mizducky

And the only cassoulets I have had were in American restaurants, and, frankly, underwhelming, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I anticipate will be an *over*-whelming one. As somebody who once spent a lot of summer days vacationing (and eating--gotta keep this on-topic!) in Provincetown, I enjoyed jumping to your website just now and sampling some of your reflections on growing up there. Not to distract from the main theme of your blog, but any asides you might care to throw in here about life and food in Provincetown from the perspective a native would find a very interested audience over here.

AFAIK, gizzards aren't all that bad for you. A gizzard isn't really an organ or gland like a liver, heart or kidney. A gizzard is simply a specialized, very muscular "pre-stomach" that is found in birds and other animals that lack teeth. The idea is that the chicken swallows bits of gravel which stay in the gizzard (aka "craw") and act in place of teeth to grind food into small pieces before they are passed to the main stomach. So, fundamentally, a gizzard is just a piece of tough muscle. I don't think they're particularly high in fat or anything like that. ← Alas, gizzards and other organ meats do happen to be hazardous for those of us who suffer from gout. All animal protein has a goodly amount of the amino acid purine, which can kick off an acute gout attack, but organ meats are especially high in the stuff. I eat the darn things anyway, because I love 'em so, but I try to space out my indulgences to avoid the nasty side effects, which even meds and copious amounts of cherry juice can only do so much to stave off. (Aside: yes, cherries and cherry juice really do help with gout. Even the head pharmacist at the Kaiser Permanente branch I go to made a point of recommending it to me a couple different times. I try to always keep a bottle of the stuff around in case I start feeling that tell-tale tingle in the big toe...)

Hi, Ed! I've got food memories going back to before I was two years old, but as for a unique food-taste memory according to the game rules, that would be from a family vacation somewhere on the Mid-Atlantic coast (probably Chesapeake Bay) when I was perhaps six or seven. We went to what I, as a kid, thought of as a very fancy dress-up seafood restaurant (it probably wasn't all that fancy in reality, but that's how my kid-self remembered it). I ordered some kind of fish--I have contradictory memories as to whether the menu called it "rockfish" or "bluefish," but whatever it was, it just blew my mind: mild but well-flavored, and the flesh literally did melt in my mouth. I spent the entire meal eating this stuff in a trance, mesmerized by the mouthfeel of it. I had never before had fish like that, and I'm hard-pressed to remember having anything like it since.

I do exactly what my fellow duck-named eGulleteer does. I especially love the gizzards! When I was a kid, my mother would simmer the gizzards right along with the couple of chickens they came from, and then we kids would fight over who got them. With long gentle simmering they become pretty tender, though they still have a bit of chewiness, which I happen to like. In Yiddish the gizzard is often called a "pupik," which word I believe more accurately translates as "belly button"! I also note that simmered gizzards, sliced and served cold, are one of the many Sichuan-style cold appetizers served at what is fast becoming my favorite Chinese restaurant here in San Diego, Ba Ren. They're only mildly spicy compared to some of their much more firey offerings, but with that same tender/chewy texture that I so enjoy.

Fat carries flavor. Free yourself from the popular culture's fear of fat, and use enough of it, of the right type and quality, to accomplish the culinary task at hand. Deprogramming myself from my mother's blind worship of margarine and "vegetable" oil and learning not to be stingy with the butter and olive oil was a major leap forward in my coming of age as a cook. Corollary: don't be trimming off the layer of fat from that roast nor removing the skin from that poultry before cooking--that's where all the flavor and juiciness come from!

Yay! Terrific idea for a topic! I'm especially liking the "Shopping Tips" -- knowing whether there's a big difference between brands, and which brands to look for, is really helpful.

I dunno if this is particularly elegant, but I really like the Chinese approach to chicken legs, or poultry on the bone in general, which is to take a cleaver and whack right through the bones making approximately equal chunks of meat-still-on-bone. A little tricky to eat without making a mess, but a nice alternative to using boneless meat in stirfries, stews, etc., as the bone is still present to give its flavor to the dish as it cooks.

And then there's Conan the Grammarian, who will whack you with his broadsword for misplaced modifiers.

Yeah, I was wondering how you coped with the relative lack of professional challenge in what you're currently doing. What do you do to keep yourself inspired and up to speed professionally? After having been a private chef for several years, would it be hard to get hired back into a restaurant? I know that, after I had taken a hiatus from the high tech industry for several years to do something else, I had the damnedest time breaking back into high tech--recruiters were all "well, your skills and knowledge are obsolete" even when I knew damned well that there were plenty of places where they would be just fine. I finally wound up taking a few classes I didn't really need, just to have a piece of paper to show the recruiters so they'd even bother with me. Would a similar thing happen in the restaurant industry? Would prospective employers be all "well, it's been so long since you directed a kitchen, do you think you'd be up to the stress, or the latest trends..." or some such rot?

Yeah, language definitely evolves--but it's one thing to have it evolve organically through usage by just plain folks, and another to have it yanked about by marketeers and ad copywriters. And yeah, I know some will argue that the marketeers and ad writers are supposely simply mirroring the language of the culture so that their target demographic can relate to their advertising ... but I would humbly beg to differ with that argument. You see, I put in a (mercifully brief) stint as a marketing writer for a high tech company in the 1980s. There, I learned all sorts of interesting things about the gentle art of writing "prose" for ads from the corporate marketing department's chief guru. He was an old ad-agency hand, himself quite literate and erudite, wise enough to view his whole career with a certain irony--because he knew better than to let any of his erudition influence the style of his very effective ad copy. From him I learned that there's a whole peculiar art to writing ad copy, an art that has absolutely nothing to do with Strunk and White, and everything to do with trying to snag the viewer's attention and implant an overall impression in the few brief seconds spent glancing at the ad. To catch those wandering eyeballs and implant the desired message is the one and only Mission--proper grammar, or proper anything else for that matter, be damned. Sentence fragments, neologisms, "verbing" nouns--anything went if it supported The Mission. In fact, sentence fragments seemed to work *better* than complete grammatical sentences, in that the viewer could scan and assimilate them quickly, like that other often-abused mutation of the English language, the bullet list. I think if I had suggested correcting a hunk of copy to use complete grammatical sentences, our marketing guru would have smiled indulgently at me, patted me on my then 20-something head, and counseled me not to be so idealistic if I wanted to last in that field. Erm, as you can tell from my current often-verbose style, obviously I didn't.

Wow, and I thought my current kitchen was a challenging workspace! I think the only kitchen I've seen here in the US that can compare in compactness was one in a friend's apartment an old building in Boston's Fenway neighborhood in the 1980s. I did manage to turn out a nice meal in that kitchen once, but boy did it require some interesting juggling. (It also helped that I was a lot smaller then, if you get my drift. ) Still, in my friend's mini-kitchen I did not have to contend with a cooktop I could only reach sideways--now that must take some serious culinary yoga! I understand there was a whole generation of older (usually brownstone) apartments in Boston as well as New York that had similarly nearly-phone-booth-sized kitchens with teeny-tiny gas ranges, though they were already becoming relatively rare back in the 1980s. But I get the impression that this size of kitchen is pretty much the current norm in urban middle-class Japanese homes, yes? Does anybody have homes with larger kitchens, or is that only for the wealthy? (Or if they're well-off enough to afford a big kitchen, do they actually hire someone to cook for them instead?)

Y'know, as a former resident of Boston, I'm fighting this huge urge to start trying to guess what community your employers' estate is in. (Lots of lovely well-heeled towns due west of Boston--back in the 1980s when I worked for Digital, I used to take shortcuts through them all the time. )

Omelettes--they cook fast, you can have fun with and practice knife skills on all different sorts of fillings, and learning the behavior of eggs over heat is a useful skill that will serve her in good stead as she gets further into cooking. I think the very first dish I learned to cook on my own was bologna and eggs, a kid-friendly omelette variant that's been comfort food in many Jewish-American households for a couple of generations. (I could have sworn I wrote this up elsewhere on eGullet, but I can't seem to locate it with Search, so sorry for the repeat for anyone who saw it the last time...) --Beat a couple of eggs in a bowl as you would for scrambled eggs. --Melt a smallish pat of butter in a small frying pan over medium heat, ideally just a little bit bigger than your slice of bologna. --Put in the bologna slice, and fry it until it's a little brown on the bottom and starts to curl up around the edges. --Pour in the eggs around and over the bologna, so that the bologna is nicely embedded in egg. --Cook until the eggs are just set, and serve. A simple little lunch she can make for herself anytime. If she really gets into the egg cookery, you might even try her out on a simple souffle--look, it's food magic, it goes pouf!!!

Many thanks for all the info. I'll see what I can turn up on my next trip up to the LA area.

Hi, Octaveman-- As far as I know, the area around Convoy Street (including a few blocks in either direction along its length) is pretty much San Diego's current Chinese/Asian business/restaurant area. (The old Chinatown used to be part of what is now the Gaslamp District downtown; while there's a museum and some preserved historic buildings down there, I don't believe there's much in the way of actual Chinese businesses down there anymore). The Convoy area covers a bit of acreage, so you'd probably be driving, rather than walking, to check it out. While there are indeed a bunch of mom'n'pop businesses tucked in among the restaurants and groceries, I'm afraid I'm still not sufficiently up to speed on them to advise you on specifics. I understand your not expecting the 99 Ranch to carry what you're looking for. Possibly the Japanese Mitsuwa Market (a block east of Convoy) might be a little more helpful, as among the specialty shops they have tucked into the store is a housewares shop. The Korean Zion Marketplace, also a block off of Convoy, also has some specialty shops in it, although right now I'm not recalling if any of them are for housewares. Sorry I can't be more helpful!

Smoothies. You can really pack the nutrition into these if you include such ingredients as yogurt, soy milk, soft/silken tofu, nutritional yeast, powdered milk--only use smallish amounts of these ingredients so that they don't overwhelm the fruit. Some smoothie recipes use ice cubes/crushed ice to give texture, but I much prefer frozen fruit as that gives you both texture and flavor/nutritional value. Trader Joe's has a good selection of pre-cut frozen fruit, and even the most mainstream chain supermarket usually has at least frozen strawberries. A banana somewhere in the mix also adds texture and body. Chilled cubes of tofu dressed with a little soy sauce and toasted sesame oil--if you can get really fresh tofu, this is quite nice and soothing. Borscht tastes excellent cold. You can make one with a variety of vegetables in addition to the beets, blend it smooth, and add a bit of sour cream or yogurt for a variation. Wishing you a speedy recovery.

Onigiri, I could understand why some folks might possibly find that dish unattractive, but to this fan of pork belly, that looks like one bowlful o' love.

Okay, I'm getting really fascinated by this conpoy stuff. Just how expensive are we talking, here? Would my local 99 Ranch Market carry it? There's a couple different aisles there full of dried foods of various sorts (fish, mushrooms, seaweeds, other vegetables, etc.) in cellophane packages--I'm assuming that's where I'd look for conpoy, right? It may be a few weeks before I can really carry on in the kitchen with new-to-me foods like this, but my curiosity is definitely piqued. Thanks, hzrt8w, for turning me on with your cooking once again!

Kamaboko is basically a pureed fish paste. You can read more about it on this thread. ← At the risk of drifting slightly off-topic: could anybody tell me why kamaboko is always packaged on those little wooden boards? I'm assuming they're traditional, but I was wondering if they had a functional purpose.

Heh. Because the last time I tried it--doing Alton Brown's duck method, as a matter of fact--I totally smoked out the house and had to quickly find the stepladder to take the battery out of the smoke detector. There's a reason the WP article advises to clean one's oven *before* duck-cooking, and now I know it! Alas, the smoke biz so unnerved me that I wound up finishing my Alton Brown-style duck on the top of the stove, which was still nice but hardly, I think, a fair trial of AB's method. The oven in this place is pretty much of a disaster anyway--thermostat is so off that even with a purchased oven thermometer it's nigh impossible to regulate (it's the Heisenberg oven! Any attempt to take its temperature sends it caromming off in some other thermal direction!). It doesn't help that the poor thing has no self-clean function and I loathe cleaning ovens with those sprays--ick. I'll certainly give the AB duck another go, but not until I've moved, and have a kitchen with an oven that behaves a bit better (not to mention a proper vent fan!).

As I too also like my duck both crispy and juicy, I'm slightly dismayed that Mr. Bruske insists it just can't be done. I will allow that it must be tricky, as I've had a lot of duck that didn't exhibit both qualities, and have had no luck so far replicating that at home. But I have eaten duck that did achieve both crispiness and juiciness, so I'm still on a quest to figure out how it's done.

I like my dead animals raw, what can I say? Carpaccio, sashimi and tartare are the best excuses for me to indulge in public, but at home... well... there's no one watching, I can just eat it! I stopped eating cow for awhile, but I'm back at it recently, I just can't help it, it's like those dirt eaters, I swear, I just can't stop. I need a 12 step program, I can hear the voices now " Step away from the beef"... ← Heh. I may need to join that program too. Actually, I'd been sneaking little noshes of raw meat even as a kid--boy, did it ever weird my mom out! But then I grew up and discovered the wonderful world of steak tartare and sashimi, and felt vindicated--see, Mom, it's not freaky, it's gourmet!

Yeah, I know, my unconscious wanted that book gone! While the glossy coffee-table format is usually a bad sign in cookbooks, I do have one that I find useful--but it's by Madhur Jaffrey, so it's got her touch to help it along. (Plus a signficant chunk of that glossy space is used for an extremely useful glossary illustrated with photos of various Asian ingredients--that alone has proven so useful as to have been worth the price of the book right there.) I also have a small selection of badly written and edited cookbooks that I keep because I find them funny and endearing. They're all those little fundraiser cookbooks--you know, the kind with the plastic comb bindings put together by church groups and such as fundraisers. Some of them actually have a few good recipes; others are just so bad they're good. One was done as a deliberate parody/prank by a department I once worked for in Microsoft-land. Reading that one is downright scary--and hilarious. Another is a collection of recipes from Africa, many so randomly translated into English as to be nearly indecipherable. But there is also a "healthy" vegetarian cookbook that I bought in a second-hand store, that I seriously need to do in. Maybe my subconscious can cause that one to wind up soaking in the bathroom sink too.

Heh. Just the other day, what I had originally meant to be a mushroom-and-shrimp risotto kinda turned into a mushroom risotto with a very substantial shrimp appetizer.

Right at this very moment, in my trash can, is a discarded cookbook. I had bought it some years ago, I think off a remainder/markdown table--big glossy coffee-table-format paperback of Pacific Rim fusion cooking. Alas, I was still very naive culinarily when I bought it; I've made a few recipes from it over the years, but as I gradually found out a whole lot more about various Asian cuisines, I got progressively more disillusioned and annoyed with Glossy Fusion Book's peculiar combination of fussiness and inauthenticity (if I'm going to fuss, I at least want it to be to some purpose!). Finally, I succeeded in getting the book soaking wet--I was browsing through it in the bathroom, actually (one of my favorite reading rooms ), and left the poor thing stranded too close to the sink. I tried drying it out, then wondered why I was even bothering. Plonk--into the trash with it!