Khadija
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Posts posted by Khadija
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I didn't manage to get around to making the cornbread, as planned (we had carnitas and there were plenty of corn tortillas). I haven't yet decided which type of cornbread I'm making. Generally, I try to always at least familiarise myself with more "traditional" versions of foods, and egullet has certainly helped my growing appreciation of Southern US cuisine. However, I must confess that, having been reared on my British-Canadian grandmother's cornbread, I like sweet cornbread. Nonetheless, I think I might try the yogurt/baking soda test just to educate myself.
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I want to make cornbread today. I have an excessive amount of yogurt (thick, 3.8%, Bulgarian yogurt). I don't have buttermilk. Can I use yogurt in place of buttermilk (maybe diluted with a bit of regular milk), or should I just purchase buttermilk? My motivation to substitute consists of desire to avoid wasting the yogurt. The buttermilk can be acquired easily.
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Shalmanese, am I right to assume that you are making your own chili-lime powder? It sounds great. I think I'll pick up some citric acid and try it out myself (popcorn, maybe?). These days, almost everything I eat is flavoured with lime, chili, sugar (and often fish sauce). I've been drinking beer with lime, and my boyfriend asked me if I intend to start putting chili, sugar, and fish sauce
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I have been working on ohnokaukswe lately or khao soi. So far, I've made it twice, and I'm making it for a third time tonight. I finally bought a digital camera, so I'll post pictures.
I am not positive, but I believe "khao soi" is the Thai name for the dish and "ohnokaukswe" is the Burmese name. In general, I've been working on learning about Burmese cuisine recently, so I go by "ohnokaukswe." I read through (and thoroughly enjoyed) the "Battle of Khao Soi" thread here on egullet. I also read through about half a dozen recipes in cookbooks, most of them from Thai cookbooks. However, Aung Aung Taik's recipe from Under the Golden Pagoda: The Best of Burmese Cooking, and Madhur Jaffrey's Burmese identified recipe (can't recall name of book) were similar to each other and shared subtle differences from the Thai-identified recipes. Some of the best research of all came from my trips to two tiny Burmese "markets" here in Toronto. These stores are basically little convenience stores, with a bit of Asian and Indian foodstuff. I could easily purchase any of the foods in more convenient locations, but then I wouldn't be able to glean info. about Burmese food from the people who work in the stores.
One thing I found particularly interesting was that the people in the Burmese markets did not recommend that I use fresh noodles. As I understand, the noodles traditionally used are very difficult to find, and flat chinese egg noodles (not round!) are an acceptable substitute. At both markets, I was told to use the dried kind, often labelled "instant noodles." I was not sure whether this is what people do in Myanmar, whether this is what Burmese people in Toronto do, or whether the proprietors of the stores were simply trying to sell me what they had on hand (dubious about this possibility, because both sets of proprietors were strongly against fresh noodles). Does anyone have ideas about this?
Anyhow, as I have today off, I had better use it wisely and get cracking on that ohnokaukswe. Will report back later.
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Thanks for the prompt reply! 130-135 it is. I did know about inserting from the side, but I had forgotten, so thanks for reminding me!
i'd say 130-135 F would put you in the beyond bleu zone.you may already know this, but since you said you haven't a lot of this experience: be sure to insert your thermometer from the side of the steak, parallel to the pan or grates, rather than the top, as the steak is most likely not thick enough to get an accurate reading from the top to center.
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Hi All,
I'm cooking a striploin tonight, nothing fancy. I don't have a lot of experience with steak cooking, and I'd like to rely in internal temperature until I get the hang of what I really like. I've looked up charts on the internet, but I find that they usually recommend higher temperatures than I'm aiming for. So, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what a good temperature for rare (but not blue) would be? I know that a lot depends on my thermometer, but if I can get a rough idea of where to shoot for, I can play with it.
Thanks!
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Maybe those organic breadcrumbs weren't fake panko, after all. Like I said, they were kind of like the ones I make. The ones I make pretty much follow either one of the above procedures. I think they're good breadcrumbs. I think of them as "homeade" bread crumbs, but not panko. Maybe crunchiness and lightness are the most important features of panko (if the flakiness only comes in the commercial varieties)?
To some extent I'm joking, but I guess the question about what defines panko really puzzled me when I realised I had made-in-California breadcrumbs and I couldn't figure out what could make them "Japanese-style," as it says on the package. The most obviously non-panko breadcrumbs I know are the plain kind from the grocery store, which are distinguished from both commercial panko and homeade breadcrumbs by their sandy texture. Then there are Italian breadcrumbs -- does that just mean the addition of herbs and parmesan? Chinese panko? That's a real stumper
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What always bugs me about this whole shtick (the faux chef home thing) is that the producers think that that is important to me
. Why am I any more likely to cook someone's recipe if they are filming in their home than on a set??? This is what drove me to scream at the tv during that Next FN Star show. I was constantly disagreeing with what the execs were telling the contestants. "The audience wants to think that this is your home, not a set". NOOOOOO! I don't care where they are, I care what they are cooking!!!That's exactly my complaint. I think the idea behind making the viewer feel that she or he is really going into the host's home has to do with captialising on the idea that tv audiences love celebrities (now even celebrity cooks), especially when it can be shown that celebrities are just average Joes (but richer and better looking). Young, dipshit pop stars actually get rich and famous by putting the monotony of their daily lives on tv, so I suppose, sadly, those tv execs aren't completely wrong in thinking some viewers would love to think they are seeing their favourite celebrity chef's real kitchen.
Michael Smith makes some okay stuff, sometimes, but I want to hear more about cooking and less about his cute kid and his fake neighbours (and I really do think his kid is cute). As for Rob Rainford, he drives me up the wall, which is unfortunate because I have occasionally caught him giving interesting tips (e.g., make eggs for a crowd using a muffin tin). Rainford has a lot of fake parties, which I find a bit annoying (Giada does it a lot too). I don't feel deceived about the parties, it's just that the timing of preparation is completely unrealisitic. Nobody would make a huge platter of carbonara (set it aside), then grill some bread (set it aside), then grill some steak (set it aside), then make a dessert, then decorate the table, and then have all the guests arrive to a fresh, piping hot platter of carbonara.
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Since I just recently learned this slang term a while ago, here's the definition of emo.
Anyway, watched the show a couple of times. The concept's not too bad, although I can't get over the stoner dude personas they project and how they seem to want to show people that they really are 'COOL' with the camera angles and various stuff that they do. Besides, the DIY ice cream machine with the freezer bit was just a bit silly considering you could probably spend less for an ACTUAL ice cream machine instead of wrecking a perfectly good fridge. Doesn't it ruin the insulation some bit and make the motor work more thus increasing your electricity bill? I guess sometimes I just don't get stuff like this...
Although in the end, it's just TV. If you don't like a show, just don't watch it.
The main guy, Nobu Adilman, plays a privates-exposing drug dealer on Trailer Park Boys btw, which weirds me out a bit personally considering he's dealing with food now! 
I really don't care for Trailer Park Boys, so, thankfully, I'll probably never see Nobu "expose" himself. It doesn't surprise me that he's on that show, though. My partner recognised him right away from other CBC broadcasting. I suspect that Nobu is not one of the original food project guys, and that he was brought on the show to be the primary host. Unlike the other two, his background is in media, and he doesn't have much to say about the engineering of the contraptions. The other two always talk to each other about that stuff, and they don't even seem to try to speak to the camera. Nobu is conspicuously more articulate than the other two (not a big feat), and he tends to be the one who speaks to the camera. This might be part of the reason the dynamics between the three are so awkward. But that's all conjecture.
The wasted fridge didn't really bother me, because I assumed it was a "found object," or at least a fridge on its last legs. That's a good point about the electricity bill, though. I think it's pretty silly and wasteful of them always to buy their meat from an organic butcher (given what they do with the meat). But if I had a tv show and an organic butcher wanted to give me free products in exchange for putting his shop on my show, I would probably go for it.
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Thanks, johnsmith45678. I wouldn't even want those guys in my home kitchen. One of my best friends (a woman) lived with a bunch of guys who were sort of like that for a year, during our undergrad. She had fun for about a week. Those guys tried to deep fry everything (bagels was a pretty weird one). They also set up a badminton court in the dining room, for about a month. My girlfriend was not at all amused, and she swore off roomates after that.
I'm not very familiar with DIY as an ideology, but I think there is something really cool about doing things yourself for fun and educational purposes. I don't think those guys care much about making great food, at all. But I think they want to get a better sense of how food and food appliances "work," which I find a lot more appealing than watching Rachael Ray show you how to make a 30-minute salad out of bagged letuce and pre-cooked shrimp. Plus, those guys are making use of skills that I just don't have, which is kind of interesting (I think one teaches design and another is an architect). I always do things like bake my own bread, even though I have access to bakeries that make better bread than I can make, because I want to learn about how bread baking "works." I see their aims as sort of analagous.
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Oh the righteous indignation of youth.
Clearly you are part of the new FN demographic...and I am not. I may never recover.
Oh...no...wait...my husband just cracked a bottle of Dom and spooned some caviar into a dish...anddddd....I'm over it.
You're right, I repent. You're so impressive. And I will never understand, because all I do is watch Food Network and drink beer and feel self righteous. It would be so nice to have so many better things to do than act goofy with friends -- things like: make fun of people who I presume aren't refined enough to appreciate, or able to attain, the pretenious, boring "luxuries" that I need to parade around to strangers on the internet. It would be so cool to be so crappy at inductive reasoning that, like magic, I can make myself believe my life is better than all those people I've never met.
Get a grip. I think the last time I watched tv was when I saw that episode of Food Jammers, and that was a month ago. I hate the Food Network, just like I hate most tv, which is part of what I tried to say in my original post. I want educational food programs. I made some small point about guiltily thinking the show was kind of cute, and you take it upon yourself to moralise and attack all kinds of ridiculously false assumptions about me and my friends. And you're calling me self-righteous? Please. Maybe you should slow down on the "Dom".
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The looks of love respect and admiration that hat wearing indie loser gives long blond haired emo dork whenever he opens his mouth to voice some complete obvious point creeps me out. Next season is on Pridevision, I guarantee. Plus the dialogue is completely inanane. "We should make some tomato sauce, what do we need?" "Uhhh, dudes, wicked idea, but we should get some tomatoes!" "Whoa." (Previous line spoken with Keanu like inflection.)
Food Canada somehow manages to find men that speak and realte to each other like no other men in the world. Man Made Food did make Food Jammers look like Cooking with Jacques and Julia though.
Just what is your point? You seem to want to say something like: a) These guys fit some "dumb" stereotype, or b) These guys seem to fit some "queer" stereotype? -- Or maybe you are just expressing a combination of the two observations?
You say that Food Network manages to find men that speak and relate to each other like no other men. Does that mean that no other men relate to eachother like dumbasses, or do you mean that no other men relate to eachother like the "kind-of-dumbasses-who-should-be-on-Pridevision"? If the former, then, based on the evidence all around us, you're clearly wrong. If the latter, this board is not the place for my response.
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The friends I associate with those guys on Food Jammers do have jobs, are well educated, pay taxes, and are considered smart, useful members of society by any interpretation of conventional standards. They like to do silly projects on their days off, much like I like to do things like make duck confit if I don't have to work. I'd rather make duck confit than make "kick-the-can" ice cream, but I certainly don't think that makes me a better, more mature, or more hard-working person. Maybe doing things like volunteer work or learning to speak Russian is more virtuous than making kick-the-can ice cream. Indulging in a passion for food, even "good," "tasteful" food, not so much. I don't see any reason to treat those guys from Food Jammers differently. Believe it or not, they have "respectable" day-jobs too.
As I said in my first post, I find their whole routine overdone, and I assume that they are being directed to ham it up for the cameras (they have said as much in an interview I read). If you just think they are annoying, that doing experiments for a bit of meaningless fun is a waste of time, or that the show exemplifies bad taste and not real cooking, that's your business. I don't really get why it bothers you so much, but I can appreciate the annoyance that comes with the view that the Food Network is not really putting out good programs about food.
But it strikes me as a pretty egregious leap of reasoning to infer from a short observation of some guys acting like goofs to the idea that they, and all people who act in a similar fashion, are jobless, moronic bums who do nothing in life but drink beer. Sure, they appear not to have tons of money. That tends to happen to a lot us in our late twenties who, being immature losers, didn't manage to save a lot of cash for kitchen appliances during university (or college) and grad school. But what do I know? I probably lack the incisive perception of a real "grown up," like you.
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I would love to try to make my own panko, but I don't have a microwave-convection, microwave, or convection. I'm still curious to see the recipe, though.
At least I now know I'm not completely off-base in questioning whether paying a lot of money and buying organic always gets you what you want.
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Now that I think about it, maybe it's just this show that bugs me. I'm not surprised that Giada's show is not shot in her real home. She rarely brings her "real life" on camera. She just has a lot of parties for her friends, but they aren't usually "characters" on the show. Ina Garten's is different. The show tends to feature her husband (and friends) as characters, and it seems like the show is kind of a window into her life (focussing on her cooking).
The "chef at home" bugs me, because now I realise that its even more contrived than I thought it was. This guy spends a lot of time going on about little humdrum aspects of his home life, like how his kid is sick, so he's going to make him a peanut butter sandwich or something and then take it up to the kid's bedroom (all on camera). I think I would rather have him simply say: "this is my kid's favourite sandwich, and here's how to make it."
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I ran out of panko. Usually, we buy it from an Asian grocer, which is out of the way. The closest store is a "natural foods" market around the corner. I asked my partner to run over there and get some breadcrumbs, preferably panko. He came back, shaking his head, with some breadcrumbs labelled "organic panko" made by a company called Edward & Sons from California. They come in a handsome plastic bottle, and cost nearly $7 Canadian for a 300g. That's why my partner was shaking his head. I was hoping this would be some great panko.
As it turns out, the organic breadcrumbs are fine, but they are nothing like any panko I've ever had. The panko I'm used to has an exceptionally light and flaky texture. The organic breadcrumbs are tiny, but chunky and dense crumbs. As far as breadcrumbs go, they're okay (sort of like the ones I make), but they are not what I think of as panko.
So what's panko anyway? The only definitional criteria I am familiar with are "Japanese breadcrumbs," and "light, flaky breadcrumbs." My $7 organic breadcrumbs don't fit the bill, but maybe I just don't know what panko is.
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Viewers of Canadian Food Network will be familiar with Michael Smith's "Chef at Home." The theme of the show is, obviously, the chef cooking whatever he cooks at home. Unlike a lot of other shows with this format (Christine Cushing: Cook With Me!), the set does not look like a studio; it looks like a real kitchen in a real house. Other parts of the house, the backyard, and the outside of the house are also caught on camera. Throughout the show, the chef's cooking projects are contextualised a lot, in terms of his family life (e.g., the chef makes stew in between cleaning the garage with family; new neighbours move in and are invited for dinner). I always had the sense while watching the show that this was really this guy's house and life, even if he was hamming it up (a lot) for the camera.
Then, my partner let me know that I am wrong. He has talked to the producer of the show, and although it is indeed shot in a house, the house does not belong to Michael Smith. The house belongs to some other people, who rent it to the producers of the show. My partner tells me that it would just be too chaotic to have film crews running around in someone's actual house, while they are living there.
I know that the kind of deception I am talking about is not a serious moral issue or anything of that nature, but nonetheless I am kind of bothered that the show is not really about the chef at his real home. I'm wondering if the same thing is happening with shows like Giada's and Ina Garten's? Does it matter to anyone else if a tv cook is presented as being at his or her home, but really isn't?
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As a child, I went strawberry picking every year, and I remember the berries being fantastic. Then, after years of no berry-picking, and years of eating plastic strawberries, I decided to go berry picking again. I was in Saskatchewan for the summer (long story). After doing some research with Saskatoon locals, I was directed to a reputable farm. Guess what? The berries were bland. Their texture was not styrofoamy like the supermarket ones, they looked beautiful, they were juicy, but they tasted like nothing. Throughout that season, I bought berries from other berry farms, farmer's markets, organic markets, chain supermarkets, you name it. They all tasted like nothing. I noticed a similar problem with cucumbers. Now I'm trying to figure out if my memory is just deceptive, or if the strawberries in Ontario are better than the ones in Saskatchewan. Anyone know about this?
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We're getting fiddleheads right now. So far, I have tried them twice. They were only okay, but maybe I could have done a better job cooking them. I blanched them, and then sauteed in butter with garlic.
This article in the Globe and Mail (Canadian National Newspaper) suggests that fiddleheads are disgusting, no matter what you do with them: http://www.workopolis.com/servlet/Content/...60520/COWENTE20
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I have never understood our culture's fascination with mayonnaise. I've always viewed it is the culinary equivalent of pus.
If you want to make a decent turkey sandwich, you need only use the following ingredients:
Sliced Smoked Turkey
A few leaves of lettuce (preferable Bibb or Romaine)
One Ripe Avocado
Bread & Butter Pickle Slices (optional)
I prefer it on toasted wholewheat flatbread, but I think the bread is a matter of personal taste. What's mandatory is the avocado, preferably mashed to the consistency of guacomole and liberally spread on both pieces of toasted bread where the mayonnaise should never have been in the first place. I sometimes throw a clove or two of minced garlic into the avocado mix as well.
Let me know what you think if you make one
John
You're so right about mayonaisse. I use homeade honey mustard (recipe: mix honey and mustard together). I only use a touch of honey, so it's not cloyingly sweet like the commercial varieties. Avacodo sounds good. Maybe a bit of lemon and salt?
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I heard that this was a camping trick once, so pre-camping trip I did a test run. I forgot to use a freezer-grade bag. The plastic melted. I didn't do it on the trip and haven't tried it since. Maybe I'll give it whirl sometime soon. I have the freezer bags.
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I'm surprised by reactions to this show. I was prepared to hate it. I have become really sick of Food Network, and when I heard that their new target market is young men, I was ready to cancel my subscription. My partner, a young man who is not especially interested in watching food shows, convinced me that, for the extra seven bucks a month, we might as well keep FN. It's not like I watch anything else (except the CBC).
So, I watched the first episode of (kick the can ice cream), ready to be mad about it. Guess what? I thought that it was kind of fun. I watched a couple more episodes, and thought they were fun too. The turkey looked gross, but it was a funny idea. I'm in my late twenties, and I know a lot of young guys who act like that, and who do things like that. The guys I know would not have bought the ice cream from the store, either. And lots of them don't care about whether food is beautiful, and would have thought the hydraulic car cake was hilarious.
I read an article about the show, and apparently those guys had been doing similar food projects for their own amusement, a tv producer friend found out about it, and asked them to do the show (the actual term "food jamming" was apparently invented for tv). Obviously, many aspects are contrived, but the whole idea of those kind of guys doing that kind of thing makes sense to me. My favourite parts are when they are doing something, and one of them hits upon a moment of realisation of how ridiculous their project is, and starts laughing uncontrollably. Maybe it's just because wacky young guys doing weird projects for fun are so familiar to me, and it takes a certain kind of person to find them kind of endearing.
Of course, it's a silly show, and they overdo the whole "stoner guys" routine, but it's tv. I think the show is actually making me embrace Food Network as a guilty pleasure.
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I am torn. I would like to try Torito, but Baldwin is really my favourite place to eat in Toronto. I forgot about the two for one lobster special. Maybe the best bet will be to meet at John's for a drink, and then make a collaborative decision about what we feel like on Baldwin.
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The only way I eat non-scrambled eggs is egg salad. Poached eggs, sunny side up etc, Blech. I don't like egg yolks in hardboiled eggs either, unless there's a spicy sauce or some sort accompanying the rice and eggs.
I did go through a period when I wouldn't eat eggs because when I cracked open one, there was a bug inside. Eeeeeek!!! I was...10? I wasn't a girly girl, but food isn't supposed to have bugs in it!
I never used to like cilantro, and it still makes me gag to bite into it, but I can't imagine steamed fish, for instance, without it now.
I can't stand dried shitake mushrooms. The smell of them soaking sends me running out of the kitchen, and I don't eat many dishes that have them. I don't really like the fresh ones either, but I can cope.
I don't like raw veggies in my sandwich. Meat + Cheese + Bread = May's sandwich. Period.
And raw tomatoes....*faints dead away* Just no, just no.
Ketchup, tartar sauce, most salad dressings, and mayonaise (except in egg salad) never ever pass my lips.
We would be kindred food-dislike spirits, if it weren't for the egg salad business. When I was a kid, I would only eat eggs scrambled. Now I am okay with eggs in most forms (poached, fried, etc), as long as they are hot. I have a big problem with foods that I think should be hot, when they are cold.
I dislike lots of condiments, too. Ketchup is okay on hamburgers, hot-dogs, and french fries. Nothing else. Salad dressing cannot come out of a bottle (not snobbery about packaged foods, I just hate every dressing I've ever tried that comes out of a bottle). But the most hated food-substance in the world is mayonaisse, in any form.
Egg salad is horrendous, because it contains both cold eggs and mayonaisse
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Quail Eggs
in Cooking
Posted
How long does it take to hard-boil a quail egg (approximately)? How long for soft-boiled? If the latter, will they hold?