NulloModo

Jason - Taco Bell is incredibly accomodating when it comes down to subbing ingredients in things, and since they make everything to order anyway, it isn're really an unreasonable request. Back when I worked at Circuit City a couple other associated and I would drive over to the mall food court for lunch breaks, and had this superstition that eating Taco Bell increased sales (not sure how that one started). Anyway, our 'sales power lunch' was usually a couple cheesy gordita crunches made with refried beans instead of beef. The beens pack a lot more flavor than their beef anyway.

Wow, this is going to be a fun cookoff, I think I might do both burgers and a meatloaf. I am stictly in the no-filler camp with it comes to meatloaf. If it seems a little loose I will bind it with an egg or two, but never ever breadcrumbs or whatnot. It does lend a dense product, sort of a meatbrick, but then again, I like it that way. There is a variation on a meatloaf I picked up called 'whooshie pie' and it is really more and oozing meatwad than a meatloaf, but it is darn tasty. You basically take a lot of ground beef, bind with an egg, season with salt, pepper, maybe some oregano or whatever you like, then stuff it with lots of cheddar and as tons upon tons of horseradish. I like to slather it liberally with mayo before baking to keep it nice and juicy. For traditional meatloaf I like to use 50/50 beef and ground 'meatloaf mix' from the grocery, which is pork, and well, some other meats I can't recall. As far as toppings go this is the one place I feel ketchup is appropriate. Once it has been baked it sort of congeals and reduces, takes on a much nicer texture and flavor than cold ketchup from the bottle. When it comes to burgers I am somewhat of a purist. Season the meat with salt and pepper, make the patties around 1/2 a lb or so each (give or take... hmmm, last couple times they've been a little bigger), grill or cook in a blazing cast iron skillet so that they get crusty on the outside, but are just barely warm in the very middle, eh, sometimes mine are on the verge of carpaccio burgers, forget red, I'm talking purple. As far as toppings go I will try to hit up the farmer's market to get some good tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and all the fixings. I go overboard on toppings sometimes, but you can't beat all the salad on there plus some mayo, mustard, bacon, cheddar, and well, whatever else I can find. I like the idea of a fried egg too, though it does tend to make it a bit messier to eat (then again, the ooze of melted cheese, mayo, egg yolk, burger grease, mustard, juice from the tomato, and vinegar from the dill pickles is hard to beat....).

Wow, I had no idea Jelly Belly made so many flavors... I remember the Harry Potter beans being everywhere around school last year when Harry Potter manie took full hold over the kiddos... but I didn't know Jelly Belly made them. Seems they have a sugar free line (with 25 grams of malitol, yikes, certainly not something to eat if you have anything else to do that evening...) but the flavors aren't as exotic... still might be worth a try. I remember only really liking licorice jellybeans anyway.

I thought the soft and hard-shelled taco was called the double-decker taco, but that could just be me. Seems for this to be a chimichanga it would have to be deep fried... which would actually probably be really tasty, but it would get your fingers greasy, and I'm not sure taco-bell has deep fryers. Perhaps some ingenuitive eG member can buy one and give it a deep frying at home.

Both ground beef and pizza dough have been featured in recent eG cookoffs, to great results. Are you saying that these items are unworthy of an Iron Chef challenge? For all the times ICJ had cool live or exhorbitantly priced ingredients, there were also times when the ingredients were very simple and or cheap. After all, sometimes it is more fun when a chef has to work with something any of us could get, makes it more educational.

Interstingly enough I've never had the shot... the girls I have dated have never been interested in my cooking for them. Perhaps it is because I some off as random and unstable... and they are worried about what I would prepare...

touaregsand - This isn't in response to your post as much as your sig line ;) That is one of the coolest kid-quotes ever, I hope when I have kids they say things like that...

A bloody mary really depends a lot on garnish to me, and there is so much you can do with it. The drink just doesn't feel right without the stalk of celery coming out of it. The other potential garnishes are really limitless though. I have had them with a nice grilled shrimp perched on the edge, which is a great touch, but I also had one somewhere in New Orleans that had an oyster (raw) floating on top... not the most visually appealing, but very tasty.

Beef Whiskey Buffalo Wings

I'll try them assuming they aren't loaded with sugar and corn starch like most of Campbell's current lineup.

I like to grocery shop at Wal-Mart, but unfortunately the super-walmart isn't near my apartment, but my work, so I often can't. I find the Wal-Mart's produce, deli, and butcher selections are pretty high quality, maybe not up to Whole Foods (wouldn't know, never been there) but it beats Safeway pretty soundly, and definately far more attractively priced than Acme or Safeway. They also have a great selection and great prices on dry good groceries, so why would I want to go anywhere else? It isn't my problem is Wal-Mart is strong-arming Nabisco, Neiman Ranch, or Vlasic, but it is my problem if I am spending $100 on a cart of groceries where I could be spending only $80 going somewhere else. If the companies can't keep up and go under, well, it's a pity, but someone else will be found to offer the product and will be willing to take what steps are necessary to hit the price customers demand.

Hmmm, so the distillation process actually removes a lot of the thujone content? I wonder if there is any commercially produced Absinthe that has had extra worm-wood steeped in it post-distillation to up the thujone content.

I think this is one of those dishes where substitutions are perfectly acceptable, even the normal way of doing things. With as much complexity as there is in the dish the subtle differences between Ancho, Mulato, Pasilla, Hatch, etc. chiles are not going to be dramatic in the end result. Heck, I think when I make up my pot I will just wander to the mexican grocery store and pick up some stuff I haven't heard of yet. I've never ruined a recipe by subbing one type of chile for another, they are all just variations on similar flavors.

Add me to the list of people who hated Indian food on the first try. I think I was around 11 or 12, at a local Indian place that, in retrospect, was either having a bad night or was genuinely bad. I was physically sick later that evening from it, but even while eating it it just all seemed off to me. Now, I absolutely love Indian cuisine, and can't get enough of it, or any other spicey food. My first experiences with Okra were also not incredibly positive. My father only prepared it one way - stewed with tomatoes. I could just never get into it, but every time he cooked it I was forced to have some. I am grateful for this however because one day it just clicked, and I started to like it. Now I love Okra in any fashion, stewed, roasted, Indian style, deep fried, in gumbo, you name it.

I love vinegar, and use it on all sorts of things. However, I keep a pretty limited stock based on what I like so far. On hand I have white vinegar (and I've found the cheapest is often the best here, cheap white vinegar has a certain harshness to it that the more refined types always lose), unfiltered cider vinegar (supposedly good health benefits, but also a great taste, great for salads), malt vinegar (my personal favorite, and a necessary for fish/fried foods), and a bottle of white wine vinegar which I occasionally use, though it is a bit smooth for my tastes. I haven't quite gotten used to red-wine or balsamic vinegars yet, they seem to have too much sweetness and not enough bite, but I'm sure they have their uses.

I suppose it's different strokes for different folks. I love and crave those carbonized bits, and I generally prefer my steaks to be very crusty on the outside, and nearly raw in the inside. I wish I could figure a way at home to give that kind of char to a steak without taking the middle outside of barely rare territory.

I salt lots of things at the table. Sides of vegetables usually need it, certain composed salads, steaks (they usually need a fresh grind of pepper too), burgers, french fries, really, anything other than desserts is usually enhanced by a bit more salt, at least to my tongue. Also certain things are enhanced by salty condiments, such as sashimi which begs for some soy sauce, or mexican rice and beans which needs some vinegary salty picante sauce. I've never had a restaurant resist giving me salt, but I've also never eaten anywhere where there wasn't salt or an appropriate salty condiment already present on the table. I don't think I could particularly want to eat anywhere pretentious enough not to put the basics out on the table either.

I picked one up last week - I love it, far, far, far better than old Diet coke, and not very far off from regular coke. Some people are a bit sensitive to Ace-K, which is the secondary sweetener used, so that could be the 'bitter' flavor some people are reporting. As for me, I will certainly be buying more of this when it shows up at the grocery. Now I just hope Coke markets Diet Coke with Lemon sweetened with Splenda.

Ah, but it is the holidays, so you don't need to find something new to say every year. Just say the same contrived, traditional, sappy bits, year, after year, after year, call it tradition, and people will be happy.

Where are you eating that salt isn't availible? I can't recall ever going to a restaurant and not having salt on the table... or at least on the next table if the busser might have forgotten the shaker on mine. Now, it might not be fleur de sel, so, if you want you own special salt, I guess it makes sense. I think a pocket pepper grinder makes more sense... as I am not totally spoiled such that preground pepper in pepper shakers just doeesn't do the trick.

The trick is the extremely high heat used in cooking. The biggest reason you can't get a steak to taste like it does at a top end steakhouse at home is that it is so hard to get the temps up high enough. A home oven can broil at maybe 600 degrees, and if you have a really good wood oven or coal BBQ maybe you can push near 700 or 800, but without pro equipment that instant sear and char that the pros can give you is just hard to come by at home.

Well, Cinco De Mayo was just a bit ago, so we really should pay tribute to Mexican cuisine, either that or southwest. My vote is for carnitas, chili, enchiladas, something along those lines. Actually, Chili would be really fun... and there are so many different varieties out there that we would surely learn a lot.

Not in a grocery store, but at a restaurant (Vinnie D'Amato's on South Street: good, but overpriced roast pork Italian sandwich). I haven't yet checked the supermarket to see if they have it. ← Gotcha, thanks for the info. I will hit up the 7-11s in the area, they seem to have a knack for getting new soft drinks in before anyone else.

I still love the diet coke with lemon, much more so than the lime, but it is getting harder and harder to find, I hope it isn't being pulled from the market. Of course, you can't go into it expecting it to taste like real lemon, but if you imagine you are drinking diet coke mixed with pledge it is pretty darn refreshing (and less lethal). It does seem like both Coke and Pepsi are doing loads of flavor rollouts lately. The Coffee Coke could be pretty tasty, I loved Pepsi Kona while it was out a while ago... heck, when they took it off the market I even tried to recreate it by filling the water resevoir in a drip coffee maker with pepsi and letting things run their course... (that didn't go so well). What other cool flavors could they come up with? Personally, I think virgin versions of alcoholic drinks could be fun, plus offer some cool branding opportunities. Coke with Bacardi, Coke with Jack, Dr. Pepper with Jaegermeister, the list goes on... I mean, I'm sure liquor flavored syrups can't be that hard to make.

Andrew - Where did you find it? I would be very interested in trying this stuff. Since my area pretty much gets the same stuff metro philly does, I imagine it is mostly likely around here somewhere too... but I haven't seen it in grocery stores yet.