mizducky

That "goat stomach delicacy" sounds like the Mexican answer to haggis. (I'd be willing to give it a go, but then I'm a fool for offal...)

My favorite hot booze drink in the world is a humble little concoction my mom used to make for me as a folky cold remedy, believe it or not--a thing called a Guggle Muggle. Into a mugful of hot milk, put some honey and vanilla extract, plus some combination of cinnamon/allspice/nutmeg to taste ... and then add a good stiff shot of whiskey (or other brown booze of choice). As a cold remedy, you're supposed to drink this down as quickly as humanly possible without scalding your mouth, then jump into bed under a bunch of quilts to "sweat out the evil humors" or whatever. But it also makes a darn fine toddy when sipped in a more leisurely manner on a chilly night.

In the modern American supermarket that no longer keeps a full-fledged butcher on staff, I only sporadically find packages of trimmings for soup/stock makings. So whenever I do spy a package of chicken necks and backs, I tend to snap it up and stick it in the freezer ASAP. Failing that, I've found that chicken or turkey wings are excellent soup-makings. Mind you, a whole chicken makes excellent stock too--there's just something from my Depression-era parents' indoctrination that makes me somehow loathe to sacrifice that whole chicken to the stockpot. Bony cuts like wings, backs, necks, etc. not only have a lot of flavor, they also have bunches of connective tissue holding all those bitty bones together, which makes for a high-gelatin stock/broth that will set up nicely when chilled, and give that nice collagen-rich mouthfeel to whatever soup etc. you eventually use it in. I have noticed that the local 99 Ranch Market, which not only has an extremely active meat department with a bunch of for-real butchers, but also a clientele that loves offal and variety meats, maintains a steady dependable supply of chicken feet and other trimmings. If I ever have to make a full-force gelatin-to-the-max stock for an aspic or something, I'm planning to hit the 99 Ranch and get me a whole mess o' feet. (Some of which might wind up turning into a dim sum delicacy instead ... ) (edited to fix at least a couple of grammatical errors ... there are probably others still left, but oh well...)

I dont know about hangover cure, but my mom (i'm portuguese) makes a killer tripe stew..it's got all sorts of beans and fat sausages as well as the tripe and I believe the broth is a tomato/red wine base. Yumm yumm. ← My understanding is that the Mexican tripe-and-hominy stew menudo is also considered a hangover cure--especially when eaten in the classic 3am-after-a-night-of-carousing scenario. I've never made menudo from scratch, but it's darn good stuff when made well. A number of the more authentic mom'n'pop taquerias around here offer menudo as a weekly/weekend special. P.S. I salute you on your tripe experiments in general. That's a series of experiments I mean to try one of these days too, so thanks for asking all the questions I would have asked.

If they're not dandelion greens, I'm guessing they're mizuna. (Which I've mistaken for dandelion greens in the market a few times before.) Second on the recommendation of the Madhur Jaffrey book mentioned here by tejon. My copy is so dog-eared and stained, you know it's gotten a heavy workout.

The best book I've seen yet for explaining stuff like that in layperson's terms is Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For The Food. Given that you don't have a whole lot of in-class time to cover all this stuff, you might want to put together a short bibliography of books like this, for your students who want to go deeper into topics only briefly touched upon in class. But I know that I, for one, when a new cook, would have totally appreciated at least some brief basics about the how and why of cooking--nothing heavily technical, mind you, only just enough basics to understand, for instance, why some shortcuts and substitutions work and others go blooey, why you really need all that water when boiling pasta, why eggs turn to rubber if you fry them too long, why some cuts of meat make great stews but turn into shoeleather if you try to broil them--that kind of thing. Call it the culinary equivalent of defensive-driving lessons: stuff ya gotta know for "safe" kitchen and grocery store navigation.

I spent Thanksgiving this year participating in a community dinner sponsored by (among other organizations) my church's les/bi/gay/trans outreach committee and the San Diego chapter of the Imperial Court (a social organization that specializes in drag balls/competitions, and also does a ton of fundraising and other good works in the greater LGBT community). This made for a most "festive" gathering, to say the least! To be sure, I only spotted one person officially in drag (the current reigning Empress of the local Court, who was serving as hostess/MC--she gamely stayed in her high heels far longer than I would ever have managed). But even several of the Court membership wearing "civilian" clothes for the day were sporting long, perfect, gorgeously manicured fingernails--I couldn't help laughing at the contrast with my own beat-up/chewed-on nails. Anyway, we fed a whole lotta people, passed out a ton of door-prize gifts, and had a whole bunch of fun. And next year, I really need to remember to get my nails done before I go!

Oh hey, as far as I'm concerned it's just not latke-frying time unless you wind up stinking up the whole place! My fellow crazed-foodie friend from my twenties back in Boston had a personal tradition of doing a huge latke-fry brunch every New Year's Day (secular New Year's, just to be clear). Sooner or later, no matter how many windows we'd have open and fans and vents we'd have running, we'd have to take the battery out of the smoke detector or risk deafening our guests. Said guests, meanwhile, would be having a grand old time getting all up to their elbows in latke batter, because *everybody* wanted to take a turn at the frying pans. It was one gloriously messy cooking extravaganza, and we'd go through a bazillion potatoes and still have only a very few leftovers.

I have never tasted it. I always assumed it would be too sweet for me, but I think it's time to give it a try. Thanks for the post, Ellen! ← You're welcome! The stuff has definitely got some sweetness to it, but it's cut by the natural tartness of the berries. Plus my understanding (from a quick Googling to augment my previously non-existent knowledge on this topic) is that the lambic style of beer brings its own natural tartness to the party.

Foods that I dream of for the holidays: --Roast turkey--especially the dark meat, skin, and the tail (I am the fastest turkey-tail absconder in the Western World--blink and it's gone! ) --Stuffing--but only when it's been cooked inside the bird --Gravy made with the drippings and giblets --Chopped liver with gribenes Everything else--well, it's certainly lovely to enjoy, but the above four things make the holidays for me. (Having spent a couple of holiday seasons in my time faithfully, and miserably, sticking to some food regimen or other, I declare never again. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of the diet-obsessed mind, or something like that.)

I have what may seem a really dumb question: leaving aside the (totally understandable) "ick" factor of the bugs' presence, what harm can they actually do to one? Do they carry disease? If one inadvertently ingests one, can it make you ill? I mean, if I have an item that's obviously infested, it's going right in the trash in three seconds flat. But what if it's only a really tiny infestation and, erm, one just fails to notice? (Okay, now I'm visualizing eGulleteers around the globe making mental notes to never ever dine at my house. )

I'm not a very prolific beer drinker, but when somebody brought some Lindemans Framboise Lambic to the after-party following our big concert this past Saturday night, I made a beeline for the stuff. Yum. Major yum. Like, "can I get a whole 'nother five or six bottles for myself?" yum. (Purty label, too!)

Dang, it's been ages since I made potato latkes. I was already plotting a major cooking extravaganza since Fearless Housemate is going out of town this weekend--what better excuse to fill the house with frying-potato smells? My mom had her own very decided opinions on how to do potato latkes. She did the shred-by-hand-on-box-grater routine. She used plain old russets, and didn't blot them dry in any way. Some matzoh meal and an egg or two to hold them together. Fried in enough oil so that, when the pan had a load of latkes going, they were all immersed just half-way. The secret art is learning just how long to wait before flipping them to cook the second side--if you try too soon, they disintegrate; if you wait too long, of course, they burn. I've never messed with my mom's recipe before, but now I'm feeling a little inspired. Suddenly I'm thinking that embedding some gribenes in potato latkes would be a most lovely thing. (Plus it would give me an excuse to make gribenes, plus then I would have schmaltz instead of oil to cook the latkes in.) By the way, y'all have heard the classic parody version of "Oh Hannukah", right? The one that avers that Mrs. Maccabeus' potato latkes gave her husband the chutzpah to defeat the Syrians, but cooking the latkes resulted in the shortage of oil for lighting the temple menorah?

Wow. Cool blog! I well remember my first adventure with cardoons. It was back when I was living in Boston, and my housemate of the time and I would do the rounds of Haymarket every Saturday. We had a habit that, when we spied some item we'd never seen before, we'd buy it on a whim and then try to figure out what the heck to do with it. We saw some cardoons and they blew our minds--we figured they looked like mutant giant dinosaur celery from Mars--so of course we had to get them. I recall getting all the strings out of the stalks was a bit of a pain in the butt, and that whatever recipe we were working from (I think it was from the old Joy of Cooking) mentioned parcooking them in acidualated water, but beyond that I can't remember a blessed thing about the cooking or eating of them. But the look of them sure did crack us up.

Well, here's how I cook brown rice without a rice cooker: While soaking brown rice is a good idea, I almost never manage to remember. Mine comes out a little stickier than if I'd have remembered the soaking, but otherwise okay. I either use a heavy, thick-walled and thick-bottomed saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, or my pressure cooker. In the saucepan, I use a 2:1 water-to-rice ratio. I will also often add a pinch of salt, a strip of kombu, or a thin quarter-sized slice of gingerroot. I put the water on alone to boil first, add the rice (and seasonings) when the water's at a brisk boil, let it come back to a boil and cook for about a scant minute, then turn the heat to low and put the lid on. I then let it simmer along on low for a good 50 minutes, never removing the lid even once lest the steam escape, and then shut the heat off and let the pot sit for another 10 minutes, again without removing the lid. I then fold a clean absorbent dishtowel so that it will cover the pot opening completely with several thicknesses of cloth, quickly whip the lid off, drape the towel over, and put the lid on top, and leave it like that for another 5 to 10 minutes--the towel absorbs a bunch of excess steam/moisture so that the rice will be fluffier. Then I remove lid and towel, fluff the rice gently with a fork, and serve. (Sometimes, even with a heavy pot the rice will scorch with this method, depending on the crankiness of the stovetop burner in question, so I have been known to use one of those heat-diffuser gizmos under the pot to, well, better diffuse the heat.) In a pressure cooker: I put about two inches of water in the bottom of the cooker, place a rack inside the cooker, and on top of the rack a heat-proof bowl (I found a stainless steel bowl that fits perfectly inside my cooker just for this purpose). In the bowl I put one cup of brown rice plus just 1-1/4 cups of water (plus optional seasonings as above). I then lock on the cooker's lid, put the cooker on high heat till it's up to pressure, adjust the heat to maintain the pressure properly, and cook for about 20-30 minutes. Then I release the pressure, unlock the lid, retrieve my little bowl of rice, fluff with fork and serve. The rice absorbs just enough moisture from the water in the bowl plus the ambient steam from the bottom of the cooker to cook properly--this method tends to produce slightly firmer grains than the saucepan method. This pressure cooker method also has a handy bonus: you can cook dried legumes in the water in the bottom of the cooker at the same time, and voila! you have your beans/rice complete protein combination all out of one pot. Brown rice does go very well with beans, and not just for the complete-protein angle. I find they come out better if I cook them separately and then combine, rather than trying to cook them from scratch together, which for me usually produces either mushy rice or mushy beans. A can of good-quality Italian plum tomatoes, while not particularly Japanese in style , is a really yummy addition to brown rice and beans--just simmer the cooked rice and beans with the tomatoes for about 20-30 minutes until the rice and beans have absorbed the tomato flavor, and adjust seasonings as desired.

I have survived my deadline, but only just barely. Eating patterns hit an all-time height (or depth) of weirdness the actual day of the deadline. I think my entire food consumption that day prior to midnight was one chocolate bar, a handful of cough drops, and a bottle or two of water. I was expecting to get a little pizza in there too, but by the time I made it back to the green room I discovered that the kids in the youth orchestra had already wolfed down all 12 pies I'd ordered for them. Lesson for next time: grab my slices while the orchestra is still trapped on-stage for the matinee show. Finally, I made it to the after-party a hair after midnight, and was pleased to see that the woman I put in charge of it was the expert Costco/TJ's shopper I guessed her to be: trays of croissant sandwiches, mini-eggrolls, cheese and crackers, hummus and pita chips, nice veggie tray and fruit bowl, big soft cookies, etc etc etc. And one of the college age orchestra "kids" brought a six-pack of framboise lambic--yum. Nice way to decompress from a deadline.

Y'know, I bet it would work okay to use a carbonated lemon drink if you just can't find a non-carbonated one. It won't be the first time people have cooked with carbonated beverages; for one thing, I've seen a number of home-cooking recipes go by for glazing a baked ham with a concoction including Dr. Pepper or other fizzy soft drinks. And you could always let the carbonated drink stand awhile uncovered till it went flat, to get rid of excessive fizz.

Heh. I must now relate a tale told to me by a foodie friend of mine some years back--long enough so that I can't remember if the tale happened to him personally, or to a friend of his. Anyway, whoever the cook in question was, he was working from what looked like a luscious recipe for a ham loaf. He spent all day chopping and grinding and seasoning to put this loaf together, baked it as specified, waited for it to cool, and then finally got to taste his creation ... only to realize "Oh my god--I've just made Spam!" :-) Having said that, I do know that this much-maligned meat product can rise to great heights when handled by a Hawaiian well versed in "local" cooking. However, I confess I don't know if I could handle the Spam pizza--but not because of the Spam part of it, rather the pineapple. It's just the New Yorker in me, who still has this knee-jerk reaction about certain types of pizza toppings.

Allow me to add to the chorus of adulation, Daniel. Even though that kind of meal would probably give me the most killer gout attack of all time, it would be worth the pain. The porky desserts are awesome. But let me also put in an especial word of appreciation for that pretty terrine. And then there is that pork belly--my new true meat-love--and all that luscious skin. And the humongous chops from that crown roast. And ... Hell, who am I kidding? I want it all!!!

docsconz: Thanks for your feedback. That's my feeling exactly too. Some of the lemon sauce they use in restaurant is nothing but a big blob of yellow, which looks a bit scary. ← I confess I've managed to enjoy even the scary-yellow-sauce Americanized lemon chicken--but only when I get the sauce served on the side, so I can ignore it if I want to. But this version with the lemonade and lemon looks really inspiring. I may give it a whirl sometime real soon, possibly reducing the sugar even more so it gets *really* tart. hzrt8w, I think I may have said this before, but I'll say it again: I am so incredibly grateful for your pictorials. Ever since I shared a dorm kitchen with some grad students from China, I've been dying to get some lessons on real homestyle Chinese cooking of the type I saw those students do. So, many thanks for fulfilling that wish! --and also emboldening me to add ingredients like fermented bean curd to my personal cooking arsenal.

Now this sounds like it has some possibilities. Some hazards, too, I suppose. But hey, that's what life is all about. I've been living on the opposite coast from my family for some 15 years now, so I've come up with a variety of Thanksgiving strategies, some of which have worked better than others. The hazard of getting invited to share Thanksgiving with a friend's family, I've discovered, is that instead of my own family's holiday neuroses, I can sometimes find myself witness to a whole other family's holiday neuroses. And I must confess that sometimes I also find myself witness to other families'--how to say this delicately without sounding like an ingrate?--less-than-optimum cooking expertise. To be sure, the cameraderie, when it's good, more than makes up for the sometimes haphazard food and occasional family drama-ramas. But sometimes I just find it easier to spend the holiday on my own, making and/or buying food that personally delights me--or finding someplace to volunteer. This year, as I've noted elsewhere, I've been majorly busy with a project whose deadline is the 26th, so I've had no time whatsoever to think about making any special meals for myself. But I lucked out in that the gay/bi/lesbian group at my church is playing host to a free community dinner sponsored by a couple of groups at our city's gay community center. So, I'll actually experience what I might consider the best of all possible shared Thanksgiving dinners: I'll be volunteering for a good cause; as the sponsoring groups are doing all the heavy work, all I have to do is show up and play hostess with my fellow church members; as the meal itself is being donated by a local caterer and friend of the San Diego gay community, I'm anticipating the food will actually be pretty excellent; as one of the groups sponsoring this shindig is the local chapter of the Imperial Court, there will definitely be some fun flamboyance at the dinner; and last but not least is the whole flood of people who will be our guests: people of slim financial means, people estranged from their birth families, people with AIDS who might not have the energy to make their own feast and deserve a day of food-pampering--just a whole bunch of people who, not unlike me, could use a nice friendly accepting place to hang with others and share the holiday. And then I'll come home and sleep A LOT!!!!!!! preparatory to my final push towards the project deadline. And in the week or two following, I'm aiming to cook myself my own little postponed Thanksgiving feast, just because the cooking part of it is one of my personal favorite childhood memories. I believe Fearless Housemate has a couple out-of-town gigs coming, so if I time it right I'll be free to be as stinky as I wanna be in the kitchen. Ideally, I want to make a roast duck (yes, I'm a metaphorical cannibal), but at the very least I'll do a roast chicken or Cornish game hen. Or maybe, if I'm really lucky, I'll find a really tiny turkey on close-out, and just have a helluva lotta leftovers.

The beauties of cheese as deadline fodder (based on personal experience): --You can kid yourself it's a healthy snack food (which it is--although not, perhaps, in the quantities consumed by a deadline cheese-a-holic like moi) --A lot of protein (as well as goodly amounts of fat and salt) in a single food-package --As long as one avoids the crumbly types, as someone upstream already mentioned, it's a relatively non-messy food to eat out of hand --Two words: melted cheese. 'Nuff said.

Heh. In my 20s I belonged to a rather hippie-esque alternative Jewish congregation/havurah in the Boston area, that basically ran on potlucks. Actually, the vast majority of them were pretty darned good--all the members were decent to excellent cooks who took pride in their home cooking. But we did have a number of meals where nearly everyone inadvertently made the same thing--I remember in particular one in which almost everyone brought a dish based on potatoes. All of them tasted quite good, mind you, but even if you were crazy about potatoes it was a bit much. After that we went to a "structured potluck" system where people signed up for making certain kinds of dishes (main dish, vegetable dish, starch dish, salad, etc. etc.) As for me--well, there was this one time I spent *hours* laboring over making this nouvelle-ish layered vegetable terrine--each type of veg had to be chopped, cooked, and seasoned separately, and then layered in a loaf pan with a rice-and-egg mixture to bind each one ... just way tedious. The finished product did look beautiful, especially when sliced, and so I had high hopes for it. But when I went to taste it: nothing. The blandest thing in the universe. And I had followed the recipe (from a trustworthy cookbook, yet) to the letter. Maybe I just had some especially flavorless veggies. Maybe the author of the recipe had toned down the seasoning because it was meant to be "spa cuisine" or some damn thing. All I know was that I'd just spent literally hours making something I couldn't stand, and it really disappointed me. But I was already at the potluck with it--in fact, had just dished it up, that was why I was getting my first taste of it--so I just slunk away and left it there. Most of it was eaten by the end of the party. I don't know if that meant others liked it more than I, or that others, like me, were just suckered in by how pretty it looked.

The fact that this is my first post on eGullet since November 11th should tell y'all something about how totally flat-out busy I have been. And this is just a brief respite before the final week of madness running up to the show on the 26th. What I've been eating: well, there's been a *lot* of cheese. (Fat Guy, we must have studied from the same deadline-food playbook.) There's been a lot of take-out--mainly greasy-spoon steam-table Chinese, with a burrito or cheeseburger here and there. Last night there was delivery pizza from Papa John's (Fearless Housemate thinks it's a few cuts above Domino's and Pizza Slut, I mean Hut; myself, I think it's barely one cut above ... and I think I may have just badly mis-used that metaphor, but oh well). Attempts at "healthy" food have been half-hearted at best and pathetic at worst: there were some canned pineapple chunks in there somewhere, and some canned chickpeas somewhere else. Oh yeah, and a bag of those Sunsweet cherry-essence prunes. (Don't ask. Just ... don't ask ). There was a way-too-quickly-inhaled chocolate fix comprising a bag of Brach's Bridge Mix. And as always, there's been a few more iterations of my favorite too-busy-to-do-it-right microwave nachos and microwave melted cheese sandwiches. And just gallons and gallons and gallons of diet pop. My liver must be glowing in the dark by now. Note that I am being more than a little vague about when these various items were consumed; the past week was kinda like that. As Fearless Leader's girlfriend (also a part of this undertaking) commented last night, we're having trouble remembering what day it is here ... unless it is in relation to D-Day or some subsidiary deadline pertaining thereto. Needless to say, a proper Thanksgiving meal has kind of fallen off my schedule ... or would have, except that I'll be taking time out to help volunteer at a free community T-day dinner being hosted by my church. Fortunately, all I have to do for that is stand around and be one of the greeters/hostesses; they'll have a bazillion volunteers to do all the real work. And then the next day it's back to my grind--the (probably all day and halfway into the night) tech rehearsal, and acres of delivery pizza ordered to feed all the performers (a musical group, like an army, proceeds on its stomach). And then the actual performances the day after that, with more pizza to appease the troops. Reminder to self: pack along the JUMBO-size bottle of Extra-Strength Tums. Or better, buy a couple of additional bottles. If I don't manage to jump on here again between now and Thanksgiving, have a great holiday, folks!

If I see the phrase "to perfection" on a menu one more time, I swear I'm gonna throw something. Most likely a fit. I mean, what the hell is the point of even including that phrase? Like they were originally planning to cook my food to imperfection, but had a better idea? And that goes for any such similar meaningless verbiage on menus. Writing workshop leaders always harrangue their participants to "show, not tell" in their prose. I say to menu writers: if the food itself shows me how good it is, you don't need to tell me, I'll figure it out. And if the food shows me how good it isn't, all the text in the world telling me how good you thought was won't magically change my mind.