Smithy

Wow! Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. You've managed to evoke a history and economy and their influence on a cuisine in a way that's never come clear to me before, in addition to answering my original question. And for anyone who wants to add something, I'm eager to read it! In the meantime I have a follow-up question: I'd like to know more about this layering of flavors by treating the same ingredients in different ways! Do you have some recipes you can point to? Or should I go check out a copy of Prudhomme's book? That sounds really interesting! Wish I could be more articulate about this, but I'm busy fending kittens off the keyboard.xxxxanyway, more responses welcome! Nancy

Boy, that does bring back memories. My uncle and cousins used to dive for abalone, way back when, and occasionally "treat" us with the meat. I can't say I liked it all that well; I remember it being very tough, but it may be they didn't know how to cook it and it may be my tastes weren't sophisticated enough. I was small then and preferred beefsteak to any other food in the world ... well, except perhaps for oranges and tangerines off the tree. I haven't thought about how rare those shells must be now. I'm pretty sure I still have one lying around somewhere, and I'm just as sure that I let a bunch go years ago. If I can find one, I'll treasure it as a rarity. Thanks for the suggestion, andie.

Ah, now that sounds promising. I like the idea of having some of it set into its own dispenser, ready to hand. Thanks for that, too. I have to say I'm not keen on green peppers most of the time; would I be thrown off the planet with red peppers instead? Let the good times roll, indeed! Think I'm off to get fresh chili powder (my husband lets it sit around forever) and try something like this tonight! On some shrimp, perhaps?

Other than some spices I suppose are sprinkled on the chicken breast prior to cooking, what the hell makes this "cajun"? ← Well, and that might be where I've been going wrong. I can sure let the good times roll while I'm eating something like that, but it hasn't seemed distinctive!

First of all, I should explain that I've never been to Louisiana, so my idea of Louisiana food started with the "French Quarter" in Disneyland lo, these many decades ago, and has branched off into more variety since then. (How many fritters can one young woman eat? Lots at the time, as I recall, but no longer.) I've had some marvelous stuff made with Andouille sausage. Loved it. Didn't think much more about it. A year or so ago an acquaintance from Louisiana sent my husband a "thank you" package that included several boxes of Zatarain's mixes. We loved them, especially the Red Beans and Rice mix, and were delighted to learn that they can be had here in northern Minnesota. It's easy, fast, and tasty, and has become a staple in our cupboard. However, we're starting to realize that it's also very salty. I bet there's something better. I began trying recipes from Eula May's Cajun Kitchen. Nice stories. Recipes okay. Main flavor seems to be "hot". Surely there's more to it than that? That leads to my question, offered here with some hesitation because y'all will KNOW I'm a total parvenue, but how else will I learn: what defines Cajun food? In particular, if you want a Cajun slant on something, what spices do you use? Is it really just hot sauce? I keep expecting more complexity. Certainly, good Andouille sausage implies more complexity. I keep thinking sweet and hot, or savory and hot, or...or what? Or is it not the spices, as such, but more the ambience and combinations? Help me learn here, folks!

Welcome, Kanishka! I have to say, I'm clueless about Burmese food, and don't know what they use to "sour" things, so I can't answer your question. I'll ask a question instead: what are the typical souring agents in that cuisine? Lemon? Tamarind? If nobody else here answers, I will also suggest that you might have better luck asking this question either on the DC Forum, since you've been talking Burmese food there, or the Asian Forum, based on location. I'm not trying to scare you off, by any means! But if nobody here has ideas for you on this question, I don't want you to feel ignored. Again, welcome! And good luck finding answers!

Now why didn't I think of that?

Funny, I was just thinking along these lines this afternoon when a 3-1/2 hour road trip was foisted on me on the way out the door. I did NOT want to do that trip. I DID want to go home. On the way, on the trip, I devoured a small bag of vinegar-and-salt potato chips. They were vile. I should add that I love real vinegar on real chips (what we true Americans would call French Fries), but somehow it doesn't translate onto packaged potato chips. At least, not onto these packaged potato chips. They really were vile, but in a perversely pleasurable sort of way. Did I stop before the bag was finished? No. Did I dig into the next bag I'd brought along? Again, no. I think I'll leave them back at the office next Monday, for the other vultures. I spent a good deal more of my resentful road trip thinking about the fact that I've successfully lost weight merely by eating only what I really, really like...but then, there are these perverse pleasure moments. Why? I ask myself, why? I can almost feel my thighs swelling lovingly into a tighter grip with my pant legs this evening. Wouldn't it have been better to wait until I could get home to my leftover potato gratin and steak with mushrooms? Or even the leftover Hallowe'en candy? Then again, there's the counterpoint, that may go nearer the mark of the original question, and has a certain Zen quality to it: if you can't get the good stuff, shouldn't you enjoy what you get? I think that was the whole point of the Steven Stills song... Nancy "love the one you're with" Smith

I think those thoughts when I look on eBay at the collectible kitchen gadgets. An amazing number of sellers have no clue what a china hat is for, or how a tomato press is supposed to work, and their descriptions are hilarious. I've seen some very strange labels attached to Wearever citrus juicers, too. Edited to add: I'd really need at least $15,000 to add on to the kitchen so I could fit in more gadgets. At present, $5000 would buy my much-needed range hood but I'd have no place to put the vent outlet!

That is the hand-held type I mentioned that people often use the wrong way. The citrus has to go into it cut side down and when pressed it turns the fruit inside out and extracts the most juice. I saw someone on a Food TV show using one the wrong way, putting the cut side up, which looks like it would fit, but it doesn't work as well and the juice squirts out the sides instead of through the holes in the bottom. ← At last, a mystery explained. I've always wondered how the heck one of those squeezers would turn the fruit inside out, but since I swear by my Wear-ever juicer (like the one you recommend, Andie) I've never had to find out. If I'd ever tried one I'd have done exactly as you described the TV guy doing, with the same results.

Late to jump on the bookwagon, I know, but I've been fairly cowed by the prospect of adding my meager 42-book total to a list that includes 1,000+ book collections. Mind you, that's 42 and counting... ← Well, we all had to start somewhere! What's amazing to me is that it was only a few years ago that I had, oh, 5 cookbooks to my name. Now the shelves are bulging. Don't worry, Mooshmouse, this thread will lead you into temptation - er, I mean, inspire you!

Well, here's an update. After a week the peppers were indeed beginning to change color, and after 2 they'd gone a much duller green. I didn't get around to taking a photo until after 3 weeks. The light was different but the photos still clearly shows the color change if you compare it to my first photo. Here they are: Last night I opened the smaller jar and tried one. Ooh, I like these! The stuffed peppers were sweet and tart - there was some salt, a little heat from the dried chile, and a sweet tartness both from the vinegar and the peppers themselves. The nut stuffing tasted great. I think next time I may try either salted dry roasted peanuts or, for a completely different taste, walnuts. When the jar is empty, I'm going to have some fine-tasting olive oil. The peppers are still a bit crunchy and tended to crack when I sliced them. Will they keep getting softer? Thanks for the recipe, Elie! Nancy Edited for spelling, and to add: at least some of that oil will be used as a dipping oil. Wow, I can hardly wait to get home to some good bread.

Oh man, while I was asking about the moussaka, little ms. foodie was posting her dinner. It's over an hour to lunch time and I'm already hungry for dinner. With all these gorgeous dinners and writeups and photos, one could easily go without cookbooks if one so desired!

Greek! Heresy! Ha ha Looks very tasty, actually. We had "grown up" grilled cheese and tomato soup: The soup was chickpea tomato rosemary, the sandwich was prosciutto & taleggio paninni. Looked really cool but I didn't feel like fussing with the camera, especially with the spouse hovering over the stove, waiting to be fed. ← My husband has yet to be subjected to my photographing the dinner before we tuck in. Boy, is he in for a surprise! But your dinner sounds excellent. Why "Greek"? Is it just the white sauce on top, or is there more to the distinction? FoodMan's moussaka looks good, and not at all like mine (except for the white sauce). Mine tends to be obvious layers of eggplant and the tomato-meat sauce. FoodMan, what is in yours? By the way: if the answer to "why Greek" belongs more properly in the Middle Eastern forum, feel free to answer over there...

What kind of mandoline did you get, finally? And what do you think of it? I'm still trying to decide whether and which one...as we discussed in the mandoline thread...

I don't recall if there's a specific reason for peeling the chickpeas - I guess to make the soup smoother? Anyway, it is a very simple and delicious soup - the only ingredients are chickpeas, leeks, water, a bouillon cube, pepper I think - and parmesan. Half gets pureed and put back in, so it also has a nice texture. ← Several of my cookbooks recommend peeling the chickpeas because the peels are going to come off during cooking and they look strange, or they slip off in one's mouth and feel strange. Then the books blithely list the easy method: rubbing the soaked peas in one's hand in a bowl of cold water so the peels "slip off" and "float to the surface" with the naked peas dropping to the bottom. Easy peeling, they say. Humbug and harrumph, I say; the water doesn't sort them out as advertised. I decided after a few tries that peeling isn't worth the extra effort, and adopted Madhur Jaffrey's attitude: the peels provide extra roughage. In a pureed dish (like hummus) it hardly matters. In a soup or a stew the peels add visual interest. (How's that for a rationalization? ) If the finished dish looks strange, I'll turn down the lights and light a candle.

Aha! A new excuse for buying a new tablecloth! Thank you! I *want* your countertops. That's a great color, and you need not apologize about being a slob cook; they still look great under all that food-in-progress. I also *want* your screened porch. Very Florida-looking (my mother comes from Delray Beach, and I still have kinfolk there). Unfortunately, that screened porch wouldn't be much good up here any more this year. It's the fireplace for us, now. I'm so glad someone else asked about Toast Dope so I didn't have to!

One additional bit of information: there are also recording thermometers that plot the temperature right onto a chart for all to see. They're more expensive than the data logger slbunge mentioned, where you plug into the computer to plot the data, but some people are happier about looking at a live graph than about seeing some mumbo-jumbo come out of a computer. That terrific site (thank you, slbunge, for a new source!) has both types available.

For about $50 you can get a motor attachment for your Atlas machine that will also leave both hands free. I just realized, we're all going on about how handy the motorized system is, when the original question specifically said "hand crank is fine"!

Oh yes, you must tell the story! I have visions of some poor passerby getting beaned by a flying pot roast under your window! Ex-boyfriend was a no-fat no-cholesterol freak, and a control freak at that. Butter instead of margarine? Horrors! And couldn't I get used to 2% milk in my coffee, instead of half-and-half? We fought over many control issues, and food was among them. As a sidelight, I should add that neither of us was overweight or had any known health problems. Here's an occurrence that foreshadowed our split. The scene: the dinner table, with friends over for a casual dinner. Main course was a beautifully broiled chicken with crispy done-just-right skin. Him: "Smith, you shouldn't eat the chicken skin. You know that has all the fat in it." Me: <stuff all the skin from my chicken into my mouth, savor mightily. Swallow. Smile. Grab the rejected skin from his plate, salt heavily, repeat the performance.> My friends, who never liked him, still laugh about that.

I haven't been comp'd much, nor have I expected to. My first (and maybe only) time at an Olive Garden restaurant, I ordered something to see how it compared to what I'd been making from recipes. I've forgotten the details now, but it had very little of whatever was supposed to be the main ingredient (for instance, very little meat in the carbonara). The waitress asked how I'd liked my meal, after I finished, and I said I was a bit disappointed, and why. I wasn't asking for comp'ing, nor was I complaining, but she asked for feedback and I gave it. To the restaurant's credit, they really tried to make it right anyway - not that I thought there was any wrong to be righted - wanted me to take a dessert on the house, and by all means, to come back. One wildly unexpected comp was when I was visiting a friend in Sun Valley one summer oh, 20 years ago or so. We'd walked to a local restaurant, had a long breakfast that lapsed into lunch, all the while talking and ordering more food, all of it excellent. That evening we came back for dinner and basically repeated the performance. Some hours into the evening, after we'd gone through our bottle of wine, the waiter came out and said, "You two have set a record, and because you've been such great customers, the owner invites you to come downstairs and pick out a bottle of wine. On the house!" I forget what we picked - something in the middle, neither the most expensive nor the cheapest - but we enjoyed that on the spot too, and gleefully purchased more dessert to go with it. We were back for breakfast the next morning. Ah youth! What a vacation!

As I keep rereading this thread (when I should be doing other things) I think Wendy is saying that nothing is wrapped, and that it's her mini-pastries that are getting freezer burn. What I hadn't realized until now is that those pastries are inside a closed cart that has to come out of the freezer before she can pull out any trays. My suggestions, and Toliver's, for smaller trays or silpats or something like that won't help because of the access. If I'm reading this properly now, then the question is why this problem just started a couple of months ago. What's changed? Is the freezer humidity lower than it used to be? Is she opening the cart more frequently than she used to? Wendy, one final question (for now): are you sure it's freezer burn? Can you describe what it looks like? When you first described freezer burn I thought of meat. I don't know what a freezer-burned pastry looks like. Nancy

Welcome, Rehovat! Please tell us more: why, indeed, would one boil beef?! Unless, of course, it's something like corned beef. Could you braise it? Or make beef stew? I do see the Traditional Dish note. Can you manage to tweak that tradition? And what/whose tradition is it, if you don't mind my asking? Sorry if I sound like a heretic. You should see me at Thanksgiving...always messing with those traditions, too.

Steaks with a mushroom-shallot wine sauce; potato gratin from the Balthazar Cookbook ; asparagus tossed in sesame oil, sesame seeds and tamari, then roasted. I was proud of that setup, and we came away full, with plenty of leftovers. I'd have taken a photo for bragging rights if I'd thought of it in time; I was winging it on the steak and asparagus! I'm learning!

Can you use smaller trays so you aren't removing as many mini-pastries and putting them back each time? Maybe put small trays or plates on top of the larger one so you only have to lift 1 tray out? Another, slower (and maybe not practical) way would be to seal them into mini-containers or compartments that will keep them protected from the outside air - I'm thinking of a compartmented box of some sort that holds roughly the number of pastries you'd be needing in a single compartment.