mizducky
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Posts posted by mizducky
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Now that I actually looked at the package, it does say "sesame cracker". In the store, they were right next to the regular rice paper that I normally use for summer rolls, so I just thought that these were shrimp-flavored rice paper. Do I break these up and toast them, as Mizducky suggests? How would these normally be served?
Thanks for reminding me -- I found this very informative article all about these cracker-style banh trang, including how to toast them, plus other inventive uses for them. Now I want to pick up a package of these and do some experimenting myself!
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How the hell did I miss this topic when it first started?
Perhaps off-topic, but our favorite way to enjoy Reed's Ginger Brew is with a shot of yellow (or if you like things stronger, green) Chartreuse and a few dashes of Angostura bitters. Pour over a tall glass of ice and enjoy the herbal party in your mouth.As a fan of Chartreuse, I have to say that this sounds totally awesome. Goes on my list of Things to Try Real Soon.
Continuing in a boozy vein, Reed's also makes a damn fine Moscow Mule. (I'm sure any of the gourmet brews would, it's only Reed's I've had an opportunity to try this with.)
Leaving the booze behind, Knudsen's makes a lemon/ginger/echinacea juice/tea blend that is awesome--not too sweet, so both the lemon and ginger retain their bite (only sweeteners are white grape juice and honey). I can't speak for any of the health benefits of this concoction, but I sure feel a helluva lot more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after a slug of this stuff.
(Edited to fix the errors I caught, at least)
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Thanks, all. I think I'm finally beginning to get the hang of these things. Still haven't made one quite pretty enough, I think, to be worth photographing. But they've all tasted pretty good.
And yep, it was the bit about waiting long enough between wetting the things and trying to wrap that was tripping me up. There's apparently a point where they're just pliable enough to wrap, but still with a bit of body to them. I'm beginning to hit that point pretty reliably.
Part of why I'm working on my skills with these things is a dinner for eight I'm planning to cater in late January. But another motivation is my suspicion, proved correct, that these things are way low in calories. (clickie and clickie) I'm always looking for new and interesting ways to do sandwich/hand-held food concoctions that are tasty, attractive, and don't blow away major chunks of my daily carb allotment in a single meal. Between the rice papers and the usual fillings, summer/salad rolls could be the best healthy food thing since pho.
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During the year I spent on unemployment about a decade ago, I got extremely familiar with the typical food pantry offerings where I was living (Seattle), and I can tell you there will be at least some food pantry patrons who, like me, would totally appreciate the occasional change of pace of foods a few steps above the mac-and-cheese and Chef Boyardee. Mind you, I took whatever was offered and was majorly grateful for being able to stretch that unemployment check--staples like potatoes, onions, rice and beans, plus some super-cheap soup meat etc. from the supermarket, and I had meals for a week. But man, was I ever glad whenever the pantry could give me some good-quality pasta or canned tomatoes or other ingredients with which I could do something a little nicer.
Having said that, food pantries do serve a wide variety of people with a wide variety of needs, from those with no cooking facilities (homeless/living in their cars, living in SRO hotels that forbid cooking) to those with some facilities but just down on their luck (i.e. unemployed/underemployed). So there's also a major need for the ready-to-eat/minimal cooking packaged products. Cans with poptop lids are especially nice for those who, sadly, don't even have a can opener to their name.
Another nice thought: donate some ethnic foods, condiments, etc. I bet somebody out there will be majorly grateful for a bottle of soy sauce or hot sauce (do check first, though, if there's a no-glass rule as already mentioned).
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Wow, this is definitely one hell of a terrific cooking/blogging party. Not only because of the glorious food, but your collective vibe.
I do happen to be a major fan of tripe as well as pigs' feet, so I am totally loving the look of your tripe/trotters dish. And the chicken looks fabulous too. I understand there's also a Korean dish involving a stewed stuffed chicken--it's called samgyetang, and I learned of its existence from, of all things, an episode of the old Japanese Iron Chef (Chef Sakai cooked it, if memory serves me right
) Despite knowing this interesting bit of trivia, I have not had an opportunity to try this dish, or any stewed stuffed chicken dish from any other country. But as a dedicated fan of stuffing cooked in the bird (as opposed to in a casserole on the side), my interest is definitely piqued. Let alone the whole concept of cooking cabbage with poultry.A random observation--romanesco broccoli is so darned cool looking. It's the fractal vegetable!
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These are "mandatory" charges. I don't think this practice can fly in the USA. The restaurants can be sued to no end. How can a restaurant charges on something that the customers did not order?
While I haven't run into any US restaurants--yet--that do things this way, I have run into plenty of US restaurants that have a mandatory minimum charge per customer, and plenty of US bars and nightclubs that have a minimum drink order (i.e. you have to order a minimun of, say, two drinks per person--sometimes, even, that's on top of a cover charge to get in the door). These practices kind of work out to the same thing as being automatically charged for a mandatory starter--in either case, the minute you sit down you're obligated to spend a certain amount of money.
Ehhh. I can see the restaurant's side of things--if you occupy a seat and order only a cup of coffee or something, you're filling a space that could have earned them a lot more money. But such practices as mandatory charges do wind up feeling a little tacky to the customer. Though occupying a seat during primetime and only spending two bucks on coffee is, admittedly, kind of tacky-feeling to the restaurant management. I have no brilliant ideas for a solution that would leave nobody feeling tacky, so ... I dunno!
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Oh dear! Beppo looks like he's just about ready to perpetrate one of those pet-caused cooking disasters we've been posting about elsewhere ... (What a cutie Beppo is!)
And the beauty of gizzards--or pupicks, as they're called in Yiddish--was invoked just today in the Daily Gullet. (This one here is a fine looking specimen, by the way.)
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What a beautiful piece. I have similar feelings about my mother's chicken soup, though when she passed 20 years ago I never even thought to preserve a sample for posterity. But every time I make chicken soup, even though I occasionally gussy it up here and there, I'm basically paying homage to her recipe. Soup ... better carrier of memory than a madeleine?
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This blog is totally going to rock.
The dialog cracked me up.
I'm majorly looking forward to the pig's feet and tripe cookery. Offal rules.
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There are a few foods I prefer to cook to old-school softness. The tougher greens, to name one category. As a matter of fact, I have a pot of collards and mustard greens simmering with a ham hock right this very minute. Okay, the mustard greens are not all that tough-textured, but I actually like how they go to mush when done this way. And the collards? I have tried some nouvelle recipes that give them a quick saute/braise for a maximum of 20 minutes, and I just do not care for their texture that way. I prefer them much more tenderized.
Another softy I find homey is soup the way my mom learned from her Eastern European immigrant mom. I see all these recipes and recommendations for soup-making--including here on eGullet--that say that, after you have simmered the vegetables and meat for hours to make your base broth, said meat and veg should be strained out and discarded because they have no flavor left. Weeeelllll--it's true that they have given up lots of their flavor to the broth. But my mom never threw that stuff out. In fact, she cut the meat and veg into big chunks specifically so that they would wind up still intact--though meltingly soft, the meat falling from the bone. I am totally unapologetic about the comfort-food value of this stuff for me. I probably wouldn't serve it at a fancy dinner ... but you can bet, if I made a beautiful clear broth to serve at a fancy dinner, I would be for sure saving at least some of the soup meat for a cook's treat. (Boiled beef with horseradish! Yum!)
And I agree with Barry Foy--the modern restaurant practice of serving vegetables so undercooked that they're practically raw is, to my tastes at least, way too far in the other direction.
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Welcome to the eGullet Recipe Cook-Off! Click here for the Cook-Off index.
Tis the season for croquettes! Perhaps you never noticed that these breaded and fried bundles of minced or mashed food, bound with egg or thick sauce, were utterly cross-cultural. Though invented by the French, who lend transliterated variations of the term "croquette" to Dutch ("kroket") and Spanish ("croqeta"), they hail from a number of other countries/traditions, including Philipino, American Southern, and NY Jewish -- or so we surmise from this topic on salmon croquettes.
And not to be forgetting about the Japanese korokke.
I seem to be deep-frying challenged (I think some corner of my tightwad soul can't get over the "wasting all that oil" concept
). I also seem to be maintaining a lousy record of following though with any of these cook-offs in terms of actually, like, cooking something as opposed to just kibitzing. But it occurs to me that my Mr. E might really get into some croquettes--it has all his favorite food groups! So maybe I'll be inspired to give him a real treat sometime soonish. -
Thanks for all the responses, everyone. I think my problem has been that I've not been letting the rice paper rest for a moment between wetting them and starting to roll them. I will attempt further experiments and report back.
By the way, what's with the shrimp rice papers? I bought some one time on a whim, and they are still in my pantry. Is there a special use for these or just go ahead and use them for summer rolls?Do you mean the bahn trang with little dried shrimp (and/or sesame seeds or other small tasty bits) embedded into them? My understanding is that those are meant to be used not as wrappers but as crackers. I think you're supposed to toast those a bit first, and then break them into pieces. Anybody know better?
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Oh yeah, lots of stories ...
In my early twenties, in my first apartment after college, I thoughtlessly left a frozen chicken leg sitting out to defrost on a kitchen counter in a plastic bag. Not only was I naive about the biohazard, but about what my yellow tabby Edith Ann might think of this offering. Some time later, I'm sitting in the living room and hear an odd rustling sound from the bedroom. Upon investigation, I discover that Edith Ann had dragged the chicken, still in its bag, under my bed so she could unwrap her prize in peace. Boy was she annoyed when I stole it away!
Some years and a few cats later, I buy a nice multigrain baguette to bring to a potluck, and unthinkingly leave it, in its plastic bag, on top of my fridge. I come home to find the bread lying exactly in the middle of my kitchen floor, with delicate bites taken out of it all over--through the otherwise still-intact bag and all. These bites are so evenly distributed that there is no way to salvage even a tiny bit of the bread.
Oh yeah, and that same cat--Jimmy Dean, the Rebel Without A Clue--had a weird thing for dried fruit. My then-partner had bought some fancy dried pineapple to include in a Christmas care package she was putting together for her family. She stepped out of the workroom briefly to look for some scissors or tape or something. She returns, and I hear a sudden stream of expletives--seems Jimmy had given the dried pineapple, in its plastic bag, the same treatment he'd given the bread. Partner had to be talked out of turning Jimmy into a kitty-fur rug.
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Hi folks--I'm trying to teach myself how to use Vietnamese rice paper (bahn trang) with the aim of making fresh spring rolls (a.k.a. salad rolls or summer rolls--the uncooked ones, as opposed to the deep fried "spring rolls"). I'm discovering it's much trickier than it looks!
There seems to be some fine line with pre-soaking them--too little and they're not pliable enough to work with, too much and they eventually wind up way too limp in the finished product. All sources are saying to soak them briefly, but I'm not sure how brief is brief. 20 seconds? More? Less? And what temperature should the soaking water be? I've seen some sites on the web that say soak them in hot water, and others that say cold water.
Or maybe I'm not buying the right kind of rice paper in the first place? Looking at the ingredient lists on rice papers in the local Vietnamese market, I see extremely few that contain just rice flour; many contain just tapioca starch, and the rest are mixtures of the two with either rice or tapioca listed first. Which is preferable? Or are the different types useful for different things?
Any suggestions or guidance on these questions, or on rice paper wrangling in general, will be heartily appreciated.
(I searched eGullet as best I could for previous topics on this, but didn't turn up anything...)
Edited to fix speling errur.
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Curiously Chef Michel Richard advocates the use of frozen Brussels sprouts.
"Merci, Monsieur Green Giant. You have introduced me to the possibilities of beautiful fresh Brussels sprouts. Freezing breaks down the fibers so that they need relatively less time to cook, and the result is good-looking, soft sprouts. Never again will the choice be undercooked and green or overcooked and insipid looking."
page 109 Happy in the Kitchen.
I recall someone else making the same observation years ago and I tried the frozen ones and they truly were a revelation.
Yep, brussels sprouts are on my short list of frozen vegetables that not only are acceptable substitutes for, but might in some ways be improvements upon, their fresh counterparts. (Frozen spinach is another, if only because there's no sinkfuls of muddy water or shrinkage to one bazillionth of original volume to mess with.) In the case of brussels sprouts, I do prefer the texture of the fresh ones--especially for my maple/mustard vinaigrette recipe--but the frozen ones are quite nice too for a quick no-fuss no-muss veg. I've been known to heat some up for a late-night snack.
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ETA, and then remove, a Patrick Swayze joke. Now see, the pop culture reference my brain immediately popped up with was more along the lines of this:
Ah keep your eyes on the road,
Your hands upon the wheel.
Keep your eyes on the road
Your hands upon the wheel.
Yeah, were going to the roadhouse,
Gonna have a real good-time ...
Guess I'm some kind of freak too, huh?
I do loves me a good roadhouse on occasion. There's a few I've seen where the insistence on unpretentiousness can become a little too, well, pretentious ... but sometimes I'm just in the right frame of mind for all that ... and a nice uncomplicated steak doesn't hurt things either. Thanks for the memories!
(Hmmm ... there's apparently a steakhouse on the outskirts of San Diego that also does the tie-cutting-off routine ... maybe I should pay it a visit just for the sharing of vibe.)
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My observation is that many people hate brussels sprouts because they grew up eating sprouts that were not only cooked to death, but were well past their prime to start with. Vegetables in the cabbage family are notorious for not aging well! Sprouts that either grew old on the plant, or grew old sitting around in the store, will be bitter and nasty-tasting no matter what you do to them afterward.
To avoid nasty old sprouts, try to pick the smallest, greenest, most-tightly-furled sprouts you can find; try to avoid any that are bigger than usual, overly loose-leaved or dull-colored, or with yellowed outer leaves. Once you have your nice sprouts, then have at them with the roaster and the garlic and the bacon and the pancetta or what-have-you--all of these are lovely ideas.
My personal favorite recipe for converting brussels sprouts haters into brussels sprouts eaters is to steam or simmer halved sprouts until just barely tender, and then cover them with a nice snappy maple/mustard vinaigrette while still warm. Refrigerate in the vinaigrette overnight; serve at room temperature or even warmed.
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My dream food TV network, in addition to having lots of genuinely useful cooking shows hosted by people who can actually cook, would be absolutely required to always program reruns of the original Japanese Iron Chef.
Yep, I have probably seen every episode at least once. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see them again. Doesn't have to be on primetime--the shows make great after-midnight TV fodder.
Even though Iron Chef America had gotten pretty good (though I confess I haven't watched recently, more because I currently don't have a TV), it never grabbed me the way the original did, in all its over-the-top, oddly dubbed glory. Long before all the other dire changes at Food Network, I knew they were starting down a path I would not like when they took the Japanese Iron Chef reruns off the air.
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I'm no expert on anything in this topic, but I was just wondering, FoodAllergyMom, if you have the means to hire a personal tourguide/translator to accompany your family for at least part of your trip--somebody on the spot to explain the allergy issue in terms that restaurant staff would understand. It might be worth it just for the peace of mind. Good luck to you and your family--have fun!
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I learned how to make gravy from my mom, over several years' worth of helping with Thanksgiving dinners when I was a kid growing up. Thanksgiving was the only time she ever made any kind of gravy or roux-based sauce, but her giblet gravy did not suffer from the lack of practice--it was fabulous. At first my duty was merely to prepare the giblets and broth, but somewhere in there--I forget exactly when--I graduated to doing the whole gravy job. I really dug it, and still do.
Meanwhile, in high school home ec, we were taught how to make a white sauce, but as with everything else we made in that class, it was presented without rhyme or reason--no background on the importance of such sauces to Western cuisines, no notion of what you could do with it other than the mediocre macaroni and cheese we used it in. So of course, being a teenager I went "why bother?" and forgot about it. It wasn't until my early twenties, when I fell in with some real foodies, that I caught a clue about the whole wonderful world of roux-based sauces, and realized that my mom's giblet gravy belonged to that world.
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Hello, all! Just some simple braised short ribs to show you, but they came out quite nicely and were so satisfying that I wanted to share:
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3 pm is my witching hour. When I work from home, I sit in my pajamas, a cat curled under my arm (or on top of my wrists), one behind my head, my music is on, and no. one. bothers. me.
This also means that no one ever says "I'm going out to get lunch. You want anything?" Every day I have great plans for accomplishments in the hours of time that lie in front of me, and then suddenly its 3 pm. I'm starving, I'm behind in my work, I'm still in my pajamas, and I have no idea what to eat.
Oh god. You just described what too many of my days are like.
(Sez she who is way behind schedule, but is nonetheless futzing around on eGullet instead of logging billable hours. Ah, the joys of freelancing ... )
By the way, I am coveting all that smoked fish. The meats and breads and sausages and everything else looks great too, but it's the fish that are crying out to me. Looked like there was a box of smoked whitefish chubs among the photos--the sight brought tears to my eyes. Ah, my people's soulfood.
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Welcome back! Love the photo-montage of Jackson making love to the olive. But just be glad he didn't start playing hockey-puck with it, the way various of my kitties over the years would do with their favorite small beloved food-items. Days, weeks, or months later, I'd find the abandoned item mouldering behind a couch. Ewwwww.
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Loving your blog. I confess that Atkins ultimately did not agree with my system, but if it's working for you, more power to you. After all, everyone's system and situation is different and unique. My only suggestions would be to keep monitoring your general energy level, and make sure you keep up on the water/fluids requirement to keep all those ketones etc. flushing out of your system okay.
Your critters are adorable. Especially the shots of the kitties entwined.
eG Foodblog: Abra and Chufi in SW France - Tantalizing Tales of Tripe
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted · Edited by mizducky (log)
Aw! Goodbye and thanks to all three of you (including Beppo the feline gourmet) for a most delightful blog!
(making note to self to cook something with pig's feet real soon now)