over-the-place things are during that first couple of days, I always unpack enough of my kitchen things to make a pot of soup and a batch of bread. For my wife and kids (and for me) those smells mean that, appearances notwithstanding, we are in fact HOME and all is well. That's a powerful form of magic, or alchemy if you will. In fact, just this past week, I've started proofing bread dough overnight so that it can be baked off first thing in the morning, and the house will smell of fresh sourdough all day. That way I'm here, even though I'm away at work. I love the energy, the chemistry, the science, the sheer "improvisational jazz" of it. I love the sixty-second stirfry and the 24-hour slow-cooked casserole. I love the flame broiling and the slow-poaching and the gust of steam from the freshly-opened papillote. I love artfully-arranged composed salads, and big random "splotches" of stew served family-style right from the pot. Got a pretty serious case, haven't I? No wonder this place sucks up so many of my non-cooking hours...

I moved away from Chilliwack in early 1993, and I don't think I've bought corn more than twice in the intervening years. Just didn't seem worth it...

It's a very interesting notion, Chef S, and I surely do hope you can make it happen. Not everybody's going to be onside with this sort of a scenario, but you knew that from the start (and if you didn't, you've definitely been informed by now). Personally, I would love to work in a restaurant like that...if it wasn't 'way the hell and gone in NC... I think you'll find an upside-downside scenario as re staffing. Obviously, it's hard enough finding good people for either FOH or BOH; finding people enthused about working both will be even harder. On the upside, I think people who buy into the concept will tend to stick around and be enthused about their jobs.

I was a Navy brat in Atlantic Canada, and my mother got into a lot of Tupperware/Avon type parties just to have some grownups around while Dad was at sea. Deviled eggs were a constant. And celery with Cheez Whiz. Being a kid, I thought that was great. And being a young boy, I thought that deviled egg farts were the greatest thing to bring to school the next day... There are two general kinds of cheezies. The little hard Hawkins style crunchy ones, and the bigger, puffier, softer ones (like Cheetos). I can tell it's time to stop drinking beer if I crave either of them, but the Hawkins ones are definitely the better of the two. It always amuses me, listening to people from other places talk "smaller than thou." My high school graduating class had 13 people, and that was in a school that served five communities! (...northern Newfoundland, for the terminally curious...)

Being an east-coast navy brat, I just about bust a gut laughing the first time I saw Sea Cadets in Regina. One of my cooking school instructors had spent 30 years in the Forces, including some shipboard time. Whenever they had a draught of newly-minted officers on board for their first cruise, he'd always make sure to do a special breakfast for their first morning at sea...kippers stewed in milk. Apparently there was quite a stampede to the heads!

"Irish Moss" is a seaweed. It's the source of much of the carageenan that goes into chocolate milk, ice cream, and similar items across the continent. In bygone days, it was harvested by individual householders on both sides of the Atlantic and used as a thickener for things like this pudding. Prince Edward Island, in Atlantic Canada, is a major producer; in fact legendary Canadian singer-songwriter "Stompin' Tom" Connors grew up picking the stuff.

Oy, lots of divergent directions and insights going on upthread. Interesting. I have a couple of problems with dining out. Being a good home cook, and a professional cook, does not make *me* unnecessarily finicky...but my wife gets really pissy and says, "You could make this better at home." Another, of course, is that the places where I can afford to eat are not the places where I'd learn some things and be blown away by the food. A tight eating-out budget (and no car) really put a crimp in the enjoyment factor. On the whole, I'm not a subtle-flavours person either. I like bold, vivid flavours, which is why I eat Indian food about 200 times for every bite of sushi. So yeah, that's a clear-cut prejudice. As for fancy-schmancy? Well, I work at a fine-dining restaurant where the chef doesn't believe in dressing things up. She says that honest food stands on its own and doesn't need to be played with, which means that our food is plainer-looking than that of our peers. I guess she's a throwback to the Escoffier-era thinking that the vegetables *are* the garnish. She must be doing something right, she can point to 25 years of steady growth. Of course, Edmonton is rather a conservative place foodwise. I guess the bottom line is to be aware of our predispositions, and to take them into account when eating out. Having said that, there are lots of possible extenuations in the meal that launched this thread. If the food was lacklustre, perhaps the chef was attempting to put the wines front and centre, and planned food accordingly? Certainly a soupy rhubarb crumble could be nothing more than an untimely brain cramp on the part of a commis, as opposed to a problem with the chef's design. Personally if I was out to impress people with my food, I would not have gone with risotto; given that making it in large quantity involves a quality compromise. I've cooked it for large groups before (as recently as last weekend, in fact) but only in circumstances where the cooking of the dish was done in front of the diners as part of an interactive demonstration (I had a cast-iron pan a metre in diameter to work with, made things pretty simple).

Canning dates from the early 19th century. The ill-fated Franklin expedition of the 1840's took large quantities of canned food in their quest for the Northwest Passage. I think Clarence Birdseye was a pivotal figure, in conjunction (of course) with the technology he relied on. While we tend to view frozen foods with a degree of snobbishness, the plain fact is that they're better than canned/dried/salted for most applications, and better than non-frozen product for much of the year. That was a truly revolutionary thing, and one of the most far-reaching developments of the twentieth century. Midwestern sushi lovers, rise and salute your hero! (...and the bloody awful Labrador winters that sparked Birdseye's creative imagination...) Another thing I consider to be pivotal, which began in the 19th century but was brought to a high level in the twentieth, is our understanding of food safety. Previous centuries knew what to do to keep food from spoiling, but didn't understand why some things worked and some things didn't. The century just ended brought us a more-or-less complete understanding of foodborne illness and how to prevent it. That, my friends, is a monumental achievement on par with the eradication of smallpox.

Wow, lots of good options there! I like the ginger/scallions/sesame combination, that's a good'n. Horseradish hasn't been mentioned yet, that's a classic accompaniment. I like a combination of cumin, coriander, lime, cilantro, and hot chilies as well. Or cheat, and use a prepared coriander chutney along with some freshly-toasted cumin. Lots of herbs work well besides the omnipresent dill; I'm partial to tarragon but experiment with what you've got in your garden. Fruit salsas are often used, but for something a little bit different try wrapping your salmon fillet in leathery dried apples and then in parchment. Kind of interesting. Try shredding some beets and cooking them lightly with citrus and cumin, then after a few minutes add the salmon and cover with the beets. Sweat under a lid until barely done (judge by the finger-poke, as the colour will be "unnatural"). I also like salmon with (wait for it) well-cooked sauerkraut. Y'know, cooked long and slow with apples and onions and white wine until it's completely mellow.

Sonofagun, you're right. Guess I should occasionally shut up long enough to let my brain catch up, eh? Never even thought to check out their website. It's a pretty good story, all in all. Oh, and Kristin, they have a whole bunch of recipes here. I will concede that, while I love the Brunswick sardines, the Millionaire brand mentioned upthread has a finer flavour and is better in many applications.

Growing up in Atlantic Canada, Brunswick sardines are a part of daily life. I rarely buy them now unless the wife is away for a day or two, 'cause she doesn't like the smell of them, but I still get a craving now and again. I haven't had the ones in soybean oil as far as I can recall, but if you find the soy oil too heavy a rinse with a lighter oil ought to clean them up nicely. I like to open them up and "broil" them in my toaster oven, then have them on toast or crostini with a nice spicy spread; remoulade, rouille, a really garlic-y aioli, that sort of thing. In Halifax I had them once with a garlic-heavy Lebanese tahini sauce, which was marvellous (admittedly, at a beery 2AM, subtlety takes a back seat). Sour pickles, sliced thinly or chopped, go well with sardines; so would capers. I've also marinated them in a little bit of mixed citrus zest, sesame oil, ginger, and scallions (ate them with a crusty loaf, used the bread to mop up the marinade. Yum, but with the same "been-drinkin'" caveat.).