chromedome

I have one, but (thanks to Mother's Day, etc) won't be able to excavate it until late tomorrow, or Monday. If nobody else has turned one up for you by then, I'll post it up.

When I was a kid, liver was right up there. Not chicken livers, but beef and pork. Detested cauliflower, parsnips, and brussels sprouts as well. Aside from that I didn't have much to worry about, since there were only about six or seven vegetables known to Nova Scotian stores in the early 70's. Today, liver is one of my very favourite things...the best part of most critters (old-timers like flipper pie, but I say the liver is the best part of a seal hands-down). Same with other offal...mmmmmmmmm. I like brussels sprouts too, though generally I'll avoid them unless I've cooked them myself. Cauliflower could still disappear from the face of the earth, as far as I'm concerned, and I'll cheerfully carry its luggage to the rocket ship. Same with parsnips. Not too many other foods I dislike intrinsically, though. Just cauliflower and parsnips, with (dis-) honourable mention to avocadoes. Of course, in the case of purely wrong-headed preparation, count me out on most foodstuffs. One of my aunts considers meat underdone if you can't take it in your hands and *break* it. Ugh.

On the one hand, I'm dying for my "Mel fix." On the other hand, I'm glad that you're getting some sleep, instead. (You are remembering to sleep occasionally, right?)

When I was a computer salesman, my co-workers used to laugh at me for using the exact same phrases - every freakin' time - with every customer. Not that I gave them a canned "spiel", you understand...I always found out what they wanted/needed/knew before I proceeded...but if I explained a given system to a customer, it was *always* in the same words. Then would come the inevitable day when a customer would return to the store, saying "But he told me...[fill in the blank]" and my manager would be able to look them in the eye and say, "No he didn't." Because he knew what I told them. Every freakin' time. My point? I plan on doing some freelance catering and cake work over the summer, now that I've graduated (Yippee!) from school. You can bet that EVERYTHING I do for a customer will be spelled out in black and white, and bear their signature. Yeah, I know, I'll still get grief. But I'll at least be able to eliminate the "honest mistake" from the repertoire.

Different establishments have different situations, for sure, but I think making some sort of provision for a good staff meal is a huge positive. One of the first things I was told, when I started at my job, was that I was *expected* to sample the things I was preparing. Cutting up pears for the grilled-pear salad? Have a wedge. Making up cheese plates? Taste one or two of them. This made immediate sense to me, not only from the cooking-school perspective (taste everything, how else you gonna know you did it right?); but from the quality assurance perspective. It's much better to have a staffer spitting and shouting WTF? than to have a customer tugging on a server's sleeve and saying "Excuse me...?" The meal itself will vary. Sometimes we'll have extras of an entree item that didn't sell as well as usual that week. Other times we'll accumulate a stock of leftovers or trim pieces, and do something with those. Sometimes somebody (might be the boss, might be the dishwasher) feels like doing some "home cookin'", and we'll have perhaps a pork roast with sauerkraut; or perhaps a multi-course Vietnamese extravaganza. Sometimes we just order in, on the boss' dime. One thing I'll guarantee you...every dollar you put into feeding your staff properly, is a dollar you won't lose to pilferage.

Ah, customers. Can't live with 'em... In the course of my one-year-this-weekend working at a high-end restaurant on the Canadian prairies, I've seen: The customer who wanted the seafood medley (lobster, shrimp, scallops, served on a lobster tail stuffed with risotto) without shellfish, 'cause of an allergy... The customer who wanted the spinach salad, but with lettuce instead of spinach 'cause of an allergy... The customer who ordered a steak medium rare, then sent it back to be butterflied and broiled to a crisp... The customer who wanted our signature toasted-pecans-and-caramel-in-phyllo dessert done nut-free for him... The customer who wanted all the onions strained out of his onion soup... and many, many, more. Some odd requests we'll accomodate, if it won't utterly ruin the dish, but usually the server goes back to the table with a tart (or downright heated) refusal from my boss. When I was newly in retail, back in my early twenties, my manager took me aside once after a particularly frustrating encounter with an irate customer. "You're forgetting one of the fundamental laws of retailing," he told me. "You can't reason with an unreasonable person."

Oh my, where to begin... I'm fairly talented at cutting myself on odd things. I haven't cut myself with a knife for a year or so (jinxed myself by saying that, mind you), but in recent months I've drawn blood with my tongs, a piping-bag tip, and a counter I was wiping down. I have a bad habit of absent-mindedly reaching for things on the rear burner without heeding the proximity of the front burner, leading to frequent bare patches on my otherwise-hairy forearms. I am also prone to picking up pots and pans with my bare hand, even though some other portion of my brain (which has presumably sloped off for a coffee or something) knows that it's just come off the burner. That split-second of loud sizzling is always high comedy. And then there are those random unnoticed burns, the ones that I don't even notice until I wash my hands or juice a lemon or something. My first week in pastry shop afforded me a moment of kitchen-klutz glory. I'd been speaking with my boss the night before about how I was looking forward to doing sugar work. She said she avoided sugar, since it involved an unnecessarily high risk of blisters. The next day I was re-heating a ball of sugar and went to tip it from one silpat to the other with (wait for it) my bare hand, which of course broke through the thin crust of congealed sugar and into the lava beneath. I broke all known records for crossing the lab to the nearest sink. My classmates said the only way it could have been better is if I'd trampled a small child or elderly woman on my way through. They're sick puppies, every one (gonna miss 'em after I graduate). In the lack of attention category I've frequently left a bowl of bread dough to rise on the stovetop and subsequently forgotten about it for hours (overnight, once). Dried-on bread dough is lovely stuff to get out of the burners. In the colder months I've also put bread dough in the oven to rise by the gentle warmth of the oven light, and then forgotten it was there. On one occasion I at least stayed with the program well enough to remember when it was time to pre-heat the oven...unfortunately I forgot that the dough was still in there. That took a while to clean up, too. Then there was my developmentally-challenged classmate last year, who had the disconcerting habit of silently taking up a post just immediately behind my right shoulder, the better to see what I was doing. I couldn't count how many times I ran him over (and scattered two hours' work all over the kitchen floor) as I turned to put something on/take something from the stove/oven/whatever. I know that last is a whole different category, but in my mental file of memorable kitchen moments it fits right in with the rest. (Current tally, for the morbidly curious, is two nearly-healed burns of less than an inch in length; no blisters or cuts worth mentioning; and only one bare patch above my wrist from today's rosti potato-making)

I've made yeasted pancakes several times, with good results, but I don't really have a recipe to give you. I ran out of baking powder one night, and decided on impulse to prep the batter the night before and use yeast instead. They came out really, really, well; so I've made them off and on ever since. I'll see about making them again, this weekend (if I'm over this *#&^#^ infection) and I'll record the quantities I use. Should get you close enough to fine-tune for your own taste.

It loaded for me just now in both IE and Mozilla.

Pet peeve. I bake bread a couple of times a week, most weeks, and I'd rather anticipated that my KA would ease the process. What a pain in the ass. A lot of the time I wind up just dumping the dough out onto the table and finishing it the old-fashioned way. Don't get me wrong, I love my KA, but it just doesn't do bread very well. Unwinding the dough from around the head unit is a standard part of making bread at my place, these days. Grrr.

My student loan brought me Escoffier and a Larousse (okay, I know, but it *does* contain lots of recipes). And my wife returned from visiting family with a 30-year-old copy of the Mennonite Treasury of Recipes. It's not all Mennonite food, mind you...when I opened it at random, I found myself looking at a recipe for gefilte fish. So that's three more.

As his life leaks out of him, he explains to his mistress about a place where, at a certain time of the year, the wild boars live almost entirely on yams. You kill your boar, you see, and then you take out his intestines and gently grill them in your campfire. Then you eat them, pre-stuffed with yams. And he dies, gasping, with a beatific smile on his face. Personally, I loved the scene where the prim schoolmistress has her charges in a western-style restaurant, explaining to them the intricacies of occidental etiquette. Specifically, how it applies to the eating of spaghetti. The tableful of them are sitting about, delicately nibbling noodles in the most ladylike fashion, when a loud noise from another table distracts them. It turns out to be an oversized caucasian, slurping his spaghetti in the loudest "eight-year-old-boy-loaded-on-sugar-at-a-birthday-party" fashion. The girls squirm in an almost painful way, watching this vulgar display, but eventually succumb to temptation. Their painfully mannered meal disintegrates into an orgy of obscenely, loudly, VULGAR pasta-inhalation. One of many memorable moments.

Barney Miller. Hash Brownies. 'Nuff said.

I'd been using Patak's (with feelings of guilt) for a few years; whenever I didn't have the time or inclination to start from scratch. Then a Tamil friend whose cooking I admire told me that most Indo-Canadians use convenience products *a lot*, and that Patak's was the weapon of choice (probably because they're the most complete line that's readily available in Canada). Offered FWIW.

A fine microplane grater works pretty well...

Sage also has a natural affinity with most cheeses (basically all but the mildest - which it overwhelms - and strongest, which it conflicts with). Add fresh or fried leaves to anything cheese centred, like an omelette or even (don't laugh) a grilled cheese sandwich. Grilled cheese on a nice bread with sage is mmmmmm.....

It may have something to do with which potatoes you use. I've noticed that starchier ("baker") potatoes tend to get kind of glue-y when mixed mechanically.

At work we have a specific pot which is ideally shaped for our stand mixer's bowl to sit in. We use that for sabayons and suchlike. Admittedly the mixer doesn't lock down into place with the pot there, but it only takes a light hand on the top to hold everything where it should be. Of course, not everyone's going to have a conveniently-shaped-and-sized pot...but it's worth keeping an eye out when you're in the thrift store.

A willingness to experiment and compromise is sometimes required, too. I freeze sage because, even if it comes out ugly, it *tastes* like fresh sage...and fresh sage is a whole different thing than dried. With cilantro, I tend to freeze anything I don't use the first day; just because it doesn't hold very well and if I don't use it immediately I wind up sponging green slop out of the bottom of my fridge. Although frozen cilantro doesn't do a whole lot for your plate presentation, it tastes pretty good. Here in Alberta, the air is dry enough that I don't have to put the herbs I'm drying anywhere in particular. I can hang them pretty much anywhere except the back of my stove. If I understand correctly DC can be pretty humid, so you may need to experiment a bit to find the best place in your own digs.

In addition to the young/old turnips thing, you'll want to match your use to the type of turnip you've got. White turnips have a sharp, radishy flavour when raw...excellent where you've planned on it, overwhelming where you haven't. Yellow turnips ("Swedes" or rutabagas) are sweet and mild when raw. When cooked, they taste similar. I'll also second the part about the greens. I'm a big fan of most cooking greens, and turnip greens are one of my favourites. They have a nice edge to them; they can be substituted in some applications for broccoli rabe or one of the more pungent Asian greens.

...also the matignon generally becomes part of the meal, whereas mirepoix is discarded.

The differences in flavour perception are quite amazing, from one person to the next. To me, asparagus and okra (for example) have a lovely delicate flavour, similar to the best and freshest of new green beans. Yet, others I know find them intolerably bitter. To me, parsnips do taste carrotty...but it's a really skanky carrot, one that's been rotted and then made into jerky and then smoked over a garbage fire and then rehydrated in stale beer. You could say I don't care for them. I have had parsnips that bordered on being enjoyable, but they've required a great deal of artifice along the way; usually caramelization in one or another fashion. Submerging them in a *lot* of something else generally does the trick too; I've had them as the "mystery ingredient" in mashed potatoes and found the result rather interesting. Overall, though, they're far and away my least favourite root vegetable (and I dearly love my root vegetables).

I'll confess to getting a kick out of Food Hunter. If any of you are ever in the area of Halifax, NS, look up Pete at his boutique-y greengrocer shop ("Pete's Frootique") in suburban Bedford. Chances are you'll find him there, obsessing over his produce. In person, he's exactly what you see on the tube. Walk into the store, pick out an item that you've always wondered about, and march up to him. He'll tell you what to do with it. And tell you and tell you. He really, really loves what he does.

I've just recently gotten one, HV, and I do rather like it. I tend to only use my "standard" blender during the hot weather, when the kids are demanding smoothies. It's a royal pain to clean fruit pulp out of, let me tell you! I haven't had my immersion blender long enough to really put it through its paces, but I do find it immeasurably better for soups and (quantity) sauces. Ladling a pot of cream-of-whatever into and out of the standard blender was a too much trouble to be worth it. I've even used my "stick" to turn barley into barley flour, in a pinch. As for cleanup, well...shove blender under running water, rinse, remove, dry. Much faster, IMO. Mine's nothing special; just the cheapie Braun that they recommend at school ($20 CDN, less Stateside I'm sure). Works well, though.

I made that for a homesick Punjabi friend, last year. I found that the end result (though sweeter than I like a dessert to be) tasted disconcertingly lemony. Actually not "lemony" as such, but more "lemon verbena-y" or "lemon grass-y". How that came out of carrots, cardamoms, milk and sugar I'm not sure. Apparently in India it's common to add red food colouring, but I didn't bother.