Carrot Top

I used to make an app of Parmesan and mayo on black bread triangles, quickly broiled then served. It was terrible how many one could eat, would want to eat, considering the high mayo content. But I've never heard of "river food". Does that mean "food you go and hang out by the river to eat"?

Just googled "pressure cooker cream corn" and came up with this: Canning Cream Corn is on the second page. The description of cutting the kernels off the cob by cutting directly through the center to let the milk out of them is there, as is the note on scraping the cob. Looks like a good idea if there really is a lot of corn to be made.

I'm just going from memory of the recipe, Susan. I would tell you more if I could. If a pressure cooker were to be used, it would for a very short time, it is to be imagined. The only reason it came to mind is that it seemed it might be of use in smoothing out the corn by the application of pressure and that would seem useful for that soft milkiness. Cream corn is sort of (to my mind) like corn kernels turned inside out and smoothed. Instead of the focus being on the initial crunch/crisp bite followed by the juicy milky inside, you get the juicy milky inside followed by bits of the more tense outside. It's great.

I really think the grating off the cob with a low slow cook just with a touch of butter salt and tiny bit of sugar should do it, Susan. A pressure cooker could help. Perhaps if the texture does not quite make it after the low slow cook the merest bit of a cornstarch slurry could add it. The side of the cans of cream corn say just "corn" and "salt" or "corn, salt, and sugar" I think. Edited to add: Add a tiny bit of water if you need to avoid scorching while cooking depending on the pot. My guess would be anywhere between twentyfive minutes and fortyfive should give you the texture and thickness if you've gotten the corn milk/starch/sugar expressed from the kernels to make the creaminess in the initial grating/prep.

I seem to remember a recipe for creamed corn "au naturel" (off the cob not out of the can) where the directions involved either slitting the kernels down through the center before cutting them off the cob and/or grating the kernels directly off the cob rather than cutting them, before cooking. This allows the milky juices to escape to create that creaminess. It probably is in some book I gave away but I'll look around and see if I still have it somewhere. (Edited to add that I can't find the book this technique is in but my best guess would be either The Settlement Cookbook or James Beard's American Cookery. ) Edited to add more : I just remembered that after cutting/grating the kernels off the cob it's important to scrape the cob itself with the blunt part of a knife to gain all the extra corn "milk".

Just finished Nora Ephron's recent release "I feel bad about my neck". The entire book is excellent, raucously funny in parts but two parts really pleased me. The first is that after reading Nora talking about her neck, I realize that I do not feel as bad about my neck as she does about hers. This is quite liberating and empowering. The glamour just resounded around me in a bright flash of light when I realized this. Granted, time will undoubtedly alter this opinion I hold now, but whatever. That is then and this is now. The second is the chapter titled "Serial Monogamy: A Memoir". This is her story of the relationships she has had with foodwriters and foodbooks of the day: The Gourmet Cookbook of 1962; The Flavor of France by Naricissa and Narcisse and Samuel Chamberlain; Julia Child's tomes; Craig Claiborn; Michael Fields ; Lee Bailey. The relationships are both real and fantasy combined. The ongoing dialog is about cooking their recipes and talking to them in her head and in real life.

Yes, I remember that way of things too. ← The conjunction of these lines of Dianabanana's and John's reminded me of my own worst meal served at someone's home. I wrote it out once as part of a story then it depressed me so much I consigned the whole thing to the trash can. Vermont on the border of California. A place called Earth People's Park which was home to a "commune" where if you look at the same of the place should have been quite lovely, earthy, full of wonderful people, all intelligent inclusive and warm. A new world, a better one in the making and all that. I was fourteen and it was my first stop after leaving home/running away after my mother decided that pursuing her Ph.D was enough for her to do without raising a child and that foster care or juvenile detention would be the best option for a place for me to live. Hah. We arrived at midnight. Not really, but close to it. The house was small and cold. The snowbanks were three and a half feet deep. I was five feet tall. There was nothing to eat in the house but some stale crackers and the kitchen was inhabited by a large angry Doberman Pinscher who had been deserted there by his owner who obviously thought a group of happy hippies needed an unfed Doberman around the place, so he left the dog tied up in the kitchen when he left in the middle of the night, taking his mandoline and his hash pipe back to his NY apartment, several days before. Everyone (I won't go into describing the characters here - you can insert any variety of general-purpose hippie of the times including men who decide to grow long hair and act cool in order to get into any female's pants that their eyes happen to fall upon and women who, well . . . I can't define them except to say that on a good day they might enthuse about brown rice and cook up a clumpy bit of it which one hoped did not have any of that Zap Comicbook hair lurking around the edges.) But let me stop being bitchy for one moment and get on to the real deal here - the meal. Everyone was looking forward to the next day when a farmer from nearby would be bringing a donation of food. He arrived in the early-afternoon cold grey grimness carrying with him one battered cardboard box of gray cabbage. Worm-eaten and mushy. One of the women braved the kitchen. I entered just far enough to push a bowl of water towards the lunging barking tied-up Doberman and throw him all the stale crackers I could find around the place. We awaited our repast. It emerged, and from a communal bowl we scooped out shreds and chunks of greyish green vegetable matter from a watery greenish grey broth. Broth is a kinder word than what I mean. There may have been some bits of brown rice in it. Probably there were. It tasted like sewage. I ate a bit because I was hungry. Then quietly I went out to the deep snowdrifts and threw it all up and cried. Vermont snow, vomit and tears are not a pretty mix.

It's a class struggle. One can choose a side or decide that both are valid and useful. It could be that Bravo not only realizes this but has decided to utilize it in each show. Yet another bit of story line or dissonance to catch and hold the attention. (Edited to correct the spelling of the word "catch" which I spelled "catche" as if I were in Merrie Old England.)

How did it taste, Arnie, and what was the impetus that made you want to try making it? Where does one find such a recipe, too?

I was in Africa, along the shoreline on a dusty, hot, busy beach. The beach was filled with people, the sun was blistering. Along the waterline were built shed/houses - one or two rooms, dark old wood, shady, open to the water. I was in the water, swimming/standing in front of one of these houses. Looking down into the water, the ocean floor was filled with the most amazing rocks and stones. I kept diving and picking them up and holding them towards the people who lived in the house. There were about seven people, a family of all ages. They told me they were Swedish and that they were watching the house for friends until they returned. They did not look Swedish as in white/blond etc but instead had African features and coloring. I wanted to find an opal. "Is this an opal?" I kept asking them over and over as I dove for stones. The stones were pink and purple and silver. "No", they said, over and over. I kept trying, smiling at them winningly each time I held out a stone. They told me to eat something and I got out of the water. It was filo dough covered with braised snails. ( ) Wierd-looking. But good. Next thing you know I was in some treetop restaurant with a staircase set in the center hung on thick ropes. It was difficult to climb but fun. I wanted to see what the people were eating. What they were eating was ordered by their names. Say, someone was named "Smith". The waiter would holler out "Smith" and a box would be found from the huge pile of differently shaped and colored boxes at the entrance to the restaurant. Then a cook appeared with a machete and he would chop the box in half to display what looked like the inside of a dollhouse with different rooms but instead each section was filled with some kind of food. He then took the box and placed it on a huge fire where the insides would cook from the heat. Some parts were dark and crisped, some were barely cooked at all. This box would then be carried to the table it belonged to and they would pull out the food from it to eat. ...................................... No, I don't take drugs of any sort. But I did get served a rotten french fry at a restaurant last night and that freaked me out. Maybe there was some chemical in that rotten french fry that caused all this. (?)

Arrogance is one thing, pig-headedness is another (as Bourdain mentioned somewhere - and which I completely agreed with as if it matters if anyone agrees with him or not - Joey who was eliminated for a variety of reasons among which "not listening" seemed to be paramount, is exec chef at Cafe des Artistes and must have some really decent skills to have gotten there and to have been awarded that title there) but causing dangerous situations is in another category of behavior in the professional kitchen that simply can't be tolerated. The way Hung moves, often, is dangerous. Talent aside, this is a huge disability and to my own mind (regardless of who really does win on this show) has simply eliminated him from my even being able to consider him as being in the game in any real way. It's like being around a guy who carries a gun but who keeps the safety off while going disco dancing after taking meth-amphetamines. (Edited to add: Not that I've ever done that, go dancing with that sort of guy. I'm just sayin'. )

I don't think that you are the first nor will you be the last person to find that what is called "go out for a simple dinner" can be fraught with startling difficulties, particularly as it is touted as relaxation, going out to dinner. A quick (or endless) gander at the Dining Out with Children thread will comfort you on that level. Dive in again when you're ready, try the suggestions above particularly speaking to the host(ess)/maitre d', then keep your fingers crossed that they (whoever it is that is in charge of seating) respond with a good attitude. People being people, sometimes even people in this position will react strangely to life as it is before them. Good luck, and bon appetit. (And if it does not go as well as planned, ever, there is a fabulous response you can say which is why it is great to grow up in New York for you have to learn it. Repeat after me: "Fuh-GET about it!" )

We tried Awful Arthur's again, tonight. The last time was mid-June, soon after its opening. I really was hopeful that two months (with light service demands as the student population that makes up most of this town disappears over the summer) would allow the place to come together. It is in one of the brand new buildings in town - one of the shiny brick and glass palaces that did not use to exist here till two years ago. The space is nice. Open, clean, large, sophisticated. Too bad the kitchen can't recognize a rotten potato when they see it. Again, tonight, service was slow, confused, waitresses (no I do not intend to say servers in this moment) wandering from table to table with plates asking if the food was supposed to be at that table, wrong all the time till they hit the fourth or fifth lucky table that actually was right. . . I ordered a fried oyster sandwich, not being willing to waste the amount of money I'd wasted on the last meal, and my daughter ordered clam chowder. When the food finally arrived after a forty-five minute wait (the place was busy, granted - the town is packed with students returning for the school year and their parents, but regardless . . .) it looked good. Except that someone had stripped an entire bunch of fresh thyme into a bowl of clam chowder for seasoning. Impenetrable thyme flavor - deep, oily, woodsy, overpowering. Where is Remy when you need him, I ask. A rat would have known better. So she did not, could not, eat the chowder. Either could/would I, for that matter. I am usually supportive of restaurants trying to get their feet on the ground. I'm on their side. But I have discovered one thing that can make me wander right over to the other side. And that is when a rotten potato has been served to me. A rotten, literally rotten (as in, when you see a potato that has sunk into itself and which smells of iodine and must) french fry was part of my french fries. I can still taste it. After eating the rotten french fry, I tried to eat the oyster roll but somehow the idea of the risk of eating oysters after having just eaten (and spit out into a napkin for it was unswallowable) a rotten potato somehow did not seem like a very smart idea. The waitress came to refill our drinks and poured me some water and pleasantly at the same time refilled my daughter's soda which she had delivered no more than ten minutes earlier with the same water instead of thinking to refill it with soda. We got the check. I asked for a comment card and the hostess looked at me as if I had two heads. After a pause for deep thought she asked if I wanted to speak to the manager. Okay. So the manager arrived and I told her the tale. Her response was "oh we have a new waitress" and "oh the french fries come in frozen so it could not have been our fault". I sort of doubt both claims. And even if true, sorry, no cigar. I won't be singing "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" tonight.

A food writer would do this thinking that other things in the world are more important than what he or she writes about as a main subject. Politics is so often considered a weighty subject, and a way to make the world work right. Food is so often relegated to be thought of as a lightweight subject, not a way to make the world work right. It only obtains an aura of weightiness for the generic reader when it is linked to business (big bucks) (haute cuisine and celebrity chefs) or economics (food supply and agribusiness). Personally I don't understand this. Food has brought more people to the table together than politics ever did in any long-lasting way. Likely brought more people to bed together too.

I'd absolutely love that recipe.... ← Ditto. It would be great if you could post it if you still have it. Mmm. Maybe it doesn't belong in a "Primer" but rather in "Advanced Studies", Tim.

Sometimes in life one has to work with what they are given, and this happens often enough in professional kitchens. A kitchen staff is there when you walk in as chef, and things being what they are it can take more energy of a negative and disruptive sort overall to try to terminate those who do not "fit" than to find a way to manage them so that they do fit. The silver lining is that this conversion of type when it happens well can be sort of like a wonderful religious experience for all involved. ....................................... Yeah, Boulud's face was a beautifully sort of funny at that moment.

I can actually see Howie being a huge asset in a production kitchen. As a cook or maybe even as a sous. That bulldog quality can be a useful asset used in the right ways. I'd guess that what it would take to make him effective, though, would be to really hit him over the head with a two by four that he respected in some way. He just seems like one of those guys who will work against everyone sometimes even himself till he's knocked flat to his knees. Then there's a complete turnaround complete with high loyalty, hard work and dedication being given. There was a difference in this weeks performance by him, though, with his behavior . . . and that is promising for him. It shows that he's thinking not just tossing things away. The risotto thing was a high-level food experience aimed for being done in a lower-level high production kitchen sort of way. Howie's not the only chef who does this in the restaurant business, making risotto like this. Is it right? Not really. Risotto is a way of life that doesn't translate easily. But I'd guess that Howie learned this method from a chef sometime in his past whom he greatly respected. There appeared to be very little focused planning of roles going on at the start of this thing. It was almost haphazard, to my eyes, with not enough real solid thinking going into it in the rush of it all. There was a wariness of personality clashes among all of them, a backing down and softening in order to supposedly create this thing called "team". They already had been dealt the emotional blow of being the ones the primary team did not choose - there was likely the feeling within them of the kid chosen last for the teams in gym class. Debilitating. I think the do-over was based on the fact that there was a feeling that so much was missing in terms of adequate performance that it needed to be done over just to be able to offer someone a chance to shine a bit. After all, they are supposed to be Top Chefs. This is what the audience wants to watch.

Yes, "lights and lungs" were considered quite a good thing at one time weren't they? I guess my thoughts were running along the line of pig slop that I vaguely think of as being made on a base of corn (maize) or oats or other grain, and the lack of grain seemed to be one of the issues. Butchers that talk like that are a huge part of the charm of places like Ellijay, GA. Why did they continue to ration meat for so long? And why is it that when I think of "rationing during the war" I think only of England? Was that the only place it happened and if so why?

I'm sure that fast food is not the devil nor will it cause mindless unhealthy devotion. But then I wonder why, if there are twenty people in any given fast food place, are eighteen of those people quite overweight to the point where one wonders if it has affected their health.

Yes, Rogov, exactly. And it has worked the same miracle with almost every philosopher since, until we reached the postmodernists. So Velveeta has the potential to bring me caviar if I bait a hook with it? Makes me wonder, your story, if subbing V for mozz would work in those deep-fried stick things. Might have to freeze it first, though. But then again I wonder if the stuff freezes. I tried but obviously am not usefully deft, SB. Did you grow psilocybin on Velveeta then take a trip with the Flintstones somewhere? ................................... Sounds like that Rotel and Velveeta dip is the clear winner in recipe category so far. I'll have to try it.

Although a discussion of Velveeta cheese could be considered a cooking topic, it seems to be more of a food traditions and culture topic. For what is a more middle-class low-brow (sic) American food than the great cheese we know as Velveeta? Though some may think that Velveeta just sort of fell from the skies one day, a gift from the gods (or a dropping from the devil) Velveeta actually has its own home-made history. Originally an artisan cheese, apparently. But then Velveeta's story takes a different path. I've had my own experiences with Velveeta, being a home-grown American. We didn't eat it at home when I was growing up, but there was at least one time in my life (described here in post 5 ) where it exerted a strange and important aura that made me need, not just want, but need, to eat it. That texture. Incredible. That cheezy flavor. Miraculous. In some way. I was reminded of Velveeta recently when reading Diana Abu-Jaber's book "The Language of Baklava". In discussing the book in another thread, srhcb posted her recipe as it is written in the book, and added his own commentary on the fulsomeness of a grilled Velveeta sandwich: How do you use Velveeta? Do you have any Velveeta stories to share? Or do you think that Velveeta is the devil's headcheese?

Isn't that a Frank Sinatra song?

Him? His name is Dick Headfoodie. Or so he thinks.

This is ridiculous. I have to get this off my mind and go do other things. I have to make a correction - I did see two examples of management: Sara's decision to make a braised item was a good time management decision but not a good overall decision. And Casey's covering FOH when things started getting screwed up was good management as an afterthought, but it worked to help ease the screw-up.

Some of these problems could have been avoided by one word: management. Even better if they were avoided by good management. * Just as the work of the kitchen requires management, not just doing . . . so does the work of FOH. I didn't see much management going on, either BOH or FOH. It was just "go go go!" The eyes of a FOH manager walking around making constant corrections and the eyes and palate of an executive chef doing the same are never wasted and always crucial to each plate happening right. Management is crucial to success. "Go go go" simply doesn't make it happen. (*As a matter of fact, not just some but most. Not all, given the situation of time crunch.)