NulloModo

Smoking stuff, definately, or baking. There is just something awesome about putting something random into a device and then hours later getting this luscious result...

One of my favorite breakfasts is Low-Carb rye topped with livwurst, sugar-free Soy Nut Butter, Stevia, mustard, mayo, and coconut. This seems to freak others out, but it really is very tasty...

Nahh. I think the Aussies love it too. ← Eh, they might as well be British/Canadian from how how reluctant they are to cut the empircal umbilical cord.

I have been wondering about this piece of the discussion and I just have to ask. In my experience, Egg Foo Young is generally a greasy deep-fried fat-&-cholesterol bomb. How can that possibly be healthier than a couple teaspoons of cornstarch in a sauce? I have no doubt that, taste-wise, it's the best choice at many a Chinese takeoutery, that's been my experience often enough & I've made that choice for that reason alone. Granted, a lot of Chinese sauces are also loaded with fat, not to mention sodium. But can the Egg Foo Young really be healthier? I see the choice more as a matter of choosing one's poison. ← Well, I think it depends on all what you look out for. I don't care a bit about Sodium, except on the couple days preceding weigh-in. My blood pressure is very good, so I am lucky enough to not have to worry. As for fat, it is a good thing on the weight-loss/health plan I am on (Atkins) so, I don't really worry about that either. Cornstarch, on the other hand, is just as evil as High-Fructose Corn Syrup. I agree though, that it is just picking your poison. Chinese take-out (as with almost any fast-food) being high in fat, sodium, and carbs unfortunately seems not to fit into any weight-loss plan. Oh well, we can always just wait for the General Tso's diet. I will say that the gravey that usually accompanies it, as tasty as it is, is usually unsuitable, containing loads of the afrementioned corn starch, so I have to make my own. I just don't have the patience/desire to figure out how to make my own perfect egg-foo young.

Is the HP love a purely British/Canadian thing? I admit to trying it whilst in GB, and then again at a grocery store here, and my conclusion was that it is just an OK at best steak-sauce. Perhaps it it a taste that grows on you such as mayo preference?

Plain steamed rice isn't meant to be eaten by itself. The plainness of steamed rice is meant to counterbalance the strong flavor of the meat or vegetable dish. It's also the principal source of carbohydrates in a (Southern) Chinese meal. ← I eat steamed rice with savory dishes for the reasons Laksa mentioned, noodle dishes such as lo mein are eaten as a simple meal seperately from other dishes, fried rice MAYBE topped with one thing (not including the ingredients that are tossed into the rice) with a simple soup/broth but not with other dishes. But Nullo is clearly a more is more diner. I mean that in the nicest possible way. ← I take no offense. I fully admit I am hooked on strong and contrasting flavors. Perhaps I will appreciate subtlety sometime later in my life, but as for now I much prefer the sledgehammer to the mouth approach. Perhaps that is why I have found it so easy to give up simple carbohydrates in my diet...

1. Mayo 2. Mustard (preferably spicey with horseradish) 3. Any nice and strong vinegary extra hot Cayenne pepper sauce

I would go for wood floors as well, it doesn't matter if the kicthen wood doesn't match the rest of the wood in the house, just go for a blatantly contrasting finish so the two will set each other off instead of clashing. For countertops I love the granite slabs my parents have. You can cut straght on them, put hot pans straight out of the oven or off of the stove on them, and they are quite easy to clean.

Never ever plain steamed white rice, that has to be the most flavorless and pointless substance on earth. I used to always get pork fried rice to mix with the dishes, that was tasty enough, now I do no rice. Then - would eat half the fried rice straight, mix the other half with the dish. Now - Just eat the dish and forget the rice. I occasionally play with chopsticks, but they are so awkward to use compared to a fork that I end up going to a fork every time. Hey, I 'm in the privacy of my own home, I will eat with my own utensiles. If it comes in a dish, I'm eating it. If it is on the menu, it counts IMO. Unless perhaps it is under a header like 'Kids Menu' or 'American Favorites'. I have certain favorites. My old standby's were the Pork Spareribs (the flourescent red ones), steamed and fried dumplings, hot and sour soup, crab rangoons, shrimp toast, egg rolls, and well, pretty much anything from the appetizer section. As far as actual dishes went I liked Mongolian Beef, General Tso's Chicken, Sesame Chicken, and Sweet and Sour dishes. My problem with the supposedly 'hot and spicey' and schezuan dishes is that they were never actually hot nor spicey. I would always request the place make them as blisteringly painful as they could, and they rarely evolved beyond medium-mild. Now, I find eating Chinese exceedingly difficult, for though giving up the rice is easy enough, all of the sauces that top what would otherwise be perfectly healthy dishes are loaded with cornstarch, and I have yet to find a chinese place where the counter guy speaks english well enough that I feel a request for the dish to be made without the starch would be honored and not just ignored. So, for now I settle on Egg-Foo Young, which is safe enough, or get my chinese fix from the Mongolian BBQ station at the Chinese Buffets in the area, where you pick exactly what goes into your dish. There is a local place called 'Chopsticks' that has been in town forever, so they must have some steady clientel, though it sure as hell isn't me after the couple times I have tried it. Blech, the most bland chinese food I've ever had. Favorite: Schezuan Hot Wok, also in Newark/Bear, DE. What makes it great? Well, the dishes have good flavor, they still can't actually seem to make anything hot, but at least the other flavors are there. The prices are great, and the best part is the service is super fast. Delivery would usually be made within 15 minutes of placing the order, you can't beat that. Plus, they take credit card orders over the phone, some chinese delivery places won't, and I will not patronize anyplace like that on principle.

I don't get why everyone seems to hate Flay. I guess his personality can be a bit of a dividing line, but I personally like the confidence/cockyness, especially since he has the talent to back it up. I thought the holes in the pumpkin ice cream shell were somewhat odd, but the dish overall looked very good, ooey, gooey, overloaded, just perfect. As for his other dishes, they seemed more adventurous as a rule than the challengers. His pumpkin soup looked and sounded as if it would be incredible, and I have to disagree with the comments made by the judge in the middle: one can never have anything too rich or portions to large, after all, if you get tired of it, just stop eating it. The faux-thanksgiving dinner thing seemed really nifty, and the pumpkin tamale was a moment of sheer brilliance. Several of the dishes the challenger made looked appealing as well, I was especially drawn into his duck dish. However, he simply didn't emphasize the squash at all except for perhaps in his panna cottta. The food looked very good, though given the option I would've seen taken Flay's menu, but there can be no argument that he truly highlighted the theme ingredient as much as just including it in many of his dishes.

Hmmm, I guess I have to say I don't get it. I am a firm believe in more is more. I have never met a dish that was too complicated, too overloaded with a flavor, or too convoluted that I didn't enjoy it. I like complex tastes, I love huge stacks of things, I love strong herbal tastes. In most recipes I find myself doubling the amount of most seasonings to get it to taste the way I like it to taste. Rosemary is strong, granted, but if I add rosemary, I want it to me a dominant flavor. If other flavors need to play in there as well, I add a bunch of them as well, creating a virtual turf-war on my tongue. In fact, nothing is more dissapointing to me than ordering a dish specyfying it has a certain ingredient in the name, and only ending up with a couple token specks of it.

I actually love almost everyone on the F-Network. Everything Bobby Flay makes looks delicious, and I love the side-trips to local stores in his shows. I think he uses way too much sugar, but I can always cut that out. I actually like his cocky-asshole attitude, makes him fun. Alton Brown is a genius in my book, I love how he can explain things in such a way that anyone can understand. I have caught a few errors in his exact explanations, and the eay he glosses over things is somewhat annoying, but hey, for the most part his recipes just work, can't beat that. Paual Dean is wonderful, she gets straight to the heart of southern cooking and isn't afraid to use lots of butter, can't beat that. I love Rachel Ray, she has one of the best personalities of any of the FoodTV personas, and the 30-minute meal recipes are just the ticket when you get home from work and are too tired for a major expedition. Plus she is very cute, makes it easy to watch her show. I like Jamie Oliver too, but then again, anything British is fun. Mario makes some amazing looking dishes, but the camera angles and dubbed sound effects on Giada's show bug me, though I don't have issuewith her personally. I love the Emeril show without the audience, but his 'Emeril Live' show has too much of an Oprah feel. I don't mind audiences or anything, but when they start thinking the host is a god, it gets dull. Juan Carlos Cruz doesn't bug me. I don't find many of his recipes very appealing, and I am past the whole low-fat thing, but I have to admire his enthusiasm. George Stella - Well, I respect that FoodTV has a dedicated LC chef, and I admire all the weight he has lost, but often his carb counts are off, and there are far better ways of preparing many of the recipes he makes. Perhaps it is because I am die-hard Atkins devotee and he takes a general LC approach to appeal to as many viewers as possible... I don't really watch any of the other shows enough to comment. Sandra LEe seems to make tasty stuff from whatr I have see. I will say I Am not a huge fan of the Al Roker shows, or the one hosted by the guy who used to host Double Dare on Nickleodeon, they just seem to like anything even if it blatantly sucks.

When you bitch-out when your friends suggest going out to dinner because you don't feel like spending the money, but then you go out to the grocery store and spend twice as much as you would have on dinner out on ingredients to make something you recently saw someone else talk about on eG.

I agree with busboy here, breadcrumbs in crab cakes are the devil, a couple eggs will do much better and leave you with a purer crabby taste. Also, you have to lay then very gently into the hot fat, and then not move them/shuffle them/flip them/touch them until they are ready to be turned. Once they have cooked enough on one side they shoudl be firm enough to flip, and then, don't touch them again till you remove them from the pan and put onto the paper towels to drain. It is similar to cooking a good burger, you want the heat to form a crust and hold it all together, the more you play with it, the worse your results will be.

I have to ask about this dish. It looks like the crab is still in the shell. I know some people make curries with shellfish still in shell, or with chicken/fish still in the bone, but then how do you eat the result? Getting meat out of a shell or or off of the bone seems to require finger action, but any sauce seems counter-productive to this.

Goat is just old lamb though, isn't it? or is lamb young sheep?

This thread inspired me to make my own caesar dressing the other night. I used a splash of cider vinegar, a dash of lime juice (had no lemon juice) an egg, a couple cloves of garlic, some salt, black pepper, and poured in the olive oil while blending till it got nice and creamy. Wow, it does have a good taste, but not quite what I expect from a caesar. Mine is garlickier than I usually taste, and the fact that I was out of parm cheese sorta hurts it, but still, it tastes very good, I will be looking for a good one in a restaurant now as well.

I've had food poisoning once. It layed me out for about a week, and I couldn't keep anything solid down, but I didn't have to go to the hospital. Then again, it wasn't due to anything unsanitary, it was my own damn fault because I ate some sausage that I knew I hadn't cooked nearly well enough... Oh well, I still love those sausages, though I do attempt to make sure they are past medium-rare now.

Most likely. Actually, your cafeteria story makes me just now understand why buffets suggest you get fresh plates every time you go up, I always thought it was odd, as the food is going from serving dish to plate, not vice versa. I always kinda though buffets did it just to track how much you were eating so they could kick you out if you had been there for a while...

Honestly? Yes, I probably wouldn't even give it the thought that he just did something unsanitary... Food safety is just hardly ever in my mind to any degree, so, it would likely just not even occur to me to be worried about what he did, I would already be salivating over the hot dog.

I think part of the street food appeal is the potential 'dirtyness' of it. IfI saw a street food vendor wearing sanitation gloves I'd be turned off by it honestly.

So how would you compare the base Courvossier or Hennessey vs. the XO stuff? I picked up a bottle of the cheapest Courvossier once (either VS or VSOP, can't remember) just to try out the cognac thing. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good either. Is the difference between different grades of the same brand of Cognac on par with the difference between say a $20 bottle of bourbon and a $50 bottle?

NC BBQ - Smoked Pork (or just pork and smoke the sausage), crushed red pepper, mustard powder, and vinegar. Buffalo Chicken - Chicken meat, hot sauce,garlic, black pepper, and blue cheese crumbles Greek - Lamb meat, oregano, lemon juice, feta, yogurt Chesapeake Bay - Lump crab meat, old bay seasoning, chives, anything you would toss into a crabcake Liver and Onion Sausage (with bacon of course) Cheesesteak Sausage - Ground ribeye (or finely chopped), onion, provolone (or whiz) Gumbo in a sausage - Pork, duck, or crawfish, okra, onion, celery, bell pepper, and creole/cajun spice blend

That is why I didn't want to limit this to authentic recipes. I don't particularly care if the dish I have eaten there is actually served or eaten in Germany at real Oktoberfest celebrations, I just wanted to be able to recreate something similar to what I have had. Thanks for the recipes Mark.

Even if the list is longer, the chef could easily break it into different categories and how to react to them with his Sous chefs before the actual batter. If the ingredient ends up being a starchy root vegetable, do xyz, if it is poultry, then do such and such instead, then the chef can always fine tune for the exact ingredient later on. Almost any of the crab dishes could've played off just as well had the ingredeint been lobster, prawns, crawfish, etc.