Grub

Sultani Murghi -- chicken with spinach and cheese (Betty Crocker's Indian Home Cooking, p 106.) This was a bit of an experiment -- the dish is really supposed to be whole chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and cheese (well, pounded flat and rolled up around the mixture), but when I ate it as leftovers I cut the thing up before heating it and well, it struck me that since flattening, rolling, and pinning raw chicken meat with toothpicks is a such a hassle, I figured I'd try to make it as a more traditional, chopped-up Indian format. Besides, it's Friday damnit, I want the route of least possible stress... In the original format, this dish makes an excellent statement about Indian cuisine: Chicken Cordon Bleu and Kiev are great stuffed chicken breast dishes, but they've got nothing on this bad boy. I've made it twice before -- last time, I kinda screwed up and didn't defrost the chicken breasts long enough, so they got torn up a little, when I pounded them flat. I guess that's what made me want to try doing the dish a little differently. I normally fix up some papadums and mango chutney hors d'ouvres when I cook Indian, but it was actually more stressful doing the dish this way, than the original method, so I didn't get around to it... I managed to get a beer out of the fridge, but didn't get around to opening the damn thing. Thankfully, my roommate noticed my traumatic condition, and fixed me a mojito, which allowed me to mellow out enough to sort the papadums out...

I think it could be said, without being accused of being overly cynical, that it was just a matter of time before the French dude got the boot after voicing his heretical views on salt... What I'd like to see, is for the tasting to be done blind, without the judges knowing who cooked what dish...

Elk and buffalo at the Buckhorn Exchange in Denver -- excellent. Pickled ocra, homemade, somewhere in the south. A client brought it into the office and offered me some -- suspecting a practical joke, I excused myself until I saw someone else eat it... Very interesting taste, not bad. Pickled eggs in Manchester, England. Apparently a southern English treat, from what the landlord claimed, as I never saw it any other pub there. Very nice with a pint... Reindeer, moose and whale in Norway. All good. And lutefisk -- NOT good. Bad reindeer in Finland, but great steak tartare -- at whatever restaurant/cafe Sibelius used to order it. They had bear in Finland as well, but I never tried it -- it was extremely expensive. Jerked goat in Jamaica. Not good, mon.

Sure. It's called "omakase." Of course, if you're in a restaurant where you can do that, you most likely know you'll be getting some kind of seafood, probably raw. ← I assume this is sushi? I've done this in a sushi restaurants I used to visit all the time, and the cook knew my preferences... No analogy is perfect, so drawing parellels between a restaurant and a home cooked meal doesn't always work -- but in this case, I think it works very well: If I trust a sushi chef (whom I don't really know at all on a personal level, but have just ordered a lot of food from) well enough to serve me whatever he thinks I might like, I think it would make sense to trust a loved one, or a friend to do the same.

Feuilletes, uh? I'd never figure that out on my own -- thank you SO MUCH! I think I'll definitely add this one to my do-again list...

Mexican food. I don't intensely dislike it, but everyone seems to be completely insane over it -- I find it boring and repetitive, and quite frankly, I can't tell the difference between a family-run joint and Taco Bell... I told someone in Texas about this, and they agreed that you can't get good Mexican food in California, and took me to what they promised was The Real Deal. Well, it looked identical to any Mexican restaurant I've been to here. And it tasted like Taco Bell. Maybe I'll need to start cooking the stuff, to better understand it, but there's just so many other cuisines to learn out there... Maybe one day.

Prosciutto-wrapped salmon and asparagus ferilletes* with brie, and an asparagus-dill béchamel sauce: I saw Jamie Oliver do a lemon-thyme salmon wrapped in prosciutto once -- I didn't have any lemon-thyme, but even if I had, since I was using a sauce to add extra flavors, I figured it'd be better to not season the main ingredient too much. So I just used some cracked pepper. The prosciutto is plenty salty. The asparagus "ferilletes" -- I'm kinda lost on that one. I got it off the net, but must have written the name down incorrectly, because I can't seem to find it anymore. It's just puff pastry wrapped around asparagus spears (shortened quite a bit), brushed with a beaten egg for color, and scored with a sharp knife (for looks, as much as anything, I guess). After cooking, I added some slices of brie -- but the slices I added were obviously too small, because you couldn't notice the brie at all. When I started assembling the dish, I thought my memory was off, because it seemed to me that it called for way too much cheese -- so I reduced it. I guess that was a mistake. But it still tasted great. The sauce was a complete spur of the moment thing. I had to cut off a lot of the asparagus to fit the puff pastry, and I just hated wasting it like that, so I cooked it, and hit it with a blender, and mixed it in with a béchamel sauce -- and added some dill too, which always goes well with fish. I'll have to hang on to this sauce for Paddy day, I guess -- what was I thinking, a green sauce? Pretty much everything was improvised except for the asparagus part. I'm kinda happy that I can do that kinda thing now, because it wasn't that long ago, that any attempt at "winging it" would result in a major catastrophy... I need to learn how to plate these things though -- arranging things, applying the sauce etc. I'm happy with my cooking, but these pictures I'm taking are freakin' horrible. I showed off egullet to a friend this weekend, who's both an excellent cook and a great photographer, and he was completely awed by the quality of the pictures in this thread... Then we took at look at my Imagegullet collection, and just laughed our asses off at my pictures: discolored, unfocused, unappetizing crap, it so bad it's downright funny. I'm like a snuff food-porn photographer... I've got no excuse either, cause I've been taking serious pictures for a couple of decades now -- just never of food. I just didn't realize how difficult it is.

Sharing food is great. It obviously depends on what you're eating as you wouldn't do it at just any meal. Best time to do it -- no matter what kind of restaurant or cuisine -- is a new place. No better way to sample a good cross-section of the menu that way.

Seeing that this board is about food and not religion, I don't want to divert the debate, but as I said, "...I would still never feed anyone something I knew they disliked..." My use of the word "respect" was poorly chosen here, seeing that it is quite ambiguous in this circumstance. I DO respect any and all food aversions, inasmuch as respect="Will not violate it" but not inasmuch as respect="Revere & venerate it." As I said, "...I would still never feed anyone something I knew they disliked..."

That looks magnificent.

The only food aversion that I truly respect, is that based genuine allergies. I have little empathy for irrational food aversions, like Linda McCartney going vegitarian because hey, lambs are cute -- or those who refuse to eat butter beans and lettuce because their religion forbids it. I've seen too many temporary vegitarians/vegan/whatnots create headaches for poor home cooks. I'll make no bones about it of course: I have my own irrational, cultural food aversions... However, taking this Commander Data-like approach to food aversions, I would still never feed anyone something I knew they disliked -- no matter how silly I thought their objections were.

Lenny Henry is awesome. I thought that show was very funny -- and that was long before I took an interest in cooking. Lenny's character could rip customers and coworkers alike a new one, while sounding like he was reciting Yeats -- there's just something so very pleasing about a truly eloquent ass-ripping... The "Pass the salt" skit has him raving and ranting to customers about flavoring his dish with everything from salt to prawn vindaloo, and that isn't just funny, it is also articulate and fairly clever. Now, has anyone looked at Todd English's Website? Dude, I swear that guy and Derek Zoolander were separated at birth...

Sea bass brushed with a mixture of olive oil, salt, crushed white pepper and freshly chopped dill, grilled over coals, on orange slices -- with mashed potatoes & chives, and a side salad of Caesar mix, red onions, tomatoes and pears, tossed in a Caesar salad dressing. Also, for starters, cantaloup slices wrapped in prosciutto, but forgot to take a picture of em...

Grilled halibut with a lemon-mustard glaze, carrots and snow peas grilled in a tinfoil pouch with roasted sesame seeds and soy sauce. The halibut started falling apart before I could get proper grill marks on it -- I guess I didn't use enough coals to get enough heat... Oh, and bearnaise sauce -- I didn't really need it for this dish (the glaze was available at the table), but I wanted to see if I could combine the CIA and Estoffier methods, and come up with the ultimate bearnaise (yeah I'm obsessive ). Oh, and some homemade bread too.

Gjetost's percieved flavor depends a lot on how you eat it -- if you chop a chunk off, or even a moderately thick slice, it is overwhelming, and not very good. Even if you slice a thin slice, and eat it on its own, it's not very good. To properly enjoy it, you have to use a special cheese cutter that slices it very thinly -- and serve it on hearty bread. You migh still dislike it of course but you have a much bigger chance of enjoying the odd, sweet, fudge-like taste, if you eat it that way. Now, if yer looking for nasty Norwegian cheese, look no further than Gammalost (old cheese)... Oh boy, Limburger smells like roses compared to that stuff. Someone here on eGullet had a tagline that claimed good cheese smells like happy underpants... Gammalost smells like severely unhappy & distressed underpants.

Really?! But you'd still remove a lot of the "bark" from the plant, though? I've tried to remove stuff, to try find an edible "core" on lemongrass, but even if I discarded 75% of the stalk, the stuff at the center still wasn't edible... I mean, I've given up on actual lemongrass, and have switched to a lemongrass paste in a tube...

I'm not very familiar with Thai food, but I do like it a lot. I've made a red chicken curry and a green shrimp curry (the green one being much hotter) -- using pre-made curry pastes. I'd like to try make my own curry paste. One dish that I did make without any pre-made stuff was Tom Yum Goong, that I pieced together from recipies I found on the net (after having seen it made in a travel program). It's a shrimp soup with lemon grass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce -- as I said, I'm no expert on Thai food, but it seems those four are used a lot. It also uses lime juice, cilantro (stem and leaves), sugar, mushroom, shallots, green onions and chicken stock. What I like about the Thai dishes I've experienced so far, is that it is both hot and spicy, while at the same time being really zesty and refreshing. I don't know if shrimp paste is exclusively Vietnamese, or if it is used in Thai cooking also, but whoa, that stuff is too much for my pallate... The fish sauce, I try to use sparingly, but shrimp paste -- no way, too challenging for me.

That looks awesome! What is the relish/sauce you're using with your salmon?

I used to think lutefisk fit this description, but then a buddy of mine got hooked on it and brought a bunch of it home from Norway. Poor wife was in tears over the stench... That exception aside, it is a mystery to me, that anyone can eat that vile crap without being brainwashed from childhood...

While I'd never want to discourage anyone from buying a book, you can find the complete recipe online here (PBS.org)...

The pictures in this thread are just too damn inspiring... So, in spite of my screwups trying to do pizzas on a grill, I figured I'd give it another go -- in a stove. But I still burned the damn things... =( Augh. They really were quite tasty, but not to my liking, though. I failed on the first pie, by not letting the pizza stone heat up enough -- while rolling the pie way too thin. This made the pie not cook evenly from the bottom (in spite of being thin), and even if this got a lot more cooking time than pie #2, it still stuck to the plate, and was uncooked in the middle). The second pie would have been great, except hey -- we wuz eatin' the first pie, and I just left it on too long =(

Thanks very much! It really tasted great, too. Didn't get very good grill marks on the steak though -- at least the photo doesn't show much -- the level of excellence on the pictures shown in this thread makes it a little intimidating to post my attempts... Thanks.

I just caught the Las Vegas phyllo-crusted salmon episode last night. It was very interesting, and made me want to watch the previous episodes. I don't know how much of the drama is made in the editing room, but I found one bit particular nauseating: At the end of the show, after a contestant was 86'd, one of the others (Yannick Marchand) made a comment, that he felt the dish was too salty... The judges' reaction was priceless -- talk about swearing in church. Chef Michael Mina didn't even respond, so Ming Tsai decided to come to his rescue, retorting that well, maybe Marchand shouldn't wear sunglasses. Quite rightly, Marchand responded, "What?" (Which incidentally is exactly the same thing I said, out loud). Tsai explained that he shouldn't walk around in someone's kitchen wearing sunglasses -- indicating that he found it to be disrespectful... At this point, we got a "back stage" soundbite from Tsai, where he said he thought they'd 86'd the wrong guy... Now, the salting preference-issue is a separate one. And, sadly so is the "don't you DARE critique me, you lowly non- chef -superstar kitchen peon!" matter. But that a seasoned TV cook as Ming Tsai, who is capable of coming across on his own show as the most personable, likeable fellow could make such an completely infantile comment, just completely disgusted me. The guy's been wearing sunglasses on the top of his head the whole time, and no complaints are made about it, until he has the audacity to question the design of the dish? What the hell does that have to do with the amount of salt in this dish? What an utterly vacuous thing to say. If you're gonna be a tyrant, fine -- that's entertaining too. But please, unless you've got a couple of neurons to rub together, and thus the ability to come up with something reasonably eloquent to say when tearing down a contestant -- don't. "You're a big poo-poo head with your stupid sunglasses" don't work. ::rant off::

Fillet Mignon and roasted potatoes done on the BBQ, boiled baby carrots, and Béarnaise sauce. I've struggled with Hollandaise sauce for quite some time now, and while I enjoyed the simplicity of an Auguste Escoffier recipe I was shown here on eGullet (no double boiler required), I found it to be too buttery for my tastes. The CIA Professional Chef recipe was more complicated and time consuming but it produced a far better sauce (well, according to my tastes). This time I tried their Béarnaise sauce, and it came out great. Since the CIA book's quantities are restaurant sized, I scaled thing down -- this makes about 1.5 cups worth of sauce: 1/2 tbsp shallot (sometimes I use red onions) 1/4 tsp crushed black peppercorn 2 tbsp tarragon vinegar (I just used white wine vinegar) 2 tbsp water 1 tbsp fresh tarragon -- leaves and stems separated 1 tsp dried tarragon 2 egg yolks 1/2-3/4 cups butter 1 tbsp fresh chervil (I just use Italian/Flat leaf parsley) Dash salt and white pepper to taste 1. Melt butter, set aside. 2. Simmer shallots, peppercorns, tarragon stems and dried tarragon in vinegar until almost dry. 3. Add water, and strain (through cheese cloth) into double boiler. 4. Add yolks and whisk until thickened. (I couldn't get it to thicken until I added butter though). 5. Stir in butter in a thin stream. Keep stirring until thickened. 6. Add chopped, fresh tarragon leaves and chervil (parsley). 7. Season with salt, finely crushed white peppercorns.

It might help stop the burning, if you wrap a little tinfoil around the ends of the bamboo sticks.