ghostrider
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Posts posted by ghostrider
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Hmm. Are Turkish restaurants on the cusp of becoming the next trend? 3 openings in the last year just in this little corner of Jersey. (Montclair / Rutherford / Ridgewood.) What is going on here? Was there a wave of Turkish immigration that is now bearing fruit? Are they popping up just because they're something a little different, but not too different?
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While you're at it Lucy, could you please tell me how you get your mashed potato pancakes to look like that (maybe in the latke topic). Mine always fall apart and never get that golden brown crust on them.
Thanks Pam, I appreciate the compliment. Actually, this was a luck of the draw. I've tried before and had problems keeping them together. I think someone after your reply said butter and low heat, I would totally agree. I used olive oil this time and kept them in the pan for quite a while at a medium/low heat. I think the key is to make them fairly small, not gigantic, mix the potato with an egg (I just made two, the other one fell apart) and then I dredged them in flour, which is what I think helps them get golden brown. I also added a little gruyere cheese, since I had some left over. I hope that helps.
Wow, this just triggered a long-buried memory. My mon always used to make these with leftover mashed taters. No egg or cheese, just dusted them with a little flour & fried them in an ancient, extremely heavy cast-iron skillet in - drum roll, here is what I am sure is the secret - BACON GREASE!!!!!
(Yes, my dad loved bacon, & we always had a can of bacon grease around to spoon into the skillets. This may have had something to do with the 3 heart attacks that he survived. It definitely had something to do with the deliciousness of the food in our house.)
Anyway the mashed potato pancakes, which I learned to make at an early age, never fell apart & the crusts never came off. And, infused with the flavor of smoky country bacon, oh my but they were good.
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I was toasting mustard & fennel seeds 30 years ago when I was learning Indian cooking.
That's the story of my life - years ahead of the times & no sense of marketing.
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Does Penzey's have anything at all on Aphrodisia?
I lived in the neighborhood for 20 years, still stop by a couple times a year to replenish various stocks. I can't imagine a better spice shop.
Wondering if anyone who's been to both has any observations.
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Considering the aforementioned drug interactions, not to mention the link between grapefruit juice and kidney stones, I think this shows the power of trends.
Has grapefruit been featured on Sex & The City recently?
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And as for parents who would make a hue & cry because their little dears were being deprived of “a hallowed childhood rite”! Those parents would be more toxic to their kids than the teachers/school authorities. What about the hallowed childhood rite of having a cupcake party at home? Are said parents complaining that their children only get half their quota of cupcakes, or no cupcakes at all?
Forgive me, but I must proffer one further bit of explanation: as I understand the old school custom, the birthday child brings a box of cupcakes to class and shares them with his/her classmates.
The summertime kids are denied this opportunity. Some schools have attempted to make up for it by holding a catch-all cupcake party at the start of the school year; some parents, naturally, still complain aboiut this since the summertime kids aren't getting the individual attention that they deserve. In response, some schools have taken to staging monthly birthday parties in an effort to restore the balance.
What's less clear is whether this all gives the child a lesson in the joys of sharing or prepares him/her to be an attention, err, monger later in life. But it is heartening to know that our schools are giving so much thought to our children's cupcake intake.
I guess I should also apologize for interjecting these footnotes into discussion of the national culinary trend which this thread is about; a trend of which, since I do not have cable and spend much of my life among, if not under, rocks, I was blissfully unaware until I saw this thread.
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Seriously? I always thought that chicken croquettes were one of the quintessential WASP foods, straight out of the Fannie Farmer cookbbook & so forth. Do tell more of these Ironbound croquettes!
(The only place I know to get good ones is way up Route 1 in Maine, so I'm no help in this forum.)
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Asked at my local Whole Foods yesterday. They're no longer planning to carry Maine Shrimp as a regular thing, said they just don't sell quickly enough. The bottom line: people would rather spend $10 / lb on big, previously frozen farmed shrimp from Thailand than $ 5 / lb on fresh Mainers. Shows you what people will pay for the convenience of not having to shell so many shrimp.
WF said they will always special order them in 5-lb lots if I give them a couple day's notice, sell me whatever I want & attempt to sell the rest at the counter before they spoil.
Or I can spend an hour of driving time getting to a mega Whole Foods that does higher volume where they are usually in stock, always being sure to call first, of course. Someone just turned me on to a new fish market that's sort of in the area where I live, I gotta check them out.
This is getting frustrating. I guess nothing good comes easy.
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Ghostrider, I was born in 1965 and did indeed have cupcakes as well as cakes at birthday parties when I was a kid. And of course they had icing. But they were not 1/2 icing!
I was born almost 20 years earlier, and we had cupcakes & birthday parties too. We did not, however, have either in class; we had to do all that on our own.
Anyway, cupcakes clearly been around for a long time. (A digression into "Hostess creme-filled," which may have been a prior trend marker, would not be inappropriate but I haven't the stomach for it.) If we can't determine who first thought to take up class time with them, do we have any idea who first declared them a modern-day trend, and when?
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Sadly, you likely won't even be there during the local corn season. OTOH, it being Maine, you may well stumble into the peak of strawberry season.
This website is useful for zeroing in on farm stands, farmers' markets and more.
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From a heated discussion on another board I've gathered that, at least in northern New Jersey, the tradition of cupcakes on kids' birthdays predates Sex & The City. (It also significantly postdates my own childhood, or perhaps it's simply a regional thing; I was unable to pin down that point.) Apparently there's a custom of some decades' standing in which kids bring cupcakes to school on their birthdays. One school felt that these in-class parties were detracting from the educational experience and banned the cupcakes, which naturally led to a hue & cry from parents who felt that their children were being deprived of a hallowed childhood rite.
(There was an interesting sub-discussion of the cupcake rights of those unfortunate chldren with summertime birthdays and how they should be accommodated, but that's not terribly germane here.)
This all leads to the obvious question: did North Jersey cupcakes spawn the Magnolia phenomenon?
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Well, we did it up in Maine, cuz after the huge Christmas dinner at the in-laws, we just wanted a light supper, & believe me, NOTHING else was open up there.
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More Maine shrimp coverage in local media (I guess it takes a guy from Jersey to notice these things
) --They were a cover story in the Dec. 15-21 issue of The Portland Phoenix. Odd article, though, about grits as much as the shrimp. Considering that a significant portion of the populace finds grits unappetizing, I doubt that this article & recipe is going to help spread the gospel much. Still, the headline was nice to see.
Not a cover story, alas, but a very nice article by Susan Lovell on p. 25 of the Dec. 21 issue of The Northern Forecaster ("News of Falmouth, Cumberland, North Yarmouth, Yarmouth and Freeport") - a good overview of the shrimp + 3 recipes.
My local Whole Foods didn't have the shrimps last Friday! I was bummed. On too tight a schedule then to ask, but I will pester them this week if the shrimp aren't back in stock.
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Shaw's supermarkets, for one. They were available at $3.99 lb up in Augusta. Had me drooling. Unfortunately I had no kitchen facilities during our visit.
Hattie's Chowderhouse over in Hallowell was also serving up the fresh ones as a special.
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Are you saying that Stop & Shop has in-store gelato bars where you can buy the stuff fresh, or that they have a house brand to be found in containers in their freezer section?
The method of delivery is going to make a difference in the texture of the product.
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Greek Delights - I'm pretty sure I'd read somewhere that both places were owned by the same folks, but I can't point you to a specific citation.
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I've had the generic "vine-ripened" tomatoes, and I've had Campari tomatoes - not the same at all! The Campari are far, far superior.
Not knowing where you live & what else is available to you, or what you mean by "generic tomatoes", it's impossible to evaluate that statement. Certainly the opposite is true where I live, & that may be the difference.
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From the website, these look like the tomatoes that are sold, at least in this area, under the term, "vine tomatoes." If indeed that's what they are, I've had them, and yes, while they are decent compared with most of what's available out of season, they don't come close to the flavor of the vine-ripened Jersey tomatoes available at greenmarkets and farm stands in season.
Just my perspective.
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I meet a lot of people who don't think they are worth the trouble, but I disagree. besides, some of the planets' most interesting taste experiences can only happen with a little extra work.
You got that right.
Price at Whole Foods has already dropped to $4.99.
I'm realizing that, due to various Xmas-related events, I am not gong to have an opportunity to cook these guys again until New Years weekend. I wonder how many others are in the same boat (so to speak): the season starts at just the wrong time for steady consumption.
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Thanks for the info. The new market space sounds promising, but it looks it'll be summer before I'll have a chance to check it out.
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Yes, Big Sky is the one I was thinking of, thanks. Good to know they're still around.
There was also Stone Soup, which I know was an outpost from their place further out on Congress.
Does the Market House offer chairs & tables like the old PPM, so that you can eat there? I can't find a website for it. Big Sky's site has a nice photo of the exterior but I can't tell what's going on inside.
Gosh I'm full of annoying little questions!
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Was a report on local TV news two nights ago that the E. coli had been found in white onions used by Taco Bell.
This is the first report I've seen clarifying the fact that those white onions had a strain of the bacteria different from the one that had sickened folks.
On with the search.
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The place in Monument Square housing some of the merchants from the former Portland Public Market - Big Sky, Hortons, the florist (the name escapes me) and Maine Beer/Bev Co. It's where the surplus shop was for many years, at the top of the square.
Thanks. I only come thru Portland 3-4 times a year, always went to the PPM for lunches. Didn't know about the new facility.
Is either Big Sky or Hortons the sandwich/soup place that was by the entrance to the old PPM? I don't remember its name.
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What's The Strangest Food Book in Your Collection?
in Cookbooks & References
Posted
Although it's tame compared with many above, Cooking With Grass remains in my collection.
Good thing it's a very slim volume or it would have been donated to a book sale years ago.