Behemoth

Uh, some of us just like to watch

Though longer vacations would have gone a long way towards keeping this one Okay, not NY, but last year when I came back to visit Philadelphia from my new home in the Midwest (aka my culinary hell.) When I got off the plane it took me a second to figure out why everyone looked so different. Then it hit me -- no holiday sweaters. Yeesh. Topic? What topic? Oh yeah: If I were going to a nice place in NY, I would wear my standard men's-cut pants and fitted top, walking-capable heels or very stylish flats. Here's the way to spot (at least the female) city dwellers world over: they maintain a collection of great-looking comfortable shoes.

THANK YOU. Now can you tell me where this place is so I can take my German relatives there and convince them to stop harrassing me about not using a spoon? I know how to twirl my pasta right, damnit.

Yeah, that's what I've always done. In fact, several times with questionable-looking bottles of home-made liquor. (Apple brandy, wines and amaretto) and tons of marzipan, packaged. In fact, pointedly asked the customs guy if it would be a problem -- never was. Have never tried to bring in meat or dairy though. What is the alcohol allowance these days, anyway? I can look it up but if someone knows off the top of their head. Oh, when in England I always have to bring back lion bars and HP sauce for my dad.

I agree, Craig. I have been keeping out of this thread as a novice (though, er, rather enthusiastic) wine drinker, but I don't like the idea of internally cringing whenever a guest picks up a wine glass. Also I tend to suspect with a lot of these things, the name plays a large role in the price...I go to Germany regularly and can see a lot of these products side by side, It's often hard to tell a difference in quality. Certainly beteween Spiegelau and Riedel. In fact, a lot of times a product's reputation is big in the US because they are advertised better in the US, whereas if you go to Germany the "fancy" brand names are entirely different. e.g., I have a watch I got from my husband for my birthday -- here no one has ever heard of the brand, but there it was kind of a big deal. Excellent quality swiss watch, absolutely beautiful piece, but they just don't bother marketing over here. I just have some nice mid-price glass wine glasses, Crate & Barrel actually. At the time I paid attention to size and shape of Riedels when buying so in terms of general shape and size I've been very happy. They are not leaded crystal, but they look and feel great, and while it will no doubt bother me when they break I expect to suffer no lasting trauma. I do plan to buy some Riedel-equivalent at some point for special use, but since I like to entertain people regularly and serve a lot of wine with dinner, this choice made a lot more sense to me. I wish I'd known about Schott-Zweisel, will definitely keep an eye out next time I'm in the market. Those look great. (Though all the web sites were .de -- are they available in the US?).

Oh, try it with soba noodles and cucumber sometime. I like to julienne the cucumber so it is about the same size as the noodles. Crunchy! Rice cookers rock. Plus then you can make thai fried rice with the red curry paste that you already have.

On the other extreme, I can add a cautionary tale... My sister in law's kid is about 13 now, and for the 6 years I've known him, absolutely refuses to eat anything that is not 1) nutella 2) mcdonalds 3) plain cheese pizza I think of her as a pretty good mom overall but why this kid has been allowed to get away with this for so long is really beyond me...such a huge pain in the ass when they were visiting. He didn't even have to try anything, it was just "shrug, that's how he is, ha ha". He's really small for his age... I can't help but wonder what kind of life this kid can have if he can't go anywhere that doesn't serve hamburgers. We would have invited him to visit us for a couple of months (and I know he's keen on spending a summer in the U.S.) but the idea of having to hunt down McD'S or whatever every day or have him starve to death is just too much to take on. Nothing he was offered at the last visit was even that weird -- like, grilled chicken and french bread. Ugh. And while I guess we could do the "you can visit but you have to eat what we have" thing but frankly I don't feel like cajoling someone to eat my cooking. (edited for spelling)

I am only recently de-bachelored...here are a few I'd make as a grad student coming home at 9 or 10pm. Since you like Diana Kennedy -- I used to make a bastardiza-er, variation of the tarsacan bean soup. Whir tomatoes onions garlic & chiles in blender then fry w/ oil in a pot, add canned pinto or black beans & stock (or, okay I'll admit it, often veg bullion) and then back in the blender for a spin. Then top w/ corn tortilla strips that you fry while waiting for the soup, and crumbled queso fresco. Whole thing takes about 15 minutes probably. You can also make quickie approximations of Diana Kennedy corn chowders with frozen corn. Oh, hummus is really easy to make in a blender. I keep frozen pita bread, then defrost it in a toaster. And you can make hummus and vegetable sandwiches that way. Also: frozen chinese vegetable dumplings. Would dump them in seasoned broth with handfuls of spinach. Frozen dim sum items in general are great when you don't have a lot of time or energy. quesadillas with lots of vegetable odds & ends are quick. I toast them in a nonstick pan. I've done them with brocolli raab, roasted peppers, mushrooms, all good...

I love large-grain bulgar as far as grains go -- quick cooking and nutty. I can add my recipe for mujaddara to the recipe file if you're interested...it is a bulgar and lentil pilaf with crispy caramelized onions...I usually eat it either with a cucumber and yogurt salad (foodman posted a version) or with green beans stewed in olive oil and lebanese pepper mix (garam masala can work as a sub for that). Other uses for bulgar -- I make it with sauteed tomatos or zucchini and onions. Nice in the summer since you can eat it at room temp. There are a bunch of lebanese home-style vegetable stews that you don't commonly find in restaurants, which my grandmother used to make to eat with bulgar. I don't have actual recipes but could give a fairly close approximation (at this point I just do it by sight)...my favorites were with okra, one with fried cauliflower, and one with great northern or navy beans. Lebanese stuff is a good bet in general, as you mentioned, but there's a lot more than just the standard restaurant stuff to try. Oh, also you could make kibbeh out of organic meat and fine grain bulgar (there's an easy baked-in-a-pan version) and also a vegetarian version using pumpkin that people make for lent. Again I can dig up recipes for these, though versions abound on the web.

Kew -- here is yet another version, it seems that person found success. She let the Kojel sit in room temp water for an hour to dissolve. I would try this recipe myself & report except a) I no longer own an electric mixer and b) don't need that much candy in my life. But maybe worth a shot, if you feel like experimenting. (Yeah, I like to let others do the work and reap the benefits ) Actually, where I've read people have been unhappy with agar it seems like it is because it sets up too hard-- may just be that they put too much agar in there. Also maybe worth a shot...though I would use agar from a reputable health food store -- I've had problems with the packages of agar threads from asian marlkets, they had kind of a musty cardboard taste despite rinsing but that could have just been a quality issue. Well, maybe now that my semester is over I can try to give both versions a shot -- if I can find a mixer to borrow. Would a hand mixer have enough power?

I really dislike mayo-based salad dressings, especially in the summer. My potato salad varies depending on what is at hand, but almost always involves a dressing made with white wine vinegar, sea salt, grainy mustard, cracked black pepper, good olive oil, shallots, and thyme. For coleslaw, I make an asian-style one roughly based on the one in the White Dog cookbook. Nice and sweet-sour-spicy. Uses thai red curry paste, limes, rice wine vinegar and sugar among other things... Macaroni salad: here is a nice lebanese version that is great in the summer: use elbow or shell macaroni (I like Barilla "pipette" shape). Dressing is yogurt, a small amount of mashed garlic, and salt. Then you melt about a teaspoon of butter and drizzle over top (the way my mom did it) or just drizzle really good olive oil over top. You might want to thicken your yogurt a little ahead of time, if it is too liquid).

If you want the real deal ne plus ultra of marzipan, look for the German brand Niederegger Lübeck. I had always been lukewarm on the whole almond paste thing (apart from those moroccan deer-horn cookies...ye gods) but the first time I tried these babies I became an unabashed besotted uncontrolled addict. There must be some deal with the devil involved here. My brother in law lives in Lübeck so I've bought them factory direct -- coolest store ever.

I'm so glad I'm not the only person with an aversion to cooked salmon. I never cared for it that much, but could certainly eat it. But the last 2 times it was served to me I felt so ill after a couple of bites it was all I could do to choke down a couple more to be polite. I felt so bad...friends had gone through quite an effort to prepare it - one with the salt crust which I ordinarily adore with any other fish. I would think I had developed an allergy at some point down the line, but smoked, gravad lax and raw versions don't bother me at all.

I don't know if anyone else is a fan of those "wei-chuan" chinese cookbooks, I love 'em. They are inexpensive, and as far as I can tell, quite authentic. (The fact that they are bilingual adds credibility, in any case...) I have the two dim sum ones, and my mom has a bunch more that I steal now and then. Occasionally you have to interpret a translation a little, but I have to say those books got me closer to making restuarant-quality dimsum than I ever thought possible. Except for "Sha Her Fen" (rice sheets). Those things will need a lot of practice or may just be forever beyond my reach. The one on garnishes is amazing, and so utterly beyond my reach I just enjoy looking at the pictures. (They very helpfully "walk" you through the process of making a monkey out of daikon with a red face carved out of carrot...um, right.)

I was raised near my grandparent's farm and I did see lambs getting killed for our food as a child. I even had a pet lamb and I knew what would happen to him eventually. My perspective is that we have an obligation to be aware of where the meat comes from, and to respect that. Respect it to the degree that the animal should be treated as well as possible while alive, and killed as quickly and as painlessly as possible when the time comes for that. When I couldn't afford free-range "as kind as possible" meat after we moved away, I ate vegetarian. Now I buy a share in a meat CSA. I think there are lots of good reasons to do this, some of them moral, but many more are just pragmatic. The whole animals having or not having souls argument is problematic for me, from a historical perspective...it depends too much on what for lack of a better word I will call "religious" beliefs? Do cows have 75% of the soul that a dog has? That sort of argument gets very dangerous.

Yeah, apparently I also ate a lot of dead flies. I don't remember this though. I am told I was usually wheeled about town gnawing on pickles. I do remember preferring pickes to ice cream after dinner. So far, have never desired the combination I remember running up to my great-grandmother's rooftop where she grew grapes and eating all the sour ones. I also remember getting stomach aches from all the sour food I ate -- not that it ever stopped me.

My vote is for moroccan Harira...still unusual to most americans, and pretty nice looking to boot. Another unusual one: North German Aal-suppe. It comes with a good story -- originally made with smoked ham, dried fruit, beans and vegetables, the name referred to "all" meaning everything soup. But when visitors to the region got confused, thinking it referred to "eel" soup, they started adding eel, and now most versions contain that.

Bob & Barbara's! God I miss that place... every night I spent there resulted in a bizarre story to tell the next day (assuming I could remember it), and that has been over the course of well over ten years. Last time I was there was with 20 german future-inlaws, after our pre-wedding dinner, and right before my husband and I moved to the midwest for our jobs. This place is now a legend in Hamburg, which is really saying something. The single most requested photo from our wedding is a group of our friends lined up against the wall with a can of PBR in one hand, a shot glass in the other. Now I'm homesick again, damnit!

Ancient Greek-style, I take it?

The "spiced basmati rice", the "simple buttery rice with onion" out of the same Madhur Jaffrey cookbook are easy to prep ahead of time, since they just involve sauteeing onions in advance, and possibly adding a few spices to the cooking water when boiling the rice. Both would be nice additions to your already wonderful-sounding menu.

The problem with the "chinese chef" argument is that a chinese chef is also probably using a wok on top of a stove that is built to accomodate it. I've found that round-bottomed woks don't work well on regular stoves because too little of the surface comes in contact with the heat source. At home most people are using either a flat-bottomed fry pan, or a flattened-bottom "hybrid" wok. (I use the former.) With both of these, it is difficult to get the depth of oil needed to keep the garlic from touching the metal of the pan, where it tends to stick and scorch almost immediately if there is nothing to buffer. Actually, I think I misrepresented Mr. Kimball & co. a little -- the garlic is not put in at the end of the cooking, but is put in last among the aromatics. So for example, when I am making stir-fried pork with scallions, I would add the white parts of the scallions first,(It's nice when those scorch a little) then the ginger, then the garlic, then the partially pre-cooked pork, then the green parts of the scallions, then the liquids at the end. The entire process hardly takes 3 minutes. In absence of properly authentic equipment, this method works quite well. BTW, in terms of authenticity, I learned this dish from a chinese colleague

Oh, I haven't made pizza in a while... We had lebanese "fast food" -- oven-roasted cauliflower (a lot like the eG recipe everyone raves about) with tahini sauce: tahini, lemon juice, cilantro and a little water & salt. 2 cans of Goya octopus mixed in a bowl with mashed garlic, lemon juice, parsley, salt and a little olive oil. pita bread. yum.

Yeah, I have to agree about the garlic. If I put it in first, it goes in slices and comes out as soon as it is getting brown. Otherwise I push the food to the side of the pan at the end, add the garlic into the hot oil and toss after a couple of seconds. The latter technique I saw on America's test kitchen...I know people on this site don't seem to be big fans but some of the techniques they come up with are often very sharp. My stir-frys got really good after watching that particular episode.

This is quite possibly one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. It reminds me of something, but I can't think what exactly...actually it reminds me a little of interiews I've read with political prisoners who say they would conjure up memories of favorite meals to keep themselves occupied. Ghost food for ghost people...

I've used an arabic coffee mill for the past ten years -- the grind is adjustable and apparently it is virtually indestructible. (I am clumsy, and our floors are hard.) Edited to add, mine is sorta like this one, only a little smaller. The nice thing is you can grind into the (easily) detachable bottom chamber to measure amounts for a recipe, or you can grind directly onto food by removing the top part.