mizducky

Hmmm. I think you've got a few different mis-apprehensions going on here: (1) the problem that resting meat is supposed to address; (2) the way resting addresses it; and (3) the implications of "equilibrium" in a slow-cooking method such as Blumenthal's. (1) First off, the problem which resting is meant to address, while it may well be exacerbated by disequilibria within the piece of meat, has a different root cause entirely. Patrick's got most of it--the process of applying heat to a chunk of meat causes the proteins within it to contract and be less capable of holding liquid. But in addition, the cooking process starts the breakdown/denaturing of those proteins--this in turn causes cell walls to leak or break down entirely, which releases even more liquid. Plus the overall heat being supplied to the meat raises its internal temperature, which is another way of saying the kinetic energy of the molecules within it increase. So as your roast approaches target-temperature (say, 140 F?) in your oven, you've got a chunk of meat with a lot of unfettered liquid, with proteins at decreased absorptive powers, and with a bunch of internal kinetic energy putting pressure on the internal liquid not unlike the pressure of water vapor within a teakettle on a hot burner, such that it's looking for any opening through which to push out. As the meat continues to cook, the main things still holding the liquid in are: the ever-decreasing absorptive power of the proteins; the unbroken browned exterior of the chunk of meat; and the external kinetic pressure of the heated oven all around the meat, pushing back on the internal kinetic energy of the liquid in the roast. Yes, this is an equilibrium between that external and internal pressure. HOWEVER--once you remove the roast from the oven, the kinetic pressure from the oven's obviously gone away, and thus so has that equilibrium. Now it's mainly the unbroken crust doing the main holding action against the flood of internal liquid. So if you breach that unbroken crust right at the moment you remove the roast from the oven, yep, tons of juice will run out. Doesn't matter if you approached that target internal temperature fast or slow--what matters is the temperature differential between the interior of the roast and the ambient temperature of the room in which the roast is actually cut open. 2) So resting addresses the above problem by (a) allowing time for the roast's internal temperature to come down somewhat, decreaing the kinetic energy of all those interior juices; and (b) allowing time for the proteins in the meat to relax a little bit, so they can regain some absorptive power and do a better job of holding onto the juices. Result: you cut into the meat a half-hour after removal from the oven, and while there is some juice leakage, it isn't the wholesale gusher you would have gotten a half-hour previously. Which brings us to ... 3) "Equilibrium" in the context of slow-roasting a la Blumenthal or other slow-cooking advocates: while I'd think these are definitely excellent methods for getting uniformly-cooked and tender roasts, I don't think the equilibrium they induce reduces the need for resting. First-off--what is meant by "equilibrium" in this context anyway? Because there's a whole bunch of different equilibria going on, in terms of heat, energy, pressure, chemical processes, etc. I think the most important ones in this context have to do with temperature/energy/kinetic "pressure," but even then, you've got multiple equilibria going on--the chunk of meat has an internal equilibrium, but there's also an equilibrium between the meat and its environment (be that oven, room, refrigerator, or whatever). So it's important when talking about equilibrium here to distinguish which one you're talking about. Secondly, as I noted above, the problem that makes resting necessary has nothing to do with dis-equilibria *within* the meat, but with the results of applying heat to meat in general, plus the dis-equilibrium between the meat's interior and its environment caused by removing said meat from the oven. And a perfectly-cooked target-temperature roast, whether Blumenthal-method or otherwise, is only in temperature-equilibrium with its environment as long as it's still in the oven. Once you remove the roast from the oven to that presumably 70-deg (or whatever ) room, that equilibrium's gone, replaced by a temp/kinetic-energy differential between roast interior and ambient temperature. If you cut into that roast right at that moment, Blumenthal method or no, it will still bleed out its juicy goodness. So yep--you still have to rest the puppy, and it has nothing to do with how perfectly you followed Blumenthal's method. Now mind you, I can imagine that if you roasted a chunk of meat, either quickly or slowly, long enough for significant amounts of liquid to evaporate out of the meat, there would be no significant liquid leakage even if you cut into it seconds after removal from the oven. But I don't think I'd really want to eat that piece of shoe-leather. [okay ... now I post, and wait for someone to find the inevitable hole in my logic ... ]

Oh dear. Now I'm jonesing for bialys. And that's just after a phone call from my doctor's assistant to discuss my elevated triglycerides level ... which means that even if I could find an authentic bialy somewhere in San Diego, I shouldn't be eating it. I dunno why bialys didn't take off as a national food fad the way bagels have, but part of me is glad--I'd hate to see bastardizations of bialys as heinous as some of the sponge-o-matic bread objects getting passed off as bagels these days. Hey, speaking of bialys, y'know what Jewish bakery delicacy hasn't come up yet in this blog? Onion board! Got any sightings for us, Pan? (Having way too much fun reading this blog ... )

For years, my regular routine at Costco was to make the rounds of all the nice folks handing out food samples while incidentally getting my grocery shopping done, and then to hit the hotdog stand. I'd always choose the Polish sausage over a regular frank, and top it with brown mustard and as much sauerkraut as would fit without falling off. It's been awhile since I let my Costco membership lapse, but IIRC they'd get a nice all-over browning on their dogs, and use decent rolls--not standard hotdog rolls but something like a slimmed-down French roll. Actually, my preferred way of having a hotdog cooked is not on a flat griddle but on a grill, long enough so that it has noticeable grill marks but still juicy, not overdone. I actually prefer my roll untoasted, so that the condiments and the dog's juices sop into the insides and almost melt the bread-surfaces right around the dog. For-real spicy brown mustard and good mellow sauerkraut, preferably pre-warmed, are musts. Other condiments as the spirit moves me--I prefer dill relish to sweet, but sometimes the sweet relish is a nice contrast against other more pungent toppings. Catsup is a no-no, but then I have no use for catsup on burgers and fries either. I keep meaning to check out Pink's. I've got an LA run slated for the end of this month--maybe I'll go then.

Ah yes ... I think it usually gets transliterated as "mamaliga." Nostalgia made me search for the recipe, and lo here's one from Wayne Harley Brachman: mamaliga *swooooooon* I adore kishka! As a matter of fact, I had some the other day at D.Z. Akins, one of San Diego's long-running forays into Jewish-style deli/home cooking--it was nice, but just not quite the same as home-made. Did your bubbe stuff the filling into actual beef casings?

Oh, that's so sad about the Kiev! You'll have to trust me that it did use to be a lot better... but then again, it's been several years since last I was there, so who knows what's happened to it since then? But at least now I know that, if the latest incarnation of the Kiev still sucks when next I'm in NY, I can at least go get good pierogies at Teresa's.

My mom was an excellent cook, and was yet another maker of a truly fine chicken soup. Hers was more like a stew than a soup, actually. She believed in soups with big hunks o' food in 'em. But her finest cooking efforts as far as I'm concerned all revolved around Thanksgiving. I had no idea how spoiled I was by her turkey-day skills until I moved cross-country and started having Thanksgiving with friends, and got to experience all the lame-ass excuses for Thanksgiving dinner all these other poor souls had been suffering with all their lives. Never until then had I understood the yearly flurry in the papers assuaging the panic of home cooks regarding turkey-roasting--what is up with these folks? I'd wonder; my mom showed me how to do that when I was a kid, and yeah it took time but it certainly wasn't rocket science. But I guess it must indeed be such for many people, because to this day, the only way I can experience a roast turkey anywhere as good as my mom's is if I prepare it myself.

The story goes round in my family that back when my brother was really young, he was a frightfully picky eater. Hot dogs and applesauce. That was it. Trying enough, but even moreso in a family obsessed about food. But my brother was apparently a little holy terror when he was small, so my folks were mainly glad they got him to eat anything at all. Anyway, the story continues that one evening the whole family--except for Baby Bro--was having grilled steak for dinner. Bro was eating his hotdog as usual, when he stopped, sat for awhile watching everyone else chow down and go yum ... and suddenly he'd whipped that hotdog across the room and wouldn't stop wailing until he was given some steak too. There remained some foods he continued to be a little odd about, but for all intents and purposes he pretty much wised up right then.

we kept most of the really nasty items out of the reader mailbag. but here's a sample: ← Good lord. Not only is that vicious, but ignorant too (even the briefest Googling turns up several references for the French connection in the evolution of chowder). And what in the world has anyone's political affiliation have to do with it? Just because this letter-writer thinks chowder's a food exclusively associated with Massachusetts? (There are several other states in New England that would be rather amused with this assumption.) Well, you know what they say about it being better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt...

Well, you know what they say ... ducks of a feather squawk together ... or something like that ...

I've also seen non-standard versions of hummus made with other types of beans in addition to or even instead of chick peas. These can also be quite yummy, although I submit that if one goes too far with this it probably leaves the land of "hummus" proper and wanders into a general multi-culti bean dip region. Indeed, there's much to be said for the general strategy of combining some kind of legume with some kind of fat and some assorted seasonings and add-ins into any number of bean-dip type dishes--the possibilities are endless. As to which chick peas to use: I've even started with dried chickpeas, pressure-cooked till nice and mashable, and not noticed all that much difference in the finished product. I too think the real differences show up with the choice/amounts of other ingredients. Myself, I like my hummus really pungent, plus I'm a self-admitted garlic nut (the first step is acknowledging it ), so I put in a goodly amount of the raw minced stuff and actually like that its flavor gets more intense the next day.

Heh. In my head, it doesn't feel like I've been all that well traveled ... until I start counting up states I've been to, and I go "wow, better check the Brain Odometer!" My major pipedream for some years now has been to acquire an old but reliable motorhome and take off cross-country, blogging about all my observations culinary and otherwise as I go. Maybe less stylish than a Harley, but definitely a bit more comfortable. (Anyone in SoCal with a lead on such an old-but-reliable RV, feel free to PM me. ) Words of wisdom. Actually, there's a whole subgenre of country/southern/soul food delights that deserve to be on the list, but I was trying to stick to the 10-only cut-off ... I see someone's already muttered about cornbread; I'd also dearly love to have put greens w/hamhock on there too, and chicken and dumplings ... maybe the only way to do this kind of thing justice is to abandon the numerical limit and go instead for separate lists for each of several Essential Regional Cuisines. (But that would be a different article--hell, that would probably be a whole book ...) Dang, I did give the whole Pennsylvania/Penn-Deutsch nexus short shrift in my previous list, didn't I. Another whole chapter in my fantasy regional-cuisine book. I am ashamed to say that in all the vacations to Pennsylvania my family took me on as a kid, I never once tried scrapple--I think my parents were afeared of it. But as an adult with a distinct fondness for "variety meats," I bet I would groove out on scrapple pretty fierce. Heh. I was sorta-kinda aware of the diversity of frybread/taco interpretations out there ... somehow, the three exemplars I've had the chance to sample so far (in Alburquerque at a restaurant, in Seattle at a pow-wow, and in the Susanville CA area as a guest at an extended-family gathering) seemed pretty similar, but I bet there were nuances that I didn't know to pay attention to (or else one or more of them were based on recipes that have been making the rounds of the various pow-wows and such). Anyway, this would definitely be another food I'd love to do more research on whenever that "magic bus" RV materializes in my life. And if you ever feel inspired, Mabelline, to start a whole separate thread on all the different variants on frybread and other Native dishes, I know I for one would read it with great interest (not to mention my drool-bib on).

Nicely-written article. And I felt pretty comfortable with your choices, jbonne--but maybe that's because you did manage to hit several of my all-time favorite foods (the clam chowder, the pastrami) and one of my relatively recent joyful discoveries (New Mexico's unique way with red and green chile). It really is hard to narrow it down to just ten, isn't it? Here's a list just off the top of my head: 1. The New York deli-style sandwich--ain't gonna restrict it to just pastrami, as that would slight my other true loves, corn beef and sliced tongue. Say it's a combo sandwich and you've got it covered as a single food item. 2. New England clambake--including all the trimmings: ya gotta have some corn on the cob in there, and some lobsters, and a bunch o' beer to wash it down. 3. The serious non-fast-food burger--oversized, damn-the-E.Coli red inside, loaded with trimmings, pickle on the side ... wait, do I hear Jimmy Buffet in the background? 4. Fish tacos/burritos -- there are whole segments of the Southern California population for which this represents an entire food group of its own. I'm one of those weirdos who prefers my fish in burritos to tacos ... I just like burritos better than tacos anyway ... except for ... 5. The Indian taco, on Navaho frybread. A thing of beauty (especially if you're in New Mexico or someplace else that knows that "Christmas" is more than just a December holiday ) 6. Southern fried chicken. My misadventures in chicken frying have convinced me that doing this dish right is an artform of the highest caliber. 7. The perfect Seattle-style caffe latte. Very specifically, the gorgeous lattes they pull at Vivace in Seattle. When I think of those perfectly-executed leaf-patterns in the foam, that dark-sweet taste that makes your hair curl with the first sip, I get weak in the knees. 8. Fried clams. Still missing them. 9. Chicago-style pizza. Yeah, I'm being a traitor to my Noo Yawk roots, but I know a good thing when I taste it. And whereas New York-style pizza has a recognizable connection to its Italian ancestors, the Chicago style I think can rightfully be called a purely American invention. 10. The pig roast. There are so many worthy variants of barbeque out there, and I am so not an expert on any of them, but there's just something so totally over-the-top in going the proverbial whole hog. And damn it's tasty. (Oh fat, wonderful fat, my love and my downfall...)

Oooooh! Could you post a couple of those pictures? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to see 'em. (Kitties and food--the ultimate ooh-and-aaah web photo combination! ) This topic is cracking me up too, as I too thought I was always being a bit of an obsessive freak in my corn eating. Corn freaks unite! (hmmm, somehow that doesn't sound quite right...) Anyway ... another channeler here (whoever took the time to invent those terms, channeling vs. rounding--now that's definitely some OCD freakishness going on right there ). Picking off the first couple of rows is the toughest--I'd get my upper incisors in between two rows and scrape downward, nipping off a couple of rows' worth as cleanly as I could. Then I'd work the rows above that, nearly always taking two rows at a time, working back and forth (not like a typewriter but like an old-school dot-matrix printer, for those of you who remember the furious flying printhead zipping to and fro). I'd be very compulsive about biting off the kernels as cleanly as possible to leave no particle of the corny goodness behind. Oh, and I'd use just a *little butter*. Just enough to accent, not enough to overwhelm, and certainly not enough to drip on me or anything. Damn, now I'm jonesing fiercely for some Jersey truck farm butter-and-sugar corn.

Hmmm, depending on how you do that Eugene/Crater Lake/Crescent City jog, you might bypass the stretch of I-5 going through Azalea OR, but if you do happen to go through Azalea, I strenuously recommend the Heaven on Earth Cafe. They have the most amazing cinnamon rolls I've ever seen--they make those Cinnabon things look like puny little morsels in comparison--and the rest of their home-cooking/diner-style grub is damn fine too. Here's a couple of pics of those cinnamon rolls to further tempt you: clickie here

Oops ... I see "Wedding Banquet" has been mentioned already. But "Fried Green Tomatoes" hasn't yet. (One of the few movies I've seen that was actually a slight improvement over the book--at least IMO.)

By that criterion, "Silence of the Lambs" qualifies as a food film. I don't deliberately seek out food-themed films as such, but of those films I have loved, I'd submit that "The Wedding Banquet" is definitely food-themed.

WOW! that's cold! Mom needs one of those 714's! ← 714's? ← "714s" is street slang for Quaaludes, dude.

That phrase is reminiscent of an old country blues turn of phrase about eating chicken, put to good use by Jim Morrison in the Doors song "Back Door Man": Then there's the classic Yiddish phrase "to make a big tzimmis" -- to make a big huge hairy deal over something. And here's a few other phrases I've heard over the years: "Don't teach your grandma to suck eggs" -- don't try to teach something to someone who has a whole lot more experience than you do (though I'm not sure what the "sucking eggs" bit is about--when and where did people suck eggs?) "Must be jelly 'cause jam don't shake that way"--long before Beyonce cautioned us that we might not be ready for this jelly, my mom reported hearing this in her childhood as a street-wise wisecrack (apparently it was also the title of a swing-era hit song). "Couple of tacos shy of a combo plate" -- another in that delightful series of witticisms to describe those a little short on either sanity or sense. And you know I can't resist throwing in a Zappa reference, right? Here goes:

My folks used to have a bunch of those corn-holders when I was a kid. Yellow plastic mini-corn-ears with a couple of metal spikes each. We used them frequently--in pairs, jamming one in the ear's stem-end and getting the other one precariously placed in the tip end. We'd keep losing them over the years, and my mom would keep buying more (always yellow, always trying to look like a corn ear, but in different interpretations of that shape), so we had a kind of mongrel mis-matched collection after awhile. I vaguely recall them all hanging out in one compartment of one of the two flatware trays my mom kept in various kitchen drawers. I think I acquired some of my own when I first left home and set up my own household, but they somehow fell by the wayside and I haven't really missed them.

Well Daniel, I'm not suggesting that people just react to this kind of news by cowering in helpless fear of their food. Rather, I'm suggesting that they keep abreast of the news and make a stink about it, as I surmise was the original intent of this thread. Sadly, publicly expressed outrage seems to be the only thing that ever gets a sluggish and/or stonewalling bureaucracy to stay on top of this kind of problem. Further, I'm *glad* this issue is getting media attention *before* anyone has actually died from BSE in the USA. Why does even one person have to die before it's considered a "real" problem? Oh, and personally, I've never found any of the arguments about "relative risk" and "acceptable levels of risk" particularly mollifying from an ethical standpoint. To be perfectly blunt, I think of those arguments as ethically questionable rationalizations that industry and their too-cooperative regulators tell themselves and each other, so that they can ignore potential human harm costs for the sake of their almighty bottom line. Mind you, I'd consider it a whole 'nother ballgame if the problem in question were totally unprecedented and killed somebody totally out of the blue. But at this point in the very public history of BSE, this is most definitely no longer the case.

Um ... because there's no cure whatsoever for BSE? Because our meat industry had a longstanding practice of the kinds of feeding-animal-products-to-animals practices conducive to passing the contagion along? Because a lot of Americans, like me, don't trust certain sectors of the US meat industry to have totally cleaned up those feed practices, and otherwise police themselves sufficiently to totally prevent an infiltration by BSE? Because this mistrust gets fueled by less-than-confidence-inspiring behaviors by the USDA such as that cited in the first post in this thread, in which they were refusing to re-test samples from this latest suspect critter until pressed to do so? Because I well remember the most recent E. coli outbreaks due to poorly-managed ground beef in fast-food burgers, which happened despite all the supposed safeguards within the meat industry--which safeguards are apparently still loopholed enough (despite the impetus of several people dying from the infection) that fast-food places are now required to cook burgers to death because they still can't trust the meat is 100% E. coli free? Because I therefore have bad feelings about a similar outbreak, only this time instead of the sometimes-deadly E. coli bug it'll be the always-deadly and incurable BSE bug? I'd say all these are ample reasons for fear and concern ... at least for me.

I have absolutely nothing to add, except to say that now I'm craving a New Mexico-style Indian taco on frybread something fierce.

Heh. When Jelly Belly fans talk of "recipes," they're usually referring to combinations of JB flavors that go together in some way--lookee here for their examples. (Hey, and somebody was wishing they had a Tiramisu flavor? Well, there's a combo here under "New Recipes" that they say is supposed to add up to Tiramisu...) Now, using jellybeans in a (conventional) recipe, say a cookie or cake or something--that's also an interesting territory to explore... though I'm a better reporter than I am a baker so I'll leave the actual experimentation to those better qualified.

You are joking...I hope. Well, if they have a rotten egg flavour, i guess they would have a vomit flavoured one (who is thinking up of these new flavours?) The Vomit flavor turns out to be part of their Harry Potter-inspired Bertie Bott's line, along with such charmers as Ear Wax, Booger, Dirt, and Sardine. Looks like the Jelly Belly folks have anticipated this question, but perhaps need a little more imagination (or a little more booze).

My family was not really into drinking, outside of the random glass of bad New York State sparkling wine drunk while watching New Year's Eve festivities on TV. Aside from some clandestine dabbling in cheap booze with high-school buddies, I didn't get my first real education in alcohol until college. As this was at Fair Hahvahd, there was not only the usual collegiate quantity-over-quality beer-swilling going on, but also some adventures into more hoity-toity alcoholic aspirations, including cocktailage. I was introduced to the joys of the martini by a member of our little posse who had a definite flair for mixing a good stiff dry one. In fact, one of my fondest college memories was attending a school football game with my posse, accompanied by a thermos full of ice-cold martini--our martini maestro even brought along little plastic cocktail cups and a small jar of olives. We positioned ourselves behind the band, and proceeded to toast every touchdown scored by the opposing team that day (of which there were several) by rising to our feet, raising our glasses, pronoucing a unison "OH SHIT!" and draining our drinks. By about the fourth enemy touchdown, we were pretty well shnockered and had our own little audience (including the band, also well-lit by now) waiting for and applauding our performance. (It should be noted here that getting shit-faced on high-quality booze at football games is pretty much a Harvard tradition--it's really something to see freshman and 25th-reunion alumni swilling from hip flasks with equal abandon). But my cocktail fascination really took off for the next level--along with a lot of people's, it seems--in the latter 1990s. I was living in Seattle at the time, and had a new posse, mainly technogeeks of various flavors, all with a definite interest in funky alternative urban culture--which included cocktailinos. We'd get together in cocktail bars of all sorts, from dives to high-falutin' joints, order drinks and compare notes. Or we'd gather for parties at each other's abodes and try out nifty concoctions we hadn't heard of before (this is where I first had a Moscow Mule, which is a wonderfully tasty drink). And it was during this time that I discovered the pleasures of a well-made Manhattan -- and the agony of all the sorry excuses for same served by too many places one would expect to have at least a little more clue.