TongoRad

Hell2Heights- that doesn't sound sketchy to me at all; I always tend to cook that way. I can see the recipe/method in my head, which is all I'd need to know when I try to do it. I have some yellow plum tomatoes (the small ones) just about ready to pick, and some serranos as well, so I'll be making my own variation of it pretty soon. It sounds like it is just up my alley. Nice post, and thanks.

It makes a hell of a rice pudding.

A mushroom sauce is fairly easy to make, and seriously good. While your pasta water is going just sweat some shallots in butter, add your sliced mushrooms (crimini by themselves would work, but the more varieties the better) and a bit of thyme. When they are cooked through add a splash of madiera, cook off the alcohol, and then another knob of butter. When it melts and darkens a bit add a ladle of pasta water and swirl it all together. Toss in your pasta when done (tagliatelle would work well), season with some black pepper and a touch of grated cheese and you're ready to eat.

Just regular sweet corn, like you'd get at a grocery store, cut off of the cob (cooked first). It's from Mark Miller' Coyote Cafe cookbook. I know there is a difference, but it makes for a tasty tamale, I've always been curious about adapting it for tortillas; I don't like the ones I've made with masa harina. Plus, I can get good ones at local taqueria/fondas, fairly fresh, so I haven't really been driven to replacing the broken press.

I'd say I am along the lines of a mimic and assimilator. I tend to get ideas from whatever I am eating out, trying new things, stuff like that- usually in a schwarma joint, South Indian place, taqueria, etc.- and copy it at home. That's the time when I will use recipes, kind of like early research into techniques and ingredients. After a few times all of that information gets jumbled up inside my head and I'll start to riff on things in my own way. Heck, if you had numerous cabinets filled with spices and various supplies you'd have to find other ways to use them on a regular basis as well. And maybe you do

There is a way to liven up the dried maseca masa harina that works well for tamales- I've always wondered if it would work for tortillas. I haven't replaced my broken tortilla press, so I can't say I could be the guinea pig but- simmer corn kernels in milk, then puree them and some of the milk in a blender and add it to the maseca when you are making the tamale dough. More than anything else it just adds a more prominent corn flavor to the final product. I'd be inclined to think of it as an 'intermediate' method if you can't make fresh masa yourself.

If I'm going to use something it will probably be one of two things these days: Boursin (though blue cheese will do in a pinch) or a salsa verde and a squeeze of lime juice. A lot of that will also have to do with what sides are being served, naturally.

(disclaimer- I worked at Madison and 32nd until about a year and a half ago, so my info on the area may be dated) Tina's Cubano is good (what the heck is with those paper thin pickle slices?!!), but the thing to get there is what they called the Fried Pork Sandwich, which has the cubes of pernil deep-fried for a bit of crispiness and a layer of maduros on top of it. Their empenadas were also good and cheap. I never liked the steam tray stuff, it always looked better than it tasted. At Bella Napoli I really enjoyed their white slices, with the Grandma coming in a close second due to it's inconsistency (some days the crust would be too tough and crunchy- it doesn't reheat well, apparently). Minar also had a steam table full of food that looked better than it tasted BUT you could get a good dosa lunch there, especially the rava masala dosa, and I liked their sambar better than anyplace in Curry Hill. When the mood struck, Golden Crust would be good for some curry chicken or patties. Other faves have already been mentioned (Olympic, SG, Hill Country, Worijip, etc.) but I'll see if I can remember any more...

Even better than the burrito idea would be what is served in many of my local taquerias, a dish called Alambres. There is a combination of at least three meats (but it always includes bacon, usually there is chorizo as well- bacon is key, though), cooked on the flat top griddle with the sliced onions and peppers (it's great with poblanos, if you can get them), and when near completion shredded cheese is added and given a quick mix. Serve on a platter with sliced avocado on top and a stack of corn tortillas on the side, people can then feel free to grab a tortilla and scoop the alambres into it as they see fit. It is great for a group, or even a couple of people.

This is one that never fails to take me back to my childhood, and I really should do it more often- chicken cut up in pieces, roasted along with onions, potatoes and peas all in the same roasting pan, sprinkled with a bit of oregano and salt. The way the potatoes soak up the fat and juices from the chicken, man, that's the stuff...it's more than the sum of its parts, for sure.

This is true, and you can blame the good folks at Texas A&M for the great deception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Mild_Jalape%C3%B1o Fortunately for me I have easy access to the real deal at any number of fondas in my area. I just wish that the grocery stores would clearly mark the chiles as the 'Mild' version so you would know what you're getting ahead of time. Maybe if your store has a knowledgable produce manager they can confirm if they carry the TAM Milds or proper jalapenos.

Guinness is only one brand of dry stout (a style of beer), and at that they produce many different strengths of their beer. The beer that most people associate with the word Guinness is the draught beer, the lightest and mildest of them all- this is also the same beer that is sold in the draughtflow cans and bottles. I wouldn't recommend using it for pastry or baking- not enough concentration of flavor. A step up from that in terms of strength is the bottled Extra Stout, which should be a better candidate. Some countries get their even stronger beers, but if you are located in the US then that point is moot; it is not shipped here. But fear not- we have many other stouts available to us. The dominant flavor in dry stout is roasted unmalted barley (is has been roasted to coffee-like darkness), so any stout that contains that element would be a good place to start no matter the style. I usually think of oatmeal stouts when it comes to cooking- they are more flavorful and rounded than Guinness. If you are in the Northeast the look no further than the classic Ipswich Oatmeal Stout. Beer can be kind of regional, so it may depend on where you are located to help you select the right one. In terms of reducing the beer, there would be no need for that and you would probably change the flavor in ways you don't want to do. But there is a style of stout that is, in essence, already 'concentrated'- the Imperial Stout. The grain to water ratio is, in some cases, way larger than in normal gravity beers. The amount of hop bitterness can be a problem, though. They can be tricky to choose for cooking purposes. We could probably come up with suggestions if you want to go that way (such as Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout), but I say try the oatmeal stout or other dry stout (O'Hara's Celtic Stout comes to mind, if you can get that) first.

Playing off of Fat Guy's suggestion to make lunch the main meal... Many of the take-out lunch specials at Szechuan Gourmet (I'm eating at the 56th Street, near Columbus Circle, location lately) come out to $8.10 including tax. There is plenty of food there (main dish, rice, soup and an extra item that could be pickled cabbage or edamame or peanuts), and I usually save my soup for another day (that soup plus some dan dan noodles for around $5 makes a great budget lunch). The key is to stick with the Szechuan dishes and avoid the obligatory Chinese-American ones. A fave is the braised crispy tofu with chile sliced pork. Their ma paul tofu is wonderful as well, but can be a bit spicy for the uninitiated. There is also a branch down by Grand Central Station on 39th, probably the better of the two, though I haven't been there in over a year. For a sit down lunch you could probably do it for $8 at the Southern Indian buffets in Curry Hill (Tiffin Wallah, etc.)- very good for the price. There are many other good options in the neighborhood for dosa and thali. Plus there are plenty of good take out options there- Roomali for kati rolls, Kalustyan's for their mujadarrah sandwich, etc. As far as chains go- Tina's on Madison by 32nd used to be part of the Sophie's chain. They sell good empenadas at lunchtime for a buck and change each, and 3 or 4 of them with maybe some fruit is pretty filling. I don't know if the other Sophie's offer the same deal. Golden Crust is always good for a few beef patties (they offer many other varieties also, like jerk chicken) or chicken curry.

A couple of weeks ago my wife made a tabboule with Grape Nuts, the recipe may have even come from the box itself, and it was really good. For the first hour or so it retained its crunchiness, but softened after that. I liked it both ways, but the crunchy version really caught my attention because it was so unexpected. We're definitely going to do it again, seeing as how we've got the rest of the box of Grape Nuts to deal with.

If you haven't done this yet here's what I'd do- puree the heck out of the chipotles, adobo and all, then strain the puree. Mix that with some Italian salad dressing (one of my buddies' secret wing ingredients, we call it the 'Troy variant' named after where he went to college) to make a chipotle based 'hot sauce' and then proceed with your normal recipe from there. I don't think you have to do much more than that.

Speaking of fruity sauces, I do one with mulato peppers, banana and orange juice, maybe a little cinnamon and oregano, that goes great with grilled loin chops. I only with that the appearance was better- I can never get the color looking better than 'drab'- but when I am by myself and want something different I really like making it.

I'm going to have to go with tamarind, it's so versatile and I use it quite often. It not only adds a nice sourness to a sauce or dressing but a good deal of roundness as well. My sauce for BBQ uses it as a base flavor. I also love bitter greens like swiss chard, beet greens, etc., whether mixed in a pasta dish or combined with roasted potatoes in a burrito, or other applications I can't keep them in the house when I've got them. I've never combined the two- tamarind and chard- but now that I think about it, that might just work...

Just spitballing here, but what about just adding some actual starchy items, like precooked tapioca or arborio, along with the water you cooked them in to get that texture you're looking for? This would open up the flavor profile a bit without being tied into what works with the bananas or other starchy fruits.

I have never made a lassi nearly as good as what I could buy for about a buck in the shops, it's proven to be deceptively tricky to me; I never could quite get the proportions exactly where I liked them using fresh mangos, and having a number of them ready to go at exactly the right time can be a challenge as well. Then we started buying a mango juice called Wilde- this stuff is seriously good, very thick (it could almost be called a puree) and richly flavored, and all natural (no added sugars, yada yada). It is quite satisfying in and of itself, but I can't help gilding the lily on occasion so I've been making smoothies with it, adding coconut sorbet and a splash of yogurt. As awesome as it is easy.

This sounds really good, but just to clarify, zoe- I am assuming you added the carrots and potatoes to the same roasting pan as the duck during maybe the last hour of cooking, after you had poured off a good portion of the fat in the pan? I did the same thing with a rib roast one time, but I think I added them too early, and hadn't poured off enough of the fat so the end result was too greasy for my tastes (and that's saying something ). I'll have to work on the timing a bit. FWIW- I made the empenadas mostly because we were given these packages of pre-made dough rounds from a co-worker of my wife and wanted to try them. The brand is La Saltena, from Argentina, and the end result was so flaky and wonderful. I'm definitely going to use them again- plus, the whole process was so easy to assemble, and they really had a homemade quality. The duck meat was just in the right place at the right time.

I was at my parents' house over 4th of July weekend, along with my siblings and all of our spouses and kids. The meal of that Friday night was a duck a l'orange that my father made, where he removed the breasts and legs from the roasted ducks and placed them in a pan with the sauce under a broiler to crisp up the skin. It was quite good, but the best part was that I was afforded the opportunity to scrounge the carcasses for myself. We threw those and the giblets into the freezer for me to take home with me. Last week I made a stock with all that I brought home, and we got quite a bit of extremely succulent meat from those bones after all was said and done (and some nice rich stock too). I used the meat to make duck and chile empanadas this week, though I imagine it would have made stellar ravioli as well.

At our last Cub Scout campout we made potatoes-in-foil with a bit of a twist: the potatoes were sliced and we also added sliced onion, butter s&p to the pouch, and tossed them right on the coals. They came out great, with enough caramelized bits to blend in with the other bits.

My mom is the same way- she won't make fried chicken without hers. It's the same one we had from back in the 70's, and it's still got her markings on the thermostat for her preferred temperature settings. I think the prference boils down to three things: temperature control, size, and a tall lid. Unfortunately it hasn't been used for fried chicken in a while, but recently we had a large family gathering and it came in very handy for tossing the cooked pasta with the sauce. All of the other burners were occupied, and the usual option would have been to just sauce the pasta in a large bowl- finishing the pasta in the skillet gave a much better result, imo.

For clarification, Umberto's in New Hyde Park (Long Island) claims to be the home of the commercial Grandma Pizza, though, as Sneakeater has observed, most slice shops offer some sort of variation of it these days. I guess it has been migrating west for the past few decades. Here is a bit more information, fwiw. If you ask me, the ideal Grandma pie should be the following: rectangular pan crust, about 1/2" high, coated first with olive oil, then crushed tomatoes, garlic, some grated pecorino, sliced (not shredded) mozzarella, and fresh basil. Unfortunately, I see a lot of versions that are just short Sicilian pies, using the standard pizza sauce and shredded cheese- t'ain't the same thing.

Perhaps they are allowing for that possibility, though what I was getting was always right out of the oven. When I worked down by Howard Beach I would frequent a place called New Park that also had a seriously hot oven. During peak times the slices would be served right out of the oven, no reheating. I did have the misfortune of getting a reheated slice one time, and it wasn't good at all, almost like it came from an entirely different place. I always figured that if there was enough foot traffic, at the right time of day, you could trust getting a quality slice.