Jaymes

Remember, that wasn't the end for him. He goes to Last Chance Kitchen. If he's good enough to win the entire competition, he'll be good enough to last through the Last Chance Kitchen challenges. In case you (or anyone else) hasn't seen Last Chance Kitchen, I won't spoil it for you. But I will say that all of John's bitching and moaning about the equipment definitely influences his Last Chance Kitchen challenge, which is: Cook Anything You Want - With Yard Sale Pots and Pans. At one point during the cooking, John's blender overflows and creates a mess. So Tom, obviously eager to rub it in, says, "That equipment sucks, right John?" And I won't tell you who John goes up against either, but, after learning that the challenge is "Cook Anything You Want," and before the "yard sale pots and pans" part is revealed, that cheftestant says, "There's gotta be a catch, especially with John there. I'm sure he might have said something stupid that's gonna bite him and me in the ass." Yup.

That's not a coincidence. Diana Kennedy is widely considered to be the top authority on Mexican cooking - certainly among norteamericanos - but she's also greatly respected in Mexico for the depth and breadth of her knowledge. Anyone seriously interested in learning about Mexican cuisine should own at least one of her several cookbooks, most of which have achieved legendary status. I, like many others, have all of them. She's mentioned on quite a few threads here on eG and I think there's one devoted entirely to her.

I do this, too. One thing that comes to mind is cold-smoked salmon - lox. I really love it. And I know I can buy a small package of it at my local market, which is enough for one serving of bagels and lox. But it's so darn expensive that it hurts me to pay the same thing for that one small package that I could pay at Sam's or Costco and get three times as much salmon. It's a conundrum for me, because, although I hate to overpay at the supermarket, that salmon doesn't keep well at all. So what I've done is to wait months and months to get my salmon "fix" until I just can't stand it anymore. Then I go to the discount club warehouse store and buy some. And spend that week eating it in various different ways. Not a perfect solution, I know. And I probably should just go ahead and pay the premium price for the small package, because by the end of "lox week," I'm pretty-much sick of it.. But I just can't force myself to do it.

Maria, thank you for the reply. It seems that my picadillo may have been appropriately sweet. As I said, picadillo is very typically stuffed into a large, mild green pepper, like poblano. So when you bite into it, you get that additional pepper taste to counteract the sweet. I remember the first time I ever had a chile relleno in Mexico that was stuffed with picadillo, rather than the more typical US version that almost always has either cheese or ground beef. At first I was really startled with the bites of nuts, olives and raisins. It wasn't too long, though, before I began craving it. And I have since found several US "Mexican" restaurants that also serve it that way. And, also as I said, Chiles en Nogada, an iconic Mexican dish that features the colors of the Mexican flag, because the chile is green, the nut sauce (the "nogada") is white, and then it's topped with pomegranite seeds for the red, most often contains picadillo as the stuffing. So, if you're looking for recipes for Mexican "picadillo," and you don't like any you've found, try googling "Chiles in Nogada." You'll find various more recipes for that stuffing. Photos: https://www.google.com/search?q=chiles+en+nogada&hl=en&client=firefox-a&tbo=u&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7hznUJipBrPE2QXavIGoDw&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1161&bih=651 And here's a pretty typical recipe (although, of course, you can find thousands): http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chiles_en_nogada_chilies_in_walnut_sauce/

Here are three recipes I've used with considerable success. Which recipe I choose to make depends a great deal on how I want to use it, as well as how much time I have. The classic Mexican way to use it is in the fabulous iconic Mexican dish, Chiles en Nogada, which is basically a chile relleno with a nut sauce. It's usually stuffed with picadillo. And picadillo is often the best choice for chiles rellenos, even without the nut sauce. It's certainly my very favorite stuffing, and I'll go pretty far out of my way to eat at a restaurant that offers a great one. I also have very often served picadillo as a hearty dip - warm, in a chafing dish, with tortilla chips alongside. Picadillo 1/4 C olive oil 1 small onion, chopped 1 small bell pepper, chopped, or other mild chile 3 garlic cloves, crushed and minced 1/3 C mushrooms, sliced 1 C tomato sauce 2 oz tomato puree 1 t vinegar 1 T salt 1 /2 t cayenne 1 lb cooked ground beef 1/2 lb cooked pork, chopped 1/2 C dry white wine 1/3 C raisins 1/4 C chopped black olives 1/4 C chopped pecans Saute onion, pepper, garlic and mushrooms briefly, until wilted. Add tomato sauce and puree. Allow to simmer for 1-2 minutes. Add meat and cook for additional 5-8 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and cook over medium heat until liquid evaporates. Picadillo Festivo -- "...one of those dishes that is great to prepare for a large group of people. Once assembled, it will keep until you are ready to serve. I prefer hot flour tortillas with it but very good sandwiches can be made with this filling. [she advises getting fresh French rolls, or bollilos, cutting off the top, digging out some of the bread and filling it with picadillo] ...add some fresh salsa, some shredded lettuce and some quacamole, replace top, squeeze to meld all the ingredients, and start eating..." -- Aida Gabilongo (Zarela's mother) 1 lb ground pork 1 lb lean ground beef 2 T lard S&P to taste 2 white or yellow onions, chopped 4 cloves garlic, mashed and chopped 3 med tomatoes, peeled & chopped 3 canned jalapenos in escabeche, seeded & sliced 1 t ground cinnamon, preferably Mexican canela 1/2 t ground cloves 1/4 C slivered almonds 1 T sugar 1 T vinegar 1 C chicken broth (at the ready) In large skilled, brown meats in lard until no longer pink. Add S&P. Add all remaining ingredients except broth and simmer, covered for 30 minutes. If the meat becomes dry and is sticking, add broth. Taste and correct seasonings. Aida adds that this is a good filling for burritos, and the "accepted filling for Chiles en Nogada," which is garnished with the nut sauce and pomegranate seeds. Quick Picadillo 1 T lard 1 lb lean ground beef 2 T oil 1 onion, finely chopped 1 potato, peeled & diced 1 ripe fresh tomato, chopped 1 t salt 1/2 t pepper 1 t ground Mexican cinnamon (canela) 1/2 t ground cloves 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 1/2 C golden raisins 1/4 C sliced green olives stuffed with pimento 1/2 C water or chicken broth In large skillet brown meat in lard just until no longer pink. Drain grease. In separate skilled, saute onion, potato, tomato and seasonings for about 5 minutes. Add to meat. Add all ingredients. Cover and cook over medium heat 10 minutes, or until proper consistency. Add a little additional water or chicken broth if needed. Serve as filling for burritos, or as a dip for parties, or main dish with veggies and a salad.

And, speaking of lasagna, that's something that freezes really well. I often make a big pan of lasagna, cut it into individual portions, and freeze them. A quick spin in the microwave oven, and you're eating one of the best, tastiest, most comforting meals on the planet. Ditto with meatloaf. And, as was suggested earlier in the thread, meatballs. Also, thanks for that great link. Looks like a wonderful website.

Before I proffer any suggestions I would like to know if you have much freezer space. Having a freezer directly influences my choices. I'd just like to say that there are obviously a lot of people that are interested in the topic of cooking for one, as evidenced by the many responses in this thread from folks trying to be helpful to the OP. So, I'd love it if you would please share whatever tips you might have, freezer or no freezer. Clearly, not every suggestion or tip is going to be relevant or helpful to absolutely everybody, in any case. I'd request you, and others, to just offer up whatever ideas you have and people can read and use what works for them. And simply ignore what isn't appealing, or workable for their situation. After all, this thread is entitled "Cooking for One," and it isn't in any sort of regional or specialty forum. Cooking for One pertains to a lot of people, and that number is only going to grow.

A while back, a friend that is seriously into Mexican cooking, and that also lives alone, spent several days making a fabulous Mexican mole sauce. After it was ready, she poured it into a sheet pan of some sort and froze it. Then she cut it into bricks about 3" x 2" x 1", wrapped the bricks individually, and froze them. I was lucky enough to receive several of these mole bricks for my freezer. I would come home after a long day at work, take out one of my individually-frozen chicken breasts, poach it in a little of my frozen chicken stock, shred it, heat up one brick of mole, put some of the shredded chicken into a hot, fresh corn tortilla, cover it with that marvelous mole, and have quite a feast. Another time-consuming Mexican dish is "Huachinango a la Veracruzana" - red snapper Veracruz style. Like mole, it's one of Mexico's iconic dishes. But it calls for a whole red snapper, which certainly isn't practical for one person. And the sauce takes too much time to just bother making one cup. So I make lots of the sauce, freeze it in small plastic bags, then at dinnertime, take out an individually-frozen fish fillet, cover it with one portion of my Veracruzana sauce, and bake it in my toaster oven. Serve with sliced avocados and charro beans, or perhaps some refried beans (either homemade and frozen in small portions, or reconstituted from one of the several companies that package dried refried beans - particularly handy for Mexican food aficionados to have on hand in your pantry because they keep forever and you can make as much as you want). http://mexicanfood.a...chinangover.htm http://www.mexgrocer...CFelFMgodS20Aew

Ah... too late to edit. Well, then, everyone make your own pronoun substitutions. ETA: And, just want to add that I hope he didn't take that remark I made about my father personally.

This is a very timely topic. The babyboomers are rapidly approaching the age where they suddenly find themselves alone and a great many people that cooked for families of various sizes still want to enjoy complete meals, but it can require some imagination to turn out tasty meals without wasting a lot of food. So, because it wasn't initially posted in the Asia forums and can pertain to everyone, I'm going to try again. I've found myself in pretty much every situation there is when it comes to cooking. Alone when I was young and single (and, just coincidentally, living in Hong Kong, a place where I knew absolutely no one but certainly did not feel sorry for myself because I was a woman alone in a strange land where I knew no one and spoke not one word of Chinese; on the contrary, I was totally besotted with myself for heading there all by myself to see what adventures there might be and how I might get in on some). Then married and cooking for two. Then the chief cook for a growing family of five. Then doing so much cooking and entertaining and catering that now when I look back on it, I can hardly believe I did it (I mean, routinely, luncheons, coffees, teas, picnics, barbecues, dinner parties for 30-80 in my home, you name it - I did it, and several times a week, many times a month, countless times a year). And then moving in with my elderly mother and father and helping him care for her as she slowly lost her long, sad battle with Alzheimer's. And then back to cooking for two - myself and a crabby, lonely old man. Then back to being a singleton in a cute little condo cooking for only myself. Then moving in with daughter and her husband and four children and back to turning out huge meals on a budget. And now, in a retirement apartment, cooking for only myself once again. I'm going to try to share tips as I think of them, but for starters, the lettuce thing... Most good grocery stores where I shop have salad bars. You can pick up as much lettuce there as you need for one meal, as well as chopped onions, green peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and myriad other veggies that are already prepped for you. Go home and toss them into your salad, or sandwich, or even into a stirfry. Also, many many staples freeze exceedingly well. Bread does. And although it goes stale in the refrigerator, that has not been my experience in the freezer. I buy good wheat bread and stick it in the freezer and then just pull off however many slices I need for a sandwich or toast or whatever. Grated cheese used to go bad before I could use up a bag. Now, it goes in the freezer and lasts forever. I love good butter, but it, too, would go rancid before I could get through an entire pound. It freezes beautifully. Bacon freezes. Separate the slices into packets of however many slices you usually use and freeze them. Buy pork chops or fish fillets or hamburger or whatever meats you like and freeze them in individual portions. My very favorite thing to do is to buy those packages of those beautiful little lamb chops at Sam's or Costco and freeze them. At dinner time, pull out one or two. Get a large saucepan with a tightly-fitting lid and brown those chops in the bottom of it. Slice up one potato and brown the slices in that pan, too. Then put the chop and the potato back into the pan, add a little broth, and some vegetables - peas, squash, etc. Sprinkle in a little seasoning (I love Greek seasoning, but you can use Cajun or Asian or Italian or whatever), put the lid back on and allow the whole thing to cook until done. A complete meal and only one pot to clean. And you can do this with virtually any kind of meat you like. Get a good-quality toaster oven. You can bake or broil or toast many things without having to heat up a huge oven. I like to take one chicken breast, or fish fillet, put it on the toaster oven baking sheet, ladle a little sauce (any sauce you like - salsas, carbonara sauce, white sauces, either made fresh by you or made fresh by you and then frozen in small plastic bags, or bought by you in those premade sauce jars, some of which are not bad) over and bake until done. Fish fillets take about 10-12 minutes; chicken breasts not much longer. Yes, they get a little watery, but just pour that water off. A really good meal for one in no time at all. I love this topic. I hope everybody gets over those initial posts that were less than encouraging and comes back here to exchange ideas. As I said, I'm alone again. And I'm looking for lots and lots of thoughts and suggestions. And who knows... The OP just might come back and find one or two tips she can use after all.

I wish it was just a county or state thing. No, It's a obsession with bacon thing that started in the BBQ community probably five years ago. Now everyone is doing it. https://www.google.c...chrome&ie=UTF-8 I love bacon. Really really love bacon. But I don't like bacon explosions, it's the ultimate lily gilding over the top "lets see if we can weaponize bacon and be disgusting americans" thing. You really would have loved being at a wedding reception recently featured on the reality show "Four Weddings." One of the brides had a "bacon bar" at her reception. It's a competition, and one of the losers speculated that the winning bride's "bacon bar is probably what put her over the top."

That being said this doesn't belong in every fine dining restaurant and most certainly not in the home, and it is ridiculous to think that this is how normal culinarians should practice their art or their passion. I am also in the "it's ridiculous" camp, but not particularly ardent about it. I'm old enough to have seen a lot of fads and trends come and go, and I've learned that whether one loves whatever the new one is, or despises it, in the end, getting all worked up either way most often turns out to be a waste of time and energy because this, too, shall pass. The best thing is that all of the new acolytes to whatever-it-is usually wind up selecting and retaining the most positive and helpful of the many small bits that make up a new trend. Not much of "modernist cuisine" is of any interest to me (and actually, I'll admit it's really none), but several years from now, parts of it undoubtedly will still be around, and will have proven to be worthwhile enough to have become commonplace. That's when I'll probably embrace them. After the "hobbyists" (because that's what I think they are, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way) have moved on to something else. And I'll be grateful to them for the winnowing process.. Just to complete my thought... I sure don't need a set of "Modernist Cuisine" cookbooks at $500+. I'm going to wait a few years for "Modernist Cuisine for Dummies" at about $13.

I think there is a place for folks like Achatz and other chefs such as Ferran Adria or Jose Andres which pioneer in molecular gastronomy as well as modernism and avant garde cuisine and make mistakes and do the sort of science experiments others do not have the time or resources to undertake. But this is strictly in the realm of very fine dining and a very particular type of fine dining customer that are willing to be guinea pigs for these chefs and are willing to take expensive risks on degustation menus that will not necessarily be home runs with every dish. That being said this doesn't belong in every fine dining restaurant and most certainly not in the home, and it is ridiculous to think that this is how normal culinarians should practice their art or their passion. I dont know if I want to exemplify a "camp" per se but I think us traditionalists have been hiding in the closet while the modernists and molecularists have been running amok. I am also in the "it's ridiculous" camp, but not particularly ardent about it. I'm old enough to have seen a lot of fads and trends come and go, and I've learned that whether one loves whatever the new one is, or despises it, in the end, getting all worked up either way most often turns out to be a waste of time and energy because this, too, shall pass. The best thing is that all of the new acolytes to whatever-it-is usually wind up selecting and retaining the most positive and helpful of the many small bits that make up a new trend. Not much of "modernist cuisine" is of any interest to me (and actually, I'll admit it's really none), but several years from now, parts of it undoubtedly will still be around, and will have proven to be worthwhile enough to have become commonplace. That's when I'll probably embrace them. After the "hobbyists" (because that's what I think they are, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way) have moved on to something else. And I'll be grateful to them for the winnowing process. You know, it's really just like R&D always is. Some fabulous new something comes out and the trend-setters are all abuzz. Much of it is much ado about nothing. But some of it is deserved ado about something. This current discussion reminds me a lot of the initial flap about microwaves. Some people eschewed the newfangled thing entirely. Some were even fearful about putting food into that mad scientist box and then zapping it with something and then putting into your body. Most were at least skeptical. But, just like today's "Modernists," there were some "modern" and wildly-enthusiastic aficionados that insisted that you could cook absolutely everything in a microwave and that this portended the complete demise of the traditional and old-fashioned stove as we knew it. And we all know how that turned out. .

Well, Alex, strain them and smell/taste them. If your wine is "off" because it's already turning to vinegar, which is what has usually happened to me when I say it's gone "off," then, as I say, add about a teaspoon or so of vinegar to it and wait for it to completely turn. What have you wasted? A teaspoon of vinegar? You can always taste it again after several weeks. If it tastes good, you've got a nice wine vinegar to use. If it tastes rotten, then bin it. Nobody is suggesting that you give crappy-tasting vinegar to your guests or to yourself. Seriously, what's the risk here? Toss it now or waste a tsp of vinegar and toss it later? To me, it's a no-brainer. But hey, to each his own.

Unless you buy these: http://www.ranchogor...oduct_Code=1LWLCategory_Code=DHAHB4#.UOCXYazJLLE Or these: http://www.ranchogor...B4#.UOCXmazJLLE Or some of the equally wonderful baby limas that don't appear to be currently in stock. Wow. What a revelation!

Add a little vinegar to them and they'll completely turn. Great for salads, etc.

Well, I for one, certainly think you're wise to use the freezer as one of many tools to make your workday mealtime quicker and easier. I don't think that means you have "to live on frozen food." For example, you could easily take a few hours on your day off and prepare & cook some meatballs, freeze them, and then later cook up some broth, fresh vegetables and noodles, and slip in a few of your meatballs to make a tasty, nutritious and speedy meal. .

I have already pointed out that I do not want to live on frozen food. Can you tell me where to buy these in SW China? Not right off-hand. But my next trip through there, I'll be sure to source some. And I will say that although I clearly didn't realize that's where you are, I have actually lived in Asia (Hong Kong and the Philippines) and done a lot of traveling there, and after wandering through those markets, it seems to me as though, while you had some disadvantages, you also have a lot of last-minute, sling-together options that I can only dream about.

Thanks for the info, I didn't know that's how it works. http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef/season-10/last-chance-kitchen

I like to form the steaming hot cooked oatmeal into a little volcano in the center of my favorite cereal bowl. And I absolutely love it - especially on cold, blustery mornings. But, I'll confess, it's mainly due to the little puddle of melted butter in the middle of the hot oatmeal volcano. And the big lump of brown sugar melting in the puddle of melted butter in the middle of the hot oatmeal volcano. And the moat of cool cream surrounding the hot oatmeal volcano with the big lump of brown sugar melting in the puddle of melted butter in the middle. Oh, of course, I could just combine the butter and the brown sugar and the cream and boil it to soft-ball stage and beat it until it loses its gloss and then spoon it out onto waxed paper and call it praline and forget about the oatmeal entirely. But I'd feel a lot more guilty about it.

Wow, what a trip, Joiei. Thanks for the report. Makes me want to head south. I noticed several Latino names on that list of restaurants. Were any of them Cuban? And if so, what Cuban dishes did you have?

Boy, that "Brown Butter and Brown Sugar Drop Cookie" sounds great. Certainly two of my personal favorite flavors. Any chance for the recipe?

We live in a time where people long to take offense. These women should be ashamed for saying that they were scarred. Oh Please! Next a lawsuit? With Gloria Allred probably. And next, a TV reality show. Not defending the insult. But turning this into a national incident? Ridiculous.