Grub

Charcoal grilled, but the salmon acted just weird. The icky, white "You've overcooked the salmon, ya dunce"-goo started oozing out really early -- I figured I got the grill a lot hotter than normal, since it seemed to be done so early. But when I cut it up, it was completely underdone. So had to do that walk of shame back out to the grill with a half-cooked fillet... I finally managed to cook it properly, but it looks completely overdone -- both because of the excessive flaking and the nasty goo. Extra bonus: no grill-marks whatsoever. The rosemary and dill also just about dissapeared. The taters didn't get that nice roasted look. The only thing that looked okay were the asparagus -- so of course, I covered that up with a completely bland bechamel sauce; duh.

Yeah, that IS a really depressing, and disturbing thing. A collegue of mine settled in England and like me, took to it like a duck to water -- but his wife utterly hated the place. Some people are just not willing to adjust to cultural differences. He always had stories about how they couldn't go to a party because his wife "tried" to buy a dress, but failed, because the staff had some fancy store had been "rude" to her (ie., she expected US style service, where someone attends to you the moment you walk in the door, with a shallow smile and an equally shallow, friendly and cheerful "can I help you?" -- instead, she'd been left alone to peruse for five minutes, before storming back out in a rage...) She finally had a complete meltdown in a Pizza Hut after ordering a rootbeer float, and the waitress didn't know what rootbeer, nor a float was... In all fairness, there are far more nice Americans than bad ones. It just takes about 20 nice ones to make up for every single bad one.

Pardon me all the hell, but if you want to have a special, intimate dinner with that special someone, and you're so concerned that this here dinner should be so super-duper special & intimate that the mere presence of other human beings on the table next to you would so utterly ruin it -- wouldn't it make sense to tell the staff about your concern BEFORE the meal? If you're THAT damn obsessed over it, it doesn't make much sense to just assume things.

Oh yeah, the cayenne pepper... The traditional supermarket spices like McCormick, Spice Hunter and Spice Island brands are just horrific ripoffs so I always try to stick with spices from an Indian store if at all possible -- far cheaper and almost always better quality. But the cayenne pepper I used for the sauce was really coarse, like chilli powder or something. I didn't notice it at all. Gonna have to grind that stuff up next time around. Sad thing is, I made a cheese sauce recently and the sauce didn't just break -- it burned the hell out of a beloved All-Clad saucier -- and I was WAY too freaked out by it, to remember to take a picture of it. I think it's completely unfair to idolize people like Escoffier so much because he didn't have the difficulties to deal with that I struggle with on a daily basis -- like the Internet and oh, look at that funny video of a monkey teasing a tiger, hahah, I wanna watch that againwhatsthatsmell?!

Great information, thanks!

That shouldn't be a big shock to anyone -- the premise of the show itself is pretty contrived... Cooking without a recipe, and having the luck to find a whole bunch of stuff that just happened to have been made the other day, that makes a perfect match for whatever slab of protein he stumbled upon. It's not a bad show -- I've cooked some of the things he made, and was very happy with the results. Haven't seen too many of these shows though. If he was as over-exposed as say, Rayray, I reckon he'd get old pretty fast. These guys are celebrities; they're resourceful folks -- why the hell can't they get some acting lessons? Less is more, people -- unless you're performing for six-year olds on Prozak, or you're a professional wrestler -- could we please have a little more Sidney Poitier, and a little less William Shatner?

In the past, arguments were made in Tiffany's defence, to the effect that this is a competition, and not a popularity contest. Hence, you do what you need to do, in order to win -- popular or not. I don't agree with that, but for the sake of argument, if I were to accept this notion, then Stephen and Dave should do whatever they need to do, in order to sabotage her. You can't say "it's a competition" when Tiffany behaves badly, only to turn around and say "oooh, that'd never fly in real life" when others do it... Now that the competition is over, the contestants should be free to talk about it -- so where is LEE ANNE'S BLOG? Someone pointed to it in this thread a few weeks ago, but it went 404 within a day or two (which made perfect sense, since the competition was still going). She only made two or three entries, but they were damn funny, and very well written. I'd really like to read more of that stuff... Does anyone know if she's moved her blog to a different location or something like that?

Having never been to a Japanese restaurant before, I ordered Sashimi at Monterey Bay Canners (a local, middle-of-the-road sea-food chain). It looked very impressive: a big tray of crushed ice, topped with leafy veggies, upon which rested the raw fish, pickled ginger and an oyster shell that contained a green paste-like substance. Having no idea what any of these things were -- and not paying too much attention to the food in the first place -- I just absent-mindedly assumed that the green stuff was guaccamole. I mean, this is California; Mexican food is practially the national cuisine. I ate everything except the green stuff. But then I figured what the hell, I might as well finish that off too... So I took a spoon and scraped everything up -- and ate it. I noticed peoples' heads started turning towards me... And then, the world just ... well, it just sort of melted. My eyes, my mouth, my nose just turned on like faucets, and there was a horrible humming sound in my head. Man, that was an E-ticket ride...

Excellent story, Racheld! This is such a classy dish: Broiled salmon with a wonderfully crispy dill crust, lime-Hollandaise sauce, beans and creamed potatoes with chives -- and of course, a hair... The only saving grace is, this was my plate... Gah. The one thing I cook the most is definitely salmon. I particularly like it broiled. This recipe is from "The NEW Best Recipes"-book from America's Test Kitchen (which is an excellent book, by the way). They do recipes over and over again, in order to really understand the mechanics, or chemistry behind it all. This one broils the fillet with just salt, pepper and olive oil, but just before it is done, you remove it from the oven, smear it with dijon mustard and cover it with a crust made from freshly toasted breadcrumbs, plain potato chips and dill. Return to the lowest rack in the oven for a minute, and that's it. It created a wonderful crust. Unfortunately, I had made no plans for sides, and ended up making these rather gluey "mashed"/"creamed" potatoes with chives. They're popular, although I personally prefer my mashers fluffy and airy. However, they're easy to make -- especially if you're already gotten the immersion blender dirty (for the Hollandaise sauce). The beans came out of a can, and microwaved -- they were about as mushy as they look.

Hehehe nice! My grandma kept chickens. They were all white. One day, my cousin decided that the black chickens he'd seen at a neighboring farm looked way cooler, so he decided to do something about it... Yeah, that's right -- he got his hands on a big brush and a great big bucket of black paint and set to work on the poor things. You can imagine the havoc... People came running, thinking a fox had gotten into the chicken coop, but at first they couldn't even understand what the hell was going on because it looked so surreal -- like some supernatural, cloudy tornado of black paint and hysterical chickens, plus one little boy covered from head to toe in paint and dirt... They ate chicken for a couple weeks after that one.

I just learned something today, that truly saddened me... One chain that I view in a favorable light, is Trader Joe's. They have some great deals, and some interesting items -- the bad thing is, they won't always keep things in stock, so if you find something you really love, you might be out of luck, because they'll only carry it for a limited time. But that's okay; not all stores can be all things, to all shoppers. I view them as the underdog going up against the giant supermarkets. And that might still be true. But the truth is, they can still be a giant themselves. A friend of mine just told me that a really wonderful little grocery store had shut down recently -- typical mom & pop store that had been there forever. They held a very sad and depressing raffle -- the prize winner was allowed to turn off the lights in the store for the last time, when they closed. They were run out of business after a Trader Joe's opened down the block.

I caught both of those. The Freeman one was good only for one single reason -- there was a very brief shot, that shows Freeman with a facial expression that made him look as if he was thinking "Jesus, is there a VOLUME button on this woman?" when she was having a particularly spastic moment... The Penn & Teller show was just depressing. I'm a huge fan of theirs, but not even they could make that show enjoyable. They just went along with the schtick and did their thing like a couple of trained monkeys. Their bullshit detector must have been on the blink.

It used to be politically correct to be opposed to big business -- not because of any particularly well formulated argument, but mostly just because it was the hip thing to do. Now that PC-ness is becoming less fashionable, it is becoming equally "hip" to oppose this -- again, not as a result of a clear thought process, but just because it's kind of human nature to tire of such things... I don't think big business or giant, multi-national corporations are necessarily inherently evil -- but if you do, that's fine by me, because if nothing else, it does seem to be slightly less silly than being pro big business. I've got two experiences with big business vs. small -- both beer related (how appropriate for a Friday). With the success of microbreweries in the US over the last decade, a lot of the big brewers realized that this was a market they wanted access to. One of the microbrews I bought, was Plank Road Brewery -- but when I realized it wasn't the quaint little outfit that the name seemed to indicate (it was Miller's), I quit buying it. It might seem like an idiotic thing to do, because price and taste had little to do with my decision -- I wanted to support microbreweries, so that we could get some diversity in our beer selection. Big brewers CAN make superb beer, but that is not their goal. Profit is their goal. Microbreweries want to make a profit too of course, but they are more geared towards making good beer, than the big ones. Now, having said that, here's my second experience: Pete's Wicked Ale was very successful as a microbrewery, and one of their beers that I enjoyed, was their Summer Ale. But then I tasted it in a blind taste test, and found that I didn't like it (the test was drunk from a cup, but I'd normally drink it from a bottle, which doesn't allow you to smell it, and thus cuts down on what you taste from it)... The conclusion: just like many people were fooled into drinking inferior Budweiser beer, by misleading "lifestyle"-ads, I had fooled myself into drinking something that really wasn't that good, simply because I opposed the big breweries. It can be quite hard to make a sensible, and informed choice, but I think it's worth trying to do so. That being said, all other things being equal, I'd much, MUCH rather support a local mom & pop store, than a big corporation.

Megan, I hate being a uh, "reverse killjoy" here but while the asparagus look a little dodgy, I think the chicken looks nice... Maybe you've just got too high standards?

Made a spinach quiche a while ago -- I dunno if it's appropriate to post that, but anyhow, here it is: I've got a wildly optimistic ambition of eventually cooking at least one item for all the egullet Cook-Offs, so I did intend to do one for this thread -- I just forgot about it by the time I got around to making this Frittata. But I reckon that still counts. Even if it completely fell apart and ended up more like scrambled eggs than anything else... Those souffles look amazing though... Very inspirational...

I think nigiri sushi can be eaten with your fingers, the way you describe -- but it can also be done with chopsticks. Other types of sushi (and sashimi) is eaten with chopsticks. When I was a kid, our little town was visisted by some engineers from China, and people were extremely excited about it because they'd heard that Chinese people eat their food with just two little sticks. As everyone knew, Chinese people know Kung Fu and can break bricks with their bare hands -- but eating RICE with sticks, now that's gotta be just AMAZING to watch... So the local hotel obtained some chopsticks, and tried to prepare a Chinese style dinner (as I said, it was a small town). My cousin went to the dinner, and the entire family were just dying to hear his report of the event. It was a huge dissapointment: they hadn't done anything magical or fantastic at all. They'd simply held the plates up to their mouths, and shuffled the rice into their mouths with the chopsticks. Huge letdown.

I'm slightly obsessed with Hollandaise sauce... It boggles my mind how freaked out people are about how this sauce is so hard to create. Half of the recipes I've encountered in books include instructions on how to "rescue" a failed sauce -- as if you were expected to fail. Even normally-rational Alton Brown's "I'm only here for the food" insists that he has failed Hollandaise more times than he could count, and offers up a "Hollandaise Takes a Holiday"-sauce (which I did attempt, only to learn that it broke easier than Hollandaise and didn't taste as good -- but most importantly, it was every bit as much work to make, as the real thing. D'oh). The way I make Hollandaise is basically a combination of Jackal10's eGullet Culinary Institute article on Cream Based Sauces which describes the Escoffier and CIA method. Simply put, I use the CIA method, except for two things from Escoffier's method: I don't use a double boiler, and I use solid butter (as opposed to melted, in the CIA method). Tthe cold butter stops the sauce from overheating -- while the rule of letting each chunk melt fully before adding another prevents you from adding it in too fast. Sort of failsafe, no-brainer method. Also, it saves you some cleanup, to not have to melt the butter (as well as not having to use a double boiler). I'd love to hear how others deal with this stuff... Edit: Uh, BB codes is dificalt.

Thanks for an excellent blog, guys... I thought I'd made a mistake by trying to do pizza on the oven -- it didn't work out too good, heheh. You've inspired me to have another go at it. Great stuff.

I think the squeamishness people feel (myself included) over killing what we eat is -- pardon me for being blunt -- somewhat pathetic. It's a sign. A sign that we're a bunch of pampered, spoiled, rich brats. If you can't handle the idea of Babe the Pig being slaughtered, the only ethical route is vegetarianism, really. I once ran out of food during a week-long hike... I'd planned on relying mostly on fishing (which was a real stroke of genius, since I've never met a worse fisherman than myself) -- by the time I finally landed a trout, I can tell you I had NO problem killing the bastard. If Babe the Pig or Winnie the Pooh had come strolling by, they'd suffer the same fate.

"Momma said they's my magic shoes. Mama said they would take me anywhere. 'Course Mama used to beat me with a rubber hose and call me a retard.' -- Monty ("Waiting...") -- hey, food related movie...

You guys are impossible! My stuff hardly ever looks good enough to warrant praise in the Dinner thread, so I post my disasters here instead, so people can get a good laugh out of it, or at least feel better about their own cooking -- and NOW you go telling me it looks GOOD? I'm gonna have to do better. Or worse.

Absolutely dead-on. They say into every life, a little rain must fall. Some get a lot and others just a little and Stephen falls into the latter category. Success can ruin a person's character just as easy as hardship -- methinks Stephen is in the unfortunate situation of being in desperate need of a few years in a pound-me-in-the-ass prison, in order to evolve into a reasonably agreeable human being.

Potato, onion & ham Frittata: Or, scrambled eggs with taters, onions and ham. I made a quiche just fine a whole ago, but this ended up just all messed up. Oh well. Tasted fine, though.

Just saw the reunion show. There was no cooking involved -- just an ackward, ardeous trainwreck. Lee Anne was depicted as far more laid back, than the impression I got from her blog -- I guess they had more than enough agression and bickering from the other members. I say "depicted" because I figure Bravo probably takes some creative license in the editing process... Dave explained that he had never cried in the kitchen. Then he proceeded to tear up. I'm wondering, what the hell are they doing to him on this show to make him cry, if he normally doesn't do it? Andrea's health-nut image was solidified further... She's just the very personification of Julia Child's quip, "I just hate health food" -- not that I hate health food, but I do hate people who proselytize it. They're like religious zealots. It bugs me that Stephen was browbeaten so much for daring to educate people about food -- but nothing was ever said about Ms. "Eat this, it'll make you take a great, big wonderful dump." Now, Stephen seemed to do a complete 180, when they showed some behind-the-scene footage of his half hour spat with Candice where he belittled her for using cookie cutters. Mr Sommelier was on a huge charm offensive, appologizing over that one, and even drinking wine straight out of the bottle. Candice didn't appologize for calling him a douchebag or whatever she called him. Something odd happened when Stephen apoligized -- Kenneth (the angry Irish dude) started laughing. Then something even more peculiar happened -- Stephen got completley bent out of shape over it. This is where that whole "Oh yeah, wutcha gonna do about it?!" shoving thing happened. It didn't make too much sense from the footage. It seemed as if Kenneth didn't think Stephen's apology was sincere, and that this really upset Stephen. They brought up the tasting-with-your-finger thing with Kenneth again, and I must say I've got some sympathy for the guy on that one... What had actually caused the uproar wasn't that Kenneth tasted with his finger -- it was that he DARED to call the allmighty celebrity chef Keller on the issue afterwards: Keller had admonished him on this, claiming they'd have to throw the sauce out and start over again. Kenneth asked him if he really HAD done so, and that got Keller's, and the Bravo crew's collective knickers in a pinch. This taboo about questioning the allmighty Chef bugs the hell out of me. I'm an engineer; we question everything. I wonder what the world would be like today, if engineers worked like that? Finally, there was of course Tiffany. I guess this was supposed to be the "karma's a bitch"-episode. She got into it with a few -- especially Dave, but also Miguel. Dave was given a T shirt with "I'm not your bitch, bitch!" on it, that Tiffany actually tried to take away from him. Miguel's "You're a snake... Sssss!" segment was shown again. The poor girl eventually ran off to cry some. It didn't seem to get her any sympathy. I can understand it. The expression that came to my mind was (if you pardon me), "I wouldn't piss in your mouth if your teeth were on fire." As far as a winner, out of the three, I think Harold seems like a completely obvious choice. I'm probably not a good judge of their culinary skills, but Dave doesn't seem to be on the same level as Harold or Tiffany. Tiffany just seems like a genuinely bad person. If the idea is, that a Chef should be some kind of an evil genius/asshole savant, I guess she's the obvious choice.

Thanks, folks -- I really appreciate it!