Smithy

Well, until relatively recently I threw out bacon fat because I was no longer cooking with it, unless it was coming straight off the bacon I was cooking at the time. I've seen the light now, and once again keep some around. I have never saved, much less cooked with, schmaltz. (I must admit that even as I write this I envision whirling around the kitchen, waving my spatula, Friml playing in the background.) When and how do y'all cook with schmaltz? What do people use it with?

I love the cat, too. My cat might look that intent, but the kittens would be all over the drinks and food, tipping them over,... "Very retro?" Come up here to northern Minnesota and say that! Unless you're referring to the actual tray itself, in which case I might agree.... Those relishes, particularly the pickled herring, are standard stock in our salad bars! So, you might say Oceanaire is being true to its Minnesota roots! Added to say: I too am loving this blog!

Ok, here's a somewhat related question. Some food safety experts these days seem to think that no precaution is too small. I have heard credible sources say not to leave the mayonnaise jar out on the counter for the half hour it takes you to eat lunch, and to put cooked foods into the refrigerator within 1/2 hour of cooking them. (That last precaution makes me wonder how one is supposed to keep the refrigerator cold, but that's another story.) To what level do you take your own personal precautions, in your kitchen? Do you have a 'line' defining the difference between reasonably safe and overly cautious?

<looks around for waffling emoticon> Well, my favorite onion-and-sorrel panade DOES call for a flameproof casserole dish... ← BWAHAHAHAHA! Did I mention up-thread that the cast iron gratins are without equal? When I got one at Jeffery Steingarten's urging in his essay on potatoes daupinoise, I fell in love with gratins. You know the old saying... "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." For a while there, I was gratining (is that a verb?) everything in sight. ← Fifi, is that essay somewhere on eGullet? I went back upthread looking for a link, and then looked at his Q&A, and didn't see the essay (or a link). If not, do you remember where you read that essay? Edited for clarification.

How about a grilled bacon, lobster and warm peanut butter sandwich? ← Sounds messy. What about deep frying it instead? After all, Elvis' favorite sandwich was a deep-fried banana and peanut butter sandwich...I bet he just never thought of putting bacon into it too...

I haven't weighed in on this because I don't have any manufacturer's recommendations, or sources. I do have one practical suggestion, though: if you're into haunting estate sales and auctions, you may be able to land a wonderful old set, with its evidently superior workmanship, at a bargain price. That's how I got the silver service that I'll use until (and if) I inherit my parents' set...and even then, I may keep the stuff I have now. It takes patience, though, and may not be your thing.

That reminds me, I have jars as well as freezer bags with zest collected from oranges and mandarin oranges when I get fresh ones in the winter. I haven't tried candying them. They make nice additions to sauces, but all too often I forget they're there. Corn cobs! I haven't tried that! My poor husband...

I was taught years ago that most of the "heat" in hot peppers is in the seeds, and that one can reduce the heat somewhat by leaving the seeds out of a dish. That has matched my experience: after blistering my tongue when I sauteed just a few chili pepper seeds in oil and then cooked with the oil, I learned to saute just a few sections of the pepper itself. Recently I read somewhere (probably on EGullet) that this isn't true, along with an implication that it's been debunked for some time. Have I been living under a rock all this time? Where's the heat?

Mr. McGee, please allow me to add my thanks and welcome to all the others' on this Forum. Have you done any research on the raw food movement, or its underlying principles? If so, what do you think of it/them? I've read the assertion that enzymes needed for digestion start to break down above 118oF, and therefore we shouldn't eat things heated above that temperature. I remain skeptical, both because it doesn't sound like much fun and because it seems to counter almost everything in the human experience. I'd be curious to know your take on it.

<looks around for waffling emoticon> Well, my favorite onion-and-sorrel panade DOES call for a flameproof casserole dish... ← BWAHAHAHAHA! Did I mention up-thread that the cast iron gratins are without equal? When I got one at Jeffery Steingarten's urging in his essay on potatoes daupinoise, I fell in love with gratins. You know the old saying... "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." For a while there, I was gratining (is that a verb?) everything in sight. ← <Fifi sets the hook> Damn, that's what I've been cooking lately! I discovered some great gratin recipes recently, and the only thing that's been getting me away from it is the Cajun thread.

<looks around for waffling emoticon> Well, my favorite onion-and-sorrel panade DOES call for a flameproof casserole dish...

Tuna oil for mayo...what a great idea! What the heck is schmaltz? I always thought it was a musical term! I too am too young to be a child of the Depression, but I am a child of two children of the depression, who passed those habits along. As a child of the West, I tend to be a water saver, as well, although I'm far more profligate with water than I used to be.

Yes indeed, and everyone else's responses so far too! I'd forgotten about saving cheese rinds - unfortunately I save some of them, then forget that I have them . Bread crumbs I hadn't thought of.

I recently heard that during WWII, when food rationing was in force in the USA, cooks were urged to save any unwanted grease for ammunition. The Good Housekeeping (or Better Homes and Gardens, I forget which) magazine said, at the time, to save every drip of grease for re-use, and if you had more than you needed, to pass it on for the defense. It was used to make glycerin. That reminded me of our growing-up days, when we purchased vegetable oil and Crisco (never olive oil, which was exotic and expen$ive) for new uses, but also saved bacon grease in a jar or pot. The bacon grease was used instead of Crisco for everything except pie crust. The bacon grease pot disappeared from our household, and no doubt many others, when the word 'cholesterol' entered the public awareness. (Now that trans-fats are considered suspect, I wonder if bacon grease is ok again?) Me, I save some bacon grease (not much, because I can't use much, and I've learned to render lard). I save snips and scraps of celery and onions for soups. I save random scraps of chicken, as well as whole carcasses, for broth. The wonderful thick gel (I call it demiglace but it probably really isn't) from chicken cookery gets saved. Our freezer has an area more or less devoted to these random elements, much to the dismay of my husband. He's of the look-for-something-edible-now school of thought, and got himself into deep trouble not long ago for throwing out my cooked chicken carcass with all that lovely thick gel that I'd been saving until I could make broth. How about you? What things do you save to go into later cookery? I'd also like to know any further historical bits like the grease-for-ammunition, if anyone knows some.

I'd like to try using vermouth, but I don't think I've ever bought it, let alone cooked with it. Therefore some dumb questions: 1. What kind should I look for for cooking? 2. Can you use it as a 1:1 substitute for white wine? 3. Will it keep after opening (unrefrigerated)? ← I use dry white vermouth, Martini and Rossi. It keeps forever in the cabinet.

I've never owned or cooked with LC. The white enamel interior has scared me off, because my experience with enamel cookware has been that it sticks. Terribly. Browning meats = brown spots all over the bottom, and deglazing doesn't help. I think this has been my experience even since I learned really how to control the cooking temperature and deglaze the pan afterward. Now, Anna N and one or two others have referred to a similar problem, but many more of you have referred to the ease of cleanup. I'd like some more info here, from any and all of you. What exactly are you cooking? Are you browning meats (or onions or whatever) in the same LC for your stews and braises? Are you living happily with brown stains on the interior of your pans? When you say "ease of cleanup" do you mean "compared to cast iron"? How would you compare the ease of cleanup of LC to ease of cleanup of a stainless steel interior pan? Is the mass of the cooking surface a factor? To be fair, I may never have cooked in a *heavy* enameled pot; I know that our only enameled pot at present is a lightweight thing suitable (IMO) only for boiling water and looking pretty atop the cabinets. Translation of the above: I really don't need any LC. Thanks to this thread I'm now intrigued, but still leery. Fifi, you're gonna have to work a bit harder to suck me in on this one.

My. tongue. is. hanging. out. You've barely started the week, and it's going like gangbusters! This is wonderful! What was that soup called? It's gorgeous! I agree with Snowangel; the memories and good food and love that come out of a kitchen are far more important than its looks. You may not like the way it's laid out, but you certainly seem to make the most of it. Great decorations, by the way. Besides, your dining room makes up for the kitchen! Nancy

It's a little less horrifying to me to see the locals jamming into those chain restaurants: they're going out for foreign food, in a sense, just as it was exotic for our family to go to a Chinese restaurant when I was growing up. That's the one hand. The other hand, of course, is that junk food is being encouraged as "nutrition"...and oh why oh why, are these sorts of thing among the USA's largest exports!? It sure doesn't help our image!

... Great sorrel input, thank you so much. I know what you mean about the color... The last time I made the fish and mashed potatoes and sorrel dish, I put the sorrel in at the very, very end, and it kept the bright green color. It was great. We want to try your Zuni Cafe Cookbook recipe. Yes, oh what a case for turning the lights down low. ← I'm glad this topic hasn't been locked yet, because I realized this morning I'd forgotten a crucial ingredient in the panade: shredded (or grated) fontina cheese. It's layered with the other solid ingredients and gives the dish a wonderful creaminess. For precise instructions you still have to go to The Zuni Cafe Cookbook - a cookbook I recommend on many counts - but if you're winging it, you need to know about that cheese! Great blog! Sorry I'm adding on so late, but I'm glad I could correct my earlier post.

That finally came to me as I was cooking dinner tonight. I'd forgotten the Germanic influence, but the Scots-Irish (and, as you note, English) who make up most of my stock were no great shakes either. Mind you, I love visiting those countries, but I don't think they spent much time - at least not a couple of centuries ago - trying to make fancy meals. (The other thing that came to me, between posting that last post and dinner, was, "Why didn't I change the darned light switch before I logged on last time?" I remembered the job as the sun was going down. I finally ended the job 'hot' so the adjacent room's lights, on the same circuit, were available. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Got away unscathed, but still dumb. Y'all are a wonderful resource and terrible distraction! )

I just finished rereading this entire thread, and I'm amazed and delighted by the breadth and depth of information. Thank you, all! One thing that strikes me is the assertion, made by many of you, that the Cajun cuisine took common food - whatever was available and affordable - and made it uncommonly good. I think that's an excellent attitude, well worth promoting in any cuisine. Unfortunately, judging by other threads on people eating junk rather than taking the time to make things good, it still seems to be an uncommon attitude. I am also taken by the fact that my paternal kinfolk came from a similar subsistance (farming and hunting) background, in Oklahoma and Tennessee, yet their food as I recall was pretty plain. Mind you, it was tasty, but it was your basic meat, potatoes (or rice, if there was gravy to be had), vegetable, fruit salad, and some damn fine pie. I'm curious as to whether the more basic approach to cooking was a regional thing - as y'all seem to be asserting - or just the approach my particular kinfolk took. This may be one of those imponderables, but I'm enjoying pondering it. You know, if I'd gotten this sort of perspective in school, I'd have gotten a lot more out of history and literature than fuzzy memories of Evangeline.

The duck a l'orange post gets the pre-packaged cake prize! I knew someone in college who refused to cook because he hated to do dishes. He lived off-campus, in an apartment, and he ate out. Every single meal. I am floored by people who go to Cairo and Luxor (Egypt) for two weeks and want to go to McDonald's.

I loove Staff Meals! Great recipes! I also have Simple to Spectacular, but I think so far all I've gotten out of it is a serious case of drooling. Same thing for the Pie and Pastry Bible...really, it's too bad I live with someone who rarely eats baked goods! Does anyone have an opinion on Pepin's Fast Food My Way? I'm hearing it pushed a lot this week as a premium on my public radio station's fund drive. I already pledged and claimed Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but for a bit more (far more than the book costs, of course) I could get both.

I was making a pilaf one night for dinner and dumped in a container of frozen chicken stock, since I hadn't thought to thaw it out ahead. I usually freeze that stuff in containers of various sizes so I'll have a selection, and it's rarely labeled because the contents are obvious. This was a yogurt cup. "Funny," I thought, "I don't remember this stuff being so yellow when I made it." When it was far too late, I realized I'd dumped in 2/3 c. worth of Meyer lemon juice. Can you say "pilaf pucker power"?

YES! YES! YES! YES! (I'll have what he's having!) ←